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I Am a RINO
Usually, the term “RINO” (Republican in Name Only) is used as a pejorative — a politician who caucuses with conservatives but embraces “nonpartisanship” and sinks party strategies frequently. But I am going to give it a different spin: If forced to identify with a political party I identify as “Republican” but I have zero respect for the party and those establishment figures that shake down the electorate for money and votes but are content to never really succeed in upholding the ideals of the US Constitution.
Frankly, the party disgusts me. The “move along, nothing to see here” attitude of too many Republican leaders in the wake of the 2020 election is Constitutional malfeasance. They would say they wanted to avoid a constitutional crisis. I say that the irregularities in revisions to state election processes and the ensuing chaos in vote counting was the constitutional crisis. Was the outcome legitimate? I don’t know. And I am beyond irate that thanks to the complacency of the Republican establishment it will never be known. And also because of this complacency, it is uncertain whether the changes made in some states will be sufficient to assure future elections are credible.
And they didn’t seal the border. And they didn’t repeal Obamacare. And they didn’t take a strong stand for my civil rights during the health “emergency”. They loved the Administrative State more than I.
So I am a RINO. I have no desire to be known as a Republican. But our system, in most places, makes one ineffective unless you are registered to vote as either a Republican or a Democrat. And to be labeled as a Democrat right now feels like having to register as a sex offender: Is my crime an immature youthful indiscretion, or evidence of a crazed fiend or a life-long pervert? So being a Democrat is a “no-go zone” for me.
But I take no joy in a Republican identity. The Party pros all have their timelines filled in for 2022, 2024, 2026, 2028… But I have had my fill. I want to live in America — the strong, free, fearless version not the grifter State controlled by the monied swells at the top and the mendicants at the bottom. I want to live in a place where the doers can throw off the catcalls of the Karens and go about their business of making America great. I want to live in a place where a public servant is just that, not the final arbiter of whether I am worthy of whatever pittance my government is willing for me to have, or even to say anything, or have physical liberty.
My world is upside down. I want it righted. And I don’t think the Republican establishment wants that. They want me to think that they do, and send them money and votes. But like Lucy and the football, they are ready to pull it away and let me end up on my backside one more time. Maybe the last time. Ever.
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Great point. The big government establishment types are the real Republican Party. Conservatives voting for Republicans because they are not quite as bad as the Democrats are the true RINO’s.
Been there since Mississippi 2014. Never forget Mississippi 2014!
In before the lectures to OBEY begin!
I’ve thought this too for a while. Republicans have changed and those wanting limited government are party members in name only.
Yes, and as has become the norm, the investigation *is* the cover-up.
Here here! I avoid that term like the plague. I will invariably use ‘conservative’ but even that has now been bastardized just as much the term liberal. Yet the the system is binary.
Actually, in the classical sense of the term I would identify as liberal, constrained by Judeo-Christian ethics. Hmmm. Would that make me a Constitutionalist?
You are not alone.
There’s been an ongoing theme on Ricochet lately.
This thread continues that theme.
Personally, since the Libertarian Party was supposed to be the liberals and they were taken over by the libertines, I thought it better to claim the libertine name for the Libertine Party. Join me. We aren’t really libertines, just like with all the other party names. The Republicans aren’t. The Democrats aren’t. The Libertarians aren’t.
If everything “aren’t” then nothing “is”? -(Not quite) Nietzsche
Pretty much.
I am a DINO. I am a bit different than you. I want to be known as a Democrat and both register and give token amount of money to the party. In my area if you wanted to do business you had to be a Democrat. You wanted a gun permit, you better be a Democrat. You wanted to get you sewers worked on or roads repaired or cleared then you better be a Democrat. I have lost jobs, gigs, contracts because I was not Democrat enough or a big enough Democrat. At one time the GOP seldom even ran candidate for election. Now they do and occasionally may win an office but mostly the decision on who is going to get a position is done at the primary level. So I am a very visual Democrat that dislikes that party more than I dislike the GOP.
Sounds like we are rediscovering the animating spirit of the Tea Party, and none too soon.
In my version of the project, it exists to discipline and force the hand of the GOP. Credible threats and all that (see my post “On Words and Deeds”). It only works from the inside, when it works at all.
There’s a lot of water under the bridge. Some of it is sewage.
I have always hated that term because it assumes Republicans are conservative . Or actually, at this point, anything. It’s a club run by certain people, and if you don’t check off various boxes you are anathema. It assumes being a “Republican” has some kind of coherent theme we all can rally around. But their very best argument has become, ‘we are not as bad as they are’.
Otherwise we all snark at the crazy Democrats, bonding away at how we all can agree how ridiculous they are on this or that.
A GOP pol can get by beautifully by patting certain voting blocks on the head, but in office he only needs to be to the right of the Democrats while looking at the far left they can veritably peacock. Certain centrist pundits prop him up by focusing on the blue-haired banshees.
This provides a perverse incentive.
It was always, ‘the other guy is worse’ until it came to certain people. These were the pariahs. Ross Perot, Ron Paul. Donald Trump. Personally I didn’t get the first two candidates entirely but I’
m better informed now after a certain amount of history has played out.
Rand Paul, Newt Gingrich and various others are marginalized and shunned.
For the Democrats, it’s Tulsi Gabbard. It validates my theory how these people are vilified and isolated. Why?
Doc, the way I see it, the term pre-dates a widespread recognition of the party’s fecklessness. I’m with you on both formerly not getting the kooks, and on recently seeing the term RINO as an inversion.
I used to hate the RINOs. Now I agree that the term is as outdated as calling progressives “liberals”. I still hate them. I just don’t call them RINOs anymore.
