Republicans, wake up! You've walked into a rhetorical trap, and you're wasting precious time digging yourselves deeper.
Back on July 13, President Obama, at a campaign stop at a fire station in Roanoke, Va., reached a point in his campaign speech where he talked about taxes. As he has done many times before, he then used a rhetorical technique called a "straw man" to represent Republican views.
The straw man is an argument where you don't rebut your opponent's stance directly, but instead set up a "some people say" argument that can be construed as your opponent's viewpoint, and then proceed to knock that down instead.
Here is the pertinent part, taken from the White House website:
"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back.
They know they didn't — look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business — you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires."
This statement — especially the "you didn't build that" part that everyone jumped on — is a straw man. Most successful people — not just the "wealthy, successful Americans who agree" with Obama — will ascribe their success to many sources — teachers, coaches, a loyal staff, good advisers, customers, investors, and yes, the public and private infrastructure that allows them to run their businesses. Even liberal celebrities thank the "little people" who helped them win their awards — although I've never heard one credit the government for, say, inventing the Internet so you could watch them on Hulu.
Few successful entrepreneurs will claim they did it all by themselves — except, of course, when they start tripping all over themselves to rebut Obama, thereby turning themselves into the straw man. And that is the trap.
Almost immediately after Obama's speech, cartoon illustrations began circulating of fat-cat, old, white, male tycoons (the straw-man stereotype Republican) lighting cigars with dollar bills and saying "I built that," usually offset by a long list of public benefits and incentives that contributed to their success through tax dollars.
Then, real Republicans began running real ads, really saying "I built that" about their businesses. This gave the Democrats the opportunity to run response ads and social media campaigns, picking on those specific entrepreneurs and pointing out the infrastructure, government loans and contracts that had benefited them.
In other words, Republicans, your opposition has successfully turned its straw man into flesh-and-blood, brick-and-mortar Republicans who can be attacked, all the while correctly claiming its own words have been taken out of context. They've even managed to change the subject entirely. Now we're seeing debates about who really built the Internet, instead of being about where tax policy should be going and why.
Let's put this behind us and move on. There are real issues to be discussed, and time is running out. We don't have time to waste on splitting hairs — or straws.
Howard Fielding is news systems editor of the Republican-American.
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