{"id":24968,"date":"2007-03-16T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:50:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T05:50:10","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:50:10","slug":"eib_interview_tom_delay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/03\/16\/eib_interview_tom_delay\/","title":{"rendered":"EIB Interview: Tom DeLay"},"content":{"rendered":"
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RUSH: We will have Tom DeLay here to talk about his new book that hits soon. It\u2019s out in certain circles. I, of course — a powerful, influential member of the media — have the book. It shows no mercy to Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich and so forth. Some of you people are going to like this. Some are going to cite the 11th Commandment of Ronald Reagan: Thou shalt not attack another Republican. <\/emphasize>You\u2019ve gotta remember, though, that Ronald Reagan threw the 11th Commandment out in 1976 when he went against Gerald Ford for the nomination. He attacked Ford very aggressively. That 11th Commandment is one that gets selectively applied. Now, some of you people who are so upset because of the lack of fight that seems to exist anywhere in elected Republican leadership, will probably get a kick out of hearing some from Tom DeLay today. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: As we\u2019ve been telling you since yesterday, we are happy to welcome back to the program Tom DeLay and his new book, &ldquo;No Retreat, No Surrender: One American\u2019s Fight<\/a>.&rdquo; Tom, great to have you back. I just want you to know that we have you on the phone line here we call The Hotline, because this book is hot.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, I hope it\u2019s hot. It tells a great story, and the best part of the book in my opinion is the forward that you wrote — and I publicly want to thank you for doing that. Once again, Rush Limbaugh gets it, and he knows how to articulate it.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I would dispute with you that the hottest part of the book is the forward, but that\u2019s very nice and gracious of you to say. I read somewhere, I think it was in a Novak column, where you told him you feel liberated not being bound by membership in the elected leadership of the Republican Party. What do you mean by that?<\/p>\n

<\/a>DELAY: Well, obviously when you\u2019re in a leadership position, you have to be careful of what you say. People are watching you. You\u2019re up front and personal and I always felt constrained by that. I was not — felt constrained about advancing the conservative cause, but now that I\u2019m out, I feel very comfortable, very much at peace, and can say whatever I want to say.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You mean you felt constrained not about your thoughts on the opposition, but about your own team?<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, not necessarily. The first team that we had with Newt Gingrich as speaker was not as cohesive as the team that was led by Dennis Hastert. But even with that, we were able to accomplish a lot, as you know: the Contract with America, balancing the budget, welfare reform. So we were able to do a lot of good stuff.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So the point is, you know, leadership is something that I discuss on this program a lot because there doesn\u2019t seem to be any elected conservative leadership in Washington right now on the Republican side, and I understand that one of the reasons for this is that, well, when you were there and up until last November, you had the president who is the top dog Republican, and it\u2019s tough for congressional leadership, Senate Republican leadership to go against the president. That\u2019s just a political no, no. But for much of your time you had Clinton in the White House, and during that time I gather you had misgivings about your own leadership, but you thought it was best to deal with that behind the scenes rather than to be public with it, and yet a lot of people when it comes to leadership, say, &ldquo;Hey, look. If there\u2019s a problem we have to know about it and get it fixed rather than try to paper it over.&rdquo; So it\u2019s gotta be a delicate balancing act for you.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, it is, and it does create some pressure and some tension that you have to deal with. There was somebody in leadership, and I don\u2019t know who it was, that kept leaking to the press what we were discussing in leadership. So you had to weigh your words very carefully and what you say — and, frankly, you had to understand that whatever you said was going to be on the front page of the newspaper the next day.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Give me an example. I know you don\u2019t want to mention a name, but this is the kind of thing that surprises average people who vote for people like you. They think that the leadership in the House, the Republican leadership, is unified on an agenda. Why would somebody in the leadership be leaking, and on what kinds of things were they leaking?<\/line>DELAY: Well, they would leak because they had a paranoia about themselves, or they had someone on their staff that they may or may not know was leaking, and that staffer was doing it to buddy up to the press for their own future ambitions. Our first leadership table was… I mean, we worked together and certainly the most important part of that leadership table was President Bill Clinton in bringing us together. But there was that tension that was going on, and it was things like, you know, if you say something about Bill Clinton off the cuff, and probably you wouldn\u2019t like to see it in the paper, it would end up in the paper the next day. Or you had a particular idea that the leadership may not have accepted. That idea, with your name on it, would be in the press the next day.<\/line>RUSH: All right. So what this is obviously a result of is, tension among the leadership, traditional human jealousies and insecurities — and an effort to, within the leadership itself, destroy somebody for whatever reason: a threat, they\u2019re not liked, the usual things that happen in every organization?<\/line>DELAY: That\u2019s correct. There is a leadership politics that no one knows about and very few people write about, and that\u2019s the politics of people that may one day want to be speaker. So if that\u2019s the way they operate, they make every decision based upon them becoming speaker in the future. It clouds their judgment sometimes.<\/line>RUSH: Would I be correct in assuming that you could be referring to Dick Armey there, based on some things in your book?<\/line>DELAY: Yes, most definitely so, especially during the coup. Now, if you read my book, unlike what was in the Novak column, I compliment Dick a lot about the things he was able to accomplish. He did a fabulous job on the Contract with America, on the homeland security department and keeping it from being a union-run group. He did some great work. But we had the problem as outlined in the book about the coup.<\/line>RUSH: The coup?<\/line>DELAY: Well, if you\u2019ll remember — it\u2019s kind of interesting, and in the book I lay it all out — a group of conservative Republicans, not in leadership, were very upset about Newt Gingrich and the fact that he would change the agenda about every 15 minutes. They were getting upset with the fact that he was playing footsies with Bill Clinton too much, and they were going to take him out and take him down. At the same time the leadership was having the same problem and we were having discussions with Newt about his managerial style and how difficult it was to make things happen when he would change the agenda over night.<\/line>RUSH: This was 1997, right, the coup?<\/line>DELAY: Yeah.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: Now, how many of the \u201994 freshmen were involved in the coup? I\u2019ve talked to some of them, and of course they arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and they really believed that they were there to implement the agenda they had all campaigned on, and it was a revolutionary thing here. They had taken over the Congress. A number of freshmen here that gave the Republicans this huge majority, how many of them were dispirited by what they learned and saw and how long did it take for that to happen?<\/p>\n

