{"id":30936,"date":"2008-11-19T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:05:25","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T03:05:25","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:05:25","slug":"why_doesn_t_liberalism_have_to_change_when_democrats_lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/11\/19\/why_doesn_t_liberalism_have_to_change_when_democrats_lose\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Doesn\u2019t Liberalism Have to Change When Democrats Lose?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Now, if you missed the first hour, Chuck Hagel, the disgraced and retiring so-called Republican Senator from Nebraska, went to Johns Hopkins University to do a seminar to the enlightened students there on American politics, and he basically did a big cry session (crying) because he was criticized by me, the leader of the conservative movement. He said, ‘Limbaugh ought to run for office if it\u2019s so easy. Limbaugh does nothing but tear people down. Let Limbaugh run for office.\u2019 Senator Hagel, as I have said countless times, I will not endure the pay cut to run for office. You ought to try doing talk radio, Senator, if you think handling criticism is such a tough thing. Are you people in Washington above it for some reason? When you go join the Democrats more often than your own party, what do you expect to happen to you? Which gets me to the point. Okay, so we\u2019ve lost a couple of elections now. We lost the midterms in \u201906, and I say ‘we\u2019 advisedly. The Republicans lost. I am a conservative first and a Republican second. And of course we lost the presidential election earlier this month, so that\u2019s two elections. And now, of course, here come all the people who have our best interests at heart. Why, Chuck Hagel, Republican in name only. Why, E.J. Dionne, Jr., Drive-By Media columnist. <\/p>\n

All these liberals are telling us that what we need to do to win elections is become more like them, that we gotta go for global warming, that we have to understand and we gotta get rid of our social conservatives and understand that abortions are going to happen and we have to defend it. If we do this, we can win elections. I\u2019m mystified by this because these people do not care that we win elections. They are opposed to our winning elections. So here they are advising us, and we even have some of our brilliant pseudo-intellectual conservative intelligentsia in our own media saying that we need to moderate and we got the campaign they wanted. We got the candidate they wanted; we got the campaign they wanted; we got a guy who was reaching out to Hispanics; we got a guy reaching out to moderates, reaching out to Democrats, reaching out to independents, and he lost in all those sectors. And of course the Republicans try to lay the blame now here on Sarah Palin, but that won\u2019t fly. She was the only thing that energized the Republican campaign, and everybody knows it, both parties know it, which is why they\u2019re trying to dump on her and make it look like she was the one who was ineffective. <\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the point. Here\u2019s the point — after this admittedly brilliant setup — the point is we won two huge landslides, you\u2019ll remember this. We won two huge landslides in 1980 and 1984. We did it with Ronaldus Magnus. I mean it wasn\u2019t even close, 49 state landslides. And then let\u2019s talk 2000. Well, let\u2019s blow that out because the Democrats think that we stole that. Let\u2019s go to 2004 with the haughty John Kerry. In fact, 2002 as well. In 2002, after the Wellstone memorial, the exit polls said the Democrats didn\u2019t retake the Congress because they were wrong on values. They had to go out and court values voters, which is the social conservatives, as far as Democrats are concerned, you hayseed hicks that live in the South and the Southeast. So for a week or so there was lip service, ‘Yeah, we gotta shore up our relationship with the all-God crowd. We gotta shore up our relationship here with religious people.\u2019 But it was just lip service. They didn\u2019t of course do anything because the constituencies that compromise the Democrat Party would not stand for it for very long. Even after 2004 — so we got \u201980, \u201984, 2004 with the haughty John Kerry, who served in Vietnam. The same thing the Democrats started saying that it was slick marketing and packaging that was responsible, it was not issues. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember, when we wiped the floor with the libs, I do not remember the libs rejecting their theories and their ideas and their policies. I didn\u2019t see \u2019em reevaluate who they are. I didn\u2019t see them say the era of FDR is over. I didn\u2019t hear them say or do, ‘We\u2019ve gotta change who we are. We gotta go out and try to attract those southern conservatives. We have to go out and try to attract those pro-lifers.\u2019 They don\u2019t do that. The left never waters themselves down. They don\u2019t water down liberalism. They don\u2019t say the era of FDR is over. All of a sudden when we lose we\u2019re supposed to do that, we\u2019re supposed to throw away everything we believe in, we\u2019re supposed to toss aside every conservative principle we believe in, because the Republicans lost? Conservatism did not lose, except when it wasn\u2019t on the ballot. When conservatism, traditional American values and institutions were on the ballot, Prop 8 — can you believe, in California, the whole concept of marriage being something other than between a man and a woman was defeated? How can that be? <\/p>\n

