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RUSH: You all read the cartoon Dilbert?  You’ve heard of the guy, right?  He’s got an interesting piece here.  It’s a very long piece about why he switched his endorsement from Clinton to Trump.  And there are a number of reasons.  I want to focus on reason number five that he gives.  This is really, really insightful.  I’m looking at the clock.  I’m gonna need more time for it than I have before we have to go to the break.  So let’s do that.  Let’s go to the break, I’ll come back and I’ll share with you what Dilbert’s theory, number five here, his explanation, why he’s decided to switch from Clinton and is voting for Trump.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Okay.  Reason number five from Dilbert.  This piece, by the way, was published on September 25th, so just yesterday.  The guy’s name is Scott Adams.  Reason number five:  “Pacing and Leading.”  This guy talks about Trump as a leader.  We don’t hear that much. The Drive-Bys of course never will talk about Trump as leader.  His surrogates do.  His supporters and people who’ve known him and worked with him do. His kids talk about it all the time. But it is not part of the general campaign resume of Trump. 

But this guy says, “Trump always takes the extreme position on matters of safety and security for the country, even if those positions are unconstitutional, impractical, evil, or something that the military would refuse to do.” Trump still stakes out extreme positions — at the beginning. “Normal people see this as a dangerous situation. Trained persuaders like me see this as something called pacing and leading. Trump ‘paces’ the public — meaning he matches them in their emotional state, and then some.”

So he accomplishes relating to them.

Such as, take whatever he said about defeating ISIS, refugees, vetting Muslims, the wall, what have you. He is matching what he knows his supporters’ positions to be in their emotional state.  Remember, Trump knows it’s not what he says that people will remember; it’s how he makes them feel.  So he establishes that he relates to ’em by staking out an extreme position.  And after he’s got them, after he has paced the public and gotten them to listen, then he leads, meaning he matches them in their emotional state.

“He does that with his extreme responses on immigration, fighting ISIS, stop-and-frisk, etc.” Here’s the key: “Once Trump has established himself as the biggest bad-ass on the topic, he is free to ‘lead,’ which we see him do by softening his deportation stand, limiting his stop-and-frisk comment to Chicago, reversing his first answer on penalties for abortion, and so on. If you are not trained in persuasion, Trump look scary.

“If you understand pacing and leading, you might see him as the safest candidate who has ever gotten this close to the presidency. That’s how I see him,” writes Dilbert’s Scott Adams. “So when Clinton supporters ask me how I could support a ‘fascist,’ the answer is that he isn’t one. Clinton’s team, with the help of Godzilla, have effectively persuaded the public to see Trump as scary. The persuasion works because Trump’s ‘pacing’ system is not obvious to the public.

“They see his ‘first offers’ as evidence of evil. They are not. They are technique.” By the way, this is instinct.  Pacing and leading… It can be strategized.  But this is something you either have or you don’t have.  You can be taught this, by the way.  You could learn this. But it’s very difficult for people to actually say something that everybody else is gonna think is extreme.  Most people don’t want the flak. Most people don’t want to deal with the criticism.  But if you know it’s just your opener — it’s how you establish and relate yourself — and then once you’ve got people, then you lead, and they will follow you, because you’ve made the emotional connection. 

This guy says this is what Trump does naturally.

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