Mastering the Rebuttals

What are rebuttals? These are the speeches that answer the arguments of the opponent, building upon the materials from constructives.

First, remember the benefits of diversification. It’s less compelling to focus all of your arguments on one part of your opponent’s position, or to make only one type of argument. This makes it more likely that your opponent can group your responses, taking them out with one fell swoop. It’s better to make a diverse set of arguments (answers to the link, answers to uniqueness, answers to the impact, etc.) to pressure your opponent in different places.

Second, always prioritize your own offense. You read a case for a reason! It’s not strategic to spend so much of your time rebutting your opponent’s points that you neglect your own. Often, strong rebuttals are highly positional, bringing the debate back to the debater’s own case. This will involve efficiently neutralizing the other side’s arguments while resoundingly winning one’s own, while doing weighing or impact calculus to prioritize one’s own arguments.

Third, the 1NR needs to be offense. The benefit of the 1NR is that it gets extensive prep time and doesn’t get cross-examined, so the most important argument should be in the 1NR. It’s wasteful to put defense here, unless the 2NR almost certainly will be majority defense (for example, a small risk of a disad with a ton of case defense).