Rhetorical Evaluation of Political Language
Connecting Disconnected Texans
Ted Cruz, the incumbent republican senator of Texas, is currently running against the democratic Beto o’Rourke in the midterm elections. Cruz has been apart of the Texas senate for around five years now, while Texas has been a red state for almost fifty years. o’Rourke and Cruz have squared off in multiple debates during the midterm election, where we get to see the Texan audience’s reaction to both candidates. While you may argue that o’Rourke did not even have a chance anyways, he was not better at using language that appealed to the audience than Cruz when talking about important issues.
In the topic of NFL players standing or kneeling, Cruz used language that appealed to his audience most effectively. Cruz argued that taking a knee and refusing to stand for the national anthem is “disrespecting the millions of veterans, the millions of soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines that risk and fight and die to protect that flag and our liberty.” Due to the fact that a lot of farmers in Texas are very spread out from each other, it is difficult for them to connect. By using anaphora, Cruz connects his very disconnected audience to each other through serving in the military. When o’Rourke spoke, he failed to connect his diverse audience together, which did not create a sense of unity in the audience for him. Due to these different strategies, Cruz was more effective in appealing to his audience.
When discussing the topic of police violence, Cruz was again the most effective at appealing to his audience. He did this by using the persuasive concept fear mongering when talking about the time he “was at the funeral in Houston in the second baptist Church where Deputy Goforth had been shot in the back of the head at a service station.” Creating fear in his disconnected audience helps to connect them, kind of similar to creating a common enemy. In this case, the enemy is killing police officers, which effectively persuaded his audience. o’Rourke, again, failed to connect his audience together in an effective way, and simply stated that “no member of this community wants this [shooting of Botham Jean] to happen.” Due to these different strategies, Cruz was again more effective at appealing to his audience.
In debating the issue of border control and immigration, Senator Ted Cruz was, for the third time, more effective than o’Rourke at appealing to his audience. This was because he said he would give what his audience wanted; success and happiness in their lives. He actually counters o’Rourke when talking about helping undocumented immigrants by saying that “It’s striking that congressman o’Rourke over and over and over again, his focus seems to be fighting for illegal immigrants and forgetting the millions of Americans…and granting U.S. citizenship to 12 million people who are here illegally, I think is a serious mistake.” Cruz, again, did not really use a persuasive concept, but just appealed to his very patriotic audience by saying that we should support our citizens more than we support undocumented immigrants.
Ted Cruz was much more effective at appealing to his audience then Beto o’Rourke because he connected his disconnected audience through anaphora, fear mongering, and simply giving them what they want. I still wonder why o’Rourke even attempted to run for senator in Texas. It has been red for almost fifty years and Ted Cruz has been the senator for five; he has little to no chance. If he ran in any state other than Texas, he would have had a much better chance to become elected.
The race was actually much closer than I had anticipated. o’Rourke only lost by around 2% of the vote, which means that he definitely has caught the attention of the entire country. However, I was correct, so I win.
