Inside baseball: The Democrat Party

A lot of sites have pointed out recently that some Republicans like to “slur” the Democratic Party by dropping the ‘ic’ and calling them the “Democrat Party”. Greg over at TPM raises it today on TPM, pointing to a Washington Post article that contains this graf:

Some liberal bloggers and party strategists saw the president’s omission of the last two letters of the party’s proper name, Democratic, as a sign of insincerity in preaching bipartisanship.

Here’s a funny thing: in perusing the Clinton@Marist archives I mentioned last week, I found a thread that’s rather interesting:

Date:         Wed, 2 Sep 1992 19:24:15 PDT
Reply-To:     Discussion of campaigning for
              President by Bill Clinton
              (CLINTON@MARIST.BITNET)
Sender:       Discussion of campaigning for
              President by Bill Clinton
              (CLINTON@MARIST.BITNET)
From:         (Name Removed) (removed@removed.BITNET)
Subject:      RepubliCANT


	
On the lighter side, during the Republican
Convention I heard many, many Republicans
in speeches and interviews consistently
refer to the Democratic party as the
Democrat party.  Democratic sounds loftier,
so the Republicans decided use the shorter
Democrat.

	
Anyway, a TV journalist tried to correct
Quayle during an interview, but the gist of
Quayle’s reply was he could call them whatever
he wanted, so Democrat it will stay.

Here we are, almost 15 years later, and we’re still worried about whether the Republicans are calling us the Democrat Party or the Democratic Party? This is beyond inside baseball, it’s just silly. Let’s get a thicker skin and focus on the big picture.

(For what it’s worth, I’d settle for the Majority Party for now…)