Ever heard of a RINO hunt?  I hadn’t until recently.  RINO stands for Republican in Name Only.  A RINO hunt is when groups identifying themselves as “The Republican Wing of the Republican Party” decides to field a candidate from the reactionary ideological right against a moderate Republican incumbent.

     A number of life-long Republican moderates are finding, to their surprise, that they are no longer welcome in the party that they call home.

     More than unwelcome, they find their party’s hate machine turned against them.  Antipathy once reserved for Democrats, Greens, and Socialists is finding an increasing number of targets within the Republican party.  Among them, moderate Republican Arlen Specter .

     I guess it’s no surprise that the more fringy elements of a party will do this when they feel like they are on a winning streak.  After all, if they are winning, they can afford to lose some of the people they object to…right? 

     I have been watching politics with some trepidation for a while…worried by how bold the radical right has gotten about voicing their vision for your future and mine:  A world where I HAVE to stay home with the kids rather than having a choice, a world where the schools are so under funded and so rife with religious superstition that I HAVE to homeschool, a world where our public infrastructure is managed purely for the benefit of multinational corporations, and the tax burden is solely born by payroll and sales taxes, and where the rivers run black with polluted sludge due to gutted environmental laws, and where “science” and “public health” become whatever Jerry Falwell says the Bible says God says they are…oh yeah, and religion.  I don’t want religion to become whatever Jerry Falwell says the Bible says God says it is either.

     …more on that note…are Jerry Falwell and I even reading the same Bible?  It’s like sitting down with someone to discuss Little Women and having them spend the next hour expounding on the symbolism of the huge white whale…I just don’t get it.

     Well, if you’ve been worrying with me, worry no more.  The Republican Party is headed for an attitude adjustment, and they are going to give it to themselves.

     Just the other day, I saw Pat Buchanan breaking his toys on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”, promoting his book about how the War in Iraq was a mistake.  I was a little confused when he made the statement that Cheney and Rumsfeld were “mislead by the neoconservatives”…I mean, I’ve been under the impression that Cheney and Rumsfeld were in on the ground floor of the neoconservative movement.

     I could be wrong.  If I find anything along that line, I’ll be sure to insert an editor’s note, but when I first started hearing about neoconservatives, their names were always mentioned.  OK, OK, it’s not a smoking gun…but what do you expect?  I’m not a journalist.  I’m a stay-at-home suburban mom.  I’ve got laundry to do.  If I wasn’t compulsive about reading and writing and kicking ass, I wouldn’t have ANYTHING.

     Anyway, I found some amusing articles on RINOS at this one site A Rational Advocate.  I’ve skimmed the site, and found it to be a very clearly delineated, complete, and quite understandable catalogue for the thoughts, opinions and base assumptions of the radical right.  I intend to go back and read more.  Anyway, if you are not interested in the site in general, here is a sampling of some of the RINO articles found on this site.  If you can’t figure out what the author is saying, don’t worry, it’s still fun and heartening. 

     The anti-RINO nicknames are funny, for instance. ..like a convention of physicists naming sub-atomic particles.  They got funny names: Sasquatch Rinos, Baby and Bold, Porcupine.

     Enjoy. I bring them to you for your amusement.

     Anyway, never in my lifetime have I seen the Republican party in as much danger of fracturing.  The “Big Tent” is about to collapse.  They’re using hunting metaphors people!  I dance, I sing, I pop a bottle of Andre Brut and sip bubbly on the deck with my loving husband.

     I don’t happen to think that the melt-down will come in time for this election.  Should Bush win, I think we’re going to find a lot of dazed and confused Republicans wandering the streets without a political home.

     I feel most sorry for McCain, I think.  A man of principle who just laid down and died for his party, to preserve one small, tattered corner of the tent for his kind.  Just a portion of the vast grazing grounds that used to support herds and herds of RINOs…only to be turned out and left to starve when they think they don’t need him anymore.

     I think he made a mistake.  I think he was guilty of wishful thinking.  I think he lost the respect of everyone when he got behind this president and did what he had to do for his party, to keep a foothold.  He lost the respect of his enemies within his own political party, and they’re using him like a tool.

     I don’t care, I like McCain.  There may be reasons I shouldn’t, but I do.  Yes, he’s a RINO, he just doesn’t know it yet.  His party moved away from him, and he’s still sticking with it in hopes of bringing it back to what it should be.

     He and many like him in both parties should just walk away and get together and form a third party...one that is made up of statesmen from both sides who can agree, disagree, agree to disagree, and get to work for this country.

     Let the ideologues and the cynical political strategists fight it out for the scraps of the two major parties.

     We can all watch the reality-show/circus atmosphere after a long day of saving social security, fixing Medicare, getting flower of our county’s youth out of that bloodbath in Iraq, help the United Nations give North Korea and Iran the attention they so richly deserve, and make American based Multinational corporations enact sustainable policies that are good for the environment and labor and still allow for sustainable and reasonable profits (Don’t think it’s possible?  Talk to Paul O’Niell.  He’s got some ideas, and he has some experience.  He may never want to go near politics again after the severe tooling the current administration gave him, but he might be willing to give helpful testimony).

     Anyway, take heart.  Hope is on the way…in the form of the political infighting, backbiting and self-sabotage of the Republican Party