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RUSH: Here’s Jason in Cripple Creek, Colorado. It’s nice to have you on the program, sir.

CALLER: Great to talk to you, Rush.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: The pundits are out there trying to make the point that the Republican Party is moving to the left, thereby departing you because they’re voting McCain. But I think they’re missing the point that not only did conservatives not vote for McCain, half the party didn’t even show up to vote last night.

RUSH: You mean in Colorado?

CALLER: In a lot of places.

RUSH: A lot of places.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Well, even in some states where the Republicans did show up, he didn’t even get half of the vote of the Republicans. I think Tennessee was one state, a couple others that slipped my mind, but he didn’t get over half. In one case, he didn’t get over 20% of the Republican vote. I’ll tell you something else. Here’s more exit poll data, and this from my buddy Comrade Bill Schneider at CNN. See. ‘Among those conservatives who disapprove of the war,’ anti-war Republicans, Jason, ‘half them voted for McCain while only 20% of anti-war Republicans voted for Mitt Romney, and even though McCain spent the past few weeks trying to portray Romney as more liberal on the war, moderates seemed to simply prefer McCain even when they don’t square on the issues.’

CALLER: I think the point is a lot of conservatives stayed home because there was no conservative candidate.

RUSH: I know. I know. If this doesn’t change, I’m telling you, Republicans are in for a shocker in November. It’s a long way from now, though, folks, and we’re a long way out here. This is only February. By the way, I just remembered. We forgot to replay the call from Suzanne, and we have… You know, I don’t want to wait ’til tomorrow to do that. Who do we have up here? Yeah, let’s wait ’til tomorrow to do it because these people on here have been on hold for a long time. It will be unfair to give a caller two shots in one day, while people are on hold. This is Carrie in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It’s nice to have you with us.

CALLER: Thank you very much. I keep hearing that we need to be loyal Republicans and support McCain if he becomes our candidate, but I question why we should have to be more loyal to the party than McCain has demonstrated. I can’t believe that someone who has only barely tolerating…

RUSH: That is brilliant. That is brilliant. I made the same point yesterday. Do you realize that they are demanding of us a party loyalty that is not demanded of McCain?

CALLER: Exactly, and he has shown it. He’s been ready to bolt to the Democrats a couple of times.

RUSH: Yep.

CALLER: But I also think that… It just shocks me that he is being elevated to one of the highest positions in our party, when he demonstrates that he doesn’t really like us.

RUSH: Default position. There’s no question about it just nobody else that is preferable.

CALLER: I could have voted for any other Republican candidate and, you know, some of them I would have had to hold my nose a little more than others, but McCain? I just cannot get behind him at all, and as a good citizen, I do feel like it is my duty to vote and not stay home. But the choices are not looking good, and I feel myself considering just doing a write-in. At least I can go and at least the candidate I write for, I can support.

RUSH: That is clearly an option. The write-in is clearly an option. It’s clearly permitted. Whether it will be counted is another thing.

CALLER: Right, but at least I’m not staying home.

RUSH: Well, that’s good. I appreciate that. I understand your civic sense about that. Look, believe me, folks, I understand the conundrum. I understand the conflict and the struggle here. When you boil it down, nobody is happy here. There hasn’t been anybody in this whole roster to go, ‘Yeah! Right on, right on!’ It’s not there, and so we’re settling. I’m just telling you, when you settle… There’s nothing… I have no choice here, but when you settle for things rather than holding out for the best, it never works. Well, never leads to happiness. It never does. Scott in Tyler, Texas, you’re next. Hello, and welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Mega dittos.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: It’s an honor to talk to you.

RUSH: I appreciate that, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Well, I think we can all pretty much agree that I think John McCain is going to pretty much get this nomination — and if he does, I think I have a solution. I’ve been tossing this around, and I’ve been pulling my hair out saying, ‘What am I going to do? I just can’t vote for Hillary.’ I mean, she drives me nuts. I’ve always said, ‘Republicans will crawl through broken glass with their legs blown off to vote against this woman,’ but under this circumstance, John McCain is… I’m sorry, but he could try to come over to our side in the general election and say, ‘Well, I’ll do this and this.’ I just don’t believe him. He’s done more to hurt us.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I mean, he’s right up there with traditional Daschle and Harry Reid as far as obstruction.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. I know. You’re right. You’re right, absolutely right, hundred percent.

CALLER: If he gets elected, I think we can agree we’re either eight to 16 years of not having a conservative in the White House, if he gets in.

RUSH: You’re right about that, too.

CALLER: Now, as far as sitting out the election, I can’t do that because my senators are Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn. They’re good senators. I think what we need to do is not vote for president. Let Hillary get in there; try to get the Senate back. That is where treaties are ratified and where we get our judges. We need to increase our margins in the House or Senate, keep our good people, and let Hillary Clinton do what they do best.

RUSH: You have really hit on something here, but I’m going to tell you: Don’t give up the House of Representatives. That could end up being the focus of our attention as we get into the fall and that is electing Republican conservatives into the House.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: District by district by district, get it done. Focus on that; focus on the Senate, realizing what we’re going to have to in the White House is six of one and half dozen of the other regardless which party wins.

CALLER: Let the Clintons do what they do best and let them increase Republican majority in midterms.

RUSH: That’s right. (laughing)

CALLER: And we’ve gotta chance to get it all back in four years, but if we let McCain in there, we’ve lost it. Do you know the damage that the liberals can do to this country in eight to 16 years? I don’t know if we can recover from that.

RUSH: It’s interesting you say that, too, because, remember, read Tony Blankley’s piece today about 1964 and what happened with the Goldwater loss and the disunity that occurred in the Republican Party then, and, of course, when we lost in ’64 that landslide to LBJ, and what did we get? That’s where we got, folks, the next 20 years is the disaster we’re living with now.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: We got Great Society. We got the war on poverty. We got national health care — or the seeds of it that were planted. Nixon came along and tried to get along with these Democrats and gave us OSHA, the EPA, affirmative action. The 20 years following the landslide defeat of a conservative led to the real cultural problems that exist today. So the argument there is, ‘Sometimes losing is not what you want, because if you think you’re only turning over say the White House for four years to somebody, it may be 20.’

CALLER: If McCain’s in there and the Kyoto protocol comes up, or any other treaty, and he has the Senate; our guys are just going to try to support the president — and we’re going to end up with 70, 80 senators voting on the treaties that can trump our Constitution since treaties do become law. When they ratify, they become law.

RUSH: Well, but —

CALLER: I mean, we can lose our guns. We can lose anything. I mean, the global warming thing? The Senate is, I think, the most important thing; although I’ll agree with you. We don’t need to write off the House or the governors or anything else. We need to get as many Republicans in as possible, but just deal with the fact there’s going to be a liberal in the White House, it just may not be their liberal.

RUSH: Wait a minute, I gotta go.

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