It doesn't work when we try it, so ... go for it!
I used to have a stump-speech critique of the Democratic Party that went something like this:
Republicans sell their policies with appeals to emotion. They hit you in the gut. Democrats sell their policies with charts and graphs and spreadsheets, in other words, appeals to the intellect. There's no question which has been more effective. Just take a look at how Coke, Pepsi, and Apple sell their products. This is why "framers" like Frank Luntz exist in the first place.
There's a reason so many economically disadvantaged whites and tea party suckers are propping up Wall Street Republicans at the expense of their own self-interest. The Democratic desire, no, (pathological) need to win the debate on intellectual terms is oftentimes the cause of our undoing. (Another example? Liberals argue for gun control by citing gun deaths statistics. Conservatives have built an entire warm-and-fuzzy culture around gun ownership that will always trump those stats.)
That's why liberals have been on the defensive for so long. Our usual appeals to intellect, by and large, are inferior to hitting someone's emotional centers—be it appeals to fear, or resentment, or bigotry or greed.
So it's with much amusement that I read this quote in Tueday's oft-quoted piece on Republican panic over the Paul Ryan pick:
Another strategist emailed midway through Romney and Ryan’s first joint event Saturday: "The good news is that this ticket now has a vision. The bad news is that vision is basically just a chart of numbers used to justify policies that are extremely unpopular."
Democrats have had marginal success in using a chart of numbers to justify policies that are extremely
popular. It's refreshing to see Republicans adopt one of our biggest mistakes, then try and use it to justify policies that are toxic.