RINOs! Normal isn’t coming back

As Wyoming Republicans go to vote in their primary today, the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) cry out for normalcy. They never paid more than lip service to defense of the Republic. Instead they defended their patronage slots and concentrated on such relatively mundane matters as Grandma’s Social Security check and a letter of recommendation for Junior to apply to West Point. In other words, “constituent service.” But American politics has changed. Donald Trump didn’t change it; he answered the bully threats of the Democrats. They changed American politics. And while they continue to play the new game, RINOs play the old. This is to inform them that the days of the “Uniparty” are OVER.

Where do RINOs come from?

RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) deceive you to get the nomination. Then they get to Washington (or your State capital) and surrender every campaign position they took.

For that reason you hear the word “Uniparty” today – a union of RINOs with Democrats. The Wall Street Journal had a neat catch phrase for the Uniparty: “Remocrats and Depublicans.” The editors of the Journal never made clear where they stood, but they knew the Uniparty when they saw it. And to some extent they still do.

Donald Trump, in 2015, decided to run for President – and hijack the Republican Party brand. He attracted a new kind of citizen candidate – call them New Republicans. But they weren’t all that new. We’ve seen them for decades, running in primaries well to the right of all other candidates. And they never got The Party Line – listings on the top row of primary candidates. The Line was once the make-or-break endorsement. Voters, if they showed up to vote in primaries at all, typically nominated those who had The Line.

Occasionally a candidate would break The Line – like immigration attorney Anna Little in New Jersey’s Sixth District. But until recently, they lost the general election.

Enter Donald Trump

Donald Trump changed all that. Not only did he win his nomination by effectively breaking The Line in State after State. He actively encouraged others to do so. And he and most of his endorsed primary winners won the general election in 2016. But we can obviously say that he didn’t do enough of that. We can look at ten RINOs who voted to impeach him at least once. (Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.-At-large, is one of them.) We can also look at the refusal of the Congress to decertify the Election of 2020 as he asked. CNAV will wager any amount, and offer 100:8 odds, that, had the Party designations been reversed, Democrats would have decertified the election.

Not only that, but Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the Republican Floor Leader in the House, was urging Trump to resign immediately. He denied it, but Rachel Maddow of MSNBC produced the video to prove it.

We also see Fiona Hill, “top adviser on Russia,” comparing Trump to Vladimir Putin. All this accords with Uniparty rules: Democrats do the dirty fighting; Republicans (make that RINOs) roll over.

So Donald Trump set about actively recruiting New Republicans to break Party Lines and knock out RINOs in primaries. We saw typical results four weeks ago in Maryland.

Incidentally, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has been quietly investigating the FBI for its ideological corruption for months. Fourteen FBI agents have come to him to protest the direction of their agency. See here and here.

A RINO commentator cries out to Democrats to knock it off

Over the past week or so, but especially yesterday and today, CNAV saw an example of something new. We see a RINO political commentator crying out to the most virulent Democratic Party leaders and ideologues. (And also to their servants in the FBI.) His message: Knock it off! You are helping Donald Trump get re-elected – and just when we were getting our Party back to normal!

How else can one interpret this piece he put out yesterday?

I was not an advocate of “Lock Her Up” precisely for the same reason I am not an advocate of “Lock Him Up.” It is madness to assume either party would lock up the political rival of the incumbent.

Regardless of what you think Hillary Clinton did or did not do with her email server, there are tens of millions of people who would assure you they know better than you what she did or did not do, and you cannot persuade them otherwise.

Regardless of what you think Donald Trump did or did not do with classified materials, there are tens of millions of people who would assure you they know better than you what he did or did not do, and you cannot persuade them otherwise.

What the RINOs mean by this

Translation: Republicans were smart to leave Hillary alone, just because she had been a political rival of Trump. Democrats are foolish not to leave Trump alone, just because he has been and is a political rival of Biden. And not merely foolish: living in a world of their own (idiots), and pursuing an insanely vindictive politics.

But what he does not say is that Republicans – at least, new Republicans – do more than think Hillary Clinton misappropriated classified information by promulgating an email address that referred to a server in her private residence. We have evidence that she so acted, and of the consequence. On the other hand, Democrats know perfectly well that Trump has not mishandled classified information. By now even a reporter for CBS News admits that Trump declassified everything that scares the FBI so.

