“Democratic Party” is unusual is that the name of the party is not the same as the name of a member of the party. Members of the Republican Party are Republicans. Members of the Libertarian Party are Libertarians. Members of the Green Party are Greens. I suspect 95% of the people who say “Democrat Party” are unconsciously trying to make it fit the same schema as other political parties, and not trying to make some subtle insult. I’m pretty sure the remaining 5% only started using it as a deliberate insult after they saw Democrats flipping their lid over the former usage. I find it basically impossible to believe that any Republican ever had the idea, ab nihilio, “I’m going to insult Democrats by using the noun form for their party instead of the adjectival! MUA-HA-HA-HA!”
Anyway, speaking as someone who’s voted Democratic in every presidential and congressional election since 1994, I find complaints about “Democrat Party” just incredibly cringe. Calling it a slur… I just don’t have time to spam enough to do that claim justice.
I listen to right wing radio now and then, and I’d say you need to reverse your percentages.
It can’t be a coincidence that every person I hear use the term “Democrat Party” also considers every member of the party to be actively seeking to destroy all that is good in America.
I have found that the people who meltdown about “Democrat” are often quite eager to sneak in “niggardly” to trigger a reaction so they can lecture others about its non-racist etymology.
There was a TV show or a movie where someone talks about a ‘Jew lawyer’ instead of a ‘Jewish lawyer’. If nouns can be deemed adjectives, the former would be A-OK… even though it is an ethnic slur. Now, the character shouldn’t have mentioned the lawyer’s ethnicity either way, and ISTR he was ‘praising’ Jewish lawyers because he thought they were the best. But his phrasing was still derogatory even if he didn’t mean it that way. In the case of ‘Democrat’ vs ‘Democratic’, the noun usage is intended as a slur.
On the narrow grammatical issue, I think what tends to happen is that when a proper noun is exactly the same as a common noun, we tend to want to follow the grammatical intuition associated with the common noun:
democrat > democratic principle
Democrat > Democratic senator
But as the proper noun diverges from the common noun, our intuition weakens:
Liberal Democrat > Liberal Democrat(ic?) MP
Consider also the following hypothetical parties. Save America Party Wonderful America Party America Party
What would we call senators from these parties, would the adjectival form follow the America (nation) > American grammatical pattern?
The first one would clearly be a “Save America senator”, since “Save American senator” does not follow any coherent grammatical intuition.
I suppose we might say “Wonderful American senator”, since the risk of confusion with generically wonderful American senators is probably low. But I think “Wonderful America senator” to indicate party affiliation would probably be preferred.
In the third case, there would be a clear need to disambiguate a generic American senator from a member of the America Party, so I think the preferred adjectival form would be “America senator”.
( So there’s a parallel argument that maybe in principle “Democrat senator” is a better adjective to indicate party affiliation. But it’s a weak argument unless we ever reach a point where we have a frequent need to distinguish those who believe in democratic principles. )
If I were in the second, I’d prefer being called either a “Wonderful America” or a “Wonderful American” way more than I would like being called a “WAP”.
Republicans like to use the term because they can put a little emphasis on the “RAT” at the end.
Unfortunately, most Republicans wouldn’t get it if you started referring to their party as the “Publican” party - their Bible versions probably translate it as “tax collectors”.
Somewhat who insists on calling it The Democrat Party after they have been told it is officially called The Democratic Party is doing it to belittle and insult.
The users of “Democrat Party” are deciding for themselves that “democratic” imputes a virtue to that party that it does not have, so they are doing us all a favor by truncating the adjective “democratic” and making up a new adjective “democrat” to replace it.
Imagine if they truncated the word from the other end, and started referring to the party as the “Emocratic Party,” meaning that Dems are all weepy and emotional and immature.
That would be precisely the same sort of thing as “Democrat Party,” just a little more overtly hostile.
to do that claim justice.