Ain’t It Grand

I think this is a question worth considering: Should the news media continue to use “GOP” interchangeably with “Republican”? A commenter on Jim Romenesko’s media blog writes:

I know it makes things easier for copy editors like me in an era of narrowed Web widths, but simply: Isn’t “Grand Old Party” a form of editorializing? (And “Just because it’s always been done that way” isn’t a legit response ...)

It’s hard to take seriously the idea of today’s Republican Party being the “Grand Old Party,” as it devolves into a Southern regional assemblage dominated by petty right-wing radicals and religious-right zealots. Furthermore, as Romenesko points out, “the term was coined when the party wasn’t more than 35 years old--in a Chicago Tribune editorial after the 1888 election.” It never even earned its nickname!

Romenesko’s simple solution: use “DP” as a synonym for “Democratic Party” and “RP” as a stand-in for “Republican Party.” If brevity is the issue, he notes, both “are shorter than GOP.”

I’ll probably adopt these initialisms myself.