But an Erick-Woods Erickson refuses to believe that. He refuses to believe that either Party does anything seriously untoward. He dismisses Republican misgivings about the Election of 2020 and also dismisses Democratic misgivings about the Election of 2016. Yet again: Democrats have nothing but the Steele Dossier, which means they have Hillary’s word on it, and nothing more. (Hillary bought and paid for the Steele Dossier.) Republicans can point to highly irregular practices – practices the Erick-Woods Ericksons of this country now excuse. Republicans in Virginia famously figured it out, figured out how to counteract it – and won an off-year election.

More of the same

Today Mr. Erickson offered more of the same. The chief redeeming feature of his prose is that he castigates not only the Democratic Party but also the media. He cites Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who calls us new Republicans “nihilstic, dangerous and contemptible.”

Then he cites Sam Donaldson, who wants to hale Trump before a “jury of his peers.” After that he delivers his message, which CNAV will paraphrase here:

You want Trump to go away, but are not sure what can send him to prison or otherwise disqualify him. When you say that, you admit that this is not going to happen! Now Knock! It! Off! We had those blackguards beaten and on the run, until you had to pull your stupid, stupid stunt!

Did the Democrats ruin things for the RINOs?

Why does CNAV suggest Erick-Woods Erickson seems to feel that the RINOS and their Establishment had the New Republicans beaten and on the run? Because he said so. Not in so many words, but close. Yesterday he said this:

Every single month since he left office, the Republican Party has more and more moved on from him. After the 2020 election, 90% of the GOP wanted Trump in 2024. Before the raid at Mar-a-Lago, it was less than 60% with most Republicans saying they were Republicans before they were Trump voters.

Now, we’re back to rallying around the party leader.

And today:

The right has slowly been moving on from Trump. Every few months, polling shows more Republicans view themselves as Republicans, not Trump voters. Every few months, polling shows Republicans are eyeing Ron DeSantis. Every few months, Republicans feel less and less like they have to defend Trump or pay attention to Trump. Every few months, polls show a declining number of Republicans who want Trump to run again. Well, every few months until August 8, 2022, when FBI agents walked into Mar-a-Lago. Now, Republicans are back to circling the wagons.

A cynical person just might think the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago was designed to do that and bring Trump to the forefront of the 2022 election cycle.

This RINO was fighting yesterday’s primary war

Erickson goes on:

You could just let him run through the GOP primaries like a bull in a China shop. You could watch and see if those candidates lose, and the GOP would move on faster if they did. [In short, y]ou could just leave it alone and let inertia and gravity do their thing. But you are so aggrieved, and your conscience so pricked, that you just simply cannot help yourself.

Bull in a China shop? Inertia? Gravity? Those are concepts from the old way, the way of the Uniparty. We see here the complaint of Republican county organizations, with their screening committees, who find themselves less relevant every month. Trump has eclipsed all personal fundraising records since shortly after the Raid. That gives him enough funds to run the Republican Party and its campaign all by himself. Which is exactly what CNAV expects him to do, and which he has been doing. True, his record is not perfect. He has endorsed at least two candidates who “flipped” on him just as RINOs always “flip” on Republican voters. Furthermore, not all his patriotic endorsements have led to victory. (Although Joe Kent, in Washington State, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.)

And conscience? Grievance? He must be kidding. We have the grievance, not the Democrats. It’s more than a matter of bogus dossiers and bad practices by Officers of Election. It’s public policies that are destroying America – by design.

He’s half right

Erick-Woods Erickson concludes by saying something half right. The Democrats, and their media allies, will, he says,

reap a whirlwind. You’ll have only yourselves to blame.

Absolutely true. But for what have they only themselves to blame? Not their continued insistence that “Russia stole the election.” That is incidental. Instead, we blame them for their bad public policy prescriptions. We blame them for throwing in with the World Economic Forum and their Great Reset. Indeed, we blame them for deliberately starving the American people, as they starved the people of Sri Lanka and Holland. We, the ordinary people of America, know that Trump speaks the truth, in this most important context:

Remember that they are not after me. They are after you. I’m just standing in their way.

RINOs will never understand that. They’ll keep living in yesterday’s world, and crying for a return to a normal that can never come back.

But we also blame RINOs and their like-minded church leaders, for saying that politics don’t matter. We blame them for their complacency, and for thinking of nothing but their patronage slots and Gentlemen’s Agreements. All summer long, we’ve been shoving them aside in the primaries. Today we’re about to give the old heave-ho to the most obnoxious RINO of them all. Commentators like Erick-Woods Erickson can either join the parade – or fall under its wheels like Hindu worshipers beneath their Juggernaut.