Hello, friends, and welcome to another week. Today we are going to have fun talking about devious political tactics! I read an article last year that described 15 political tactics used by Republicans, and I found it to be utterly fascinating. I don’t have a background in political science—only a driving curiosity and interest in the subject. So this is probably nothing new to the well-informed folk. But if I found this interesting and eye-opening, I figured many of my readers might as well.
Ever since reading this article I mentioned, I can’t help but notice these tactics being used—all the time. Frankly, it’s a powerful feeling to be able to see behind the curtain, so to speak, and to understand and even categorize the type of political speech being used on us by any given politician. I think it makes us better consumers of news and political media, and I hope you find this knowledge to be as useful as I did.
At the outset I’ll note that, of course, political tactics are nothing new. They’re as old as civilization itself, to be sure. Likewise, no single political faction holds the monopoly on using these tactics. That said, you all know by now that I have a liberal bent and I don’t shy away from picking on Republicans especially. My perception is that while Democrats aren’t innocent of using political tactics, I do believe that these more devious tactics have been rather perfected by the Republican party, having become their bread and butter, so to speak.
Former George W. Bush political strategist, Karl Rove, is frequently cited as being one of those Republicans who mastered the devious campaign tactic. A 2006 NPR article reviewed a Karl Rove biography called “The Architect,” by James Moore and Wayne Slater, and it described Rove this way:
Ultimately, though, Karl Rove, we think, will be a man who’s remembered for figuring out how to game the American political system. Under Rove, the politics of deception has become a conventional political tool. By drumming up the cash he needs from corporate supporters, Rove has been able to fill the ether with television and radio ads that create an alternative reality. When parents, busy over the kitchen table with their children, glance at the television flickering across the room and see their smiling president beneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner, they assume the worst is over. Image trumps truth. The stage is more important than the facts. The polls go up.
We’re not suggesting that Rove is the first political operative to lie, nor that deception is the only ax he swings. Rove works with the truth, if and when it’s an advantage. We are insisting, however, that he is American politics’ most talented, prolific, and successful dissembler. When his policies and their merits, supported by his candidates’ rhetoric, are not enough to succeed, Rove will do whatever is necessary to win.
Note that the above excerpt was written in 2006—before even Obama’s presidency. It makes my stomach turn to know how far those deceptive tactics have been taken by Republicans in the intervening years. I include that quote simply to bolster my statement and belief about how these deceptive tactics are a particularly Republican tool, more than any other group.
As I mentioned above, I read an article last year that introduced me to these 15 specific concepts that will take up the remainder of this essay. I have the link as well as some thoughts about this source, included in a footnote at the end of this essay.1 Plenty of political tactics are straight-forward and ethical. However, what I am about to discuss are the type of tactics that lean towards the deceptive or underhanded.
So, here we go. Let’s discuss devious political tactics!
#1—Take the Offensive
This tactic involves aggressively establishing the agenda of the campaign to control the race and put the opponent on the defensive from the outset. Throw your opponent “off message” early, so they are on the defensive and can’t catch up.
Long before the 2020 election, the previous president aggressively and actively started painting the narratives of Joe Biden being “sleepy,” and of the election being rigged, among other things. This put Biden and the Democrats immediately on the defensive on these matters. The election-rigging claim was ludicrous. The allegation was made long before the election even occurred, thus sowing the seeds of doubt early. After Biden won, Republicans were therefore right-ready to reap the fruits of the doubt that they had sown before the election. This rhetoric led to the widespread and easy adoption of the Big Lie that Biden’s win wasn’t legitimate. These completely bogus claims demand a lot of time and energy to be be spent in attempting to defeat them, which is exactly the Republican’s goal.
#2—Attack Your Opponent’s Strengths
This tactic forces the opponent to back away from the very qualities that makes him or her attractive.
In a particularly frustrating (to me) push, the previous president and the Republicans took Biden’s long and fruitful career in public service and painted it as a negative. Republicans across the country began to parrot the line that “Biden hasn’t done anything in 47 years.” Alternatively, the argument was that Biden’s long career in politics made him an untrustworthy “Washington insider,” rather than the highly experienced and competent public servant he is.
As a more recent example, conservative pundits blasted Biden last week for stopping to pick a dandelion for his wife, Dr. Jill Biden. What should have been seen as a benign gesture of a thoughtful and sweet-natured husband (one of Biden’s strengths) was instead sold as being an example of his supposed dementia or lack of focus. If their opponent does anything to look good, they’ll find a way to attack it.
#3—Accuse Your Opponent of What He or She is Going to Accuse You Of
Accuse your opponent of your own weakness. Even if outlandish, these attacks disarm the opponent and puts him or her on the defensive again.
The previous president accuses everyone he doesn’t like of being liars, even though that is an easily-proven description of him. Another word for this is “projecting.” They project their own faults and weaknesses onto their opponents. Ignoring the fact that the former president’s own children worked in the white house or otherwise reaped favor and benefits due to their father’s position, he whipped up true fury over false accusations of special treatment that Biden’s son, Hunter, allegedly benefitted from.
