The massive "insult" Trump and his MAGA gang have co-opted for Republicans who have decided not to just heel to Donald Trump, who acknowledge the fact that he lost the 2020 election, is a blanket condemnation: You are no longer a REAL Republican!
You may continue to call yourself a Republican, but we know that you have disqualified yourself by turning against our Savior, his holiness Donald Trump, sent from God to save us from modernity.
For your perfidy, you are to be cast out into the Darkness and forever branded RINO, Republican In Name Only. (Please! Anything but THAT!)
The term RINO pre-exists Trump and was originally used to brand Republicans who broke from general party solidarity, perhaps by refusing to vote in lockstep with the leader, making a principled decision to commit the worst crime in the GOP: helping Democrats try to do something actually good for people, or resist confirming awful corporate stooges to the highest positions of authority.
But then Trump came out of the shadows to pursue his criminal enterprises in broad daylight, things like bullying a foreign head of state to persecute his political enemies using the power of the US presidency, pressuring state officials to subvert election law to give him votes or cancel those of his opponents to enable him a victory that he did not deserve, along with other equally slimy actions.
Some Republicans broke and just couldn't stand the sickening immorality, not to mention gross criminality, of all this, and even voted to impeach Trump.
But underneath, these Republicans aren't really heroes, they're not even less Republican in any significant way.
People on the left may indeed be confused to think that so-called RINOs are to some degree redeemed from their backward social viewpoints by virtue of having been "cancelled" by the Great Leader.
But it's important that we remember: none of this is true. Even though they may have turned against Trump, which is actually just the minimally logical thing to do, beyond that they haven't changed for the better in any way at all.
Those designated RINO have become pariahs in the GOP, and at the same time heroes among many Dems. But neither of these appellations is actually warranted by their actual characters.
Bluntly, even anti-Trump Republicans still suck, HARD.
The current uber-RINO, Liz Cheney, has been receiving lavish admiration from lefties all over suicidal, I mean SOCIAL, media for her brave stance against Trump, with some (on the LEFT!) even saying they would support her for President.
Similarly Adam Kinzinger, who would fill out the "Cheney/Kinzinger" ticket proposed by some breathless, wacky, full-of-hope lefties who think that people can CHANGE, and see the error of their ways, to become GOOD, CARING...
(God I'm tired. People whose brain oil has all drained out so that their brain cells are grinding together, seizing up, smoking and emitting noxious fumes, preventing any credible thoughts from being created, coming to conclusions like "Liz Cheney is a good person"... How much more can I take?)
But even these supposed "respectable" Republicans did everything they could to confound all Democratic efforts at progress for the people whenever they could, while voting along with Trump on the order of over 95% of the time.
Needy people getting government assistance with health care, child care, reduced prices, lower inflation, anything at all that would help desperate people of all ideologies, Republicans flatly oppose, along with environmental and corporate regulation designed to impede billionaires from just stomping all over everyone else, because it's REGULATION, and regulation is BAD!
These are not "RINOs", in fact there really is no such thing. A Republican is a Republican is a craven asshole.
A much more accurate classification would be "RFOT*", Republican Free Of Trump.
But to be an RFOT is not to be celebrated to any greater degree than a serial rapist who finds Jesus. Turning against stupid evil should be the very least thing we expect for anyone.
"Hey, seriously... THANKS FOR NOT SETTING MY KIDS ON FIRE! I know that wasn't easy for you and i want you to know how much we VALUE you."
In these critical times more than ever we must not be sucked into the RINO mind trap, because Republicans are always Republicans until they openly denounce their whole nasty sinkhole of fetid ideology, and until then we must not forget that they are against everything that we know is right: true religious freedom, actual freedom of speech, the right to associate with anyone you like however you like, the right to BE whoever you like, the basic right to control you own physical body, and so much more.
RINO and RFOT both start with "R", and that is something we cannot afford to forget or overlook, now or ever.
* Yes, I just made that up.
[Note: It was the sheer luck of AC that produced the brilliant phrase "suicidal media" above that I only discovered on my second edit pass through this text. Rather than correct it I decided to leave it and only clarify it, because I want to be known for pithy social criticism like this, God help me.]