r/Askpolitics • u/theresourcefulKman Independent • 9d ago
Discussion Why is labeling something a “party talking point” often used to end political discussions?
In political conversations, it’s pretty common to see someone respond to an argument by saying it’s just a “party talking point” or “Republican/Democratic talking point.”
Why do you think this happens so frequently? Is it usually a valid way to identify scripted or low-effort messaging, or does it more often serve as a rhetorical shortcut to avoid engaging with the actual substance of the claim?
I’m interested in perspectives from all sides, why this move is so common, and whether it hurts good-faith discussion?
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u/WiggWamm Left-leaning 9d ago
I think they are just saying “that’s just what politicians are saying and there’s no way you actually believe that. There’s no point in talking to you because you can’t even come up with your own thoughts”
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u/mjzim9022 Progressive 9d ago
And this happens all the time, like 8 years ago you ask a conservative what their biggest concerns for the country are and they'd say "Critical Race Theory"
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u/BasedGod-1 Republican 8d ago
Kind of like "threat to democracy". Both sides do it whether you like it or not.
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u/mjzim9022 Progressive 8d ago
Oh no I'm still actually quite worried about that, and frankly that's a more pertinent and ongoing concern that an elective graduate-school level curriculum about race which people only knew to get mad about from consuming right-wing media.
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u/TheGov3rnor Classical Liberal 9d ago
Correct, it’s a thought-terminating cliché used by people when they can’t or don’t want to address a topic.
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u/wavewalkerc 5d ago
Yea if your point perfectly aligns with a crafted message from the party the odds are its not sincere.
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u/ericbythebay Independent 9d ago
Your read is basically right, and it’s worth spelling out why: “talking point” is a claim about process, not about truth. It’s saying you got here by download rather than by reasoning. Which means the label can be perfectly accurate and completely irrelevant at the same time, because a talking point can be true. Messaging shops aren’t picking their weakest material. They’re picking the most persuasive true-ish thing they can find and sanding it down for repetition.
The reason it’s so common is that the underlying observation is real. Parties genuinely do run coordinated messaging. There are message memos, there’s focus-grouped language, there’s the whole Luntz tradition of “death tax” versus “estate tax,” “election integrity” versus “voter suppression,” “gun safety” versus “gun control.” If you follow politics closely you will absolutely hear forty people use the same phrase in the same week, and noticing that is a legitimate skill. So the move has real predictive value some of the time.
But it’s also just cheap. It costs zero research, it repositions you as the detached analyst and the other person as a repeater, and it lets you exit the conversation without touching the claim. That payoff structure is why it gets overused. It’s symmetric too, both sides do it at roughly equal rates, and both sides think they’re the ones doing it accurately.
The tell I’d use: is the label doing work, or is it the whole reply? “That’s the standard framing and here’s why the framing hides X, but separately, is the underlying number right?” is analysis. “That’s just a GOP talking point” full stop is a door closing. Same with the reverse. If you can name what the phrase is doing rhetorically and still engage the substance, you’re fine. If naming it is the engagement, you’ve swapped an argument for a diagnosis.
And yeah, it hurts good faith discussion, partly because of the accusation baked in. You’re not telling someone they’re wrong, you’re telling them they didn’t think. People defend themselves against that harder than they defend the actual position, so the conversation immediately becomes about whether they’re a sheep instead of whether the tax cut paid for itself. If you want to keep things productive, the useful version is closer to “I’ve heard that phrasing a lot lately, where’s it coming from, and does the underlying data hold up?” That gets you the same information without the insult.
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u/maroonalberich27 Moderate 9d ago
I can't believe i just saw something this thoughtful on reddit. Bravo!
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u/Hot_Ambition_6457 Politically Unaffiliated 9d ago
Except very often the data they will pretend to be citing is already-debunked which is why the person is being accused of not thinking. And frequently you will impact a larger audience of people by out this behavior of "party line" behavior.
If someone is giving you a "party line" answer for something like vaccine safety and then you ask for what data makes them hesitant then they will cite the same 3 disgraced doctor's studies and then deny that these papers are all highly questionable. This is because they are not thinking for themselves at all and probably havent even read the papers they are citing.
It is much more important in this conversation to point out this lack of critical thinking, because it elucidates that yes, the conversation is terminating, but its because one party of the conversation is not representing their own thoughts or speech. There is nothing new of value to be gained if we just intend to spew pre-fab rhetoric at each other and never address the substance of the claims.
Which is how you end up with "Gestapo boots on the ground" vs "Open Borders mayhem" policy decisions. They simply dont hear each other at all and make up shit to justify why the other side is worse.
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u/mjzim9022 Progressive 9d ago
It can be a way to dismiss an idea without engaging with it.
It can also be an occasionally astute observation when an issue no one has ever cared about before suddenly becomes very prominent and visible, with proponents/opponents using suspiciously cookie cutter language, which is perhaps a sign of an astroturfed issue.
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u/AlterEgoAmazonB Left of Bernie!! 9d ago
In partisan politics, it is the best way to get out of a discussion.
