RUSH: This is Lila in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Welcome on the EIB Network.Hello.CALLER:Hello, Rush.It’s awfully nice to talk to you.RUSH:Thank you.CALLER:I want to thank you for the last election — well, not the last election, but the Bush election because I think without talk radio, Kerry would have won. So thank you very much.RUSH:Well, you’re very kind to say that.Thank you.You’re very perceptive, too.CALLER:Well, I hope you think that when I finish what I called to say.I’m asking you or really imploring you to lose the acronym RINO, because that kind of says fence-sitter, and I am a pro-choice, pro-civil union Republican.RUSH: (Yawns.)CALLER: I know, I know, but listen. I’m a Republican because Republicans have always said the individual matters, and individual power matters, and you can be an individual within the party, and when I hear “RINO,” there’s no fence -sitter in me, Rush, or a lot of my moderate Republican friends.We basically have been hammered over these last few years. People say, “How can you be one of them? How can you be a Republican?” But it is because we don’t like the George Soros, left-wing way of running a party.In other words, “If you don’t agree totally, get out.”I think Republicans have always been defined by being free to be you and me, and really believing in this country and loving our president and believing in the flag and supporting the military.So I’m a Republican.RUSH:Wait a minute!CALLER:Pro-choice –RUSH:As a moderate how can you support all those things?CALLER:Moderates do.RUSH:No.CALLER:Rush, now, listen.I’m a moderate.RUSH:What does that mean?CALLER:Because on the one hand, a moderate, one end –RUSH:Define.CALLER:I’m a liberal person –RUSH:Now we’re getting somewhere. That’s right.CALLER:– on social issues. I’m a conservative on military and fiscal issues.RUSH:See, that’s –CALLER:So it’s an average.I’m not an average person, but it’s an average.RUSH:I understand.I was just asking you to define moderate, and you did it.CALLER:Well, thank you, because I wouldn’t be in any other party.I’m afraid that some very nice people will get shoved out feeling that –RUSH:Well, in the first place about the RINO term, I don’t use it that much. There are a lot of people out there that use it constantly.CALLER:I know.RUSH:I don’t use it very much.CALLER:And because you’re such a leader –RUSH: Yes?CALLER: I think you can kind of disparage it.I hope you do.RUSH:I got a problem with moderates, as you well known.CALLER:I know. (Laughing.)RUSH:They sabotage this party going forward and becoming dominant and strengthening and doing the right things for the country. They sabotage it.CALLER:I don’t know how that happens, because, to me, we have enough numbers in moderates and conservatives to win.When one of the groups steps out –RUSH:Yeah, but –CALLER:– the independents and Democrats take over.RUSH:What’s happening out there, Lila, in the Republican Party even now — and this immigration bill is highlighting it — is the moderates who are the minority in this party are trying to drive the conservatives out of it or to diminish their power and influence in it.The war on conservatism in this country is not just emanating from the left.It’s emanating from the right, because moderates have liberal aspects to their existence, as you just explained.CALLER:I think the idea that we can lose, as far as I’m concerned in the party, is the them-or-us attitude.Conservatives need to lose it; moderates need to lose it.It is all together believing. Lose the smaller issues, and there are smaller issues, to be determined by a Supreme Court.What about civil unions? What about pro-choice? It’s the constructive of judges that will determine that if we are smart.RUSH:See, but the judges ought not be deciding any of it.CALLER:Well, I’m not sure. I’m not sure the federal government –RUSH: Those are questions that need to be decided by the people in a democratic fashion.CALLER:In a state, though, Rush. I believe it should be decided by the people in the states.RUSH:You’re relying on the judges to be the final authority on controversial, uncomfortable political issues, and that’s not what judges are supposed to do.Anyway, I hear you.I hear where you’re coming from, and it illustrates one of the problems that exists today.I gotta run because I’m outta time, though.I enjoyed talking to you.BREAK TRANCRIPTRUSH:Look, folks, there’s one fundamental reason to vote Republican now. It’s this.It’s 2007, and the Democrats are debating whether there is a war on terror.Now, what more do you need?END TRANSCRIPT
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