i've been calling the current dilemma "the Reaganomics Recession." It's accurate, and it drives all my conservative friends right up the wall. Give it a try!

Scott Morrison

Your report reminds me of the first Conservative Activists Cooridinating Alliance, the CACA Conference, in my alternate history novel, The Energy Caper, or Nixon in the Sky with Diamonds. The year is 1973.

 The lobby was crowded with well-scrubbed young conservatives schmoozing over coffee and donuts. He had the day to kill, and there was a smorgasbord of seminars to choose from on the theme: “Winning the Culture Wars.” For the morning session he picked “Nurturing a Conservative Punditry,” and for the afternoon “Controlling the Grammar of Politics.”

The first seminar almost put him to sleep, but at the second a fire-breathing history professor about his own age named Kingrich made a lot of sense advocating a strategy of attacking liberals and their motives at every opportunity.

“The goal is to control the very language itself,” Kingrich told them. “By framing the arguments in terms we choose, we win the debate.”

Among his many suggestions was one that every true-blue movement-conservative immediately stop using the term “Democratic Party.”

“The word ‘democratic’ has far too many positive connotations to let Democrats have it to themselves,” Kingrich insisted. “The answer is for us to always say and write Democrat Party, and when you can, say it with a sneer, like you’re cussing them out…DemoCRAT! Party. You can’t do it with ‘democratic’ because the unaccented ‘ick’ sound gets in the way. And even if we could, we wouldn’t want to because people might think we were disparaging the very idea of democracy itself, and that’s not something conservatives want to publicize. But if we sneer out ‘crat’ some people will subconsciously hear ‘rat’ and associate Democrats with rodents and vermin, while others will hear ‘crap’ and see a steaming pile of dog shit.

“Okay, now why don’t you all give it a try? Trip it off your tongue with utter contempt, like in the movies…‘you dirty RAT!’ Really spit it out…DemoCRAT! Party. See what I mean? Pretend the person next to you is a liberal, and you want to insult the son-of-a-bitch. Go ahead, don’t be shy…DemoCRAT! Party.”

A cacophonous roar went up as sixty eager activists began DemoCRATing each other as insultingly as possible—DemoCRAT! Party, DemoCRAP! Party, DemofuckingCRAT! Party.

McGill and the guy beside him, whose badge read “Tom DeKaye,” DemoCRATed back and forth, nastier and nastier until Kingrich said into the microphone, “Didn’t take long to get the hang of it, did it?”

Everyone laughed, and the room quieted down.

“So how did it feel?” Kingrich asked with a puckish smile. “Bet it felt g-o-o-o-d, didn’t it?”

The consensus was that it had indeed felt good. Very, very good.

“So when you leave here, go out and spread the word,” Kingrich said. “Whenever you hear somebody on our side say Democratic Party, take them off into a corner and tell them about our language-control program. Make sure they understand how important it is for all conservatives to be on the same page. If we all pretend it’s as common as butter on bread, we can sneak it into usage before the damned Democrats know what hit ’em. Now, are there any questions?”

McGill raised his hand. “But professor, isn’t that usage just flat out wrong? I mean, ‘democrat’ is a noun, right? And ‘democratic’ is an adjective. I’d have gotten big red check marks from every teacher I ever had if I’d used it like that. Conservatives don’t want to sound illiterate, do we?”

“Don’t give it a second thought,” Kingrich assured them. “Language evolves with usage, which means it can be manipulated, and liberals haven’t figured that out yet. Now I agree that good grammar has its place, but it’s a quaint notion we can quietly toss into the dumpster when we need to, and believe me, hardly anyone will notice. And if we use it often enough, some day even Websters will be forced to accept it. In the long run, my friend, divorcing Democrats from the word democratic in the public’s mind is worth breaking a few petty rules, wouldn’t you say? And who’s going to punish us if we’re caught…the grammar police?”

Laughter filled the room as McGill raised his hand for a follow-up. “But do we really want to be deliberately insulting? Democratic Party is their legal name, part of their heritage, and refusing to use somebody’s name is a slap in the face, a slur, like calling somebody ‘boy’ or telling them your mama wears combat boots. And it’s historically wrong. Do we really want to be seen violating the ideals of civility and respect for tradition conservatives are supposed to stand for? Aren’t we opening ourselves up to charges of hypocrisy?”

Kingrich’s moon-face beamed with confidence, like a TV actor in a deodorant commercial. “Voters don’t know the first thing about history, my friend, and nobody has ever gone to jail for hypocrisy. And as for it being a slap in the face, that’s exactly right. Every time we use it we get a free backhanded slap at their ugly liberal faces and they can’t slap us back. What the hell can they do…start calling us ‘Republic Party?’ Ha! A lot of good that’ll do the bastards. Next question….”

I grew up in the Pittsburgh area and was just back there two weeks ago when McCain was in the area making his famous gaffe. It prompted me to enlist an old song in the campaign to defeat him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ran3ylJOqww