The Democrats are far better at messaging than Republicans, primarily because they know how to communicate using stories that emotionally resonate with people. It’s natural for them, since they tend to be more emotional than Republicans. Republicans are more likely to stick to facts, logic and statistics, which the average person often tunes out as dull.
Fixing our messaging should be a high priority, but sadly it isn’t. There’s usually no one talking to political candidates about their messaging except their campaign consultants, and they have so many areas to cover — including getting sidelined crafting messaging to deal with bad publicity — that it’s a low priority and receives minimal attention.
Enter Engage to Win communications coach Melanie Sturm. Known as “the Win Coach,” she gives talks on how to provide better messaging. She got started in this area writing a column for her local paper called “Think Again, You Might Change Your Mind.” She adopted a writing style of “persuasion,” which is different from standard op-eds she found, and due to this different style, people didn’t even perceive her as ideological. Her column at The Aspen Times became the most popular one there, despite the fact Aspen is a very blue city in Colorado. Her son jokes that she teaches people to sound like Democrats.
Sturm said the goal of political speech should be to “appeal to persuadables,” avoid giving “hostiles” ammunition to use against us, and unite the “friendlies” on the right. She said that in order to enact our morally superior ideas, we need to diffuse polarization with messaging that brings people to common ground. We do that by showing how bad ideas hurt people and are unfair and uncompassionate, and how our good ideas help people and are fair and compassionate.
She lists six “powers of persuasion.” The first is that you are the message, and need to develop trust with the other person. Trust must be established before anything else. “The feelings don't care about facts — you have to earn their trust first,” she said. “Margaret Thatcher was only partly right when she said, ‘first you win the argument, then you win the vote,’” Sturm told the Independent Women’s Forum. “First you must win the audience’s trust.”
The second is to find common ground, and the third is the winning side always fights for people, not things. The fourth is to frame issues in terms of fairness and compassion. The fifth is to tell stories, and the sixth is to use rhetorical devices to pivot to better ground, such as showing you care by saying you are worried or concerned.
Sturm admits that the right has a higher moral hurdle to get over, with our higher level of ethics. Yet the right is perceived as blackhearted while the left is seen as kindhearted. While two-thirds of people tend to agree on a lot of issues, the problem is enough are peeled off to the allegedly compassionate side.
She’s discovered which messaging works the best for certain issues. For election integrity, she recommends the phrase “easy to vote and hard to cheat.” When people question whether there was cheating during the 2020 election, she advises people to respond and ask them why Trump got the most votes ever for a president (well, there’s Joe Biden, if you believe his numbers).
On education issues, she said instead of saying “parental rights” we should say “family inclusion.” She said one school board full of leftists adopted a platform with that name.
She acknowledged that abortion is one of the most difficult issues to craft messaging that works. Since the winning side must argue for people, the debate needs to be framed in terms of arguing for the mother (the baby doesn’t vote). She recently presented to RNC leadership on how to message abortion, to open the eyes of many, and has received great feedback. She said one of the most effective tactics is to ask people if the cutoff should be 40 weeks like in Colorado, which jars people when they learn that.
Sturm, who is Jewish, said the phrasing on the Israel-Hamas war should be about saving Palestinian babies, especially since the Hamas leaders have shown a lack of caring there. She suggests asking Hamas supporters whether it is a tragedy that Palestinians who live on the other side of the border — in the Gaza Strip under the control of Hamas — don't have the same rights as Arabs that live in Israel under the control of mostly Jews.
When those hostile to Israel claim that Muslims occupied Israel before the Jews, she said to respond and point out that Muhammud lived in the region around 600 A.D., whereas Jesus, who was a Jew, lived there until his death at 33 A.D., hundreds of years earlier.
When people claim that the lawfare against Trump is evidence he’s a bad person, she says to respond and point out the double standard of Hunter Biden being given mostly a free pass the last few years.
Turning Point USA had her give a talk at a conference, and many savvy candidates and organizations have hired her, but it’s not yet considered standard for political candidates to seek out this type of instruction, so who knows how many candidates have lost their races due to lacking this skill. Sturm is available by Zoom to provide instruction to groups. Every Republican Party around the country should urge candidates and activists to take this type of training at least once. As Sturm likes to say, “When we reclaim the fair-sounding words, we win!”
GOP Candidates and Political Activists Must Embrace Messaging Experts Like Melanie Sturm
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19.02.2024
The Democrats are far better at messaging than Republicans, primarily because they know how to communicate using stories that emotionally resonate with people. It’s natural for them, since they tend to be more emotional than Republicans. Republicans are more likely to stick to facts, logic and statistics, which the average person often tunes out as dull.
Fixing our messaging should be a high priority, but sadly it isn’t. There’s usually no one talking to political candidates about their messaging except their campaign consultants, and they have so many areas to cover — including getting sidelined crafting messaging to deal with bad publicity — that it’s a low priority and receives minimal attention.
Enter Engage to Win communications coach Melanie Sturm. Known as “the Win Coach,” she gives talks on how to provide better messaging. She got started in this area writing a column for her local paper called “Think Again, You Might Change Your Mind.” She adopted a writing style of “persuasion,” which is different from standard op-eds she found, and due to this different style, people didn’t even perceive her as ideological. Her column at The Aspen Times became the most popular one there, despite the fact Aspen is a very blue city in Colorado. Her son jokes that she teaches people to sound like Democrats.
Sturm said the........
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