Why RINOs Will Always Lose

14 Nov, 2013 by Robert Cleveland

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With Chris Christie’s re-election win in New Jersey, the rumor mill is buzzing with speculation over whether America’s favorite overweight governor will run for president in 2016. With the rumors this strong, I would say that the possibility is pretty good that Ann Coulter’s former favorite will give it a shot…but there is just one problem – and it’s a doozie:

If Christie wins the Republican nomination in 2016, he will lose the general election.

You would think, at this point, that the Republican Party would have learned their lessons from 2008 and 2012, but maybe the establishment is still blaming George W. Bush for 2008, and the Tea Party for 2012 and everything else under the sun. But if there is a lesson to be learned from the last two elections, it is that the party establishment has been whistling the wrong tune for far too long now.

“We need a moderate,” we are constantly told. “We need a candidate who will appeal to independent voters.” Meanwhile, the party runs candidates from the extreme left-wing of the party like John McCain and Mitt Romney, which inevitably lead to disillusioned conservatives who are much, much less likely to show up at the voting booth.

In fact, it was Sarah Palin, the conservative half of the 2008 ticket, who injected some much needed momentum into McCain’s rather pathetic campaign, but when McCain’s campaign staff started what almost amounted to a campaign against his running mate, all they managed to do was to show conservative Republicans that McCain wasn’t really serious about his seeming rightward shift, which sucked the wind out of the sails of that short-lived gain in momentum.

It was pretty much the same story with Mitt Romney’s campaign, just not to the same extreme. The pick of fiscally conservative Paul Ryan had conservatives starting to get excited about the Romney campaign for the first time, but when Romney went out of his way to play nice with President Obama during the second and third presidential debates, it hurt his already tenuous conservative credentials, and conservative Republicans who were already facing increasing disillusionment with the party just weren’t motivated enough to go vote for another RINO.

The best explanation I have ever heard for this phenomenon was given by conservative commentator Bill Whittle: RINO Republicans will always lose because they are the New Coke.

New Coke was introduced back in the days of the Great Soft Drink Wars, when Coke vs. Pepsi was all the rage. Coke decided that in order to win over Pepsi drinkers, they needed to change their formula so that Coke would taste more like Pepsi…but there was a problem. Pepsi drinkers liked Pepsi, so they had no reason to switch from their favored brand to a competing brand that was just a Pepsi wannabe. Coke drinkers liked Coke better than Pepsi, so they had no reason to buy a soft drink that was trying to match the taste of something they didn’t like to begin with.

In the end, no one bought New Coke, and Coca-Cola was forced to scrap their new offering and introduce Classic Coke, a return to their original formula.

It’s the same way with politics. The Republican Party keeps trying to run the New GOP – the “moderate” Progressive Republicans who try their darndest to be as similar to Democrats as they possibly can, with just enough differences to maintain the GOP label. The goal is to try and win over enough moderate Democrats to swing the vote to the GOP’s favor. But Democrats have no reason to vote for a Republican, when they can get all of the left-wing progressivism they want, and then some, from the Democrat candidate. And real Republicans will only turn out for the New GOP in an effort to keep the Democrat from winning – and that will never be sufficient motivation to get enough Republican voters out to defeat someone like Hillary Clinton.

Imagine a general election between Chris Christie or John McCain (whom the rumor mill also suggests might run) and Hillary. Neither of them have enough real philosophical differences with Hillary to distinguish themselves on a national level. Both have stabbed conservatives in the back, which will suppress turnout among Republican voters. Democrats – even moderate Democrats – will have no real motivation to support Christie or McCain over Clinton. It’s a losing strategy all around for the GOP.

The thing Republicans haven’t tried in far too long is the novel idea of going back to Classic Coke. Millions of Americans are hungry for common-sense governance. We are seeing the effects of the Democrats’ socialist ideas, and people are tired of it. We’re tired of the burdensome regulations. We’re tired of hearing about an economic recovery that never seems to show up. We’re tired of being lied to and spied on and looked down on. We’re tired of giving our hard-earned money in aid to nations that hate us and want us to die. We’re tired of the constant evasions and total lack of accountability in Washington. We’re ready to hope for a change that doesn’t involve ramping up the corruption in Washington to unimaginable levels. We’re ready for the government to start getting out of the way so that America can prosper again.

In 2010, under the specter of Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and the wasteful stimulus bill, Tea Party Republicans were able to take back the House, and the only times since then that the GOP has shown any real life were when Rand Paul and Ted Cruz gave their respective filibusters and energized conservative Republicans.

We have reached the end of the New Coke. No one is buying it anymore. RINO Republicans might manage to hold on to their districts in regional Congressional and Senate races (a great argument for term limits if ever there was one, since incumbency is so hard to beat), but we have already proven over the last two election cycles that running RINOs in the presidential election is a losing proposition. The GOP has only two options: either go back to Classic Coke, or lose in 2016.