Ex-DNC Chair Forces Republican To Correct Himself In Middle Of Hearing Fracas When He Says ‘Democrat Colleague’
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) stepped into a roiling fracas to force Rep. Andrew Clyde (D-GA) to correct himself after he made a reference to his “Democrat colleague.”
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) touched off a Polaner All-Fruit commercial’s worth of fainting toward the end of a very long House Rules Committee meeting on President Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” when he told Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) that Republicans “say they’re pro-life because they want the baby to be born, go to school, and get shot in the school.”
Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) started going at it with Frost with what can only be described as a Real Housewives-Meme fervor. Frost doubled down and told them “I meant every word.”
Things were just starting to simmer down when Rep. Clyde — seated next to Rep. Frost at the witness table — tried to start some shit the Old Testament way — he tried to get Proverbial on his ass!
But Rep. Wasserman Schultz waded right in to correct a childish epithet that has become all-too normalized:
REP. VIRGINIA FOXX: Thank you. Thank you The panel is dismissed. Thank you very much.
REP. ANDREW CLYDE: I might remind my Democrat colleagues of Proverbs 13:5–.
REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Democratic! Democratic colleague!
REP. ANDREW CLYDE: Democratic colleagues–.
REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: THAT’S the name of our party!
REP. ANDREW CLYDE: –of Proverbs 13:5, and you can add 14:5 to that, too!
According to the New International Version, Clyde’s Proverbs roughly translate to “Liar Liar pants on fire!” and “I knoweth thou art but what art I?”
But Wasserman Schultz forcing Clyde to correct himself is the true checkmate of this entire exchange, as anyone who has tolerated decades of this intentional misnomer can attest.
The origins of the weird-ass insult apparently go back a long, long way. Depression-era long. Apparently, referring to the “Democratic Party” as the “Democrat Party” is meant to diminish it for… reasons.
I didn’t know it was that old, but I do know that the late Rush Limbaugh pushed this idiocy hard, and it has become near-universal among Republicans. Trump started making a point of it sometime before his losing bid to President Joe Biden, but could never quite get the hang of it.
According to Trump, he did it because he — who incited an insurrection — didn’t think Democrats were “democratic.”
Real journalistic outlets like CNN and the Associated Press refer to the Democrats as the “Democratic Party” and democrats as “Democratic lawmakers,” but right-wing outlets use “Democrat politicians,” etc.
There was even a study of the term, which found that Trump and outlets like Fox News were very influential in an “explosion” of its use:
The results showed a marked increase in the use of “Democrat Party” as a slur in recent years, particularly around 2018 and 2019. While the term has been used sporadically for decades, its prevalence exploded during and after the 2016 election.
The study identified Donald Trump as one of the key figures responsible for mainstreaming the term. Trump, in his speeches and tweets, often referred to the “Democrat Party,” explaining that he did so because “it sounds worse.” This intentional mislabeling was echoed by other prominent Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy.
However, Trump wasn’t the originator of this trend. The study found that conservative media outlets, particularly Fox News and personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, were instrumental in pushing the use of “Democrat Party.” These media figures regularly used the term, and their large audiences helped spread it further. Republican politicians, particularly those aligned with more performative and partisan factions of the party, adopted the term, likely as a result of the media’s influence.
Now, if these idiots want to sound like idiots, that’s on them — it has all of the intellect and maturity of a third-grader calling someone “Smelliott” but without the wit.
What pisses me off is that supposedly objective news anchors and reporters and interviewers will allow the epithet to go uncorrected, and CNN won’t force their own paid contributors to use accurate terminology. There are hundreds of examples of the term in the past few weeks, versus thousands on Fox News.
If Bakari Sellers suddenly decided he was only going to talk on CNN about the Refucklican Party, do you think that would fly?
Yet somehow, MSNBC has managed not to have a single on-air mention of “Democrat Party” over the past few months. Because it’s not their name. That’s a fact.
Watch above via the House Rules Committee.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
