The term Grand Old Party (GOP) is an affectionate moniker for the Republican Party that was originated by supporters of that party around 1874. It is not appropriate to use that nickname unless you like them, or are a member of that party.
Let's not help Republicans diffuse and obscure who they are!
My main objection to the acronym is that Republicans use it to hide or obscure the fact that they are Republicans, which gives them a slightly better image. Research has shown that the term "Republican" gets a much more negative response than either "GOP" or "conservative". I remember reading some years ago that this fact was discovered in focus groups conducted by public relations and advertising firms that had been retained by the Republican National Committee. (I tried to find some reference to that research today, but gave up. My search engine usage is still somewhat inept.) The focus groups were used to find the optimal "branding" to use for the party. It's like selling laundry detergent or soda pop. "GOP" gets a better response than "Republican", even though the product is the same.
It makes sense for a party to call themselves by the name that engenders the most favorable response. Let's do a Gedankenexperiment hypothesizing two hypothetical carbonated beverages. Would you rather drink one called "Ambrosia", or one called "Slurg"? What if Slurg tasted exactly the same as Ambrosia and was much cheaper? You might buy Slurg, but with great reluctance, because you know what ambrosia is, but what the heck is slurg, anyway? How much cheaper would Slurg have to be for you to purchase it instead of Ambrosia? Notice that the more attractive name automatically makes you favor that product over the one with the less attractive name. If Slurg cost more than Ambrosia, no one at all would buy it. Hence, if the two names were the only candidates for labeling a new drink, it would be a no-brainer to pick Ambrosia.
I was taught ideas like this when I took a course in advertising in business school. (Sorry. I love these B school case studies.) The classic example to illustrate the value of branding is laundry detergent, which, as any chemist can tell you, is an absolutely undifferentiable product. That means that one detergent is exactly the same as another. None works any better or worse than any other because they are chemically the same, composed almost entirely of one chemical, sodium lauryl sulfate. The demand for detergent is nearly constant, too, which means that the only way to boost sales is to increase market share!
Now we're getting somewhere. (Have you sussed the analogy to political parties?) To get consumers to buy more of your product so you can make more money, you have to get them to buy less of your competitor's product. In game theory, this is known as a "zero sum game". This means your loss is my gain and vice versa. In commerce, undifferentiable products can only compete in two ways, by price and by product differentiation. The latter method sounds paradoxical. How do you differentiate something undifferentiable? You can't do that in objective reality, but you can create the perception of a difference by sham, trickery and hype.
Have you ever been asked which laundry detergent you use? I haven't, because I'm male. They only poll women about this type of thing because women buy or direct the purchase of most of the detergent sold. In fact, men who live in a household without women tend to buy the household products they were taught to select by a female family member. Now, ladies, when they asked you what brand you buy, did they also ask you why? That seems like a reasonable question, but what were they really trying to find out? They didn't really care about your delusional notion of why you think that brand cleans your family's clothes better, because it doesn't. They just wanted find out how well their brand differentiation and advertising were working. You didn't think those blue and green specks or the scent really did anything, did you?
The most important factors in capturing market share for products like detergent are advertising and brand recognition. Every manufacturer says their detergent works best, but no consumer has any rational reason to believe such claims. You advertise to increase the recognition of your brand, which becomes the operative factor in attracting buyers. Branding works best if it is unique, attractive and easy to remember.
Color, design and subtleties of language all play a part in creating a good brand. (Watch any episode of Mad Men and focus on what they say in the meetings rather than the actors' looks.) Short names are better than long names. Real words are better than made up ones, except for cars, but that's another story. Distinctive, eye-catching colors and graphics contribute as well. The best branding draws the consumer to the product, making the choice of that brand over others simple and easy.
Having made a case why Republicans might want to use proven principles of advertising in rebranding, what evidence is there that they are intentionally rebranding the Republican Party as "the GOP", a much snappier moniker, and the adjective "Republican" itself as "GOP"? In this internet age, there is only one place to start, the official web site of the Republican National Committee. (Navigate to the link in another tab of the browser, or better yet, another browser instance so you can look at both pages at once.)
