RINO

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If you ask me, Ron Paul is the RINO – Republican In NameOnly. 

Don’t get me wrong; that’s a good thing.  I have been a Ron Paul guy since I firstheard of him in 1988 when he ran for President as a Libertarian Party candidate.  I just think it amusing that the term RINO isthe pejorative used by those on the fringes of the GOP to smear the Republicansthey don’t like – i.e. most of them.   

Who is under the fat hump of the GOP bell curve?  47 Republican senators signed on to a non-bindingbalanced budget resolution which, if enacted, would require Congress to balancethe budget within five years.  But yesterday,40 of those 47 Republicans voted againsta real budget bill – Senator Rand Paul’s – that does exactly that.  

Those 85% whose gut-check bounced are not RINOs; they areR’s.  They are the mean plus one standarddeviation, the center-cut, the sweet spot of the Republican Party. They talklike libertarians when they are running for office, talk like conservativesafter they win, and then vote like schmucks. Heartbreakers.

Paul the Younger did himself doubly proud this week; he alsofilibustered the Patriot Act singlehandedly on the Senate floor this week.  How pathetic is that?  One lone defender of the 4^th, 5^th,and 2^nd amendments out of that whole Republican Party that made sucha grand show of reading the Constitution to start the session.   

And while Dr. Rand Paul fought his own Republican Party todefend our 2^nd Amendment rights in Washington,D.C., Dr. Pam Galloway fought her own RepublicanParty to defend them here in Madison, Wisconsin with her ConstitutionalCarry bill that the leaders of her own Party are trying desperately to waterdown. 

The mind boggles; two doctors – rookies with no priorlegislative experience – are our fragile grip on the Constitution.  And thank God for both of them.  What a perfect commentary on the absurdity ofour times: our doctors are fixing government while our government is ruininghealth care.        

Here is the list of Republicans who have won their Party’snomination for President since I have been old enough to vote: Nixon, Ford,Reagan, Bush, Dole, Bush Dance Remix, and McCain.  Congressional leaders I remember include BobMichaels, Newt Gingrich, Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell, Denny Hastert. 

There hasn’t been a Goldwater Republican since…Goldwater.  

So quit calling big-government Republicans RINO’s; call themNADS, but not because theirs are particularly large.  It stands for Not A Democrat, which most daysseems to be the only principle they have left.  If Obama is for it, they are against it andvice versa.  I would not be surprised ifthey reverse themselves and vote to double the subsidy for wind energy after itmussed up Michelle Obama’s hair in England.    

Is there even such a thing as a DINO?  Do the anti-war lesbian unionists reef on thefoodstamp PETA greenies for not being Hispanic enough?  I don’t know that much about Democrats – justthat they want to take all my money and tell me what to do.  I’ve never gotten past those two things to discovergoal #3.      

And I’ve never heard a Libertarian called a LINO, either, althoughI did recently learn that we have been further subdivided into Cosmotarians and Paleotarians.  I think thedifference is whether you base your Presidential campaign on legalizing drugsor ending the Fed.  It sounds a lotbetter than wing-nut A and wing-nut B.

Paleotarians, I am told, hold conservative personal valuesbut oppose the imposition of values by the state.  Works for me. And if we strip away all of the Party labels, I think that thumbnailsketch describes a majority of Americans.  We don’t want Democrat government orRepublican government; we want lessgovernment.   

What we want most from government is to be left alone.  We don’t want someone else’s values writteninto law.  We don’t want someone else’schoices to be our mandates and prohibitions. We don’t want to tell others how to live their lives and we don’t wantto be told how to live ours.  We want topay our own way and choose for ourselves the means to help others lessfortunate.    

Is there a label for that?   Yes, it is called American.  The idea thatgovernment is limited and liberty is not; the belief that free people and freemarkets improve the human condition.  It’snot a Democrat thing, or a Republican thing, or a Libertarian thing; it is anAmerican thing – or used to be.  Thisweekend we honor those who have given their lives for that American thing. 

How many of our politicians in either party vote as if theytruly believe in free people and free markets? How many of them vote as if the United States Constitution they swore anoath to protect and defend is the law of the land? 

How many are Americans In Name Only?  Too many.          

“MomentOf Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment andwatch for the upcoming release of his new book, “Capitalista!”