McGrath,+Michael

**__Debate Experience__**
I'm a sophomore debating for Georgetown and a coach for Blake. I've judged about 20 rounds on the Latin America topic and have a decent, albeit spotty, background on topic lit.

__**Quick-Philosophy**__

I've debated on the national circuit for a bit now in high school and college and am willing to listen to just about any argument. I'll be able to better sift through the technicalities of a policy strategy or a K that is topic specific or fairly straight forward (security/fem/cap/nietzsche), but I'll try my best to try to try to best adjudicate whatever it is that you're interested in arguing.

__**Thoughts on Certain Arguments**__ __Non-Traditional Affs__ I'm inclined to believe that affirmatives should defend some sort of topical action. Teams that don't should invest time winning why it's impossible to have a sufficient discussion about the resolution absent their affirmative. Teams that are going for T should not drop the case. This usually results in the aff getting to dictate meta level questions about the purpose and nature of politics.

__T/Theory__ Lean negative on issues of: conditionality, being able to reject the argument and not the team (except for conditionality), not needing a solvency advocate, competing interpretations Lean aff on issues of: consult counterplans, normal means counterplans

__Kritiks__ I do not find famework arguments that exclude kritiks in totality very persuasive I do think framework debates are very important to how I judge a criticism and if the negative team's framework arguments go mostly uncontested, I probably won't have a very high threshold for alt solvency.

__Inherency__ I have a high threshold for voting on inherency. Arguments about why the squo solves, even if they are arguments about why the plan might pass in the future, are probably solvency arguments, not T or theory arguments.

__Dropped Arguments__ I'm very inclined to believe that if a team intentionally concedes an argument that their opponent made, that it should be considered to be true. While I also default to think that unintentionally dropped arguments are true or at least of high risk, I'm fairly willing to listen to arguments as to why you might be justified in making new arguments in a rebuttal. Moreover, I'm especially likely to give leeway to teams that drop incoherent/"blippy" claims (as is often the nature of intrinsicness, no neg fiat, ect) if they double down on the argument in their next speech.