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Chris Bowers:

Protecting American democracy should be the first priority of anyone seeking office. Protecting our nation comes second. America actually was founded in order to protect our democracy, rather than our nation. The civil war was fought to protect our democracy, not our nation. There is no such thing as American identity without democracy. If, as a nation, protecting our nation has become more important than protecting our democracy, then we have lost our way as a nation both at home and abroad.

And that is exactly what we have seen from conservative "governance" over the past six years: protecting the nation always trumps protecting our democracy for them. For conservatives, the nation is more important than the democracy. But what has always made America great and given us our purpose both at home and abroad has been that our democracy comes before our nation. There is a reason for this. As I said above, our democracy actually did come before our nation.

When Americans start worshiping our borders, our "homeland," our military and our security instead of our freedoms, our march of progress, our opportunity, and our transformational power in the world, then we are worshiping false idols. Our nation has consistently taken major risks to our security in order to protect our democracy. Now, we are taking risks to our security and cracking down on our democracy in order to protect our borders and our nation ("our homeland"). I could not possibly think of a way for America to have gotten more off track than for a national consensus to emerge around the idea of national security being our number one priority.

Chris is right, but it would take a mighty powerful politician to pull off this rhetorical switch. But if done right, I think it would be an unbelievably powerful line of attack.