How to sucker-punch the right wing
Their radicalism is a vulnerability you can exploit. So exploit it.
Fish gotta swim,
Bird gotta’ fly,
Trumpies gotta’ slander us and lie, lie, lie.
Lately, the Republican lies and slander have gotten uglier and worse. Meanwhile, a lot of Democrats I know have responded by complaing.
They complain that the right has Fox News, as if we lacked a cable network of our own. They complain about how few people realize how Republicans have become a dangerous right-wing personality cult, as if that should be self-evident to the politically disengaged. Or worse, they “go high,” and take a perverse pride in keeping their discourse reasonable and positive as if there were any evidence to suggest today’s political climate rewards for high mindedness and principles.
For a party that prides itself on rational, evidence-based reasoning we are awfully slow to learn the endlessly validated lessons of Game Theory: when dealing with a bad-faith opponent the only viable strategy is tit-for-tat payback. Golden rule strategies based on forgiveness and assumed good will are only useful after their sucker punching stops and equilibrium is restored.
We need to change, but how do we?
As with most important questions in life, the answer is simple but difficult. We just have to keep discipline and stay on message, two things Democrats are notoriously bad at. And we need to communicate by a different set of rules. Until something resembling reasonable, good-faith political discourse returns, we need to learn a strategy I call “attack and contrast”
The rules of “attack and contrast”
Never engage the false talking point, even to dispute it.
Never explain; explaining is losing
Never play defense, ever. Instead: attack and contrast. More on that below.
Most Americans support what we support, even if they don't support us by name.
Every right wing attack on our motives and policies is an implied endorsement of something most Americans don't support.
Every time a Republican demagogue uses ugly, 'base appeal' language to describe their views, they have offered us an exploitable opening. Exploit it, exploit it and then exploit it some more.
By far, the most powerful and effective way to attack a right wing demagogue is to
Pinpoint their most radical and repellent positions,
Reframe each one so as to make its implications clear to people who aren't politically engaged deep thinkers, and
Demand they defend them. That automatically puts them on the defense.
When framing your attack, always use open questions:
Open questions t start with "Who, what, when, or how" and can't be answered with "yes or no."
(Avoid 'why' in most cases--it elicits evasive talking points and 'just so stories')
After attacking, remind the people and press of the reasonable, highly popular positions and contrast them with their ugly and radical ones:
"I will never force a raped 12 year old girl to bear her rapist's offspring. My opponent has already told you he/she will."When your opponent changes the subject never, ever respond to the deflection. Call out the evasion and repeat the attack.
When they respond with more mud slinging,
call out the evasion,
point out how it's more evidence of their bad character, and
repeat the attack.
Have fun!