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January 24, 2007
Bush really ought try to be less like McCarthy...
I don't have much to add to this:
In the prepared text of the speech, sent out by the White House some 40 minutes before Bush ascended the House rostrum, the president was to say, “Some in this Chamber are new to the House and Senate – and I congratulate the Democratic majority.” When Bush delivered the line, however, he paid tribute to the “Democrat majority.”Dropping the “ic” from the word “Democratic” may seem insignificant, but it was almost certainly a deliberate move by Bush, who has used the phrase “the Democrat Party” for months as a way of needling his opponents.
Republicans have periodically referred to their opponents as belonging to the “Democrat Party” for many decades, and the phrase was a particular favorite of former Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy. A recent Washington Post column filled in the backstory: according to the Columbia Guide to Standard American English, McCarthy “sought by repeatedly calling it the Democrat party to deny it any possible benefit of the suggestion that it might also be democratic.”
The phrase didn’t get much attention, however, until President Bush made it a mainstay of his public remarks during last fall’s midterm election season. It’s also used frequently by Republican lawmakers, conservative political activists, and conservative commentators and pundits.
For all of Bush’s talk tonight about crossing party lines to work with the new Democratic Congress, it is the missing two letters that may offer the clearest indication of whether partisan tensions are really like to fade in the waning years of Bush’s presidency.
– Yochi J. Dreazen
What a childish leader we have. Name-calling during the state of the union is, I suppose, just another example of our preposterous president...
Posted by Andrew at January 24, 2007 08:58 AM
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