Political Tactic #7—Moving the IssueThis political tactic is very useful for getting other people to move their position closer to yours by taking advantage of public opinion and putting that public pressure on our opposition so that they adopt your policies instead of theirs. The tactic works like this:Let me begin by asking you to agree that five plus five is ten, correct? We all agree that the answer is ten (5 + 5 = 10). OK, now that we have that out of the way, let us look at two political parties: Political Party A and Political Party B.Political Party A believes the correct answer to the problem is nine. Political Party B wants the answer to be one. So, what Party A does is chooses a position far from the correct answer and selects ONE as their answer.
So now we have two political parties at odds with each other: Party A at ONE and Party B at NINE. Now because people seem to think that all compromise is good (that is not true), Party B is not interested in finding the correct answer and instead wants to get Party A to move closer to the desired answer of ONE. Thus, Party B demands that Party A compromise by agreeing to the halfway point between the two positions of ONE and NINE, which is about FIVE.Again, the public seems to think that compromise is always good so public pressure begins to build on Party A to accept the compromise of FIVE. Eventually, Party A agrees and the two parties sign an agreement to make FIVE the answer.
The next time negotiations occur, Party A starts off with the last agreement, which was FIVE. Party B–again not interested in finding the correct answer–demands ONE and begins to use public pressure once again for Party A to accept a compromise between FIVE and ONE. The two parties eventually compromise and agree to THREE. Notice that each time the agreement ends up getting closer and closer to ONE, which is what Party B wanted all along.
Eventually, someone in Party A counts re-looks at the original five plus fire problem and realizes that BOTH parties have been wrong and that the correct answer is actually TEN. At that point, Political Party B–realizing the danger of someone catching on to what they have been doing and realizing the risk that the number may begin moving the other direction away from their desired answer of ONE–begins to call that group “extreme”. The public, who has been a victim in this whole game notices that TEN is pretty far from what the two parties have been agreeing to and seems to think that TEN is extreme as well even though it is the correct answer.
That is how this trick works and how political parties and their politicians use public opinion to sway voters to their point of view.