The Book of GOP “Twistifications”
So you’re tired of yelling at GOP debate moderators or want to shut down your Foxified uncle?
Since it’s not easy for faithful conservatives to convincingly answer questions about climate science, gun violence, and mass deportation, among many others, they often resort to 14 rhetorical tricks to sway credulous audiences—tricks I spotted from my years debating Bill Buckley, Pat Buchanan, and now some of the smartest conservatives on my weekly nationally syndicated radio show.
To see these “twistifications” in action—Jefferson’s word for saying things that are convincing falsehoods—I refer you to any speech by Ted Cruz, tweet by Erick W. Erickson, radio show of Rush Limbaugh, or cable hour of Hannity/O’Reilly. (Readers wired to say “both sides do it” in a game of false equivalence to sound thoughtful, as noted in text, sadly are just not paying careful attention.)
Underscoring all that follows is the projection of implacable confidence. In the words of the immortal British axiom, “perhaps wrong but never in doubt.”
1. Black Swans. When data and common sense are to the contrary, just emphasize one outlier and ignore voluminous contrary examples. Pretend that the aberrational is typical. To argue that Obama really isn’t smart, Sean Hannity several dozen times cites when Obama once mispronounced “corpsmen” as corps-men, not cores-men. To prove that Hillary is a confirmed liar, find that time Hillary thought she was under sniper fire landing at an airport in Bosnia. This method could “prove” that Ted Williams was an awful hitter by showing you video of his only three-strikeout game in a .341 lifetime career.
2. Lie, Brazenly. All candidates “lie” to some extent, though most instances are harmless puffery that nearly all voters discount. But then there are repeated untruths that poison debate. It’s all GOP presidential contenders asserting that Obamacare is a job-killer when jobs increased every year since enactment. It’s Donald Trump asserting that “83%” of white victims were killed by African Americans (it’s in the teens) all while he invariably adds phrases that seduce the faithful—“frankly . . . in all candor . . . believe me . . . OK? . . . right?” It’s the Bush 43 aide telling journalist Ron Suskind that “we create our own reality.” The Niagara of repeated GOP lies reveals a new post-truth world that earnest fact-checkers apparently cannot deter and that democracy has not yet adjusted to.
3. Hyperbole. Mark Twain called them “stretchers”—when there’s a germ of truth in a comparison that’s far more dissimilar than alike. Hence all those times critics simply label any controversy as “Obama’s Katrina, Obama’s Watergate, Obama’s Munich.” Or use a loaded adjective—the best early example being Gingrich’s 1996 memo urging GOP candidates to always use words like “traitor, pathetic, corrupt” to describe Democrats. The best current example: if there’s any international problem that Obama doesn’t think warrants risking World War III, just call him “feckless” or “weak.” Q.E.D.!
4. Deny, Deny, Deny. In the play Chicago, a wife walks in on her husband in flagrante as he keeps calmly saying “what woman?” until the liaison hurriedly dresses and leaves . . . and the wife starts to question her memory. In real life, it’s Jeb Bush insisting that his brother “kept us safe” because W spoke patriotically into a bullhorn while standing on the rubble of 9/11. So no matter how obviously Voter ID state laws suppress hundreds of thousands of eligible minority voters and U.S. deficits don’t turn us into Greece, just assume that the Japanese axiom is correct: “After six months, no one remembers.”
5. Politically Correct! This is a close relative to 1–4 above. What if your opinion is unpopular because it’s both false and stupid—like Mexicans are rapists, the climate is cool. Why bother admitting error when you can ignore evidence by decrying censorship, which enables you to never have to respond to the core problem. While Republicans are the ones to denounce PC, notice how none of them ever criticize the NRA or laud 5 percent unemployment? Here the world champion was Ben Carson: You don’t agree that Jews with guns could have deterred the Holocaust? You’re just being politically correct!
6. Reverse Language and Speak Quickly. Lincoln said audiences should be careful with slick talkers who confuse “a horse chestnut and a chestnut horse.” Today that kind of word play is skillfully deployed by conservatives who ignore “racism” but harp on “reverse racism.” Chief Justice Roberts, as noted in the text, said in a key voting rights opinion that the way to end discrimination is to end discrimination, which smoothly equated centuries of oppression of African Americans with centuries of dominance by white Americans. Or if you have an antifeminist organization, call it the Susan B. Anthony group. If you can’t convert ’em, confuse ’em.
