Tag Archives: RINO

national news

Donald Trump: RINO in chief

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Donald John Trump’s game of charade as he pretends to be a “conservative Republican” has been called out many times by many people and in many forums. So what I am going to provide isn’t an exclusive.

He is a Republican In Name Only. Trump is the nation’s RINO in chief.

There once was a time when Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility. They railed against budget deficits, no matter their size. The 1980 GOP landslide win for the presidency rested in part on Ronald Reagan’s intense criticism of President Carter’s $43 billion budget deficit that fiscal year. Forty-three billion bucks wouldn’t even get a mention these days!

Trump’s big ugly bill runs up deficits in the trillions of dollars. It piles on another $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. About the only GOP-friendly policy in the big ugly bill are the tax cuts that benefit the mega-rich. Those cuts come at a cost … the aforementioned deficits and debt.

Republicans hate Marxist dictators. Trump calls them “smart cookies,” says he admires their leadership strength, wishing he had the kind of popular support that they enjoy.

GOP pols normally would rally to the side of a sovereign nation attacked by Russia. Not this RINO in chief, who scolded the Ukrainian president for daring to suggest he could defeat the Russians on the battlefield.

Donald Trump has turned Republican orthodoxy on its ear. Yet he continues to bully GOP members of both congressional chambers into backing his idiotic tariffs, which real Republicans such as George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford all have said are taxes that result only in inflation.

Donald Trump once admitted that he ran for president as a Republican only because the GOP offered him the easier path to the pinnacle of power. There you have it right there. He cannot articulate a party policy issue because he is too stupid to understand one.

All hail the RINO in chief!

national news

Get ready for some serious pain

I am going to doff my proverbial cap and proclaim that Donald J. Trump did the nearly impossible by persuading enough Republican members of Congress that it was in their best political interest to approve Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that gives tax cuts to rich folks who don’t need them while yanking money away from programs that help millions of other Americans who need the assistance.

I don’t recall Trump ever campaigning for the issues he managed to accomplish with this legislation. He never said he would slash Medicare and Medicaid while giving more tax cuts to the mega-wealthy. He never pledged to gut the USAID funds that help feed starving children abroad. He didn’t say he would all but destroy the social fabric of our government.

That is what Congress has signed on to do. The Senate needed a tie-breaking vote from Vice President J.D. Vance to send the bill to the House. And the House needed to get a first-class bullying job from Trump to send this piece of sh** legislation to Trump’s desk for his signature.

What’s next? I suppose we now have the 2026 congressional election coming up. There must be a formula for turning Congress over to the control of the opposition party that actually cares about the entire country, rather than just those who support what passes for the Republican Party … and the RINO in Chief.

I will offer a left-handed tribute to Trump for defying all the odds and getting his fellow nation-haters to climb aboard the clown car that now governs us.

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have been exposed as a powerless collection of men and women who cannot find their backside with both hands. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries set a House record for speaking for the longest stretch ever. Big deal. Congressional elections are coming up next year. This is the best opportunity voters will have to change the dynamic in Washington and restore some semblance of compassion in a government that today demonstrated that it has nothing to offer.

national news, political news

Trump redefines conservatism

Donald J. Trump, through the force of his enormous will, has managed over the past decade to reshape the political landscape into something few of us recognize.

Take the definition of the term “conservative.”

I came of age politically in a time when Barry Goldwater and later Ronald Reagan became the gold standards for political conservatism. Their view was the term meant minimal government influence in our lives. Goldwater later became known more as a libertarian, taking the view that government had no role to play in determining people’s sex lives or whether a woman could obtain an abortion.

Trump has taken the conservative movement in an entirely different direction. He wants to use government as a weapon to wield against his political enemies. He vows to sic the FBI and the Justice Department on those in the media who criticize him.

He wants the government to go after colleges and universities who teach certain subjects in class. He recently withheld a huge fund from Harvard University because the Ivy League school refused to knuckle under his demand to stop teaching about racism, slavery and other low points in our nation’s glorious history.

Trump wants the government to ban transgender athletes from competing, he wants transgendered patriots to be barred from serving in the military.

None of this is “conservative” as I grew up understanding the term. An activist government is more of a — dare I say it? — liberal effort. In the old days, liberals were seen as wanting to deploy government to bring meaningful change.

These days, it’s all been tossed into a cocked hat.

Which brings about a key question. Who in our modern political world stands out as a Republican In Name Only? The Republican Party used to be thought of as the conservative party, yes?

I’ll cast my vote for Donald Trump as the nation’s RINO in chief.

national news, political news

Who’s the real RINO?

The adherents of the 45th POTUS have redefined a long-held term: Republican In Name Only.

