At Wednesday night’s debate, if you happen to hear one of the 2020 Democrats moan that someone has brought up a “Republican talking point” or “right-wing talking point,” understand what it means: It’s the code the candidates use when faced with facts they’d rather not address.
During the first primary debate of the season last month, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro said he was in favor of decriminalizing unauthorized crossings at the border, in effect, rendering the phrase “illegal immigration” obsolete. Asked the next day on CNN how he would respond to someone who would rightfully characterize that position as support “for open borders,” Castro was indignant. “Open borders is a right-wing talking point,” he sniffed. “Nobody has called for open borders. That’s just a right-wing talking point.”
At Tuesday’s debate this week, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney correctly noted that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s healthcare proposal would outlaw private insurance. She seethed, responding that he “should stop using Republican talking points…”
She said it again when challenged by former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on her fantastical climate change proposals. “What you want to do instead,” she said, “is find the Republican talking point of a made-up piece of some other part and say, ‘Oh, we don’t really have to do anything.’”
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper immediately after the debate, Warren was once again asked what she would say to someone who enjoys their current health insurance, only to have it taken away under her policy. “You know, I really wish we’d stop using Republican talking points on what people are giving up,” she snapped.
So prolific is the “But Republican talking points!” sidestep that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders hadn’t even been asked a direct question during that same debate when he shot back at Jake Tapper, “Jake, your question is a Republican talking point.”
It’s a technique not dissimilar to the stupid “whataboutism” distraction that liberals and even some conservatives like to use. They criticize something President Trump does, for example, and when asked why the same standard wasn’t applied to say, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, their retort is, “That’s just whataboutism!”
Well, no, it’s just a simple observation that one side may not be getting the fairest shake.
The “Republican talking point!” diversion is basically the same. It’s meant to fool voters in to believing that the problem with what they’re witnessing isn’t that the 2020 Democrats don’t have sufficient or even logical explanations for some of their lame ideas. The problem, instead, is that they’re being asked to explain them at all.
