RUSH: Well, if you look at the last couple of polls that I have seen where the so-called generic congressional ballot, where they go and they ask people, ‘If the election were held today, who would you vote for, for Congress?’ without mentioning a candidate’s name, it’s tied, Republicans and Democrats. And I saw something the other day where as many people today identify themselves as Republicans as identified themselves as Democrats. You know about the Pew poll, and you guys at Fox even had a poll which shows that a majority of Americans for the first time in a long time are against the pro-choice position. They are pro-life. So I don’t buy the fact that people are majority Democrat.
I think this last election, you had eight years of media pounding on the Bush administration. The Bush administration was not defending itself as forcefully or as often as it should have, not singing its praises, not — certainly economically, not — talking about the good things. Plus, you know, the Republicans today are kind of hamstrung, because the Bush administration did go wild in spending. And so Republicans today, they think in Washington if they start talking about reducing spending, they are opening themselves up to charges of hypocrisy. But Bush never did
And this has got Republicans bamboozled, too, because they have got nobody that people love as a personality — and even if they did, the media would go out and destroy that person, or try to. So what is going to have to happen here is all of the things that Obama is doing — he’s just barely past 100 days — are going to have a dramatic impact on people, so all that people like me are telling them will actually be happening rather than something they’ll just have to believe. The Chrysler dealers are a great example of finding out exactly what Barack Obama as president meant to them. I’ll bet many of them voted for him, but now he is putting 3,300 of them out of business, many of them successful. So it’s going to take time for this damage to affect as many people personally as possible, and you will see them flee the Democrat Party as quickly as they can.
VAN SUSTEREN: If there is no sort of single Republican leader out there, does the responsibility thus fall on Michael Steele’s shoulders because he is head of the Republican National Committee? And what is his challenge, and can he do it?
RUSH: Well, that is not the job of the RNC chairman. The pressure on Steele is sort of compounded because there isn’t — right now — an identifiable, single Republican person candidate that everybody is focusing on as the next hope. The RNC chairman or the DNC chairman is really not the boss of the party. It’s whoever gets the presidential nomination in 2012 that’s going to be the leader of the Republican Party. That’s just politics. That’s the way it is — and that person, we may know who it is, we may not. The list is large. But it’s going to be bloody, because the Republican Party, as I said, they cringe at people like Sarah Palin. They cringe at the tea parties. Our own party has blue-blood members that look at this California vote yesterday and say, ‘Oh no! We are trying to get rid of tax cuts! That’s too Reagan. That’s too old-fashioned. People want big government.’
Colin Powell. He is a guy who says a couple of weeks ago: the Republican Party, the country wants bigger government; they want to pay more taxes — and then California shows just the opposite. The Republican Party is made up of a lot of people like Colin Powell who also wanted to vote for Obama but did not. But he did. So it is fascinating to me to watch all of this and chronicle it, because I think there’s an opportunity here to literally contrast ourselves. I think the Democrats are so damn vulnerable, Greta, with what they are doing and destroying individual liberty and prosperity. They are doing great damage to the middle class out there who dreams the American dream, and it is getting harder. It’s going to be almost impossible to achieve if Obama accomplishes everything he wants. When they’ll figure it out is when the ‘revolt’ or ‘revolution’ will begin.
VAN SUSTEREN: Where does former vice president Dick Cheney sort of fit into this whole formula in terms of the Republican Party? Does he help them right now, or hurt them as he speaks out?
RUSH: Well, now, see, that is a great question. This is why you are number one at ten o’clock. Dick Cheney gets results! Dick Cheney, the past two weeks, has been out saying, ‘This country is less safe with Obama and his policy. Club Gitmo? Fine,’ and guess what? Every foreign-policy decision that was the Bush-Cheney foreign policy fundamental war on terror is being adopted by the Obama administration! They are going to keep Guantanamo Bay open. They are not going to release prisoners into this country or into prisons here. Dick Cheney gets results. And you’ve got Republicans. I saw on your network some hack GOP ‘strategist’ yesterday afternoon or the day before, saying, ‘Dick Cheney is the wrong messenger for our party today, and there are some others who are the wrong messenger.’ For crying out loud, he’s the only one who is speaking out in opposition to what Obama is doing — and he’s getting results! So I don’t think… You miss the point if you people think Cheney is on the outs and is causing problems. He is getting results, and he is showing the way. He has got courage and guts. God bless him.
VAN SUSTEREN: Rush, as always, thank you very much for joining us.
RUSH: You bet, Greta. Thank you so much, and I always enjoy being with you.
VAN SUSTEREN: And I love it, and I especially love being surprised by the call. Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: You bet.
GRETA: Rush, thank you for joining us. Earlier today you said on your show that the upcoming elections boils down to this: ‘It’s either Obama and the Democrats or America. You can’t have both.’ What do you mean by that?
