RUSH: Bruce in Boaz, Alabama, hi. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: It’s an honor, Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH: Well, thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I wanted to take a stab at why you are the de facto candidate for the conservative party.
RUSH: Go for it, sir, go for it.
CALLER: I believe the lines began to be blurred as soon as George Bush the First took office when he told us to read his lips and it didn’t mean no new taxes, and then as much as I love George the Second, I believe George the Second really blurred the lines on fiscal policy, and I believe that you’re the most qualified voice for the conservative viewpoint, and you won’t let ’em blur the lines even more with John McCain, and so they’re trying to get you, who is a conservative by conviction, to shut up, so John McCain, who is a conservative by agenda, can get on with his agenda.
RUSH: McCain is not a conservative?
CALLER: I agree.
RUSH: So you misspoke. Well, let me ask you a question. You seem to have got this figured out. Do you think this is accidental? So you have Bush 41, who runs as Reagan’s heir and says, ‘Read my lips, no new taxes,’ and then, bam, eventually we read his lips, and there are new taxes, and makes a deal, who with, Foley? And then we have Bush 43, who Peggy Noonan, in disagreeing with me, says has destroyed the Republican Party, not John McCain, because he’s not governed as a conservative on many things while having conservatives in the House, he stymied them. Do you believe all that? Let me just first ask you since you pretty much made the same case, so you believe that, right?
CALLER: I do believe that.
RUSH: Okay, so the next question I have for you, is this just coincidental? Is this just accident, or do you think that there is on the part of the country club blue-blood Republican set a desire to rid the party of its Reagan conservatism?
CALLER: Oh, absolutely. I think that is the agenda. I am a conservative by virtue of my convictions, and I listen to you because of your convictions, not because of your agenda.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: We are driven in the South more about what we fear than we are by anything else, which is why we’d rather vote for a backslidden Southern Baptist and a non-practicing Presbyterian than a practicing Mormon. Those of us who are driven by our convictions are few and far between. It’s just too much work.
RUSH: Yes, those driven by ideas. Let me just repeat this. This is why we’d rather vote for a back-stabbing, did you say?
CALLER: Backslidden.
RUSH: Backslidden Southern Baptist, that would be Huckabee?
CALLER: That would be Huckabee.
RUSH: Than a non-practicing Presbyterian, that would be McCain?
CALLER: That would be McCain.
RUSH: Than a practicing Mormon, and obviously that would be Romney?
CALLER: Yes. Because we’re afraid of Romney.
RUSH: I understand that.
CALLER: I voted for him, but I won’t admit it in church. (laughing)
RUSH: I understand that. Actually, the evangelical vote’s being split between Huckabee and Romney, it’s not all going to the Huckster. That’s an affectionate term. You Hucksters out there, you think I’m insulting you, I’m not, with the term. Okay, so you think that there’s an ongoing concerted conspiracy — and, by the way, conspiracy doesn’t mean something we don’t see, it just means people are conspiring, they’re working together for an objective. In this case, the objective is to simply rid the Republican Party of conservative influence and power.
CALLER: Yes. Quick example. My six-year-old granddaughter in Virginia recently, this week, was told to take two animals, an elephant and a tiger, and to put them together and make one animal out of them, and the whole idea was to try to teach her how we must all get along. Well, I don’t intend to get along with people who want to kill me and destroy my ideas, but I have convictions.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Very few in politics have convictions —
RUSH: Are you telling me you don’t understand the importance of reaching out to Democrats to get things done?
CALLER: I don’t want to reach out to them. I want to defeat their agenda that my convictions and my dreams —
RUSH: Amen, bro. Amen. So your six-year-old granddaughter in Virginia was told to take two animals, an elephant and a tiger, this obviously a paper exchange, a paper exercise?
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: How did that turn out?
CALLER: Well, it turned out to be an elephantiger, so she told me on the phone, and she was so excited about getting an A and making the two animals be peaceful with one another.
RUSH: She got an A for creating an elephantiger?
CALLER: That’s it, that’s correct.
RUSH: Could we pronounce it elephantiger, because some people are not going to —
CALLER: (laughing) You have my permission.
RUSH: That is crazy. They take an elephant and a tiger and the teacher said, ‘Come up with a brand-new animal.’ Did she have to draw what the animal looked like?
CALLER: She had to draw it, cut it out, paste it together, and then write a story about it.
RUSH: What did it look like, did you see the elephantiger?
CALLER: I saw it on my web cam, Rush, and it looked like the head of an elephant with the backside of a tiger.
RUSH: Was it gray or did it have stripes?
CALLER: It did.
RUSH: Both? It was gray and had stripes?
CALLER: It had an elephant’s head, gray, and a tiger’s body with stripes, and it was glued together.
RUSH: So really what your little six-year-old granddaughter was being told to do was learn, there’s no differences between us?
CALLER: That’s it. We can all get along, all the little animals — and I believe that’s going to happen in heaven, but not in this earth.
RUSH: Well, no, but that exercise, that’s going to extend to people!
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: The whole point of that exercise is to show there’s no difference in anybody. If you can take an elephant and a tiger, put them together and come up with an elephantiger and it makes sense to somebody, well, imagine what other differences we can rectify on paper with some little creative artwork.
CALLER: Absolutely. And we can have a John McCain who can reach across the aisle and he can bring us all together and make —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — Demorepubs out of us.
RUSH: We’re no different, except the conservatives. Nobody will ever be able to draw a conservative with anybody else because they just won’t mix. That’s next to be taught in school.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Hm-hm. Don’t forget, the elephant is a GOP symbol here and a tiger is a tiger, and you know what happens.
CALLER: And, Rush, you’re our true Ronald Reagan voice of conviction.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate it. I really do. By the way, you know this elephantiger, you need to go out and trademark this thing and sell it to Apple Computer. They can name their next operating system after this. I would love to see that.