Extending Politics Links- Part 1

There are definite do’s and don’ts of extending the politics DA in the block. The basic guiding principle is that you should a) turn everything so that the 1AR can’t kick out of things, b) read more evidence then the affirmative, and c) be sweet.
However, translating these generic guidelines into practice can be difficult, so lets get more specific in the following series of articles.
1. New link arguments
New links read in the block should never be more generic than the ones read in the 1NC.
For example, if your 1NC link is "Foreign aid costs political capital", then never in the block read a card that says "passing legislation costs political capital". The reasons for this are two fold. First, it is just unnecessary. If a judge isn’t going to vote on your more specific link, the generic one isn’t going to help. Second, a crafty 1AR will take advantage of this by reading new link uniqueness evidence that says a piece of legislation recently passed. Non uniquing one of your links will generally take out your entire DA.
A more common occurrence of this is the 2NC Focus link. Here the neg will read a new link argument in the block arguing that Bush can only think about one thing at a time before his brain melts down and therefore the plan will be the end of his agenda. This is incredibly easy for the 1AR to jack you on because they don’t even need to read a card that another piece of Bush’s agenda has recently passed, they just need to read a card that says he HAS another part of his agenda and you are basically hosed. If you take the time to put a specific link in your 1NC, don’t mess it up by reading a ton of more generic ones in the block.
One flipside to this, if you absolutely must have that focus link alive in the debate, read it in the 1NC. At least that way you will get more time to deal with potential uniqueness complications in the 2NC and you can then read your more specific links in the block and hopefully the 1AR will drop them.
So what kind of new link arguments should you be reading in the block?
First lets take a step back and think about why are you reading new link arguments in the block to begin with? Most of the time its because the aff made fun of your terrible 1NC link evidence. That’s not a good reason to make entirely new arguments, that’s a reason to read better evidence on your initial argument. Reading new links gives the aff the ability to make new arguments. For the same reason that you don’t normally read new disads in the 2NC (the 1AR can straight turn them making your 2NR miserable), you shouldn’t be reading new link arguments because the 1AR could conceivably make some devastating arguments that are very difficult to recover from. So if possible you should continue to go for your initial link argument and just read more/better evidence to support it.
Another reason people read new links is when the affirmative link turns. This is a slightly better reason, but still not great. Many times a 2NC will say something like "Winners win is non unique because Bush just won on tax cuts and now my focus link". Obviously that is problematic. Keeping consistency between your defense against the Aff’s link turns and your new link arguments can often be tough. Instead, I suggest you just impact turn all the aff’s link turns instead of reading new links. This accomplishes the same goal, you get new links to the disad. But since the aff made the argument initially , they cannot make the vast litany of new arguments that they can to new link arguments. So for example, if the aff says "winners win", you should read several cards on "winners lose", if they say the plan makes Bush popular, say popularity is bad for the agenda and etc.
The downside to this is that 'now the 1AR won’t drop it'. This is probably not true. If the 1AR is bad enough to drop your new focus link, they will probably drop several of your impact turns to their initial link arguments.
But back to the initial question, you should read links that are as specific as possible. Cards about senators, lobbies, or public perception of the plan combined with an internal link about why those groups are essential to the agenda are best. By getting more specific as the debate goes on you limit the aff’s range of new potential answers. The thing you want to takeaway from this though is that reading new links isn’t like reading new impacts in that 1 link can end up costing you the whole DA, so you need to make your choices wisely.