The Real Reason Democrats Won

RUSH: That is one of the strangest things I have heard anybody say. I was just listening to John Boehner as he’s getting ready to pass the gavel to Nancy Pelosi, queen bee, Washington, DC, the world. He said, ?The purpose of a congressional majority is not to wield great power, it is to use limited power to gain whatever end you want.? John, come on. We all know the Democrats. This is the difference! I don’t know whether he even meant it. I don’t know whether he’s sending a message to Pelosi or not, but I will tell you this: In her mind and in her heart and in every Democrat in the House mind and heart, total limitless power is exactly what they think they have, and they’re going to exercise it, and that’s the reality of it. The purpose of winning a majority is to wield great power in service to your ideas, which is one of the problems that the Republicans always seem to have: they somehow lack the fortitude and the courage to go ahead and actually try to wield great power, wanting to score points by sharing it or appearing to be “bipartisan” now and then and so forth and so on.
Actually, what Boehner said is a good transition here. We had a couple of calls earlier today. One of them was serious; the other one was sort of trying to be funny, but their point was this: ?Rush, we got Democrats being sworn in, in power in the House and the Senate today, and it’s partly your fault because you spent so much time bashing them.? What that comment meant was, his line was: “You bashed them to power,” meaning I bashed them so hard and so bad that I created sympathy for them and people voted for Democrats just to spite me. That’s what he thinks. I haven’t heard too much of that. I mean, I’ve had sporadic e-mails from people who have that theory. If you are one who thinks that I must caution you to rein it in because you’re falling prey to this whole notion that confrontation is “mean” and that genuine criticism is “mean,” and that we’ve all just got to get along.
Let me tell you what I think. If anything, if I am a factor in the Republican defeat, for me to even admit this would be to admit that I have an ego out of control — and everybody who knows me personally knows I don’t have an ego, period. In fact, they wish I had one. But the public image of me is the opposite. If I did anything, if I’m responsible in any way for the Democrats being in power, let me tell you what it is. It was not Democrats that elected the majority. It was moderates and conservatives in the South that made the Democrats win this majority. If the Democrats hadn’t run those 11 or 12 conservatives in the South on phony baloney conservative issues, the outcome would have been entirely different. What does that mean? It means that over the course of this program — and look at what’s happened during the course of this program! I started out, and then other talk shows sprung up and then Fox News and the conservative blogosphere and so forth.
There’s a whole conservative “New Media” out there, and when we established great high standards for conservatives, and we have validated in the hearts and minds of a bunch of Americans who are conservative and never heard their views expressed nationally in media. They’ve been invigorated, and they have high standards, too. If a Republican campaigns as a conservative and then doesn’t govern that way, that person’s going to be thrown out by conservatives — not “defeated” by Democrats, but thrown out by conservatives. So if those of us in media on the right, in your opinion, are responsible for the Democrats being in power, it is because there has been so much education about conservatism and what it stands for and what it means and the great potential it offers for the country, that people who run as conservatives and fail to govern, are going to get thrown out.

Conservatives are not going to vote for pretenders. They’re not going to vote for Republicans if they’re not conservative. Democrats, they’ll vote for a Democrat regardless — except southern Democrats, the old Reagan Democrats. They will vote their ideology, and they did this election, and they didn’t care what party. Chuck Hagel is a great example of this, folks. Chuck Hagel was on C-SPAN today, and he was asked, ?Why do so many Republicans not like you?? And, of course Hagel said (summarized), ?Weeeeell, I’m my own man! I follow a drummer of my own is all I follow,? and then he said, ?You ought to see my e-mail,? meaning you ought to see how much angry mail I’m getting from Republicans. Well, of course, because in many instances he doesn’t seem like he’s a Republican. Now, he’s got six years between his elections, and so he has plenty of time for him to make changes running up to his election two years out that can affect outcomes in his races, but House elections are every two years; there’s not a lot of time for people to forget the failings of their individual congressman or so forth.
But if any factor at all ensues, any power factor ensues, I’ll guarantee you it is the fact that conservatives were dissatisfied with their own officials, their own elected officials in many cases, and threw ’em out. Be it corruption, be it scandal. Mike DeWine’s a great example. He joined the Gang of 14 with McCain and so forth. There are any number of examples I can give you, and these people lose, not because people are voting for their opponents because they’re just sympathetic to all the bashing they’re getting — because the “bashing” that happens here, I don’t even consider it “bashing.” I get up every day and I don’t look to people to “bash.” I get up; I go through the news, the show prep that I do, and if I see the things that I believe in — the institutions I believe in, the people I believe in — being attacked, I’m going to respond and defend. I’m going to point out the truth about the people doing the attacking.
Of course, since liberals have always considered themselves immune from such attacks, ?Why, this is vicious! This is mean-spirited! This has never happened before,? and they do everything they can to shut it down because it’s something they don’t want to have to deal with. Yet they are the ones that don’t debate issues. They are the ones who attack the character and reputations and credibility of their opponents and try to destroy those things because they can’t beat us in the arena of ideas. Now, Snerdley reminded me. Moments ago he said, ?You know, back when Clinton won in ’96, I could not get away from all these Democrats calling to gloat about how Clinton won and wanting to do the nah-nah-nah-nah-nah and so forth. You can’t find these Democrats.? One guy maybe gloated, and he was not even really a Democrat. This was the guy that thought I was responsible for the Pelosi swearing-in ceremony, which just took place.
They’re not there today. There are no Democrats calling here to gloat. There probably will be now. I don’t think it’s that they’re so excited about the first hundred hours that they don’t have time to call here. My theory is that there aren’t that many Democrats that are really thrilled to beans about this. Most mainstream Democrats today are fed up. Read the letters to the editor in your paper, folks. Most Democrats are fed up that Bush isn’t going to be impeached. They’re fed up that the Democrats don’t have the guts to pull funding from the war — and that’s what they think is responsible for Democrats winning. Cindy Sheehan thinks that she’s the one, and her little band of wackos, is why the Democrats won. It’s not. So they’re too busy being angry. They already think their party is selling them out, on Iraq and impeachment and getting rid of Bush and all this sort of stuff.
My point is, you can sit out there and you can be upset that Pelosi is the speaker and that Dingy Harry is running the Senate, and you may be upset that they won and all that. They didn’t win anything. They have the power, and I?m not denying the reality, but their victory here is not the result of an affirmation. It is just the opposite! Their victory is the result of people being thrown out by disgusted voters who are simply not going to vote for people that they didn’t believe were going to represent their interests. That’s as simple as I can make it.