As a result of recent primary elections, the Democratic Party’s stripes have been revealed. The socialists are out. Loud and proud.

The Donkey party’s ultra-left progressive membership rocked the vote in recent primaries and successfully nominated ultra-left ideologues for the November election.

Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts and fellow Congressional hopeful Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York will join other extreme Democrat candidates as their party’s standard-bearers. And, barring a miracle, these extremists will win nomination in their Democrat-dominated districts. Their influence will certainly grow as the party en masse turns more extreme.

Strange as it sounds, the takeover of the Democrat Party by its socialism-touting members couldn’t be better news for Republicans. It’s helping Americans to see the Democrat Party for what it really is – it’s not for the little guy anymore, it’s for removal and re-engineering of the country’s governing system.

Because of the takeover of the Democrat Party by avowed socialists, the Republican Party, despite Democrats’ decades-long effort to make us think the Grand Old Party is only an assembly of the rich and privileged, has become the only refuge for the majority of Americans who just want sanity and structure to reign over the land.

Democrats stand for stuff that sounds good at first, like a supper filled with sweets sounds good to a child. But their policies ultimately leave the corporate body sick and unsatisfied. Look at any major city where liberal policies have conned a few generations into thinking the government is only there to provide them free housing, food, health care and even cell phones. That is sick thinking.

At its core, the progressive agenda posited by the new Democrats simply means more money coming out of taxpayer pockets. Cortez and Pressley ran on similar pledges of universal health coverage, abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, and government-funded college education for all.

They are mimicking Bernie Sanders of course, the proud Democratic Socialist from Vermont who’s never met a government program he didn’t like. The more entitlements the better, according to The Bern. (Until other people’s money runs out, as the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher famously warned of British entitlements run amok.)

Core Republican ideas ensure the continuation of our society: Keeping a lid on government overreach and taxation, holding to the Constitution, ensuring a top-notch military and being tough on criminals to dissuade future crime. I’d bet that the average voter on the street would agree with those four principles. They might think they’re a Democrat, but really they’re Republicans stuck in old ways of thinking that the Democrat Party is the party for hard-working folks.

Especially here in Maine, where many need to work two or three jobs to make ends meet, I bet it’d be hard to find many people agreeing that free health care, free college and abolishing the agency that keeps 7 billion people from flooding through our country’s borders are workable ideas.

Democrats used to represent the working man. Even 20 years ago, with Bill Clinton at the helm, they had a “Big Tent” approach to governing. They’ve lost their way and now stand for everything that seems foreign to what the average American thinks of this country. Because they’ve veered so far left, I’ll be surprised if the country rewards the Donkeys with the much-ballyhooed “Blue Wave” in November.

The new breed of Democrat represents a kind of mentality that would also be anathema to one of the great heroes of the Democrat Party, President John F. Kennedy. JFK would roll over in his grave after seeing how Bernie and his minions are hijacking the Democratic message, which used to be: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

Now the Democratic message represents the complete opposite of that inspirational phrase from a half-century ago. The Democrat Party is the party of “gimme.”

Kennedy’s accomplishments in office would disturb Pressley and Cortez. He called for reducing exorbitant Eisenhower-era tax rates, the repeal of which led to a bullish decade of growth. He was hawkish on foreign policy, most notably in his efforts to turn back Communist influence in Cuba and Vietnam, noble but failed goals as they were. And he called for dramatically increasing the defense budget.

JFK surely would have been a Republican today, since military strength, reducing taxes and exerting American influence around the globe in the name of freedom are all things to which the Republican Party subscribes. I hope old-time Democrats think twice before they blindly vote for any of the new breed of Democrats.

John Balentine, a former managing editor for Sun Media Group, lives in Windham.