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2009-03-05

Republican's pejorative use of "Democrat Party"

Sean Quinn has a nice post over at FiveThirtyEight.com about this. The very short summary is that it's no different than my elementary school tormentors calling me "Baby Huey".

Here's an excerpt from Mr Quinn's post:

[I]t is striking that a huge number of Republicans continue to go out of their way to use the epithet �Democrat Party� rather than the party�s actual name, the Democratic Party....

The intent seems to be twofold: First, it seems to be an attempt at branding/labeling/controlling the way language sounds in an audience�s ears. Democrat apparently sounds "worse" than Democratic, and it's also an attempt to separate the Democratic Party from small-d democratic, a popular American concept. If such a tactic nets votes, it�s objectively justifiable. Second, it�s designed to get under the skins of Democrats. From a Republican perspective, both seem to be independently important reasons to standardize the epithet....

One of the reasons the "childish" party of Fleischer and Limbaugh is having such a tough time in the wilderness is they've done a too-clever-by-half job figuring out how to systematically weaponize language. There's no referee. It's their right. It's also no great parlor trick, and you can go to any grade-school playground and find the same. The day Republicans work to signal good faith by policing their own house on basic respect in language will probably run parallel with the day we'll see the party reborn as an ideologically grownup force.


Original post by Hugh at 3/05/2009 10:38:00 AM Eastern time :: 0 comment(s) :: links to this post

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