Posted on 12/24/2010 7:29:13 AM PST by Kaslin
Here's both my qualifier and my bona fides for the opinion that follows: I earned my Republican stripes working for a GOP U.S. senator, for Ronald Reagan's first successful presidential campaign and for Newt Gingrich.
Since those days, I've occasionally branched out and suggested some policy or position that doesn't reflexively mirror some bedrock conservative outlook. Often some readers of this column, whom I deeply respect and appreciate, will call me out for this or that view by dismissing me as a "RINO" -- a "Republican in Name Only."
Of late, some of my friends are being labeled RINOs because they voted to approve the START anti-nuclear weapons pact with Russia. U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., did so following private briefings the rest of us weren't privileged to hear.
Isakson is such a RINO that he chose to first run for the Georgia state legislature as a Republican in 1974. That's when Richard Nixon had all but destroyed the Republican Party, and Democrats still ruled Georgia as all but a one-party state. To this day, Isakson's ratings as a conservative are almost always near the top.
Now he and a dozen of his fellow Republican senators, including a former presidential candidate, have chosen to act in good faith and sober reflection to pass a treaty to help limit nuclear arms. Even many of their detractors can't seem to fully articulate why they find fault with this.
Doubtless the treaty has warts. It makes little difference to me. In my years overseas in the advanced study of international relations, I learned foremost about treaties that they are made to be broken. Remember the Camp David Accords of Jimmy Carter? They were useful, even admirable. But they have hardly paved a road to a permanently peaceful Middle East.
I'd love for some of the conservatives who revere the Federalist Papers to actually pick up a copy of that body of work and read it. They might be startled to learn that the constitutional framers sagaciously designed America's lawmaking process to include a U. S. Senate that was elected not by direct vote by the people, but by state legislatures. This ensured that excessive public passions didn't drive the making of important laws and policies. I still believe the 17th Amendment, which provides for the direct election of senators, to be one of the most damaging political actions in our nation's history.
All this as it may be, I still believe that President Obama in his heart remains a stout redistributionist of wealth. If he could have kept enjoying a Congress ruled by Democrats for another two years, the lot of them might well have seriously jeopardized our free market system. Even after the Democrats' stinging defeat in November, damage continues to be done to our liberties by the president's legions of bureaucrats and policy czars.
Yet none of that can dissuade me from defending the many maligned Republicans who labored in the political vineyards a generation ago, when being a Republican meant having no more influence than the president of the local Elks Club. These brave men and women took the GOP from being all but irrelevant in Washington -- and from being too liberal under Presidents Nixon and Gerald Ford -- to today's world, in which the GOP represents the governing philosophy of at least a large plurality of Americans.
Many people are unhappy that the lame-duck Democratic Congress won some final victories before exiting stage left. But Republicans are like us all: They have to play the hand dealt them. I believe they've largely done that.
As for START, among other things it calls for onsite inspections of nuclear facilities. I'm only too happy to allow Russian inspectors stateside in exchange for our own inspectors being allowed access to nuclear facilities in the Russian regions of the old Soviet Union -- a potentially unstable place and situation. I learned in my long-ago studies that treaties are only as enforceable as the parties who enter into them are willing to make them.
As for those who like to use the label "RINO" like a political bludgeon, allow me to ask this question: Have you ever been pelted by rotten fruit and eggs as you rode in a parade, only because you were a Republican? Have you ever been an active Republican in a state overrun by little else but Democrats? I have. So has Johnny Isakson.
Sometimes it seems the only way to shed the dreaded "RINO" label is to forget about pragmatic lawmaking and instead just appear on radio or TV, selling CDs, books or other trinkets, and telling everybody only what they want to hear. And that's too bad, for conservatives and everybody else.
Republican In Name Only is a wonderful red flag to raise whenever bribery gets the better of principals. Don’t let anything, including this article, cause you to hesitate to use the term RINO on Liberals in Republican’s clothing!
Would one of it`s adherents ever have the balls to answer this, and spare us the obfuscation-the quasi-intellectual rationalizations or platitudes (keep it simple for dummies like me); What has all that “compromise” done to stop, let alone reverse, the non-stop trend towards the socialization of America? Has this lesser of evils approach strengthened or weakened the power of Conservatism in whats said to be it`s natural home? Has this "natural home of Conservatism" stopped or advanced the cause of a bloated and eventually Constitutionally abusive Federal branch?
I just don`t see how that carcass of a party can be saved, the DemocRAT Party has become the new american socialist party and the Republican(CRAT) Party is the new liberal party and there is no home for Conservatism; we desperately need to remedy that. No more Rats or Crats, I`m thru with the Lesser of two evils because it only leads to a forced choice of evil, not good.
It’s so much better to just call them STUPID and CORRUPT.
For all intents and purposes, there isn’t a popular vote, except as a “moral victory”, which amounts to nothing. However, several States have now tried to circumvent the Electoral College by having all their votes count for the candidate with the most popular votes.
