Blogs

Understanding the Immigrant Medicaid affirmative.

Winning the States CP in Every Debate.

Stefan Bauschard

Introduction

I think that as long as you properly conceptualize, write, and execute the states counterplan in a given debate, you can win almost every negative debate with it.

I think this is true for three basic reasons:

(1) Theory. Affirmative debaters are bad at erecting theoretical restraints on the negative and judges are reluctant to enforce any theoretical restraints that affirmatives erect.  Nearly unlimited negative fiat means negatives can write counterplan texts to circumvent almost any affirmative arguments against the counterplan.

(2) Reality. The states are largely the domestic policy makers.  There is almost no literature that speaks to the need for federal action in a world in which all of the states (and federal territories) essentially implement the substantive mandates of the affirmative plan. It's quite rare that the state action cannot solve the affirmative advantages as well as federal action can.

(3) Offense. It is much easier for the negative to win offense against federal action than it is for the affirmative to win offense against state action. This is true for three reasons. One, disadvantages to federal action, particularly politics, are substantively stronger and have bigger impacts than disadvantages to state action. Two, the negative can spike almost any disadvantage to the counterplan they know is coming in the counterplan text.  The need to have all parts of the plan be topical substantially limits the ability of the affirmative to spike negative disadvantages in the plan text. Three, the structure of the debate is rigged against the affirmative's ability to debate counterplans -- negatives have 13 minutes in the block to answer affirmative disadvantages and defend their own while affirmatives have only a small amount of time in the 1AR to answer negative disadvantages and defend/develop their own disadvantage(s) that they linked to the counterplan.

In this post, I will explain how to conceptualize, write, and execute the states counterpan in any given debate taking advantage of Reality, Theory, and Offense to win the debate. Although at times I will discuss them separately, the interplay of the three brings even more power to the counterplan.

What follows is a an organized collection of all of the cards that have been put out at various camps to answer the states counterplan for different affirmative cases.

This listing is not comprehensive in that it only includes cards from camp materials that we've had access to to date (8/2) and we have not reproduced every single states counterplan answer card -- only the ones that made different arguments. We did our best to minimize the reproduction of repetitive evidence.

We hope that you will be able to take advantage of this organized collection in a number of ways:

a) If you are running one of these affirmatives, this is a quick way to gain some states counterplan answers

b) If you are interested in running the states counterplan, you should go through each of these arguments and write blocks to answer them, as well as a specific counterplan text for each affirmatives. You can find an organized listing of the various plans here.

c) You should be able to quickly see what affirmatives have strong states counterplan answers and what ones do not.  We suggest running an affirmative with a strong set of states counterplan answers.  We also suggest beating as many affirmatives as you can with the states counterplan and then spending your time preparing more specific strategies against other affirmatives.  Given the weakness of some of these states counterplan answers, you should be able to quickly see what affirmatives you can beat with the states counterplan.

We also strongly suggest Winning the States Counterplan in (Almost) Every Debate