{"id":31403,"date":"2009-01-14T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:55:04","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T02:55:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:55:04","slug":"hardball_discussion_of_rush_and_gop_provides_teachable_moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/01\/14\/hardball_discussion_of_rush_and_gop_provides_teachable_moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Hardball Discussion of Rush and GOP Provides Teachable Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Audio sound bite time. This is laughable. I wasn\u2019t even here yesterday, and yet the Drive-By Media were still obsessed with me. Let\u2019s go PMSNBC on Hardball, Chris Matthews talking with Democrat strategerist Steve McMahon and the Republican strategerist Todd Harris. Matthews said, ‘Todd Harris, so are we gonna go back to the two kinds of parties we had in the sixties and seventies where you\u2019re going to have two parties which are both partially centrist parties, not left-right? Left party, right party, but center-left and center-right parties. We\u2019re going to go back to that?\u2019 <\/p>\n

HARRIS: On behalf of Republicans, I think that we need to able to field centrist candidates in centrist Democrats conservatives where (pause) conservatives can get elected, moderates where moderates can get elected, or else (crosstalk) going to continue. <\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: (interrupting) Or else you\u2019re going to lose the Northeast completely!<\/p>\n

HARRIS: And — and out West. <\/p>\n

MCMAHON: But — but as long as people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have the voice that they have in the Republican Party, and they\u2019re out there saying we need to be more conservative. We need to stick to our values —<\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: (interrupting) They\u2019re not running, though!<\/p>\n

MCMAHON: No, no, they\u2019re not running, but they\u2019re pulling the party.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right, what is wrong with this? This is a teachable moment. There\u2019s much wrong with this. In the first place, the Republican guy — well, the premise of the question is: Are we gonna go back to the sixties and seventies where we had a center-left and center-right party? In the first place, this Democrat Party, there\u2019s nothing centrist about it. It is as far left a party as you and I have ever seen in our lifetimes. It is a myth that there\u2019s anything ‘centrist\u2019 about it, as we can tell by looking at how they propose to fix the economy. The assumption that they can is from extreme leftists. Back in the good old days that Matthews cites here, we had center left and center right, that\u2019s when the Republicans had a measly 120 seats in the House. They didn\u2019t even go to committee meetings. They were out playing golf with Democrats.<\/p>\n

Bob Michel was the Republican leader at the time from Peoria, Illinois, and of course Matthews and the Democrats would love to go back to the point in time where Republicans were irrelevant, and he\u2019s close to getting that now. But the real flaw in the premise of the answer to the question is Steve McMahon. ‘Rush Limbaugh stops the GOP from moving to the center.\u2019 Where do these people get this? Where is the GOP? The GOP has abandoned conservatism already. The GOP is centrist. All of these pundits, when the exception of Krauthammer, that Obama met with last night, these are the people that suggested… Well, George Will didn\u2019t. He was notably on fire against McCain. But most of these other guys that attended this thing last night said that McCain was the guy! That\u2019s the kind of candidate we need as a Republican. <\/p>\n

‘We need somebody that\u2019s going to go out and look at this group and that group and pander to that group and pander to this group. We need to go out and get people who are going to pander to the middle class, the Walmart crowd.\u2019 You know, looking at people as members of groups is a Democrat game, it\u2019s a liberal game. We conservatives believe in individual freedom. We don\u2019t look at people as members of groups, and I\u2019m going to be tell you something else, folks. When you look at freedom in terms of do groups of people enjoy a measure of freedom, you\u2019re not talking about real freedom. You\u2019re talking about grievance. You\u2019re talking about pitting one group against the other. You\u2019re measuring whether this group has an unfair advantage over that group — whether this group\u2019s too big, too small, whether this group is too diverse or not diverse enough, whether that group is fair, unfair — that\u2019s the liberal Democrat game.<\/p>\n

And the Republican Party is starting to play it they\u2019ve fallen prey to the notion that you win elections by going out and looking at people not as individuals and not seeing freedom as a universal human concept, as embodied and proclaimed by our founders. And that\u2019s why we\u2019re wandering aimlessly wherever we\u2019re wandering, the deserts, the oceans, or what have you. The Republican Party, Mr. McMahon, make up and look at your own city of Washington. The Republican Party has moved to the center! Nobody was able to stop it. This is the strange thing. I don\u2019t know what these guys are complaining about. They\u2019ve got the Republican Party right where they want it. They\u2019ve got a party that\u2019s subservient. They got a party that\u2019s cowardly. They have a party that\u2019s afraid to be critical of anything, any time, if it has to do with Obama. <\/p>\n

