Colin Powell: I'm Still a RINO

One of the more entertaining news stories from the last week is the squabble between RINOs Colin Powell and Dick Cheney.  Cheney observed on a talk show that he didn’t realize Powell was still a Republican.  Powell retorted that he was a Republican because he had voted for Republicans Reagan and Bush II as well as Democrats Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Obama.  Powell’s response makes as much sense as Cheney’s reputation for being a conservative, which nonsensically appears to be based on his advocacy for business interests and war in Iraq.

In itself, watching two big-government RINOs argue over which can claim the mantle of “Republican” is as meaningful as professional wrestling, but what is at stake today is what, if anything, it means to be a Republican.  In 1994, the Republican Party was on the brink of a ushering in a political realignment that would have made it the majority party for the first time since 1932.  Republican leaders won power by talking a big game of small government, but they didn’t mean a word of it.  As they gained power in Washington, the beltway Republicans proved that what they believed in was big, intrusive, lawless government.  The result is the last election in which big-government Republicans got the whipping they earned by years of misrule. 

Powell and Cheney should be irrelevant, so it matters that people listen to their “debate” over which is a Republican, precisely because neither of them should be a Republican.  Powell and Cheney illustrate two visions of a Republican Party without principle. 

Powell’s vision is one in which the Republican Party should seek electoral victories by appealing to the same people who vote for Democrats, so that the difference between the two parties is one of brand name only.  His view appears to be that competing parties foster debate and that debate is good as long as it is not based on any ideological difference.  This is the voice of one who came up through the federal bureaucracy and distrusts political principle absolutely. 

Cheney’s vision is one in which the sole governing principle is reason of state:  that the interest and well-being of the state itself is the value government exists to serve.  What matters to someone like Cheney is that the “right” people hold the reigns of power, and provided the right people are in charge, there should be no legal or moral restraints on government’s power.  This is the voice of the second Bush administration. 

Fortunately, we don’t have to accept either Powell’s or Cheney’s vision.  In fact, we can tell both of them that, however they may regard themselves, we do not consider them Republicans.  “I may be out of their version of the Republican Party,” Powell said of his critics, “but there's another version of the Republican Party waiting to emerge once again.”  Indeed, and therein lies our hope.  We have the benefit of two hundred years of political history in which successive leaders articulated and defended the principles of individual liberty, limited government, and constitutional government.  The likes of Cheney and Powell will be forgotten in a generation, and it is up to us to recapture our Party and provide the principled leadership our country needs now as much as ever. 

Scott Boykin is Chairman of the Alabama Republican Liberty Caucus.