Better Disagreement

I'm reminded of something I studied in a Communication Theory course in college, but can't remember the title of, and so am having a difficult time find on Google. Some psych researcher / professor proposed that there were four strategies used to deal with cognitive dissonance. The most effective of them was taking what the opposition states as a negative and turning it into a positive. For example:

Opposition: X presidential candidate wants to cut Y from the budget. That's terrible since it will hurt the poor the most. You: Actually, it's great. If you look at Z statistic, you'll see that removing Y helps the rich AND the poor. Opposition: Huh, so it does.

This is obviously way simplified, but does anyone know the name of that theory?