DELAY: At least half of them, 35 to 40 of them. It took a couple of years, particularly the second term of Newt Gingrich, where the members had just had enough. At the end of 1997, they wanted to see a change, and they didn\u2019t see Newt bringing about that change, so they were going to take him down. So Dick Armey, myself, Bill Paxon from New York, and John Boehner — the now minority <\/emphasize>leader — came together, frankly, to handle the situation and try to keep that up. Whether you were supporting Newt Gingrich or not wasn\u2019t the point. The point was our conference did not need this kind of divisive action right in the middle of our Congress. It would have destroyed everything that we were working for.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Interesting point, because — and I\u2019m sure you know this — so many grassroots conservatives today are upset, and they have been. I think a lot of it can be traced back to the \u201995 budget deal when the Democrats were out saying that Republicans wanted to starve kids, and there was no defense. It was allowed to stand, just like so many accusations against the current administration are allowed to stand without any defense. Conservatives who have voted for Republicans in the House get frustrated because they don\u2019t fight back. They don\u2019t seem to have any energy in refuting some of what they think are baseless charges. They\u2019re very upset with what they perceive as the unwillingness of the Republicans in the administration and in Congress, to stand up for their own people in the face of obvious political attacks by Democrats. <\/p>\n

You can look at this phony scandal of the firing of US attorneys. The attorney general goes out and says, &ldquo;Yes, mistakes were made,&rdquo; and hands the Democrats his head, practically, on a silver platter. Then the president says, &ldquo;Mistakes were made,&rdquo; but I don\u2019t know if any mistakes were made. It doesn\u2019t appear to me that any mistakes were made. Presidents have fired US attorneys. They work for the president. He has a constitutional right to fire \u2019em. John Sununu has just come out and said the attorney general should resign! What people ask is, &ldquo;Where are the instincts, the normal instincts to want to defend themselves and then go on offense against liberals who are trying to destroy them?&rdquo;<\/p>\n

