It’s been years since we began hearing about RINO’s: Republicans judged “not Republican enough” to suit other Republicans, especially the Tea Party and their ilk. It means “Republican In Name Only”. In other words, to the Republicans who use that term, you can only be a real Republican if you believe exactly what they believe.
The name and the concept wreaked havoc within the Republican Party. Until that time, it had been a fairly broad-spectrum large slice of America, encompassing such diverse ideas as isolationism and internationalism, free enterprise and the safety net, environmentalism and all-out exploitation of resources. Due to the Southern Strategy first implemented in the 1970’s, it had also taken on some typical southern attitudes, especially the almost fanatical opposition to abortion and the pervasive gun culture. But those trends were not yet uppermost. There was still room in the GOP for a wide range of beliefs and a large spectrum of believers. They felt that they had a “big tent”.
Ever since the 1912 election cycle, some Republicans have accused other Republicans of not being “real Republicans”, but to some extent it cut in both directions. It did not prevent all factions from being heard, or competing successfully for nominations or offices. Then in 1992, after the Bush/Clinton election, the abbreviation RINO surfaced. The background was the fact that Republicans had held the White House for 12 years and felt somehow entitled to it. When it was won by a Democrat they felt betrayed. That was the year that the abbreviation “RINO” first appeared.
Of course they spent the next eight years trying to destroy the victorious Democrat, in every conceivable way, but more basically, at a gut level, they felt that something in their own party had failed them. Thus began the RINO hunt. There were—and I believe still are—actual concrete entities within the Republican Party called the “RINO Hunter’s Club” and the “RINO Watch”, both dedicated to identifying and ousting from the party anyone not deemed ideologically pure enough to satisfy the farthest right Party members.
Surprise: they succeeded. They drove huge numbers of former Republicans right out of their party. (After all, who likes to be called names and treated with contempt?) Some did remain in the party but ceased to take an active role (example: Olympia Snow), but most became Independents or even Democrats. In fact I personally know two who became strongly activist Democrats.
The result, which anyone might have predicted, was that the Republican Party shrank. This does not seem to have dismayed the remaining Republicans, if they have even noticed it. In fact they are still hunting RINO’s, demanding ever more stringent ideological purity, as their numbers grow ever smaller. The logical end to this ought to be that finally there will be only one Republican left.
Things are not always logical. Instead the end has been Trump. He is the epitome of a RINO, not only not ideologically pure, but not even ideologically aware. He takes whatever stand happens to seem expedient at the moment, on any and all issues, and changes it the next moment. Yet I don’t think I have ever heard any Republican explicitly call him a RINO. Many of the former RINO hunters are now fawning over him in an excess of sycophantic display. I have heard it said that this is the result of fear; that those who incur Trump’s ire get burned in the end.
Perhaps this is the cause in some cases. However, I think it is not personal fear that animates long-time successful Republican office-holders. They are after all survivors of brutal political infighting. Rather, it seems to be a different sort of fear: the fear that Trump is all the Republican Party has left, that without him their beloved party will collapse like an empty plastic grocery bag. They may well be right.
Thus the current Republican state of things.
Now let’s consider the Democrats.
I first saw the term “DINO” right here on Daily Kos, only a few months ago. It must be extremely new; when I googled it I found almost no references, in contrast to “RINO”. It’s usage has been entirely pejorative, I think exclusively by some Bernie Sanders supporters referencing some Hillary Clinton supporters. It has, one hopes, not caught on.
The Democratic Party has been, for over 200 years, the original “big tent” party. That has been its great strength. Even while embracing the Dixiecrats as a significant part of its coalition, it was able to push forward social legislation on multiple fronts: child labor laws, women’s rights, protection for unions, pure food and drug laws, assorted elements of the social safety net, and finally Civil Rights. These things could be accomplished because, not in spite of, the big tent aspect of the party. It didn’t matter that there was a significant minority in the party that opposed every one of these advances. What mattered was that the majority favored them, and that thanks to the “big tent”, there were enough Democratic voters to elect people who would pursue these goals.
Even since the demise of the Dixiecrats in the 1970’s, the Democratic “big tent” has been smaller but still functioning. The “Blue Dog Democrats” (less numerous heirs of the Dixiecrats) did not prevent the passage of the ACA (despite having some influence on its final form), nor did they prevent the various measures that have made up the revolution in LGBT rights. In fact they facilitated all of those reforms, though unintentionally, simply by making up a Congressional Democratic majority which allowed for their passage.
The mantra has always been, until perhaps recently, “if you call yourself a Democrat and vote Democratic, if you are elected to an office and surround yourself with other Democrats, if you belong to Congress, or a state legislature, or a city council, and caucus with other Democrats, then you are facilitating Democratic goals. You are therefore a Democrat.” It has functioned successfully for 200 years.
My concern is a recent quest for ideological purity by some Democrats, which has led to the term “DINO” being used for the first time. Nobody denies that Democrats disagree on all sorts of issues. They always have. What is new is the idea that a person who does not embrace some specific set of those ideas is not a “real Democrat”.
This is a road that can only lead to calamity. Does anyone seriously want to see the Democratic Party follow the disastrous road that has led the GOP to the brink of dissolution? I know that some of these new “DINO hunters” think that if that happened, somehow there would be a new party that would include only their fellow-believers, and would, in some now-unforeseeable way, be able to achieve all their desired goals. This belief is as futile as the parallel set of beliefs of the RINO hunters.
The only way to achieve these goals, or indeed any goals requiring public action, is by strenuous hard work, by convincing huge swaths of others of their desirability, and by compromise with any large blocs who cannot be convinced. All of this is facilitated by having a formidable political party structure at one’s back. Indeed, in most cases that’s an absolute requirement for getting anything meaningful accomplished on a large scale.
DINO hunters: think twice, and then think again, before you try to destroy the Democratic Party. In the coming years it may be your only friend.