John McCain, especially of late, likes to emphasize to reporters how much he values treating people with “respect,” and his desire to have a presidential campaign where rivals honor each other’s differences.
And yet, he loves the grammatically wrong “Democrat Party.” The WSJ’s Laura Meckler decided to ask him about the disconnect.
Given McCain’s reputation for reaching across the aisle and his daily pledge to treat Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with respect, Washington Wire was a little surprised to hear McCain using the same [“Democrat Party”] language [as Bush].
“One thing I’m not any good at predicting is the outcome of Democrat elections,” he said Tuesday aboard his bus, dubbed the Straight Talk Express. A day earlier, he had mentioned his “Democrat friends” to a Cleveland-area audience.
Asked aboard his bus about the “ic,” he replied, “I’m sorry, I usually say Democratic. They prefer Democratic, so I try to say Democratic… It offends some members of their party, so I’ll say Democratic if that’s what makes them feel better.”
Look, I try not to make too big a fuss over this, but McCain’s response is just silly. The use of the “ic” is not about what anyone “prefers,” or what makes people “feel better,” it’s about grammar in the English language.
The senator seems a little slow on the uptake lately, so let me spell it out. “Democrat” is a noun; “Democratic” is an adjective. There is no “Democrat Party,” not because it’s offensive, but because it doesn’t make any sense. Republicans have two choices — the “Democratic Party” or the “Democrats’ party.” One is preferable, but both are at least consistent with rules of English. If they’re feeling particularly casual, they could also go with “Dems” — as I do — as an inoffensive shorthand.
But let’s not characterize this as some kind of option.
I’m reminded of this Ruth Marcus piece from a while back.
If he wanted to, President Bush could change the tone in Washington with a single syllable: He could just say “ic.” That is, he could stop referring to the opposition as the “Democrat Party” and call the other side, as it prefers, the Democratic Party. […]
Democrat-as-epithet has seen its fullest flowering — on talk radio, among congressional leaders and, more than with any of his predecessors, from the president himself — during the recent Republican heyday. As Hendrik Hertzberg pointed out in the New Yorker in August, the conservative Web site NewsMax.com takes pains to scrub Associated Press copy “to de-‘ic’ references” to the party.
For all their talk about English as the official national language, Republicans take pains to mar our grammatical rules, intentionally, simply to be annoying. McCain “tries” to get right, he says, but he just can’t quite get it down.
Indeed, his vow to use the grammar that makes Dems “feel better” didn’t last long.
Later on that same ride, he was talking about his annoyance that Democrats take credit for the improving situation in Iraq. “To say, as Sen. Obama has said, that it’s because of the Democrat majority that we have experienced success in Iraq, that’s just beyond comprehension.”
So is John McCain’s use of the language sometimes.