RINO's Versus Grassroots Conservatives In Republican Politics – JP
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Doral, Florida – Political parties are not found in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, but politicians soon started splitting off into two informal parties. First, Federalists included George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall. They championed a strong central government, and represented commercial and urban interests. They founded the Department of the Treasury in 1789 and established the United States Dollar as a sound currency. Second, Democrat-Republicans included Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, Presidents from 1801 to 1825. They stood for decentralized government, and represented agricultural and rural interests. In 1803 they paid for the Louisiana Purchase with United States Dollars.
Political parties in America have relatively little substance, compared with parties elsewhere. The substance has to be filled in by the leadership of the parties during each period. The parties are like two chutes or tracks for competition, like two pistes in ski races. The Democrat party was founded in 1825 by Andrew Jackson to support his Presidential campaign of 1828. Democrats are generally people who feel like they are less American, peripheral, outsiders. They include more recent immigrants, like the Irish, Italians, Jews, Latinos and so on. They have been more likely to be Catholics and Southerners.
The Republican Party was founded, mostly by Yankee transplants, during 1854 in the upper Midwest, in order to contain the power of slave-holders in the new territories of the Western United States, not to abolish slavery. They tend to be more settled Americans, core citizens, although not necessarily a majority. They have been more likely to be Protestant, both mainline and evangelical, although Catholics have been joining more. Juneteenth is their holiday: Republicans defended the Union and abolished slavery from 1861 to 1865. They freed the African slaves in America from their Democrat owners and fathers.
Progressive Movement
The progressive movement started in America around 1900 as a reflection of the socialist movements in Europe, which traveled from there to here. They could not call themselves socialists, because even today that term does not sell well in America. They offered progress in opposition to the prevailing conservative outlook in America, which itself became a movement later in response.
Progressives advocate for greater government regulation, such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission. They got central banking with the Federal Reserve Act, and Constitutional amendments for income taxes and direct-election of United States Senators, all in 1913. Most importantly, perhaps, they advocate for a “Living” Constitution, with its interpretation shifting with the times.
Progressives in the Republican party (RINO’s) have consistently opened the door for progressive Democrats to be elected to office. In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt ran as a progressive third-party candidate against the incumbent Republican President Taft, and thereby opened the door to President Woodrow Wilson, another progressive. He was a racist who segregated the federal civil service and supported the KKK, got America into the First World War and thereafter pushed for joining the League of Nations, precursor to the United Nations, expanded the administrative state and suppressed free speech.
In 1932, Republican President Herbert Hoover’s progressive mismanagement of the economy into the Great Depression opened the door to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which further expanded the administrative state, and did not restore economic growth. In 1952, Eisenhower defeated Senator Taft of Ohio, the conservative presidential candidate and author of right-to-work federal legislation, for the Republican nomination. Ike presided over three recessions during his eight years in office, and personal income tax rates reached 70% on his watch. It took Douglas Dillon, JFK’s conservative Republican Secretary of the Treasury, to cut tax rates and launch the Go-Go 60’s.
President Nixon was also a progressive. He imposed wage and price controls in 1971, went off the gold standard that same year, expanded the administrative state with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and more, and appointed the Justices who gave us Roe v. Wade and Bakke. Watergate knocked out a progressive Republican, and gave conservatives in the Republican party an opportunity to come back into leadership after the debacle of the Goldwater candidacy.
Accordingly, Ronald Reagan, the first conservative President since Calvin Coolidge left office in 1929, won the election in 1980. He reduced taxes and regulations, and supported Paul Volker’s fight against inflation, resulting in growth over 5% every year from 1982 through 1989, building an additional economy the size of West Germany’s. He also helped lead the West to victory in the Cold War with a foreign policy not of Nixon and Ford’s détente or rapprochement, but of: “We win, they lose.“ He called out the Soviet Union as an “Evil Empire,” and challenged their leaders with: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!”
The tragedy of the contemporary conservative movement in America has been that the Reagan legacy was taken up by the unworthy Bush dynasty.
President Poppy Bush was elected on Reagan’s coat-tails, but immediately reversed Reagan’s policies, promising a kinder and gentler administration. He failed to conclude victory in Iraq, and raised taxes, despite his promise not to do so, which led to the third-party presidential candidacy of independent Ross Perot in 1992. This third-party challenge opened the door to the election of Democrat President Clinton. Accordingly, the popular vote in that year’s presidential election was: Clinton 43%; Bush 37%; and Perot 19%. Donald Trump learned from Perot’s experience not to go third-party. Third parties are for losers. RINO’s must be challenged directly in the primary elections, then in the general elections, a RINO is better than a donkey.
