RINO-ism has been a congenital condition that has existed within the body of the Party since its birth in the 19th Century. RINO-ism is like an inherited disease which passed to the Republican Party from its parent, the Whig Party. The ill-effects of this inherited disease sometimes lay dormant. But when they become active, they have proved to be historically devastating not only to Republican electoral hopes, but have proved to be spiritually devastating to the very soul of the Party
Part 1, here.
Part 2, here.
The above excerpt is from Part 1, to show how the sophisticated argument is honed, this is from Part 2.
The historian Richard Hofstadter agreed with Trilling, portraying Conservatives as cranky, angry reactionaries who were people, as the Washington Post put it, who “complain about the twentieth century” and irrationally sought to repeal it. Such types were not to be taken seriously.
Faced with this reality, the Republican Party was firmly under the control of go-along-to-get-along Republican In Name Only (RINOs - or as Eisenhower called it “Modern Republicanism) who ushered in a golden era of bi-partisanship.
In basic agreement that Isolationism was a dangerous foreign policy, both Republicans and Democrats recognized the Cold War required a vigilant and active policy to contain the danger of Communist Imperialism. Democrat Cold Warriors such as Truman, John Stennis and John F. Kennedy were often even more anti-Communist than were many Republicans.
Both Parties agreed that Statist intervention in both economic and social policy was the key to a stable and prosperous society. “Moderate” Republicans coalesced around not only Eisenhower, but around those RINOs who provided the intellectual basis of his polices. These were found, not surprisingly, in the Eastern Establishment located in NYC and Washington DC and they were led by Nelson Rockefeller.
The Rockefellers were the financial and social scions of the Eastern Establishment. They were not only ultra-rich, with mega-fortunes tied up in Standard Oil (long ago re-named “ESSO” and later “EXXON” in a clever but dishonest public relations attempt to put some distance between the company and the Robber Baron reputation it acquired when it was known as “Standard Oil”) and in the powerful international bank, Chase Manhattan.
Moderate “Rockefeller Republicans” supported ALL the statist policies that grew up in the shade of the New Deal and WW II including expanding social welfare programs, Federal Civil Rights legislation, high rates of taxation and public works (especially highway and other infrastructure) spending. The only difference between Rockefeller Republicans and their so-called rivals in the Democrat Party was that the RINOs maintained they, as people with stronger business backgrounds, would be able to administer statist government more efficiently than Democrats. They had no problem keeping “good” New Deal measures – as long as they were run “efficiently”. RINOs pretended to have more respect for States Rights and private enterprise than Democrats, but recognized that the New Deal – and all the statist meddling it represented – was to be PERMANENT. Combined with the rejection of isolationism, which was required by the demands of the Cold War containment of Communism, RINOs insisted that this was the KEY to the electoral success that was denied them during their years in the wilderness under FDR and Truman.
But the sacrifice made for the Eisenhower era was high because it caused the Republican Party to basically make itself a virtually irrelevant afterthought to Democrat/Liberal ideology. In the name of getting elected, the RINOs became “Democrat Light”, which was a confection that usually resulted in minority status given that the voters could get the undiluted version by pulling the lever for their Democrat opponents.
It surprises me - not quoting "Onward Christian Soldiers" lyrics as key to the rant. But they speak for themselves and do not need my thoughts to aid them. I encourage the Crabgrass blog troll to check the links and send those folks cash. Plenty. They perform a service for all sensibly rational people. They explain their point of view for others to read and understand who they are. There is value to that. This crescendo from Part 2, and they are not even finished - it is not the final rallying cry of the piece, but mere preparatory oratory:
With Goldwater forces drowning out his supporters with boos and catcalls, Rockefeller all but declared war on the Conservatives:
“During this year I have crisscrossed this nation, fighting … to keep the Republican party the party of all the people ... and warning of the extremist threat, its danger to the party, and danger to the nation… These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror, they have no program for America and the Republican Party... [they] operate from dark shadows of secrecy. It is essential that this convention repudiate here and now any doctrinaire, militant minority whether Communist, Ku Klux Klan or Birchers.”
Having been compared to both Communists and Fascists, the Base went berserk. It led Goldwater to ride the wave of anti-RINO feeling at the Convention to the nomination, but it also led to his greatest mistake.
Wearing RINO antipathy as a badge of honor, Goldwater crossed the Rubicon on the “extremist” issue when he all but embraced it saying “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice -- and let me remind you also, moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
It was a tactic that won the nomination battle, but caused him to lose the electoral war.
Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats picked up where Rockefeller left off. Realizing the RINOs had a vested interest in allowing the Conservatives to lose in order to have any hope of regaining control of the Republican Party, Johnson’s campaign openly demonized Goldwater.
He was the tool of paranoid Right-wing conspiracy theorist kooks in the John Birch Society; he was a tool of Segregationists and a favorite of the Ku Klux Klan in the South; he would repeal Social Security (actually, Goldwater wanted to make it voluntary)… indeed, he would repeal the entire New Deal; he was a tool of Wall Street; he was anti-Labor and was a danger to labor unions; he would exacerbate sectional differences in the country dividing North from South and Urban from Suburban and Rural; he would recklessly inflame the Arms Race; he would get us involved in Vietnam and, most dangerous of all, his recklessness would lead us into a nuclear war with the USSR.
This point was driven home in the infamous “Daisy Girl” campaign commercial which has gone down in history as the most vicious example negative campaigning ever produced.
It portrayed a little girl picking the petals off a daisy innocently counting them; a few seconds into the commercial a stern, metallic-sounding man’s voice is heard counting down a missile launch. The little girl looks skyward and when the count reaches zero a nuclear bomb explodes into a terrifying mushroom cloud.
Johnson’s voice is heard saying:
“These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die." It is followed by a voiceover which solemnly intoned "Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.”
Conditioned by months of negative RINO campaigning stressing exactly this point, the commercial symbolized everything people feared about Goldwater and his policies. Combined with Johnson’s happy talk of his “NEW” New Deal – his socialistic “Great Society” domestic program and his dishonest pledge not to escalate the war in Vietnam (when he promoted what he knew was a lie: stating that “American boys” would not be sent to fight wars that “Asian boys” should fight while preparing to do exactly that once the election was over) Goldwater – and the Republican Party - were annihilated in the 1964 elections. They not only lost their bid for the White House, but they also suffered terrible losses in the House and Senate both of which were dominated by large Democrat majorities as a result.
Liberalism reached its high water mark with the help of RINO subversion. The conventional wisdom was that the Conservatives had led the Party into a catastrophe; the Republican Party was pronounced dead and its obituaries were found in every newspaper, in every magazine and on every TV news program…
…but, all the obituaries missed an important fact: it was not the Conservative Base that was dead, but the unopposed RINO domination of the Republican Party that had existed since the 1940s. The RINOs themselves survived, but were now so alienated from the majority of its members that they realized they could no longer operate openly as liberals, let alone as leaders of the party.
Buoyed by defections to the Republicans by Southern Dixiecrats opposed to Johnson’s pro-Civil Rights legislation and by conservative working class Democrats in the North who had many problems with Johnson’s domestic policy of requiring high taxes to pay for social welfare that was viewed by traditional workers as parasitical, the Conservative Base of the Republican Party didn’t shrink in the wake of its 1964 debacle, it grew.
Song of the purist purge of the RINO, redux; fit for talk radio. Such people, indeed.
They have a link to "The Memo," read it - here. It explains much of what they are about.
They have their most fundamental page, also, here. It explains even more of what they are about.