Republicrat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Republicrat" or "Demopublican" (or "Depublicrat," the shorter "Demolican," or "Democan") are portmanteaus of the names of the two main political parties in the United States, the Republicans and the Democrats. The terms are used pejoratively by those on both the right and left who allege the policies of the two parties are in practice indistinguishable, and so form essentially one party with two names. One of the earliest uses of the term online was a net.politics.theory usenet post from 1985.[1]
Republicans have often portrayed themselves to be pro-business and, in recent times, have favored an aggressive foreign policy; Democrats have tended to campaign on more liberal social policies and a more important role for government-funded social programs. Some commentators, such as right-wing radio talk-show host Michael Savage and left-wing Ralph Nader who have both used the terms, have opined on how it is often hard to tell the parties apart, leading to the term's popularization. This was a view shared on the left by the Green Party during the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, whose bumper stickers read, "Bush and Gore make me want to Ralph". Jello Biafra has used the term during interviews as well.
The term is also used in a pejorative sense by members of one party to attack members of their party who are either centrist or who have the "wrong" ideology. The term Republicrat is commonly used by liberal Democrats to attack conservative and centrist members of the party, such as Senator Joe Lieberman. Another term used by liberal Democrats to describe conservative and centrist members of their party is "Democrat In Name Only" or "DINO." Likewise, a conservative Republican term for liberal and centrist Republicans is "Republican In Name Only" or "RINO."
An equivalent term used in the United Kingdom is LibLabCon, a pejorative portmanteau referring to the three main political parties, the Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.
There is also a slightly lesser known usage of note. In this usage, the words are put together in order to voice the not unheard-of opinion that the two mainstream American political parties are two sides of the same coin. Often this usage expresses the sentiment of "ordinary citizens" who see all politicians as serving the same special interests and make little distinction between the two parties.
[edit] Usage In Popular Culture
In the 1994 movie "Reality Bites" actor Ethan Hawke performed the song "I'm Nuthin'", written by him. One of the lines was "I ain't no Republicrat or Demican, ain't nothing in between."
The song "Slow Down Gandhi" on Sage Francis' album A Healthy Distrust includes the line "republicrat, democran, one-party system."
A 2008 speech entitled "Republicrats" by Thomas Teague was awarded first place at the Oklahoma State Speech and Debate Contest, which drove home the point that neither party has all of the answers and that people should be open minded.