In 2020, President Dubya Bush campaigned as more conservative than Gore and Kerry, but he governed like a progressive, greatly increasing government spending and buttressing the administrative state. His legacy includes forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Transportation Security Administration and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the financial crisis of 2008, serious enough to be called the Great Recession.
Dubya’s stumbling presidency, together with McCain’s incompetence, opened the door for President Barack Hussein Obama, the Friar Johan Tetzel of American civilization. He sells indulgences for the forgiveness of the alleged original sin of all Americans: racism. If you support him, then you win absolution. Since 2008 the Democrat party leadership has been taken over by globalists, communists and jihadists.
For example, Democrats no longer nominate their presidential candidate through a democratic process. In 2016, Senator Sanders won the delegates, but Hillary had the super-delegates and won the nomination. In 2020, Senator Sanders again won the first three primary contests, so the Democrat leadership anointed Vice President Biden and cleared away all opposition. The presidential election that year was marred by irregularities. In 2024, the Democrat leadership conducted an involuntary coup d’etat against the incumbent President Biden, and instead installed as their candidate Vice President Harris, who had not won a single presidential primary vote in 2020 or 2024. Where is our democracy? Theirs is the democracy of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1990.
Trump pulled off a surprise in 2016, and defeated the Bush dynasty in the presidential primaries, while also offending the McCain mafia. His administration, however, was impeded not only by Democrat fabrications and schemes, but also by the failure of RINO’s to support him. RINO Speaker Paul Ryan and a record number of Republican Congressmen declined to run for re-election in 2018. President Trump had a dispute with Georgia Governor Kemp about the nomination to an open seat in the United States Senate. Kemp nominated a clueless ingenue, Kelly Loeffler, in return for her husband’s donation of 20 million United States Dollars to the Republican Party of Georgia. Trump preferred the nomination of Congressman Doug Collins, a fiery conservative.
During the presidential election of 2020, RINO’s Governor Kemp and his Secretary of State Raffensperger delivered Georgia and its two United States Senators to Democrats, and the McCain mafia delivered Maricopa County, and therefore Arizona, to Democrats. In return Cindy McCain was named by the Obama-Biden-Harris administration to head the United Nations food program.
This year, Trump has overcome Democrat lawfare to run an effective campaign, with little support from RINO office holders. For example, the Florida Attorney General has taken no steps to protect a state resident from wrongful prosecution and unequal protection under the law in the States of New York and Georgia, and also by the federal government in the District of Columbia and South Florida. It took the Missouri Attorney General, with dubious standing, to bring charges against the State of New York. In addition, RINO presidential contenders have waited for Trump’s campaign to be derailed by the lawfare, a health event or even assassination. No luck for them so far!
We also have Liz Cheney, former Republican Congressional leader and daughter of Dick Cheney, who served as President Dubya’s Vice President and administered President Nixon’s wage and price controls. She announced this week that she and her father are voting for Kamala this year. In 2020 she had written that: “Kamala Harris is a radical liberal who would raise taxes, take away guns and health insurance, and explode the size and power of the federal government. She wants to recreate America in the image of what’s happening on the streets of Portland and Seattle.” As Kamala has said, her values have not changed, but the Cheneys are willing to support her against Trump. RINO’s would rather vote for a communist Democrat than for a conservative Republican.
RINO’s would rather have Democrats in office than conservative Republicans like Donald Trump. They come in three varieties, sometimes combined: cowardly, incompetent and corrupt. Nevertheless, this November you should vote Republican. The Stupid Party is better than the Crooked Party for free citizens.
The Situation Today
The dividing line in politics today is not only Democrats versus Republicans, but also: (1) Progressives versus conservatives; (2) Globalists and cosmopolitans, versus Americans and patriots; (3) Bohemians and wokesters, versus the bourgeois middle class; (4) Socialists and communists, versus capitalists; (5) Crony capitalists versus free-marketeers; (6) So-called elite expert technocrats and credentialed scientific managers, versus We The People; and (7) Jihadists and other pagans, versus Judeo-Christians.
At the county level, the divisions are similar. Beware of people who go into politics to earn a living or to enhance their financial prospects; but also beware of people who don’t, but who are obsessed with politics and power, and who are in effect childless cat people. People are policy.
The foregoing was prepared for a presentation to conservative Dominicans in The Bronx. They have become disillusioned with the Democrat party, but in looking into their county Republican party, they have found some of the dissonance described above. It happens all the time.