RUSH: Here’s a Tony, Edmonds, Washington. Hi, Tony. You’re next on Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for having me on.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: Say, how can we light a fire under the Republicans? Here we’ve got, what, five/six weeks before the election, and these guys have not established a mandate to govern in 2015 if they take the Congress. You know, I asked John Campbell, who is a retiring congressman from California, a great guy. I said, “Why can’t we do what we did in ’94 where we’re the Contract with America.” He said, “Well, we’re already the majority, and the majority doesn’t need to have a contract,” which just baffled me. I don’t understand these guys.

RUSH: Well, there is an active posture now to not do exactly what you want. What’s animating or informing the Republican philosophy at the moment is the belief that the Democrats are committing suicide and that when that happens, just get out of the way and just let it. “If your opponent is destroying himself, then don’t help. Just sit there and let it happen.” But I agree with you.

I don’t think we’ve ever had a greater opportunity to contrast who we are with what is happening. We don’t even have to talk about how theoretically bad it’s gonna be if Democrats win; we’re living it. A contrast is made to order right now, and not just for the mandate that would accompany a victory, but for public education as well, which we sadly are short on.

We need to be educating the American people from a leadership point of view, politically, what the opposite of Obamaism and the Democrat Party is and what it can mean to people individually and their families. But the Republicans are afraid to do it. There’s a whole bunch of reasons why, John. One is the belief that if your money is destroying themselves, just shut up and let it happen.

B, they really believe if there’s any criticism of Obama (because of race), that they’re just gonna get hammered. They’ve been made to believe the American people — even though Obama’s at 38, 39% approval — still don’t want Obama criticized, ’cause he’s a nice man and they don’t want any criticism. So they’re listening to consultants who are advising them to go slow. Some people — some people, John — are actually beginning to ask if the Republicans actually want to win.

You know, it’s easier to be in the minority.

You don’t have to do anything.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, we just had a call. Understandably, I agree with him. I think we’re really blowing an opportunity here in this election. I don’t like this assumption that we’re gonna win big. I just hate it; it makes me uncomfortable. Winning with no effort is a recipe for not winning, and it doesn’t look like any effort’s been made, except fundraising. I, like you, am inundated with panic-stricken fundraising e-mails. Do you get those?

“We’re losing! You know why we’re losing? Because they’re out-raising us!”

Yeah, and why do you think that might be? I think it’s a golden opportunity that’s being blown here and missed. But, see, I’m not a professional politician, and they are. Theoretically they know their business and we don’t. I know we vote for ’em and they supposedly work for us, but politics is a business, and they have experts who tell ’em what to do to win. Sometimes the experts have blown it pretty bad.

But it seems, I’m sure to you as it does to me, that this is such a golden opportunity. Not just to win an election but to be the beginning, to set the stage and build the foundation to effect real change here, and then turn things around so that we’re back in the direction of rebuilding the principles and the doctrines that led to the founding of the country.

Which basically means just turn things around so that once again the emphasis is on individual liberty and freedom. Economic freedom, economic abundance and advancement, and the accrual of wealth and people getting jobs again and finding careers. It seems like just such a golden opportunity — and then we read why they’re not. A, the theory on your opponent destroying themselves. “Get out of the waya nd let it happen,” which a part of me understands.

And then there’s the fear, the fear that criticizing Obama — no matter where he is in the polls — is gonna anger people, particularly the independents. Republican consultants believe this stuff. And then there is the existing (and we know it exists) dislike in the Republican establishment for conservatives, because Republican establishment types are like Democrat establishment types in that government’s the center of the universe.

Government’s where the money is.

I think there’s another factor here.

I think as the grassroots — as you individuals — have been donating less money, the Republicans are making up the deficit from corporate interests. So the corporate interests who are donating are now the masters. You donate, you expect results. And if you donate in big bucks, in blocks of big bucks other than a $5 donation here, $10 there, you wield considerably more power in getting policy decisions that you want.

This is a chicken-or-egg thing. The grassroots are contributing less money because they’re angry that the party doesn’t seem to be representing them. That leads to corporations filling the gap, which further distances the grassroots and the base from the party, and it’s such a blown opportunity. See, I don’t think you have to criticize Obama to state your beliefs, if that’s what you’re afraid of.

You don’t even have to mention Obama in spelling out what you believe. You don’t have to mention Obama in explaining core principles. You don’t have to explain Obama at all. You don’t have to mention Obama at all in telling people what kind of country you want, what you believe in, and how you intend to make it happen. But for whatever reason, they’re not doing it — and not only are they not doing it, in some places it’s even worse.

Thom Tillis is the Republican running for the Senate in North Carolina against Kay Hagan. Kay Hagan ought to have been blown out already! She ought not even be viable, but she is for a whole host of reasons. Some of it is money. So Jeb Bush went in there the other day. Jeb Bush went in to campaign for Thom Tillis, and one of the things that Republicans are saying in certain…

Scott Brown is telling everybody. He’s running against Jeanne Shaheen up in New Hampshire, and he said this election is totally about amnesty and stopping it. From the Republican side, this is an election about amnesty, not just in New Hampshire. He’s specifically referencing that. But elsewhere, Tillis and a number of other Republicans seeking the Senate are running with an anti-amnesty plank as part of their campaign.

