Opinion: Democrats in Iraq

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Sometimes, even new habits are hard to break. For years Republicans have referred to their political opposition as the ‘Democrat Party,’ as opposed to the ‘Democratic Party.’ Not sure why, other than ‘Democrat’ sounds less noble than ‘Democratic.’ Anyway, a bit of this newspeak came up this morning, when President Bush held a press conference this morning with British PM Tony Blair. In his prepared opening remarks, the president was supposed to say, ‘We’ll support the democratic government of Prime Minister Maliki as he makes difficult decisions and confronts the forces of terror and extremism that are working hard to tear his country apart.’ But what came out (as least in the broadcast feed) was, ‘We’ll support the democrat government of Prime Minister Maliki....’ Once you train your tongue to lop off that last ‘ic,’ it’s hard to go back to the old pronunciation.