Good thing we have the vast liberal media to correct these sorts of misconceptions.

Sometimes I think, screw it, lets embrace the derogatory terms and make them positive.

Who is it that always cleans up after the irresponsible children and alcoholic and philandering and gambling dads? Moms. If the Democratic party is the Mommy party, it is because we are the only ones responsible enough to clean up the Republican messes, which they create with such speed and aplomb.

Who is protective of their children? Moms. Don't mess with a protective mom. Was Margaret Thatcher one to be trifled with? I think not.

yeah. maybe Dems are the mommy party while the GOP is the party of absentee dads who spend the child support money on getting drunk and philandering?

To add to my earlier comment. I would take Pelosi over Bush in a cage match any day of the week.

I would say that at this moment the Democratic Party is the Mommy AND Daddy party. And the GOP is the troubled, black sheep middle brother party.

Yeah, I have to go with connor on this one. Except that I might say the GOP is the drunken ne'er do well uncle. My spouse was pointing out that the GOP most closely resembles the youngest brother in "parenthood"--the one who is always hitting up the parents for money and abandoning his responsibility for his children.

aimai

This sort of commentary doesn't actually have anything to do with empirical reality. It plays entirely on chauvinistic themes that begin in early childhood: "You throw like a girl!" "What are you, a little girl?" God forbid a middle school boy should use a piece of pink construction paper for anything-or that a grown man could choose any woman as a leader. And then we have football teams and military groups with endless variations on "Step it up, ladies!"

We live in an age of stereotypes. Men are forceful, women are shrill, men deal with "hard facts," women deal with "mommy issues." You'd think by now that society at large would be embarrassed by this overtly sexist behavior, but it evidently still reverberates in our collective heart. Phyllis Schlafly rides again.

Now, what sort of cookies should I bake today?

If the democrats are the 'mommy party,' does that make the republicans the 'nazi' party, or just the 'frat' party?

And when is The Times going to lose its image as a 'liberal' paper?

Then there's Jonah going on about the Democrats being the party of paranoia, in this morning's LA Times., based on a Rasmussen poll question (which he didn't given) about whether Bush knew in advance about 9/11:
Rasmussen Reports, the public opinion outfit, recently asked voters whether President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The findings? Well, here's how the research firm put it: "Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know and 26% are not sure."

Based on those numbers, he thinks the Dems are paranoid? What part of 39% is a majority?

Wow. Just wow.

Keep it up, Patrick. All the white male condescension on display there--and approved by myriad Times editors, I might add--really makes the Times coverage "relevant".

Fair enough since the repubs are well known as the "draft dodger" party

Patrick Healy is the NYT reporter who wrote that godawful story about the Clinton's marriage around this time last year. If you have TimesSelect you can access it:

"For Clintons, Delicate Dance Of Married and Public Lives

".....The dynamics of a couple's marriage are hard to gauge from the outside, even for a couple as well known as the Clintons. But interviews with some 50 people and a review of their respective activities show that since leaving the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton have built largely separate lives -- partly because of the demands of their distinct career paths and partly as a result of political calculations."

I'm not surprised this latest comes from Healy. He's got some old-fashioned notions rattling around his head.

It's easy to see that the Demicans and Republicrats have nothing to fear. Divide and conquer. Has anyone considered that BOTH are responsible for the problems of this country and NEITHER has a solution?
Keep voting for Coke vs. Pepsi, and let's whatch was real change comes.

The "mommy party" is a term I've usually heard from the most vile-mouthed libertarians on internet chatrooms. It doesn't belong in a serious news story. For balance, will Healy describe republican candidates as "A Cracker Looks to Lead Country-Club Elite Back to Robber Baron Glory?

Don't stand for this crap!

(sent to public@nytimes.com)

To Whom in the Field of Journalism It May Concern:

I didn't realize that NY Times journalists were given the responsibity of changing the name of the Democratic Party. President Bush tried to do it, and he had to publicly correct himself.

Will Patrick Healy be publicly correcting himself anytime soon? Or, at the very least, apologizing for not using quotes to indicate that he thinks he is witty?

Otherwise, please send me the email you got from Howard Dean letting the public know that Dean is now the leader of the Mommy Party.

Let's start calling the R's the baby party ... they act like spoiled children, won't play nice, lie continually and have exhibited nothing but incompetence ...

Forget about the tired Daddy party & Mommy party labels.

The Republican party has become the “child” party. This child is a liar and a schoolyard bully, taunting and hectoring (and occasionally censoring, imprisoning, torturing and killing) those with whom it disagrees. Bush and his Republican Congressional cronies use the U.S. government like a candy drawer for their political base.

My view of the Democrats is that they are actually the “parent” party. Unlike the “child” party, the Democrats are willing to grapple with complex problems. Like Iraq. Global warming. Public education. Poverty. Health care.

The child has broken enough vases in our nation’s proverbial house: turning a budget surplus into a massive deficit, despoiling the environment, and spilling blood pointlessly in a horribly ill-conceived war. Let’s give the children a well-deserved time out so they won’t be such a danger to the rest of us.

But really: Have we now been reduced to describing Dems as the Mommy Party in our headlines with no quotes or visible irony?

Since this is the same "paper of record" that publishes MoDo dreck about Obambi and the Breck girl, is this headline all that surprising?

Why let reality interfere with a good headline and an even better fantasy? This is how much of the media operates. What will be disappointing is if the Democrats once again fail to recognize this.

