Q&A Friday #104: Are There DINOs At The National Level?

04 Feb, 2011 by John Hawkins

RINOs are a fact of life, but have there ever been any DINOs at the national level? — duken008

Sure, there have.

In fact, they used to be pretty common in the South. There were plenty of “Yellow Dog” Democrats who were generally conservative, but voted Democrat because that’s how their family had been voting all the way back to the Civil War. Today even, Democrats at the state level in certain states are considerably more moderate than they are at the national level.

But, to the point of your question, what constitutes a “DINO” is, at least to a certain extent, in the eye of the beholder. For example, there are a lot of Democrats who’d certainly consider the very liberal Joe Lieberman to be a DINO because he’s serious about national defense.

Now, if you’re talking about genuinely conservative Democrats, they don’t exist on the national level. There are some Democrats who have generally moderate voting records, but when it counts, they almost always toe the liberal line. However, when it doesn’t matter, they may vote our way in order to try to protect their jobs in their red districts.

So, based on just voting records at least, there are DINOS at the national level.