Strategic RINO-ism vs. Satanic RINO-ism, & the SAVE Act (posted 3/11/26)

Sadly, all conservatives are familiar with RINOs – those Republicans in Name Only who pretend to be conservatives when they’re running, only to betray their conservative voting base by voting like (and with) leftists.

I actually prefer the term CINOs – Conservatives in Name Only – since the GOP has often been a home for mushy centrist and center-left pols. That being the case, a liberal Republican can’t fairly be called a RINO, since the “in name only” part suggests that a left-leaning Republican is necessarily an oxymoron. Which, tragically, it is not.

But I’ll use “RINO” in the commonly accepted meaning, since I can’t change our language single-handedly. (If I could, I’d start with the phrases “my truth” and “sex assigned at birth,” the use of which would be capital offenses in an Edenic world in which I was King Martin the First.)

(And what a glorious world that would be!)

Though RINOs are often the bane of our existence, I’ve argued elsewhere that in our political system, they are sometimes necessary. If, for example, a Republican candidate tries to get elected in a purple or even blue state, he or she will necessarily have to run and govern as a moderate or centrist – i.e. a RINO. The kind of rock-ribbed conservatives that I prefer would have no chance of getting elected in a purple or blue-leaning state.

So our real-world choice is usually between a frustratingly centrist RINO type – a Susan Collins in Maine or Mitt Romney in Massachusetts – and a far-left loon. And if a Collins or Romney would vote with us more often than not, they are a better option than the leftist alternative we’d get if we ran a ruby-red conservative who was sure to be defeated there.

As the famous dictum of William F. Buckley (Peace Be Upon Him) says, we should vote for the most conservative electable candidate in every race.

What I’ve been describing so far is strategic RINOism, i.e. the pragmatic decision to support mushy moderates with an R beside their name in districts where such candidates are the least bad options, given an electorate that runs the gamut from deep blue to faintly red.

By Satanic RINOism – and I’ll grant you that the adjective may be a tad harsh – I mean mushy candidates pretending to be conservative when running in a deep red district. In such districts, there is no reason for a conservative base to settle for anything less than a consistently conservative candidate; thus, any stealth RINOs in such areas should be run out of town on a rail, forthwith.

Mitt Romney might be the archetypal example. He was a great GOP choice for MA governor, since he was competent, and the most conservative governor anyone could hope to get in that benighted, midnight-blue state. But he was a terrible choice for Utah senator, where he was a Satanic RINO, i.e. a faux conservative who could have governed extremely conservatively, and yet he governed like a strategic RINO centrist, unnecessarily.

Which brings me to the most infuriating current example of an issue on which Satanic RINOs seem to be hell-bound and determined to torture me, personally: the SAVE Act.

This act is a tailor-made, perfect-for-a-mid-year-election issue. By calling for the most common sense, unobjectionable method to preserve the integrity of our sacred democracy – requiring proof of citizenship and proof of identity to vote – it creates the ultimate trap for dishonest, leftist hacks. There are no legitimate grounds on which to oppose it, which is why the pathetic Democrat arguments against it are so transparently corrupt and false.

Their real argument is that the SAVE Act would drastically reduce the amount of fraudulent votes that could be cast. Because the Democrat party depends on those votes – either from illegals, or from imaginary or dead voters – they need to preserve the fraud at all costs. But they can’t say that out loud.

So they are reduced to bald faced lying (the native language of the Left) – “Nobody ever votes illegally in this country!” – or racist and sexist smears against their own voting base – “You can’t expect women and minorities, with their tiny brains and their pathetic ineptitude, to be able to secure a photo ID just like grown-up, intelligent white guys can do!”

Both of those strategies are ballot box poison, as the aggregate of all polling indicates. Overall, Americans favor the SAVE Act by approximately 84-16%! As many as 70% of Democrats are for it, and the numbers among Independents and Republicans are much higher.

This is not a controversial issue like abortion, or a complicated and potentially confusing issue like health care or tax rate policy. It’s simple, easy-to-explain and understand, and a lopsided winner for conservatives. As such, even the most basic, Politics 101 level of competence makes the proper response obvious:

Run on this! Make it the front-and-center, number one issue in your public campaigning. If you’ve got a majority, force votes on this early and often. Use the filibuster – the real one, where you force your opponents to get up and talk for hours and hours – to publicize the debate. Force them to make their ridiculous arguments in public, which will get them on the record, and provide you with hours of invaluable material for honest, devastating future ads.

The ads write themselves. Show Senator X talking to the point of exhaustion in a transparent attempt to block this popular legislation.

Even if you can’t break the filibuster – and everything I’ve read about this issue suggests that we can – you can still get your opponents on the record as voting against this great legislation over and over again. (The ad Voice-Over: “Senator Jackass took 135 votes in the last 3 months. 14 of those votes were to name bridges after himself; 5 were to support Hamas fans in our colleges; 3 were to dedicate post offices. The other 113 were to ensure that illegals and fraudsters can continue to vote in our elections!”)

The issue will even be useful against the treacherous RINOs in your own party, too. Force the spineless wimps representing red states and districts to either vote as conservatively as they’d promised to, or to betray their base, and thus ensure that they’ll be primaried and forced out at the first opportunity. And you’ll also get the ancillary benefit of providing a useful lesson to everyone else in the party: don’t even think about betraying conservatives or you’ll be dispatched just like Thom Tillis or Liz Cheney!

So what is the GOP doing with this golden, election year opportunity? They’re only tepidly supporting it, like feckless weasels.

Unexpectedly!

John Thune is the Senate Majority Leader, representing deep red South Dakota, which last voted Democrat in a presidential election 62 years ago! He’s not up for re-election until 2028. He’s voted mostly conservative – over 90% with Trump during his first term – but not as conservative as he could or should have – voting around 30% with Biden during his posthumous term.

Even given those RINO-esque tendencies, it should be a no-brainer for him to support and push the SAVE Act. But he’s making idiotic excuses not to. He says he doesn’t have the votes to defeat a filibuster, or to pass it in the Senate.

Again, that kind of wussiness might make sense in an election year if it were a controversial issue – a hard-line anti-abortion bill, or a necessary-but-unpopular budget austerity measure. But this is a 90-10 issue with your base, so even if it did actually fail to beat the filibuster, it would then become a great election issue to beat your opponents with!

Even if Thune were just a craven self-preservationist, it would STILL make sense for him to force a vote. Because that would take the pressure off of him (“You can’t blame me, because I supported it and got it to a vote!”) and put it on the posers in his own party and the dishonest creeps in the opposition. Force them to take a stand on it, and then face the consequences if they vote it down.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the week-kneed GOPers — who are whispering that it can’t pass and hoping that they don’t have to vote on it – actually voted for it, if push came to shove.

And dammit, this is one time that push should definitely come to shove!

Even if it means – correction: ESPECIALLY if it means – that some Satanic RINOs are shoved right out of congress if they won’t do the right thing.

Everybody, call your House members and senators about this!

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