If I were to point out to my sister that those names include three former Republican presidential nominees and the daughter of a former Republican vice president, she would likely make her indignant "pfffft" noise. She would follow that with a dismissive "yeah, sure," or some similar response to let me know that Beck and Carlson hadn't given her the correct response to that particular challenge. She, like so many other people who claim to be Republican these days, are truly Tea Party RINOs.
These Tea Party RINOs like to point out that Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower were all Republicans. However, any Republican who today would stand up for civil rights and voting rights like Lincoln did, take on rich people and powerful corporations like Roosevelt did, or raise taxes on the rich and take on the military industrial complex like Ike did, would be declared RINOs by those who today are drunk on the Tea Party. Heck, they want to dismantle the EPA which was brought about by Richard Nixon to set and enforce air and water quality standards because smog made the air unhealthy in some areas and rivers were catching on fire in other areas.
It isn't just my sister who does this. A person I came across a while back was criticizing an actor for a statement he made. My friend asked what about acting makes him think he knows about politics and the economy. I suggested that it was perhaps the same thing that made him think he knows about those things as a Walmart employee. I think he took it more as an insult than an observation because he didn't want to discuss it after being called out.
That is typical behavior for Tea Party RINOs. People like George Will and William F. Buckley Jr. would intellectually discuss the conservative viewpoint. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, my sister, and the shelf-stocking economist from Walmart, don't discuss things intellectually because their stances on issues are not intellectually developed. Even Mitch McConnell complained about the quality of Republican candidates, even though it was probably to deflect blame from himself for his intellectual dishonesty.
One of my friends, bless his good-natured heart, is a devout conservative capitalist. He does his part to support capitalism by working everyday so his bosses get richer off his labor than he does, and he does his part as a conservative by voting against his own best interests.
He hates Joe Biden and Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state. To him, both of them are liberals so he is against anything they say or do. He likes Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, though. To him, DeSantis is the example of good leadership. Due to the fact that he always seems to be drawn to the price of gas, he asserted that Inslee didn't adopt the gas tax holiday that Biden said he wanted but DeSantis implemented it. He would not admit that if DeSantis is a good leader because he did what Biden said he wanted, that it proves that Biden is also a good leader. He also would not admit that if everything Biden says is the opposite of good, and Inslee did the opposite of what Biden said, that it proves what Inslee did was good.
None of those Tea Party RINOs understand the peripheral issues that cause these illogical combinations, and mostly because they refuse to change their opinions when truth proves their opinions are flawed. They all seem to claim intellectual prowess that, for some reason, they refuse to display. They tend to equate money with intelligence and to be hypocritical about how they see things today compared to how they behaved in the past.
For example, my sister says she hates socialism of any kind despite that almost nothing she and her family have was paid for with money earned in the private sector. She cannot reconcile her conclusions with her situation or history, but it keeps peace in her house because it is a Tea Party RINO household. As long as no one mentions that military pay, military retirement, the GI Bill, civil service employment, and civil service retirement are socialism, no one gets called a Marxist.
Similarly, the RINO whose contribution to capitalism is working hard to make the richest family in the world even richer cannot reconcile what he says. However, he is probably popular at work where his rhetoric about actors and athletes staying in their lanes rings true to those who hope to end up as 50-year-old department supervisors like he is. After all, he is probably a good guy once you get to know him like those who ran to his rescue said.
I believe them because that is true about my friend who remembers how much less costly it was to drive when gas was half the price and he drove a Subaru. The cost of driving, though, is Biden and Inslee's fault as he chooses to pump more expensive gas into a vehicle that gets 5 MPG. However, he also cannot say whether the vehicle is a money pit because it needs a lot of work or a gold mine because the engine and tranny alone are worth . . . whatever.
Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney call themselves Republicans because they are Republicans.
Those who call Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney RINOs are not Republicans. They are Tea Party RINOs whose best arguments at times are, "Pffft . . . yeah, sure," "actors should act, or get jobs at Walmart if they want to make comments," and "I don't care what anyone says, gas cost me a lot less when I drove a Subaru."
