Liz Cheney and Pat Toomey are not RINOs | Opinion

Former President Donald Trump is not the sole decider of who is or is not a Republican. Barry Goldwater, former senator and Republican candidate for president in 1964, admonished his fellow conservatives in 1960 that they should work to “take back this party.” The simple fact is that former President Trump is not a traditional conservative and never has been. With the possible exceptions of his appointees to the federal bench and building a powerful American military, there are strong arguments to be made that many of his policies were not consistent with traditional American conservative principles.

So why then is he clamoring to tear down other Republicans who think outside the box?

It borders on the irrational that Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s sole representative in Congress who has a very traditional conservative voting record, is under attack by Trump at the CPAC Conference and his obedient and economically dependent son, Donald Trump Jr. Equally beyond the pale is that a junior colleague representative from Florida, Matt Gaetz, who has periodically been under review for House ethics violations, would travel to Cheney’s state to attack her vote against the former president. Gaetz and others need to be thinking ahead, not looking in the rear-view mirror of former President Trump’s one-term presidency.

» READ MORE: Pat Toomey is facing a Republican backlash in Pennsylvania for voting to convict Donald Trump

In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, whom I publicly supported in an article in the Jewish Exponent and who campaigned for and voted for Trump, is also being attacked for his vote to convict Trump. Toomey, who voted about 85% in support of Trump’s policies in the Senate, surely is a bona fide conservative by any measure except when it came to voting to convict Trump for his behavior leading up to and during the attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6.

Political parties are not fraternities or sororities, where members select their colleagues. American political parties have a singular purpose: to elect candidates to public office and to help winners govern effectively. Thus, members who register to join a party in our United States volunteer to select, elect, and serve winners of elections.

The Republican Party of which I am a lifelong member who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and in Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburgh’s administration, needs to learn and practice several important things.

We do not, nor do our leaders or former leaders, have the right to tarnish those within the party as a RINO, the derogatory term “Republican in Name Only.” No one who declares themselves a Republican should be attacked as a RINO just because they don’t support the winner or loser of an election. Former President Ronald Reagan said it best when he proclaimed the 11th Commandment, ”Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.”

As for those Republican organizations across the country, including several in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, acting to censure senators or representatives who did not support the former president, they need to realize that the GOP, locally or state by state, is not a religious order where censorship or excommunication is permitted. The tent must be large enough to accommodate different thinking and policies.

» READ MORE: Trump calls for GOP unity, says he won’t start another party

America needs, as even liberal New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman admits, a responsible right-of-center political party. That should be the Republican Party. To my fellow Republicans, do not wallow in the failure of 2020. Nominate and work for Republicans who can win general elections. That is our job!

Howard A. Cohen has taught business ethics at Temple University’s Fox School of Business and serves on the private-public partnership board of Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation. He lives in Philadelphia.