Why Should We Have to Settle?

RUSH: Patrick in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. You’re next. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Mega dittos with a qualification here. I think we need to bite the bullet here on Miers and go ahead and drop the hostility and get behind her, because we can’t beat that Gang of Seven on this. I don’t see us getting a better nominee even if we withdraw her.
RUSH: So you’re saying that this is John McCain’s fault?
CALLER: Yeah. I’m saying Chafee and Snowe, McCain and Specters are just not going to let us get someone with a paper trail through.
RUSH: I’m glad you called, Patrick. I appreciate your point of view, but I want you to keep your radio on. His point is: The GOP is ripping itself to shreds over this. There’s internal strife. There’s division. We ought to just unify behind Miers and get the best we can get. We should settle. Now, many of you believe that this probably is something very bad. You’re watching this. I would like to take you back to something I said yesterday. It’s very important that you people make an effort to listen to this program every day, because I couldn’t disagree, with all due respect, Patrick, any more with you than I do. I don’t think that when we are the majority in the House and Senate and we have the White House, we settle. I don’t think we settle. I don’t think we need to settle for anything, and I’m going to tell you: All of you who think that this dissension in the ranks is going to lead to the destruction of the so-called conservative movement or the Republican Party? Unh-uh. I want to remind you that what’s happening right now is that conservatives who have held their nose for a number of years over a lot of things, finally have reached a tipping point. The last time the conservative movement unified like this, and the last time that it insisted and the last time it said, “Okay, you know, we’ve been doormats and we’ve been nice guys. We’ve been getting you elected, but then you turn around and turn into your old country club blue-blooder self.”
The last time this happened was 1976, with the attempt to get Ronald Reagan nominated to the Republican presidential nomination, at the convention in Detroit in — or not Detroit, where was it? It was Detroit in ’80, but in 1976, he failed to Gerald Ford, but that led to 1980. I said yesterday that if any of the liberals in this audience are sitting out there all giddy and rubbing your hands together in glee thinking that this rift means the end of your opposition, think again, because the last time this happened it led to two landslides: 1980 and 1984. The fact of the matter is that it’s conservatives who elect Republicans in this country, and when the conservatives get plastered enough, mad enough, they get in gear, and things change for the better. So I totally reject the notion. The Republican Party may be damaging itself, but I don’t look at that as the conservative movement, which is not a party, damaging itself. I think there are some Republicans here who are doing things they really don’t want to do, saying things they really don’t want to say, saying things they regret having to say. But they have to say them. It’s their job. But I think what’s going to happen here is a stronger movement when this is all said and done. Conservatism is about a set of principles and a core set of beliefs, and you don’t settle. You don’t sell them out, and if at times you do, then the day is going to come when you say, “Not anymore. I’m not doing it anymore,” and we may be close to one of those moments now.
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