Why Democrats Don’t Cry ‘DINO’

By Peter J. Wallison

Saturday, August 27, 2022

 

I despise the term RINO — Republican in Name Only. It splits the Republican Party year after year, and its persistence hands the Democrats power in Congress they would not otherwise be able to earn. I never hear the term DINO — Democrat in Name Only — because the Democrats are too smart for that.

 

Within the Democratic Party are avowed socialists (Bernie Sanders) together with senators and representatives who represent Montana, Arizona, and other generally red states — states that have long traditions of independence and free-market values. In other words, the Democratic Party is at least as divided politically as the Republican Party, but we don’t hear Democrats routinely denounce one another as fakes.

 

Because Democrats don’t claim that fellow Democrats with whom they disagree are not actually Democrats, they are able to hold and use power to a degree that the GOP cannot. Here’s an obvious case in point: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, prevented President Biden from getting Congress to adopt his Build Back Better plan — a $5 trillion monstrosity that would have changed this country had it been passed — almost single-handedly. Although Manchin was attacked by activists on the Left, we didn’t hear Democrats in Congress or otherwise holding official party positions calling Manchin a DINO. They recognized — somewhat reluctantly, to be sure — that he was still a member of their party, and among other things had voted to organize the Senate under Democratic control.

 

And what came of that? President Biden was recently able to claim a success with a destructive new law called the Inflation Reduction Act. It doesn’t reduce inflation, but it does double the size of the Internal Revenue Service and, according to independent studies, adds taxes for virtually every American. To the Democrats, that’s a success, and they can credit it to Senator Manchin, whom they did not attempt to exclude from their party.

 

On Capitol Hill, Democratic lawmakers worked with Manchin to find common ground, and eventually were able to claim some kind of victory. To many Americans who just want a functioning government, that may be enough to urge them to vote for the Democrats instead of the GOP in the upcoming midterms.

 

Contrast that with the controversy within the GOP about the infrastructure legislation in 2021. No one can deny that the roads and bridges in this country need repair. For years, gas taxes, which are supposed to be used for this purpose, have been used to pay for entitlements, leaving our roads and bridges in dangerous disrepair. If you’ve ever seen the third-world Union Station in Washington, D.C., or ridden the swaying and clattering railroad between Washington and New York, you would have to wonder why voting for infrastructure repair should result in some Republicans calling other Republicans RINOs.

 

Yet that is exactly what happened last year. Because of that treatment, some of the most effective Republican members of the Senate are not running for election this year, and their seats could go to left-wing Democrats, leaving the Democrats in control of the Senate and capable of stymieing whatever ideas come out of a (hopefully) Republican House.

 

If Republicans continue the mindless practice of denouncing other members of their party as RINOs, they will never be seen by the American people as a serious political party that’s prepared to govern.