Please forgive the relatively short diary. I wrote a comment on a diary earlier today and a commenter recommended I expand. Credit to my wife for planting the seed of this idea (thanks hon!).
Republicans have defined the political playing field (through messaging) to their advantage on a number of issues that Democrats think SHOULD be winners for us (e.g. pro-life, death tax, job creators...). I believe we have made mistakes in not taking these messaging battles seriously enough as a party, and have not responded by proactively framing voting choices on OUR terms. I propose a simple change we can all make in our writing and speaking that can take at least one of their negatives (against us) and turn it in to a positive (for us).
We often hear (R)s grouse about the burden of regulations, the job-killing effect of regulations, the business-choking impact of regulations. Everyone in their right mind knows these are smoke screens for driving more profit at someone else’s expense, but we haven’t been good at proactively countering that.
I propose that instead of talking about, or allowing (R)s to talk about, regulations, we always refer to PROTECTIONS. At their essence, regulations are intended to PROTECT against some sort of excess (free-rider problems, externalities, etc). In fact, many successful regulatory agencies actually USE that word in their title (EPA, CFPB...). We can EASILY provide examples of how these protections have benefited voters, while those subject to these protections are still profitable. We can use emperical evidence of what these protections were put in place to solve (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley to prevent accounting abuses that led to Enron, EPA to protect against manufacturing abuses that led to PCBs littering the bottom of the Hudson river...). Most ov all, we can change the conversation from their framing to ours.
I know this is a simple proposal, but it is one of many such simple changes we all need to make to improve the image of our party. Comments welcome.