Jefferson's Party - not Democratic-Republicans

[Acsenray]

From The Mailbag item on Why is the Republican party called the GOP? And why the elephant? (http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mgop.html) --

They decided to call themselves Republicans because they felt their ideals were very similar to Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party.

I believe the Jeffersonians were called simply the Republican party. It was during Andrew Jackson's time that the Republicans split into the Jacksonians (which became the Democratic-Republicans and then the Democratic party) and the National-Republicans headed by John Quincy Adams.

[John W. Kennedy]

Yes, but it's not uncommon for later historians to refer to Jefferson's party as the "Democrat-Republicans"; it's not strictly authentic, but it's clear.

[Acsenray]

I'll take your word for it if you say that it's common, but it seems unnecessarily inaccurate to me.

But why do you say "Democrat-Republicans" instead of "Democratic-Republicans"?

[John W. Kennedy]

But why do you say "Democrat-Republicans" instead of "Democratic-Republicans"?Jefferson called his party the "Republicans", but his opponents called them the "Democrats" as a term of abuse. Eventually, they adopted the word as a badge of honor, and became today's Democrats, today's Republicans being a party formed from the wrecks of half a dozen failed parties in 1856. To avoid confusion, it is not uncommon to call the early now-Democrats-then-Republicans "Democrat-Republicans", no matter what they called themselves then, just as it is conventional today to refer to dates between January 1 and March 24 in years prior to 1752 as, e.g., February 11, 1731/32, though people didn't at the time.

[C K Dexter Haven]

We get added confusion in that democrat (small d) and republican (small r) are both commonly used political terms, independent of the current U.S. political parties. I think we'd save lots of confusion if the political parties would change their names to something fairly unique and reasonably recognizable, like Whigs and Tories. Or even Bull-moosers.

[JRDelirious]

We get added confusion in that democrat (small d) and republican (small r) are both commonly used political terms, independent of the current U.S. political parties. I think we'd save lots of confusion if the political parties would change their names to something fairly unique and reasonably recognizable, like Whigs and Tories. Or even Bull-moosers.

Yeah, but how could we tell which ones are the Know-Nothings? ;)