MOTION 5: THS liberal candidates to employ languages and narratives (including but not limited to “national unity”, “make the country great again”, etc.) used by hard line conservatives if it can provide assistance to win elections
(Polite concern: this particular motion seemed a little hard to debate, especially for gov side, thus possibly reconsidering the aim of the motion or doing further stress-testing would be beneficial. In any case, the analysis is as follows:)
Key Clashes:
1. How does the interpretation of these messages influenced?
2. In which world do liberal candidates get more consistent buy-in?
Clash 1 Gov:
1. Society is more likely to have deeper discourse and interrogation of these messages: - why?
● Similar competitive lines call for a need to distinguish further between liberal and conservative messages, thus society is more likely to interrogate the meaning behind what “make the country great again” actually means in the liberal sense vs. the conservative sense
● Policy links – society wants to see how the candidates policies will drive the message they are communicating, thus formal debates, interviews, etc. are more likely to center around the mechanisms each candidate is using to get to materialize the same message they all have, rather than the differences in their initial messages as liberals and conservatives
● Liberal and conservative voters more inclined to have discourse on why they support a particular candidate considering their messages are the same/similar - thus opens up an avenue for more informed decisions
Clash 1 Opp:
1. Societal interpretation of these messages is likely to harm the liberal candidate – why?
● Likely to lose liberal buy-in or at least reduce voter turn out due to lack of identification by liberal voters – liberal language such as Obama’s “Yes We Can” have appeal to the liberal population because it sets them apart from conservatives and it is clear what they are voting for and why: coopting right wing hard line narratives would push away the liberal audience
● Campaign funding and advertisement: corporates tend to associate their image and the target market they appeal to in the commercial market with the candidate they are supporting, thus liberal candidates may decrease incentive for liberal corporates to support them when they begin to adopt hard line narratives as corporates do not want their customers (if they get most business from liberals) to assume they associate with or support right wing rhetoric
● Moderate buy-in may be risked: in swing states where moderates could either sway right or left, this makes it harder for them to decide due to the same extreme narratives being promoted on either side – moderates tend to go for more centrist liberals instead of radical right or left, thus hard line narratives could hurt centrist liberal candidates who would otherwise get moderate buy in
Clash 2 Gov:
1. Liberal candidates become more of a threat to conservatives – would be more likely to get airtime on conservative media stations to further interrogate them if they seem to run the same lines, which would increase their exposure and buy-in
2. Corporates and sponsors are likely to remain and promote the policies behind the conservative lines to distinguish between candidates
3. Liberal and centrist media stations are likely to further emphasize the differences between the candidates in an effort to interrogate the meaning behind the languages and narratives they use, to appeal at a deeper level to the moderate and liberal audience
Clash 2 Opp:
1. Lack of sustainability: even if liberals get more conservative buy-in short-term, due to the difference in policy prioritization and implementation between liberal and conservative politicians, they are unlikely to please the conservative crowd when they are in office, thus in the next election, not only do they lose conservative buy-in, but they are likely to never gain it back as they have now created distrust with the conservatives
2. Conservative candidates may decide to adopt even more radical narratives if this becomes the norm with all liberal candidates – why? - to get more of an edge over liberals, thus are more likely to normalize further extremes to carry their conservative audience with them as they maximize on the distrust they have for liberal candidates