It's clear that they are rebranding as "GOP". Take a look at the address; it's "gop.com". Notice that the page's title, the text displayed in the browser's page heading (on the tab, not on the web page itself) is "RNC : Republican National Committee | RNC : Republican National Committee | GOP". I don't know why they have the acronym and the official name twice, followed by the nickname, but they do. What struck me is that these are the only instances of the word "Republican" on the page except for once more in very small type, and that is in a required legal notice where they have to use the real name of the party. They can't get away with using the rebranded nickname for that. Everywhere else where you might expect to see the word "Republican", it has been replaced by "GOP".
The graphics of the new, all-red logo prominently feature the acronym GOP looming over the stylized, toy-like elephant with its Satanic pentagrams, those upside down stars that look like goats' heads, rather than the standard pentacle stars on the American flag. The background is red, the new signature color of the GOP. It's all red, just like The East Is Red, Mao Zedong's favorite song. Red doesn't stand for communism any more now that the Soviet Union has dissolved and the People's Republic of China, with its all-red flag, is in cahoots with the wholly-owned party of corporate capitalism, the red banner party, the GOP! Do you think it's a coincidence that so much manufacturing has been moved to China, along with much of the technology that makes it possible?
Frightening, isn't it?
The rebranding isn't just happening at the national level. In Washington, where I live, no Republican running for office puts anything other than "GOP" on a campaign sign. This is traditionally a Democratic state, and they know that the less Republican they seem to be, the better they will do. They even had a dispute about this, but the Republicans prevailed and have been allowed to keep using "GOP". (Washington Democrats still put "Democrat" on their signs.) The GOP rebrand is too complete to be voluntary; this has to be a coordinated effort directed by the RNC. It probably didn't take a lot of coercion, though. You've got to say one thing for Republicans; they follow orders well and rarely step out of line.
To contrast Republican rebranding, let's take a peek at the official web site of the Democratic National Committee. They have changed their logo, too. The donkey is gone, replaced by a cyan 'D' enclosed by a dark blue ring. The site is democrats.org and that's what it says on the browser tab as well. The word "Democrats" is featured on the page in text and graphics. Not much has changed from past years except getting rid of the donkey.
The moniker "GOP" isn't the only substitute for "Republican". Let's not forget "conservative", the other term that did better with the focus groups. Have you ever heard any self-styled conservative who wasn't really just a plain, old Republican? Why do they do this? The simple answer is that "conservative" can easily be made to sound like a good thing. This is why, of course, they have taken such pains to characterize the antithetical labels "liberal" and "progressive" as bad things, so "conservative" can be the good thing that is their opposite. "Conservative" then implies that they are conserving something, as in conservation, instead of what they are really doing, which is the antithesis of conservation. This adheres to the advertising maxim that new branding works better than old branding because of its novelty. The actual meaning of the brand name, or what's inside the package, can be supplanted by hype, at least for a while. (A famous advertising metaphor is, "We're selling sizzle, not steak.")
A more complex bit of legerdemain with branding allows Republicans to plunder natural resources, redistribute wealth to the rich from everyone else, undercut and impoverish domestic workers by exporting jobs, sell off technology and the means of production, and turn different segment of society against each other in an orgy of destructive hate for people of color, women, children, the poor, Muslims and gays, then not have to answer for the consequences. What's "conservative" about that? Nothing at all, but it's possible to deflect criticism by pointing at someone else. If you do it right, everyone points around in a circle and no one is to blame. The sole purpose of substitute terms for "Republican" seems to be to deflect criticism by diverting the focus of attacks on Republican Party policies and tactics to multiple outlets.
We know that so-called conservatives are anything but that, and GOP is meaningless rebranding. I've heard many a self-styled conservative attempt to blur party lines, by saying that all conservatives are not Republicans or that all Republicans are not conservatives. Now, the Tea Party, which is getting capitalized to give it legitimacy as a separate entity, is a third non-Republican label to diffuse criticism. Why not throw in one more? Have you noticed that almost all "independents" are really Republicans, too? The more labels you have to play with, the easier it is to not be the one at fault. Assigning responsibility for action and even acts of violence becomes the classic shell game. ("Oh, that's not the GOP, it's the Tea Party.")
If I were to choose a descriptive name for Republicans, I would go for "destroyers" or "upheavalists", even that old standby "hatemongers", anything but "GOP". I also like "Republi-cons", which references the traditional name and is descriptive as well.