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.
Christie Todd Whitman was a disaster that set the party back a decade.
Christie ran as more or less of a moderate
He is aggressively cutting back spending and reducing the size of government, supports tax cuts, is openly pro-life, supports school vouchers, opposes environmental regulations that harm the economy and opposes same-sex marriage. How can he be defined as moderate?
Your boy Obama targeted a lot of them with his shut down of the automobile dealerships. You may not know but the Democrats know where they work, how they work, who they are, and how to hurt them.
I think you're confounding the guys running the party machinery with the folks on the RNC committees.
At some point in time you have time to waste on the upper reaches of the party structures, but for the most part all of the parties are STATE parties, and the national elements are supposed to arrange for conventions and the like.
I would use, "TRAITOR" instead, but then all the Republican Namby-Pampies "moderates" wouldn't let me back into their "Big Smelly Tent."
That's mostly because the MSM is losing its influence. They were the only ones who would actually say "it's good to be a moderate" ~ which it isn't of course.
Was that really the case or did Romney just want to make a Presidential run?
New Jersey is a bit more conservative than Massachusetts but both Romney and William Weld were elected governor as Republicans. And, if the economy and impact of liberal legislation like Romneycare negatively impact the state, I believe a real conservative could win there.
From a national perspective, liberal Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins do more harm than good. Brown appears to be in the same category.
There are at least a baker’s dozen of the traitorous bastards in the Senate and still a passel of them in the House. And there will always be more in the making. It’s OPEN SEASON, NO BAG LIMIT until we bag them ALL!!
See this vanity.
But if you think it looks bad to choose the 13th, I'd go for the 16th instead :-)
Cheers!
...oh, and Merry Christmas!
Liberal republicans if you prefer...but they aren’t conservatives. They may have a few conservative views but one or two areas of agreement with conservatives does not make one a conservative.
“Your boy Obama targeted a lot of them with his shut down of the automobile dealerships. You may not know but the Democrats know where they work, how they work, who they are, and how to hurt them.”
First, Obama isn’t “my boy”. Secondly, it was patently obvious that whole thing was politically motivated- I wouldn’t dispute that but I find it disparaging that you assumed I didn’t know. But I’ll let that slide, because your first remark is what I want to address.
“BTW, the overwhelming majority of the Countryclubbers ARE Conservatives.”
I want them to prove it. I want them to walk the walk. And not just sit on one leg of the stool, either- not ditching social conservatism because it offends some of their snotty liberal friends and business partners. My opinion, based on a lot of current events, is that there are too many in the GOP who are willing to compromise at a point when further compromise only gives the Demcoms more of what they want.
“You must get men of a spirit that are likely to go as far as they will go, or you will be beaten still.”- Leo Amery, quoting Oliver Cromwell. Amery made these remarks while they were ejecting Neville Chamberlain from the Prime Ministership of Great Britain. I find them particularly appropriate at this time.
Obviously when Zero gets us nuked, the blast wave won't hit this author, then.
And if people like this author don't start getting the true reason behind the election results, it's going to happen to them again.
We are making considerable headway.
I don't think we've got but two Rockefeller Republicans left (Snow and Collins), and in the Souf' there's Br'r Lindsey, but he'll go whichever way the wind blows.
Now, technically speaking, NONE of the current Republican Senators ever ran for office as a Democrat except Senator Shelby.
No doubt we continue to need a term for folks like Shelby. You take a real good look at that bad boy's voting history and he's been on the WRONG SIDE a hundred times more often than Brown (as yet). RINO fits the man; the man fits the classic definition of RINO, and that means all those others are simply Leftwingtards and Pukes.
You get rid of just two of the outliers ~ and pick from Corker, Alexander, Hatch and Lugar for your best picks, and you'll see the others having to come in line with the regular Republicans.
We'd earlier had an event called The Gang Of 14 which consisted of 7 Democrats and 7 Republicans who'd agreed to screw up the Senate together to advance various items of common interest ~ that included Justice Alioto's confirmation.
The names on the Republican side are interesting: Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) (no longer serving), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mike DeWine (R-OH) (no longer serving), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), John Warner (R-VA) (no longer serving).
The Democrat 7 suffered 3 losses as well ~ 2 by death.
It is not unreasonable to expect a high rate of death and retirement among senior Senators which means we can actually plan on that. The time has arrived to start figuring out who we'd like to run in the next primary that involves any of the Senators you don't like.
Yeah, advocating the return of personal indenture for life is a non-starter in this country these days, so go for something else.
Look, if you don’t have the stomach for the RINO hunt, just get out! We’re gunning for them ALL!!
I don't think they need to prove anything to you ~ they won, and in elective politics that's all that counts.
And yes, Obama is your boy. You didn't do enough to stop him back when he was running for the Illinois state legislature.
Everybody is somebody else’s RINO.
If you want to get rid of all the Left-leaners and former Democrats, go for it.
My position is that we had a perfectly good word that described a phenomenon that has been around for a very long time ~ and that back in the days when Republicans were a pitiful helpless minority in the South, it served the party well.
I would like for people to refer to the morons, thieves, reprobates, conmen and people of that kind with the correct terms which are morons, thieves, reprobates, conmen and their friends.
Let NONE ESCAPE~!
Da (as Boris might say).
RINOs haven't figured out that they will be cashiered-out in their very next PRIMARY; and that the Democrat and Independent alternative pathway doesn't work (when the votes are counted fairly.)
.
wrong guy but same point
“And yes, Obama is your boy. You didn’t do enough to stop him back when he was running for the Illinois state legislature.”
Merry Christmas from NC, where I have lived all my life. Rather hard to stop someone from making it to the Illinois state legislature from here.
“I don’t think they need to prove anything to you ~ they won, and in elective politics that’s all that counts.”
Rather elitist statement....but actually, yes they do. They have to prove they are worthy of my vote- and that of people of a like mind. Otherwise they don’t get it. “We’re not as Marxist as the other guys” isn’t going to cut it anymore, either. Winning doesn’t matter much if the only thing you are going to do is go along with the Demcoms.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.