7. Shameless Hypocrisy. There aren’t many human search engines in Republican debate audiences. So when Karl Rove of the Bush Great Recession attacks Obama’s economic record, Fox News runs segment after segment about Obama playing golf on vacation (Bush and Reagan took off 300 percent more time), Paul Ryan votes against paid family leave but insists he’d only become Speaker if he could be with his kids on weekends, these politicians don’t flinch when their words completely contradict their actions.
8. Ergo Hoc Propter Hoc. There’s a joke about an old man sweeping leaves in DuPont Circle to keep away the elephants. “But there are no elephants here,” comes the reply. “See!” he says. If there’s little evidence to support some prejudice, a surefire way to convince reactionary listeners is just to list problems and then say a version of “on Obama’s watch!” If inequality, illegal immigrants, and an exploding Middle East precede the forty-fourth president, ignore those realities and blame him. Assume most people lack any sense of consequence.
9. Fear Itself. As noted in the text, our evolution includes a brain clump called the amygdala so we can flee or fight when in danger. This primitive impulse was essential to cavemen and is to modern cavemen like Ted Cruz who brilliantly confuse the patriotic with the apocalyptic (“the world’s on fire!”). He theatrically asserts that an Iran nuclear deal that slows or stops a nuclear Iran—agreed to by nearly all the nations on earth—actually guarantees that Iran will somehow build and use nuclear weapons against Israel and America. Not to be outdone, Marco Rubio brags that he bought a gun to stop ISIS if they attack his family. This tactic works best when it instills not merely fear, according to the New Yorker’s David Remnick, but “perpetual fear.”
10. Next Faux Scandal. “It’s always something,” said Gilda Radner’s character Roseanne Roseannadanna. Should some controversy be resolved against your team—say, Barack has released his birth certificate and Michelle in fact did not spend $200 million traveling to the South Pacific—just quickly move on to some new allegation to feed the conservative perpetual grievance machine. If it’s late year, the “War on Christmas”—when America’s 7 percent nonbelievers supposedly bully the 80 percent Christian population—will do nicely. Or if you have no obvious policy difference with Obama on, say, Syria and ISIS, then attack his refusal to use the words “Islamic terrorism” which equates the substantive and the superficial. See: Benghazi-gate and Emailgate.
11. Change the Subject with a Rhetorical Question. Here’s a nearly infallible misdirection: if you’re cornered on having to defend something insane—such as a Gestapo-like registry of Muslims or helping billionaires spend more millions in secret campaign gifts, have this arrow in your quiver: “What about Obama’s IRS that was governed by an enemies list? What about Mayor Richard Daley throwing the election to Kennedy with graveyard votes in 1960? What about Obamacare’s website?” Because relevance and proportionality are not required, the opportunities are truly endless.
12. Snark Attack. The King of Snark is Erick Erickson, a very popular radio host/tweeter on the Right. To take one example: he ardently embraces a Second Amendment with the words “well-regulated.” But since it’s impossible to square that belief with the lethal statistics on gun-related deaths in the U.S., here were some of his 50 tweets the week in December when 14 were killed in San Bernardino, four at a Planned Parenthood Clinic, and Obama attended the Climate Summit in Paris: he displayed a New York Times editorial on gun control with supposed bullet holes . . . “I expect the President will demand we all put solar panels on our roofs to stop ISIS” . . . “Wonder where Rolling Stone will get glam shot of shooters for next cover.” Reductio ad absurdums are fun to read.
13. Attack “The Media” or “Elites.” Blame the messenger who won’t answer back. If CBS reports that there are 50 times more gun deaths per capita in America than Germany, why would O’Reilly bother denying the truth when he can smirk and say, “Well, what do you expect from the lame-stream media?” Or dismiss Obama’s call for more college education by saying, as Rick Santorum did in 2012, “What a snob!” VP and felon Spiro Agnew launched this Them vs. Us meme in the modern era. George Wallace and Sarah Palin are still its champs.
14. Hitler! Last, if nothing else is available, there’s always a comparison to the Führer himself. Although Newt Gingrich nearly cornered this market, it still has some political utility when less-skilled speakers try it. At least you know for a certainty that the target will not deny it by asserting “I am not Hitler!” Works every time.
It’s now almost impossible to pin down quick-witted GOP contenders deploying these tricks. But before throwing up your hands, eventually there will be a general election when a Democratic nominee will have a pulpit to expose that “truth has a liberal bias” and a media more willing to use their BS detectors. Eventually, the best hope for a remedy to these artful devices is Benjamin Franklin’s observation that “when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.”