Did they HAVE a rino party?
Years ago, what today we call “RINOs”, were willing to style themselves as “Progressives”.
They were listed on separate party affiliations on ballots in Wisconsin and in New York State, as I recall. Back then, there was no viable Democrat party in Wisconsin and many other states, partly as a residual from the time of the Civil War, when the Democrats, if not actually prohibited, were so unattractive to most US citizens not in the Old Confederacy, that they only formed a pallid little club in many of what were considered “Union” states.
It was not until the the rise of FDR, and the New Deal, that the Progressives began their migration to the Democrat party. The Progressive party was formally dissolved in Wisconsin only after the Second World War, when they signed a “peace treaty” with the old guard Republicans of Wisconsin, and one of the outcomes was the rise of Joseph McCarthy, who was always a very anti-Progressive politician, as the Progressives had become riddled with pro-Soviet members and agents. This propelled Senator McCarthy to take a very strong anti-Communist stance, but Joe being Joe, he got a little strident, and offended the members of what even then was the Deep State. Joe tackled the infiltration of our government, particularly the State Department and the Department of the Army, in headlines, but most of what he charged was well documented in records obtained from both the Army and State Department archives, until it was so highly classified that only the Russians ever knew about later developments.
John McCain considered himself to be the reincarnation of Teddy Roosevelt, a person he claimed to admire greatly, but was well know for being the “Progressive Republican” President.