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Republicans and Democrats use different words or phrases to subtly frame issues (Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2010; Luntz, 2007). One linguistic tool in the Republican arsenal is the phrase “Democrat Party”. While the epithet’s origins are disputed, journalistic accounts suggest its use stems from Republican attempts to characterize Democrats as tied to machine politics (Safire, 1998) or elitist (Woodward, 2008) and therefore unfit inheritors of their party’s articulated name. Little beyond this is known as few studies have been conducted. This deficiency is regrettable given that the “Democrat Party” slur is increasingly prevalent and conveys a message to the partisan base that the other side consists of a homogenous ‘other’ worthy of scorn and ridicule. As such, it may serve as an elite cue to affective polarization and negative partisanship. Key questions to explore include: Has the use of the epithet increased alongside elite polarization? Which Republican elites most frequently employ the phrase? Under what conditions do Republicans deploy the rhetorical jab?
By systematically studying the deployment of the “Democrat Party” moniker both longitudinally and cross-sectionally, we can learn how this weapon of “linguistic polarization” is deployed and the extent to (and conditions under) which it has become a feature of mainstream Republican discourse. We combine existing collections of text including Republican party platforms, presidential addresses, the Congressional record, and Congressional newsletters with a novel collection of social media posts to conduct this empirical analysis. We hypothesize that the use of “Democrat Party” is increasing over time alongside party polarization. Furthermore, we hypothesize that more conservative Republican elites have historically been more predisposed to use the epithet but that the gap is closing as it becomes a regular, mainstreamed technique of partisan signaling. We also look at transcripts of conservative media, most notably FOX News, to see if this signaling is being passed along to the party's rank-and-file. This will contribute to understanding of political elites' role in fostering party identity and promoting linguistic polarization in different settings.