DELAY: Hey, Rush, have you been talking to my wife? (Laughing.)<\/p>\n

RUSH: Your wife\u2019s a great American, and if she\u2019s echoing me on this or if I\u2019m echoing her, then she\u2019s in touch with the conservative voters of this country.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, I think that had a lot to do with the losses in 2006. Exactly. I think there was two things that were going on. One — and it\u2019s not because I was taken down as the majority leader, but the very fact that I had to step aside as majority leader sent a wave of confusion through the Republican caucus, at a very sensitive time when they should have been working and strategizing the upcoming election. It took the new leadership that was elected after I left permanently in January of \u201906 another two months just to hire staff. So by the time they were ready to go, it was too late. Secondly, as you say, they did not have the capability to articulate — not only what they did, particularly in 2005, which is pretty impressive — but what they stand for and where they want to lead the country. I think they would have had a better fighting chance in 2006 if they had. You\u2019re absolutely right. This US attorney thing, it just boggles my mind. The Bush administration still hasn\u2019t learned, number one: the Democrats are going to come after \u2019em. All this ‘let\u2019s get together and can\u2019t we just get along…\u2019 <\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s it. It can\u2019t be that they don\u2019t know that. There has to be something. I\u2019ve sat here and asked myself, ‘Do they not understand that they are targeted for destruction?\u2019 But after six and a half years here, they have to know this. It\u2019s their curious way of dealing with it.<\/p>\n

DELAY: That\u2019s the whole point I was going to make. It starts with Don Rumsfeld. I mean Don Rumsfeld, in my opinion, gets let go because the Democrats are demanding it and it looked good politically. Well, that sent a great message to the Democrats. ‘Well, if we raise enough hell, maybe we can get another head and another scalp,\u2019 and here they come after Alberto Gonzales, and you have Republicans now handing the scalp over, rather than walking out there and say, &ldquo;Look, these attorneys serve at the will of the president. This is a personnel matter, and that\u2019s that. We\u2019re not going to give in to you. We\u2019re not going to send people to testify before your politically driven committees. We\u2019re not going to play your game.&rdquo;<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, you\u2019re — conveniently, I think, with humility — leaving your own scalp out, but that\u2019s crucial. So we\u2019ll talk about that and some other things when we move forward. We have to take a brief time-out. We\u2019ll be back and continue with Tom DeLay right after this.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Welcome back, folks. We are with Tom DeLay. He has a new book out: &ldquo;No Retreat, No Surrender: One American\u2019s Fight.&rdquo; You\u2019re talking about the Republicans giving Democrats scalps. Rumsfeld is an example, and there are countless others, and it\u2019s indeed frustrating. Let\u2019s look at your own case. Now, you\u2019ve talked about this on the program once before, so I don\u2019t want to go through the details. I\u2019ll just summarize them very quickly. Republicans in the House, in order to placate Democrats, established a rule that if any of their leadership were ever indicted, they\u2019d have to quit the leadership. Democrats have no such rule. I don\u2019t know how that happened. I don\u2019t know why the Republicans fall for it. Here comes Ronnie Earle, and we all know the bogus indictments against you and all of this stuff, but the end result is, you\u2019re gone. You were gotten rid of, too, and my question to you is: I got the impression that after this happened there were some Republicans in the House leadership that weren\u2019t that disappointed when this happened.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, I don\u2019t know who that would be, Rush. (Laughing.)<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, my point is that you had your own people problems, people who thought that you were too aggressive, that you were making the Republicans too big a target with your aggressive defense of conservatism and your pursuit of the opposition. I mean, let\u2019s face it, the Republican Party has a lot of moderates out there that don\u2019t like conservatives.<\/p>\n

