This gamecock thinks it’s time that tea partier and other conservatives in the GOP started referring to ourselves as RINOs, and proudly so, unless and until the majority of elected Republicans in Congress use the means that the Constitution provides to try to achieve conservative ends.
To label a fellow member of the GOP as a “Republican in name only” is to question their commitment to conservative policies. But doesn’t that epithet assume that the Party of Lincoln is primarily committed to replacing failed liberal policies with conservative solutions? Yet, maybe the association of the party with its grand old successful Presidents, of which there have been few, is misleading.
Yes, the Great Emancipator, Silent Cal and The Gipper were conservatives that achieved conservative ends. But their tenures only cover 21 years of American history since its founding 159 years ago. And yes, nearly all other GOP Chief Executives have been more conservative than the Democratic Party alternatives. But no significant liberal Democrat program, except for slavery and Jim Crow laws, has ever been eliminated even when the GOP held the White House and Congress early this century. Pat Buchanan covers the history well in his recent Goldwater-Rockefeller redux description of last week’s betrayal of conservatives in both houses of Congress by a majority of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s U.S. Senate placeholders, who, by the way, ran and got elected as Republicans:
Those that are content to merely tweak a gargantuan and growing Welfare State own the GOP today, and have for most of its history. They own the name Republican.
The difference between liberal Democrats and Republicans as Democrat Lite, used to matter more before Big Government got Super Humongous big. But having crossed the Obamacare tipping point, American can’t be saved from economic despair as the New Obamanomics Normal by mere Democrat Lite tweakings.
Therefore, this Republican since our Summer of 2001 “conservative epiphany” is officially declaring myself a RINO in a party designed for elephantine memories worthy of being conserved. Will more conservatives join us and use our sharp rhino horns to prod a majority of the party to use the power the Constitution gives us to save America from the ruin we have been on since the Housing Bust?
Mike DeVine‘s Right.com
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
