Mediaboss Marketing

What pretty lies Republicans tell, most of all about themselves. And what a gorgeous opportunity they have given Democrats to steal that bogus rhetoric right out from under them.

Try this on for size: Democrats are the party of family values because they promote the creation of more families. They did precisely that with their advocacy of marriage equality, which didnt tug the country away from convention but toward it, by encouraging gay and lesbian Americans to live in the sorts of arrangements that conservatives in fact extol.

Democrats also want to give families the flexibility and security that help keep them afloat and maybe intact. Thats what making the work force more hospitable to women and increasing the number of Americans with health insurance do. And Republicans lag behind Democrats on both fronts.

Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility because they dont pretend that they can afford grand government commitments whether distant wars or domestic programs without collecting the revenue for them.

Democrats are the party of patriotism, because theyre doing something infinitely more urgent and substantive than berating football players who kneel during the national anthem. Theyre recognizing that a hostile foreign power tried to change the course of an American presidential election. Theyre pressing for a full accounting of that. Theyre looking for fixes, so that we can know with confidence that we control our own destiny going forward. The president, meanwhile, plays down the threat, and Republicans prop him up.

Democrats are the party of national security. They dont taunt and get into Twitter wars with the rulers of countries that just might send nuclear warheads our way. They dont alienate longtime allies by flashing contradictory signals about their commitment to NATO. The leader of the Republican Party does all of that and more, denying the G.O.P. any pretense to stewardship of a stable world order.

Democrats are the law-and-order party. While many Republicans and their media mouthpiece, Fox News, labor to delegitimize the F.B.I. and thus inoculate Trump, Democrats put faith in prosecutors, agents and the system.

Democrats are the party of decency and modesty. None of their highest leaders uses the public arena to bully private citizens in the way that the Republican president does. None advances his or her financial interests as brazenly or brags as extravagantly.

Democrats are the party of tradition, if its interpreted and it should be to mean a news media that operates without fear of government interference, an internet to which access isnt tiered, judicial appointees who have a modicum of fluency in trial law.

Under Trumps thumb and spell, the Republican Party is watching the pillars of its brand crumble. Democrats should grab hold of and appropriate them. And theyre starting to, fitfully and imperfectly. Jettisoning Al Franken as the Republican National Committee reteamed with Moore was part of that effort.

Who among us doesnt care about family values, defined justly and embraced honestly? Who doesnt see the good in patriotism, tradition and decency? Theyre neither hokey words nor musty concepts, and thats why Republicans have been using (and misusing) them. But in the age of Trump, they constitute a language that Democrats can more credibly speak.

See the rest here:
Democrats Are the New Republicans - The New York Times