{"id":237962,"date":"2017-06-21T14:50:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T18:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=237962"},"modified":"2017-06-22T16:44:01","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T20:44:01","slug":"they-call-us-right-wing-i-call-us-mainstream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/06\/21\/they-call-us-right-wing-i-call-us-mainstream\/","title":{"rendered":"They Call Us Right Wing — I Call Us Mainstream"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Carl in Leona Valley, California. I\u2019m glad you waited. It\u2019s great to have you on the EIB Network. How are you doing?<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019m doing fine, Rush. Thank you so much for sharing your mic with a rank amateur.<\/p>\n

RUSH: (laughing) Appreciate that. That\u2019s a nice compliment.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Listen, thanks to the advent of the podcast and the iPod I\u2019ve listened to you for probably seven years now, and I listened to every word. There\u2019s no interruptions, I can always back you up. I just love this thing strapped to my belt buckle. And I can play your whole show. But I don\u2019t recall anybody calling in and talking to you about — well, I guess what I\u2019m thinking is so many people refer to you as being on the right, way right, you know, or extreme right. And I\u2019ve given that thought, and I know the left is almost all the rest of the media. I don\u2019t know anybody that\u2019s on the right. I wouldn\u2019t know where to begin. To me, you\u2019re the guy in the middle.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You know, I have to tell you something here, Carl. I haven\u2019t said this a lot, but over the course of the many years of this program I have on occasion said that the truth of the matter is that this program is actually — and the people that listen to it — is actually the mainstream of America. They try to marginalize you and me by categorizing us as the so-called extreme right or the far right or right wing, which is done to denigrate anybody who\u2019s not liberal. They always tar them.<\/p>\n

The new one is alt-right. And the alt-right is everything a conservative is plus he\u2019s a white supremacist. And so that\u2019s Steve Bannon and the Breitbart people, those are alt-right conservatives. And of course that\u2019s BS as well. The left makes up these labels. They assign people falsely to these labels. But this is actually a very shrewd observation of yours. I\u2019m not denying, I\u2019m conservative. But do you realize there are many, Carl, in the so-called conservative movement who think now that I have sold out and betrayed conservatism because I did not help to try to destroy Trump during the primaries?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Oh, no. No.<\/p>\n

\"\"RUSH: The measure of a real conservative, according to them, is somebody who would have seen that the Trump poses the greatest threat to conservatism ever and a real conservative would have joined the effort to take him out. Since I didn\u2019t, I am now viewed as a —<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, maybe they need to do like you and start writing some history books, because I think when you look at it from a viewpoint of, what are we gonna see 20, 30 years from now when we look back at Obama and some of these nutcases, it just gives you a whole better perspective. And I think that\u2019s where you come from. You always see a bigger picture than the current little windstorm that\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you. I\u2019m ideological. I\u2019m not gonna deny that. But how does it manifest itself? You know, I have very subtly had a name change at my think tank. It used to be the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. But then other conservatives excommunicated me from conservatism and I no longer qualify. So I changed the name of my think tank to the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Anti-Leftist Studies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Because when you get right down to it, how do you explain Trump? Let me just tell you right off the bat — I\u2019ve said this before — I didn\u2019t think there was a single Republican who was going to beat Hillary Clinton. I might have been wrong, but of all of them running, I just didn\u2019t think it was gonna happen.<\/p>\n

I thought from Trump\u2019s first day, from his trip down the escalator, that he was gonna win. And maybe someday I\u2019ll tell you why. We\u2019re not far enough removed from it yet for me to tell you why. But I can easily tell you why I thought that was gonna happen. And if you knew how to listen carefully, I\u2019ve already actually explained that, although not by saying, “Let me tell you why I knew Trump was gonna win,” but I have explained it over and over, time and again, in indirect ways.<\/p>\n

When the NBC Access Hollywood video came out, I did not think that was going to damage Trump. I didn\u2019t. And I was one of the few. I mean, even the Trump campaign, they were panicking, understandably so. I didn\u2019t think it was gonna matter, because what I knew was that there wasn\u2019t a thing anybody else could do to break up Trump supporters from Trump. There was nobody. Access Hollywood couldn\u2019t do it, NBC couldn\u2019t do it, none of the media could do it. Only Trump could do it.<\/p>\n

The only person that could destroy the connection he had with those gazillions of people showing up at the rallies was he himself. Nobody else could. And so I never doubted. And I always thought that Trump was gonna win. And I always thought Trump would beat Hillary. I probably cannot go back in archival broadcasts and find such precise predictions, but I mentioned it over the course of campaign, many people here, Mr. Snerdley, I never had any doubt about it. But during the primaries I never endorse anybody, so I didn\u2019t endorse Trump and I didn\u2019t try to destroy any of them. They do it themselves.<\/p>\n

But because I didn\u2019t join the effort to destroy Trump, I was considered to be a conservative fraud. And, believe me, the Never Trumper conservative coalition, it\u2019s still alive, and it\u2019s still functioning, and they are bitter today, almost as bitter as the Democrats that Ossoff lost. Because, to them, it\u2019s all about Trump, and Trump is just the worst thing that\u2019s ever happened to America, to conservatism, to American politics, to civility, to everything, comity, crossing the aisle, to the establishment, you name it.<\/p>\n

\"\"And because I did not join in that, I have been summarily sent to the firing squad, the literary firing squad and shot thousands of words at me. But that\u2019s okay. It\u2019s still your observation that what happens here is not so much right wing as it is centrist, \u2019cause what really happens here and what has always happened on this program, from day one, this program has targeted liberalism and all of its offshoots as the greatest threat to America as founded.<\/p>\n

And so that has been the focus here. And I\u2019m not denying I\u2019ve espoused and promoted conservatism at the same time, because conservatism\u2019s the alternative. And conservatism works every time it\u2019s tried. That\u2019s the problem. It really hasn\u2019t been tried. Even people claiming to be conservative, when it comes time to actually do it, chicken out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: I have very subtly had a name change at my think tank. It used to be the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. But then other conservatives excommunicated me from conservatism and I no longer qualify. So I changed the name of my think tank to the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Anti-Leftist Studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThey Call Us Right Wing - I Call Us Mainstream - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/06\/21\/they-call-us-right-wing-i-call-us-mainstream\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"They Call Us Right Wing - I Call Us Mainstream - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: I have very subtly had a name change at my think tank. 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