{"id":327193,"date":"2019-10-31T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T20:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=327193"},"modified":"2019-11-01T16:20:18","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T20:20:18","slug":"your-host-got-the-hook-at-the-national-review-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2019\/10\/31\/your-host-got-the-hook-at-the-national-review-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Host Got the Hook at the National Review Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: My buddy Andy McCarthy — I saw Andy last night at the National Review Institute dinner where I was awarded the William F. Buckley Award for Leadership and Political Thought.<\/p>\n

\"\"Folks, I got the hook last night. (laughing) I have never gotten the hook. I have never gotten the hook. I got the hook when the audience was loving it! I got the hook, they came out and put a stop to it and the audience was chanting, “More! More! More!” Right? Snerdley was there.<\/p>\n

Now, there\u2019s a couple reasons why I got the hook. One of them, I was way over time. Gay Gaines was the other award recipient, and they told us 15 minutes max. \u201cWe want to maintain a tight schedule here. We want to go to the after-party, the dining and the dancing and all that at 9 o\u2019clock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cOkay.\u201d Well, I think they came and got me, what, in 25 minutes? Nobody would know because everybody was enraptured, folks, nobody wanted it to end. But Rich Lowry came out and was leading a bunch of applause, created a standing O. That\u2019s how I got the hook. And I have since had some people say, “You know, Rush, you got the hook right in the middle of your brilliant entreaty telling everybody why it\u2019s important to defend Donald Trump because it\u2019s defending ourselves. That\u2019s when they came and got you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cDo you think there\u2019s a conspiracy afoot here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I don\u2019t know. I mean, but it\u2019s very, very strange.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Anyway, the audience was chanting, “More, more, more.” Anyway, folks, it\u2019s okay. It was funny. I\u2019m sure I did a double-take. I\u2019ve never gotten the hook before. Usually people get the hook because they\u2019re dull and boring and are putting people to sleep. And I woke people up.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 By the way, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, was in attendance at the National Review Institute last night.\u00a0 Now, he knows that there are no diplomas from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative and Anti-Media Studies, and yet he said that if he could get one — because he thinks he\u2019s qualified — he would hang it on the official wall in his governor\u2019s office.\u00a0 That would be something, the governor of Florida having a diploma from Limbaugh Institute on the wall.<\/p>\n

He actually gave me one of the greatest compliments I\u2019ve ever had.\u00a0 He listed five great conservatives and put me in the list.\u00a0 Reagan, Scalia, Clarence Thomas… Right. Okay, so Reagan, Scalia, Clarence Thomas… Who was the fifth?\u00a0 Maybe he had me in there twice.\u00a0 There were… (interruption) Oh, God yes. That\u2019s right. Buckley. Speaking of which, I have an audio sound bite of Buckley appearing on this program.\u00a0 It was July 13, 2004, and Buckley had new book out. Brothers No More was the title of it.<\/p>\n

So I had him on to talk about the book, and whenever I had him here, I\u2019d pick his brain about events.\u00a0 Man, what a resource.\u00a0 I miss Buckley.\u00a0 I wish he were here. I miss him being around.\u00a0 It would be great to be able to ask, “Bill, what do you think of X?\u00a0 What do you think of all this?”\u00a0 He\u2019d have a take that nobody else has.\u00a0 Sometimes, it would disappoint you.\u00a0 Other times, it would invigorate you.\u00a0 So let\u2019s listen to this.\u00a0 Back in 2004, Buckley identified the exclusionary impulse of the establishment to go after disrupters based on accusations of coarseness or incivility.<\/p>\n

The bite takes about a minute, and here it is…<\/p>\n

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n

RUSH: Bill, you know, as I study things today, you are now treated and received \u2014 and properly so \u2014 with great affection and great respect, and there are some who say that, “Oh, we wish for the old days of Buckley conservatism when it was urbane and erudite and polite.” They say that the modern era of conservatism has descended into harshness and other things, and —<\/p>\n

\"\"BUCKLEY: But that\u2019s a weapon. People use that when they want to be anti-Limbaugh. They will say, “Well, Limbaugh belongs in that school of polemical thought which really should be excluded.” … [T]hey\u2019ve done it to me in the past. I\u2019m not saying that that criticism cannot be leveled. Sometimes it can be leveled. But to level it with the license that they use against you … speaks to me of a different motivation. They want to argue with you by simply outlawing your voice on the grounds that it is eccentric and extreme. It is, as I say, simply a polemical device.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Rather than debating the issues, disqualify and discredit the voice, then, is the technique?<\/p>\n

BUCKLEY: I think that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

END ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Yes. Now what was fascinating is when Buckley had retired or was nearing it, it was very easy… And biographies of Buckley were written by leftists who longed for the days of Buckley. “Oh, why can\u2019t conservatives today be like Buckley was?”\u00a0 What they really meant was, “Why can\u2019t we go back to the days when there\u2019s only one of these guys, and we only have him on PBS?\u00a0 There\u2019s only one of these guys. He\u2019s got his magazine. We don\u2019t have to deal with a whole army of \u2019em.\u00a0 Why can\u2019t we go back to that? Buckley was smart — unlike today\u2019s conservatives.<\/p>\n

\"\"“Buckley was brilliant! He was a New Yorker. He was understanding.\u00a0 We could deal with Buckley.\u00a0 He was civil.\u00a0 He was sophisticated.\u00a0 He was unlike any of these people that have followed him,” and it was a myth.\u00a0 Buckley was not that guy in the early days of his coming out with the founding of National Review.\u00a0 He had an ongoing feud with Gore Vidal that even today would have been censored.\u00a0 Now, this is 1968.\u00a0 It\u2019s on ABC TV. Buckley is talking with Gore Vidal.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure. This might have been on the old Dick Cavett Show.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure.\u00a0 I think this was. But get a load of this.<\/p>\n

This is the sophisticated, the erudite.<\/p>\n

This is, “Why can\u2019t you conservatives be more like Buckley was.”<\/p>\n

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n

VIDAL: You must realize what some of the political issues are here, that many \u2014<\/p>\n

BUCKLEY: You\u2019re so na\u00efve about it.<\/p>\n

VIDAL: \u2014 people in the United States, uh, happen to believe that United States policy is wrong in Vietnam and the Viet Cong are correct in wanting to organize their country in their own way politically. This happens to be pretty much the opinion of Western Europe, and many other parts of the world. If it is a novelty in Chicago, that is too bad. But I assume that the point of American democracy \u2014<\/p>\n

BUCKLEY: And some people were pro-Nazi, too.<\/p>\n

VIDAL: \u2014 is you can express any point of view you want.<\/p>\n

BUCKLEY: Some people were pro-Nazi.<\/p>\n

VIDAL: Shut up a minute.<\/p>\n