Going For It

In competitive policy and Lincoln-Douglas debate, "going for it" refers to the late-round strategic choice of collapsing the debate down to one (or very few) arguments and investing the bulk of speech time defending that position. The phrase is most often heard in the context of the 2NR (second negative rebuttal) or 2AR (second affirmative rebuttal), where time pressure forces debaters to pick their strongest path to the ballot rather than extending every argument from earlier speeches.

The logic is straightforward: a rebuttal speech of five minutes cannot adequately cover a dozen flowed arguments against a prepared opponent, so the debater "goes for" the argument with the best combination of truth, technical execution, and strategic fit. Common choices include going for a single disadvantage, a topicality violation, a kritik, a theory argument, or a case turn. Debaters will often signal the choice explicitly ("we're going for the politics DA") and then spend the remaining time on uniqueness, link, impact, and weighing.

Going for it well requires several skills:

• Flow management — knowing which arguments were dropped or mishandled by the opponent.
• Impact calculus — explaining why the chosen argument outweighs everything the opponent is going for, typically on probability, magnitude, timeframe, and reversibility.
• Strategic concession — sometimes granting opponent offense on other flows to free up time and neutralize cross-applications.
• Judge adaptation — picking an argument the specific judge is likely to vote on, based on their paradigm or disclosed preferences.

The opposite approach, sometimes derided as "going for everything," tends to produce shallow extensions that lose to a focused opponent. Coaches in the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) and college circuits routinely teach 2NR/2AR collapse drills as a core rebuttal skill. The phrase has also migrated into broader political and negotiation jargon to mean committing decisively to one line of argument rather than hedging across several.