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Who Do Our Arguments Persuade?
On the member feed, Benjamin Glaser has a post titled “You Want to Know Why Ted Cruz Can Win?” that discusses the senator’s new campaign ad and the shocked reaction at its high quality from the Washington Post. It’s an eye-catching and powerful ad … to me. Big deal. But I was going to vote Republican anyway.
I keep wondering what will convince the people who don’t agree with us, but might be convinced. I don’t know the answer to that but, over on NR’s Postmodern Conservative blog, Peter Spiliakos has an interesting point of view. His conclusion: it’s is time to move past the Baby Boomer model of persuasion:
We are in a different place now [than we were in the 1980s]. Rove wasted $300 million in the 2012 cycle trying to get general election voters to oppose Obama. Murphy is in the process of wasting over $100 million trying to get Republican primary voters to support Jeb Bush.
The old political shorthand no longer works. It means nothing to Millennials. It means nothing to voters who immigrated to the US post-1980 and it means nothing to those voters’ children. That doesn’t mean that these voters are on the left. Many of them might be skeptical of tax increases, and they might start with the presumption that late-term fetuses are human beings, but they have no connection to the old political clichés. Cutting taxes to revive the economy is something that rich people say – and only about cutting taxes on rich people. The locution “culture of life” is something they have never heard from anybody they know. The old conservative political shorthand is immediately tuned out.
He continues:
… We need to slow down. We can no longer assume that people know what we are talking about. The voters that we need might have partially overlapping policy preferences with conservatives, but they don’t know it, and the language we use (even the language of establishment Republicans who can’t shut up about how inclusive they are) is repellent.
After reading the post, I went back and watched the ad to see what popped. First, Cruz’s use of the terms “mainstream media,” “economic calamity.” Second, its proposal for three actions: tripling the Border Patrol, building a wall that works, and securing the border.
I know what he means, I like that he gave specific actions to take. But, again, he doesn’t have to persuade me. How do these terms and actions fit with the NR post?
Published in Politics
Agreed, it’s just tough to know how to begin.
You’ve not met my MIL.
Yep.
The OP touched on this, but listen to most GOP politicians, and the cliches have become boring and predictable and meaningless. “Secure the border”, “immigration reform”, “tax reform”, “stand up for the middle class” (okay, that’s a bipartisan, meaningless cliche), etc, etc. say nothing.
Is there a finishing school for every person elected to Congress that requires rote memorization of these empty cliches?
Talk to people, for G-d’s sake! Use words and phrases normal people use. Trump is good at this, aside from the weird use of “fantastic” and “yuuge” and his juvenile insults. Why can’t anyone else?
I don’t believe they skew liberal. I believe they skew with a present time orientation, low risk tolerance, and discount the future significantly.
Consider the SS reform. We basically told them we were going to make their retirement more risky. We were selling them a higher future return with more risk. For generally well to do white people that’s a good trade, for everybody else not so much. Then like idiots we called people economically illiterate rubes for having a different risk tolerance.
Consider our economic plans. If you elect us we will do things which will have a future payoff, if any at all, and introduce significant risks and vicariously losses in the short term. In a high discount environment the future risky payoff does not overcome the short term risks. They are worried about their mortgage payments now. But instead of proposing plans that addressed those risks, you insult them, by again calling them rubes, low information voters, idiots, and why don’t you just screw off and die already. Seriously this is the tone. screw off and die.
Liberals propose low risk solutions to present oriented problems with long term trade offs.
This is a nomination ad (I don’t know how well it would do in the general, but apparently it’s struck a chord) so he may not need to persuade you but he needs to persuade people like you.
I think people are largely tuned out to the minutiae we here on Ricochet live and breathe. Milton Friedman and Maynard Keynes might be important to our understanding of politics but to most people it’s like talking to me about the Kardashians: nonsensical gibberish that makes their eyes glaze over.
Ricochetti like to believe people will respond to white papers but most people are looking for a shoe commercial.
You want to run faster, jump higer, be Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods? Buy Nike, buy Reebok, buy New Balance, buy Asics.
You want stability/prosperity/freedom/happiness? Buy Cruz, buy Rubio, buy Clinton, buy Sanders.
On that level the production values matter as much, or more, than the message.
There are certainly indications that his message is reaching voters who are at best tepid with regards to the GOP, broadening the base of potential voters.
Couldn’t agree more. This is precisely what prompted my posts on seriousness late last year.
Trump has really resonated with many of the more low information types that I mentioned in a previous comment. A co-worker of mine (who’s a democrat) said “Trump says what most people are thinking but would never say aloud”. This is true, which is why Trump is gaining.
These politicians need to just talk, like normal people about normal things that people understand.
You’re again taking a natural human condition and insinuating it’s only a problem among the Riochet/NR/Federalist crowd. The real problem is that everyone always get way too offended when somebody disagrees with them about an issue they hold dear.