#4—Go Negative, Then Cry Foul
This involves going negative early on, then when your opponent retaliates, you call public attention to their “dirty” campaign tactics.
Senator and current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to even consider Merrick Garland as Obama’s Supreme Court nominee roughly eight months prior to the 2016 election, but then the Republicans cried foul that the Democrats wanted to use that same logic to pause the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court with mere weeks remaining until the 2020 election.
#5—The “Big Lie”
Boldly sell big lies. People are less likely to believe small lies than big ones, ironically. People feel like there’s no way a person would say something so big if it wasn’t true. They also know that accusing your opponent of lying can backfire, so they lie boldly and with impunity.
The biggest of all examples of a big lie is what we simply call these days, the Big Lie—the lie that Biden didn’t legitimately win the election. Despite no evidence of widespread election fraud, numerous failed court cases attempting to overturn the election, and Republican elections officers throughout the country vouching for the accuracy of their elections procedures—somehow the former president and his followers have convinced at least a two-thirds of all Republicans that Biden’s win was illegitimate. This is dangerous absurdity, and it led directly to the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021.
#6—Appeal to Moral Values
Republicans tactically and deceptively lean on the “faith-based” approach to government. Religion, morals, and emotions are stressed over actual facts, policies, and modern culture.
Republicans appeal to religion and morality constantly, in spite of their own rampant moral failings and misdeeds. What better example than the former president’s photo shoot with a Bible in hand, in front of a church. Even leaving aside the fact that he tear gassed people to get this photo, the image itself was awful in the fact that it was a pure political ploy and has nothing to do with the former president’s actual beliefs, values, or actions. How has the most immoral, adulterous, cheating, lying, name-calling, con-man to ever grace the Oval Office been equated to religious “savior” status by so many American Christians? It wasn’t an accident, and this appeal to religion was carefully crafted.
#7—Sell the Persona
Sell your candidate as a personality type. The “Successful Businessman.” The “Everyman.” The “Straight Talker.” Etc.
It seems improbable, but indeed, the former president has been sold as being a successful businessman and champion of rednecks everywhere. In reality, I don’t think he would be caught dead spending a weekend with his flag waving, gun toting supporters. Those aren’t his type of people. Yet, his campaign was able to play up his alleged (and arguably inaccurate) success as a businessman and billionaire as a selling feature, no matter how much this party had railed against New York elites in the past. (The former president lived in his own Manhattan high rise, outfitted with literal gold toilets, for goodness sake).
We were heavily sold on the concepts of the former president being a good businessman, and being the straight-shooter who says what everyone else is too chicken to say. Republicans relied on these tropes heavily, ignoring the fact that he wasn’t that great of a businessman and that he seriously lacked skills in law, foreign affairs, policy, and governance. It glosses over the fact that he’s not so much of a “straight-shooter” as simply an asshole.
#8—Sell an Adolescent Worldview
Emphasize offering an uncomplicated world, a world of immediate gratification, a self-absorbed world.
Republicans rely heavily on the idea of the “good old days” when things were simpler and “better,” regardless of an inability to really articulate what this means for most Americans. Quick, small tax cuts (immediate gratification) for the middle class are favored over policies that require the uber-wealthy to pay their fair share. They oversimplify and downplay important issues rather than admitting and recognizing that things are complicated.
More recently, this has manifested in anti-mask behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is selfish and rewards the immediate gratification type behavior as opposed to enforcing the expectation that people must experience some minor hardship for the greater good.
#9—Exploit the Media
This means exploiting the capabilities of the media, denouncing the media, controlling the mainstream media through intimidation, imposing limits on “unscripted encounters” with the media, and cultivating a network of influential media commentators and media outlets that support your agenda.
This one is too obvious. Republicans have been on a media rampage in recent years. Everything they don’t like is painted as “fake news” or illegal censorship or “cancel culture,” and decent journalism is “the enemy of the people.” On the other hand, favored news outlets that promote Republican talking-points, like Fox, OAN, and Newsmax are used more and more as propaganda machines.
#10—Create Straw Issues
Manufacture minor, but emotionally loaded, issues to divert the attention of the voters.
Democrats want to take away your meat. They want to cancel Christmas. They want to ban Dr. Seuss. Of course, none of this is true, nor are these even remotely the most pressing issues of the day. But conservative media and elected officials will spend a significant amount of time diverting attention to these non-issues. If you can convince someone that the evil Democrats are going to ban your beloved Christmas holiday, you sure as hell are going to vote for the party that’s going to prevent that. Of course the rest of the Republican “platform” (to the extent there even is one) is against your best interest, but that doesn’t matter because they had you at cancelling Christmas.
#11—Employ Surrogates
Use surrogate supporters to go out and do your dirty work, so you can never stick the candidate with actually saying anything bad.
Using surrogates is normal and expected in a lot of ways, because you can’t be everywhere at once. What is interesting, though, is when surrogates are used to spread concepts that then can’t be pinned on the candidate or elected official himself because he wasn’t actually the person who said it.
