PROGRESSIVES – THE
DEMOCRAT PARTY VERSUS THE REPUGLICANS
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
FEBRUARY 27, 2021
A CRUDE
LINGUISTIC WAR OF SLIGHTS AND SLURS HAS BEEN GOING ON, MORE PROMINENTLY AMONG
POLITICIANS SINCE THE TEA PARTY HIJACKED THE GOP THAN IN THE PAST. THE REPUBLICANS ALWAYS, NOW,
MAKE IT A POINT TO CALLTHE DEMOCRATIC PARTY THE “DEMOCRAT” PARTY. I SUGGEST WE
CALL THEM THE GODAWFUL OLD PARTY, OR EVEN BETTER THE “REPUGLICANS.” THAT’S A
PERFECT DESCRIPTION.
THE WHOLE THING
IS SILLY, OF COURSE, LIKE CALLING ENVIRONMENTALLY CONCERNED CITIZENS “TREE
HUGGERS.” IT DOES, HOWEVER, MAKE ANYTHING APPROACHING GOODWILL AN IMPOSSIBILITY,
AND IT GUARANTEES THE CONTINUANCE OF A DEPLORABLE AND INCREASINGLY DANGEROUS LEGISLATIVE
GRIDLOCK WELL INTO THE DISTANT FUTURE.
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
FEBRUARY 27, 2021
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-us-news-ohio-elections-f39b9370f14fd698a76285b83a2ef4c6
What’s in an adjective? ‘Democrat Party’ label on the rise
By JULIE CARR SMYTH
Today [FEBRUARY 27, 2021]
PHOTOGRAPH --
FILE - In this Feb. 24, 2021, file photo, a sign directs Republican and
Democrat legislators to their parking areas as a N.H. State Trooper watches the
flow of traffic prior to a New Hampshire House of Representatives session held
at NH Sportsplex, due to the coronavirus in Bedford, N.H. Amid calls to dial
back hyper political partisanship, two letters are among the obstacles standing
in the way. Republicans, including the lawyers who defended former President
Donald Trump during last week’s impeachment trial, routinely drop the “i-c”
when referring to the Democratic Party or its policies. (AP Photo/Charles
Krupa, File)
COLUMBUS, Ohio
(AP) — Two days before the assault on the U.S. Capitol, Pennsylvania state Sen.
Doug Mastriano, a Republican, said supporters of then-President Donald Trump’s
claims of election fraud were basically in a “death match with the Democrat
Party.”
A day later,
right-wing activist Alan Hostetter, a staunch Trump supporter known for railing
against California’s virus-inspired stay-at-home orders, urged rallygoers in
Washington to “put the fear of God in the cowards, the traitors, the RINOs, the
communists of the Democrat Party.”
The shared
grammatical construction — incorrect use of the noun “Democrat” as an adjective
— was far from the most shocking thing about the two men’s statements. But it
identified them as members of the same tribe, conservatives seeking to define
the opposition through demeaning language.
Amid bipartisan
calls to dial back extreme partisanship following the insurrection, the
intentional misuse of “Democrat” as an adjective remains in nearly universal
use among Republicans. Propelled by conservative media, it also has caught on
with far-right elements that were energized by the Trump presidency.
Academics and
partisans disagree on the significance of the word play. Is it a harmless
political tactic intended to annoy Republicans’ opponents, or a maliciously subtle
vilification of one of America’s two major political parties that further
divides the nation?
Thomas
Patterson, a political communication professor at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center
on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said using “Democrat” as an adjective
delivers a “little twist” of the knife with each usage because it irritates
Democrats, but sees it as little more than that.
“This is,” he
says, “just another piece in a big bubbling kettle of animosities that are out
there.”
Others
disagree. Purposely mispronouncing the formal name of the Democratic Party and
equating it with political ideas that are not democratic goes beyond mere
incivility, said Vanessa Beasley, an associate professor of communications at
Vanderbilt University who studies presidential rhetoric. She said creating
short-hand descriptions of people or groups is a way to dehumanize them.
In short:
Language matters.
“The idea is to
strip it down to that noun and make it into this blur, so that you can say that
these are bad people — and my party, the people who are using the term, are
going to be the upholders of democracy,” she said.
To those who
see the discussion as an exercise in political correctness, Susan Benesch,
executive director of the Dangerous Speech Project, said to look deeper.
“It’s just two
little letters — i and c — added to the end of a word, right?” she said. “But
the small difference in the two terms, linguistically or grammatically, does
not protect against a large difference in meaning and impact of the language.”
During the
“Stop the Steal” rallies that emerged to support Trump’s groundless allegations
that the 2020 election was stolen from him, the construction was everywhere.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel accused “Democrat
lawyers and rogue election officials” of “an unprecedented power grab” related
to the election. Demonstrators for the president’s baseless cause mirrored her
language.
