Let's Go RINO Hunting

Last November, we won. We won bigly. We won the presidency, we won the House, and we won the Senate. We have a mostly reliable majority on the Supreme Court. We won over demographics who haven't voted for us in decades, and whose votes Mitt Romney and John McCain couldn't dare to dream of winning. The electoral count was a blowout, and we have a clear mandate from the American people.

Yet there are, incredulously, still a few Republican representatives who haven't gotten the memo.

Three of them betrayed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Well, maybe "betrayed" isn't the correct term, as nobody paying attention expected Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, or Mitch McConnell to do the right thing. These spineless narcissists are, for all intents and purposes, moderate Democrats who ever so occasionally invoke the ire of their fellow liberals by voting Republican.

But Thom Tillis? His 11th-hour betrayal of Hegseth, and, by extension, the will of the American people, threatened to torpedo the nomination. After the bombshell revelation that Tillis planned to vote against Hegseth, he demanded that Senate Majority Leader John Thune cancel the floor vote on the nomination. To his credit, Thune refused, essentially calling Tillis's bluff and daring him to publicly vote against Hegseth. As we know, Tillis folded like wet paper and voted to confirm. He did the right thing, but not by choice.

Less than a week later, the hearings for Trump's picks for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary for Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and FBI Director Kash Patel have taken place. Each of these candidates performed superbly under clownish but aggressive questioning from Democrats. To the dismay of their detractors, they unapologetically defended the America First agenda that a solid majority of citizens just voted for.

But beware of "Republicans" who have secretly transitioned to Democrats without parental knowledge or consent. Nominees must make it past their respective committee votes before the full Senate can vote on them. In Gabbard's case, she needs the vote of every Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. But after her hearing, reports surfaced that some Republican committee members were wavering due to her past comments on Edward Snowden.

Really? Of all the lame excuses to hide behind, digging up Snowden is one of the more laughable ruses out there. Snowden isn't yesterday's news. He's last millennium's news. In the hierarchy of voter concerns, Snowden falls somewhere between J6 and climate change. I personally find the man reprehensible, but I am not so obtuse to use it to jettison a DNI nominee whose stated goal would be the refocus of our intelligence agencies against Islamic terrorists and Chinese communists rather than against the American people. Don't sacrifice good for perfect.

As Vice President JD Vance told Sean Hannity yesterday, "...the United States Senate should not be used to block people because you have one policy disagreement on one issue. You don't get to make these decisions." 

And yet, certain unnamed Republican committee members could do exactly that and scuttle her nomination. We wouldn't know who because the committee vote takes place in secret. So much for Republicans' newfound commitment to transparency.

There are nine Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The X feeds of committee Sens. Tom Cotton, James Risch, and John Cornyn have stated that they support Gabbard's nomination. The feeds of Sens. Mike Rounds and Ted Budd at at least somewhat, if vaguely, supportive. The feeds of Sens. Susan Collins, Jerry Moran, James Lankford, and Todd Young have not revealed which way they'll vote or shown any support for Gabbard during her hearings.

So since the vote is secret and we have no idea which senator is really Chelsea Manning "identifying" as a patriot, we'll just have to assume that each of these non-committed Republicans is suspect. And we'll have to contact their offices. They need reminders that they work for us and that, if they abhor the very notion of accountability to us deplorables, then we can easily find someone else to do it come primary season. The Republican fence-sitters are:

• Susan Collins (R-Maine), Washington, D.C. office: (202) 224-2523
• Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Washington, D.C. office: (202) 224-6521
• James Lankford (R-Okla.), Washington, D.C. office: (202) 224-5754
• Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Washington, D.C. office: (202) 224-5842
• Todd Young (R-Ind.), Washington, D.C. office: (202) 224-5623
• Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Washington, D.C. office: (202) 224-3154

This isn't about "blind loyalty" to Trump. This is about our once-in-a-century opportunity to completely revamp the entire stinking, corrupt edifice and return it to something resembling the vision of our Founding Fathers.

To that end, I don't care what Gabbard said about Snowden. It's an axiom of Western legal theory that it's preferable to let the guilty free rather than punish the innocent. If Gabbard's focus is on training our intelligence community's sights off law-abiding Americans and back on our foreign enemies, I can handle her views on Snowden.

To that end, I'm not interested in Patel's promotion of a song defending the J6 protesters. He's made it clear that you can both denounce whatever illegal activity they committed and support proper legal action against them, while at the same time resisting the Stasification of the FBI. I can handle his workout playlist.

To that end, I'm not interested in Kennedy's more outlandish conspiratorial views. If he's willing and able to take on Big Pharma, poisonous food additives, and the Fauci/Biden COVID lockdown regime, then he has my support. I can handle him trying to convince me that the moon is made of green cheese.

Whatever the shortcomings of these nominees, the amount of good these nominees can do in service of promoting peace, strength, accountability, and freedom in America dwarfs them. The RINOs resisting Trump's "controversial" picks either don't see the bigger picture or they DO see the bigger picture, secretly agree with Democrats, and are grasping for whatever pretext they can about which to feign manufactured outrage and derail Trump's agenda.

Simply put, these RINOs are like insolent children, to whom we keep giving second and third and fiftieth chances to, who nonetheless exploit our trust only to betray it time and time again. But they only do it because no one holds them accountable. Like with the brat throwing a tantrum in the grocery checkout line, we adults let them do it on the empty and unenforced threat that if they keep it up, they'll be grounded.

I've always wondered why Republicans in solidly red Kentucky keep re-electing Mitch McConnell instead of primarying him into well-deserved oblivion. Ditto for Lisa Murkowski in Alaska (I know she was primaried out but somehow got re-elected anyway). It doesn't do much good for Republican voters in California and Massachusetts to be calling their offices and giving them earfuls if their votes can't oust these senators.

If people need to call James Lankford's office, then Republicans from Oklahoma need to do it. If someone needs to primary Thom Tillis, then Republicans in North Carolina need to do it. And so on, right down the list. Now is not the time for complacency. Regardless of whether they win or lose, Democrats are in the streets every single day pushing their agenda. It wouldn't kill us to make a couple of phone calls or send off a couple of emails.

And there's no excuse because RINO hunting is perhaps the easiest sport there is. It's easy to identify RINOs by their oft-changing color, bouncing as they do from red to blue to red to blue like a chameleon on ketamine. They're loud and boisterous in their eloquent yet hollow orations on "decorum" and "bipartisanship," which is so much blood in the water to attract the attention of and make easy prey for Democrat predators. RINOs often stampede away in fear when others confront them with reason and logic and make easy pickings when taking what they mistakenly believe to be cover and concealment amongst the billionaire donors at D.C. circuit cocktail parties.

During the November 2016 and November 2024 hunting seasons, the RINOs were nearly wiped extinct. Most surviving RINOs were herded into the mental cages at CNN and MSNBC, where they are sporadically paraded out for the cameras before audiences that steadily lost interest in these freakish yet banal species.

But a few RINOs remain, dangerous in their complicity, threatening in their fraudulence. A RINO is a RINO and will always behave as such. Don't trust them. Smoke them out of the brush and off our territory. It can't be all on Trump. We have to take responsibility for the actions of the people we knowingly sent to represent us.

If your vote sent a RINO to Washington, then use every legal and peaceful means possible to influence their vote. Today. Not two Novembers from now because their vote is ultimately your vote.

Do your civic duty. Let's go RINO hunting.

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