But that only works on the first ballot, and that is a real zinger in the EC. Though technically, those elected to the EC vote for the candidate they represent, by law, they cannot be *required* to do so. Even more so, if there is no winner determined after the first ballot, which has happened, then all members of the EC become “free agents”, and can vote for whoever they choose.
And does that turn into horse trading like you wouldn’t believe.
Hear for yourself
http://audio.wrko.com/m/audio/36018158/u-s-senator-scott-brown-r-ma-on-the-start-treaty-and-dadt.htm
transcription may not be totally accurate “ 72 senator...we met with ambassadors and kings and queens and spoke to our European allies. And military leaders so. You know maybe someone has information I missed and — I’m happy —”
Well, I listened, and I am even further disenchanted with this guy. What a joke!
He has met with Kings and Queens and Ambassadors ... on and on and on. What bunk!
Who were these Kings and Queens? Who were these Ambassadors that he spoke with? He must have travelled to their homeland to speak with them because I do not remember any royalty visiting the US lately. Do you? The man is a liar!
For anybody else on these threads who wants to appreciate what a loser this guy is, simply listen to the radio interview referenced in post#87.
Wait till you hear his defense of DADT and the validity of the lame duck session. Bring a BARF bag.
Scott Brown isn't a RINO, he is a LOSER!
You are correct – and wise.
But like the Moro Islamic Liberat’n Front
which took the name MILF and
the very recent company use of WTF,
CINO is already very taken.
Traditionally that's what they do. The Democrats also have people who run party machinery and pay the bills ~ and they are "selected" in an entirely different manner.
What you have to figure out first is that the Republican coalition operates differently than the Democrat coalition. Since both parties are "coalitions" and far different than European or African parties or Asian parties, there are going to be people within each party who DO NOT AGREE WITH the rest of 'em ~ but they play some part in giving the party dominance in the legislative arena. Purity of ideology has NEVER been a necessity in American party politics.
Currently we have some Republicans in the Senate and the House who imagine that a deal was made with Obama that requires them to vote for some other Obama nonsense. We'll find out won't we.
Frankly, we can DEFEAT START through control of the budget and implementation legislation. It can become just another one of a long list of treaties Presidents have signed and Senate's have ratified that turn into poop.
We can also defeat TARP II and Obamakkkare the same way. It's coming.
Still, we are going to have some Republican Senators who don't go along with us but they're mostly old guys who should've retired already. There are suitible replacements available should they do so.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.[2]
You appear to have some problem with the 13th? None of us are supposed to have a problem ~ only Democrats and their running dog lackeys have a problem with slavery. They love slavery. They love to regulate. They love to take people and turn them into nothing more than lawn boys and bedwarmers.
The best bet to maintain some party presence was to grab a Democrat the others were turning on ~ usually because he wasn't engaged in pederasty, pedophilia, graft, theft or murder ~ and see if he'd like to go to the State Legislature as a Republican, or maybe even to Washington as a Republican Congress critter.
Over a long period of time we were able to wear down the Democrats enough so that a regular Republican could run and win in the South.
The Democrats peddle this myth that all the Souvrn' Democrats turned into Souvrn' Republicans ~ but the truth is that the Republicans built their party foundation from the grassroots up and eventually convinced the voting public to move into the 20th century by voting for them instead of the corrupt Democrat party.
The dispute over the 13th amendment as a guiding principle of government in this country is still a problem for the Southern Democrats ~ they pine for the lash of ol'massa or something, and that's what they get every time the Democrats take over Congress.
Put down the pipe!
Sounds more like Isakson is senile. Maybe an ethics issue could be used to leverage him out of office.
Some of them are still around. One of their body, Jeffords, decided to switch parties in mid session and became a Democrat just before his friends in AlQaida attacked America.
We have yet to address the question of his involvement in that event.
I`d love to know who took it?
How about we call them Marshmallows?
If we have a Republican majority in the Senate (after 2012) we can probably depend more often on the alcoholic, so my vote is for another alky from Mass.
There are a lot of them to pick from!
“Like I said the Country Clubbers RUN PARTY MACHINERY and pay the bills!”
Without conservatives, they won’t be doing much. My money and my votes don’t go to effetes, er, elites...
“Purity of ideology has NEVER been a necessity in American party politics.”
Times change. We do need it- badly. Cutting deals for political expediency is imperiling the very foundations of the Republic. If the Republican Party does not represent a fundamental and total counterweight to the blatant Marxism of the Democrats, then their usefulness is at an end. And if a few fat cats who find it would make life too hard between themselves because they can’t speak to someone on the golf course have to be kicked to the curb, so be it.
The alternative to working the system is, of course, shooting up the opposition.
Lots of luck with that.
B/S. RINO season is OPEN!! NO BAG LIMIT!!
VOTE THE RINO BASTARDS OUT IN 2012, 2014, 2016 and BEYOND!!
Rebellion is brewing!!
If you’re too damn weak-kneed to fight the evil bastards then get the hell OUT!!
DON’T TREAD ON ME!!
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