Well here's the liberal compassion I've heard so much about.

[Dill]

(03-02-2017, 11:52 PM)Rotobeast Wrote: But..... what if Alan thought that he may be able to makes conservatives stop and think ?
Seriously, he made me question some things.
Had he taken an aggressive stance, I would have wrote him off.
We tend to double-down on our opinions when we're challenged.
I will agree there are a few times where he could have done more, but I believe there was a method to his tone and cadence (apart from the times where he was stammering in anger...lol)
I like to think he subscribed to the thoughts of the following article, as I am ATTEMPTING to do.

http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/if-you-want-persuade-people-stop-winning-arguments/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=Learn+Liberty&utm_content=If+you+want+persuade+people%2C+stop+%E2%80%9Cwinning%E2%80%9D+arguments

Interesting points, Roto. I do think it likely Combs thought he was making people think, not just conservatives.

Remember, though he was working with Hannity, who always takes a hyper-aggressive stance. And that is what appears to attract Hannity's audience to him. 

Your article has some good ideas, and "questioning" is certainly a viable alternative to logical argument in some contexts.
That was in fact Socrates' preferred approach--though in his questions always turned out to be a logical argument in disguise, and sometimes a very aggressive one.  Sounds like, if you want to persuade people to a different track for the next election, better get your questions started now, because questions take a while.

At the heart of that article, though, is the implicit recognition of the diminished role of logic and evidence in political discourse. Now we are living in an age in which political arguments relying on logic and evidence are inherently biased.

I think at the root of that rejection is a lack of understanding/knowledge of how logic and evidence work, or used to work, in political arguments.  History affords us with examples when they appear to have worked, usually with happy results.
(E.g., the Federalist Papers.)

Have you ever read any of George Lakoff's work? He seems like someone genuinely interested in understanding how liberals and conservatives communicate, and how to enable communication between them.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/467716.html