DELAY: But they weren\u2019t in leadership. I think if you talk to Denny Hastert or Roy Blunt, the whip now — or Eric Cantor, the chief deputy whip — we had a very cohesive leadership table for eight years, and we worked very well together. Denny Hastert and I were partners. Sometimes I\u2019d get aggressive and he would tamp me down, and sometimes he wasn\u2019t aggressive enough and I\u2019d pump him up. So it wasn\u2019t in the leadership. Yes, we had members of Congress that didn\u2019t want to go where we wanted to lead them and fought us every step of the way but we were able to hold them together and accomplish some pretty amazing things over the last eight years of Denny Hastert\u2019s speakership. You have to deal with that obviously when you\u2019re dealing with, at the time, 225, 230 individuals, particularly Republicans. By the nature of being a Republican, they\u2019re individuals. But we were able to deal with it and hold them together and move forward. Things like balancing the budget — you know, most people don\u2019t know that the House, the Republican House for 12 straight years passed tax cuts every year, and as important as that is, it was 12 years before the federal government raised one penny in taxes. That alone is a pretty good accomplishment.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, it is, but look: it\u2019s taking your book, after the fact, to get that news out. The Republicans have another problem that irritates people, and that is the, quote, unquote, PR machine that doesn\u2019t seem to exist. All these good things remain secret because the Drive-By Media, of course, doesn\u2019t cover them, and they do promote the Democrat spin on things. I\u2019ve talked to Republicans who say, &ldquo;Well, we can\u2019t get our message out.&rdquo; But clearly there are ways to do it. I gotta share an e-mail with you, because this relates to something you said about Speaker Hastert. A woman writes in and says, &ldquo;Newt got in the way of the Republican agenda? It was more cohesive under Hastert? What? What has the Hastert leadership accomplished except lose the House? I don\u2019t understand. All I know as a conservative is that Newt got it done.&rdquo;<\/p>\n

