{"id":3494,"date":"2016-05-04T17:42:54","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T17:42:54","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2017-07-06T10:13:01","modified_gmt":"2017-07-06T14:13:01","slug":"cruz_lost_but_conservatism_didn_t_die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2016\/05\/04\/cruz_lost_but_conservatism_didn_t_die\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruz Lost, But Conservatism Didn\u2019t Die"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: So it apparently is the case that Ted Cruz decided between midnight and 2 a.m. Monday — well, Tuesday morning. Early Tuesday morning, late Monday night, before the voting began in Indiana, Ted Cruz decided to get out if he didn\u2019t do well in Indiana. He didn\u2019t tell very many people. A limited number of staff tried to talk him out of it. His mind was made up. Now, it\u2019s interesting that that\u2019s before Trump on Fox & Friends yesterday accused Cruz\u2019s dad of consorting with Lee Harvey Oswald. But even without that, I wonder…<\/p>\n

I have not spoken to Senator Cruz, and I probably could get through if I picked up the phone. But there are just some things here that I assume. I know a lot of you in the audience were very sad when Cruz announced that he was not gonna continue, that many of you had unbelievably high hopes and a lot invested, because on paper here we had somebody that was — a Republican that was — actually conservative, who actually could implement the things that you and I all believe and wasn\u2019t the establishment and so forth.<\/p>\n


\nI don\u2019t… The thing I don\u2019t know — and, as I say, I could find out. But I\u2019m gonna surmise some things with the caveat\/proviso that I could be wrong here. Many people sent me notes last night saying, “Rush, are you finally gonna admit that conservatism is dead now? Are you just…? Are you gonna…? Rush, are you finally going to come to grips with the fact that conservatism has never been the big, majority way of thinking in this country? How can you look at what\u2019s becoming of this country, what\u2019s become of it in the last 10, 15 years and say that conservatism dominates anything?”<\/p>\n

And I know that there are many people running around saying similar things to that today. But I don\u2019t think conservatism died last night. I don\u2019t think conservatism is being buried in Indiana. I think what happened is that another conservative messenger was systematically, piece by piece, destroyed. Which is the normal course of things. For all of you who think that conservatism is dead and on its last legs, why does it remain the single greatest threat feared by the Democrat Party and the American left?<\/p>\n

Now, there are many answers to that question, but one of them surely is they fear conservatism. They know how many Americans are conservative, and they know what percentage of the country is. The left and people I\u2019m talking about know full well they are a small minority. I\u2019m talking about the committed activist types are a small minority. They have succeeded in governing against the will of the American people for I don\u2019t know how long now.<\/p>\n


\nThey fear conservatism more than they fear any foreign enemy. They are far more mobilized and animated and intent on destroy conservatives and conservatism than they are any other foreign threat. That would not be the case if it was insignificant. Now, understandably, too, I have to admit that one of the aspects of the thought process of the American left is they don\u2019t like opposition, period, no matter who it is. And they don\u2019t believe in debating and they don\u2019t believe in a debate in the arena of ideas and triumphing that way.<\/p>\n

They snuff out opposition.<\/p>\n

They eliminate it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no such thing as a level playing field.<\/p>\n

Their opponents don\u2019t even get on the field. That\u2019s the strategy: “Don\u2019t even let \u2019em on the field.” Now, I\u2019m sure that Cruz was prepared, as prepared as he could be, and I\u2019m sure his family was prepared as they could be for what was going to happen, given how he had arrived at his prominent position in the Republican nominee field. He knew he had made enemies of the Republican establishment, and he knew that the media and the Democrat Party are automatic enemies. But here\u2019s what I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

I just don\u2019t know just how equipped anybody is to cheerfully, happily live each and every day with the kind of garbage, lies, filth spewed about you and your family multiple times a day, and yet we\u2019re told that the conservative must be cheerful and must be happy and must be a happy warrior. Well, how does that work, you know, when they\u2019re out there saying you\u2019re the Zodiac Killer? You stop and think of that for just a second. Put yourself in Ted Cruz\u2019s shoes. And let\u2019s establish some givens. A, Ted Cruz loves America much as anybody.<\/p>\n

Ted Cruz desperately fears America\u2019s on the wrong track and desperately wants to stop it and turn it around and save it. Ted Cruz reveres the Constitution of the United States, knows it backwards and forwards. Ted Cruz reveres the founding. Ted Cruz is religious. That means he is a person who does his best each and every day to live according to the morality that he believes. And then he has to get up every day and read stories in the media about how he is to mean and he is so vicious and so Hitler-like that his daughters will not even be in the same room with him because he scares them so much.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I mean, the stuff that was said about Cruz and his family long before the Rafael Cruz\/Lee Harvey Oswald stuff started, long before the Zodiac Killer stuff started?<\/a> It\u2019s nothing that any other conservative had to put up with, don\u2019t misunderstand. My question is: How does how does anybody go through that? I mean, you\u2019re running for president. You have these desperately held beliefs. You think that we\u2019re in a national crisis. You\u2019re frustrated because so many people don\u2019t see it that way. You\u2019re hell-bent on convincing them.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re hell-bent on trying to explain to them why you\u2019re doing what you\u2019re doing. You\u2019re very earnest about it. You care about it so much that you\u2019re doing everything you can to get people to listen to you. And every time you open your mouth, some fool is out making fun of you, destroying you with lies and innuendo and so forth. And at some…? Do you not at some point say, “This can\u2019t be done. If 38% of the people of Florida can be convinced that I am the Zodiac killer, how do you stay cheerful?” At some point do you not just say to yourself…<\/p>\n

And again, I don\u2019t know. I may be putting myself in Cruz\u2019s shoes and imagining how I would react to things that have been said about him that are demonstrably not true, that everybody laughs about. It would be… (interruption) Yeah, but I can\u2019t… (interruption) Snerdley says, “You\u2019ve gone through much worse than that.” No, I haven\u2019t gone through much worse. I\u2019ve gone through similar. (interruption) Yes, I know, I know. I\u2019ve gone through similar. But… (interruption) The staff is saying, “You\u2019ve gone through 27 years!”<\/p>\n

Well, yes. I\u2019m still cheerful, and the audience here still is here and so forth. All true. But, see, unlike in politics, I can take all that. As I told you, I had to make a big psychological adjustment very early on. Nobody is raised to want to be hated. Nobody is raised to want to be disliked and laughed at and reviled and made fun of every day, and have some of the most outrageous things said about \u2019em. I had to learn. In order to put up with that for 27 years, I had to learn how to take it as a sign of success, which that\u2019s… Try that psychologically.<\/p>\n

Try trying to tell yourself that being hated by 30% of the people that hear you means you\u2019re succeeding. Nobody\u2019s raised that way. But in politics you can\u2019t get anywhere with people hating you. I mean, I can have 30% of the people thinking I\u2019m the Zodiac Killer, and it\u2019s not gonna stop them from listening. It may even make \u2019em want to listen more. But in politics, you\u2019re running for president, and they tell people that you\u2019re the Zodiac Killer, that your dad was there with Lee Harvey Oswald?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no way to make that, to transfer that into some measure of success in a political campaign. So I just wonder if at some point Cruz said, “I love my family too much. I mean, I know they agreed. I know my family understood what we\u2019re getting into here. But there\u2019s always a ‘but.'” Here\u2019s the point. I don\u2019t know. Maybe ask Senator Cruz about it sometime. But the point is that along with Cruz\u2019s defeat comes the cheerful hammering of nails into the coffin that will bury conservatism. And, I\u2019m sorry: Conservatism is not buried after last night.<\/p>\n

Conservatism didn\u2019t die.<\/p>\n