The “democrats” (as in democracy) and “republican” (as in a republic) are not very descriptive identifiers for a democratic party in a republic (though I guess you could argue a two-party system isn’t very democratic).
In many other countries, parties are labelled as “Progressive”, “Conservative”, “Socialist”, “Christian Democratic”, “Social Democratic”, etc. that give you some idea of what they stand for / believe in, albeit in some cases, they can be misnomers and be things they want you to think they believe in (e.g. the various “democratic” parties in one-party states). Why are the American parties so boringly named with such broad descriptors?
p.s. Whatever happened to the Bull Moose party?
I thought party names were sometimes unintuitive in other countries as well? From the names alone I couldn’t tell you what the Whigs or Tories stood for in the UK, or the Brazil of Hope Federation today, or the old Arrow Cross party in Hungary. It’s usually some mix of historical oddities and domestic marketing.
We could use a new Bull Moose party. It’s almost hard to imagine a platform like that winning today.
The party’s platform built on Roosevelt’s Square Deal domestic program and called for several progressive reforms, asserting that “to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day”. The platform included proposals such as restrictions on campaign finance contributions, a reduction of the tariff and the establishment of a social insurance system, an eight-hour workday and women’s suffrage.
And sometimes is even contradictory. The Danish Left party is right-wing (agrarian conservative), the French Radicals are centrists. These names have historic causes, but it’s still confusing.
I’m registering as Bull Moose.
In Australia our establishment conservative party is called the Liberal party. I understand why and how it actually made perfect sense at the time but man if that isn’t ever ironic in modern context.
TR '28!
There was a political party called the Democratic Republicans. They split, giving us Democrats and Republicans.
Just double checked online, it looks like you and schnuritto are both partially correct. The “Democratic Republicans” did splinter off to the Democrats and the Republicans, but these were different from the modern kind and they seem to be unrelated to each other. This was the “National Republican” party that supported John Adams and were conservative too, but not related to the “Republican” party of today. These national republicans later merged into the Whig party, pretty interesting I think.
No. The Democratic Party does descend directly from them, but the Republican Party was founded much later independently.
Oh yeah, I think I knew that at one point but completely forgot it. I wonder if they decided to keep the old “big tent” kind of names in order to not alienate any voters
The Democratic Party is the older one of the two. My understanding is they called themselves that because they saw themselves as the party representing the popular will.
Why the Republicans called themselves that, not sure. They were mainly founded over opposition to slavery, not really described by the name at all.
I did a double take when I read Christian Democratic as Christian Demoncratic and yeah that sounds about right for modern US Politics.
SPLITTER.
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