Talk:yellow dog

RFV discussion

The following information has failed Wiktionary's verification process.

Failure to be verified means that insufficient eligible citations of this usage have been found, and the entry therefore does not meet Wiktionary inclusion criteria at the present time. We have archived here the disputed information, the verification discussion, and any documentation gathered so far, pending further evidence.
Do not re-add this information to the article without also submitting proof that it meets Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion.

---

yellow dog

Rfv-sense "socially conservative and economically liberal person". - -sche (discuss) 22:15, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I share your skepticism. I never heard it. I don't know how to try to cite it. DCDuring TALK 23:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

US Political term: ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_dog_Democrat –Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 23:55, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but that isn't the definition which is subject to RFV. - -sche (discuss) 00:34, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, of course. Yes, I see the problem. From looking around, I see that Yellow Dog has split into two meanings, politically. One is generalised from "would vote for a yellow dog if it was on the Democrat ticket", and means anyone who would rather vote for the worst possible option in party X than anything in party Y. Attestations include this on FreeRepublic for "Yellow Dog Republican", although this is immediately challenged on the ground that "Broken Glass Republican" is correct. (Can't use any term which is tainted by association with them... whoever "they" happen to be.)

On the other hand is the idea that the Yellow Dog Democrats are an ideological subset of Democrats with a definable set of attitudes beyond being "rusted on". eg. this from 2003, especially in contrast to the "Blue Dog Democrats", who started out with a particular ideology. But even then, it appears to be used as meaning socially and economically liberal, as opposed to the (relatively) socially and economically conservative Blue Dogs. I suspect this use comes from not long after 1995, in reaction to the Blue Dogs who were founded to espouse more conservative ideologies and attempt some sort of rapprochement with the Republicans.

I wonder if there is some sort of "... Dog" bloc, united generally by social conservatism but divided by economics, per [1]. That would explain the extant wording of that sense in the entry. Pure speculation, however.

All use of "liberal" and "conservative" are, of course, in the US political senses, which may or may not have anything to do with liberalism and conservatism as defines ideologies (as opposed to tribal markers).

But you're also right that this looks to be non-trivial to disentangle. Does anyone know a scholar of US Political Science to ask? –Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 01:44, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Failed. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 14:20, 4 October 2013 (UTC)