Adventures In Semantics: The "Ic" Factor
In the prepared text of President Bush's State of the Union speech, the president was supposed to say this: "Some in this Chamber are new to the House and Senate – and I congratulate the Democratic majority." But as delivered, Bush called it the "Democrat majority"
And everyone seems to think they know just what that was supposed to mean. Wrote the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire: "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."
This morning's Washington Post hedges a bit: "Bush does this a lot, and while it's hard to say if the omission was intentional in this instance, it is a semantic tactic that's been part of Republican warfare for decades."
And why is that? What are the origins of this evil terminology? It's "a means of needling the opposition by purposefully mispronouncing its name," the Post explains, "and of suggesting that the party on the left is not truly small-'d' democratic."
Wow. That is offensive.
Cable news programs with airtime to fill following the speech immediately took note of the matter. Democratic strategist Paul Begala told Anderson Cooper he was "100 percent certain" that the de-suffixication of the term was intentional, adding: "It's sort of a bizarre article of faith on the right wing, that you can't call the Democratic Party by its name."
The Journal took the matter to the White House, which "offered different interpretations." One "top aide" said "it wasn't conscious or intentional." Another said "I heard 'Democratic.'"
The Post procured Charlie Cook, of the nonpartisan Cook Report, who "doubt[ed] if it was a conscious slight," but wasn't sure it was all that innocent. "I think it was just a force of habit."
Indeed, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Window on Washington blog confirms that "Bush is a serial offender, sometimes unable to say Democratic Party even when he is trying to say something nice about Democrats." The blog then documents at least eight different occasions in which the de-'ic'ification has occurred.
Let's hope, for the good of us all, that it doesn't happen again.