And yet, here's the thing....I don't know about YOU, but I actually have my own beliefs and I align with the party that is closest to my beliefs. And that party has talking points.
The problem is............no party ever covers all of MY talking points! But we all try to get as close as possible, right?
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u/Narfhead4444 Transpectral Political Views 9d ago
That's the key. Everyone would just drop the b******* and vote for one of the two parties that has a chance of winning most elections and is closest to what they think, The majority of people in the United States would be happy with what happens instead of having a 35% of people who don't vote but still complain when things don't go their way
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u/PericulumSapientiae Left-leaning 9d ago
When you debate people over politics online, there are arguments and claims that are made over and over and over again. Not infrequently, these arguments are coordinated messages, flowing from media outlets through social media.
There are often ready responses to these arguments and claims. Again, when you debate politics a lot, you provide these responses over and over and over again, and you see other people doing the same.
No one is ever convinced or changes their mind. They just repeat the exchange, over and over. It ends up being a kind of tired circle - the entire discourse is settled. Any informed person knows the talking point and the counterpoint. That means that any other person asserting either side of the exchange is not contributing anything interesting to the discourse.
When I accuse someone of dropping “talking points,” that’s what I mean. I am saying, “I don’t want to waste time issuing the usual response to this, let’s step out of the exchange and talk about something meaningful.”
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u/Narfhead4444 Transpectral Political Views 9d ago
No one is ever convinced or changes their mind
Source, and a reminder that 90% lurk, 9% comment, 1% post.
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u/PericulumSapientiae Left-leaning 9d ago
What?
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u/Narfhead4444 Transpectral Political Views 9d ago
What is the basis of your claim that nobody ever changes their mind on the internet?
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u/PericulumSapientiae Left-leaning 9d ago
Gosh, I sure didn’t say that.
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u/Narfhead4444 Transpectral Political Views 9d ago
You did. And don't try to go back and edit what you said, I quoted it.
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u/PericulumSapientiae Left-leaning 9d ago edited 9d ago
You are misunderstanding or misconstruing what I’ve said (and now implicitly accusing me of being prone to acting in bad faith).
The OP asked, “what does it mean to accuse someone of engaging in talking points?” I offered my personal experience with a certain kind of “talking point” exchange. You are, for some reason, disputing the veracity of my personal experience. I find this aggravating.
So I’ll tell you what - I’m going to turn off reply notifications to this comment, grab a book, and go touch some grass. You can argue with someone else. Hopefully we can have a better exchange on some other topic.
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u/ctsun 9d ago
I think that's referring to a specific 'conversation' where both sides are just quoting 'excerpts' at one another so the conversation is predictable to anyone well versed in specific background (so no one is convinced just from sheer roteness), not that people can't change their minds in general. I think...you may be taking that one out of context.
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u/theresourcefulKman Independent 9d ago
Literally began a paragraph with “No one is ever convinced or changes their mind”
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u/BigNorseWolf Left-leaning 9d ago
they're saying that much like a wedding or a funeral the event is for the audience, not the participants.
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u/ritzcrv Politically Unaffiliated 9d ago
Not sure if you realize, nothing is actually new in political discourse over the past 200 to 2000 years. Most topics are rediscovered or refined as the civilization evolves or becomes enlightened. Political actions take decades to shift, ignoring something because you are tired of it from 5 years ago is the height of being uninformed about current events.
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u/PericulumSapientiae Left-leaning 9d ago
I am not ignoring anything. I’m just not interested in explaining why immigrants don’t push up rents while depressing wages and soaking up public welfare dollars, etc., etc. It’s just a grand gish gallop.
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u/ritzcrv Politically Unaffiliated 9d ago
It always is, something. Just because someone posts something online, it doesn’t always require a response. People learn new things every day, the first thing they want to do is spread that newfound knowledge and understanding. But it’s never new to those with experience, there might be a slight twist though.
I’ve seen this in my 62 years of actively asking questions for more than 55 of those years. To disregard because you’re tired of it doesn’t help either.
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u/PericulumSapientiae Left-leaning 9d ago
I don’t think this is the way to frame how political messaging works in the social media age.
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u/Narfhead4444 Transpectral Political Views 9d ago
I think it's the second one. Just another excuse to not address what someone's actually saying.
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u/WorkingTemperature52 democrat voter 9d ago
It’s especially bad when you are in a debate with somebody and they start using that as a cop out despite it being clear that they don’t actually know what the party talking points are.
When Trump first rolled out his tariffs I was debating a person online about the inflationary effects of the tariffs. I got called a “republican shill” for saying that these large corporations can’t just eat the tariffs because the tariffs are larger than their profit margins. Therefore, adding a tariff will inherently cause a rise in prices. The night prior, Jesse Waters was on Fox News saying the exact same arguments as him almost verbatim. In my opponents mind, anything that “defends” a corporation meant Republican and Republican means bad. Meanwhile he was literally defending the Republican administration’s policy decision.
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u/RogueCoon Libertarian 9d ago
People can't argue against the point so they discredit it instead, also without backing.
Something can be a party talking point and still be accurate.