DELAY: Let me, if I can, give you the agenda in 2005, just one year before the election. In 2005, we passed three tort reform bills signed by the president. The House took on the judiciary, to hold them accountable. We passed five bills limiting the jurisdiction of the court. We even passed a bill twice breaking up that leftist Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco and told them that they could meet in Guam if they wanted to. We actually cut discretionary spending for the first time since Ronald Reagan. We started the process that was very important to me, and that is, I think entitlements should be looked at every year and reformed every year, and we did it in 2005. That saved $40 billion. We passed a strong border security bill in answer to the president and the Senate who wants this comprehensive immigration, and sending the signal that the House is not going to move from border security first before you start discussing amnesty. I could go on and on. We passed a comprehensive, long-term, long-vision energy bill that took us almost ten years to accomplish.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right, let me stop you there only because I\u2019ve got 25 seconds here before we have to go to the next break. But I think the reason that so many people hold — and I know there are many people hold the same view that the woman expressed in her e-mail — the perception that Newt was out there. He was making speeches. He was on television every day, and he was articulating conservatism. Hastert wasn\u2019t. Hastert was the invisible man, and so what you just described is unknown. You comment on it when we come back after this.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: And we\u2019re back. We\u2019re talking with Tom DeLay, whose new book is ?No Retreat, No Surrender: One American\u2019s Fight.? Now, back to this e-mail from one of my listeners who was stunned that you said that Newt got in the way of Republican agenda and crediting Hastert with so much of the successful agenda you\u2019ve just detailed for us. As I said, I think the reason for this was PR. Newt was out there every day. He might have been making a speech at a think tank and he might have been announcing a new policy initiative every ten minutes, but still he was visible and he was doing it, and whatever he was saying was conservative. Nobody\u2019s ever seen Denny Hastert in that role, and so the things that you say were accomplished, doubtless were, but the missing component to all this was almost a braggadocio about it, a confident presentation to everybody that this had happened. So people largely don\u2019t know it, and I think that\u2019s why this woman and probably others were surprised to hear you say that Newt was more of an obstacle to the agenda than Hastert was.<\/line>DELAY: Well, Rush, I wouldn\u2019t put it that way — and if I said it that way, I shouldn\u2019t have. Newt was not an obstacle. There were things going on within the leadership. We were still able to accomplish some pretty amazing things. Newt was speaker. We balanced the budget. Welfare reform. There\u2019s just a lot of things that we did that were accomplished and thank goodness that we did. But your e-mailer is absolutely right, and I have to take some responsibility for this. We sucked at communication. It was our biggest weakness. We just could not get it together. Thank God that we had you and others that at least understood what was going on and were talking about it. But yes, we needed a national communications strategy. We needed to put our brightest and most articulate people out front, and we needed to tell our story over and over again and stand up to the national media — and as you call them, the Drive-By Media. I hope to do that in the future. In fact, that\u2019s part of what I\u2019m doing in the future, is to develop a national communications strategy to stand up to the Drive-By Media.<\/line>RUSH: Now that you\u2019re liberated.<\/line>DELAY: Now that I\u2019m liberated.<\/line>RUSH: Now, this may be — and I\u2019m not trying to hit you with tough questions, but you —<\/line>DELAY: Go ahead.<\/line>RUSH: — you\u2019re inspiring them. I have a theory. I\u2019m one of the average Americans who, leading up to the campaign of 2006, the election of 2006, said, “I, frankly…” and I said this after the election, “I\u2019m through carrying their water. I\u2019m not going to defend them if they won\u2019t defend themselves. I\u2019m not going to make their case anymore if they won\u2019t, just to prop \u2019em up.” My theory is — and I\u2019m going to ask you this point-blank, and it may sound egotistical, but it concerns me — is there a recalcitrance, a reluctance on the part of elected Republicans in the House and even in the Senate to rely on the new conservative media to speak for them, to defend them, to attack their enemies so that they shut up?<\/line>DELAY: No. I think where they are right now, and I think where the conservative movement is right now, they\u2019re licking their wounds, number one — and we need to put that behind us.<\/line>RUSH: But I\u2019m talking about before the election, though.<\/line>DELAY: Oh, before the election?<\/line>RUSH: Before the election. I understand where they are now. They\u2019re powerless in the House. Would you explain…? I\u2019m jumping ahead here. I don\u2019t want to forget this answer, but I\u2019ll save that question for after this. I\u2019m talking about before the election.<\/line>DELAY: Before the election, to be honest with you, as I said earlier, they were in confusion. For the entire year of 2006, the Democrats knew what they were doing: disrupt the leadership and it will take them months to bring it back together and get up to speed again. That\u2019s number one. Number two, we\u2019ve never been good at communication, and if you\u2019re in confusion and not good at communications, communication\u2019s going to be terrible. Number three: You cannot discount, Rush, the massive, unseen-before-in-my-lifetime coalition that the Democrats have been able to build over the last six years. So even if they were at their best game, even if they were articulating what they had accomplished and where they want to take the country, they still had to face one of the most politically awesome machines (built mostly by the Clintonistas) that I\u2019ve ever witnessed. I gotta tell you, if the conservatives don\u2019t get it together, Hillary Clinton\u2019s going to be the next president of the United States.<\/line>RUSH: Are you talking about the alliance of the blogs and the new Podesta think tank —<\/line>DELAY: Right.<\/line>RUSH: — coordinated with Rahm Emanuel and George Soros? Is that what you\u2019re talking about?<\/line><\/p>\n

DELAY: And Harold Ickes and Sidney Blumenthal and the Halperins and Begala and Carville. They didn\u2019t stop working when they left the White House. They are out there right now. When they needed an organization, Harold Ickes created America Coming Together, which is a group that has 1400 full-time employees that canvass. They needed somebody to do media for the 527s. They created the Media Fund. They needed to organize Hollywood and musicians, and they created America Votes to hold concerts around the country and feed that money back into their coffers. You already mentioned the Center for America progress, Hillary Clinton\u2019s think tank.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah, that\u2019s John Podesta.<\/p>\n

<\/a>DELAY: They needed opposition research. They\u2019ve investigated probably every sitting Republican that we know of right now through a group called CREW, and Democracy 21 and Common Cause. I could go on. They made a consulting group to pull this coalition together. They got Thunder Road Group. To fund it, you\u2019ve got George Soros foundations, hundreds of foundations, like the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation, the Soros Foundation pumping money in. The unions. The Service Employees Union are bragging about putting $73 million in the last election just from one union funding all of this stuff. I\u2019m just touching the tip of it. If you want to see what it\u2019s all about, go to DiscovertheNetwork.org<\/a> and you can actually see it and read about it.<\/p>\n

