I'll add my perspective. When I first saw this "cons pubs" nonsense, I didn't have any idea what was being talked about for the longest. Finally I figured it out. Now don't get me wrong, I generally dislike conservative Republicans, so I don't particularly care about whether the nickname gets their feathers ruffled. But it just seemed nonsensical. Nonsensical and pointless to invent nicknames for the sole sake of it, unless there was an ulterior motive as SMC points out. And that brings me to the larger question: The need to abbreviate things when you could simply type out the full name. It doesn't take that much more effort and it certainly comes across as more educated sounding, and potentially less derogatory.
All of that said, I don't really like the idea of coming to this message board for the sake of arguing politics with people. So your nicknames haven't really cost you a poster (at least as far as I am concerned), as I probably would have ignored the political topics on principle to begin with.
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