So Democrats want to impose background checks on small dealers or ban AR-15s, and the Republican reaction is “they’re taking all of our guns”! Republicans want to ban abortions after 20 weeks and liberals hear “Republicans hate women!”
There is no tone that any of us here could use when discussing curtailing Social Security that would not come across as “screw off and die” to those on the losing end of any reform.
That’s why persuasion is so difficult.
The other thing conservatives don’t deal with well is collapsing social trust. Everything conservatives believe in is culturally english institutions in a state of high social trust.
In a state of low social trust, people trust outgroup people less. So Skipsul can’t convince anybody of anything because he is outgroup.
Conservativism also only works when there is a strong group loyalty. This doesn’t exist anymore especially from the upper class to the lower classes. So when conservatives talk about less regulation people hear: let weasels screw them.
The Atlantic had a great article on the importance of getting the global rich back into the social fabric, with strong bonds of affection and in group loyalty.
Great point.
To paraphrase what you’re saying: the only way conservatives can convince anyone is if they drop the conservative part of their ideology and just agree with what the majority wants.
I think this may very well be true, but if it is, we should stop the head-scratching about why the country keeps drifting away from conservative policies. We’re a democracy, the majority is not conservative, and people don’t like being told they’re wrong. Ergo constant leftward drift.
No, I am saying you have to change the order of priority. Stabilize then repair the social fabric, and then people will be open to the rest of the agenda.
All true. Oddly, I think this is another Trump strength – as wealthy as he is, he’s appealing in this sense:
This sort of appeal crosses a lot of lines. Trump gets a lot of loyalty from that.
Or else, as that is a very long term problem, try non-political approaches to get people to like and trust you first, then you can lead.
I’m not sure how that works. Social fabric is such an emergent phenomenon that I fail to see what active political steps would restore it.
And in any case, if restoring the social fabric means that some people have to make changes in their lives to accommodate others, we’re back to the original problem here: how do we persuade group A to make concessions to group B? In the past, telling black single mothers to get married and stop having children out of wedlock wasn’t exactly well-received.
I think it’s pretty much chicken-and-egg.
The major challenge in front of the GOP is their branding is terrible because the opposition has effectively labelled them as old, nasty, white male, rich warmongers who hate people and want the destroy the planet.
They refuse to do their own labelling of the Dems as old, nasty, white, female or girly men, rich from lawyers and bankers, war losers who hate Americans who work .
Those who unilaterally disarm become extinct.
If you replace hate and destroy with “casual disdain” its absolutely true.
Have you listened to Q&A with Bill Bennett, he discusses the novel Submission and makes the same point.
Preaching to the converted can actually be useful, if it gives fellow members of the congregation new arguments and angles to use when talking with the heathen.
I think Republicans/conservatives are failing big time in two ways, marketing-wise:
Not yet, but I will. I bought his book about education years ago, and I miss him!
Which is why I want people to be free to opt out – sell it as an optional relationship between people who trust each other.
It is much easier to sell freedom than less regulation. Most people, when asked, do not want to be treated like children.
I like big buts and I cannot lie.
This is true BUT most people believe other people need to be treated like children. They vote for laws to force other people to do stuff.
Also, people think other people are lying weasels who are just 2 seconds and a flimsy excuse away from absconding with their silver and daughters virginity.
Sure. So they can vote for their own freedom for a change, instead of voting to take away the freedom of the other guy.
on that note, I have long been arguing that school choice is the only issue of any real importance. Ann Coulter says immigration. That’s because she wrote a book about immigration. She’s wrong. It’s school choice.
By white single mothers either. We as a society get what we pay for [PLUS what all the borrowing pays for that we act as if is someone else’s problem.] We subsidize single mothers, black and white. And boy does society get a lot of ’em. And those transfer payments of OPM is more addictive than opium.
Anybody ever hear of ‘cold turkey’?
That’s the formula for winning the general election, but you have to win your first round playoff game before you start game-planning for the Super Bowl.
Who is Ted Cruz trying to persuade in this ad? I would guess the answer is: GOP primary voters. In particular, a lot of voters are backing Trump mainly because of his vocal stance on immigration, Cruz needs to persuade enough of those voters that he too understands their concerns and can be trusted to secure the border.
He can afford to speak in conservative shorthand at this stage of the game, since that’s what most of his target audience understands.
So true.
And it will be easier now than at most times. People hate Obamacare and see that the country is headed for the toilet, and the most visible person in power is a very liberal Democrat.
If we can’t sell conservatism now, (the benefits, not necessarily the philosophy) we can’t sell it at all.
I don’t think school choice is going to do anything. I went to a private Jewish day school, and today I consider myself a liberal/progressive. In fact, I would say that many of the students who were born to American Jews support Obama, and those who were born to Jewish parents outside of the US support Republicans, and only then due to a perceived anti-semitism by Obama (and not because of economic policies). Also, bear in mind, this was in a school where teachers openly showed contempt for Obama. I don’t recall any teacher praising him.
This is just based off of my experience. It isn’t as if I have done any real empirical analysis of this.