If this country has moved so far left, if this country is such now anti-tradition, anti-conservative, in California how can a ballot initiative that defines marriage as that between a man and a woman only, how can it win big if this country\u2019s gone so far left? The Mormons and the blacks did it, 70% of the blacks who voted in California voted for Prop 8 to keep marriage defined as that between a man and a woman. My point is, the left never starts saying they have to change who they are; they have to water down what they believe in. They just chalk it up to the stupidity of the American people. When they lose, the American people are stupid, or Rush Limbaugh did something to poison the minds of the American people. But they just chalk it up to the American people are dumb and stupid, got tricked by slick conservative marketing and packaging, events and circumstances beyond their control. It was never their failures. <\/p>\n

Now, their guy, Barack Obama, gets 52% of the vote. We conservatives are supposed to drop everything we believe, we\u2019re supposed to drop who we are. Not only will that not happen, it can\u2019t happen because conservatives are believers. We\u2019re not policy wonks. We don\u2019t form our beliefs based on, where should we be on this policy? And where should we be on this policy, and how should we approach that group, and how should we approach this group? We don\u2019t do that because our policies and core beliefs deal with everybody. Our policies and core beliefs lift everybody. This is a nation founded on the concept of individual liberty and freedom. You give as much of that to everybody, and it\u2019s been proven to work, \u201980, and \u201984. The problem is there are too many people in government, both parties, who are frightened by too much individual liberty on the part of the American people. We believe in our principles and that\u2019s why the E.J. Dionne, Jrs. of the world and the Chuck Hagels of the world, the David Brooks, the Frums, all the rest of them don\u2019t get it and never will, and this is why they don\u2019t matter to conservatives and never will. <\/p>\n

They think they\u2019re going to help redefine conservatism, but you can\u2019t. Conservatism is what it is. The era of Reagan is not over. ‘Well, Rush, Reagan\u2019s agenda, a whole different set of matters.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t matter what the agenda is. Conservatism applied to it works. I can\u2019t tell you how many times people have said to me, and these are friends of mine, ‘You don\u2019t sound, Rush, like you\u2019re deferential enough to the historical consequences and nature of Obama\u2019s victory.\u2019 What do you mean? ‘Well, it\u2019s the first black president. I mean this is a seminal moment. This is huge. Look at what we\u2019ve overcome.\u2019 I said, ‘I got past that the second day after the election.\u2019 ‘What do you mean?\u2019 Because I don\u2019t care what Obama\u2019s skin color is, I don\u2019t care what anybody\u2019s skin color is. I\u2019m speaking now, by the way, as a conservative and as an American. When I look at a group of people, I see Americans. I don\u2019t see, ooh, there\u2019s some blacks, we gotta do what we can to make them like us and there\u2019s some women in there, gotta make them like us. And, look, there\u2019s some Hispanics, well, we better not insult them. I don\u2019t see people like that. <\/p>\n

I see people as human beings with all kinds of potential, depending on their own ambition and desire and willingness to work hard, do whatever it is to realize their dreams. So, yeah, Obama is the first black president, yeah, it happened and so forth. But now that doesn\u2019t give him a pass as far as what his ideas are. And if his ideas are bad, if he gets into office and starts doing things that I think are damaging the country, I\u2019m going to say so. I\u2019m not going to be afraid to do so on the basis that he\u2019s black, the first black president. We gotta get rid of this identity politics. We have to get rid of all of this group and victimization politics and realize that we\u2019re all human beings and that we\u2019re all Americans. This hyphenated stuff just doesn\u2019t work, and that\u2019s what conservatism is. All these pseudo-conservatives who want to now start looking at people the way liberals do: female Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Wal-Mart Americans, NASCAR dads, soccer moms. I mean, why do we have to segregate the country this way in order to progress? Because it doesn\u2019t cause progress at all. It just creates unnecessary animosities and rivalries. <\/p>\n

So I\u2019m not going to listen to the Hagels and I\u2019m not going to listen to all of these on our side who claim that the era of Reaganism or conservatism is over, that we need to adapt to the modern era and understand what it is. Basically, we need our own version of Big Government, too. We just need to do it smarter and better, passing out the goodies to the right people. You may as well just join the Democrat Party and have that argument with them \u2019cause there\u2019s no room on the right for that kind of argument, make government the central theme of people\u2019s lives is just — (interruption) I know, there\u2019s no argument. There\u2019s no argument on conservatism about what it is. There\u2019s an argument among pseudo-conservatives of what conservatism ought to become. <\/line><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Now, if you missed the first hour, Chuck Hagel, the disgraced and retiring so-called Republican Senator from Nebraska, went to Johns Hopkins University to do a seminar to the enlightened students there on American politics, and he basically did a big cry session (crying) because he was criticized by me, the leader of the […]<\/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":"\nWhy Doesn't Liberalism Have to Change When Democrats Lose? - 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\/2008\/11\/19\/why_doesn_t_liberalism_have_to_change_when_democrats_lose\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Why Doesn't Liberalism Have to Change When Democrats Lose? 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