{"id":24576,"date":"2007-02-13T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:00:14","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T06:00:14","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:00:14","slug":"we_shouldn_t_redefine_conservatism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/13\/we_shouldn_t_redefine_conservatism\/","title":{"rendered":"We Shouldn\u2019t Redefine Conservatism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: While I was gone, I noticed something. With all these Republican candidates for president — you have Giuliani; you have Romney who got in today. McCain. I can\u2019t even remember them all. There\u2019s a distinct effort, there\u2019s a big move underway now to redefine conservatism in a way that fits the candidacy of one or the other of these candidates. They are conflating electability with a serious discussion of conservatism. Much of it\u2019s coming from the New York and DC elite. It reached its zenith with a column from George Will<\/a> that I saw Sunday, in which there\u2019s a big swipe taken at Reaganism and that conservatives\u2019 view of Reaganism is a waste of time, that Reagan was one man at one time and never will be again. <\/line>It\u2019s a stunning, stunning piece — and all these things together amused me, because have you ever seen liberalism wring its hands and try to redefine itself to fit one particular candidate? Liberals don\u2019t make excuses for who they are. They do their best to hide who they are, and they do their best to camouflage who they are with different names (like “progressives” or “moderates” or what have you), but they never have any serious disagreements over the fundamental principles of liberalism. Yet here we go with the people on the conservative side now trying to fit each one of these candidates into what is a conservative by redefining conservatism to fit the candidate, and this is important to me because it ought to be the other way around. If conservatives are serious about a conservative candidate, then the candidate ought to have to be conservative, not the other way around, and I see that happening.<\/line><\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/line>RUSH: Beth in Kansas City, Missouri, you\u2019re next on the EIB Network. Hello.<\/line>CALLER: Hey, Rush.<\/line>RUSH: Hi.<\/line>CALLER: I am a very unique animal. I am a 40-some-year-old woman. I\u2019ve never voted Democrat in my life, so I really don\u2019t care what Obama or Hillary has to say. However, Mitt Romney today announced his candidacy for president, and I was wondering, “Is he going to follow in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan and be a good conservative?”<\/line>RUSH: Well, I\u2019ll tell you what. Let\u2019s listen to his announcement, because we happen to have that here and we can also show you what MSNBC did in following his announcement. So you hang on here, Beth, and we\u2019ll go through this together. This is this morning in Dearborn, Michigan. Romney made this announcement as part of his “I\u2019m in” thing.<\/line>ROMNEY: I love America and I believe in the people of America. I believe in God, and I believe that every person in this great country and every person on this great planet is a child of God. I believe that we\u2019re all sisters and brothers. I believe that the family is the foundation of America and that it needs to be protected and strengthened. I believe in the sanctity of human life. I believe that people and their elected representatives should make the laws, not unelected judges. I believe that we\u2019re overtaxed and government is overfed. Washington is spending too much money! (Cheers.) I believe that homeland security begins with securing our borders, and I believe that our best days are before us, because I believe in America.<\/line>RUSH: (mimicking audience reaction) Yay! Bravo! Bravo! What do you think of that, Beth?<\/line>CALLER: Well, it seems good, but is there any follow-up to that?<\/line>RUSH: What do you mean, is there any follow-up?<\/line>CALLER: Well, has he proven in the past that what he says… that he walks the walk? I\u2019m from Missouri. So you have to show me.<\/line>RUSH: He\u2019s like a lot of the Republicans are in the race. He used to believe certain things at one time and has now switched his mind on them. Some of the social conservative issues, like abortion, he was of one mind and changed his mind later — and the people that believe in Romney are saying, “Reagan used to be a Democrat and became a Republican. It happens.” So Giuliani\u2019s people are out putting forth the message, “Hey, I do have these things in my r?sum?, being somewhat liberal on the social side of things, but I\u2019m for the judges and I think abortion ought to be decided by the people,” and so forth. All of the candidates except McCain are doing what they can — and McCain is a different animal here, but all of them have tried to moderate their past and meld their past into a current mold of conservatism.<\/line>CALLER: What about fiscally? Will he be a fiscal conservative?<\/line>RUSH: Yeah, he\u2019s got a pretty good fiscal conservative record. He does. I want you to listen to MSNBC, though, dice and slice this. This is Chip Reid after the announcement, and he was talking with Ana Marie Cox of TIME Magazine and this is how that exchange went.<\/line><\/p>\n

