{"id":28031,"date":"2008-01-03T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:25:25","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T04:25:25","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:25:25","slug":"conservatism_works_try_it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/01\/03\/conservatism_works_try_it\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservatism Works. Try It!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: John in Lake Zurich, Illinois, it\u2019s great to have you with us, and I\u2019m glad you waited. Welcome.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I called to talk about the focus group they had on Fox last night with Frank Luntz, but could I address the guy from Montana who didn\u2019t like Romney — <\/p>\n

RUSH: Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n

CALLER: — real briefly here?<\/p>\n

RUSH: By all means.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Mitt Romney, by any account, is one of the most accomplished guys who\u2019s ever run for president. And for a guy to dismiss him out of hand the way that guy did is ridiculous and he obviously does not know the credentials that Romney brings to the table. He\u2019s been successful at everything he\u2019s done, and, you know, you may quibble with some of his positions, I\u2019ll guarantee you, though, that anybody who comes from an eastern state is going to have to modify some of their positions they used to get elected there in order to run nationally. <\/p>\n

RUSH: No, I hope not. I hope what you mean to say is they have to modify their position to get elected there.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, what they did to get elected there is they\u2019re going to have to modify some of them, the things the eastern liberals wanted —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Right. If Romney wants to get elected governor of Massachusetts he\u2019s going to have to moderate some tones on things, right —<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes.<\/p>\n

RUSH: — to get elected there?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes.<\/p>\n

RUSH: But the big mistake would be, if you think you gotta do that nationally to get elected, that\u2019s a miscalculation, as far as I\u2019m concerned, and he\u2019s renounced some of those things that he did to get elected in Massachusetts, which is why people have this concern about flip-flop, he\u2019ll say what he has to say, this is the charge to say what he has to say depending on who the audience is. But he has been consistent throughout the campaign here, and he\u2019s put himself out there, he\u2019s kind of committed now to his latest positions. You have to be confident of that.<\/p>\n

CALLER: And I think he\u2019ll stick with those positions.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n

CALLER: So anyway, what I called about was the focus group that Luntz had for the Republicans last night. I was dumbfounded to find that these people did not want to be confused with the facts, they basically dismissed a Romney ad that he showed them, they basically said we don\u2019t want to hear any contrasting positions put out by the candidates themselves. And then the same group of people admired Huckabee for not paying to air his ad but getting it out through the news media. And I just thought that —<\/p>\n

RUSH: I told you yesterday it was going to be the case. I don\u2019t know if you were here yesterday, but Huckabee does his ad on New Year\u2019s Eve, calls his press conference, he actually taped the ad on, I guess, Sunday, then he calls this press conference on Monday to announce he\u2019s not going to run the ad. But he shows the ad to the press, the press laughs and snickers when he says he\u2019s not going to show it, and he said, well, I had to show it to them because they would have said I was making it up, that I had an ad when I didn\u2019t; I had to show it to them. And so the conventional wisdom was he really shot himself in the foot because he got the ad out while saying he wasn\u2019t going to get it out and he got it out without having to pay for it other than the production costs. And I said yesterday, folks, I don\u2019t believe that it wasn\u2019t going to work, because you have to understand, the Huckabee people are going to see what they want to see, and that\u2019s basically what you heard in your focus group last night. Somewhat like liberals, they do not want their comfortable little worldview that they have woven as a cocoon in which to live upset by anything. They don\u2019t want —<\/p>\n

CALLER: Exactly.<\/p>\n

RUSH: — to be confronted with anything that doesn\u2019t fit their worldview, whether factual or not.<\/p>\n

