Learn the Jargon

Perhaps the most annoying of political euphemisms, it’s Congress-speak for someone that the speaker may not be friends with – and who they may in fact loathe.

A lamentation among critics of the current Republican Party of how far it has drifted from the 16^th president’s era; for GOP lawmakers, a shorthand reminder of the party’s proud origins.

An accusatory adjective for a purportedly stacked-deck process that plays into the populism flourishing across the political spectrum.

The theory that elections in political systems like the United States’ tend to favor the two major parties, making it very hard for a third party to win.

The hyperbolic phrase that partisans trot out before every presidential contest to rally the troops.