Last week, I posted a diary that offered some one-sentence 'zingers' that not only counter GOP talking points, but undermine the conservatism behind them.
For instance:
On trickle-down: The Republican plan is: Our government will get out of debt by asking its boss (us) for a pay cut and then going on a spending spree. Does that sound like a good way to get out of debt?
This week, I've got some more. For instance:
On fighting pollution: The way I was raised, if you make a mess, you clean it up.
(Extended for Joe Barton (R-TX):) No one apologized for making me clean up after myself.
See? It gets to the heart of the fight against pollution, and places the fight against pollution into one of classic, traditional values. A way of saying, "you're not weak to fight pollution". But it also casts polluters as dirty, which is a key component in turning people against them, because our senses of moral and physical disgust are highly intertwined. So there's a positive and a negative motivation built in to one little line.
Me and mine have found these lines effective with conservatives (and especially with undecideds/apathetics). Moreover, they do not insult the people you're talking to, casting them as stupid or gullible. Instead, they paint the Republicans (and conservatives) as the immoral scumbags they really are. This is how you undermine people's associations with them; by showing them that the GOP are not folks you want to be seen with.
Anyways, you've seen a couple of examples; look below the squiggle and you'll find some more!
On never-ending tax cuts: They say freedom isn't free. Well, good government isn't free, either.
On Romney's "five point plan": How come he's got a five-point-plan but he never tells us what those five points are? Maybe he thinks we can't count to five...
On renewable energy: We've never had to send our soldiers to die to get energy from the sun or the wind.
On apologizing for America: The way I was raised, if you break something or hurt someone, you own up to it. You don't act like nothing's the matter.
On apologizing for America 2: There's nothing weak/wrong about treating people with respect.
On apologizing for America 3: When BP spilled oil in the ocean, the Democrats made them clean it up. The Republicans apologized for bothering them. They apologized for America. Must be why they're so worried about other people doing it.
On fair pay for women: If the market fails to ensure that everyone gets paid what they deserve, then the government has to step in to fix the failure.
On fair pay for women 2: Men are paying women less because they're worth less? Well, it's a fine line between "worth less" and "worthless".
On Social Security's imminent demise: If I told you that your business, if you do nothing different, will be in the black until 2043, would you say your business was in "bad shape" and "needed major reform"? Of course not.
and a couple of longer ones:
On energy independence: The US cannot control oil prices, even if we pumped every last drop of what we've got. We're just not a major oil country. That's why we keep invading the Middle East: We try to keep things stable there so the price of oil remains stable here. If we could control prices from home, we wouldn't have to send our soldiers overseas.
On college grad unemployment: Everyone's been been telling us for years that if we go to college we'll get a good job, because Republican tax cuts would lead to good jobs. Ten years later, the tax cuts failed. They didn't create any jobs, and now everyone's telling us to settle for a crap job and blame Obama.