After
Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was removed from her
House committees for espousing sometimes dangerous conspiracy theories, she
tweeted: “In this Democrat tyrannical government, Conservative Republicans have
no say on committees anyway.”
Trump’s lawyers
used the construction frequently during his second impeachment trial, following
the lead of the former president, who employed it routinely while in office.
During a campaign rally last October in Wisconsin, he explained his thinking.
“You know I
always say Democrat. You know why? Because it sounds worse,” Trump said.
“Democrat sounds lousy, but you know what? That’s actually their name, the
Democrat Party. Right? The Democrat Party. So I always say Democrat.”
In fact,
“Democratic” to describe some version of a U.S. political party has been around
since Thomas Jefferson and James Madison formed the Democratic-Republican Party
in the 1790s. Modern Democrats are loosely descended from a split of that
party.
The precise
origins of Republicans’ truncated phrasing are difficult to pin down, but the
Republican National Committee formalized it in a vote ahead of the 1956
presidential election.
Then-spokesman
L. Richard Guylay told The New York Times that “Democrat Party” was “a
natural,” because it was already in common use among Republicans and better
reflected the “diverse viewpoints” within the opposing party — which the GOP
suggested weren’t always representative of small-d democratic values.
Wisconsin Sen.
Joseph McCarthy, who had just led his notorious campaign against alleged
communists, Soviet spies and sympathizers, was the most notable user of the
phrase “Democrat Party” ahead of the vote. The current RNC did not respond to
emails and phone messages seeking comment for this story.
The
construction was used sparsely in the following decades, but in recent times
has spread to become part of conservatives’ everyday speech.
At the height
of last summer’s racial justice protests, the group representing state
attorneys general criticized “inaction by Democrat AGs” to support law
enforcement. In explaining its rules for cleaning Georgia’s voter roles, the
office of Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said it was
following a process started in the 1990s under “a Democrat majority General
Assembly and signed into law by a Democrat Governor.” Asked recently what he
would think of his former health director running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio,
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine responded, “I’m going to stay out of Democrat
primaries.”
Using Democrat
as a pejorative is now so common that it’s almost jarring to hear a Republican
or conservative commentator accurately say “Democratic Party.”
Ohio Supreme
Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor said she wishes both parties would abandon
their heightened rhetoric toward each other. She spoke out forcefully in
September after the Ohio Republican Party maligned a “Democrat common pleas
judge” who had ruled against them. The party later apologized.
Her objection
was the politicization of the judiciary, which she has fought against, and not
specifically the GOP’s misuse of the word “Democrat.” But in a later interview,
she said the language was a reflection of today’s hyperpartisan political
environment.
“It’s used as
almost like a curse word,” said O’Connor, a Republican. “It’s not being used as
a compliment or even for purposes of being a benign identifier. It’s used as a
condemnation, and that’s not right.”
For their part,
Democrats rarely push back, even when the phrase is used in state legislative
chambers or on the floor of Congress. It wasn’t always that way.
Then-President
George W. Bush departed from his written remarks and used the phrase “Democrat
majority” in his 2007 State of the Union address. He was swiftly rebuked and
apologized.
“Now look, my
diction isn’t all that good,” a rueful Bush said. “I have been accused of
occasionally mangling the English language, so I appreciate you inviting the
head of the Republic party.”
Bush’s
self-deprecating joke highlighted a key issue around Republicans’ use of
“Democrat” as an epithet, says political scientist Michael Cornfield, an
associate professor at George Washington University. Democrats don’t have a
comparable insult for Republicans.
“It’s a one-way
provocation,” he said.
In the 1950s,
Democrats toyed with a tit-for-tat approach in which they would refer to
Republicans as “Publicans,” the widely despised toll collectors of ancient
Rome. Republicans scoffed at the effort, which they rightly noted no one would
understand. Republicans also could turn it around as a way to burnish their
brand: In British usage, a publican is someone who owns a pub.
Meanwhile,
“Republic” — without the “a-n” — isn’t derogatory. It’s known as a “God word”
in American politics, just as small-d “democratic” is, meaning a revered
cultural concept that’s universally understood.
The truncated
“Democrat,” on the other hand, “rhymes with rat, bureaucrat, kleptocrat,
plutocrat,” Cornfield said. ”‘Crats’ are bad. So you can see why they do it.”
David Pepper, a
former Democratic Party chairman in Ohio, says Republicans’ phrasing has
“clearly been thought about.” Even so, he doesn’t see trying to erase it as a
good use of Democrats’ time as the party seeks to reset the national agenda
after four years of Trump.
He said that
while President Joe Biden has pledged national unity, “the other side is
literally trying to make the other party sound like rodents.”
“To me,” Pepper
said, “that’s absurd and disturbing at the same time.”
AP news
researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.
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What’s in an adjective? ‘Democrat Party’ label on the rise
By JULIE CARR SMYTH
Today [FEBRUARY 27, 2021]
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