What's a RINO?

[drewtwo99]

@Blaster_Master

From my own experience, I know a few people who use the term RINO, and they’re all very conservative but most only see themselves and a little conservative, one even claims to be a moderate and not conservative at all. When they use the term RINO, they’re talking about politicians that most people would see as conservative; hell, I’m sure some people on this board would even see those RINOs as ultra-conservative.

Yeah, like our good friend Clothahump who posted the inspiring quote that started this thread.

To any truly moderate or rational observer, today’s congress is anything but “full of RINOs.” In fact there are all sorts of objective measurements that have been done (including a fantastic infographic showing the conservativeness of the republican party increasing over the decades) that show that the republicans in congress are more ideologically pure than ever before, but to someone as far right as Clothahump, maybe it really would appear that congress is full of RINOs.

To me, a true RINO would be a person who is registered as a republican, but almost always supports and votes for democrats. A republican who got up and spoke at a democratic convention about how terrible the republican party is and how great the democrats are, for example, would be a RINO. Zell Miller was a good example of a DINO, but I can’t think of any actual RINOs.

[TheSeaOtter]

@Blaster_Master

I agree with the idea that RINO (and DINO too, though I’ve heard it less often, but I’m in a pretty conservative area) is just a true scotsman pejorative for someone who is less conservative than they want them to be.

I live in the Boston area, which is about as solidly liberal as it gets, and I can’t remember the last time a politician was called a DINO (or other pejorative to the same effect). Certainly, there are plenty of assertions that individual Democrats are distressingly centrist, but no one is claiming they “aren’t real Democrats”.

Democrats (or at least the ones I’ve encountered) seem willing to accept that ‘their’ political party is a coalition that contains people with a range of views on most topics.

[Smapti]

@TheSeaOtter

I live in the Boston area, which is about as solidly liberal as it gets, and I can’t remember the last time a politician was called a DINO (or other pejorative to the same effect). Certainly, there are plenty of assertions that individual Democrats are distressingly centrist, but no one is claiming they “aren’t real Democrats”.

Democrats (or at least the ones I’ve encountered) seem willing to accept that ‘their’ political party is a coalition that contains people with a range of views on most topics.

Speaking as a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, I was more than happy to refer to Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and Zell Miller as DINOs.

The fact that they’re all gone now has made things simpler, for sure.

[Clothahump]

Answering the question ‘How do you feel about US House Republicans right now’ in another thread, Clothahump said:

Originally Posted by Clothahump

Too many of them are RINOs. There are nowhere near enough real conservatives in the Republican Party any more.

Rather than derail that thread, I’ll ask here: What is a RINO?

Since you quoted me, I’ll answer that I use the term RINO to denote two different kids of people: 1) someone who runs as a Republican because he can’t get elected as a Democrat or 2) a Republican progressive as opposed to a Republican conservative.

[Rhythmdvl]

@Clothahump

Since you quoted me, I’ll answer that I use the term RINO to denote two different kids of people: 1) someone who runs as a Republican because he can’t get elected as a Democrat or 2) a Republican progressive as opposed to a Republican conservative.

I’m particularly interested in the “real conservatives in the Republican Party any more” bit. The “any more” implies that there was a time when “real conservatives” dominated the party for more than a fleeting moment, and that they dominated the party for a sufficiently long time such that their views came to define the Republican Party.

That’s the crux of my question. Party crossovers or people calling themselves Republican only to get a nomination are the easy case, and not at all how many use the phrase.

[BrainGlutton]

@Clothahump

Since you quoted me, I’ll answer that I use the term RINO to denote two different kids of people: 1) someone who runs as a Republican because he can’t get elected as a Democrat or 2) a Republican progressive as opposed to a Republican conservative.

:dubious: “Republican progressive”? IF ONLY! :mad: Even the now-extinct Rockefeller Republicans were moderate-liberal, not progressive. Using the modern sense of “progressive” to mean “left-liberal” or “social-democratic” or “something well to the right of socialist but well to the left of liberal,” there have been no progressives in the GOP since Reconstruction. (There were radical elements in the GOP to start with – in the 1850s through the 1870s, there were even some actual Marxists in the GOP, including some who served Lincoln as generals – see The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition – Socialism, by Peter Nichols – but that didn’t last.) No, not even TR counts as a progressive in the modern sense – Progressive Era progressivism was a different animal entirely, more of an upper-middle-class-based good-government agenda.