The Gish Gallop

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

AmBushed writes at Daily Kos, Romney Won Using a Debate Technique Called the Gish Gallop:

As fact checkers busily highlight the myriad number of lies and distortions offered by Mitt-Etch-A-Sketch-Romney during last night's debate, and the spinners spin
their polls with impunity, I find it interesting that the debate tactic
itself has not yet been discussed nor properly analyzed. In fact, the
lies and distortions offered by Romney in last night's debate are the
very ESSENCE of his tactic — and is therefore quite pertinent to the
discussion. Romney used a debate tactic known as  the Gish Gallop.

The Urban Dictionary defines the Gish Gallop thusly:

Named for the debate tactic created by creationist shill
Duane Gish, a Gish Gallop involves spewing so much bullshit in such a
short span on that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of
it. To make matters worse a Gish Gallop will often have one or more
'talking points' that has a tiny core of truth to it, making the person
rebutting it spend even more time debunking it in order to explain that,
yes, it's not totally false but the Galloper is
distorting/misusing/misstating the actual situation. A true Gish Gallop
generally has two traits.

1) The factual and logical content of the Gish Gallop is pure
bullshit and anybody knowledgeable and informed on the subject would
recognize it as such almost instantly. That is, the Gish Gallop is
designed to appeal to and deceive precisely those sorts of people who
are most in need of honest factual education.

2) The points are all ones that the Galloper either knows, or damn
well should know, are totally bullshit. With the slimier users of the
Gish Gallop, like Gish himself, its a near certainty that the points are
chosen not just because the Galloper knows that they're bullshit, but
because the Galloper is deliberately trying to shovel as much bullshit
into as small a space as possible in order to overwhelm his opponent
with sheer volume and bamboozle any audience members with a facade of
scholarly acumen and factual knowledge.

It is quite apparent to those of us who have closely followed this
election, that this latest sketch drawn out by Romney completely
contradicts major policy ideas stumped on the campaign trail by him over the last few months.

Call it Etch-A-Sketch, call it the Gish Gallop, call it lies…it's all
about the same. But it is a known debate tactic. And, like Romney, it is
dishonest.