Trump and his herd are the true, real RINOs

WASHINGTON » On a glorious autumn afternoon this week, I went hunting. For zebra. In Maryland.

It wasn’t hunting in the Don Jr. and Eric Trump sense of spraying unsuspecting wildlife with semiautomatic gunfire. This hunt involved driving winding roads through woods and subdivisions in Prince George’s County, where three zebras escaped from an exotic animal breeder two months ago. Two remain on the lam, an equine Bonnie and Clyde in a habitat not far from Joint Base Andrews, where the closest thing to a natural predator is the Food Lion.

Not since Panda Cam debuted at the National Zoo has the capital region been quite so animal crazed — even though the zebra, while not exactly native to the Washington suburbs, isn’t that much of a novelty. They can be purchased as pets or even eaten, and a group calling itself the International Zebra-Zorse-Zonkey Association once estimated a few thousand of the beasts live in U.S. backyards.

So why the fuss over these renegades? As described by The Washington Post’s ad hoc zebra correspondent, Maura Judkis, the zebras have for some “attained a near-mythical status as symbols of freedom and resistance and independence.” The mythology has only grown since the chief of Prince George’s animal services division predicted they would be caught in a week — six weeks ago.

I’m cheering for the fugitive zebras because they refused to run with the herd. We need more of that around here.

The evening after my zebra hunt, a similarly willful duo was distancing itself from the pack in Washington: Republican Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), who have refused to join the rest of Donald Trump’s GOP on its goose step toward authoritarianism.

The lonely pair voted with Democrats on the Jan. 6 committee to hold Trump adviser Stephen Bannon in contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena and refusing to comply with a subpoena seeking information on why he told followers on his Jan. 5 radio show that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow” and “we’re on ... the point of attack tomorrow.”

“Based on the committee’s investigation, it appears that Mr. Bannon had substantial advance knowledge of the plans for Jan. 6 and likely had an important role in formulating those plans,” Cheney said Tuesday night, adding that the spurious, vague references to executive privilege by Bannon and Trump “suggest that President Trump was personally involved in the planning and execution of Jan. 6.”

Cheney addressed the rest of the Republican herd still trapped in Trump’s corral: “Almost every one of my colleagues knows, in your hearts, that what happened on Jan. 6 was profoundly wrong” and that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud. “I ask my colleagues, please consider the fundamental questions of right and wrong here. ... All of us who are elected officials must do our duty to prevent the dismantling of the rule of law.”

Cheney made the motion to hold Bannon in contempt. Kinzinger cast the penultimate vote in the unanimous 9-to-0 roll call.

Trump refers to Cheney and Kinzinger as “RINOs” — Republicans in name only. He used the same term this week to disparage former secretary of state Colin Powell posthumously: “He was a classic RINO.”

He’s used the same term to describe, among many others, Republican officials in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania who stood by their states’ election integrity; Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah), John Thune (S.D.), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.); Paul Ryan; Jeb Bush; and the late John McCain.

By Trump’s standard, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater would be RINOs today, too. That’s because the real RINOs are Trump and his followers. They’ve abandoned the GOP of Reagan, McCain and Powell — internationalist, free-trading champions of human rights, the rule of law and limited government — and embraced the polar opposite: isolationist, protectionist, white nationalist, vulgar assailants of legal and democratic structures. Trump’s Republican flock has achieved herd immunity from the truth.

By contrast, Cheney and Kinzinger haven’t changed their stripes. They’re holding fast to the honorable Republican traditions. For the sake of our country, we need more zebras such as them to break free from Trump’s exotic barnyard.

I didn’t expect to find the runaway zebras as I drove near the farm from which they escaped. But there was a thrill in knowing a zebra could appear around any bend, as incongruous as a fugitive kangaroo in Kansas City or a runaway yak in Yakima. Instead, I found schools and churches, tract houses and high-tension power lines, road crews and construction crews, a golf course and a herd of Herefords. Driving through the Greens at Marlton development, I caught a glimpse of a distant equine shape silhouetted in a shaded meadow behind a row of houses. It was almost certainly a horse. But I’d like to think it was a zebra.

I need to believe.

By contrast to the Trump crowd, Cheney and Kinzinger haven’t changed their stripes. They’re holding fast to honorable Republican traditions.