RUSH: Now, this is the most amazing thing that I have next. It’s a See, I Told You So. I will admit even I am stunned by the timing of this. I’m not stunned by the news or the data or the information, but I’m stunned by the timing. I want to take you back to me on this program just yesterday when I explained my never-ending quest to figure out why, despite its never-ending failures, people continue to, even if they abandoned the Democrat Party or liberalism for a while, they always go back to it. I’ve been trying to figure that out all of my life. Here is a brief synopsis of what I said.

RUSH ARCHIVE: People are fed up with the Democrats. They’re fed up with Obamacare and foreign policy. They’re fed up with everything. They’re going to vote for the other guys. They’re not voting for conservatives. By necessity they’re voting Republican, but they’re not voting ideologically.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this. Eight years of Reagan and yet the voters are easily fooled to returning to liberalism. There was no protest when the liberals came along and started raising taxes, making everything worse, destroying jobs, what they always do, wrecking the culture. No protests. People voted for it. And my conclusion is that voters never, other than Reagan, the lone example, never affirmatively vote for conservatism because it’s never really presented to them. It’s presented to them by me and Fox News on some occasions and other so-called new media, but it’s not presented to voters by the Republican Party.

There are a few now and then, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio come to mind, but not the party. Voters never affirmatively vote for conservatism because it’s never really presented to them. What happens is liberals, Democrats are rejected for a time because people are fed up and they’re mad like they are now. But after a certain passage of time, they feel it’s safe to go back.

RUSH: They return to liberalism. So even after a demonstrable eight years of overwhelming economic prosperity, wealth creation, entrepreneurial activity, after eight years of the Reagan administration, people eventually abandoned it, went back to voting liberal Democrat and ended up voting the same things that required the eight years of Reagan to fix it. And I’ve been trying to figure out, why? Why does this happen?

Part of the answer is that conservatism is always a protest vote, like it’s gonna be in this election. I’m not trying to be a downer. I’m the mayor of Realville. The Republican Party is not out presenting an alternative. The Republican Party’s not out presenting an agenda. They’re not defining what’s wrong with the Democrats. They’re not defining what Obama has messed up. They’re not informing people who Obama is or who Harry Reid is or Pelosi.

They’re not doing any of that. They’re not tying the failures that are rampant in this country to the Democrat Party. They’re not tying the failures to Obama. They’re not tying the failures to Harry Reid, and so the people, they never hear it. They just get mad at the Democrats every so often and decide to vote for the other guys. But it’s always a protest vote. It’s a disturbing thing, such a golden opportunity has been on our plate, particularly since 2010, when Obamacare and the spending went through the roof and the Tea Party was created.

We had vast majorities of Americans opposing Obama on pretty much everything. It was made to order for the Republican Party to forge a connection with that group of people, a majority of Americans, and create a new political majority based on that opposition. It would require the Republicans explaining what’s wrong, why Obamacare isn’t gonna work. No matter what’s done, it can’t work. Explain what liberalism is. Explain why they can’t find jobs but they have $200,000 in student debt. Explain why all these things are going wrong, and then tell people how they can be fixed and say, “This is how we did it in the 1980s, and we can do it again.” That doesn’t happen.

So people are left to vote for the other guys. So the Republicans are never, “Yeah, man, those guys, they’ve got some great ideas.” No, it’s always, “They’re the other guys.” You heard all that. So I got up today and I’m doing show prep and there’s a story in the Washington Post. Mind-boggling the timing of this. People think Democrats understand them. They’re gonna vote for Republicans, but they think the Democrats are still their favorite party.

“Democrats are likely to lose the Senate in three weeks — at least according to just about everybody — and their brand hasn’t been worse in at least the last 30 years, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week. And yet, through it all, they remain the party that Americans empathize with the most. It’s almost as if Democrats are the party people would like to vote for, but they just can’t right now.”

My gosh! This is exactly what I said. They vote for them, they get mad, and then they return when they feel it’s safe.

“It’s almost as if Democrats are the party people would like to vote for, but they just can’t right now. What in the world does that mean, you might ask. Well, the Post-ABC poll asked people three empathy-related questions. 1) Which party better represents your own personal values? 2) Which party is more concerned with the needs of people like you? 3) Which party better understands the economic problems people in this country are having?

“And despite their overall deficit in the 2014 campaign, Democrats lead on all three of these measures — by between eight and 14 points. In fact, their edge on the first two questions is bigger than it has been in at least five years.”

