Trump was one of the biggest RINOs in politics - at least as that term was understood in 2014. It always frustrated me to have to explain to people (especially on the left) that he wasn’t actually conservative (in the fusionist sense of the term).
You’re absolutely right that he ran and governed as a NY liberal’s caricature of a conservative. The worst thing was that he made the stereotypes true.
I wondered when someone would define what a RINO truly is. Most politicians are scared of losing their career if they turn against Trump but in the end it’s not just their career that’s in jeopardy but their personal integrity.
RINO has always been a sort of vague epithet but before Trump, it generally meant Republicans who failed the ideological purity test. This would happen when the normal process of governance took place - a Senator had to compromise to get legislation passed, a governor had to make a decision in the interest of his state, etc.
They still do this across the aisle. Joe Manchin is just a DINO to the progressive clown car.
What Trump has done is purge ideological purity from the Republican party altogether and replaced it with the cult of personality. Republicans didn’t even have a platform at the last convention. It just said “Ask Trump.” The answer, perhaps intentionally, never follows any kind of intellectual framework beyond whatever the former president decides at the time.
All deviants from Trump are now RINOs. Worse, there’s a sort of reverse cult of personality on the anti-Trump side of the fence where anything Trump is for must be bad. See Jen Rubin, the Lincoln Project, and so much of the legacy media.
The guy has almost single-handedly scrambled the entire intellectual underpinning of American discourse. It’s remarkable, really.
I cannot recall the original source of these words, but like you, I chose to use them as a major part of my own writeup on the definition of RINO, what it means to be a Republican, and what it means to be a Conservative. I have some additional thoughts I added to these words:
Trump was one of the biggest RINOs in politics - at least as that term was understood in 2014. It always frustrated me to have to explain to people (especially on the left) that he wasn’t actually conservative (in the fusionist sense of the term).
You’re absolutely right that he ran and governed as a NY liberal’s caricature of a conservative. The worst thing was that he made the stereotypes true.
I wondered when someone would define what a RINO truly is. Most politicians are scared of losing their career if they turn against Trump but in the end it’s not just their career that’s in jeopardy but their personal integrity.
RINO has always been a sort of vague epithet but before Trump, it generally meant Republicans who failed the ideological purity test. This would happen when the normal process of governance took place - a Senator had to compromise to get legislation passed, a governor had to make a decision in the interest of his state, etc.
They still do this across the aisle. Joe Manchin is just a DINO to the progressive clown car.
What Trump has done is purge ideological purity from the Republican party altogether and replaced it with the cult of personality. Republicans didn’t even have a platform at the last convention. It just said “Ask Trump.” The answer, perhaps intentionally, never follows any kind of intellectual framework beyond whatever the former president decides at the time.
All deviants from Trump are now RINOs. Worse, there’s a sort of reverse cult of personality on the anti-Trump side of the fence where anything Trump is for must be bad. See Jen Rubin, the Lincoln Project, and so much of the legacy media.
The guy has almost single-handedly scrambled the entire intellectual underpinning of American discourse. It’s remarkable, really.
I cannot recall the original source of these words, but like you, I chose to use them as a major part of my own writeup on the definition of RINO, what it means to be a Republican, and what it means to be a Conservative. I have some additional thoughts I added to these words:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/freethinkingtrueconservativesofreason/posts/1116762822077760/?__cft__[0]=AZVkfkzMjrdef1EXb6clWh1n2vWUulN8bsw5lBx6zEgqtuM7Ke_ZJdBgoUGeyRMKSbE5Oi0QZ6ni8nKZHnwb8RRi3180GOIUcvWUb7KwgYcGwpN8LfOEcuYOZ674aBxukkLtb-m0VJCXnTTk9HbwKM8p&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R