The only way now to be classified a RINO these days is to disagree with the cult leader’s world view or criticism him for it … such as it is. You agree with the idiot, you’re good. You disagree, you become subject to censure or worse, expulsion from a once-great political party.

Sen. Mitt Romney recently declared that “absolutely not” will he vote for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee this November. He hasn’t said who will get his vote, not that I care. Let’s remember that we cast our votes in secret, so it’s no one’s damn business who votes for whom.

He’s already getting the RINO barbs flung at him by the cult followers. He earned their misplaced scorn by voting to convict their hero in the first impeachment trial held in the Senate.

In reality, though, the real RINO is the cult leader. He ran as a Republican in 2016 because it provided him the easiest path to victory. Dude actually said so!

Does he know about basic Republican doctrine? Does he care to learn about it? Does he give a crap about anything other than fattening his own wallet? No, no and no!

The term RINO these days ought to be seen as a badge of honor by real Republicans who happen to be appalled at their party’s most recent and reportedly future presidential nominee.

If only they could — or would — deny him the power he craves.

national news

RINO gets re-defined

An amazing transformation has occurred within the American political dictionary over the past, oh, six year or so.

The term RINO has taken on a new meaning, one that has nothing to do with what I understand the acronym was created to symbolize.

RINO is shorthand for Republican In Name Only. I long have understood the term as one that describes someone who talks a good Republican game, but who veers far from normal GOP orthodoxy with his or her votes or public policy decisions.

These days? It is used as an epithet for anyone who opposes the presence of Donald John Trump on the political stage. Here’s where the irony gets so rich you damn near choke on it: Of all the prominent Republicans in action today, Trump himself is the personification of a RINO.

He once said that abortion should be legal, then he changed his mind. He has disparaged the men and women who serve in the military. Trump has cozied up to dictators such as, let’s see, former KGB spy Vladimir Putin, Marxist North Korean thug Kim Jong Un. He trashes our intelligence network. Trump wants to yank the United States out of NATO. He applauded Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. During his term as president, the nation rang up the largest debt in history.

Do you get where I’m going here?

And yet those who adhere to Trumpism contend that those who don’t are the RINOs of this world.

Trump has redefined Republicanism, turning into something barely recognizable to real Republicans.

Therefore, he has reshaped the American political glossary, turning it into … damn, I don’t know what to call it.

Go figure.

State news

Senators aren’t RINOs

Robert Nichols and Kelly Hancock already have been labeled Republicans In Name Only by the Ken Paxton acolytes who are angry at the state senators for voting their conscience in the just-completed Senate impeachment trial of the formerly suspended attorney general.

Sens. Nichols and Hancock did what they felt was the right thing to do, which was vote to convict Paxton on the impeachment articles tossed onto senators’ laps by the overwhelming House majority that impeached him for misconduct of his office.

I would laugh out loud at the notion that Nichols and Hancock are RINOs, except that it isn’t a funny accusation to make. Hancock, from Tarrant County, is considered one of the more conservative members of the Senate; Nichols, who hails from Jacksonville, isn’t far behind.

And yet … the Paxton crowd is going to tar these men for agreeing with their fellow House Republicans that Paxton committed misdeeds worthy of him getting tossed from office.

This signals arguably the start of a sort of “civil war” among the MAGA wing of the Texas GOP and the rest of the Republicans in the Legislature. The MAGA wing won the argument when the Senate acquitted Paxton and allowed him to return to work.

Nichols and Hancock aren’t up for re-election until 2026, which might explain why they showed the backbone missing among their Republican colleagues. Perhaps they see tempers cooling enough until the 2026 GOP primary season kicks into high gear.

Whatever. Neither man is a RINO, period. Given the state of the Republican Party these days, the RINO label just might stick to them.

That would be a shame.

State news

Cornyn says Trump can’t win? Hah! Ya think?

The minute I heard about what Sen. John Cornyn said about Donald Trump’s chances of become POTUS once again, I thought instantly of a friend of mine in Amarillo … who called Cornyn a RINO.

I chuckled when my friend said such nonsense, because Cornyn is nothing of the sort. The San Antonio native is as rock-ribbed a Republican as you’ll find. He just happens to believe that the GOP is going to lose the 2024 presidential election if it nominates the twice-impeached former POTUS to run against President Biden.

It’s time, Cornyn said, to nominate someone without all the baggage that Trump is lugging around. Starting with the very real probability he is facing multiple future indictments for criminal activity.

Frankly, I don’t know why I am even remotely concerned about any of this. I try like heck to shove Trump aside. I am refusing to comment on every single lie that flies out of his pie-hole.