They have a party which is running around saying, ‘We want Obama to succeed,\u2019 which is tantamount to saying, ‘We want extreme liberalism to succeed.\u2019 Look, I would have to have a question for Mr. McMahon. ‘You\u2019ve got the Republican Party right where you want it. What in the world are you unhappy about?\u2019 Now, they\u2019re unhappy about something, and my best guess, ladies and gentlemen, would be that they understand that there are elements in the conservative movement who know the Republican Party is doomed to continual defeat as it is currently populated and structured and positioned and they\u2019re probably aware that there\u2019s going to be a lot of pressure brought to bear to bring the party back around to the party of Reagan, when they lost, when the Democrats lost. They don\u2019t ever want the Republican Party asserting itself as a conservative party again because that\u2019s when Democrats and liberals lose. <\/p>\n

So what they\u2019re doing is a preemptive strike. It\u2019s sort of like Fox just announced now that Hamas has agreed to unconditional ceasefire. Now, how many unconditional ceasefires have we had? I would say the Republican Party has, too, but what\u2019s the difference in Hamas and the Republican Party? We know that unconditional ceasefires in the Middle East happen when the bad guys are losing, when they\u2019re losing big, when the Israelis are on the verge of wiping out Hamas here come the rockets from Lebanon trying to distract — and those are from the Hezbos, the gazookas in Hamas are making these homemade rockets now and they\u2019re firing on Israel. They\u2019re in deep trouble. So, okay, they wave the white flag, and they say, ‘We want an unconditional ceasefire,\u2019 and all that happens during the unconditional ceasefire is that they rearm, and the Iranian mullahs try to get more armaments and bodies into Gaza for the gazookas to use. This is common. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s time-honored, and yet the best and brightest among us in the ‘smart power\u2019 State Department and elsewhere think that they have occasion and the United Nations, ‘Whoa, looky here! Look at what we\u2019ve done here and look at us. Why, we have brokered an unconditional ceasefire.\u2019 How many unconditional ceasefires have there been in the past 50 years in Israel\u2019s history? Look at Bin Laden. Bin Laden yesterday on a new tape calls for a jihad against Israel. Excuse me? Hasn\u2019t there been a jihad against Israel for decades? And Bin Laden calls for a jihad against Israel? And guess what? In many sectors of the mainstream media, in many sectors of the liberal intelligentsia in this country including the media even after our sworn enemy, Bin Laden, architect of 9\/11, comes out and suggests or swears out a jihad on Israel; Israel remains the problem, in the eyes of many leftists in this country. Israel remains the problem? Bin Laden inadvertently co-opts a segment of the American left, which opposes Israel? Okay, so we\u2019ve got a ceasefire. Yip yip yip yip yahoo. Unconditional ceasefire. Not a surrender, unconditional ceasefire. This means that the gazookas get time to reload, if the Israelis accept this. In the case of the Republicans we have an unconditional ceasefire, too, but I don\u2019t see any evidence they\u2019re trying to reload.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I guess we\u2019re up here to sound bite number two. This is a continuation of the discussion that took place on MSNBC Monday night in which Steve McMahon, the Democrat political strategerist, said that I, El Rushbo, am the only thing preventing the Republican Party from moving to the center. When in fact it already has! It\u2019s already there. It\u2019s already moved big time. This is a continuation of that discussion. Matthews said, ‘Do you agree with that?\u2019 He\u2019s talking now… This is Todd Harris, the Republican strategerist. ‘Do you agree with that, that they hurt your party by pulling it too far right?\u2019<\/p>\n

HARRIS: I don\u2019t think we pulled the party any more to the right than Air America wass pulling the Democratic Party to the left.<\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: They do have more pull, though!<\/p>\n

HARRIS: They do have more pull. They have more listeners. Uhhhh, but, you know, you\u2019ve got progressive groups on the left pulling the Democratic Party to the left.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And then Matthews, he wants to know what state could I win, if I were to run. Totally misunderstanding what we do here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Audio sound bite time. This is laughable. I wasn\u2019t even here yesterday, and yet the Drive-By Media were still obsessed with me. Let\u2019s go PMSNBC on Hardball, Chris Matthews talking with Democrat strategerist Steve McMahon and the Republican strategerist Todd Harris. Matthews said, ‘Todd Harris, so are we gonna go back to the two […]<\/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":"\nHardball Discussion of Rush and GOP Provides Teachable Moment - 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\/2009\/01\/14\/hardball_discussion_of_rush_and_gop_provides_teachable_moment\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Hardball Discussion of Rush and GOP Provides Teachable Moment - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Audio sound bite time. 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