CALLER: They want to feel good about liking Huckabee. They don\u2019t want to be confused with the facts or the fact that, you know, we — you know, I don\u2019t care whether you take Romney, Giuliani, or Huckabee, at least they\u2019ve all run a governmental agency from the executive branch. I think the biggest thing I\u2019ve got with McCain is I\u2019d like to see him as governor for a term in Arizona before I trust him in the presidency because you don\u2019t know how he\u2019s going to act with Democrats if he\u2019s in that Oval Office, I think. And you know, he\u2019s let us down on enough things where I think he can\u2019t be trusted. But I think any one of those three guys, Huckabee, Romney, or Giuliani are going to do fine in the Oval Office and they\u2019re going to stand up. I\u2019m confident that Giuliani and Romney will stand up against the Democrats in Congress because they\u2019ve done it in their past roles as mayor and governor.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Frankly, this is the thing that concerns me about any and all of them, and I\u2019m not nearly as confident as you are that that\u2019s going to be the case, and I only say that not because of specifics related to them, I say it simply because none of them are full-fledged — I\u2019m not crying over spilt milk here, but they\u2019re not movement leaders. They\u2019re not ideological conservatives. They\u2019re conservative on some things, in some cases a lot of things, but there\u2019s a big difference in being a conservative ideologue and thinking you\u2019re leading a movement in order to change America and improve it, to take it in a different direction, than if you think your job is to go up there and compromise to get things done. Now, you have to on certain occasions, and Reagan certainly did, but Bush, you know, if you look at Bush in this — the Democrats thought they were going to smoke him this year. Bush has gotten everything he\u2019s wanted out of these people. Bush has literally smoked them. He started using his veto pen. He\u2019s not leading a movement, either, but this is, to me personally, this is what\u2019s sorely missing. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not nearly as confident as you are that any in the field are not going to bend down and do whatever they have to do to get along with the Democrats. Now, I\u2019ve talked to Karl Rove about this. We had him on the program, and I asked him, ‘New tone. You come into office, you\u2019re facing hostile Democrats. You\u2019re coming out of the roiled nineties, all of the fractious stuff that happened with Clinton in the second term. So you have a new tone where you let Ted Kennedy help write the education bill, and you basically were going out of your way to make the Democrats feel welcome and at home and comfortable and part of your administration. Do you regret it?\u2019 Not at all. We didn\u2019t have margins to win, we had to bring them in if we wanted to get anything done. And I know this is a sad reality when you don\u2019t have large margins, it\u2019s probably one of the things doing Democrats in now, their margins are so small in the House and Senate. <\/p>\n

Reagan got things done with a Democrat majority in the House he wasn\u2019t even close to. So the thing is it can be done, and it can be done how? How did Reagan do it? Reagan went over the heads of the media. He had landslide victories based on ideas which gave him a mandate that the Democrats in the House couldn\u2019t miss. There was no question why Ronald Reagan was elected. I don\u2019t care what the Democrats said about slick marketing and packaging. Reagan was elected to rebuild the country\u2019s military, to defeat the Soviets, and to cut taxes. And he set about doing it because that\u2019s why he was elected with a 49-state landslide and a mandate coming off the malaise years of the Carter administration. So it can be done. You can snooker these guys. You don\u2019t have to cave to them. They\u2019re not interested in compromising, they\u2019re interested in you compromising, or us compromising, they\u2019re interested in us giving ground, and that\u2019s frankly some of the things that I\u2019m tired of. Anyway, I appreciate your call, John, I appreciate your patience as well. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Here\u2019s Steve in Walnut Creek, California, hello, sir, great to have you with us.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Redeemed dittos, Rush.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: You know, this is like talking to the president of the United States.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that, sir. Thank you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019ve listened to you, and I know that you are trustworthy, you\u2019re a man of faith, conviction, and passion, and I think Duncan Hunter is also such a man. And my question to you is, in the event of a brokered convention this fall, do you think there could be a draft Duncan Hunter movement?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I wouldn\u2019t rule anything out. If we go to a brokered conventional, you understand what that means? <\/p>\n

CALLER: I believe it frees the electors for —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah, it means everything is up for grabs.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right.<\/p>\n

RUSH: It means anything can happen. A lot of people think we\u2019re headed in that direction based on how close and tight everything is, but that\u2019s way down the line. Duncan Hunter is a great guy, and he truly is authentic. It\u2019s a mystery why some people don\u2019t get out of the bottom tier or the lower tiers in campaigns. But, remember, this is his first chance, it\u2019s his first time going up in a national audience, and he\u2019s got a future ahead of him if he wants to try to continue to do this. Whatever happens here does not rule him out forever. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: John in Lake Zurich, Illinois, it\u2019s great to have you with us, and I\u2019m glad you waited. Welcome. CALLER: Hi, Rush. I called to talk about the focus group they had on Fox last night with Frank Luntz, but could I address the guy from Montana who didn\u2019t like Romney — RUSH: Oh, yeah. […]<\/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":"\nConservatism Works. 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