RUSH: Here’s Annette in Highland, Illinois. Glad you waited. Great to have you on the program, Annette.
CALLER: Thank you. I just want to tell you, I’m so glad you’re saying what you’re saying today. I was a nervous wreck yesterday that we were gonna lose you as conservatives, and you’re just right on today about the immigration thing. My family immigrated here legally in 1955, and some more of them immigrated here in 2007, and we are against any kind of amnesty. The Republicans didn’t lose because of Hispanics. The Republicans lost because they’re not conservative enough.
RUSH: I happen to think you’re dead right. I think that’s why so many voters, Republicans who did vote in 2008, didn’t in 2012. I think that’s why —
CALLER: Many of my friends and acquaintances did not vote for Mitt Romney because they said they held their nose and voted for a moderate with McCain, and they only did that because of Palin, and they weren’t gonna do that again.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: The one thing, and I hate to say this, I like Marco Rubio when he first came on the scene, but the one thing I’m not hearing from any Republican is that anyone who came here illegally is never given the right to vote. And if they want to do that first, and then go from there —
RUSH: Yeah. (crosstalk)
CALLER: — you know what this problem of illegal immigration, I support that.
RUSH: I proposed that. Not yesterday, but last year, Annette, I said, as a means of illustration, the same point you’re making, I said, “I, El Rushbo, will support blanket amnesty right now if they can’t vote for 25 years,” and nobody took me up on it, because the whole thing is about votes. Why did you think you’re gonna lose me after yesterday?
CALLER: Well, because — Marco Rubio is really convincing, and I was very worried, people tend to listen to what he says because of his ethnic background. And he does not necessarily speak for the Latinos and Latinos who are here legally in this country. And he seems to think they lost because of this Hispanic and Latino issue, and they didn’t. So I feel like he’s a little bit deceived and he had a huge audience yesterday, and I just really — I feel like, as a conservative, we’ve lost so many people, and I’ve listened for 20 years, and I was scared.
RUSH: Never, ever fear that I will ever do anything like that.
CALLER: Well, thank you, because right now I feel like I’m a woman without a party.
RUSH: I know how you feel, but I’m never gonna betray myself or you, never, ever. What I said in the first half hour of this hour about immigration is exactly what I think about it. It’s an assimilation issue, it’s a cultural issue, and I don’t have time to go through it all here again, but I don’t know what you’re afraid you heard yesterday, but if you heard or if you’re afraid that you heard that I somehow bought into amnesty, no way in any shape, manner, or form. What I was praising Rubio on is what I heard as his unalterable position on border security as a first step, and if that doesn’t happen, he’s not voting for this. That’s what I was praising on him.
CALLER: Well, I think it comes from a fear as a conservative of being abandoned by the Republican Party and feeling really hopeless when I supported these people with my vote for 25 years.
RUSH: Yeah. I know.
CALLER: And I feel very betrayed. And, like I said, myself and many others feel like we don’t have a party now.
RUSH: I know. I know. I know exactly what you’re talking about. You have been betrayed so often, you expect it now. I could give you names and I know you would agree with me, on people that you loved and you were just ready to go to wall for, and then one day they abandoned you. I know what you’re talking about. We’re not gonna do that. One of the biggest fears that soldiers have is being abandoned on the battlefield. We don’t do that. I couldn’t betray myself, wouldn’t do it, but I appreciate your calling, Annette. Thank you so much.