When it comes to labels, the GOP is liberally effective

Some might argue that what the GOP has really mastered is the language of obfuscation and misdirection, a willingness to unmoor words from their meanings — as in its shameless attempts in recent years to co-opt the language of the civil rights movement as a weapon against affirmative action. Good point. But the truth of the language is not what I'm here to talk about. Its efficacy is.
Consider the party's masterpiece. Of all the terms it has arrogated unto itself (values, tradition, patriotism) and all those it has used to jab the competition (secular, culture wars, moral relativism), its best work is embodied in one word: liberal.

— Leonard Pitts