Who are the RINOs?

I’ve never been a political animal, and never supported one party over another.  Two of my favorite modern Presidents are Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.  While radically different in some ways, both Presidents were sincere patriots who offered what they felt the country needed at the time.  And big majorities of voters agreed.  Donald Trump is totally different, however, and presents a number of very serious threats to the US, its system of government, and our way of life.  This is one of many commentaries on him and the dire situation we find ourselves in under his administration.

There is so much ground between those who support Donald Trump and those who abhor him, that is seems impossible to reconcile the two sides in the foreseeable future.  Among the many ways the two groups differ is the very basic question of who comprises the two sides.  Trump supporters have been described as Republicans, deplorables, ignorant, racists, far-right, nationalists, and yearning for life in the 1950s.  Trump opponents are referred to as Democrats, far-left, elites, globalists, and RINOs - among other things.

One of the huge misunderstandings - actually, a serious falsehood - is that Trump and his kind are the true Republicans, and that any Republican who doesn't support him is a RINO: Republican In Name Only.  This claim, demonstrably false like so many other things Trump and his followers broadcast, creates just one of the many walls that keep the two sides from finding common ground.  A little history will help set the stage for considering this important issue:

At least as far back as 2013, there was a great deal of discussion over whether Ronald Reagan would have been accepted and supported by the Republican party as it had become at that time.  According to long-time Republican leader Bob Dole, the party lacked the big ideas and the willingness to compromise that made Reagan so successful and popular three decades earlier.  49 states out of 50 - that's how many Reagan won in the 1984 presidential election: red states, blue states, states on the coasts, mid-west states, red-neck states, farming states, liberal states - he won them all (almost).

This matters because in almost everyone's mind (at least until a few years ago), Ronald Reagan was THE ideal example of a true Republican.  Yet in 2013, long before Donald Trump became a factor in Republican politics, Reagan would be seen as too liberal, too accommodating, too unwilling to go to war.  In other words - not a true Republican!  Three years later, Newsweek magazine wrote: Based on their public statements, policy proposals and accomplishments while in office, not even Ronald Reagan would come close to satisfying the Republican base if he were seeking election today. The point is not that Reagan was a liberal. It’s that the GOP is at risk of becoming so dogmatic that it would exclude even its most iconic member.

By that time (March, 2016), Trump had become a serious contender to be the Republicans' nominee for President, and that really freaked out most party leaders.  A partial list of Republicans who publicly opposed Trump included: former Secretary of State and 4-star general Colin Powell, who said Trump was "a national disgrace;" both Bush former presidents, along with Jeb Bush; former Republican nominees for president Mitt Romney and John McCain; Ted Cruz, who called Trump a "pathological liar" and "amoral;" former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele; Trump's current BFF Lindsey Graham, who previously vowed not to vote for him; former Defense Department and CIA head Robert Gates; and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  And MANY more.

To reiterate: These were major players at the highest levels of the Republican party, and they vehemently opposed Trump and what he represented.  Since then, they've been joined by other very high profile, very Un-liberal, Un-Democratic leaders such as: former Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark, former SEAL Team 6 commander Gen. William McRaven; the military's most highly decorated 4-star general, Barry McCaffery, who called Trump "a serious threat to national security;" and Congressmen Jeff Flake and Bob Corker.

None of these people are liberals, and none of them are "RINOs".  Donald Trump, on the other hand, was a registered Democrat until 2009, and fits the definition of a RINO much more than these other Republicans.  Rather clearly to anyone who's followed Trump's antics over the years, he is a "Republican" only to the degree it suits his needs.  And today's "Republicans," as suggested previously, have broken with what that term has meant over the decades.  It is THEY, the ones calling others RINOs, who are no longer real Republicans, I would suggest.

The point is that there are a lot of people who are NOT liberals or Democrats and who abhor and oppose Donald Trump and all of his Congressional toadies.  Millions of us; probably tens of millions.  We resent being called those things, because they're not true.  But then that's what so much of Trump is all about: spreading lies that can be easily disproved, yet taken as truth by his misinformed followers.  And the sad reality is that breaking that pattern will be neither easy nor quick, allowing immense damage to our nation to continue for quite some time.