Maryland Conservatarian

I admit that going after a Ruth Marcus column has a certain fish-in-a-barrel aspect to it but I’m feeling lazy today.

And apparently so was Ms. Marcus. Her column today, One Syllable of Civility, has her taking on the President on a matter that apparently has been roiling DC for months. She is courageously calling on the President to:

“…stop referring to the opposition as the "Democrat Party" and call the other side, as it prefers, the Democratic Party.”

If he was to do so, Ms. Marcus believes he “could change the tone in Washington.”

Now I believe I’m a fairly well-informed citizen, keeping abreast of the issues of the day but honestly, this is the first I’ve heard of this problem. Of course, part of me is now kicking myself for not being aware that Democrats considered the term “Democrat” derisive. I mean I’d consider it an insult to be called a member of the Democrat Party but I never though they did also. I would long ago have been hurling that epithet around had I only known that it pained them so.

Still, if you randomly asked 100 self-identified Democrats (Democratics?) about the term “Democrat” I doubt you’d find even two who express hurt and dismay at the term. There'd be a similar result with Republicans and their awareness of the hurtfulness of that term. Ms. Marcus has just given this so-called insult new life.

Not content with that, she goes on to find other examples of Republican rudeness:

“In the few weeks since the election, the president has followed up his syrupy rhetoric of cooperation with a series of face slaps: pushing the doomed nomination of John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations, resubmitting the equally doomed nominations of a quartet of offensive judicial selections and naming a physician to head the federal family planning program who works for clinics that refuse to offer birth control.”

I’m not sure why it offends Ms. Marcus to force that other party to actually go on record with their policy differences. John Bolton has been our finest ambassador to the UN in decades – if the non-Republicans don’t like him, they can vote against him (along with King RINO, Lincoln Chafee). That’s government, not rudeness. The same goes for Mr. Bush’s fine set of judicial nominees – it is well within the parameters of polite society to demand an up-or-down vote on a nominee; even if those who don’t sit with the GOP have a negative reaction to them. And I don’t think Emily Post is aghast at the President’s nomination of Eric Keroack to head the federal family planning program – esp. as the HHS Nominee Has Prescribed Birth Control (also in today’s Post – and I will save for another rant the wisdom of even having a federal family planning program).

There is a certain surrealness to Ms. Marcus being so worked up about this verbal tic of the President’s and its impact on civil discourse in Washington. Last April she swooned over the man that I consider the godfather of incivility, Ted Kennedy and in the news of late is this exchange between Leslie Stahl and Nancy Pelosi:

“Pelosi has called her Republican colleagues “immoral" and "corrupt,” and has said they're running a criminal enterprise.

"I mean, you're one of the reasons we have to restore civility in the first place," Stahl remarks.

"Well actually, when I called them those names, I was being gentle," Pelosi says. "There are much worse things I could've said about them." Lesley Stahl Profiles The Woman Who Could Become the Next Speaker Of The House - CBS News

…but Ruth Marcus thinks we’re just a “DemocratIC Party” away from a Capitol Hill group hug.