True American Stories

In the 1/14/16 republican debate Ted Cruz was asked to respond about a statement the president made about the economy and responds with something that has nothing to do with the economy. He says, "I want to get to the substance on jobs, but let me start with something, Today, many of us picked up our newspapers and we were horrified to see the sight of ten American sailors on their knees with their hands on their heads and that state of the union president Obama didn't so much as mention the ten sailors that had been captured by Iran. President Obama is preparing to send 100,000,000 dollars to or more to the Ayatollah Khomeini. And I'll tell you it was heartbreaking but the good news is the next commander in chief is standing on this stage." Here Ted Cruz uses a Red Herring to pull aware from the intended question and appeal to ethos  and pathos to cause an uproar in the crowd and improved his worthiness of being president. Not only was he talking about something that was completely irrelevant to the question, he also insulted both the president and the democratic party, by guild of association. Even though he ended up answering part of the question in the end, he used a red herring to avoid the complexity of the question and ended up giving a very simple answer. This logic is faulty for several obvious reasons: he talked about a topic that was completely unrelated to the questions, he attacked a party while doing it, and he meant to evade the complexity of the question, so that he might be able to give a simple answer and seem patriotic while doing it.