The insult du jour for Republican candidates this election cycle is being labeled a RINO, a Republican in Name Only. Unfortunately, the insult has been so overused lately it’s been rendered meaningless. The insult is even emptier because it is so detached from actual statements, campaign promises and voting records.
A candidate like Newt Gingrich can get away with supporting the biggest socialist scheme in American government over the past 30 years because he says nasty things about the press and calls Barack Obama a Marxist. Jon Huntsman, on the other hand, can have a stellar conservative record as Utah’s governor, be anti-abortion and adored by the NRA. But if he refuses to spit out angry screeds against Obama, he’s dismissed as a RINO, the facts be damned.
So as a public service to POLITICO readers, I, your humble conservative servant, have put together a “Who is the Real RINO?” test. based on voting records, candidate quotes and facts! (Shocking, I know.)
Good luck!
You will have to use pencil and paper to write your answers. We aren’t that sophisticated here at Moonhowlings.
1. Who said, “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose. I am not going to change pro-choice laws in any way”?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
2. Who bragged about being a moderate with this comment, “There is a new synthesis evolving with the classic moderate wing of the party, where as a former Rockefeller state chairman, I’ve spent most of my life”?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
3. Who starred in a 2007 global warming commercial with Nancy Pelosi that was sponsored by Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
4. Who once famously said, “I don’t line up with the NRA”?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
5. Who was paid $312,000 by ethanol interests and then said ethanol is good for national security and for the economy?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
6. Which candidate bragged about not being a Republican during the Reagan presidency and promised that if elected he would not “return to Reagan-Bush policies”?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
7. Which candidate told Planned Parenthood that he supported state funding of abortion?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
8. Which candidate has consistently supported the type of individual mandates for health insurance that conservatives are trying to overturn through court challenges to Obamacare? (Trick question: Two of three are correct answers.)
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
9. Which candidate went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and called Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan “radical” and “right-wing social engineering”?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
10. Which candidate is the only GOP presidential contender to come out in full support of the Ryan plan?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
11. Which candidate bragged to CNN that he’s “the most seriously professorial politician since Woodrow Wilson”?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
12. Which candidate told Planned Parenthood that he supported the “substance” of the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
13. Which candidate said of the Medicare prescription drug plan that was the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society, “Every conservative member of Congress should vote for this Medicare bill. Obstructionist conservatives can always find reasons to vote no”?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
14. Which candidate attacked Steve Largent, Tom Coburn and other conservatives as “the Perfectionist Caucus,” while giving his last speech as speaker in support of Dick Gephardt and Dave Obey’s colossal Omnibus Bill of 1998?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
15. Which candidate was ranked by Cato Institute in 2008 one of the most fiscally conservative governors in America?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
16. Which candidate was cited by the Pew Center for running the “best-managed” state, hailed by Forbes magazine as the “most fiscally fit” and ranked first in the country for job creation?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
17. Whose economic plan does The Wall Street Journal consider the most impressive and conservative of the Republican presidential field?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
18. The American Conservative wrote this about which GOP candidate, “For the past two decades a ‘moderate’ Republican was one who didn’t generally side with his party on three issues: taxes, guns and abortion. [This candidate’s] record on those isn’t just to the right of the moderates. It is to the right of most conservatives”?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
19. Which candidate was praised in a Club for Growth report for reforming health care with “no individual mandate, no employer mandate and no provision for a massive expansion of subsidized care unlike Obamacare or Romney’s plan”?
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
20. Who are the real RINOs here? (Feel free to circle two.)
A. Mitt Romney
B. Newt Gingrich
C. Jon Huntsman
Answers: 1) A; 2) B; 3) B; 4) A; 5) B; 6) A; 7) A; 8) A and B; 9) B; 10) C; 11) B; 12) A; 13) B; 14) B; 15) C; 16) C; 17) C; 18) C; 19) C; 20) you decide.
