RINO - as we know is a term used derogatorily by the hard right to characterize a person who calls themselves a republican but doesn't act like one by their standards. How ironic it is that this now describes almost all republican Congress-persons. Most are latter-day replacements signed on to the Grover Norquist anti-tax un-American blind totality which has long been an untested requirement for a chance to get support and not be eviscerated by right wing partisan media to have a chance at becoming a Republican Congress-person. Since the mid 1990's when the first "republican revolution" filled the house under the bluster and blather of Newt Gingrich, Fox News came on the scene fulfilling both the dream of a "GOP TV" network cooked up in the ultra paranoid Nixon White House by aid Roger Ailes, and the result of de-regulation of the FCC in 1987 by Ronald Reagan which killed the "Fairness Doctrine" which kept television news and opinion balanced and centrist for the previous 40 years, these events began the replacement of the republican party to embarrassment it is today. To have a democratized and civilized two-party governmental system, the number two essential besides the number one essential of holding elections and voting on bills is abiding by the outcomes of those defining structural elements--win or lose. We still have the elections and the votes (occasionally on legislation) but the real RINO stand-ins that have replaced the party of Bob Dole, Richard Lugar, John Danforth and many other persons of independent mind and character through lying with hand on the Bible in taking the oath of office while fully knowing they will hold their loyalty to the Norquist blind totality higher or face the wrath of Chief Inquisitioner and RINO'S Rhino, Rush Limbaugh, no longer is there that second essential element of democracy and the civilization it defines--abiding by the outcomes of elections even if you lose.
When conservative columnist David Brooks, (who b/t/w remembers when republicans in Congress were nothing like the fifth rate stand-in RINOS like the trio that went to Egypt and declared the Muslim Brotherhood, a political organization, party to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center as well as every other terrorist group in the Islamic world, Michelle Bachmann, Steve King and Louie Gohmert), when Brooks talks about the phenomenon he called "Cruzism" in which he cited this round-about Canadian Texan "Senator" belligerently inciting his fellow RINO hordes to shut down the government or threaten the administration with trashing the country's full-faith and credit through "kamikaze" tactics, RINO'O Rhino Rush Limbaugh was apoplectic in his defense of Cruz into his gold-plated microphone, "that's what he's supposed to do, what do you want him to do, go along?"
Well, frankly Chief Inquisitioner and RINO'S Rhio, that's what our American tradition that we like to call democracy calls for. It calls for abiding by the outcomes of elections and votes whether you like them or not. We are not a brand new democratic experiment in the middle east where religion and law are one in the same and people want democracy only as long as they win and war if they don't. We have 230 plus years where with the exception of the Civil War, where we pretty much behaved according to our Constitution and abided by the outcomes of elections.
Democrats sat through eight years of Bush-Cheny being wrong at ever turn where the acts of omission haven't yet to be tabulated and added to the dimensions of the disaster that was that mis-adminstration. But because we are American and observe the traditions of our country we went through it as nauseating as it was. When the shoe is on the other foot however and it's not even something as awful as a ginned-up false war but a positive idea to provide health care that was originally a genuine pre-RINO republican idea that gives reason for the national suicidal behavior of "Cruzism" and post-republican party petty contrarianism, there is only one or two things to call what it is as this group of posers, stand-ins, liars, boobs and some actually very sly and committed fraudsters and extortionists and they are things none of us are familiar with facing in America i.e insurrection and tyranny. And what is the stated goal of this tyranny? It is "to shrink the government until it is small enough to drown in the bathtub"--once a "haha" piece of Norquist rhetoric now backed up by a decade and a half of action which demands we stop thinking of this as just the musings of a pesky outsider but the real machinations of an unlikely tyrant.
This has stopped being any kind of "democracy" since Ronald Regan enabled the country to observe different "facts" by deregulating the FCC and therefore live different histories through opposing partisan media which has divided families as sure as the Civil War did in the late 1850s and 1860's. And Grover Norquist and others seized the moment of the first republican revolution which showed its stripes then by shutting down the government like a bunch of stupid children not at all sure of what the consequences of their actions would be. The transformation of the old true republican party into the RINO horde of belligerent and reckless insurrectionists and babbling fools it is today was underway. How much more will President Obama throw into the bottomless pit of the ghost of compromise he still believes in while the RINO stand-ins just take it as another piece of con-artist victory until they have indeed gotten government of the people, by the people and for the people, supposed by President Lincoln to never vanish from this Earth, small enough drown--and with it every progressive program ever accomplished to make us the modern, competent and compassionate civilization we still "sort of" are. How long will it be before all progressive accomplishments from the new deal forward are rolled back small enough to fit through the drain in that tub straddled by grinning and smug Grover Norquist?
If we can get President Obama to stop thinking this is all about him and that this isn't just racist contrarianism or that compromise isn't just "a dirty word" as he put it and realize the democracy he still thinks exists has indeed been snuffed by the long snowballing effects of Reagan, Gingrich, Norquist, the Kochs, The Club for Growth, Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, and other low-scruple Norquist pledge signatory RINO stand-ins, and do it now in no uncertain terms, as the financial crises loom, the government will not be shut down, the debt ceiling will be signed ObamaCare will be implemented and supported and Norquist who holds no office will have to face not a press question he can dodge with his familiar assertion that the pledge is not to him it's to the voters, but instead the full force of American justice which will counter-assert that what he has been saying doesn't matter, it is what he has done that adds up to matter. And that is form an extortion and fraud engine whose outcome is the single biggest inside attack on American democracy since the Civil War--the end of one of the two party system and replacement of it over time with fools, colluders and low rate ninnies that want the job and perks and will sign anything and never break ranks regardless of consequence or appearance. And every last one whose signature is on that unholy blind totality that has given us the sequester will be given just two options: renounce or resign. There is no such thing as compromise with belligerent unqualified dolts or true criminals
Real republicans should once again aspire to hold office and not be held under threat of a totality pledge backed up by threat of the wrath of a lying industrialized partisan paranoia machine. And that loud-mouth beside himself nearly flinging the reading glasses off his head when passionately cosigning Ted Cruz's reckless unwillingness to abide by the outcomes of elections in democracy and work together with fellow Americans to make the most of the will of the people will at last be finished. I live for that day when that golden mike of lies and hate is silenced for its roll in inciting deliberate reckless gambling with destruction of what's left of the real America to simply satisfy the want of vain victory at any cost.