An acronym for “Republican in name only,” RINO is a pejorative term used primarily by Republicans to describe members of their own party that they have deemed to be insufficiently conservative. In the midterm elections of 2010 and in the Campaign of 2012, these criticisms came primarily from the Tea Party movement. In these elections, Tea Party candidates vigorously challenged those Republicans deemed to be RINOs in Republican primary elections at the state, local, and national levels, with the goal of purging all moderates from the party. During the presidential campaign, Tea Party surrogates offered a host of litmus tests (including a “purity test”) for Republican candidates for the White House. Candidates were expected to oppose all forms of tax increases, to be strongly committed to cutting domestic spending (although there was some disagreement about entitlement spending), to oppose same-sex marriage, to oppose legal abortion, to be critical of the Environmental Protection Agency, to oppose cap-and-trade legislation to regulate greenhouse gases, to be critical about theories of global climate change, to support gun rights, to oppose “Obamacare,” to oppose the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), to oppose the stimulus bill, and to demonstrate an overall commitment to a smaller federal government. Given the long list of items, it should come as no surprise that Republican candidates were sharply critical of each other’s performance on the litmus test.
In the Campaign of 2016, the litmus test became much more specific: Would the GOP candidate for president support the eventual party nominee if it did not happen to be him or her? Or, to phrase the question another way, would the candidate promise to refrain from running an independent challenge for the White House? Only Donald Trump refused to comply with the terms of the litmus test. Trump, previously a supporter of Democratic candidates and long a friend of the Clintons, had long had a reputation as an eccentric and thus showed less of a propensity, overall, to adhere to all of the components of the GOP platform than had the other candidates (supporting, for example, a government-funded health care system, but changing his position on other topics to conform to the party norm). While Trump’s refusal to accede to the litmus test certainly left him vulnerable to being tagged a RINO, it is not clear that this in any way hampered his overall popularity with GOP voters.
Democrats have their own version of this term, DINO, to indicate someone who is a “Democrat in name only.” This term hasn’t played much of a role in presidential elections. It has been more commonly used to describe legislators such as Senator Joe Lieberman, who lost his Democratic primary for the Senate in Connecticut, won reelection as an Independent, caucused with the Democrats, but campaigned with John McCain in the Campaign of 2008. Naturally, Democrats questioned Lieberman’s loyalty and his Democratic credentials. The Democrats have generally not subjected their members to litmus or purity tests; however, this may be a function of the historic lack of cohesiveness of the Democratic Party.
Barrett, Grant, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.