This post is about an odd habit that started during the segregation era of Republicans calling the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party.” That isn’t understood as carrying a specific racial connotation.
Just had an idea: is it because the ordinary adjective "democratic" is really part of ordinary language, with an overwhelmingly positive association, while "republican" is a less positive specialty word? That is, it's only used as a common adjective-noun by people interested in particular historical cases from Athens in the 5th century BCE to China in the early 20th or Northern Ireland now, and not always with positive connotations. In truncating "Democratic" to the less common "Democrat" could Republicans be trying to level the linguistic playing field, making their opponents as alienating as they are themselves?
Sounds reasonable. There's also a related notion that the John Birch Society started as an anti-integration line, "The United STates is a republic, not a democracy." With the usual pseudo-history to go along with it. This would have been a surprise to Thomas Jefferson and his followers, because their party was officially named the Democratic-Republican Party. So they weren't assuming the two things were incompatable!
Just had an idea: is it because the ordinary adjective "democratic" is really part of ordinary language, with an overwhelmingly positive association, while "republican" is a less positive specialty word? That is, it's only used as a common adjective-noun by people interested in particular historical cases from Athens in the 5th century BCE to China in the early 20th or Northern Ireland now, and not always with positive connotations. In truncating "Democratic" to the less common "Democrat" could Republicans be trying to level the linguistic playing field, making their opponents as alienating as they are themselves?
Sounds reasonable. There's also a related notion that the John Birch Society started as an anti-integration line, "The United STates is a republic, not a democracy." With the usual pseudo-history to go along with it. This would have been a surprise to Thomas Jefferson and his followers, because their party was officially named the Democratic-Republican Party. So they weren't assuming the two things were incompatable!