Wednesday, January 23, 2008

RINO hunt not good for GOP.

Conservative talk show host Michael Medved had a pretty good insight today on his radio program. Currently there is a witch-hunt by many prominent conservative talk show hosts as they try to expose the "fake conservatives" or RINOs (Republican In Name Only) in the Republican Party and among the four serious Republicans running for the Republican nomination for president. Medved points out that this witch-hunt for RINOs is foolish and is bad for the Republican Party. He also stated that Ronald Reagan would not support this RINO hunt and he's right. Reagan won elections by welcoming with open arms anyone into the GOP. President Reagan famously stated (and I'm paraphrasing) someone who agrees with me seventy percent of the time is not my enemy. Yet Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt (who should know better) and their like are tearing into McCain and Huckabee pretty viciously on a daily basis. Most of the anti-McCain/anti-Huckabee folks keep using the term RINO when referring to the two men. In fact many of the radio hosts are acting like spoiled children and if it isn't their candidate who doesn't get nominated, they claim they'll sit out the election. That's pretty darn selfish. They are willing to allow this nation to be hurt by electing Clinton or Obama by default.

As Michael Medved points out, the true RINOs are not the candidates who aren't conservative on every single issue, but in fact the true RINOs are the radio hosts who are threatening to sit out the election because their guy didn't get the nomination. By not supporting the GOP candidate in November, the talk show hosts are truly the ones who are Republicans in name only.

Republicans can only win elections by appealing to independent voters and moderate Republicans. This crusade to drive out the so-called RINOs in the GOP will only hurt the party and the conservative movement and drive the independents and moderates away from the GOP. Ronald Reagan would not approve.

Neither Senator McCain nor Governor Huckabee is my first choice for the Republican nominee. But if one of them should win the nomination, I'll support him wholeheartedly.

2 comments:

Kris said...

Very well said. Very disrespectful.

Anonymous said...

Looks like the RINO hunters were right on target. Are you happy now that the RINOs have led the GOP to utter ruin?