No, they are not.
The GOP is the entirety of the party membership, just like the Rodents are the entire set of filthy disgusting self-proclaimed elitist greedy pigs AND the morons that vote for them AND the moronic Never Trumping Traitors.
RINO is a designation of the subset of Republicans (the GOP) who are disgusting traitors.
Conservatives are another subset of the GOP, the largest such and the most poorly defined.
There's even RINO Rodent jackasses claiming to be "Principled Conservatives" who are just the disgusting RINO pigs showing up at the library to host Drag Queen Story Hour. Real Americans want nothing to do with them.
Define "Real Americans". I have to work tonight, but for extra credit, show me how the current GOP at the national level is doing one damned thing for that group.
The GOP (the ones who cast the votes on the Hill, who undermined the POTUS's policy attempts--(which were populist in nature, and I would suggest by virtue of that, supported by a vast number of people who voted for that POTUS and some even who did not when the policy aligned with principle), who slow walked "investigations", who miserably failed, despite having both houses of Congress and the White House to enact the very policies they'd been elected to enact (Secure the Borders, repeal Obamacare, defend the country, reduce spending and taxes) is the power at the vanguard.
They're the 'stars of the show', and all else just extras or comic relief. Even those few who are trying to do something correctly are branded by the media as 'kooks' or shoved into the shadows by the Party.
So whaddya got?
Even half of the TEA party freshman class was composed of a group that had abandoned the promises made on the stump, and left their constituents with one (stump, that is), bleeding and raw, by the time they were sworn in.
@roamer_1 Yes, those who yet live out of the groups who organized and put those candidates up for election can reorganize again, find new faces or even some old ones and go another round, but don't think that rules haven't changed to prevent such a rush at the gates of power again.
After all, the Chamber of Commerce doesn't want the masses making another run at their turf like that. In some locales, that can be seen on the local level, even. As for the State GOP, I never got to vote for Cruz or Trump, or anyone in the 2016 primary--we didn't have one. And that situation has become worse, not better as access from the grass roots has been shut off here. It's why I left the Party. When microphones are shut off on speakers at the Convention, that's it. Full Stop, Done.
You cannot represent me if you won't listen.How in the Hell does that represent ME? It doesn't. No more than the gender fluid race baiting Democrat/socialists do.
That was an eye opener that might be laid at the feet of local politics, but the same syndrome is pervasive. McConnell and his lot really don't give a flying f**k what we think, if it isn't aligned with what
they (and their biggest donors--
on and off the books)--think.
That's the raw reality of Washington DC, and
BOTH parties.
The squeaky wheels get the grease, and they're getting greased BECAUSE the current squeaky wheels marginalize the MAJORITY in this country. Those wheels who squeak loudly with the help of a media machine that is equally corrupt at its core, who do not practice behaviours which do not contribute to society, but tear down the very real (and, incidentally, conservative) social behaviour patterns which lead to prosperity, from undermining fundamental social structures (families) with social, fiscal, and educational policy, to flouting perversion, to rampaging violence when 'they' don't get their way, to blaming anyone and everyone BUT the perpetrators of that violence, to claiming that, somehow, just pandering to yet another group on the thinnest of excuses will make everything right even as they search for new ways to be offended (some of the best creative minds on the planet are working on that problem, because they're running out of stuff that is anything but blatant racism in their search for ways to undermine western civilization).
We even see this related as "acting too white" in the current discussion of things.
Oh shit, let's go live in bleep mud huts, jump around and sing in a circle and beat our hide shields. What a great step toward sustainability, oh, and don't forget dying like flies in a snowstorm the next time the virgins aren't enough for the fire god.
Western Civilization still lives in mud huts, but we fired the mud first and made brick, we generated electricity, brought in water from miles away at times and plumbed that into the huts and the waste out, and learned to keep things clean so we didn't die in droves of avoidable diseases.
At least our failed civilizations left impressive ruins and written records (not that some Eastern ones did not).
But ever it is the same. Forgo the roots, the principles which made your civilization great, and it's going in the other direction--and sometimes very fast. The surface of this planet is littered with the accumulated ruins of millennia of failed civilizations. Those we know enough about always had some form of destruction of the family unit at their core of their demise, some form of failed monetary policy, some form of "social breakdown" that led to their vulnerability and eventual conquest by some group that had its stuff wound a little tighter and had its eye on the prize. That wasn't a leap forward in being more civilized, and often a harsh step backwards as the villas or mansions of even the elite were looted by the invading hordes, the books were burned, and the surviving people put to the sword, sold into slavery, or left to starve.
It is those who held to their principles in those times, or retained them and passed them on who preserve the principles and philosophies and even religious writings that contribute to the foundations of the next iteration of civilization. The monks of the Dark Ages, those who hid the Dead Sea Scrolls (and likely thousands of others which were recovered) who preserve the identity of that civilization for the next to build on and the history of its demise as a warning. It is only that all we learn from history is that no one seems to learn from history, even as people, once again argue that this time, the "right' people can pull off what has never been accomplished, if they just try hard enough, they alone will master the use of failed principles to build a lasting and worthwhile civilization.
We are here. It is what it is. Will we meekly stand by while our birthright is squandered by crooks?
Time will tell. But if we let that happen, it will be rare and forbidden tests which tell of a land where all had fundamental Rights, where Government governed at the consent of the governed, and derived it's power only from that well informed consent.
