I had a coworker who liked to listen to Rush Limbaugh. He was over 50 years old, and over 250 lbs, and, yes, white. He drove a truck. He followed the TEA Party. He seemed to consider it his duty to correct my misunderstandings. Then one day we had a conversation that went like this.
Bryce: 'morning John (the Tea Partyer).
John: Hey, have you herd what Obama is doing? He's pushing a bill that will blow up the deficit by (yadda yadda ... I don't remember this part of the conversation, probably because I was thinking about some thing else. Something like "Time for a new strategy.") How could he waste so much of our tax money???
Bryce: Yes, absolutely, we just have to bring that deficit down. Those people need to learn to pull themselves up.
John: Right.
Bryce: You may not believe this, but you have challenged and changed a few of my opinions. You are right: self reliance is important. People need to have integrity and learn to live in the free market rather than living dependent on welfare.
John: #nodding and smiling# Exactly.
More over the orange sunset cloud...
Bryce: #smiling# And they should start by slashing those extravagant military pensions. You're NOT STILL collecting those welfare...
John: I EARNED THAT!!! I SERVED THIS COUNTRY FOR DECADES, PROUDLY...
Bryce: #steps out of punching range# Pull your...
John: ...I WOULD HAVE KEPT SERVING IFIWAZATFORMY INJURY!!!
Bryce: ...by your own bootstraps...
John: #walking away#
Bryce: Dependency on welfare never works...
Feel free to substitute Social Security, Ranching subsidies, Farm subsidies, "business expense" tax deductions, etc. Pick whatever “welfare” program in which they are most likely to participate. And be sure that you do step out of punching range.
It's like Judo. Redirect the attack of an aggressor so that they feel the brunt of their own force. The greater the momentum, the easier it is for the adversary to loose balance. Timing is very important they should not realize that their attack will be redirected until it is too late to regain their balance.
Poe's law states that it is often impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of such extremism. In my opinion, the more an extremist hopes to indoctrinate then the happier that they will be when hearing another using their talking points and the easier they will stumble into this trap.
Lets look at some demographics. Proximately 20% of the electorate are over 65 years of age, and of those 56% (2014) voted for Romney, therefore (.2X.56=.112) 11% of the electorate oppose socialist policies while collecting checks from a socialist program. They're hypocrites.
I have to admit my failure. In all my conversations with conservatives, I have never convinced a conservative to reconsider their position using logic. Conservatives have spent the last five decades building their PR around the idea that everyone in the country will be better off if the government implemented pro-business competition policies of deregulating, lowering taxes, and stopping redistribution. Every Republican presidential contender since Nixon held the office has made this a central theme of their candidacy. Every time I've tried to change a conservatives mind I've run up against this, their greatest weapon. Let's use it against them.
I can only promise that this strategy will give a conservative the opportunity to experience being treated like a “Welfare Queen.” They won't like it, but they might learn that the rhetoric they have espoused can be very easily turned on them.
Reposted from comments here.