My approach is to start off VERY calmly, and to simply ask if the Senator or whomever I am calling has made a statement on the appointment of Steve Bannon to the office of White House Chief Strategist. The staffers who answer the phones try to get you off quickly, by telling you that the Senator has not yet commented, but they will be sure to pass your message on. At this point, right when they are about to move on, I escalate and extend the conversation by saying, "I have some other questions and comments for the Senator." I proceed to say that I am outraged and horrified that the Senator has not yet and did not immediately denounce the appointment of a white nationalist to an office down the hall from the Oval.
At this point, the responses from the staffers vary. Some lose their bureaucratic detachment, and become partisan, even argumentative. They say things like, "the Senator has never met Mr. Bannon." (A common deflection being used for this.) I responded to one by saying, "I have never met Abraham Lincoln but I'm pretty sure of his views, because I can read." Another defense takes the form of, "Congresswoman Foxx is still studying the positions of Mr. Bannon and will make a statement when she is ready." Still more staffers brush it off completely: John McCain's aide told me that "the Senate is in session and extremely busy with important matters." I countered that nothing could be more important than preventing an extremist in the White House. Another kept it to the book, informing me that "The Senate does not advise or consent" on the office of chief strategist to the President. Technically true, I returned, but the elected officials can use the bully pulpit of their office to speak to their constituents and to the nation about their views on issues, and do so all the time. When I suggested to the staffer at Richard Burr's Winston-Salem office that he could hold a press conference to denounce Bannon, the staffer scoffed, "press conference?" Lindsay Graham's staffer got into a sharp exchange with me in which she questioned my sources of information, and flat-out called the New York Times biased. I informed her that I formed my opinion of Steve Bannon by reading the Breitbart site itself, and by reading several articles about him in, yes, the New York Times (which is not biased, by the way) as well as the right-leaning Wall Street Journal, among many others. In short, I brought her back to the reality that there is a consensus among mainstream journalism that Bannon is at the very least among the political fringe.
Why do I continue to legally parse everything these people say? Because I want to keep them on the phone as long as possible. I want to make them work at having to defend an untenable position. Eventually I ask them directly how they personally feel about Bannon. Most were professional enough to avoid that question, but I flustered a couple of aides with it. My favorite response was from a staffer to Virginia Foxx's office in Boone, who said, "hey, man, I'm just a vet who got his finger blown off in Iraq, I don't know about any of it." At least he was honest. I keep them on the phone because it gums up their system, it makes them devote resources to my call, resources they could use elsewhere if they didn't have to field my well researched and passionate call if they would simply do the right thing and denounce Bannon. So, they may not ever actually do it, but I make it cost them--literally, since they are paying some staffer to talk to me, and by costing them morally and spiritually because they are facing the wrath of the righteous. I love a good debate, and I would love to have one based on facts. But these Republican leaders are relying on magical thinking to avoid the topic of Bannon. "I've never met him?" Bannon was Paul Ryan's worst nightmare, back when the conventional wisdom was that Trump was going to take the entire party down in 2016. Ryan stopped campaigning with Trump and wouldn't even say his name! Now that he has been unexpectedly handed the legislative green light he has always craved, he is going to look the other way and give Trump a pass on this one. Not good enough! Ironically, the actual GOP leaders, McConnell and Ryan each have the same message that plays when you call their offices: "we are experiencing a high volume of calls right now. Please refer emergencies to our web site. This call is ended." You can't even leave a message!
In all of my communications, I try to compliment the elected official if possible for their service (easier to do with John McCain than Jeff Sessions), and tell them that while I am a Democrat, I totally respect that there are honest, honorable Republicans. I then use that compliment to say that I am begging them to take a stand and fight against what we can all surely see is evil. I also familiarize myself in advance with what the officials have said. This can be done on Google while you are talking to these aides. I do not, however, stint on sharing the depth of my outrage. Without even raising my voice, I share that I am horrified, terrified, alienated and estranged from my own country, and that I feel utterly unrepresented in the government when the people who purport to by my servants in government have no reaction to or whitewash the elevation of a known hate-monger to an unprecedented level of power and influence. I promised these people that I and many others would be calling daily. Please join me.
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