I’ve long been amazed at the consistency which Republicans will refer to the “Democrat Party.” It’s not a new phenomenon — in fact, it dates back about six decades — but it seems that the GOP has used it the last few years with increased frequency. And glee.
Part of this is strategic; Republicans don’t want to reinforce the notion that one party is “democratic.” But for the most part, this is simply childish — Republicans think it’s annoying, so like a child hoping to get a rise out of someone he or she is teasing, they repeat it ad nauseum. In still other instances, it seems conservatives have simply forgotten that they’re wrong. Indeed, the president, whose memory is often a little off, used the phrase during his post-election press conference five times — and that was Bush trying to be conciliatory.
The WaPo’s Ruth Marcus suggested today that it’s time for Republicans to give it up.
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. […]
[A]s a matter of simple politeness — something the Bush family is famously good at — it’s rude to call people by a term that makes them bristle, even a seemingly innocuous one.
I think Marcus is largely right about this, but I’d add another point.
It’s not just about what Democrats “prefers,” nor is it about whether the name is “innocuous” or not. It’s about grammar in the English language. “Democrat” is a noun; “democratic” is an adjective. There is no “Democrat Party” because it doesn’t make any sense grammatically. Republicans have two choices — the “Democratic Party” or the “Democrats’ party.” One is accurate, 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.
Marcus suggested that if “the president wants to do more than pay lip service to the notion of a new tone in Washington, he could start by just paying lip service.” That’s largely true. Democrats are annoyed every time the president or one of his allies uses the wrong name of the party. We’re setting the bar awfully low, but I suppose Dems would feel slightly better if Republicans could bring themselves to start using the name of the party that’s existed for over 200 years.
But more than that, the GOP should want to stop using the nonsensical “Democrat Party” because they sound like idiots. For all their talk about English as the official national language, Republicans have no real incentive to intentionally mar our grammatical rules simply to make some kind of foolish attempt at being annoying.