Those first two questions again are: Which party better represents your own personal values? Democrats at an all-time high. Well, higher than they’ve been in the last five years. Which party more concerned with the needs of people like you? Democrats, higher than they’ve been throughout the last five years. People are gonna vote against them, but they’ll eventually feel it’s safe to go back to them. Remember the exit poll, 2012 presidential election, question, “Cares about people like you,” it was Obama 81, Romney 19.

“Despite their overall deficit in the 2014 campaign, Democrats lead on all three of these

questions,” which means — well, I don’t want to say we’re doomed, but that’s 60 years of media, 60 years of Hollywood, 60 years of the news media, 60 years of the educational system. Propaganda has paid off, cultural branding. This notion that the Democrats care and they feel and that they’re concerned overwhelms the Republican Party. This might explain why the Republicans fall prey to these traps. “You know what? We gotta be for amnesty so the Hispanics will like us, too.”

“When you leave aside empathy and focus on issues, that’s where the GOP shines. On the size of government, the GOP leads 40-33. On the economy, the GOP leads 42-37. On immigration, the GOP narrowly leads, 40-37. But even on immigration, people don’t want what the Democrats are offering. “On the budget deficit, it’s GOP 43-34. And on the Islamic State,” on dealing with terrorism, “Republicans lead 42-28.” And yet people still think the Democrats are the party most like them. Their values, the Democrat Party shares their values. The Democrat Party cares about them. The Democrat Party understands the excrement pile that is their life and wants to help ’em shovel some of it away. The Republican Party doesn’t care that their lives are a bunch of excrement piles, is what they think.

“So when it comes to which party more Americans feel personally connected to, it’s clearly the Democrats. When it comes to which party they see better addressing the current problems in American government, it’s clearly Republicans. And at least for now, the issues appear to be more important than that emotional connection,” which is what happens. The issues have become a serious problem, and so the Democrat voters are gonna vote for the other guys. But they don’t know why. They’re not doing it affirmatively. They’re mad at the Democrats, it’s time to give somebody else a chance, whatever. But after a while, maybe 2016 when Hillary gets the nomination, if she does, they’ll feel it’s safe to return.

This Washington Post story is eerie. It is uncanny how it makes my points from yesterday. If I didn’t know better I’d say they heard my show, went out and did a quick poll last night and wrote a story about it. I mean, it’s that uncanny. So, you see, even if Republicans win in a landslide, it isn’t gonna be a mandate because the Republicans just don’t get it. They’re really not what people want. Even though they may win in a landslide, it’s just a protest vote. Now, there are solutions. I went through the solutions yesterday. There’s a way to fix this. The Republicans have a golden opportunity to fix it in this election cycle.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Tom in Pittsburgh. Welcome, sir. It’s great to have you with us on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Rush, it is an honor. Been listening to you since you were tape delayed on the weekends here in Pittsburgh.

RUSH: Oh, my gosh. You know, I had forgotten those days.

CALLER: Hey, I wanted to ask you about that Washington Post poll and somebody identifying as Democrat. I wonder if there’s kind of a corollary to the Wilder Effect on that, the way the Republicans are portrayed everywhere in the media, that people just don’t want to identify themselves as Republicans? Like the Wilder type thing.

RUSH: Well, I can understand how you’d want to think that, but I think we have too much real world data to suggest that there’s no Wilder Effect. What he’s saying here, folks, you got a pollster that comes along asking what you think of the two parties, and the Wilder Effect would make the respondent say, “Oh, the Democrats care much more about me” because they think the pollster’s a Democrat and they don’t want to make the pollster think that they like Republicans, ’cause the pollsters will think they’re racist and sexist, because that’s what Republicans are, so forth and so on. And it’s an intriguing thought, Tom, and it would be fascinating if it were true, but I think there’s too much real-world data, election returns, and if you look at pop culture, books, movies, TV shows, and late-night comics and look at the way Republicans are made fun of, it’s all real.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: It’s all legit. You know, you reminded me, though, it’s a good thought. I did not — I erred. I forgot to close the loop. I don’t know how many of you are still hanging. I said that there’s a way around this, a way to get started on it, anyway. And it involves those times when Republicans win elections. Now, the example that I gave yesterday — and, by the way, this is all academic because the Republican Party today may arguably be liberal-light, as opposed to conservative. The Republican establishment, you know as well as I do, hates the Tea Party. They don’t like conservatives, because they don’t like anybody for smaller government.

