Ace: 'Facts change minds'

Ace has written a couple of excellent posts about what Congressman Joe Barton should have said instead of apologizing the BP CEO Tony Heyward. I particularly like the following observation from Ace, which he added after his list of questions that Congressman Barton should have asked Mr. Heyward (boldfacing mine):

Arguments don’t change mind. Theories don’t change minds. Rhetoric doesn’t change minds.

Facts change mind. Facts.

That’s why internet traffic doesn’t spike just because Charles Krauthammer has a good video up, or Ann Coulter wrote a trenchant column, but instead spikes when a scandalous political story is breaking.

Because everyone knows that if opinions are going to change dramatically in this country, it will be fresh facts, not fresh arguments (and not oft-repeated arguments, certainly) that will do it.

The internet slows down when a Big Fact is coming down the tubes. Because everyone recognizes the power of a new fact. We either wait for it excitedly or dread it coming, but we all know, it could change things.

In any breaking story, a news junkie skips past the channels that are offering analysis and more talking headery and goes to the one that seems to be offering fresh fact.

Every big blog day I’ve had wasn’t due to analysis or commentary, or even attacking commenters. It was due to a big news, new fact.

I just do not understand how everyone knows this, intuitively, and yet doesn’t seem to really know it all.

This is timely for me as I make the conservative case for lesbian and gay equality — it gives me the target to hit: fresh facts. And I DO have them. Come to think of it, it was exposure to facts during the 2008 presidential campaign that converted me to fiscal conservatism. Hmmmm.

See Ed Morrissey at Hot Air for the background on how Barton’s attempt to make Obama accountable for his “shakedown” of BP for the $20 billion escrow fund/Democrat corruption lottery prize went … awry.