Do we need to change the way we phrase our positions?

I have been doing a lot of thinking latley on the success/failures in the modern political arena and have decided that a few things hold true.

The public is driven by perception, if you are perceived in a positive light than John/Jane Q. Public can support you and your issues with little more information. Example

Pro-Life
We assoiate the pro-life movment with the conservitaves, and they call themselves 'pro-lifers' and 'anti-aborotionists' and we use the same terms to describe them. This leads the obvious to those who see things in terms of black/white that the Liberals are 'anti-life' and 'pro-abortion' which we know is not the case. We should start refering to the conservitive movement as 'anti-choice' and not 'pro-life' because the perceived opposite of pro-life is pro-death.

This needs to be addressed to all situations as well. We are not anti-war, we are pro-peace.

Starting to place positive phrases in our positions will be a big start to reclaiming the House and Senate in '06. Remember perception is everything, and for the majority of voters who receive their information in 60 second sound bites we need to make a hard fast grab for their attention.

their message is getting out. "Limousine liberals", "tax and Spend Liberals", "Tree-huggers", "Pro-Abortion", "anti-God", "Homosexual agenda", "weak on Defense", Against the Troops", Un-patriotic".

If you vote Democrat you are branded all of these things.
There are many others. ID&E is "Partial Birth Abortion". I could go on.

We need to change the dialog.
We need to represent THEM in the same way they represent US.
Sound Bites.
One word snippets.

We have to follow their lead.
Lowest common denominator.

I still say we need to lose Senators in order to gain the Senate.
Same with the house.

This is how they did it.

Gingrich is contemplating a run for president when he did exactly what Bill did while he was impeaching the man.

Take 'em down using their tactics!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees this. Plus you brought up another that we need to change. The 'tax and spend' tag need to be recycled into 'pay as you go'. We need to also remember to keep the wording simple, Fiscal Conservitave will not hold as well as Balanced Spending will when describing non-deficit budgeting.

The right has done a masterful job of defining the left and using language to do it. Why is Liberal a pejorative and Conservative commendatory? Because they said so and linked the terms to catch phrases exactly as you describe.

Pro-abortion and "baby killing" are easy catch phrases and hard to combat. Once the definition of abortion becomes "baby killing" the discussion is over. That's why "partial birth abortion" is having such an impact on that discussion. You simply can't run against the phrase.

Anti-war is another. The average red stater believes that we only fight wars to protect ourselves. To be anti-war or pro-peace makes them believe that we are not in favor of protecting America. We have to find a way to make our position into a three word phrase that portrays strength through something other than war. I'm struggling with it right now. Colin Powell made a strong case that humanitarian aid is a "hard national security asset". Feed them and educate them and they are less likely to pay attention to the trouble makers. Very difficult to condense that into three or four words.

You are playing by their rules and using their terms.

I am Pro-Choice. I do not favor abortions, but I do favor everyone's right to chose the their own course.

The "Frame the Debate" group

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=252