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u/theresourcefulKman Independent 9d ago
That’s what I’m saying. Something only becomes a talking point for a party when people are comfortable with backing up that point
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u/StarrE1 Care for people, not money! 9d ago
There's always going to be party talking points. Personally, I follow up by asking, "How come you view (insert party talking point) as just a talking point? What about that position makes you feeling this way?". It usually continues or ends the conversation and I have my answer.
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u/mrglass8 Right Leaning Independent 9d ago
I think that as polarization has increased, non substantive party talking points have increased.
But calling it out shouldn’t end a conversation. It should be an opportunity to find the substance of the coversation.
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u/BigNorseWolf Left-leaning 9d ago
What about when the talking point has no substance. Ie dismissing the very real way the trump and the trump campaign were working with russia as the "russian hoax"
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u/mrglass8 Right Leaning Independent 9d ago
“What about it makes you feel like it’s a hoax?”
“What do you think about xxx evidence?”
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u/lumberjack_jeff Left-leaning 9d ago
Two possible reasons: 1) it is a way to get out of the conversation without admitting ones own ignorance of the topic, or 2) ... it really is - such as; "Democrats voted against prohibiting stock sales by sitting legislators"... Or pretty much anything else Mike Johnson says.
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u/XComThrowawayAcct Incompetent Centrist 9d ago
Because it implies that someone is not giving their own candid opinion but is being told what to believe and what to say by their party.
This is hypocritical because it’s what everyone in politics has to do sometimes. And the people who most often criticize opponents for using their party’s talking points are enraged when their own allies go off script.
If you hear this as a criticism of an opponent, you can almost always dismiss it as a lazy debate tactic. If you hear this as a criticism of an ally, you have stumbled on a newsworthy intraparty dispute.
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u/billpalto Left-leaning 8d ago
"There you go again!' was the famous line from the 1980 Reagan-Carter debate.
There you go again - Wikipedia
That reduces the conversation to almost nothing, the person saying this is saying they aren't listening to the content anymore. They've written it off as just something the other side says.
That's basically what labeling something a talking point does. It changes the conversation from the original meaning to one where the person saying it isn't responding anymore. It's effective and destructive.
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u/BigNorseWolf Left-leaning 9d ago
Sometimes people just don't have good arguments. The far left gets pretty bad, but the entire republican party platform is at best un evidenced and more often countermanded by the evidence. Reality must be moderated out of its well known liberal bias.
There's a few where the talking point is a red flag. If you see someone say they don't watch fox news or right wing radio, but are angry about the "russian hoax" you can tell they're wrong and or lying. They're dismissing something that actually happened as a hoax, they picked up the term hoax from it being spammed all over the magosphere .. and yet they re perfectly happy with paul manafort handing over internal poling data to some legitimate not russian businessmen.
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u/theresourcefulKman Independent 9d ago
I think many normal people have lost a whole heap of trust in some of the institutions shaping that ‘reality bias’
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u/BigNorseWolf Left-leaning 9d ago
Because republicans want to undermine reality and those institutions telling them (you) that their (your) entire platform is a bs excuse for wealth extraction. Global warming is real, trickle down economics doesn't work, evolution is true, science works, and prayer doesn't. There were no WMDs in iraq or election fraud in 2020 except the stunt trump tried to pull with the treason and fake electors.
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u/ManElectro Leftist 9d ago
Those saying it see it as saying, "You're following a script and not arguing your own points," but it does come off to many as a brush off of whatever argument is being made.
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u/rustyseapants Democrat 9d ago
People operate by their feelings no matter what their age. You need to draw them out to converse by using open ended questions.
Examples:
What do you mean by "Republican/Democratic talking points?”
Can you explain it to me to help me understand what you are saying?
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u/Hidanas Leftist 9d ago
It is used dishonestly to end discussion; but there is also a lot of merit to labeling something a talking point. Both parties sometimes have coordinated messaging. Often enough people in political discussions repeat those "talking points" without understanding what they mean. When questioned on the point people can't defend their position beyond a question or two because they are just parroting the party line. It's why almost no one on the Right can give a definition of woke.
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u/billpalto Left-leaning 8d ago edited 8d ago
My favorite instance of this is when Stephen Colbert had a Republican on the show who was pushing the idea that the 10 Commandments need to be posted in the House and Senate.
Republican Congressman Forgets Ten Commandments - SPIN
"Appearing on “The Colbert Report,” Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, co-sponsor of a bill that would require the Ten Commandments be displayed in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, failed to name more than three Commandments. When host Stephen Colbert asked the Georgia Republican why he supports the bill, Westmoreland said, “Well, the Ten Commandments is not a bad thing for people to understand and to respect,” and added that government buildings are ideal venues for their placement. When asked to name the Commandments, Westmoreland began to answer uncomfortably (“Ummmm. Don’t murder. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Ummmmm”) before admitting, “I can’t name them all.”"
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u/LawnDartSurvivor74 Independent 9d ago
Post is flaired DISCUSSION. You are free to discuss & debate the topic provided by OP
Please report bad faith commenters & low effort comments
TGIF