CHIP REID: He\u2019s barely out of the starting block so I\u2019m going to go right for his knees. <\/line>COX: (Giggling.)<\/line>CHIP REID: Number one: he\u2019s a Mormon —<\/line>COX: Right.<\/line>CHIP REID: — and evangelicals have a problem with it. <\/line>COX: Right.<\/line>CHIP REID: Number two: he\u2019s a flip-flopper. <\/line>COX: Right.<\/line>CHIP REID: He was pro-choice and he was to the left of Ted Kennedy —<\/line>COX: Right.<\/line>CHIP REID: — on gay rights —<\/line>COX: Right!<\/line>CHIP REED: — in Massachusetts, and now he\u2019s to the far right. Uh, and he has no foreign policy experience. How does he stand a chance?<\/line>RUSH: Now, you didn\u2019t hear any of that — there was none of that — in following up after Barack Obama made his announcement for example.<\/line>CALLER: Right.<\/line>RUSH: This is just what happens. Look… (Sigh.) I don\u2019t know how to tell you this. I am just not into it yet. This stuff is all going to shake out, and I\u2019ve not studied enough of these people to tell you which one of them is a better conservative, better on this issue or that. It\u2019s what I was trying to say earlier. I think what troubles me is that all of these candidates, by their supporters, are being molded into, “Well, he can be a conservative — and he, and he, and he! Rudy, he can be conservative, and Mitt can be a conservative!” To be conservative is to be conservative, and frankly, folks, I\u2019m going to tell you: there\u2019s not a full-fledged, pure conservative out there in the race as of now. So the chosen candidate is going to be a compromise.<\/line>CALLER: I need to just keep listening to you, and as things happen, not only will I watch and wait, but I\u2019ll listen.<\/line>RUSH: Well, but feel free to make up your own mind.<\/line>CALLER: Oh, don\u2019t worry. I will.<\/line>RUSH: Well, as a woman, I know you will. <\/line>CALLER: (Laughs.)<\/line>RUSH: But I appreciate the confidence that you vest in me to tell you what to think. It\u2019s well-placed, and I will do my best to earn that as I have over the past 18-1\/2 years. Folks, don\u2019t misunderstand me on this. This may seem like a small thing to some of you, but it seems to me that there\u2019s a big move underway now to redefine conservatism. For example, I\u2019m not going to give a name, but let\u2019s say there\u2019s a so-called Republican candidate who is not really conservative when it comes to fiscal issues. Well, the tendency is to say, “Eh, he\u2019s a good conservative,” because we the supporters of these candidates want to fit them into conservatism in such a way that conservatism has to be redefined in order to accommodate the so-called conservatism of the candidate. What\u2019s happening here is that people are looking at these different candidates and they\u2019re looking at “electability,” and they\u2019re conflating that with a serious discussion of conservatism. <\/line>Now, look, you can back a candidate without pretending that they are true conservatives — and that\u2019s what\u2019s going to have to happen in this race. But I am not going to sit here — as I\u2019ve done in the past and made mistakes, I am not going to sit here — and tell you candidate A is conservative if I don\u2019t think he is. I\u2019m not going to create a bunch of false hopes and images so that when these guys behave as they are, in ways which are not conservative… I don\u2019t want people to be surprised. We have made that mistake in the past, and it\u2019s time to stop making the mistake, and the mistake is made by people of good intentions who know conservatism is an important factor in primaries and the supporters of these candidates all want their candidates to win, and so we redefine conservatism to fit whatever characteristics the candidate has. I\u2019m just telling you: that I\u2019m not going to. One of these guys is going to end up being the preferred candidate. I\u2019m going to be making a choice between one of these guys. I don\u2019t know when. But I\u2019m not going to tell you the choice has been made on the basis that “this is the conservative in the race!” if I don\u2019t think the guy is — pure and simple, which is all I\u2019m saying. <\/line>In addition to all that, it\u2019s so soon here that there\u2019s plenty of time for some shaking out to occur, and it\u2019s just way too soon to get behind anybody. I don\u2019t know how else to say it other than that. I\u2019ll think of different ways to illustrate the point as we go on here, but as I\u2019ve said, there\u2019s so much out there that\u2019s going to happen that we can\u2019t predict. You have potential dark horses that are going to come out of nowhere like Jimmy Carter did for the Democrats in 1976. Who knows? You could have Duncan Hunter come out of nowhere. Newt Gingrich can pop out of nowhere and start dazzling people left and right as a full-fledged candidate. Who knows? It\u2019s still so, so early. In this presidential race, the earliness is going to end up being a detriment to this whole thing because people are going to be fed up with the presidential race before it actually ever gets started — and I am going to try to see to it that at least you people on this show are not fed up with it, because we\u2019re not going to get on board and start it now as though it\u2019s the most important thing we face, because it isn\u2019t.