1. The first rule is that you have to hit first, you don't wait to be on the defensive. Quoting Mike Tyson, Shapiro said 'Everyone has a plan until you hit them in the throat.' His second rule is largely an elaboration on the first.

 

2. You have to frame your opponent. 'The debate is over in the first 30 seconds, the moment you charactarize the opposition, the debate is over.'. 

'Your opponent is the person you're arguing against, it's like playing poker, you're not playing the cards, you're playing the man'. He used the example of an interview about gun control he did with Piers Morgan in January, right after the Sandy Hook shootings, where he planned from the start to use his first opportunity to speak to 'charactarize him as a bully', he accused Morgan of standing 'on the graves of dead children to push your political agenda', so that Piers Morgan was on the defensive from the beginning. 

 

He also makes a valid point about how some opponents of Conservative policies make their cause look bad through what he called 'bullying' tactics,

such as calling someone a racist or a homophobe without evidence, and how pointing that out can take the focus off of the original discussion on policy and make it about something unrelated, which can be an advantage to the Conservative side. 

 

  Regardless of the facts surrounding the policy discussion itself, Shapiro points out that from the perspective of less knowledgable people watching the debate, framing your opponent as a bully from the beginning will win the argument, especially if the opponent makes accusations that aren't actually true and get called on it, because then the opponent becomes the 'bad guy', since 'every political discussion is a story, and every political discussion has a narrative, and 'every movie has a good guy and a bad guy.' and that regardless of the facts of any given issue, 'nobody is going to vote for Darth Vader.'.

 

 While he may underestimate the rational capacities of the average Canadian, there is a simplistic logic in terms of first impressions on one side or another in a debate and he has a very strong point here. 

 

3. "You have to frame the debate yourself. The left likes to frame the debate in its own terms".

 

4. "Set up philisophical inconsistencies in your opponents arguments", he elaborates "Take any issue that the left likes to talk about, and there's a massive philosophical inconsistency, the left does not have philosophically coherent positions unless they are open Marxists."

 

5. Number 5 was set up nicely by number 4, as a response to an opponents attempt to set up philosophical inconsistencies in your own arguments, "Don't Get Sidetracked. You may notice that when you're discussing with folks on the left, any political issue, they like to throw out red herrings. the red herring usually has a name, and it's name is usually George W. Bush, no matter what you're discussing, someone will bring up 'well what about Bush', the proper response,

he said 'well what about Wilson. Neither has been President for quite awhile at this point, why don't we talk about the person who's in office".

 

He used the example of a Piers Morgan segment in which Morgan compared bullets to Sudafed in terms of restrictions, Shapiro's response was that he can have

different positions on 2 different things because 'I don't take bullets for a headache.'. 

 

6. "If you don't know something, admit it right off the bat. Nobody in America knows everything.". He uses Romney's disastrous answer to a question on Benghazi to illustrate the worst that can happen when you try to act like you know about something when you don't. 

 

7. Don't get sucked in by the paradigm. This is one I believe the left has to learn from. He uses the example of Piers Morgan bringing up Reagan's position on assault rifles, Shapiros response is 'So? I like Ronald Reagan, but he wasn't God, he could be wrong about stuff...just because somebody is 'on our side' doesn't mean that they're always right, and this is the biggest mistake the Conservative movement makes in general, it's why we backed George W Bush's horrendous moves on domestic policy, which is why Bush's second term was an absolute disaster, face it, I like George Bush, I think he was an honourable fellow, but Bush's second term was an absolute unmitigated disaster, without Bush's second term there is no Obama first term, it's that simple, but we sided with him because he was our dude.". 

 

8.Let the other side have meaningless victories. "The other side likes to operate within the context of buzzwords, you know, tolerance and diversity and acceptance and all of these things that mean nothing to them... but they like to use those words alot,so it's okay for you to say I'm also for tolerance, diversity and acceptance, it makes you look moderate, it makes you look like you're not a wild eyed right winger, it makes you look like you're willing to come to some common ground.". 

This is something I always do when arguing with conservatives, using 'free market' arguments against resource companies having access to resources at ultra low royalties, and 'law and order' arguments for cracking down on environmental offenders and executives. 

 

9.Ask Questions. "People on the left are not fond of being on the defensive, they're very fond of being on the offensive, you have to make them answer questions about their own philosophies, defend their own positions. People on the left don't have positions, they have feelings." 

 

10. Body language actually matters. "It didn't matter what John McCain said in the 2008 election, that election was over the moment you put John McCain on the stage with Barak Obama, and it was even more over when you put them in the debate and you had John McCain gripping his microphone like he wanted to throttle the neck of it.". 

He also concedes "When it comes to imagistics the Republican party just sucks, we're terrible at it.".