The Whole Party is RINO

By Jennifer Hill

The term RINO, or Republican in Name Only, has been around for a long time. Used to describe Republican politicians who get elected on the R side of the ticket and then typically vote along Democrat lines, RINO has been thrown around at politicians for more than 100 years. At some point, however, we have to stop calling out RINOs and acknowledge the entire Republican party as an affront to Conservativism.

In 1906 Teddy Roosevelt was the first president declared a RINO, and apparently those slur throwers were right, as Teddy later went on to start the Progressive Party. During FDR’s tenure as President the term morphed as Republicans who seemed to go along with whatever the Democrat President suggested were commonly referred to as “me too” Republicans. But it was during Bill Clinton’s time in the Oval Office that RINO really took off. Since then a majority of Republicans have had the term thrown at them at some point or another. Republicans like John Boehner, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, and Lindsey Graham have all seemed relatively comfortable with their status as RINOs, and why wouldn’t they be? Despite the fact that their own party declares their lack of conservative values they continue to be reelected as Republicans. Donald Trump got in on the RINO action when he took to Twitter to declare all Republicans who agreed that he’d lost the election were in fact RINOs. With so much RINO being thrown around the Washington Post decided to gather a list of all Republicans in the 114th US Congress who’d been formally accused of being a RINO. They determined that 173 of the 246 Republicans in the House of Representatives had been declared a RINO.

All these RINOs running around supporting expanded government and the ever-growing budget, beating their war drums are enough to make a person wonder, are they really RINOs or is the entire Republican party just Democrat Lite? The Republicans are supposed to be the party of conservativism. They claim to care for traditional family values, conservative fiscal policies and safeguarding the constitution, all under that umbrella of ‘conservative’. But when was the last time that the Republican Party actually conserved any of those things? Traditional family values are now considered so bigoted that the current Supreme Court nominee cannot even define the word ‘woman’. Government spending has never been higher with both sides only arguing over whose pet projects should get the money while the supposed conservative voices never mention spending less of it, and under a Republican President many Republican Governors allowed the entire economy and our rights to assembly and commerce to come to a screeching halt in 2020. We’ve never been less conserved. Still so many Americans, especially those in rural America, continue to blindly pull the lever for the R side of the ticket then assuage their concerns about the direction of the party by occasionally calling out a few RINOs. Rinse and repeat. This cycle is only leading us farther down the path of extreme liberalism.

As Libertarian author and commentator Michael Malice says, “Republicans are just Democrats driving the speed limit.” Perhaps it’s time to throw the RINO party away and move towards the Libertarians. Yes yes, people will tell you that you’re wasting your vote, or giving a vote to the Democrats. But does it matter? Is there anything that the Republicans are doing that’s actually slowing our steamroll towards communism? Is plugging your nose while voting for all of those RINOs actually conserving anything anyway? If you’re being honest the answer is no. So, get brave, take a stand and quit driving the damn speed limit.