When you support gay rights, domestic partnerships, and support abortions (the GA Right-to-Life absolutely refused to endorse her in this campaign or any other political campaign, then you are a RINO to me. When you vote to give taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood, (over $1 million dollars), that confirms it even more. That is just a start for her.
Sure, Deal was a Democrat, but like President Ronald Reagan, his former party left him, and he had to leave that party.
Obviously we are going to have to send the Union Army back down there to he'p you people work this out.
You have to remember that the term RINO was being used decades ago before Ronald Reagan came along. In fact, in those days we used to differentiate between "Rockefeller Republican" and "RINO" and "Eastern Wing of the Republican Establishment".
A RINO is a Democrat who runs in a predominantly Democrat area under the Republican label. The purpose is to deny a regular machine Democrat a position in Congress or a state legislature, or sometimes a Governorship or a Mayorality. This frequently happens with city council elections.
A Liberal is a mind-numbed, knee-jerk, robot-like adherent or advocate of various discredited and antiquated Leftwing nostrums and notions. A RINO does not need to be a Liberal, nor are all Liberal Republicans RINOs. Some of them are just unpleasant people who can't get elected as Democrats.
BTW, Ronald Reagan never ran for public office as a Democrat. Deal did. That indelibly marks him as a RINO. Not that they are all bad, but if we don’t need to run a RINO why run one.