Former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt officially joined the Democratic Party this week and it did not take long for him to defend it starting with calling out a common slur used by Republicans.
Schmidt notably renounced the Republican Party in 2018 in response to outgoing President Donald Trump’s behavior and the party’s refusal to condemn him. He would go on to be a frequent critic of Trump and the GOP, and helped found the Lincoln Project with other anti-Trump Republicans, which created and released devastating ads that ran in battleground states, many of which Trump lost to President-Elect Joe Biden.
During a podcast discussion about Republican efforts to keep Trump in power through seditious means, Schmidt announced his intention to formally register as a Democrat.
“I spent 29 years as a Republican, I’ve spent two and a half as an independent, and later this afternoon I will register as a member of the Democratic Party,” Schmidt told Plouffe. “Because in America today, it’s only the Democratic Party—which is the oldest political party in the world—that stands for the ideas and ideals of American liberty.”
Shortly after the announcement, The Hill published a story about it using the following headline: “Longtime GOP strategist Steve Schmidt announces he’s registering Democrat”.
It may seem harmless, but the headline uses the word “Democrat” instead of “Democratic Party,” and is commonly used by Republicans as a slur against Democrats. Indeed, you can often hear Republicans refer to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party”. Well, Schmidt called out the slur on Twitter in defense of his new party.
Democratic. It’s the Democratic Party. It’s the oldest in the world. This headline should read “registering Democratic”. It’s an important enough institution in this country that it is entitled to its’ proper name. https://t.co/Z1ssMmnDRU
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) December 16, 2020
In fact, the party was founded in 1828 and traces it’s roots even further back to the 1790s when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison founded the Democratic-Republican Party. It is the oldest active political party in the world as Schmidt pointed out, nearly thirty years older than the Republican Party, which was founded in 1854 and has since become an abomination those early Republicans would not recognize today.
Referring to the party as the “Democrat Party” may not seem like a big deal, but it is. Unlike Republicans, members of the Democratic Party believe in democracy.
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