Rebranding

Rebranding is a term from the marketing world. Instead of re-creating your product, you create a new image for it or you recast your competition's product in a negative light. Properly done, it can work wonders: See Classic Coke following the New Coke fiasco, Wal-Mart's attempt to recast itself as an environmentally-friendly, good neighbor, great place to work and the Republican party's recasting of both itself and of Democrats.

Say the word Democrat and what answer do you get? Tax-and-spend, gay rights, baby killer, soft on defense, liberal (the latter isn't all wrong). Now try it with Republican. Values. Fiscal discipline, patriotism, strong defense, responsibility, conservative (the latter isn't all right). Given the historical record and the current state of the Bush administration, none of the statements about either party prove to be true. Yet they're almost automatic responses. We've been rebranded.

The Republicans in actuality are socially conservative and fiscally liberal. By socially conservative, I mean their policies favor organizations such as churches, the States, companies and wealthy individuals. They are anti-Federal government except where it benefits the organizations they support. They favor simple, uniform solutions to social problems. They are pro-status quo. At one time they were also fiscally conservative. In Ronald Reagan's day, the Democrats ran things, the highest U. S. tax bracket was 70 percent and the common joke was the Welfare Cadillac. Reagan reasoned, rightly so, that by lowering the upper tax brackets, he would stimulate the economy through increased investment (although the newly-created wealth never "trickled down", an error Reagan himself admitted to be the worst of his presidency). Seventy percent was excessive and needed to be trimmed. Social excesses also needed to be reduced. He was effective, although an ethical breach (Iran-Contra) limited his success in his second term.

Fast-forward to today. Today's Republicans are still socially conservative: They want prayer in school, they want to eliminate basic rights, they want to support the big institutions that support them, the Churches (Government support of faith-based initiatives), big business (relaxation of environmental laws, tax breaks), wealthy individuals (eliminating capital gains and dividend taxes) and they support simplistic solutions to complex social problems (take away the money and they'll find jobs). Unfortunately they no longer have fiscal discipline, see the highway bill for a stunning example of fiscal liberalism. The Republicans have become socially conservative and fiscally liberal. They're using tax money to fund the organizations that support them and to fund them handsomely while running up huge Federal deficits.

Despite the Republican rebranding of us so-called liberals, we are fiscally conservative. We've just been rebranded as socially and fiscally liberal. Social liberalism favors the individual in their rights and their benefits at the expense of organizations. Civil rights legislation is an example of granting rights at the expense of business, social and political organizations. We do not dabble in the religious other than to keep us free of it at any Governmental level. We favor progressive taxation. If this sounds like good policy, it is. The only place in the political spectrum that compares is moderation in both dimensions, John McCain providing an example. What we need to do is communicate our position: We favor individual rights and will only infringe on the rights of business, social, religious and political organizations when they impose unfairly on the rights of the individual. Then it's no longer gay rights, it's extending basic freedoms to all individuals. It's progressive taxation rather than unfairly burdening the rich. It's championing rights rather than imposing our will on others. It's the respect of a moment of respectful silence that a child can do with what he or she pleases before beginning the school day including pray. It's about fairness and justice for the individual, what the Founding Fathers really meant when they wrote the Constitution, not about the furtherance of corporate America or mega-Churches.

We need to rebrand ourselves as the protectors of individual rights, as measured on national defense, as fair and just. The Republicans are currently doing a great job of rebranding themselves, as they did under Nixon and to a lesser degree under Reagan. Clinton had his shortcomings but they were his own. Borrowing a page from Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, we need to sieze the initiative and rebrand ourselves as well.