Who really gets to decide what RINO is? I find calling someone a RINO offensive. The Democrats really don’t have an equivalent word, do they? Until recently, there were moderate republicans and this was fine. I guess no more.
The Republicans are going to have to ask themselves how they are going to re3claim the White House and hold on to the House if they devour their moderates. It takes more than the extremes to win national elections.
How did you score on the offensive RINO test? Please rank Huntsman, Romney and Gingrich in order from most conservative to least. Feel free to editorialize.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/69231.html#ixzz1fGBFGjwI
I have to ask. Why do moderates or independants care what conservatives call non-conservatives? Why does it even matter?
This is more of the “us vs. them” mentality.
Some people aren’t capable of handling a situation where someone on their “side” has a different opinion. So he can’t be a Republican who has different opinions on some issues. He has to be a “RINO”; the label identifies him as not being on “our side”.
Ok, but does it even matter?
If one side wants to shoot themselves in the foot — whats the deal with having them do so?
I must have struck a nerve in my choice of topics. Have you heard Joe ranting and raving each morning? He really feels that some of the candidates have simply embarrassed the party. He cares. He feels passionately about this subject.
Have you heard that Joe Scarborough is being considered as a pick for VP? I find that hard to believe.
Joe Scarborough is a Republican.
Now if you mean me, fair question. You know I used to be a Republican. I vote in Republican primaries, and sometimes I have to live with Republicans as my representatives. When things are really bad, I get to have one as a president.
And sometimes when conservatives are calling other non-conservatives things, those non conservatives are me.
So who gets to decide who is Republlican enough? Looking at things historically, I certainly fit the bill until new folks took over. Then I felt I had to leave. I would say I have as much right to have an opinion as the next guy.
“I must have struck a nerve in my choice of topics.”
Not with me. This topic to me is like arguing between calling someone fat or big boned. In the end it just doesn’t matter.
I just don’t think this issue resonates with independents. They just don’t care about intra-party name calling.
Yea we sort of do. If you think someone is a ‘RINO’ I might stand a chance of liking them.
Some would call Obama a DINO.
@marinm
Independents may find it humorous. It’s the right-wing saying “nanny nanny boo boo, I’m more Republican than you” to their fellow party mates. We’ll let them pick off each other. It saves the Dems the trouble and makes for entertainment for independents.
@Censored bybvbl
+1 for entertainment. I know, as Starry pointed out, that it’s fun to see Krugman call out Obama as a DINO but really at the end of the day that name calling doesn’t amount to anything.
I can see independants sitting at home watching that kind of exchange on TV and saying, “Oh no he didn’t!” but two minutes later tuning into American Idol. People just don’t care about ‘those’ labels.
@marinm
I agree that most people don’t care about the labels. RINO seems to be a pi$$ing match particularly reserved for Republicans. There’s that fiscal/conservative divide that troubles that party.
Make that” fiscal/ social conservative” ^
Marin, why do you think people don’t care about the labels? I think if they care about politics they do. If they don’t care about politics, well, they don’t know what anyone stands for anyway. I think maybe we are dividing this up wrong.
@Censored bybvbl
But, even if it does divide the party — who cares?
MH, ask a standard independent what a RINO is and you’ll get a blank stare. It’s a political label only the left and right care about. The center could care less.
Name calling is always fun to watch on the Republican side – remember in the 70s an insult was to be called a “Nixonian”…or worse a “Rockefeller Republican”. Just as much fun to watch Republicans who are the extreme right or left say “fiscal conservative” and not one follows the principles set down by Edmund Burke who is considered the Father of Modern Fiscal Conservatism….and he put it all to paper somewhere around 1725.
I never knew those terms were insulting. sigh.
@Moon-howler
It depends upon who is saying it and whether the intended victim actually thinks its insulting.
A Rockefeller Republican would not think that its insulting.
I don’t tend to use RINO because its not specific. In fact, since conservatives are separate form the mainstream Republican party….. conservatives could use RINO as a term for themselves….. demonstrating their distance from the hypocrites in DC.