{"id":4019,"date":"2013-02-23T09:55:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T14:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4019"},"modified":"2013-02-23T09:56:26","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T14:56:26","slug":"rinos-are-hypocrites-who-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4019","title":{"rendered":"RINOs are Hypocrites? Who knew?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington Post op-ed columnist Kathleen Parker recently made a case for a concerted effort from moderate Republicans to “take back the Republican Party.” (Here<\/a>)\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, she calls for a “RINO rebellion.”\u00c2\u00a0 The trouble she sees is that taking over a party requires zeal, and RINOs are just sane people.\u00c2\u00a0 This yields a zinger:<\/p>\n

First, sane people are too busy Being Normal to organize. No, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is not a relative term. We all know what normal is, and it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t involve carrying gigantic photos of aborted fetuses to political conventions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s pretty funny.\u00c2\u00a0 (And, if I’m not mistaken, a step toward pro-choicing the Republicans?)\u00c2\u00a0 Regardless, this suggestion to draw the Republican party closer to the center has yielded some criticism.\u00c2\u00a0 Matt Purple<\/a> over at the American Spectator is up to run the argument.\u00c2\u00a0 Purple’s main line of criticism is that all of Parker’s suggested changes are actually all standard conservative commitments.<\/p>\n

Yes, if only there was a political movement calling for reasonable budgets, more privacy for the individual, upholding the rule of law, and concern for national security. She must imagine hordes of earthy Tea Partiers holding the Post<\/em> in their gunpowder-stained fingers while recoiling and exclaiming, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Compassion for the disadvantaged?! This paper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gone to the dogs!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 So Parker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s principles seem pretty similar to those of modern conservatives<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, that’s a nice point, I suppose.\u00c2\u00a0 Though there’s a difference between ‘reasonable budgets’ and ones that, say, slash the Department of Education<\/a> or that eliminate the IRS<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s all what you’re counting as reasonable, I suppose.\u00c2\u00a0 But when Purple turns to candidates, things get weird.<\/p>\n

To understand just how vacuous the moderate stance has become, consider their embrace of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. John Avlon praised the Garden State firebrand as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Northeast Republican\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153moderate record.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> Joe Scarborough defended his accomplishments.<\/a>… Conservatives can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even support sequestration without drawing condemnation from the center-right. But Christie cuts funding for AIDS patients and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the moderate Moses leading the GOP out of the electoral desert.<\/strong> Again, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pure air.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, to make this point, Purple had to look to other<\/em> moderate Republicans to find Chris Christie as the candidate of choice. Now, you can’t make a hypocrisy charge stick when the inconsistency is that between different people.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not hypocrisy of the RINOs, that’s just that they disagree.\u00c2\u00a0 Second, I’m unsure whether the moderate line was right with Christie in the first place — if he’s such a moderate, then why did Ann Coulter endorse<\/a> him?\u00c2\u00a0 My thought was that hailing him as a moderate was strategic packaging, not accurate description.<\/p>\n

Finally, even were all these charges right, I have no idea what kind of point this hypocrisy charge scores with the RINOs.\u00c2\u00a0 If it’s that the ‘moderate’ candidate they chose wasn’t all that moderate, then shouldn’t the RINOs just say back:\u00c2\u00a0 Well, that’s as moderate as we can get in this party. We’d actually prefer John Huntsman.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington Post op-ed columnist Kathleen Parker recently made a case for a concerted effort from moderate Republicans to “take back the Republican Party.” (Here)\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, she calls for a “RINO rebellion.”\u00c2\u00a0 The trouble she sees is that taking over a party requires zeal, and RINOs are just sane people.\u00c2\u00a0 This yields a zinger: First, … Continue reading RINOs are Hypocrites? Who knew?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tu-quoque"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4019"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4021,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019\/revisions\/4021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}