RINOs --Wrong Then. Wrong Now.

I snapped up a copy of the Middletown Press at the Mansfield Flea Market last summer and this image keeps haunting me. So I moved the cat who has made my box of old newspapers his favorite bed, and fished it out to post this snowy morning. Its so telling; isn't it?

I wish I could put up the whole paper in fact. Nearly every page is full of stories about so-called "GOP Extremism". You can feel the newspaper's anguish for us por por Republicans; can't you?

'They really really want us to have a chance you have to understand'! The mainstream media as it is now known wants to stop us from making the fatal mistake of nominating Goldwater --- or Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or Sarah Palin...

The more things change, the more things stay the same. This isn't just about media bias, its about those spineless fifth-columnists RINOs who let the press scare them into betraying their stated beliefs.

-- On on that, we know how sucessfull the Johnson presidency was now, don't we?

True scores of RINOs have thankfully left the party but enough remain to make a constant nuisance of themselves.

Here is a little sampling of the headlines which tell the story all by themselves.

"Extremism Splits GOP"

"Ike Asks Goldwater to Explain Position"

"Area Republicans Go Slow on Barry Views"

"GOP Isn't United Behind Goldwater"

"Former Legislator Bolts GOP, Unhappy with Barry"

"Rockefeller Blast Goldwater's Stand"

Under the last front-page above the fold headline is a picture of Republican (well sort of) Senator Nelson Rockefeller with the caption "Barry frightens him".

Oh, and let me read to you a bit of the inside editorial "Goldwater and the Press". Its just so rich:

"....Usually the newspapers in a campaign are accused of being a one-party press whose publishers invariably support Republicans and this results in news stories favorable to their candidate. In the last election it was charged that most reporters are Democrats and hence Vice-President Nixion suffered and President Kennedy benefited. This year the charge that seems to be shaping up is that Eastern Newspapers are against the senator. Thus it appears to be the case that for the second campaign in a row, the Republican candidate will do most of the complaining...In short, the outcries about the press usually com late in the campaign -- usually from the loser -- but this year the Goldwater supporters are taking no chances: They are getting their complaints in early. All this is not to say that the press as a whole will get though this campaign without error or misquotation, for this is humanly impossible, nor is it to say that Senator Goldwater will not have the editorial support of as many newspapers as is usual for a Republican candidate. But it is to say that the performance of the press, good, bad, or indifferent, will be the subject of distress to one side or the other, and possibly both."

Like I said -- rich.