The following is a quote by Mitt Romney, extracted from the second presidential debate of 2012. At this point in the debate, Romney and President Obama were quarreling over issues regarding energy production and expenses:
"I will fight for oil, coal and natural gas. And the proof, the proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that you're paying at the pump. If you're paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you're paying more. When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about $1.86 a gallon. Now, it's $4.00 a gallon... If the president's energy policies are working, you're going to see the cost of energy come down."
(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/16/transcript-second-presidential-debate/)
Here Romney makes an argument that is easy to follow: if production is up, prices are down- prices are high, therefore, President Obama's energy policies are to blame. He uses very plain logic, reasons that seem simple enough to persuade the audience that the answer to this problem is not complicated at all. He uses imagery that the public at large can relate with: filling up a tank of gas. Nearly every American does that regularly. He attributes the price difference between when the President took office and the present time, asserting that it was the sole cause of the price increase. Romney does not include other factors that may be relevant to the cause of this jump in cost, but rather asserts that it is the President's policies alone that caused it. By utilizing a single and very simple cause-and-effect dialectic approach, he makes a strong persuasive argument.
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