I have this theory that you can pick out liberals and conservatives by what kind of parent they are to their children. Liberals are the nuturing parents, and conservatives are the authoritarians.
The Republican party is particularly good at accepting this "frame" and exploiting it for electoral gain. Both types of parents have good and bad qualities, and they trumpet the good things about authoritarians while painting a bad charicature of the nurturers.
Democrats need to learn to accept this basic frame and twist it in our favor.
Some of the chatter on dKos lately makes it sound like some liberals want us to be more authoritarian with our party - MaryScott's diary today is a great example.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/8/1014/31110
I don't think is going to work very well because it goes against our basic nature as nurturers. (Although, as a practical matter I do agree that there is way too much concession going on and not enough obstruction, but I digress) Nuturing parents don't throw their children into volcanoes, even if they sometimes think it's a good idea.
The Republican message makers have done a pretty good job of redefining the word 'liberal' as a caricature of the nuturing parent frame. The worst kind of nurturer is an enabler. The parent who gets high with their kids (the Hollywood caricature), or the parent who's 30 year old kid still lives in the basement and never got a 'real' job (the welfare caricature) are two good examples.
Of course, these are extreme versions of a nuturing parent. A good nurturing parent is caring, lets their children be themselves, provides a safety net in case their kids make mistakes, and uses positive reinforcement to motivate. The problem is, the Democrats aren't countering with an extreme version of an authoritarin parent.
The worst kind of authoritarian parent beats their kids when they misbehave. They don't allow their children to be themselves, but rather try to relive their own childhood (think overbearing football dad or hockey dad). They use negative reinforcement to motivate and destroy their child's self esteem.
This negative caricature can easily be applied to current events. The elimination/reduction of social programs, infringing on civil liberties to be 'tough' on crime, the "ownership society", the imperialist "yee-haw" foreign policy, etc. can all be fit into an authoritarian parnet mold.
With the current crew in the GOP it shouldn't be too hard to paint a more extreme authoritarian picture. The most powerful "frames" are the ones that already exist, we need to start tweaking for electoral advantage. If conservatives paint liberals as Hollywood wussies, we need to paint them as abusive hockey dads.