No, babe, the fact is, you don’t get to decide who is a Republican or a conservative. Someone who has mainstream conservative values and votes and supports Republicans, as this CNN commentator has done, is actually a Republican. You don’t get to RINO her out of the Party because she is not reactionary enough for you.
RINOs defend RINOs well enough. People call themselves whatever they want, and I call them whatever I want. Trump is not "Republican", CNN employees are not "Republican". They have loyalties that transcend the demands of the label. Probably phony pretensions. Like being some damn "token" something or another. Nobody knows what a Republican is, but I can Guan-damn-tee you Kanye is not a Republican either. I think they are Americans, and I don't think you are American. They are not so American that they would really be any kind of model or example, but the basic idea that qualifies them as "American" is that they, in some ways, seem to think individual people have rights and relevance that should take priority over some of the demands for conformity to some of the "liberal" imperatives. They like people working and taking care of themselves, and prospering more than they like them being taken care of by socialist programs. Trump and Kanye agree on the need for them to use their position or assets to help foster that self-reliance that made them successful.
So go pound sand with your little Statist authoritarian encyclopedic intellectual conceits. You practically have to be a Marxist to even use words like "reactionary" in describing people you know nothing about. With Marxists and many influenced by the made-up fantasies of socialism and the whole kit and caboodle of related ideologies, the common denominator is lies. The end justifies the means, and lies made up in service of the cause are considered clever if not virtuous methods of the "revolution" or "resistance".
The whole political dictionary made up in promoting Statism over the American ideals of governments of, by, and for the people.... run by the people.... is designed to control and manipulate human beings to subservience. You think you get to define what's what and divide and classify and pontificate according to you particular delusions.
In my simplified truthful lexicon, I simply recognize that people operating within the made-up constructs are really not even what they imagine they are.
A political party can call themselves Republican or Democrat, meet and write up little party platforms or run out some kind of campaign, but nobody sticks to the terms. There's always some damn lobbyist with some kind of angle about why politicians should do what he wants, and most of the time that is what is done.
A person may call themselves "American" for any of several reasons, if not hundreds of reasons, but in the context of a discussion of politics where the ideals of socialism are distinctly different from the ideas of the United States Constitution or Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence, the word "American" can have a distinct meaning of supporting those documents in some fashion. Sure a lot of ideological "socialists" also believe they support those ideals as well, but in some ways their profession just isn't realistic to the terms of human rights envisioned by the American founders.
So if you want anyone to think you're "smart" it would be advisable to consider actually understanding how the terms are being used, and what it intended by others in their use.... and maybe respond to that.
Not go off on some stupid insult about how anyone who isn't hip with the trends you prefer is "reactionary". That is such a trite overused and discredited term. You think you are "progress", you think you can shout down anyone who differs by using stupid meaningless terms that wore out all over again every time some totalitarian dictator called himself "progress" and wanted to shut down his opposition.
I have fun trying to make conceited arrogant idealists with a settled world view just a bit uncomfortable. I'm not done until I can laugh at them. So I'll have to do some more, later, gator.