Frontlining Your Own Case
Frontlining means defending your own contentions against the attacks the other team made in their Rebuttal. You will be able to write a frontline that rebuilds a contention the other team attacked.
When Frontlining Happens
After Con's First Rebuttal attacks Pro's Constructive, Pro's Second Rebuttal must frontline — respond to those attacks — before extending its own offense. Skipping frontlining is dangerous: if you never answer an attack, the judge may treat your original argument as effectively disproven.
How to Frontline Efficiently
A good frontline restates the attack briefly, then answers it directly, ideally with new reasoning or evidence rather than just repeating the original warrant. Because time is short, debaters often frontline only the most important 1-2 attacks in depth and briefly address smaller ones.
Con attacked Pro's jobs contention by saying the number is 'just a projection.'
Pro's frontline: 'Con says our jobs number is just a projection — but this projection comes from the Congressional Budget Office using historical data from three comparable programs, not speculation. And even if the exact number is uncertain, Con has not disputed that job growth of some meaningful size occurs, which is enough to outweigh their disadvantage.' This directly answers the attack and adds a fallback.
1. What does 'frontlining' mean in PF?
2. True or False?
"If a team never frontlines an attack on their contention, the judge may treat the original argument as disproven."
Answer all 2 to check.
Frontline your strongest, most-attacked arguments first — a dropped attack can sink a contention.