It’s a war of words reminiscent of a sandbox brawl.
Following in the semantic footsteps of President Bush — who frequently irritates liberals by referring to their party as the “Democrat Party” — Rep. Anthony Weiner lambasted the “Republic Party” last week, removing the “an” from the party name, and unleashing a burst of pride across the liberal pundit-sphere.
In so doing, Weiner (D–Sheepshead Bay) became, arguably, the first Democrat to slur the Republicans in that manner on the floor of Congress. The historic moment came during a debate about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s travel arrangements to her home district in California.
“The Republic Party is so completely bankrupt of any ideas of their own, they’ve taken to bringing up three hours of discussion and a debate between the White House and themselves about what kind of security the Speaker should have,” declared Weiner.
The slurring didn’t stop there.
“The Republic Party is the minority party not only for this reason, but this is one of them,” continued Weiner, before launching into a seemingly unrelated tangent involving Republicans, aisle seats, and peanuts (don’t ask).
Weiner later told The Brooklyn Paper what prompted him to cross that linguistic line.
“One, I was making light of the way Republicans frequently, for reasons I don’t quite understand, refer to the ‘Democrat Party,’ most prominently in the president’s State of the Union,” said Weiner. “It was also to put a humorous point on a serious [issue], which is that the Republicans seemed more obsessed with security arrangements for Speaker Pelosi than with the [important] issues of the day.”
That may have been his intention, but conservative bloggers who have adopted Bush’s “Democrat Party” syntax weren’t amused.
“Here we have a series of gaffes, like [Sen.] Barack Obama, who apologized for essentially tarring the U.S. military, [Sen.] Ted Kennedy talking about the ‘torturers’ at Abu Ghraib,” Doug Ross, a Republican blogger based in Atlanta, told The Brooklyn Paper. “Those are far more egregious errors than the innocent mistake [of calling the Democratic Party the ‘Democrat Party’].”
But at least one conservative blogger — okay, libertarian blogger — understood why Weiner and other Democrats were miffed.
Jeff Krimmel, based in Los Angeles, called President Bush’s rhetoric “inflammatory.”
But two slurs hardly make a right.
“This is a spiral into more childishness,” said Krimmel.
