Taking hold of a recent slide in support, Democrats have begun using a new political frame to describe their opponents from across the aisle: Every variation of the word incompetent, incompetence and any other synonym thereof.

Search “.gov” Web sites with the words “Republican” and “incompetence” and thousands of entries of politicos on record declaring the Republican leadership as incompetent will appear.

“The strategy is to look at the bad things your opponent has done, bring attention to them, and say how you would make changes,” said Cliff Cleland, campaign coordinator for the County Democrats.

Other Democrats find this to be a necessary tactic.

“The Democratic Party is failing under Republicans on both the state and federal level. In order to take back the White House, we need to bring out Republican incompetence and mistakes,” said Matthew Kapustianyk, a member of the executive committee of the county Democrats.

Richard Baker, another at-large member of the executive committee and former NIU professor of accountancy, said this tactic might help gain back power for the Democrats.

“Unless the Democrats begin to speak out clearly on the issues, we won’t be able to rise to a position to gain seats,” he said.

County Republicans find Democrats’ new vocabulary to be unoriginal and based only on the benefits hindsight affords.

“Obviously there is room for improvement; there are a lot of gray areas. Who’s to say who was right and wrong,” said Steve Kuhn, membership chairman for the County Republicans.

On campus, many Democrats agree with the “incompetence” strategy used nationwide by an increasingly large stock of professional Democrats.

“It makes sense,” said Kevin Malone, vice president of the College Democrats.

College Democrats member and political science major Ryan Kerchner doesn’t think the strategy is all about the incompetence, because nothing is that black and white.

“Issues like Hurricane Katrina could have been handled better, but I don’t know if as a whole they [Republicans] are incompetent,” he said.

Members of the College Republicans said the new Democratic frame diverts attention away from the Democratic cause. Brent Keller, a member of the group, thinks it makes the Democrats seem less intelligent, while Andrew Nelms, another member of the group, said it removes focus from the issues.

“The approach should be the issues and how they can best serve the people,” he said.

Another student finds the strategy appropriate, but doesn’t think the Democratic Party is doing an adequate job of bringing out Republican mistakes.

“I think they should be doing that; they should be showing how the Republicans are messing up, but they aren’t,” said Jamie Jeschke, a sophomore political science major.

Jeschke also said the Democratic party isn’t attacking as much as they should be.

“The problem is they are afraid of attacking for some reason. They seem to miss every opportunity to get back at the Republicans, whereas the Republicans will take every opportunity to attack the Democrats,” he added.