My answer:  NO.  My case in point:  Eight years of the Bush Administration.

Bush was not a “Neo-conservative”.  Bush was a RINO.  He agreed with us on a point or two, but for the rest of it, he was left of center.  In and of itself, this only makes him as bad as a Democrat.  Same politics, same damage, equivalent by the Turing test, right?  Wrong.

RINOs have one other major defect.  When they gain leadership positions, they can make those Republicans with better sense shut up and vote like fools, and that’s exactly what Bush did.  For six years, Republicans were Democrats for most purposes, and they paid for it two election cycles in a row.  Now, they’re irrelevant due to the leadership of one of their own.

Tell me what Democrat, if they had enough sense to overcome Bush Derangement Syndrome, would have dared dream they would destroy the Republican Party, discredit and disenfranchine the conservative movement (if only for a time), and get the ball rolling on the socialization of our economy as well as Bush did?  Any liberal with any intellectual honesty or emotional control at all should look at the Bush administration as a net gain.  They would be sending the man thank-you notes, presents, and adulation any chance they got.  He was the best thing to happen to them in a long, long time.

Clinton could not have done better, and he was a consummate politician.  Obama would consider his career complete if he only did half so much with regards to annihilating all political opposition.  FDR is the only Democrat in my memory to do more for his party than Bush did, and Bush was supposed to be a Republican.

Hence my conclusion.  RINOs are not the lesser evil.  Now, when I say RINO, I’m not talking about Republicans who merely disagree with conservatism on a handful of points, but flaming “moderate” Republicans who are indistinguishable from Democrats.  The ones who are conservative until it’s time to do something real, and then either do nothing, undermine their own fellows, or vote and talk like Democrats.

These are the ones in a position to do real damage, because they can do it from within.  Either from naivete, an ease of manipulation, a selfish desire to earn the approval of a liberal media, or just a disgust of conservatism, they do far worse than their Democrat counterparts could do from the outside.  And on top of it, they don’t even consider working with their own party.  They always jump the aisle first (think “Gangs of”), and for some of the time during the Bush administration, it was easy to see the RINOs in charge didn’t have any regard whatsoever for conservatives.  It’s why we dislike them.

I can all but hear the moderates screaming as they read this, presuming any come to visit me.  As far as I’m concerned, the burden of proof is on them to back their assertion that “The Republican Party needs us!”.  Furthermore, I no longer care if someone might or might not have “been a good man”, “was just naive” or “thought they were trying to do the right thing”.  Yes, it’s harsh, but we have a country to fix now, and the milquetoast has no place in it.  As much as it brings me to nausea, the Republicans may well be our best shot at it.  So those Powells and McCains hurting them can quit being Powells and McCains, or for all I care, they can begone.