<\/line><\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSRIPT<\/line>RUSH: Let me see if I can build on this point I\u2019m trying to make about “redefining conservatism” so that it fits a particular candidate, which I think is bad news and is unnecessary. We\u2019re never going to get to where we need to be with situational politics. By situational politics I mean taking somebody who\u2019s not a conservative and calling them a conservative because they\u2019re “close enough,” and in the process we\u2019re redefining conservatism. That\u2019s — for those of us who believe in conservatism anyway, for the long haul that\u2019s — not good. We water it down. It\u2019s something the libs never, ever do. They don\u2019t destroy their icons. They don\u2019t try to redefine liberal. They\u2019ve got a great scam going. They know they all are full-fledged, 100%, Grade A libs. Their only trick is to try to convince as many people out there as possible that they\u2019re not that, but they don\u2019t. You take a look at anybody. Look at Bob Casey, the former governor of Pennsylvania who was pro-life. They wouldn\u2019t let him into their convention. There\u2019s no tolerance for the non-lib in the Democrat Party or in the, quote, unquote, “liberal movement,” but we conservatives, we\u2019ll water it down or whatever to let some candidate in who\u2019s not a full-fledged conservative. <\/line>Like Romney is arguing that he fits into the traditional conservative mold including his conversion on abortion. McCain and Rudy are trying to redefine conservatism to accommodate their views, while they both are modifying their own positions to move right to some extent. McCain\u2019s potential fatal decision was to side with the DC liberals and the media against his own party for so many years as a means of drawing attention to himself. In the process, he was running for president then rather than the GOP nomination. He thought he could double back, and after he had gotten the approval of the DC Dems and the media, that he could double back and get the Republican base and the nomination. But what\u2019s going to happen is that the DC Democrats and the media elite will discard him and they\u2019ve already begun to do so faster than he can sneeze. One reason right now that Rudy has an upper hand on McCain is that he has spent the last few years campaigning for conservatives, and he\u2019s been helping to rebuild the Republican Party\u2019s coffers, but he has been out there working for conservatives. That\u2019s not the only reason, but that\u2019s important to party types who have a great deal of influence on delegate selection by the time you get to the convention. <\/line>Rudy has simply been a much better Republican than McCain has. In a recent column, George Will<\/a> called Rudy a conservative. In a column that ran Sunday, he says that Reagan really wasn\u2019t — or that Reagan was a once-in-a-lifetime thing that we\u2019re never going to have again. I\u2019ve got that column in the stack, and I didn\u2019t get to it today, but I will hopefully later in the week, because it\u2019s really fascinating in a whole bunch of different ways and I want to dissect it and break it down for you. There\u2019s too much argument — even in conservatism right now, there are arguments among people who want to be the leaders of the conservative movement — over what is a conservative, and all these allowances for (sigh) the less-than-ideal conservative or the less-than-pure conservative, are being made, on the assumption it\u2019s the best we can get, and that\u2019s just something you never see the left doing. Look, when it came time, they nominated John Kerry. You can\u2019t get any more liberal in every which way: dour, sour, anti-America, hates the country, willing to protest the country. All this stuff they were putting out there, and they thought because he wore a military uniform could fool people and get elected. <\/line><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: While I was gone, I noticed something. With all these Republican candidates for president — you have Giuliani; you have Romney who got in today. McCain. I can\u2019t even remember them all. There\u2019s a distinct effort, there\u2019s a big move underway now to redefine conservatism in a way that fits the candidacy of one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nWe Shouldn't Redefine Conservatism - 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:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/13\/we_shouldn_t_redefine_conservatism\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"We Shouldn't Redefine Conservatism - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: While I was gone, I noticed something. 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