Is it just me? I don't know if I'm just being sensitive or if Republicans are ramping up the use of negative terms to refer to Democrats for the upcoming election season. It seems like back during 2004, every time a right-winger named the opposition party they referred to it as the DEMOCRAT PARTY. After the elections, the usage seemed to fade, but maybe the sensitivity of my ears decreased a bit during a non-election year.
Recently, the use of this term has once again on the increase among the TV talking heads, and even from the President himself in some recent speeches. To me it smacks of a clear cut case of disrespect for the Democrats and a conscious effort to use a term that sounds less favorable than Democratic.
So, I fired up Google to see if anyone else out there is feeling the same way I do. It turns out there is.
TheCarpetbagger Report looked into it and found that it isn't necessarily a new thing:
The 'Democrat Party'
I'd always just assumed that Republicans call their rivals the "Democrat Party" as some kind of childish insult. They realize it's grammatically wrong, but they think it annoys Dems, so, like a child who enjoys teasing others a little too much, they stick to it.
I've falsely assumed, however, that this is a fairly modern taunt. Kevin did some digging and found that it goes back quite a ways. For example, Geoffrey Nunberg explained:
The bleaching of democracy made small-d democrat irrelevant as a political label....That's what allowed the Republicans of Hoover's era to start referring to their opponents as the Democrat Party....By mid-century, "Democrat Party" had become the routine tic that it is for modern Republicans, though nowadays it probably has less to do with undermining the Democrats than simply irritating them.
For that matter, William Safire noted:
Acting on a tip, I wrote to the man who was campaign director of Wendell Willkie's race against Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "In the Willkie campaign of 1940," responded Harold Stassen, "I emphasized that the party controlled in large measure at that time by Hague in New Jersey, Pendergast in Missouri and Kelly Nash in Chicago should not be called a 'Democratic Party.' It should be called the 'Democrat party.' . . ."
Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a Republican alternative for Dems to (mis)use. Andrew Sabl noted that Air America's Sam Seder likes to pronounce Republican "RAYpublican," but that doesn't quite seem to work.
Andrew is right when he says Dems are neither "disciplined enough nor consistently petty enough to make anything like this stick," even if they did come up with a sneering name for their rivals. But just out of curiosity, do readers have any ideas?
Also, it turns out that Gene Hargrove, a professor at UNT is also a bit irritated by the tactic, but he's also a bit put out by the misuse of the English Language:
The Democratic Party is one of the oldest political organizations in the world. It has its beginnings in the first days of the United States under its Constitution (1792-1800). Originally known as the Democratic-Republican Party, it held its first national convention in 1832 and renamed itself the Democratic Party in 1840, making the name Republican Party available to any new party that might happen to come along.
In contrast, the Republican Party, which falsely calls itself the Grand Old Party, only goes back to 1854 when a group of abolitionist Free Soilers (correct name), disaffected Democrats, and Whigs upset about the Kansas-Nebraska Act decided to claim that they were the true descendants of the Democratic-Republican Party, even though they knew that that party still existed and had existed continuously from the time that it had discarded the word Republican.
Throughout nearly all of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was universally accepted that Democrat was a noun referring to the members of a party and that Democratic was an adjective referring to things having to do with Democrats, the members of the Democratic Party. Even the members of the Republican Party respected the name Democratic Party for much more than a hundred years.
Near the end of the twentieth century, however, some members of the Republican Party began acting as if they had forgoten how to pronounce the name of the Democratic Party and started calling it the "Democrat Party."
Since the first person to use the phrase was John Connolly, who had for most of his life been a Democrat, it was not a simple matter of forgetting or getting confused about grammar, about the relationship of nouns and adjectives. Apparently, the Republicans wanted to try to disassociate the word democratic from the name of the party of their chief opponents, perhaps having realized that democratic was a more powerful word than republican. Most likely no one will ever know exactly what was going on in their heads. Nevertheless, the basic idea of taking the "ic" off of Democratic and using a noun as an adjective is clear--they were trying to be insulting.
It is a sad commentary on the ways of humans that people can get used to errors and malpractice and that the misuse and abuse of language can become the norm. Today most Republicans, many members of the news media, and even a few Democrats say Democrat Party as if they really believe it is the name of that political organization.
To avoid this tragedy, not to mention the impending collapse of the English language, it seems to me that the Democrats ought to strike back. Obviously the current lack of response has been making the situation worse. While the words "Democrat Party" ought to make the speaker look like an idiot, things have gotten so bad that sometimes such a speaker appears to be making a clever remark. To others it seems to be ordinary and factual, as if it really is the name of a political party.
And finally, it seems that Dana Blankenhorn is not only insulted by this incorrect reference to the Democratic party, he's sick and tired of Democrats rolling over and taking it.
Point of Personal Privilege: -ic
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
Much of the disrespect found in American politics today can be traced to two letters -- ic.
The letters come on the end of the name of the current opposition party. It's the Democratic Party. Democrats belong to the Democratic Party.
Yet for many years I've seen conservative Republicans call their opponents the Democrat Party. The -ic is usually dropped right at the point of personal insult.
I've concluded it's deliberate. It's a sign of profound disrespect, a form of personal abuse, which Democrats have suffered just as women have suffered spousal abuse. If Democrats aren't even allowed to name their own party as they've seen fit to do for 200 years, how can they hope to govern?
It's time to make it stop.
Call them on it. Don't respond to mentions of "the Democrat Party" without correcting it. Whether you're on a news show, or just in the blogosphere.
It's real simple. Democrats are members of the Democratic Party.
Insist on it. Respond only to your own name. Someone tries to pin another name on you, slug them with your words. Don't let them get away with it.
Stop letting yourself be abused this Holiday season.
Most galling to me is having to watch an interviewer, and worst of all - Democratic Politicians and Talking Heads sit by and just let it go by without so much as a peep. If they aren't willing to make a statement correcting this blatant misuse of the English Language and smearing of a Great Party, then it's no wonder that the party is wandering through the political wilderness.