It fairly screams "rat".Republican pollster Frank Luntz tested the phrase with a focus group in 2001, and concluded that the only people who really disliked the epithet were highly partisan Democrats.
[12] Political analyst Charlie Cook attributed modern use of the term to force of habit rather than a deliberate epithet by Republicans.
[14] Among authors of dictionaries and usage guides who state that the use of Democrat as an adjective is ungrammatical are Roy H. Copperud,[9] Bergen Evans,[15] and William and Mary Morris.
[24] The noun-as-adjective has been used by Republican leaders since the 1940s, and in most GOP national platforms since 1948 and began being popularized by Brazilla Carroll Reece in 1946.
[26][27] When Senator Thruston Ballard Morton became chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1959, he indicated that he had always said Democratic Party and would continue to do so, which contrasted with his predecessor, Meade Alcorn, and with National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Barry Goldwater, both of whom used Democrat Party.
[3] According to William Safire, Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, campaign manager to Republican Wendell Willkie during the 1940 presidential campaign, explained that because the Democratic Party was at that time partly controlled by undemocratic city bosses, "by Hague in New Jersey, Pendergast in Missouri and Kelly-Nash in Chicago, [it] should not be called a 'Democratic Party.'
Columnist Russell Baker wrote in 1976: The origin of this illiterate phrase, goes back, I believe to the era of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy ...
[8] Newt Gingrich, in his efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to produce a Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives, relied heavily on words and phrases that cast Democrats in a negative light.
[33] A proposal to use the term in the August 2008 Republican platform for similar reasons was voted down, with leaders choosing to use Democratic Party.
[34] Ruth Marcus, an opinion writer and columnist for The Washington Post, wrote in 2006, "The derisive use of 'Democrat' in this way was a Bush staple during the recent campaign".
[13][35] Democrats complained about the use of Democrat as an adjective in the address; John Podesta, White House Chief of Staff under Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton, said it was "like nails on a chalkboard", although congressional historian Julian E. Zelizer has opined that "It's hard to disentangle whether that's an intentional slight".
[13] Political analyst Charlie Cook doubted it was a deliberate attempt to offend Democrats, saying Republicans "have been [using the term] so long that they probably don't even realize they're doing it".
[13] Bush joked about the issue in a February 4, 2007 speech to House Democrats, stating "Now look, my diction isn't all that good.
"[41] During the first White House Coronavirus Task Force press conference, he advanced this usage with, "... governors including Democratic—or Democrat, as I call them—governors—which is actually the correct term.
[48] Sherman Yellen suggested "The Republicants" as suitably comparable in terms of negative connotation in an April 29, 2007, Huffington Post column.
[49] On the February 26, 2009 edition of Hardball with Chris Matthews, California Republican Representative Darrell Issa referred to "a Democrat Congress".
"[50] In March 2009, after Representative Jeb Hensarling (R–Texas) repeatedly used the phrase Democrat Party when questioning U.S. Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag, Representative Marcy Kaptur (D–Ohio) said: I'd like to begin by saying to my colleague from Texas that there isn't a single member on this side of the aisle that belongs to the "Democrat Party".