This "mommy party" business doesn't just come from the right. In his book "Don't Think of an Elephant," George Lakoff put forward the idea that liberals have a "nurturing parent" view of government, while conservatives have a "strict father" view. While Lakoff didn't use the words "mommy party," his "nurturing parent" is seen as "mommy" by most people, especially since he contrasts it with the strict father model. This book, which was very popular among progressives, is probably seen by conservatives as evidence that progressives do see the proper role of government as "mommy."

By the way, I don't see government as a parent at all, even by analogy or metaphor.

It's all in definition. What is wrong with being the "Mommy" party, exactly? As a mommy I work a fulltime job managing a multitude of projects. At the same time I organize a household, manage the finances, schedule all the appointments for the household's members, verify the doors and windows are secure, plan for future projects (investments, retirement, college, etc.), provide and prepare all the food for the household and prompt the household members regarding their projects (maintance, security, etc.). Personally, the Mommy party would be the best to run a nation.

More great work from Greg:

"Mommy Party" and "Daddy Party" are favorite Chris Matthews tropes. He boasts about his alleged authorship of the terms, and Healy is currently in the process of becoming a Chris Matthews Show regular.

What word comes after "inane" and "mindless?" That's the one we have to track down.

P.S. Suppose men had voted 50 percent Rep and 47 percent Dem. That wouldn't make anyone the "Mommy" or "Daddy Party" either. Let's not act like there's some sort of evidence which makes this foolishness sensible.

By the way--read Healy's whole piece. Treat yourself to a good solid laugh at his use of "frisson."

I first heard this construction ("mommy party" versus "daddy party") from David Brooks, and afterwards only from Republicans. Gosh, I wonder what they're trying to sell?

Of course, this is the same times that has continues to employ Tom "Six Months" Friedman and only recently lost Judy Miller. The only worthwhile part of the paper any more is Dining & Wine.

If Republicans are the daddy party, they're the dead-beats dads who can't hold a job, even one they're given by friends, because they're incompetent drunks who lie, cheat and steal from their employers.

They're the angry, bigoted dads who hate every group they aren't a part of and who have derogatory names for all of them.

They're the lying dads who steal mom's pay from the two jobs she works at to feed the kids and then spend it on keeping themselves drunk and comfortable.

They're the creepy dads who sexually molest the kids - boys and girls - while mom is working those two jobs to keep them fed, and that's when they're not screwing around with the 14 yr old babysitter and anything else they can peg.

They're the bully dads who beat the moms to keep them in line when they try to question them.

They're the dangerous dads who would murder their wife and kids rather than lose the power over them that they have.

They're the scum dads who will leave their family living in squalor because they're too lazy and evil to actually devote any part of themselves to making life better for anyone around them.

They're the disappearing dads who will drain the bank account qand leave their family hopeless if they think they can find smeone else to scam in another town.

That's today's Republican daddy party

I first encountered the Mommy and Daddy party references from Chris Matthews when he was a regular on The McLaughlin Group back in the 80s, so as far as I'm concerned, he's the author of the term. It was ridiculous then as now. And probably tells us more about Matthews toilet training than anything else.

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.

It seems that Jeff Lichtman is the only one who got it close to the real issue (with a little context from bob somerby, Helter, and Batocchio). While Matthews does use them a lot, he did not coin them. They first appeared on the right in news, commentary, and blogging and they were used mostly the way Jeff claims (citing George Lakoff). But the usage was more vicious. The nuturing aspect of the "mommy" idea was tied to the welfare state and handouts, as they claimed, and was depicted as the worst type of coddling. But they also bundled in their claim of overregulation in areas like the environment and product safety, as if the Dems were bent on legislating away our freedom to protect us from ourselves. Somehow taking away choice on the abortion front and intruding into our lives other ways is not considered protecting us from ourselves (just doing what is right, I suppose). On the other side, while a strict "father" comments were emitted occasionally, it was usually by someone attempting to make a contrast to the "mommy" image. It was used used much less frequently.

I hate watching Fox News and listening to Rush and ilk, but I do so occasionally so I hear where they are coming from. I suggest that the crowd commenting on this issue, and other issues like it, actually listen to the other side so they know better how to defend themselves in true debate (not that we encounter it all that often).

Code: "muscle" as in what we need to put behind more of our arguments

Sorry, I left DCB out of my "on the right track" list. But even though Chris' use may go back that far, he was not the one pushing it for the last ten or fifteen years. It was almost entirely the conservative "press" (not that I would deny that Matthews falls on that side of the line way too often).

Why don't Democrats try to work this tired old storyline over by tarring Republicans as the "Deadbeat Daddy" party? You know, won't pay the bills, blows all the money ontax cuts for millionaires, won't ever take any responsibility for mistakes, whines when calledout for behaving badly...
"Deadbeat Daddy Party" seems to nail it for me.

Fuck the media whores. We're all a bunch of faggots with hair obsessions as far as they're concerned. I'm sick of the media whores games.

As far as I'm concerned journalists can blow me. What a bunch of fucking weasels.

I cast my vote for Republicans as the party of spoiled brats, meatheads, and greedheads -- supported by their fellow travellers the weaselly media whores.

They can all blow me.

Dems aren't the "mommy party" - they are the "single parent" party, since the so-called Rep "daddies" have their heads up their asses, busily trying to repress and oppress their perceived threats.

It's a new world, you lily-white conservative middle-aged males. Forget leading, so either follow or get the hell out of the way.

Mommy as in mommy state. Socialism et al.

Exagerated? Obv but clearly lest we go statist we need to keep that sort of objection in mind or we'll lose again.