- RINO 175 up, 15 down
Republican in name only; typically means a member of the GOP who's more liberal than a Republican should be
Schwarzegger's one big RINO!
by Alex Aug 19, 2003
The usage of RINO predates the August 19, 2003 definition on Urban Dictionary by almost a decade. According to wikipedia, the term was coined by Celeste Greig in reference to Mayor Richard Riordan and Congressman Michael Huffington in 1994. These two dates are important as they represent the start and end of the Republican Revolution.
All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.
I. All This Has Happened Before
In 1994, Republicans were feeling pretty good. They had been out of power for forty-years and they could smell their opportunity to seize back the gavel. The sense of a coming tsunami built around conservative opposition to the President likely caused Celeste Greig to feel empowered to attack a fellow Republican whom she felt had failed to live up to the core principles of the Party.
Nine years later, in 2003, the one-time zinger had become so popular that it's common derisive usage would warrant an entry on Urban Dictionary. Only by this point the Republican Party had already begun it's descent into minority status when by August 2003 Iraqis had failed to see our tanks as the vanguard of liberation.
When an organization comes into power, especially after being in the wilderness for a generation or more, it is easy for the sudden insider to rapidly forget how the ascent was made. Sir Edmund Hillary is celebrated the world over while Tenzing is generally forgotten. And so Celeste Greig surely felt her Party's return to power meant that she no longer had to recognize the accomplishments of Richard Riordan or Michael Huffington. They had become the Tenzing of the Republican Party -- instrumental to their ascent, but rapidly dismissed.
And this is also typically how an organization goes out of power. By forgetting how the Republican Party ascended to power, the news makers of the Party began to kick the supports out from under the Republican majority by demanding partisan purity. It was this "purification" of the Party that popularized the term RINO as a derisive attack against any Republican who did not march in perfect lockstep with the ideologues. By the end, moderate Republicans were extinct and the GOP could no longer retain power a mere twelve years after their rise, well short of the perceived permanent majority envisioned as late as 2005.
II. All This Will Happen Again?
With the ascension of the Democratic Party in 2006 and the liberal bloc in 2008, will all this necessarily happen again? I fear it has already begun.
In the last two weeks there have been 324 stories and diaries mentioning the Blue Dog Coalition. Of the 22 most relevant stories and diaries, 21 attack the coalition. Many of these same stories and diaries recommend that the Blue Dogs either join the Republican Party, get in line with the Democratic leadership, or simply cease to be. The parallels to Ms. Greig's attack on RINOs is startling, and necessitates the question: are we repeating the mistakes of the last Republican majority?
Criticism of any bloc within a political party is certainly fair, especially if that bloc seeks to wield a veto over the legislation of it's own leadership. What is not fair is to forget that the current Democratic majority is build on the foundations set by the Blue Dog coalition. Consider these facts:
*While these 52 members from conservative/moderate districts stuck with the Democratic Party, 15 of their colleagues switched to the Republican Party.
*If the 8 Party Switchers from 1992-1996 had remained in the Democratic Party, the Democrats would have retaken the House in 1998.
*But for the 16 Blue Dogs elected from 2002-2004, the Republican Party would have retained the House in 2006.
*If 40 of the 52 Blue Dogs take the advice of some here, then the Republicans regain control of the House.
Let us be clear, I do not recommend silencing criticism of the Blue Dog Coalition. However, I see a disturbing parallel to the fall of the Republican majority every time someone urges the Blue Dogs to be primaried, switch parties, or anything else that amounts to calling the coalition ideologically impure -- a DINO.
We ought to respect what the Blue Dog Coalition has enabled us to do simply by their vote to install the House leadership. The coalition remains the Tenzing to the liberal bloc's Hillary. So please dial back the rhetoric lest the attempt to create an ideologically pure Party leads to a resurgent big-tent Republican Party.