Contra Rodin, we are not RINOs. While I understand and agree with the supporting points, the term just doesn’t fit us.
I think Tea Party sums it up nicely.
Othering or otherizing. Finding comfort in demonizing someone(thing) different. Usually in response to cognitive dissonance. In a fundamental sense it means never having to contemplate saying “I’m wrong” or “I’m sorry”.
There’s a counterpart to Sam Adams imprecation about tireless minorities and to the fact that only 3% are implacably determined in any long struggle. Those people will always be a reviled minority. I’ll comment more on Ron Paul’s farewell address when I get to a keyboard.
I’m with you, Rodin. The party left me quite a long time ago and I feel no allegiance to them, except the Lefties leave me no choice but to stay with the Republicans. So sad.
If we’re all RINOs now, I guess that means Rob Long needs to pick another term for himself. Maybe he’s a “real” Republican now?
Get me started on the filthy sockpluckers of the Lincoln Project.
P.S. I hope that photo in the OP is licensed.
Spot on
I’ve never considered myself a republican. From time to time I looked at getting involved, such as when I went to a republican meeting in Austin. They spent a whole lot of time doing prayers, yawn, and had a guest speaker who thought he knew who would get the nomination (he laughed when someone asked if Trump had a shot). But no one, NO ONE runs for office as a republican in Austin. They don’t even try. Every person running for office is an unopposed democrat. Like they say in racing, you can’t win if you don’t finish, or start. What a worthless party.
And then the republicans saw a huge movement, the Tea Party movement that sought to corral the bloated government, and what did the republicans do? They crushed it, just like they tried to crush Trump.
I tell you what, if the republicans don’t start supporting Trump and what he has done, they’re going to get a lot worse than Trump. The American people won’t tolerate what the democrats are doing and what the republicans allow, so long as they get the drippings.
Notice how as the wheels are visibly coming off the vehicles of both parties, the one dependable issue came along to remind us of whom we must vote for.
Even though nothing has changed.
Thirty states that already have plenty of Planned Parenthood Centers and plenty of abortion clinics will legislate to keep abortion legal.
Twenty states that currently have few if any Planned Parenthood centers and only a few or zero abortion clinics will legislate to make it illegal.
This is meant to demonstrate that if you are a godly person, you will vote Republican.
(Or if you are a “compassionate, tolerant feminist,” you must vote Democratic.)
The above algorithm has been used so many times before a thinking person might think it has been over used.
But apparently one can fool almost all the people all the time, if the correct issue is chosen.
Never mind the way that for these past 2 and a half years, the NWO organized a plandemic that further destroyed the middle class, that established a still-in-existence blueprint for quarantining any “super spreaders” should another pandemic show up next week, next month, or right before the mid terms.
And that those Republicans who could afford the lockdowns as their company or government agency still sent them a check each pay period fully supported the idea of doing in many members of the working class. (The fate of many working class people became bankruptcy, loss of family, friends, and so in some cases suicide.)
Meanwhile foreign firms & BlackRock have purchased so much of America’s housing that tens of millions of us face homelessness. Rent raises have come about that are 141% of what people were paying two years ago. For people who may already have been offering up 1/3rd their monthly income to rent, this means homelessness, or a van down by the river. The issue is nation-wide: from Phoenix to Boise, from Seattle to Tampa. There seems to be no rhyme or reason, especially if you consider how Detroit is now the nation’s most expensive metro area to live in.
Our food situation is facing drastic shortages, with food plants across the USA being incinerated. Additionally MidWest farmers might have been shorted needed fertilizer due to the control Union Pacific exerted – control that prohibited some rail lines from using its tracks.
(And then there is the – GASP! – cost of fuel.)
Republican leadership is not seizing on any of these issues. In fact that leadership seems more intent on promoting full scale ostracism of those few Republicans who are getting the support of a weary and diminishing middle class than in finding a way to attract the very needed indie voters.
Bill Clinton rode into office in 1992 on a flying carpet banner of, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Republican Do Nothing Leaders might actually unleash a banner that reads “Nov 2022 – You’re Stupid if You Won’t Just Trust Us As We Partner with The WEF!”
Voting for the lesser evil still gets you evil.
Couldn’t think of an accurate synonym. English has synonyms for its synonyms. An English thesaurus is the phonebook of thesauruses. Those Romance languages have thin little pamphlety things. I think maybe the Decent Party or the Best Party. Somebody’s been working the Whig name since the Obamanation but I think the Bull Moose Party is available.
Bingo. The definition of a Republican is anyone who self-identifies as a Republican. Anyone who tells you differently is either selling something or has been sold something.
The GOP spending is what is most frustrating to me. They talk a great game about debt and deficits when they can do nothing about it and when they controlled senate, house and president, did nothing about it
This. When someone claiming to support “fiscal restraint” sets about buying votes or rewarding donors, restraint is a pipe dream. We can survive a bit of grift in booming times, but as the predators pick off the herd one by one, eventually you notice that there are far more predators than prey left.
The political top is rotten as tops. gradually become in big places. We’re big because of national defense. There is no other reason. It used to be that market economics and the tendency toward protectionism made big, at least economically, essential. That’s less true now as well. We need big markets, but not global, indeed global doesn’t work for us any more because it has China who uses it against us. We have to figure out security, but it’s clear the current bunch work against that and they’ll be in power at least three more years, and perhaps to the end, which wont be long but it’s the end. We better figure out how to form self defense of a smaller place before we discover that the next election will be rigged by the totalitarians on our left. We don’t have to do anything but if we’re not capable of reorganizing around the existing constitution and leaving Washington, New York city and chunks of California and a few other places to stew in their own failure, we wont be able to as they’re totalitarians and will behave as such.