i believe it started after a commercial they were whining about that had a text crawler across it that when the commercial ended only said RATSI prefer DEMOCRAPS!
I don’t know but I was thinking about that recently.
It’s a wonder they don’t change their name. They like changing things.
Especially words.
It must be so demeaning to be called a RAT but hey, if the name fits...
The Rodentry.
But Patrick Henry was one of the Anti-Federalists, a faction that eventually became the Democratic Party.
That's my memory, anyway--others may recall earlier references but if so it wasn't common usage as it is now.
The Republicans ran a TV ads years back...
On the screen it said “Democrats” and it zoomed in on the words till all you saw was the letters “rats”
The Dems screams the Republicans were running subliminal advertising call them “RATS”
Well around here it became the custom after the ‘Rats objected to a GOP ad (was it during the first Bush campaign) in which the word DEMOCRATS ran across the screen in a slow crawl as dire critiques of their policies were read out. They complained because there was a moment when only the last four letters appeared on the screen, and they claimed it was an attempt to make a subliminal association between Democrats and rats. They’d been called ‘Rats ever since.
(Kind of like the way “clymer” came to have its current meaning.)
In Genesis 1 11, God gave Adam the right to call rats, rats.
i believe it started after a commercial they were whining about that had a text crawler across it that when the commercial ended only said RATSHere's Elbridge Gerry in the First Congress:
MR. GERRY did not like the term National, proposed by the gentleman from Virginia, and he hoped it would not be adopted by the House. It brought to his mind some observations that had taken place in the Conventions at the time they were considering the present constitution. It had been insisted upon by those who were called anti-federalists, that this form of government consolidated the union; the honorable gentleman's motion shows that he considers it in the same light. Those who were called anti-federalists at that time, complained that they were in favor of a federal government, and the others were in favor of a National one; the federalists were for ratifying the constitution as it stood, and the others did not until amendments were made. Their names then ought not to have been distinguished by federalists and anti-federalists, but rats and anti-rats.
Back then, the federalists were the ones centralizing as much power as possible, so they were like democrats in that regard.
ME! (You’re welcome.)
The commercial Democ-RATS.
I would say that I was the first to refer to them as DEMONRATS.
Actually it appears that freeper gitmo used the term demonRats in May 2003. My first use of the term was here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/963618/posts
Me wuz, everybody knows that!
I have dibs on demonrats.
Free Republic was calling them RATS all the way back to the corrupt Clinton days.
In later years Henry, scared out of his gourd by the French Revolution, became a supporter of Federalists Washington and Adams and an ardent opponent of the states’ rights KY and VA Resolutions.
When a journalist took a job as Herbert Hoover's press secretary the joke was: "The first known case of a rat joining a sinking ship," and that comment also been recycled by columnists.
Howie Carr fans remember Congressman Joe Early shouting in Congress "They ran like rats!" about the ethics committee members that had condemned him.