New Frames

Josh Marshall is absolutely right. Democrats do have to embrace their destiny as the party of grownups.

There was a lot of crowing when Bush came into office on 2000 that "the grownups" were finally in charge. But what has it come to? Blowing trillions of dollars in projected surpluses on tax cuts for the rich and industrial welfare. Saber-rattling jingoism and unnecessary war. Culture war politics. Veiled threats to the judiciary because it isn't in the pocket of the Christian Right. Sleaze from DeLay and company.

And all this time the economy has been running rough- there are just as many jobs today as there were 5 years ago when there were 10 million fewer Americans of working age. Gas prices are exploding. Life is tougher for average Americans today, and the Republican solution is to try to phase out Social Security and cut services for the most vulnerable Americans.

I have not, not do I truly intend to, read the Gospel of George Lakoff. It's clear that Democrats need to shed the ugly, Republican constructed aspects of their image, but one of the primary arguments in his latest book, that Democrats need to recast ourselves as gender-neutral nurturant parents, is absurd. Gender-neutral? Ya kidding?

How about this- Democrats cast as reponsible parents, Republicans as crappy, self-serving, incompetent parents.
Ezra Klein has written some good things along this line, but I think these need to be fleshed out.

Responsible parent doesn't have to mean boring parent. Responsible parents protect their children, they're invested in their children's happiness, they understand boundaries, they treat their kids like human beings.
They don't, for example, booze or gamble away their kids' college money. They don't arbitrarily mete out punishment. They don't live vicariously through their children.

Responsibility confers a certain kind of strength. You can't have faith that the father will protect you when he's left the house chasing after the wrong guy. The responsible parent doesn't do that.

A lot of the imagery built around Republican foreign policy is based in a half-assed pro-democracy idealism. Half-assed because it's symbolism to the degree that it actually relates to the world. We live in a pretty spectacle-hungry society, so that symbolism works on some level. This half-assed idealism has crept into most corners of Republican policy and politics, and I think this is dangerous for the Republicans.

I think, at the current moment, 5 major issues are hurting the Republicans, and I think this Responsible/Irresponsible binary can draw them together.

1. The Social Security debacle
2. Terry Schiavo etc.
3. High gas prices
4. Iraq
5. Tom Delay and attendant scandals.

We have, from the Republican side, respectively: buffoonish pseudoidealism; the feds reaching into our private lives; inaction in the face of a long term problem; adventurism that has resulted in a lot of death and not a lot of progress; and sleaze.

Democrats should demonstrate, likewise: a realism and an attachment to collective financial security; an understanding that the the government ought to respect families; a long-term, sober investment in improved efficiency, {possibly an investment in mass transit}, alternative energy sources, and thus a decreased dependence on foreign oil; and a committment to good, clean government.

It isn't sexy, but i'm not worried about that. One of the good things about a frame based on responsibility, rather than nurturing exactly, is that responsibility becomes a way to cast religious right culture politics as an attachment to divisive trivia. Mature adults can disagree on cultural hot-button issues, but threatening judges, grandstanding, and imposing the federal government in order to try to get your way isn't called for.

i think using maturity and responsibility as frames for the Democrats is probably a good way to ply educated people bothered by religious fanaticism and lower middle class people who are feeling increased financial burdens away from a Republican party increasingly under the reins of religious fanatics and a messianic agenda of decreased capital gains taxes and an eroded safety net.