Democrat Party (phrase)

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Democrat Party is a political epithet[1] used by many conservative commentators and in speeches and press releases by some Republican Party leaders (including the Republican National Committee, the White House, and President George W. Bush) to refer to the opposition Democratic Party. As a proper noun, "Democrat" describes a member of the Democratic party. Some Democrats strongly dislike the term, seeing it as a sign of disrespect.

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[edit] History of usage

The history has been traced by numerous scholars and commentators, including Feuerlicht (1957), Lyman (1958), Safire (1993), Sperber and Trittschuh (1962), Numberg (2005) and Hertzberg (2006). The earliest known use of the term, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was in Great Britain in 1890: "Whether a little farmer...is going to rule the Democrat Party in America."[2] The term was used by Herbert Hoover in 1932, and in the late 1930s by Republicans who used it to criticize Democratic big city machines run by powerful political bosses in undemocratic fashion. Republican leader Harold Stassen said in 1940:

   
“
 I emphasized that the party controlled in large measure at that time by Hague in New Jersey, Pendergast in Missouri and Kelly-Nash in Chicago should not be called a "Democratic Party." It should be called the "Democrat party." [3]
   
”

The adjective form has been used by numerous Republican leaders since the 1940s and appears in most GOP national platforms since 1948.[4] In 1947 Senator Robert A. Taft said, "Nor can we expect any other policy from any Democrat Party or any Democrat President under present day conditions. They can not possibly win an election solely through the support of the solid South, and yet their political strategists believe the Southern Democrat Party will not break away no matter how radical the allies imposed upon it."[5] President Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his acceptance speech in 1952 and in partisan speeches to Republican groups.[6] Ruth Walker notes how Joseph McCarthy repeatedly used the phrase "the Democrat Party."[7]

[edit] Current usage

The Republican Party makes extensive use of the "Democrat Party" term on its web site, GOP.com, although the term "Democratic Party" is used almost as often. The White House since 2001 has often used the adjective when referring to the opposition party, and President Bush has used it almost exclusively.[8] Likewise it is in common use by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay,[9] Senator Charles Grassley,[10] and Congressman Steve Buyer.[11]

Media Matters for America has documented that the term has also been used by CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, and the Associated Press. Abroad the term is used by the BBC. [12]

Some local (county-level) Democratic organizations do use the term on their web pages, often but not always mixed with "Democratic Party". Notable examples include counties in Colorado [4], Illinois [5], and Indiana [6].

[edit] Issues of grammar

The official name of the party is "the Democratic Party of the United States of America," but that long form is rarely used except at the national convention. [13]. Some believe that the use of the noun "Democrat" as an adjective is ungrammatical.[14] However, using a noun as a modifier is not grammatically incorrect in modern English. For example, a noun is used as an adjective in "shoe store," "school bus," "peace movement," "Senate election," etc. Americans commonly speak of "the Iraq war" rather than "the Iraqi war."[15]

The use of "Democrat" as an adjective could be part of a broader linguistic trend. As one linguist explained in the Christian Science Monitor:

   
“
 We're losing our inflections – the special endings we use to distinguish between adjectives and nouns, for instance. There's a tendency to modify a noun with another noun rather than an adjective. Some may speak of "the Ukraine election" rather than "the Ukrainian election" or "the election in Ukraine," for instance. It's "the Iraq war" rather than "the Iraqi war," to give another example. [16]
   
”

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Hertzberg, 2006.
  2. ^ under "Democrat" 4 citing Spectator 15 Nov. 1890 p 676; they mark the use of democrat attributively as rare, but have one earlier citation from Coleridge's Biographica Literaria.
  3. ^ Stassen interview quoted in Hertzberg (2006)
  4. ^ National Party Platforms, 1840-1996, editors Kirk H. Porter, and Donald Bruce Johnson, (1996).
  5. ^ Robert Taft, The Papers of Robert A. Taft, edited by Clarence E. Wunderlin, Jr., 2003, 3:313.
  6. ^ The Washington Post, October 28, 1958, page A8.
  7. ^ Walker (2005)
  8. ^ "Bush Courts Black Voters at Urban League" by the Associated Press, July 23, 2004.
  9. ^ "DeLay: Democratic Party Unfit to Lead", Fox News, July 26, 2003.
  10. ^ "Alito: No Person Is Above the Law", Fox News, January 9, 2006.
  11. ^ "Transcript: House debates articles of impeachment", CNN, December 18, 1998.
  12. ^ Media Matters for America, August 16, 2006."GOP strategists christen 'Democrat (sic) Party' -- and the media comply" On BBC see [1], on USA Today see [2]; on Fox News see [3]
  13. ^ Official website of the Democratic Party uses only "Democratic Party.", "Democrat, Democratic" definition at Bartleby.com
  14. ^ Copperud (1980)
  15. ^ Walker (2005); Master the Basics: English by Jean Yatets, 1996, page 64.
  16. ^ Walker (2005)

[edit] References

  • Roy H. Copperud, American Usage and Style: The Consensus 1980, pages 101-102.
  • Ignace Feuerlicht. "Democrat Party," , American Speech, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Oct., 1957), pp. 228-231 online in JSTOR
  • Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage 1998, p. 196.
  • Hendrik Hertzberg."The 'IC' Factor" The New Yorker, August 7, 2006.
  • John Lyman, "Democrat Party," American Speech, Vol. 33, No. 3 (October 1958), pp. 239-40 in JSTOR notes term in common use by Democrats in Maryland
  • Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, 1994, pp 328-29, page 667.
  • Geoffrey Nunberg. "The Case for Democracy" in "Fresh Air" commentary, January 19, 2005 (radio broadcast).
  • Geoffrey Nunberg, Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show 2006.
  • William Safire, Safire's New Political Dictionary (1993).
  • Hans Sperber and Travis Trittschuh. American Political Terms: An Historical Dictionary (1962) pages 117-23.
  • Walker, Ruth. "Republicans, Democrats, and the Afghan on the couch" Christian Science Monitor, January 27, 2005

[edit] See also

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