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Re-redefining RINO in the Trump Era – A Response to Old Bathos
In a post you should read, Old Bathos offered a new definition of RINO for the age of Trump. Ol’ Bathos is making an important point: never accept the premise of the Left’s loaded questions. I submit that RINO is being redefined in a more significant way.
Before the election, Trump seemed like the one who was Republican in Name Only. After all, he was a newcomer to the party and had donated money to left-wing Democrats. In the past year, though, Trump has developed some serious conservative Republican credentials.
One reason for this is Trump’s unwillingness to accept what others take for granted, which takes forms more substantive than rejecting the premise of a mendicant question. He refuses to accept things as set in stone, such as Jerusalem being the non-capital of Israel or the polite fiction of CNN’s respectful objectivity. More than that, he refuses to accept that his role as a Republican in DC is to politely ask for a few concessions, while Mordor on the Potomac continues to gut the Constitution, along with the American Dream. He acts, oftentimes, as if a conservative Republican (or a President who governs like one) has the duty and the prerogative of achieving conservative Republican policy goals.
This is a high bar for Republicans in DC. It just may be that, in the Trump and post-Trump era, Republicans will be expected to actually accomplish substantial conservative reforms. If they don’t; if they can’t be at least as conservative as Mr. New York Values, Clinton-donor Donald Trump; they may risk being branded as the wrong sort of pachyderm.
Published in Politics
When Spicer was Trump’s spokesperson, and some asinine reporter asked him what the Administration thought of the charges against it, with regards to colluding with Russia in order to win the election, and Spicer just openly started in laughing, just a hearty good-natured laugh, I became a Trump convert.
That laugh as a response to the White House press pool has been so long overdue. Decades overdue.
The GOP has for years seemed to negotiate with itself before ever taking action. They present a bill, or judicial candidates, or regulations seeming to say “Will the Democrats and independents accept this?” before the real debates and negotiations even start.
If the negotiation classes that my employer paid for me to take were worth anything, the GOP should have been presenting bold concepts-outrageous, scorched-earth positions to rock the other side back on its heels and bring them to the negotiation table with a bit more humility.
Laugh at the progs and the press. When they present some foolishness, tell them “Never gonna happen-my constituents would never stand for it.”
Trump gets this.
This reminds me of a line from the original “Ghostbusters ” movie: “YOU’VE never worked in the private sector! They expect RESULTS!”
Well, they did say he would run the country like a business.
This is the exact way the profs have made progress in this country.
Except I think they use their insane constituents and radical lobbyists to stake the absurd ground so that their proposals sound downright reasonable. Might get the deal a bit closer to their side than the opposition’s side.
Good post.
Deep down a RINO does not believe that the Great American Experiment, the vision of the Founders can still work. He thinks a new order needs to be installed but not too fast. A RINO does not believe the New Deal and Great Society can ever be undone, merely reformed at the edges–the large federal involvement will likely grow but hopefully not too fast. A RINO is terrified of being cast as out of date or out of touch with prevailing trends and mores so he will never be critical of the rather obvious downside of the ongoing sexual revolution, campus brownshirt totalitarianism or the harsh absurdities of racial identity politics. At heart, a RINO is someone who wants membership in and approval by what he sees at the elite.
A RINO can claim to be the heir of Reagan–Reagan himself did not try to undo the federal leviathan. But a RINO could never withstand the withering hatred directed at Reagan who was always comfortable with his own principles and largely immune to the deprecations hurled at him.
The American Left has now metastasized into a Gramscian tumor and seeks to destroy the religious, cultural, social and ideological roots of the country and sees any disagreement as a mortal threat to their project. The counter-revolutionary moments (Reagan ’80, Gingrich ’94, Trump ’16) struck terror each time. They see off-campus America as a seething fascist horde merely awaiting orders from their Führer to arise, a horde that must be silenced and crushed. Democratic politicians and media figures are generally too cynical to be true believers in The Narrative but they share a loathing of middle America and foolishly think they can ride the tiger to stay in control.
In this environment, the RINO proclivity for compromise and gentility makes them eloi invited to the morlock feast. They serve to provide cover for overt media partisan assaults and groin-kicking tactics by Democratic pols. The Narrative is a project aimed at the jugular of American culture and freedoms and the RINO go-along get-along approval-craving posturing is an especially pernicious form of disloyalty.
Well, that about says it all.
OB, I appreciate you looking on the bright side, but we may be in for some rough days ahead .