In politics, you’re either on-message or you’re losing. Let’s get to it.
Welcome to On Message, a weekly look at where the battle lines are drawn and who is winning the war of words.
This week… Don’t Say Gay.
Earlier this month, the Florida legislature passed House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education bill.
Opponents of the bill quickly dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, throwing any rational discussion of the bill’s benefits or shortcomings right out the window so we can have a good-old-fashioned message battle.
So, what does the bill actually say? Good question. It took a few minutes on Google to find the full text of the bill, which doesn’t actually even say the word “gay” anywhere in the text.
What it does say is that it prohibits, “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner.”
Ok, so what are those grade levels, you ask?
That’s spelled out beginning on line 97 of the bill:
“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
As I’ve mentioned several times in previous episodes, the simplest message almost alway wins and a catchy phrase like “Don’t say gay” would normally be good enough for opponents of the bill to win, especially since they know they can count on people to not do what we just did and, you know, read the text of the bill itself.
But there are ways to counter a catchy bill nickname or slogan and fight back. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis did just that when reporters asked about the bill, using the nickname.
The first thing Governor DeSantis did was refuse to accept the premise of the question. He knows where the reporter is going and he cuts the reporter off before he can even complete the question.
The second thing he does is put his most important message right into the beginning of his response, making the clarification that the bill covers kindergarten through third grade. That’s the most important message for proponents of the bill and the one most likely to bring middle-grounders to his side.
The third thing he does is point out the inaccuracies of the premise of the question and attacks the reporters bias – which draws applause.
And fourth, he puffs his chest a bit to tell his audience that they can expect him to fight for them and their shared position going forward.
It was a masterful response.
There’s just enough of the element that draws people to President Trump (the take-no-prisoners, I’m done being nice, I tell it like it is) but backed up with facts and presented in coherent sentences. It’s what has people talking about Governor DeSantis as a presidential nominee and has the Trump camp worried that someone might have figured out how to be a better version of Trump himself.
In politics, don’t expect your opponents to be interested in being fair about your message. Getting your message right is your problem. But when they present something that is verifiably false, pointing it out is not only important, doing it in a way that exposes their pliable relationship with the truth is very much to your advantage.
That’s it for this week.
More On Message in the next issue of the Utah Political Underground.
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