RUSH: What is your thinking on why the Republicans, even after the electoral victories in \u201994 and presidential victories in 2000 and 2004 haven\u2019t put together something similar?<\/p>\n

DELAY: I think we got a little arrogant. I think we got a little lazy. I think we relied on doing things like we\u2019ve always done. The only real two new ideas that I know of that we came up with was the 72 hour program (which was a good get-out-the-vote program) and what I called Stomp (which is a volunteer program) and robocalling and microtargeting. Those are the only new ideas we had in how we run our campaigns. While we\u2019re doing that little, the Democrats understood, number one, that McCain neutered the party through his McCain-Feingold, and they had to create this whole new party, and that\u2019s what they did. It took \u2019em five to six years to do it, but they did it and they did it well.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So basically they took advantage of a loophole in the McCain-Feingold bill to create the 527s and the Republicans don\u2019t have a lot in that area. One of my theories that I\u2019ll run by you is, it\u2019s going to be tough to overcome institutionally. Liberals, by definition, go to college to become bureaucrats and to become people who work to grow government. Conservatives look at government as something to be restrained. We don\u2019t make it our career to orient our lives around government. The liberals do. This is something that is their lifeblood.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Oh, you\u2019re so right, Rush. I\u2019d just add to that. Liberals, by the virtue of their philosophy, are collectivists. So it\u2019s easy to pull everybody together and work together. You\u2019ve got abortionists working on labor policy. You\u2019ve got labor unions working on environmental policy. Conservatives, by their philosophy, are individualists. They create an organization to protect against gun control, but you can\u2019t get the gun owners to work against abortions. Shoot, during the energy bill in 2005, I couldn\u2019t get the mining association to work with the chemical association. (Laughing.)<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I\u2019ve got a couple big questions on this, but it\u2019s time for another EIB Obscene Profit Break. We will take it and be back and continue our talk with Tom DeLay just a second.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Welcome back. Tom DeLay is our guest here, and this is going to be the final broadcast segment we have with Mr. DeLay. Title of the book, &ldquo;No Retreat, No Surrender: One American\u2019s Fight.&rdquo; We were just talking about the fact that liberals, from the time they\u2019re in junior high school are oriented toward getting jobs that interact with government or are in government for the purposes of controlling it. For conservatives, that\u2019s anathema. To the extent they want to be in government it\u2019s to restrain it. Now, one of the things the liberals are succeeding in doing is insulating institutions in this country: academia, the media, a number of places like that, from the judiciary, from election results. My question to you about this is you and your fellow Republicans, in taking over the House, went to the people. <\/p>\n

The Republican majority resulted in 1994 from connecting with voters, educating and informing them, and you produced majorities up until last November. Same thing here with me. I\u2019ve tried to acquire the largest audience possible, not by becoming a think tank but by actually appealing to the people. The point was to create as many informed people as possible to go vote on Election Day. That gives our side a triumph. But with so much insulation from election results going on, the liberals have purposely planned this. It\u2019s very wise strategic move. Does it worry you that so many of our institutions are becoming immune to election results, and is there anything you would suggest that could be done about it?<\/p>\n

DELAY: Rush, I\u2019ll tell you, the reason for the title of the book, ‘No Retreat, No Surrender\u2019 — talk about it in the book — is what I perceive as the voids of leadership that are vitally important to fill in the very near future. First and foremost, the Republicans have to go back to their first principles and stand on those principles. Develop an agenda that I outlined in the book to fight for. But as important as all that is, we have to find a way to pull everybody together. That\u2019s why I\u2019m creating a grassroots organization called Coalition for Conservative Majority. People can go to the website, CCmajority.org<\/a> and sign up, and that\u2019s going back to the people. You\u2019re absolutely right. We have to change the culture of the media, which means we have to develop a national communication strategy working with people like you and others about getting information to the people. We also need a group that develops resources to connect with the Republicans and conservatives on the inside of the Congress to work together like we used to even when we were in the minority to drive that conservative agenda and defeat the leftist agenda. If you fill those voids, then you\u2019re going to pull the conservative cause and the conservative movement together to work together and drive that agenda.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right, I\u2019ll give you a few names, and you give you your impression of them if you want, your impression of them as conservative leaders and potential presidential material. Rudy Giuliani.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, Rudy Giuliani has exhibited leadership, and I think the reason he\u2019s doing so well in the polls right now is that\u2019s what conservatives are begging for is leadership. They\u2019re willing to forgive him of his social liberalism. But like all of these candidates who are going to have to prove to themselves over the next few months, and we don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen. But if you look at the polls, even, today (which are meaningless) over 60% of conservatives are waiting for these candidates to prove themselves.<\/p>\n