Establishment people, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, live off Big Government. They want the power of running it. They want the power of dispensing and spending the money, and of raising the money. They want to get involved in close relationships with CEOs, corporate cronyism, if you will. So it’s not altogether granted certain that the Republican Party is conservative. But if it were, and if it were really trying to take advantage of victories, what it would do, and let’s just assume, hypothetically assume that the polling data is right.

Let’s say the Republicans win the Senate, and all the way down the ballot, let’s say Republicans have another year here like they had in 2010. And, by the way, just to remind you, 2010 was a huge defeat for Democrats all the way down the ballot. The Democrats lost almost a thousand offices, seats and offices nationwide in the midterm elections in 2010. I’m talking mayors, dogcatchers, governors, not just members of the House and the Senate, but all the way down the ballot, all over the country, they got shellacked. It was major.

Well, I’ll just use that. What did not happen after that election? Something very obvious did not happen after. The Republicans, the people that won, the victors did not hammer home why. They didn’t stride to the microphones and explain the victory, and they didn’t tell people why the Tea Party voted the way it did and they didn’t tell people why people were unhappy with Obama and the Democrats. They didn’t do any of that. They were polite and they were nice, and they said they weren’t gonna gloat, and they weren’t gonna be ramming it down throats.

All of this was done under the guise of voters don’t like conflict, voters don’t like braggadocio, voters don’t like partisanship. And so the Republicans have to be magnanimous, very humble, and almost apologetic when they win. I cited the example of George H. W. Bush when the Soviet Union fell. Now, that to me is a great example. I’ll tell you why.

Soviet communism was responsible for tens of millions of deaths over its lifetime. Soviet communism denied liberty, freedom, basic human rights, to tens of millions of people over its lifetime. Soviet communism spread poverty everywhere it went. Soviet communism destroyed everything it touched, including, in the end, its own military, for all intents and purposes.

When the Berlin Wall came down, who got credit? Gorbachev. Gorbachev got credit for seeing the light. Gorbachev got credit. The new emancipator. Gorbachev brought about freedom to the world. And this is because fellow travelers in the media dare not report the negatives of Soviet communism. The Republican Party did not explain why the Berlin Wall came down. The Republican Party did not celebrate it. The Republican Party did not take the occasion to educate, to inform, and to celebrate the fall of a system of government that was responsible for death, for misery, for poverty, for tens of millions of people.

Teachable moment lost. An opportunity to become the good guys, an opportunity to represent economic prosperity, wealth creation, abundance, freedom, liberty, lost. Same thing’s gonna happen this time. If all these pre-election polls are right, we’ll just hypothetically — you know, I don’t like to proclaim anything done beforehand, but let’s say the pre-election polls are right, and let’s say the Republicans win the Senate.

What do you bet there won’t be any attempt to tell the voters why they did what they did, to congratulate them, and to then set the course for what this change is going to mean in terms of real people in their lives? That’s what has to happen. The Republican Party simply refuses to identify the enemy, political enemy. The Republican Party refuses to tell people how voting for the Democrats is hurting them. The Republican Party refuses, by real world example, not just theory, not just rhetoric. The Republican Party refuses to celebrate its victories and to define them and to explain to people why the happened and why they need to keep happening. That’s how this gets turned around. There is a solution to this.

Now, the branding issue where Republicans are thought to be mean-spirited, extreme, not cool, not hip. You know, folks, winners are all thought to be hip. Winning is cool, isn’t it? Everybody wants to be a winner. Everybody wants to be on the winning side. When the Republicans win, the cool guys lose. That makes them so mad. I’m sitting here as a guy on the radio, but I don’t think, if it were done right, even this pop culture branding thing could change.

Reagan made some inroads in this area. Not completely, not totally. And, by the way, we keep citing Reagan ’cause he’s the only guy. There isn’t somebody else who did what he did. It’s not, “Oh, God, woe is us, can we bring back Reagan.” It’s not that. It’s not hero worship or any of that. It’s just the best living example. Not living, but I mean current, within our lifetimes example. There’s still teachable lessons, real world lessons to garner from that. The Republican Party I know is not interested.

But back to the guy’s point. I don’t think there’s a Wilder Effect here. I don’t think that there’s anything unreal about the fact that Republicans aren’t seen as hip and cool and with it. The idea that Democrats care about people like me and Republicans don’t, that’s been ingrained for so long, and there’s not a Republican who knows how in the world to fight it, because the Republicans don’t know how to talk about liberty and freedom, or they don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know which. I know it’s easy to be looking from the outside and thinking you have answers.