RINOs are the GOP's future, not the Tea Party

Ever since New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, his state ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, extended his hand to President Barack Obama, the Tea Party has been adamant in calling him a Republican in Name Only (RINO), a sin exceeded only by being a Democrat.

Yesterday, Christie won re-election in a landslide. The Tea Party didn't fare as well. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, despite running in a state that — while turning purple — is far more conservative than solidly blue New Jersey.

In Alabama, establishment Republicans scored another victory when former state Senator Bradley Byrne defeated Dean Young, a Tea Party favorite who insists that the president was born in Kenya, to become the GOP's candidate in the state's 1st Congressional District.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Both Christie and Byrne have been decried as RINOs, which, to outsiders, seems odd, seeing as both have solidly conservative voting records — especially on economic issues.

"One mistake for the GOP to avoid is casting Mr. Christie as a 'moderate' because he won twice in a Democratic state," wrote The Wall Street Journal. "The governor has by and large governed as a conservative reformer."

Liberals have long complained about Christie's reputation as a moderate Republican, seeing as he opposed a minimum wage hike, raising taxes for the wealthy, and funding for Planned Parenthood. Byrne has a solid conservative voting record as well, earning him endorsements from a plethora of business groups and the NRA.

Getting a Tea Party endorsement isn't so much about policy as it is "a question of tactics and tone," wrote TIME's Alex Altman. In other words, RINOs are blasted for reaching across the aisle, not for how they vote.

This latest election, argued The Daily Beast's John Avlon, shows the flaw in that standard of conservatism:

The fact that Young lost should be an even starker warning to Tea Partiers. Races in deep-red Congressional districts, as opposed to state-wide races, are traditionally where Tea Party candidates should be able to shine.

Young's hard-charging style and his unapologetically retrograde views — "Homosexuality is wrong, and that is just the way it is," he told The Guardian — were rejected by voters in a district that is about as reliably Republican as any in the country.

"The message to Republicans should be obvious: Stop nominating candidates who are far out of the political mainstream," wrote USA Today's editorial board. And while USA Today believes that "should happen naturally over time as Republicans grow weary of losing," others aren't so sure the GOP will learn its lesson.

No matter how conservative a so-called RINO votes, some Tea Party members will always back the firebrand, wrote The Washington Post's Carter Eskew:

Of course, two gubernatorial races and one Congressional race isn't a large enough sample size to declare the Tea Party dead. The real test will come next year during the 2014 midterm elections.