OPINION
In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt, then President William Howard Taft, and Senator “Fighting Bob” La Follette fought for ideological control of the Republican Party, each denouncing the other two as not really Republicans.
The phrase “Republican in name only” emerged as a political pejorative in the 1920s. The earliest known print appearance of the term RINO, The Manchester Union Leader, abbreviated it to RINO and pronounced the sound like “rhino.”
So, Republicans in Name Only was used to describe politicians of the Republican party deemed insufficiently loyal to the party’s ideology. Lately, commonly used by former President Donald Trump and his many supporters, it refers to his critics in the Republican party as, you got it, RINOs.
So, I find it really interesting any of us who look at the need for stronger private sector labor unions in this country, women’s right to choose, the division of church and state, the COVID vaccine itself, automatically somehow become Marxists. But the better name is really RIN
O. And my contention is the bastards should have run some RINOs and they wouldn’t have gotten the ass kicking they got.
If you were handpicked by Donald Trump to run for office you were basically doomed by the secret brotherhood of the RINOs. Having been accused of being a RINO for two and a half years now, I decided that we must have a secret sign. No functioning secret society in world history doesn’t have a private recognition sign. So, folks here it is.
As a little geek history reader there were Freemasons, and I really always wante
d to know what was going on in Skull and Bones, but there are always things like swords, and handshakes. In early Christianity, allegedly one Christian would take his or her toe and make the top half of a fish in the dirt and, if the other was a Christian, they would make the bottom half of the fish and that was the sign.
What happens when a RINO meets a RINO? Before we begin to speak about our truths you first must shift your body and do a 360 to see who’s watching in case it could be a Trump Republican or some politically correct snitch. Then, squeeze your fingers tight into a fist, place your thumb squarely under the nose, and touch fist to your forehead. The sign of the RINO.
Then if the person you’re having the conversation with does exactly the same thing you know you are talking to another pillar of truth, a fellow RINO. Be careful around any member of the inner circle of the Republican Party or some politically correct witch hunting weasel, but give the secret sign — we are fellow RINOs.
And then slip away to talk about how much we miss George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Walker Stapleton, and Dick Wadhams. And then we say, “RINOs forever, forever RINOs.”
So, until the next time we get together when we’ll all learn the rhino love call.
Go RINOs. Take State.
— Peter Boyles