Josh First's Blog

Why RINOs keep on RINOing

Despite my working out in the boondocks, I still cannot get away from the politics of presidential campaigns and Washington, DC. Not only do I pay attention because EVERY American should pay attention to politics – it is the lifeblood of our constitutional republic, and without the involvement of The People, it dries up and blows away – but I pay attention because this 2024 election is the last gasp we Americans have for freedom and free air. We are ever so close to losing our freedoms to the DC Swamp.

Two particular forces are at work against We, The People and our freedoms. One is the Left, which includes the entire Washington, DC, professional establishment, including federal employees at every agency and commission, the media, and the Democrat Party. The second force is the Republican Party establishment, or the GOPe, which includes Conservative, Inc. and conservative establishment media.

Members of this second group are often referred to as “RINOs” because they are “Republican In Name Only.” They are not politically or culturally conservative, and they usually stop well short of doing anything that actually challenges the Left. Some people call RINOs controlled opposition to the Left, but I think that is just an occasional role that the GOPe must play in order to advance what they think their own interests are. More than anything, the GOPe RINOs are deeply self-interested people, with their own values, their own visions and views, and the truth is, their views are truly unique.

Not that being selfish, unprincipled, and lazy on a battleground where if the Left wins, everyone loses all their freedoms tomorrow, is such a uniquely cool thing. But it is true that the GOPe is made up of people who in their own minds believe they occupy some unusual and well-considered ideological place. And while the rest of us can’t see it or understand it, and while the GOPe in all their ideological purity seems to be really no different than the Left, practically speaking, the truth is, we average Americans are dealing with a group of people who think very differently than we do.

Someone recently commented online that Florida governor Ron DeSantis can never understand a President Donald Trump, or even Trump’s voters, because DeSantis is a product of elite educational institutions (Yale, Harvard), while Trump is a product of street work and street smarts and making deals to make everyone on the street a winner in some way. I think that comment is a true insight, because it gets at the roughly 20% “White Wine” voters in the GOP who really like DeSantis and identify with him. They are elites, or at least see themselves as elites, definitely as superior to the rest of us unwashed beer drinking “deplorables” who work for a living. And thus, they feel none of the raw fear of failure that everyone else in America is feeling right now. RINOs don’t see Trump as a lifeline in a storm, they see him as blocking them from getting the control they want (and which they are very good at getting even from an inferior force and position in Congress).

And so political careerist DeSantis is going to keep trying to claw his way up the political ladder, whether he makes a good impression or not as a presidential candidate (few Republicans doubt his good abilities as governor of Florida). He has the backing of the GOPe, the RINOs, the Republican “elites” who are not ever ready to rumble to win. Someone quipped that the RINOs are the people who always show up with a bag of golf clubs and a little white “I surrender” flag, and while they are not quite that useless and fickle, there is more than a seed of truth in it. They are not brawlers.

So why won’t the RINOs support President Donald J. Trump, who already gave us the best four years America had enjoyed in a very long time? Because RINOs can afford the economic downturns that destroy most other people, and like the Left, with whom they are almost always in bed, and which is committed to communist revolution, the RINOs are just as  ideologically committed to being “moderate” at any cost. Makes no sense, but it works for them in their heads.

So RINOs are gonna RINO and there is very little hope of persuading them to join the ranks of the people who clean their pools, maintain their golf greens, and work on their cars. The GOPe RINOs occupy their very own little place on the political map, and they intend to stay right there. Just like they tried and failed with neon-green RINO Dave McCormick in the 2022 PA senate seat race, the RINOs are trying to get a very similar Ron DeSantis into the White House in 2024. DeSantis has more of a good track record to run on because of his successes in Florida, so he is a real candidate for president, but as we have seen in the past few days, DeSantis on the national stage is like a deer in the headlights.

And that is because RINOs cannot ever have the genuine answers to the critical questions that real Americans want to hear. They can’t, by definition; they just don’t see the world the way the rest of us do. RINOs are neither leftist revolutionaries nor conservative pragmatic survivalists. RINOs are self-limited by their self interest, and by their belief that they alone should be in charge of running things, and when pressed to explain this in public, they bumble and stumble like Ron DeSantis has done the past few days. RINOism only makes sense to RINOs.

So count on Ron DeSantis staying in the presidential race, no matter what, even though he has a snowball’s chance in hell (assuming Trump survives the efforts to assassinate him) of winning. It is because DeSantis is the RINO protest vote against all the Deplorables and their leader, Trump. This is all they got, and they are gonna play it. RINOs gonna RINO…

So to all the Deplorables out there, move on and expect nothing but protest after protest from the GOPe. They are not on America’s team, they are on their own team. We are going to have to win 2024 without them.