Re: John’s post below.
Rebranding the other party sounds silly until you think about how the media works. Last Sunday the popular news chat shows featured Dick Cheney, John McCain and Newt Gingrich. Although I don’t remember which, another recent show discussing Sonia Sotomayor invited…three Republicans. When Republicans control the government, major news shows skew Republican. When Democrats control the government the shows still lean right. Judging by the people in charge of scheduling these things, Americans really, really want to know what Republicans, who they hate, think about everything.
Let me explain how this will work. FOX News will work in the silly name at the margins, through crazy people like Glenn Beck and in the guise of ‘talking about it’ (a lot). Each Sunday Newt and John Boehner and (hey, why not) Tom DeLay will use the Nazified name as if they never used anything else. The host might quibble, at first, but how often do they want to talk about the same thing? Hosts mostly don’t challenge obvious lies or intentional goofs like using ‘Democrat’ as an adjective so it isn’t clear how many would even object.
After a while Roger Cohen and people like him will correct themselves to account for this new reality. “Democratic Party or Democrat Socialist Party? Opinions differ.”
Why not? The same trick already worked once.