It isn’t common English usage to use the term Democrat to modify a noun. Your comparisons are odd since Republican was originally an adjective that was then turned into a noun because of its usage in for advocates of different stripes and then the party.
The examples are rather odd, but to give a more comparable example it would be similar to using the despot for despotic. One would not say someone is a despot ruler, one would say they are a despot or a despotic ruler.
Despot ruler makes one sound like a rube as does Democrat Party.
I often find this debate rather bizarre. How many times do we here that young black men should use English properly? I tend to agree with Jesse Jackson that they should, but I also think Republican party members ought to use English properly as well.
I think so-called Democrats ought to learn and agree with the meaning of the root word of their political party. The principles of democracy shouldn’t be ignored in that all individuals should be treated equally and have an equal opportunity to participate in elections and equal powers in deciding our leaders. They just look silly complaining about this when their own policies, stances and politicians are anti-democratic and in opposition to real democrats.
It will be very interesting to see how Illinois Anti-Democrats react to Illinois’ worst in the world ballot access laws (democratic laws) being found to violate the 1st and 14th Amendments of our US Constitution. So far, they’ve only tried to protect the most restrictive ballot access laws in the world, or have sat idly by while that was done.
Proper English is secondary when the root of the word itself is being used to portray a different meaning the real definition. Otherwise, relative definitions is just as bad as relative use of noun versus adjective.
I think the better — and more enlightening example — is the use of “jew” instead of “jewish,” e.g., “jew lawyer.” Funny, both constructions — “Democrat politician” and “jew politician” — come from the South.
Vasyl, I brought up that comparison, and they didn’t get it.
On an unrelated note, why is it that sometimes when I go to leave a comment here, “Buck Turgidson” is already filled in in the “Name” field?
I’m sorry to point this out, but in the original post you used ‘we here’ instead or ‘we hear.’
I don’t want to speculate on IlliniPundit’s motives; I suspect he and I disagree on a great number of things, but he seems like a fairly reasonable person. That being said…
Josh Marshall put it thusly, and I can’t really disagree: The whole issue of ‘Democrat’ party — other than as an example of Republican infantilism — is an issue of respect or rather intentional and repeated expression of disrespect as a means of asserting dominance…You assert dominance over someone by mangling their name and continuing to do so even after the correct pronunciation or style is pointed out.
The fact that conservative media seems to have started doing this in a fairly widespread manner rather recently just emphasizes that this is a move of aggression, not just a simple mistake or a newfound respect for some alternative grammar.
The infantile response that I’ve seen put forward is to refer to them as Republican-Americans.
Republican-Americans pushed the Iraq war upon the rest of us through the use of doctored intelligence. Republican Americans want the administration to conduct illegal wiretapping on Americans.
The Republican-American President, George W. Bush, is a jackass.
I’m rather fond of this phrase. The Republican-Americans lost the November election.
Josh Marshall is correct: the intentional use of an historically and grammatically incorrect name for the Democratic Party is an expression of disrespect and an example of the sophomoric banter that passes for wit among right wing Republicans.
Why are you democratics getting upset about this. Aren’t you PROGRESSIVE enough?
Because Democrats believe in education, grammar, and literacy. You?