One modern way that the former president did this was through the use of retweets. He would retweet the most horrendous stuff, including white supremacist fodder, and then claim ignorance because it wasn’t his actual words. In the meantime, the message was sent loud and clear to those listening—if you’re white supremacist, he’s your guy.
#12—Use Emotional Appeals
This typically means manipulating people’s fears and insecurities. Scaring people with things that haven’t happened and/or that you have no basis to prove have happened or will happen.
Republicans put a lot of emphasis on how Biden or immigrants will “destroy” the suburbs. This is an appeal to people’s emotions of fear—fear of violence, fear of people not like you, fear of change. These are often not based in any truth at all. Remember last year when that rumor went around that members of Antifa were going door to door in the suburbs to literally shoot people? Of course that was never a real thing, but every-day Republicans sure believed it. One of my neighbors texted our entire neighborhood warning us not to answer the door because it may be Antifa.
#13—Rely on Expert Testimonials
Rely on experts, regardless of the quality of the expert. It’s ok if they have a financial stake in the issue or another conflict of interest.
Do you remember when the previous president brought out that random doctor to say that hydroxychloroquine was a good treatment for Covid-19, and it turned out she was a total hack who espoused all sorts of wild views? There were perfectly capable, experienced, and intelligent doctors on his team (ahem . . . Dr. Fauci) and yet he gets whatever random “doctor” he could find to spin the message he wanted.
97% of scientists agree that climate change is real and caused by humans, but that doesn’t stop conservatives from finding the one scientist who questions the data (perhaps because he or she was hired to do so), and present that viewpoint as if it has equal weight in the scientific community.
#14—Rhetorical Devices
Use of speaking tricks to twist the issues. The long list includes, but is not limited to, misrepresenting your opponent’s position, taking their words out of context, shifting the burden of proof, downplaying or ignoring the evidence, etc.
There dozens of rhetorical devices, but just for one example, think about times that the previous president gave answers to questions, which may have been technically true, but which avoid important context or mislead. For instance, after the news broke that he only paid $750 in taxes in 2016, he responded by saying he’s paid millions in taxes. Technically, this is true when you consider payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc. But it ignored the main issue that he had not paid a fair share of federal taxes, and paid far less than the average American. Even when people tried to pin him down on the question of federal income tax alone, he kept deflecting and referring only to the larger more inclusive number.
#15—Use of Language
Similar to the last category, but this refers to strategically using language to control thoughts and behavior. The long list includes, but it not limited to, connotative words, labels, euphemisms, obfuscation, code words, etc.
As just one example, I’ll point out the frequent use of “dog whistle” language. A dog whistle can only be heard by the intended audience (the dog). Dog whistle language sends subtle messages to the intended audience while sounding otherwise benign. Republicans frequently use racist dog whistles. These are statements that conjure fear of other races, while on the outside looking neutral. Anytime they mention the suburbs, thugs, outsiders coming to your neighborhood, etc.—these are racist dog whistles, and they have a historic relationship to concepts to racism against black people and immigrants.
As another example, using labels is a huge favorite of the former president. He’s got a name for everyone: Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Obama, Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas. He uses this language tactically to belittle his opponents and create simple, unlikeable caricatures of them.
Now that you know a little bit more about these more devious political tactics, take a look at how your elected officials talk and try to pinpoint which tactic is being deployed. I see these all the time now. I’ll restate it one more time—Republicans are not the only party that use tactics or even dirty tactics. But they sure are a lot more organized, shall we say, in their concerted efforts towards employing these devious methods. Let that be a lesson to us, when trying to combat the prevalent misinformation being set forth by them. Perhaps even just pointing out when we see these tactics being used will help lift back the curtain for some otherwise gullible friends and family.
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The article I read that introduced me to these 15 concepts is entitled “Deciphering Karl Rove’s Playbook: Campaign Tactics and Response Strategies,” by Art Silverblatt, Ph.D, et al. Silverblatt states that these are “Rovian” campaign tactics. However, I hesitate to restate that assertion here, because the authors don’t explain how or why these tactics in particular are tied to Karl Rove. I couldn’t find any other sources confirming this assertion. Additionally, the article itself is just a PDF and I cannot tell if it was ever published anywhere formally. Regardless of who to attribute these 15 political tactics to, they certainly do exist and thus I decided to go ahead and present the concepts, only in a more general way and not tied to Karl Rove specifically.
A really good explanation of “what” the tactics are which is extremely important. Isn’t the more salient question “why” the tactics work? I mean we’re arnt really talking about these tactics unless they are effective?
The literacy rate in the US is 99%. Virtually every states k-12 core curriculum include “critical thinking”, “logical reasoning”, and our “process information” standards. So why do these tactics work?
One of the things I really enjoy about Rachel’s world view is the need for civility in the arena of political discourse. I think the pragmatic difficulty of civil discourse is rooted in the “why” the the tactics of this post.
I believe the answers lay in the neurobiology of brain chemistry that fuels what motivates us and or the fight or flight response.
I am looking forward to see what others think. Another thought provoking post Rachel. 👏🙏
I apologize. Clearly proof reading is not my strength.