Yes, one step at a time.
Firstly, my experiences. I live surrounded by Republicans(or more lately, no longer Republicans but Conservatives) who are very vocal about their political opinions. As a result, I usually know quite well what will go over with Republicans and what won't. I won't even TOUCH the subject of gun control with them, even on very mild grounds. However, other issues, I'm finding that their goals are actually fairly aligned with Democratic goals(quite a few exceptions, but generally, make America a better place, reduce crime, help the poor, etc.) The biggest separation is HOW to do so. So my progress with making this bill pass this mock government is larger with my general intent on educating Republicans on more effective methods. Firstly, like I stated before, make things Hybrid. If you can't make a giant leap all at once, make it a step.
I'll give an example. One of the bills presented to me last week was only presented to my delegation. In it, it outlawed the use of solitary confinement entirely. Now firstly, only 7/12 of the kids would have passed it(this was a mock debate session to prepare for the mock government session. Irony). I get this based on what their opinion was. Now it would have passed, but I proposed a simple amendment, and it ended up passing with 12/12 votes(note my delegation is slightly in favor of liberal positions, however, I'm told the mock government session is in favor of conservative positions). My simple change was that rather than entirely outlawing solitary confinement, it limited it to 1 session, no more than 24 hours, once a week at most.
Now, this would drastically cut down on solitary confinement still, and just keeping that little amount swayed 5 more kids to vote to approve it. Hence the nothing is absolute and making Hybrids of this process can massively influence support. The main obstacle is not creating an effective method, it's getting people to support it. I've seen this process done on several bills now, and it works quite well on issues that people can be swayed on.
For this drug program, we have to create a hybrid on it to get it to pass majorly. I don't like getting it passed by the skin of the teeth, I'd rather see at least 80% of kids supporting a bill, if not more.
However, now I have to state the obvious. We have to agree on what we believe would be effective measures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJUXLqNHCaI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg
This video, I think, sums up the basic idea.
Do you agree? I know most of this post was related more to the process of convincing people, but I can't stress how important this is in government proceedings, much more than whether the process actually works.