Tag Archives: RINO

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

national news

No ‘real conservatives’?

Wow, man. Nimrods exist in every nook and cranny, even among avid readers of blogs — such as mine. One of them showed himself by making the dumbest assertion I can imagine about the House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection.

This particular nimrod, a fellow with whom I used to work in Amarillo, said that the panel contains “no real conservatives.”

Holy partisanship!

I will respond with this brief post. What in the world would you call Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the two Republicans chosen to serve on the panel?

Both of them are as true-blue — or ruby-red — conservative as you can get. They both have opposed traditionally, for instance, efforts to control firearm ownership, massive spending on domestic programs, abortion rights, increasing the minimum wage … shall I go on?

I won’t. Suffice to say that Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger are conservative lawmakers, a point I and others have sought to make since their appointment by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve on the insurrection committee.

They also happen to believe — contrary to some faux conservatives — in the rule of law and in their fealty to the Constitution.

Does that make them Republicans In Name Only? No. It does not. It makes them true to their principles.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

GOP needs to hear this

Today’s version of the Republican Party is in dire need of wisdom from the likes of a mayor of a mid-sized American city who — and pardon the cliche — is speaking “truth to power” about those who run a once-great political party.

McKinney Mayor George Fuller has earned high praise for his blunt talk about the state of the Republican Party, to which I am presuming he belongs; I base my presumption on the fact that municipal elected officials in Texas run as non-partisans.

As the Dallas Morning News commented today in an editorial: McKinney Mayor George Fuller said he was “ashamed” of the way his fellow party members have behaved regarding book bans in public school libraries. He said out loud what voters already know: Fringe politicos will use any culture war issue to fearmonger and drum up their base.

The DMN commented further: “Individuals are trying to hijack the Republican Party,” he said. “They’re divisive people that are hurting this country … They’re damaging our children, our most precious commodity, and using them as their new pawn.”

The Morning News notes that Fuller and Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker — another GOP official who has spoken against the current party leadership — are not “Republicans In Name Only.” The paper notes that Parker has held staff jobs for several top Texas Republicans and that Fuller is a business-friendly official who is a developer when he’s not governing a rapidly growing community in Collin County.

Fuller and Parker are pragmatic politicians who know the risks associated with their party being swallowed up by the cult of personality that has placed today’s GOP in grave danger.

McKinney Mayor George Fuller is speaking truth to the GOP (dallasnews.com)

A political party must not be hijacked, as Fuller has noted, by any individual whose sole motive is to cling to power … and the democratic process be damned!

The party had better awaken to the truth that Fuller and Parker are telling … or else.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news

Taylor a RINO? Wow!

Van Taylor needs some help from an unexpected source. That would be little ol’ me, your friendly good-government progressive blogger.

You see, the two-term Republican U.S. House representative is getting pounded by a Trumpkin cabal of idiots who consider Taylor to be a Republican In Name Only. Good grief! The young man is as Republican as they get. He won’t collect my vote on Tuesday when we get to cast our ballots in the Texas primary.

Taylor, though, will get this word in his defense as a Republican who is far from what the RINO hunters contend he is.

They castigate him for voting in favor of an independent commission to examine the 1/6 insurrection. That’s a no-no in the half-baked minds of the Donald Trump acolytes. The independent commission idea died a quick death in the Senate. Taylor then voted against creating a House select committee. Why? Because he said the select panel would be too political. That’s crap, of course. However, that first vote is like an indelible stain on the congressman.

The ultra-right-wing group calls itself RINO Reckoning. It is based out of Ohio. It has searched for so-called RINOs around the country and has found Taylor to be a prime target. He has drawn some far-right foes in the GOP primary, such as former three-term Collin County judge Keith Self, who alleges there is ample evidence of “widespread voter fraud” in the 2020 presidential election.

What utter bullsh**! Self is revealing his idiocy with every statement he makes about The Big Lie.

Van Taylor’s candidacy has put me in an admittedly awkward spot. I dislike his view of conservatism. However, I truly hate the message being put forward by those on the far-right wing of his party. They comprise a dangerous gang of traitors.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news

Van Taylor a RINO? Wow!

Believe it or not, I am going to come to the defense of U.S. Rep. Van Taylor, a Plano Republican who is running for a third term as my congressman from the Third Congressional District of North Texas.

You see, a far-right wing outfit based in Dublin, Ohio, has targeted Taylor, calling him a RINO, the acronym that stands for Republican In Name Only. This nut job outfit, which calls itself RINOreckoning,org, says Taylor voted with Democrats too many times in his second term.

So, this group of wackos wants Taylor tossed out. RINOreckoning doesn’t recommend a successor; it just calls Taylor a bunch of names and suggests that his bipartisan outreach betrays “real Republicanism.” What utter bullsh**!

I’ll be straight with you: I am not a big Van Taylor fan. I likely will vote for the Democratic challenger this fall. However, one of the few bright spots in Taylor’s still-brief congressional career has been his willingness to reach for Democrats in Congress to work on bipartisan solutions. It has earned him a bit of a positive reputation among many of his colleagues.

There’s one half-truth I want to mention specifically in this anti-RINO screed I saw online. It chastises Taylor for voting in favor of an independent commission proposed by Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to look into the 1/6 insurrection. The measure never got out of the Senate; it died a quiet death in the other chamber.

What these right-wing fruitcakes don’t dare mention is that Taylor voted against creation of the select committee that Pelosi formed as an alternative to the independent commission. The RINO hunters don’t say a word about that, which of course is understandable as it argues the liars’ half-baked narrative.

Oh, and then there’s this one: It says that Taylor sided with “Liberal Liz Cheney.” Rep. Cheney a liberal? Are they fu**ing serious?

Take a look at the website:

Rino Reckoning

This outfit clearly is aligned with the QAnon wing of the GOP. Its message is as dangerous as, say, the kind of crap that flows from Donald Trump’s pie hole about the “rigged 2020 election” and the “widespread voter fraud” that elected Joe Biden. Spoiler alert: There was no widespread voter fraud, and the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. political history.

The Dallas Morning News noted this about Taylor in its summary of editorial board recommendations for the upcoming midterm election: Taylor, 49, a businessman and Marine veteran in his second term in Congress, has demonstrated deeply conservative values dating back to his years as a member of the Texas House and Senate. He has a reputation as one of Congress’ most engaged and responsive members to his constituents.

There really is much to admire about Rep. Taylor. He served as a Marine officer in Afghanistan, fighting to protect the free-speech rights of fruitcakes who populate RINOreckoning.org. I likely won’t cast my vote for Congressman Taylor. However, he deserves better than to be mischaracterized in this manner by a dangerous group of right-wing outliers.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com