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    Special note to Liberal candidates for public office: logic, history, and the facts are all on your side. All you have to do is scrupulously tell the truth. True to form, your right wing conservative opponent will distort reality and the facts in an effort to con the public into voting for him.

    In the past, every time you've tried to call him on his deviousness, he claims you cannot be believed. After all, you've been citing reports and data from the "biased liberal news media" and therefore nothing you say has any basis in fact.

    Because of past distortions by conservatives, many members of the public believe the right wing's spin on issues: who's really paying the taxes, what kind of tax cuts stimulate the economy, what has caused stagnate wages for the past 25 years, whether it's more cost efficient to prevent crime or to put people in jail, whether it is more cost efficient to prevent environmental problems than to ignore them and clean them up later, and so on.

The Challenge

    Look for an opportunity to challenge your opponent on one of these issues that will be crucial to your campaign. In a public debate (on the air, or in some public forum where the opponent has no opportunity to weasle out), say something like:

"You said... (e.g., the 1993 tax bill was the biggest tax increase in history), I say... (The 1993 budget reduction bill taxed mostly the top 1.2% of the American public, the middle was mostly untouched, and the bottom 20% got a significant tax cut, etc.)."

"Obviously one of us is deliberately misleading the public." (Or, "deliberately lying"?)

"Let's have an objective third party decide the issue and report their results on (TV station or major newspaper). Why don't you, Sen. X, pick your favorite state university, and I'll pick mine. We'll present our cases to, say, a class of students in communications, one in political science, one in economics and one in statistics. I'm sure they would jump at the chance to analyze our positions and present their conclusions in a fifteen minute program on (TV station of major newspaper.)"

"It would be a great opportunity for them to experience some practical experience in applying their analytical skills. It wouldn't cost a cent, and (the newspaper or tv station) would love to have the publicity."

    If your opponent agrees to the project, he'll lose and he knows it. If he tries to waffle out, he looks bad. If he criticizes colleges for being too liberal, you say, "You mean you don't trust the students in our own (state) colleges and universities to be objective and tell the truth?"

    Seems like a can't-lose situation.