Last week, my Twitter feed looked like a time travel diary into the Republican party’s days gone by. Many people were on a mission to figure out which potential Republican candidate never appeared in a picture with Paul Ryan and declare him or her the only candidate worth supporting. Everyone who has been spotted within a 10-mile radius of Paul Ryan at some point in their career is now disqualified. Apparently, being a “RINO” can spread through a handshake.
Paging ardent time travelers: just 8 years ago, Donald Trump identified as A DEMOCRAT and, by his own admission, made sizeable donations to Hilary Clinton. Donald Trump had dinner with every Hollywood liberal imaginable. Talk about “guilt by association.”
Much like the villains invented by JK Rowling, some Republican voters are working overtime to separate RINOs from “pure bloods.” The term RINO was invented for Republicans who would sell out their conservative principles by voting for Democrat-sponsored bills. More recently, the accusation started to apply to every Republican politician not deemed conservative enough – even if the same Republican served the party well in the past. Today, the term “RINO” is thrown at anybody who does not spend their days inventing mean nicknames for Don Lemon.
The same people who wholeheartedly defended George Bush and called opposition to the Iraq war “unpatriotic” (I was alive when that happened, so don’t tell me it didn’t) claim today that Bush was the worst President of all time. And in a more recent case of amnesia, the same people who viewed Ron DeSantis as Donald Trump’s potential running mate, have just discovered that the Governor is the worst RINO and a globalist to boot. I don’t know how you get from a rising star of the Republican party to a RINO over the course of just a few weeks.
American political system has only two viable political parties: one liberal and one conservative. Neither party stands for the beliefs of every one of its voters. Each party merely represents two opposing visions for the country. The vote for a party does not mean that you fully embrace the views of all party members – today or in the past. It simply means that you align yourself with one political vision rather than another. Today, these two visions can’t be farther apart – so imposing purity tests on people who share your vision is a great exercise for shooting yourself in the foot.
Neither party today has the same standards they did in 1980, or 2000. Even Democrats agree that today President Kennedy would be a Republican. Obama did not “evolve” to embrace gay marriage until late into his term. Today, that would disqualify him from even running on a Democrat ticket. The direction of the Democrat party has shifted significantly, and so did the direction of the Republicans. However, there is only one party that throws its members under the proverbial bus for the views they once held, or politicians they associated with, 20 years ago.
Your party is only as good as delivering a victory for its candidates. Instead of scouring the internet for long-lost “allies” of Paul Ryan, we should be exposing Republicans who voted to re-elect Ronna McDaniel – the RNC chairwoman who practically surrendered the 2020 election to the Democrats. The only “fitness” test we need is whether a politician can win – not who he shook hands with 20 years ago.
And one last thing: if you believe that a 20-year-old picture with Paul Ryan is more politically damaging than a two-months old picture with Kanye West, you should think of running on a third-party ticket.
