Donald Trump has a penchant for calling Republican officials who disagree with him “RINOs” or “Republicans in Name Only.” These people range from the late Colin Powell to Mitt Romney to Larry Hogan. Arguably bona-fide Republicans.
But are they?
According to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey in which voters were asked whether the events of January 6, 2021, were “a legitimate form of political discourse,” 33% of self-identified Republicans said that it was — as did the Republican National Committee in its censure of two other Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who don’t see storming the U.S. Capitol as “legitimate . . . political discourse.”
Which makes one wonder: Is there such a thing as the Republican Party as it has been known prior to 2016, or is what now exists the “Trump Party” pure and simple? As is widely known, prior to running for president as a Republican, Trump was cozy with Democrats and some — as in some traditional Republicans in the earlier part of this century — might have argued that the free-wheeling morality exhibited by Trump was something that no self-respecting Republican would ever do.
But appealing to people who wanted to, in effect, “stick it to the Man,” even though Trump was arguably the poster-child for “the Man” in terms of his alleged wealth and disinterest in the “little guy,” a category that is a large portion of his “base,” Trump became the leader of the Republican Party, which he evidently continues to be.
So here’s a question: Does the leader get to redefine what something is? One could argue that the people that Trump has described as RINOs are actually those who have traditional Republican values and so those who are in Trump’s camp are the real RINOs because one of the only things that they have in common with what has been long thought of as Republicanism is their opposition to Democrats.
Perhaps those who are actual Republicans, not the post-2016 variant, need to take their name back. Of course, that would necessitate their standing up to Trump and it seems that another characteristic of long-standing Republicans is loss of a spine, which explains their inability to do anything other than precariously lean on the edge of a cliff that they’re afraid Trump and his minions will push them off.
Of course, conceivably the cliff has a drop of only a few inches, but they’re not going to take that risk because they like their jobs too much to uphold principles.
Macaulay is The Hustings’ pundit-at-large.
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