RUSH: Robert, Austin, Texas, welcome to the EIB Network. Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Wow, mega dittos, Rush! How are you?
RUSH: I’m fine, sir, never better. Glad you called.
CALLER: Hey, man, today is Friday the 13th. It’s supposed to be an unlucky day but after calling for 15 years, I got through on the first call.
RUSH: You don’t believe any of that superstition stuff now, then, do you?
CALLER: No, not at all, man. What an honor. I’m so honored?
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: — to finally talk to you, man. Here’s my question. I’m listening to you, and I know that you’re an optimistic guy by nature. I mean I’ve listened to you long enough to know that you’re not a doom-and-gloom guy, and you don’t walk around kicking the ground with your head bowed down, you know? You’re an optimistic guy, and I hear you talk about just the optimism about our party and where we are and where we’re headed and how the Democrats are imploding, and I’m optimistic. But my question is, and I’m curious, how do you balance the optimism that you feel with arrogance? In other words, I felt confident and I felt optimistic that President Bush was going to win last November. I mean I just knew he was going to win. But when they said that Bush got the most votes in presidential history —
RUSH: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: — and Kerry got the second most votes, well, then that got me down a level, like I wasn’t too confident; I couldn’t feel too arrogant because Kerry was close. So I’m just wondering when I watch the news, and I hear you talk about the Democrats imploding and I hear you —
RUSH: Well, look, wait a minute now. Let’s stop with this business of Kerry getting the second most number of votes. You gotta understand how to properly analyze this. The reason all that happened is that there was a now larger turnout than anybody expected and there was a larger turnout than we had in — how many was it, 40 years? It was the largest turnout the since the sixties, I forget what it was, it was a huge turnout. Of course the opposition candidate is going to get a lot of votes. But the way you’ve got to understand is in big turnouts Democrats win. That was the old rule of thumb because there are always more Democrats registered than Republicans and so the Democrats always prayed for sunshine and great whether on Election Day, made sure they had plenty of gasoline to go pick up their voters in the buses and so forth to get them to the polls because the bigger the turnout, the greater the odds the Democrats were going to win.
Well, lo and behold, what? What just got smacked down? There were so many old rules that were supposedly conventional wisdom that just got smacked down in this race. We had the largest turnout election in a long time, and what happened? Bush wins by four million votes. The, now, there’s a reason for this. There’s a reason that more people decided to vote for Bush. I’ll betcha some people decided to vote for Bush because they’re really voting against Democrats because they couldn’t stand the attitude and the arrogance that the Democrats were displaying.
Now, I don’t walk around with any arrogance about this. I’m confident, but, you know, when you talk about the party, we got problems in our party. My confidence — and this is where people laugh to me sometimes. My confidence stems from who I think the American people are on balance. I know we got some wackos out there, and we got a lot of liberal Democrats and I know this, but I think, in the parts of this country where I describe it as the people who make this country work, and I would right now call those the red-staters just for the sake of this discussion. The people that make this country work, they’re people who care about the institutions and traditions that made this country great and will keep this country great. They’re worried about their kids’ future, living their lives the best they can. They’re not seeking any attention whatsoever. They’re laboring away in anonymity. It is these people in whom I’m confident. It is these people, when they watch the news and they watch Joe Biden or they watch Dingy Harry, they don’t need me to tell them what Dingy Harry is.
They see it themselves. We’ve all known creeps in our lives. Everybody knows a creep when they see one. Everybody recognizes a mean SOB when we see one. Everybody recognizes an arrogant, condescending person when we see one, and I’m just telling you that when they see the Democrats of today, the average, ordinary American will look at those people and their personalities and will not be impressed and will not be inspired and they won’t want to join them. The only people that are, are the people that have the same attitudes, the same hate, the same seething rage out in the country who already with those people. They’re not expanding; they’re not growing ;they’re not building their base — and I’m not joking about this — why do you think they’re not doing much about immigration?
We played the tape from Sheila Jackson Lee. She wants she’s illegals in the country, and she says that they want to get here so they can vote legally. In her mind this is just a whole pot full of potentially voters, and here’s Hillary coming out for changing the law so that felons can vote. Well, where are they going for their new voter base? I’ll guarantee you it’s not coming from their reach-out; they’re not expanding their base or else pie by virtue of their policies. They don’t have any. They’re not expanding their base or else pie with their personality because it’s mean. They’re not expanding anything with an agenda, because they don’t have one. They are not going out, they’re not inspiring anybody. All this is causing a bunch of disgust aimed at them. People watch Ted Kennedy and they laugh. People watch Dingy Harry Reid and they shake their heads. They listen to Joe Biden — and these people all come at us with this arrogant condescension as though they still run the show, as though they’re still in power, as though they’re still a majority party, and everybody knows they’re not.
They basically come across as phony; they come across as liars, and I’m just going to tell you, human nature is human nature. Whether it’s Dingy Harry or Ted Kennedy or any of these people on television or whether it’s somebody you work with, you are able to recognize an SOB. You don’t need somebody to tell somebody’s an SOB, somebody that you know, or somebody who you can observe. You don’t need to be told. People know it, and I think with the bust-up of the media monopoly and the effort to do puff pieces on all these Democrats and make them so soft and cuddly and likable; it isn’t work anymore, and that’s the root of my confidence and my optimism.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right. Along the lines of my last profound and sterling profundity of a monologue, let me give you an example of what I was talking about. Now, those of you that are worried about Hillary Clinton — and I know you are because I hear about it all the time: “Rush, what about Hillary?” and I get sooooooo tired of people being afraid of Hillary. Folks, it’s tough to do. It’s tough to do, but to go through life looking at everything through fear is doom. It’s just not healthy. It’s hard not to do. We’re programmed to do that. We’re programmed to anticipate bad things. But this business with Hillary, you know, “What’s she doing with Newt?” If there’s one area that you ought to be concerned with Hillary Clinton, it is the area of immigration. I’ve got two stories here: (Story) “Kennedy-McCain Immigration Bill, Built on President Bush’s Proposal — Kennedy and McCain joined forces yesterday to introduce comprehensive immigration reform bill that builds upon President Bush’s proposal for a guest worker program.” They don’t like calling it amnesty but it would basically normalize ten to 11 million illegal aliens in the country after a passage of time. All right?
Then you go to another story. “Hillary and illegal immigration, story says this: Hillary gets it, “Hillary Clinton says she’s against illegal immigration and she would fine employers who hire them. Pundits say the New York Democrat’s using the hot button issue to position herself for the presidential run in 2008. It’s a way to hit Republicans from the right. Polls show huge majorities of both Republicans and Democrats oppose illegal immigration and are frustrated that President Bush won’t do a thing to stop it.” What have I been telling you? This is an issue both political parties are ignoring at their peril, but Republicans primarily are the ones that stand to hurt most from this if they don’t recognize the sheer anger out there — and so here comes Hillary. Now, forget all this talk about moving on the right on abortion and all these other cultural things. If she’s able to pull this off, if she’s able to convince people she’s actually going to do something about this, there are enough people in this country who care about immigration more than anything else who might take a risk and trust that she’s being honest — and that’s, just mark my words on this, this immigration stuff, that’s where people have to be concerned, and I just want to get it on the table now.