{"id":7559,"date":"2006-05-31T15:08:05","date_gmt":"2006-05-31T19:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7559"},"modified":"2006-05-31T15:08:05","modified_gmt":"2006-05-31T19:08:05","slug":"republicants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/republicants\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Republican’ts’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in March, I had an item<\/a> about Republican use of the phrase “[tag]Democrat Party[\/tag],” which is the GOP way of using grammar for childish purposes. I asked readers for ideas about what name Dems could use to tease Republicans — and you guys came up with a lot<\/i> of suggestions.<\/p>\n

As it happens, my friend [tag]Tom Schaller[\/tag] noticed that many of you liked “[tag]Republican’ts[\/tag]” — and he suggests<\/a> that we all start using it, at least as often as the GOP throws around “Democrat Party.”<\/p>\n

I’d love to see [tag]Howard Dean[\/tag], next time he’s on Meet the Press, send a shot across the partisan bow by telling Tim Russert or other media types that if they refuse to correct Republicans (Ken Mehlman seems to be a common culprit) when they say “The Democrat Party,” then Dean is fully entitled to begin publicly referring to Republicans as the “[tag]Republican’t Party[\/tag].” As in: Can’t balance the budget; can’t stop raising the national debt ceiling; can’t manage federal emergencies; can’t find Osama bin Laden; can’t control our borders; can’t stop smearing and leaking; can’t answer tough questions from the media; can’t find weapons of mass destruction… (I can’t<\/i> spend all day doing this, but you get the point.)<\/p>\n

Dean would only have to allude to the fact that he’s going to refrain for now from calling Republicans “Republican’ts” — a phenomenon (for you wordsmiths) known as apophasis<\/a>, the cheeky act of mentioning something by saying it won’t be mentioned — unless the GOP knocks it off.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tom has me just about convinced. Particularly now, in light of the significance of competence in government (Iraq, Katrina, the budget, etc.), emphasizing which “can’t” govern effectively is important. If “Republican’t” helps in this endeavor, I’m for it.<\/p>\n

And, for those budding online entrepreneurs out there, I should probably mention that [tag]Republicant[\/tag] and [tag]Republicants[\/tag] .com are taken. Tom got in touch with the guy who owns Republicants.org, who happens to be a Dem. Someone in Howard Dean’s office might want to send him an email or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in March, I had an item about Republican use of the phrase “[tag]Democrat Party[\/tag],” which is the GOP way of using grammar for childish purposes. I asked readers for ideas about what name Dems could use to tease Republicans — and you guys came up with a lot of suggestions. As it happens, my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}