Gridlock and Rhetorics of Distrust

Abstract

Abstract Gridlock plagues modern policy deliberations in Congress. By analyzing the 2013 Senate debate over the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, this essay shows how distrust operates as a rhetorical stance that forecloses compromise and justifies corrosive legislative stalemates. Despite agreeing on most policy specifics, congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle constructed subversive, untrustworthy policy actors to legitimate their refusal to compromise on a final bill. Republicans denounced the Obama administration as flouters of immigration laws and uninterested in border security, while Democrats detailed a Republican “ploy” to cheat millions of undocumented immigrants out of a pathway to citizenship. These rhetorics of distrust created irreconcilable visions for how to implement immigration reform. The essay concludes by proposing that more dialogic forums among representatives and a politically realist outlook could help ameliorate rhetorics of distrust.

Journal
Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published
2018-12-01
DOI
10.14321/rhetpublaffa.21.4.0607
Open Access
Closed
Topics

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  1. Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Also cites 15 works outside this index ↓
  1. 11. David G. Levasseur, “The Rhetorical Construction of Economic Policy: Political Judgment and the 1995 Budg…
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  6. 18. Zornitsa Keremidchieva’s work is an exception here, as she wants to make an argument about the assemblage…
  7. 26. Robert Asen, “Deliberation and Trust,” Argumentation and Advocacy 50 (2013): 3. Emphasis added.
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  9. 38. Lisa Magaña, Straddling the Border: Immigration Policy and the INS (Austin: University of Texas Press, 20…
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  15. 112. See Leah Ceccarelli, “Manufactured Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate,” Rhetor…
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