The effective bait and switch strategy of the Left

By Tom Quiner

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk33toZcGZg]
There are two ways to change the world: with a carrot or a stick.
Jesus used a carrot.
Hitler used a stick.
In U.S. politics, the stick has been employed with great effect by the political Left. What happens is this: the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, academia, and Hollywood decide on their issue and deploy the stick in a very clever way. They accuse those of who disagree with their issue of doing the very thing the Left actually wants to do themselves.
Take contraception.
The Left wanted to force employers to pick up the tab for women’s birth control and other “reproductive health issues.” How could they accomplish something so extreme? They accused Republicans of wanting to ban contraception, even though no sane conservative had proposed such a thing. In fact, contraception has not been a part of our political dialogue for a long while, at least not until January of 2012 when it became a manufactured political issue by George Stephanopoulos.

He asked Mitt Romney if states had a right to ban contraception.

He wouldn’t let go. His goal was obviously to pin Mitt Romney down into stating that, yes, states do have that Constitutional right.

Romney didn’t take the bait. You can watch the exchange above.

Nonetheless, Stephanopoulos accomplished the mission of the media: to plant the seed that somehow lurking in the recesses of dastardly Republican minds was the goal of banning contraception.

A non-issue was made into a new national issue for a single reason: to grease the skids for President Obama’s HHS Mandate that forced religious institutions to provide contraception coverage in their health insurance plans in violation of their religious conscience.

One doesn’t have to be overly cynical to suspect that Mr. Stephanopolous, a former political operative for Bill Clinton, was in the Obama loop and was setting the stage to reposition the contraception argument.

With the media carrying water for him, the HHS Mandate was transformed from a religious freedom issue to a women’s rights issue.

The Stephanopoulos maneuver is a textbook example the bait and switch tactic of the Left. They accused the Republicans of wanting to take away contraception, when in fact, Democrats really wanted to force employers to pay for it, even if it violated their religious beliefs.

The election may have been decided by this single exchange.

Take gay rights.

The movement started with a simple plea for tolerance. No decent person wanted to see people fighting same-sex attractions bullied. Who among us doesn’t know someone we care about who is attracted to members of the same sex. But it was all bait and switch. Tolerance morphed into an insistence on acceptance, even among those who object for religious reasons. If you didn’t accept the latest fad, marriage “equality”, the Left will savage you. There is no such thing as tolerance for dissenters on so-called gay marriage.

Bait. And. Switch.