RUSH: Well, I think it’s pretty clear. I think we’re in the midst of a disaster, Greta. I think the Obama administration, the regime and its agenda, is a disaster for this country as founded. There is a systematic destruction of the private sector of this country taking place. The private sector is where jobs are created for Americans. And there aren’t any jobs being created, and there are no policies in place to create jobs. The policies in place are depressing job creation. And so the question here for the election is: Obama and the Democrats or America, because you can’t have both. And maybe I should say ‘America as founded.’ I think it’s crunch time. I don’t think this is being overstated. I don’t think it’s being exaggerated at all.
GRETA: What do you think of the Tea Party and its effect on the midterms?
RUSH: Well, clearly the Tea Party is having a profound effect on the midterm elections. But if you look at Alaska and the polling data in Alaska and Delaware, you know, Lisa Murkowski says she’s gonna run the write-in campaign. They did some polling, and she’s taking votes away from the Democrat, not the Tea Party winner, the Republican. And the same thing in Delaware. Castle flirting with maybe a write-in candidacy, and so they polled it and they found out that Castle would take votes away from Coons, the Democrat, and not from Christine O’Donnell. I think what’s happening, if you look at who the Tea Party nominees are and the people that comprise the Tea Party, these are people who live lives, these are people who have lived lives. You know, Nathan Deal in Georgia has a debt problem. It’s not hurting his campaign. He can relate to the people in this country who make it work. The Tea Party people have not been groomed for political advancement from college on. The way has not been paved for them. These people have made it on their own to whatever degree they’ve made it, living their lives, and that’s who’s surfacing now.
There was a piece in the American Spectator about a month ago that I just thought was fabulous. It’s now been made into a small book by Angelo Codevilla called The Ruling Class. And we really are dealing with the ruling class elites, which is a minority running the country versus the country class; that’s the average, ordinary American people who make it work. And, by the way, when I say elites, they’re not better than anybody else; they just think they are. They think they’re more special, they think they’re smarter, they think they’re more sophisticated, but they’re not. They’re in the process of ruining the country. And part of being an American is wanting to leave a legacy for your children and grandchildren better than what you found, what you had. And people now are genuinely thinking it’s not gonna be possible, first time in American history, in the modern era. It’s not good, and it’s gotta change. Republicans, people around the country have been clamoring for people to get involved: ‘Come on, we need you to run for office,’ and now they’re out there doing it, and it’s not time to start putting them down; it’s time to support them. I’m enthused by what’s happening. I’m invigorated by it.
GRETA: Has the Republican Party ignored the members of the Tea Party over the last year, two years?
RUSH: Did you say they’ve ignored them?
GRETA: Yes. Have they ignored them? Have the Republicans ignored the Tea Party?
RUSH: Well, I think not all Republicans have, but, you know, Washington is the political class. Members of both parties obviously comprise the political class, and Washington is a town that has its own prescriptions for success, it has its mechanisms in place for how you advance there, both politically and socially. And the Tea Party people, I think there is a good way to illustrate in a way that is a fairly good analogy. I can remember back in the early nineties, Greta, when my show was just taking off and I would go to parties in the Northeast, some of the Northeast Republicans. I’m naive at this point; I mean I’m thinking all Republicans are conservatives and they’re all Reaganites, and I was dead wrong about it. And these people whose names you would recognize, I don’t want to mention, come up to me after dinner and jab me in the chest with their finger and say, ‘What are you going to do about the Christians?’ I said, ‘Well, what do you mean?’ ‘The pro-lifers. We can’t win anything with pro-lifers dominating this party. You’ve gotta shut ’em up. We’ve gotta get the social issues out of the Republican Party.’
Well, it turned out that these guys were being badgered by their wives over the abortion issue, and they were embarrassed to be going to the conventions with the pro-lifers and the people that they thought were the unsophisticated, that didn’t quite understand how politics worked, their Democrat friends are making fun of them because of the people that were in their party. And it’s a little bit of what’s happening now. The Tea Party is a bunch of outsiders. Look at Sarah Palin. You know her well. Sarah Palin’s being reacted to precisely the way all the other Tea Party people are, not because she’s a walking joke like they want you to believe, but because they fear her. Same thing with Christine O’Donnell. You know, liberalism I think is all a lie, and liberals live their lives trying to cover up the lie and make sure that it’s not exposed. And that’s why Clarence Thomas was so opposed. But here you got the Democrat Party that loves to say they believe in civil rights, helping the downtrodden, helping blacks get ahead — Clarence Thomas gets nominated to the Supreme Court, what happens? All hell breaks loose. And they set out to destroy it.
