Republican in name only
[4] In 1993, future California Republican Assembly President Celeste Greig distributed buttons featuring a red slash over the word RINO to express opposition to Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan.
[citation needed] Donald Trump and his closest supporters have frequently used the term to describe anyone within the Republican Party he deems to be disloyal.
[10][11][12] After former Vice President Dick Cheney endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, Trump referred him as an "irrelevant RINO".
In the 1930s and 1940s, the term Me-too Republicans described those running on a platform of agreeing with the Democratic Party, proclaiming only minor or moderating philosophical differences.
From 1936 to 1976, the more centrist members of the Republican Party frequently won the national nomination with candidates such as Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie, Thomas E. Dewey, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Gerald Ford.
In the 1950s, conservatives such as Robert A. Taft and Barry Goldwater, who rallied against "me-too Republicans",[20] were considered outside of the mainstream; serious consideration was given to leaving the then GOP and forming a new ultra-conservative party in coalition with the "states' rights" Democrats of the South.
[26][27][28] The metaphorical "cuck" is represented in a genre of interracial pornography as a masochistic white husband who allows his wife to have sex with a stronger black man, thereby participating in his own symbolic emasculation.
[29][30][26][31][32] In white supremacist vernacular, the term is an accusation of yielding to non-white interests on issues such as immigration or modern display of the Confederate flag;[27][33] however, the term gained use (with some controversy)[26][27][28] by more mainstream conservatives to denounce Republicans whose compromises included vote trading, rhetorical restraint in deference to donors, cooperation with Democrats on any particular initiative, or attempting to court voters by making appeals to supposedly liberal ideals.
