“If not a difference between RINOs and Democrats, then why are the RINOs siding with Cruz on this, when none of the Democrats are???”
Obviously, anyone wanting to ever win again as a Republican (including RINOs) would be be a fool not to vote against that bill.
RINOs vote with the Republicans more often than not, to keep up appearances.
Let’s take a hypothetical example:
Let’s say you are a RINO senator, and you 100% support the Democrat political agenda, but for strategic purposes, you ran as a Republican and you call yourself a Republican.
Now, let’s say the Democrats sponsor a bill before the Senate requiring that any Senator with the Republican Party affiliation will be hanged just for having the name “Republican”.
As a RINO, would you want your Democrat friends to win that vote, knowing that if it passed, you’d be hanged for calling yourself a Republican?
Of course not.
Another example:
Let’s say you are a House RINO and you support the Democrat agenda 100%. Democrats have a majority in the House and there is a Leftist bill that all Democrats are supporting to shut down a pipeline or something.
As a RINO, you support the job-killing bill, but there are enough real Democrats to pass it without your vote.
Do you vote with your Democrat friends even though your RINO vote is not needed to pass it? Of course not. That would give you away. You would vote with the Republicans to keep up appearances.
That is what is going on here - the RINOs pick and choose when to betray their Republican constituencies. More often than not, they vote with the Republicans to keep up appearances - especially when their votes won’t make a difference anyway.
But on key strategic votes, like Obamacare, or impeachment, when the Democrats need that extra one or two votes to put them over the top - or to make something look “bipartisan” - a RINO or two will conveniently step forward to “vote their conscience”.
FReepers know which ones are the RINOs - even when they vote with the Republicans most of the time on symbolic votes like this one.. they aren’t fooling anyone.
Well, maybe they are fooling you. :-)
“RINOs vote with the Republicans more often than not, to keep up appearances.”
Regardless of the reason a vote is a vote, and a vote from Romney that helps stop the Democrats counts just as much as a vote from Cruz doing the same.
As to what’s in their heads - of course they HATE TRUMP, probably every last one. I don’t care - their feelings for Trump won’t force my family into re-education camps - the VOTES of their opponents for the Democrat agenda will.
So you may choose to put your family in danger because a certain RINO who, like the Democrats, hates Trump, but I suspect that most here will suck up and vote for the RINO, if only to keep their kids out of those camps...and then deal with the RINO later, when the consequences aren’t nearly as bad (as in the next Primary, for example).