Why? Well, what did Clarence Thomas ever do to anybody? Nothing. But he represented a threat. Here’s a guy, when he was confirmed and sits on the court, is now the most powerful, in real terms, black man in America. And he didn’t get there going through the Democrat Party civil rights route, affirmative action, so he represents a threat. Shows people that you can succeed and become whatever you want without going the route the ruling class tells you you must or the Democrat Party tells you you must. Same thing with Palin. She’s lived a full and rich, real life. Nothing was paved for her. Hillary Clinton didn’t even get a full partnership at a law firm until Bill became governor. Michelle Obama got the no-show job at the Chicago hospital after her husband was elected to the Illinois legislature.
But these women did it on their own. Their dad didn’t pave the way; parents, sponsors didn’t pave the way. And I just think right now that it’s an interesting thing to see, the average, ordinary real people who want to aspire to great things are being destroyed, or trying to be destroyed, being impugned, laughed at, and made fun of because they actually do pose a great threat to the existing power structure that’s in place in what I call the ruling class.
GRETA: What do you think about the Pledge to America?
RUSH: Well, I mean, I think it’s fine. You know, I have to laugh. I look at Obama talking, ‘Oh, yeah, well, that’s a pledge to destroy America,’ or whatever he said. He’s the one doing that. I wasn’t expecting a full-fledged legislative agenda. I didn’t have a whole lot of demands from it, nor expectations. I remember Pelosi back in 2005 or 2006 when they were running against the Republican majority in the House at the time was asked, ‘What are you going to do?’ She said, ‘Nothing. We don’t have a plan. Our plan is to stop George W. Bush.’ Well, frankly, that’s my plan, is stop the Democrats, stop the Obama regime. The Republicans wanted to come up with a blueprint, if you will, that if they win they want to have a little bit of a mandate to do something. You can’t just say, ‘Okay, we won because we’re not the Democrats, we won because we’re the other guy.’ What are the other guys gonna do? ‘Well, here’s what our objectives are, here’s what we’re going to do.’ But some people say they didn’t get specific enough legislatively. That’s, you know, for other people. I didn’t have a problem with it, and I don’t think there’s anything major wrong with this. It’s a starting point. And, look, some of these people that were involved in putting the Pledge together are not Tea Party Republicans. The conservative movement per se has not totally retaken the Republican Party. There’s an effort underway to do that. This is a starting point. We got years and years and years ahead of us. This is just the first of many elections that have to be big and victorious if we’re to stop the direction that the American left has taken the country in two years.
GRETA: One last question. Which politician currently do you admire most or impresses you the most?
RUSH: Which politician do I currently admire the most?
GRETA: Yes.
RUSH: Is that the question?
GRETA: Yes.
RUSH: You know, you asking me a question; if I answer this, I’m gonna make a lot of enemies. It’s really hard to say. I really look at Sarah Palin, however, and I look at everything they’ve thrown at her, I look at the attempts they have made to destroy her: a decent, good, patriotic woman, not done anything to anybody. And, in fact, she has lived the life that the feminists told us women should do. She has had it all. She’s a family woman, she started out in the PTA, got involved in her kids’ lives and took it further, wanted to go into politics at a higher level, try to fix things. She’s done it all, and she has not withered under the efforts to literally destroy her. You have to admire that. You have to admire people that don’t quit and don’t give up, especially doing it with a smile on the face. She’s defied them all along. Even Republicans said when she retired with the governorship, ‘Well, that’s it, she’s never gonna amount to anything.’
Look at her. Her daughter is on Dancing with the Stars, crossed over into the so-called mainstream. Entertainment Tonight’s up in Wasilla. Entertainment Tonight? I mean that’s the Hollywood left. They’re up there being entertained with exclusives of Sarah Palin. It’s gotta just be rubbing the Democrats raw. This is not what was supposed to happen. This woman was supposed to be a standing joke, and they can’t make a joke out of her because she’s a very serious woman who loves being an American, loves life. And you have to admire how she’s stood up under this withering attack. And there are a lot of people on the Republican side I could say that about. I don’t mean to leave others out by simply mentioning her. But a lot of these Tea Party people. Sharron Angle. They’re going after her. What’s she done to anybody? She hasn’t done anything to anybody. And certainly she’s no more unqualified than Joe Biden is, the walking gaffe machine. I mean the idea that people on the left are the essence of brilliance and sophistication. My God, they’re destroying the country! I’ll take anybody but these people. Look, if Mickey Mouse were running, I’d vote for Mickey Mouse over Obama or over anybody else on the Democrat side. It’s that simple. The Limbaugh Rule: If they got a (D) next to their name, vote against them.
GRETA: Rush, thank you.
RUSH: Thank you, Greta. It’s always a pleasure.
GRETA: Always a pleasure to have you, Rush. Thank you.