So Jeb Bush went in there and actually suggested that Republicans should pass amnesty if they win back the Senate! Now… (sigh) Here you have Republicans campaigning for the Senate with an anti-amnesty, anti-amnesty-related comprehensive immigration reform plank in their campaign, and here comes a guy saying, “Yeah, but after you win you should do it.” It’s… I don’t know, folks.

Breitbart has the story: “Even though Republicans may take back the Senate by running against amnesty, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush pushed amnesty legislation while stumping for North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis on Wednesday. Bush, according to the New York Times, reportedly said that comprehensive immigration reform ‘will restore and sustain economic growth for this country.’

“And even though a recent Gallup poll found that illegal immigration is now the top concern among Republicans…” By the way, Obama’s polling low on it: 30% approval for whatever he’s gonna do on immigration. Despite all of that, and even though “illegal immigration is now the top concern among Republicans, Bush said that if immigration reform is ‘framed in that way, I don’t think there’s a big debate in the Republican Party about the need to do this.'”

Meaning: Frame it in a way that it will restore and sustain economic growth. This is where… Jeb, if you’re out there — or representatives of Jeb if you’re out there — grassroots Republicans don’t understand that. It seems just the opposite. If you’re gonna flood with millions of low-skill and low-educated individuals, how in the world does that restore and sustain economic growth for Americans, for the country?

It seems to me that the natural Republican campaign theme, whenever you’re talking… You don’t even have to even mention Obama talking about immigration. You can mention Democrats at large. But how hard is it in opposing comprehensive immigration reform as a Republican to say, “No! I am in favor of jobs for the American people”? How hard is that? That’s not hard at all, and that would resonate.

The American people don’t understand how economic growth is gonna take place, especially for them, if there is a never-ending trek into the country by low-skill and very ill-educated people from Central America or anywhere else. The two don’t make any sense. But this has been something that the Republican establishment has been married to since the first term of the George W. Bush administration.

It has been something they have been salivating over. There’s something more going on here than just the Chamber of Commerce wants it. There’s something more going on here than just big-money donors and Big Business who want cheap labor donors want it. There has to be something else that is behind this. ‘Cause it doesn’t make any (on the surface) common sense.

Especially to go in with a guy who’s campaigning for the Senate on an anti-amnesty plank and then to suggest that the Republicans, after they win the Senate, should do it! Jeb Bush, “according to the New York Times,” and there’s a caveat: “according to the New York Times.” I would be surprised if Jeb denied this, by the way. He hasn’t yet, that I’ve heard. But the New York Times says — they put this in quotes, but they still use the word “reportedly said.”

“‘And my hope is with a Republican-controlled Senate, we can begin to see a conversation about how to go about doing that,’ Bush reportedly said,” meaning immigration reform. Here’s a story from the Associated Press, and it’s a shocker. Well, it’s a shocker because the AP is shocked. It’s their story. Headline: “US: Most New Immigrant Families Fail to Report in.”

No kidding! Really?

The AP is shocked and stunned that these “new immigrant families” that have come across this year — the children and the adult parents that they’ve been paired with are found — are not reporting back to the authorities. “For nearly three months this summer, the [Regime] carefully avoided answering questions about what happened to tens of thousands of immigrant families caught illegally crossing the Mexican border and released into the United States with instructions to report back to immigration authorities.

“Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and others said they faced deportation. But it turns out that tens of thousands of those immigrants did not follow the government’s instructions to meet with federal immigration agents within 15 days,” and now they’re out there. They’re in the wind, and we don’t know if the government knows where they are. We don’t know if the government kept records of where they put them.

They have “vanished,” it says here in the story. They have vanished into the interior of the US. Well, I hope they’re not taking pictures of the interior. Did you see the other day the park service not letting journalists take pictures in national parks? (interruption) You didn’t see that? Oh, yeah. You can’t take pictures in a national park without permission from the government now.

If you do it, you could be fined $1,000 if they catch you. So I hope these illegals who have vanished into the interior are not taking pictures there in Jellystone Park or Yellowstone, El Capitan. Now, imagine. Imagine the outrage when Obama finds out about this, folks. The AP is shocked! The AP is shocked that these immigrants did not report in as they were told to do. Imagine the outrage when Obama finds out.

Pshew! Heads are gonna roll.

He only know things when he reads them in the paper like you and I, and when Obama finds out that these tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of illegals who came across the border were told to report back in 15 days and didn’t? Man! I don’t want to be there when the heads roll. Oh, I should point out that the AP earlier this year made fun of — they mocked — people who suggested this would happen.

People like me and you.

When we heard that these hundreds of thousands of “immigrants” were told to report back to immigration authorities within 15 days of clearing the border, and we suggested that that would never happen — no way, Jose — they mocked us and they called us racists and they called us bigots. Now from this article: “[T]he 70% figure suggests the government released roughly 41,000 members of immigrant families who subsequently failed to appear at federal immigration offices.”

Forty-one thousand. That’s what they’re admitting to. You can bet the real number is higher than that. This also from the article: “[F]inal deportation had been ordered for at least 860 people traveling as families caught at the border since May but only 14 people had reported as ordered.” Now, if I’m reading this right, only 14 people caught at the border since May have been deported.

But how can that be?

Because Obama repeatedly says that deportations are up, and he’d never lie to us about this.

So, man, I’m just confused.