It’s just that when a solid GOP politician such as John Cornyn says Trump would take his party down the drain, the party ought to heed the advice this Texas wise man has to deliver.

Then again, were he to run for POTUS yet again, maybe it’s good that he would lose once more.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Cornyn a RINO? Hardly!

AMARILLO, Texas — A longtime friend of mine revealed something to me today I did not expect.

He called John Cornyn, the state’s senior U.S. senator, a Republican In Name Only. I could only respond with, “Cornyn a RINO? No, he isn’t.” My friend wasn’t to be deterred. Yes, he is, my friend said. So is George W. Bush and so, too, is the rest of the state “in danger” of becoming a “blue state.”

Ah, but then he laughed it all off. He said, “I guess it depends on your perspective.” Yep, boy howdy, dude!

My friend is a fellow I admire greatly, and I will continue to admire him and will call him my friend. I just am going to suppose that we won’t talk politics in the near — or likely distant — future.

I came back to where we lived for 23 years. I guess my discovery of my friend’s political outlook reminded me of just how “conservative” the right wing swings in this part of the world. It reminded me of how the Panhandle once served as a breeding ground for the John Birch Society, about how so many residents of this community adhered to the ultra right wing of the political spectrum.

My friend took a moment to note during our visit that I am “exposed to all them liberals in Dallas.” Therefore, it doesn’t bother me, he conjectured.

I then informed him that because of recent events in my life I am divorcing myself from politics — at least from the extent I have been involved in them in recent years. Yeah, I know that this is a “political” blog post, but its intent is to illustrate one of the discoveries I have made on my westward journey from my home in North Texas.

And so … the journey continues in the morning to places far out west.

Pacific Ocean? Here I come!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

RINO: misdirected term

It is an astonishing thing to watch and to hear as Republicans seek to hang RINO tags on fellow party members in this age of Trump as the former POTUS seeks to tighten his grip on a once great and grand old party.

Donald Trump’s hijacking of the party has turned it into a cult of personality in which actual long-standing and principled Republicans are being demonized because they, in so many cases, simply stand for the rule of law.

RINO, of course, is the acronym that stands for Republican In Name Only. What is baffling to me in the extreme is to hear so-called Republicans who — prior to Trump’s arrival in politics — had little to do with the party or with crafting policy positions on which the party ran for public office.

Donald Trump is one of them. In that context, he is the ultimate RINO, an empty vessel who becomes a champion of whatever cause someone tosses out there for him to scarf up.

Liz Cheney is seeking re-election to her House seat in Wyoming. She has been censured and cast out of her state’s GOP. Why? Because she had the temerity to criticize Trump for inciting the insurrection of 1/6 and for refusing to adhere to the long-standing tradition of handing over power to the man who beat him in the most recent presidential election.

And yet she is as a Republican as they come. Her record is replete with votes in favor of gun ownership, against abortion, in favor of lower taxes, favoring a strong military.

You get the idea, right? Her Republican credentials cannot possibly measure up to the standard that the Trump Cabal of Cultists have set. You have to be loyal to the former POTUS, or else you’re out!

It is truly astounding.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Wait for RINO epithets

Wait for it. They will come in due course, if they haven’t already been pouring in at Liz Cheney’s congressional re-election campaign office.

Rep. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, is featured in a political ad in which he calls Donald J. Trump the “greatest threat to democracy” in the nation’s history.

You know what’s coming next, right? There will be exclamations from the Trump cultists that Dick Cheney’s views don’t matter, and that he’s a Republican In Name Only. Yep, Daddy Dick Cheney is a RINO in the eyes of those who continue to coalesce around Donald Trump.

Dick Cheney proclaims his pride in his daughter Liz’s efforts to expose Trump as the crooked fraud that he is.

The elder Cheney is trying to get his daughter re-elected to the House seat from Wyoming, the very seat Dick Cheney occupied before he left Congress to become White House chief of staff for President Ford. He then served as defense secretary for President George H.W. Bush before being tapped to run as VP with “W.”

The thing is, Dick Cheney also is right when he calls Trump a “coward” because he lies to his supporters about the so-called theft of the 2020 presidential election. The former VP says, instead, that Trump is the electoral thief, seeking to reverse the results of an election he lost handily.

I haven’t cheered much for Dick Cheney ever since he coerced President George W. Bush into going to war with Iraq on the false claim that the Iraqis played a role in events of 9/11; they played no role!

However, the ad he has participated in on behalf of his daughter give me pause to offer some much-appreciated praise for the man once called “the shadow president” during the two terms of the Bush administration.

Will the ad turn the tables and breathe enough life into Cheney’s campaign to resurrect it? It’s not likely. Then again, we ought to consider tossing the conventional political playbook into the crapper.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com