The RINO in the Race: Donald Trump

I don’t like the term “RINO.” It is too often applied disparagingly to politicians who have spent decades working for the conservative cause by activists who, in most cases, have done little but kibitz. In the current presidential field, however, there is one candidate whom it is fair to call a RINO: Donald Trump. Trump is literally a Republican in name only, since he was until recently a registered Democrat and a donor to Democratic candidates and committees, and is on record saying that he agrees with the Democratic Party on most issues.

Trump also seems to despise just about every Republican except himself (assuming he actually is a Republican). While speaking highly of Hillary Clinton, he repeatedly and unfairly attacks the last GOP president, George W. Bush. And increasingly, as he has slipped in the polls, he has lashed out against the other candidates. Jeb Bush is low-energy, Marco Rubio is a lightweight, Ben Carson isn’t up to being president. Don’t you think the Democrats will remember these smears (and more that are yet to come), and use them against the eventual nominee and his running mate? Of course they will.

The Democrats are already using Trump to discredit the Republican Party, Trump’s new-found home. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said earlier today:

All the different times that Donald Trump has made insulting comments about individual women specifically, but the offensive way that he refers to women, really, it’s just—I will tell you, I’m happy to just have Donald Trump just keep talking and then demonstrate that because he’s at the top or right at number two, of their Republican field. It shows you where the Republican Party is today. So he should just keep talking. It just helps us eventually elect a Democratic nominee as the 45th president.

It pains me to admit it, but for once, Wasserman Schultz is right. I don’t agree with those who speculate that Trump is a Democratic Party plant, put up to a joke run for the presidency by his pals Bill and Hillary Clinton. But I do think that, wittingly or not, he is making it more likely that a Democrat will be elected next November.

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