RUSH: John McCain.<\/p>\n

DELAY: I wouldn\u2019t call him a conservative. McCain voted against <\/emphasize>tax cuts. McCain is the author of McCain-Feingold. McCain is partnered up with Ted Kennedy on immigration and is going in the wrong direction. He\u2019s going to have to prove himself, too.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Mitt Romney is trying to carry the conservative banner. But again, he talks a good talk, but I think the conservatives are going to see if he walks the walk.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Fred Thompson.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Fred Thompson is a good, solid conservative. I disagree with him on immigration, but he was distinguished in the Senate. He certainly has a persona about him that people like and he could communicate a message.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay. It doesn\u2019t sound like you\u2019ve made a choice among the names that I mentioned to you.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Not even close. (Laughing.)<\/p>\n

RUSH: Does that mean none of them fire you up?<\/p>\n

DELAY: There isn\u2019t a candidate out there that fires me up. I\u2019m a close friend of Sam Brownback. He is a committed, dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Can he put together a campaign? It\u2019s too early to tell.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Duncan Hunter. You know him well.<\/p>\n

DELAY: I love Duncan Hunter. The only thing I disagree with Duncan on is trade policy. He\u2019s a protectionist. But as far as having a commander-in-chief, he couldn\u2019t be any better. I mean, he\u2019s the best.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Tancredo.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Tancredo, his time will come. He\u2019s a one-issue candidate, and we all know that. Mike Huckabee, the governor of Arkansas, I\u2019ve known for 25 years. He just is a fabulous human being, but he\u2019s going to have to prove himself, too, because he raised taxes in Arkansas.<\/p>\n

RUSH: How is this going to be? All these front-loaded primaries, you\u2019re going to have a Super-Duper Tuesday. It\u2019s almost like a national primary for both parties, early on. The conventions are going to be more of an afterthought than ever before.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, I think the candidates know what they have to do, and what they have to do is to appeal to the base. Because if 60% of the base of Republicans — which, frankly, is the base — is sitting back and watching, they know they have a job to do, and that\u2019s why you have primaries.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Tom, thanks for your time. This has been most enlightening. People are going to enjoy the book. You know, the early publicity on the book has been ‘Bush is more compassionate than conservative\u2019 and some of the leadership fights between Armey and Gingrich, but there\u2019s a lot more in this book, as typified by the second half of our discussion. I wish you the best with the book. Thank you for all your time here. Just one final thing here. I forgot to ask you this, if you can comment on it — and I know there are probably some limitations from your lawyers — where are you on this Ronnie Earle business now?<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, the Democrats are still at it. Rush, I just gotta tell you, it\u2019s not enough to defeat a man publicly. It\u2019s not even enough to vilify him publicly. You have to carpet bomb his life. You have to make sure that he leaves office disgraced, bankrupt, and heading for jail — and they\u2019re not going to give up on me because they know I\u2019m going to be out there continuing to fight for what I believe in, and I\u2019m not giving up. No Retreat, No Surrender.<\/emphasize><\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, that\u2019s Clinton, Inc., right out of Lewinsky. That is: You don\u2019t defeat your enemies; you destroy them.<\/p>\n

DELAY: That\u2019s the Democrats. They don\u2019t have any ideas. They don\u2019t have a vision. They don\u2019t have an agenda. How do you think they won in 2006?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, they don\u2019t have an agenda they\u2019ll admit to.<\/p>\n

DELAY: That\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

RUSH: They have an agenda, and it\u2019s dangerous for all of us.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Amen.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Tom DeLay. Again, the title of the book is &ldquo;No Retreat, No Surrender: One American\u2019s Fight.&rdquo; <\/line><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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