Jonah Goldberg explains for readers of the latest print edition of National Review while the popular epithet RINO (Republican In Name Only) makes no sense.
The Republican Party is a guild. Its job is to win elections for members of its guild. For the last half-century or so, it has usually done this by importing ideas from the ideologues. It rarely buys as many of our wares as we would like, and we often feel it doesn’t use them correctly when it does buy them.
Conservatives interested more in principle than in partisan politics want to see their ideas embraced by any member of any party. Hence conservatives who fret about liberal, moderate, or not-quite-conservative-enough Republicans have no good reason to call those “offenders” RINOs.
My problem with the term “RINO” is that it represents a profound category error, confusing the customer with the manufacturer. The people most apt to use the term “Republican In Name Only” are actually the real Republicans In Name Only. I am a Republican by default, because the GOP is the more conservative of the two parties. This is true of all the purists denouncing Republicans for being insufficiently conservative. What the purists actually mean is that the subjects of their ire are too Republican, too concerned with protecting the guild and winning elections for its members. If we had our terminology right, it would be the conservatives — some openly flirting with a third party — who were being denounced as the true Republicans in name only.