Offered up for your consideration, from the Liberal Street Fighter zone.
I plan on using this term for the party destroying our country from now on.
If you listen carefully–or, really, not so carefully–national Republicans often like to refer to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party.” They do this with a straight face but a heavy dose of snark. It’s a bully’s taunt, schoolyard humor.
A few months back, Steve Benen took up the issue of how the GOP uses this label, linking to a more historical post by Kevin Drum about whether “Democratic Party” or “Democrat Party” is technically correct.
Then Benen laments:
Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a Republican alternative for Dems to (mis)use…Air America’s Sam Seder likes to pronounce Republican “RAYpublican,” but that doesn’t quite seem to work… do readers have any ideas?
It didn’t take one of Steve’s readers long to come up with a great alternative, one which I think works especially well now in the post-Katrina, post-Iraq, post-deficits Republican Party: Republicant’s.
Thomas Schaller over at the Gadflyer continues:
It seems to me that the “can’t” theme is potentially of two varieties. The first is the incompetence and mismanagement variety–the notion that the GOP is simply incapable of managing the government, a theme Rep. Tim Ryan emphasized rather brilliantly on the House floor recently. The second is more damning because it’s not a matter of capacity but of will–the fortitude to do (or not do) certain things, like balance the budget (no will) or snoop around in Americans’ private behaviors (no will to stop).
I’d love to see Howard Dean, 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 “Republican’t Party.” 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 spend all day doing this, but you get the point.)
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, the cheeky act of mentioning something by saying it won’t be mentioned–unless the GOP knocks it off.
I’m not holding my breath for the Democrats to start doing this. I’m sure their consultants would tell them that focus-grouped centrist Americans would think it was mean, but if the insult fits, then I say use it.
This, of course, means that I will continue to use the term Vichy Democrats for all of the hack sell-outs in the leadership of the Democratic Party who continue to handmaid the Republican’t march to the far right.
Aren’t words fun?
