Learning Opposition Research

When Michala was a baby and a toddler, she would go into the campaign offices with me on long evenings or weekends. She was immersed in what I did, and picked up sayings along the way. One thing she always heard us say around the office was, “Let’s dig into that,” or, “We need more research on this.” So when she was two and three years old, it was always funny to listen to her playing with her baby dolls and Barbies, saying things like, “Let’s do more research.”

When I worked on my last campaign, it was a Presidential campaign. That summer I spoke to a group of college interns about opposition research. My role in that lecture was to teach those students what opposition research was, and the basic methods how to do it. In teaching them how to do it, I had to teach them why, and what we look for, etc.

One of the interns raised his hand and asked me, “Ms. Aimee, how will we know what to look for?”

The first thing I told him; I was only about four years older than he was; he didn’t need to call me, “Ms. Aimee.” Okay, so I was probably more than four years older, but not much. Eight years, max.

Second, I told the group, “You will keep digging and digging through piles and stacks of information. At some point, there will be discrepancies or things that just do not align to what you know is truth. Something will sound as an alarm. A name or location, repeated will keep showing up and it will not seem quite right. Trust your gut and go with it. Dig then dig some more, and dig deeper.”

You and I deal with opposition research, every single day. We are in a spiritual battle against the enemy.

Satan is our opponent and he constantly makes discrepancies and tosses about things that do not align to what we know is truth.

“Rescue me, O Lord, from evil men; protect me from men of violence, who devise evil plans in their hearts and stir up war every day.” - Psalm 140:1-2 (NIV)

For one thing, Papa is a protector. It is in His nature to rescue and protect us from those who desire to do evil. Sometimes when people do evil things to us, we can feel like the enemy won, and they got away with it. They don’t. Their actions will catch up to them. The lies they tell will come back to them and the things they steal will be uncovered. Truth always wins.

We have to seek the truth, though, and the only place we find the truth is in God’s Word. The world is not filled with truth, but God’s Word is. So in the process of seeking the truth, we have to dig and dig deeper until we uncover God’s truth.

“He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of all he created.” - James 1:18 (NIV)

God gave us birth through the word of truth. The opposition (the enemy) does not want us to know God’s truth. That is why opposition research is imperative. In other words, in order to combat the lies of the enemy, we have to seek God’s truth. I’m going to be a truth seeker until the day I close my eyes here and open them in His Kingdom. I pray you will be, too.