RUSH: You know, it’s sad to be told, ladies and gentlemen, by a wounded vet returning from the theater that I have challenged his legitimacy and his heroism and his service and called him phony when no such thing has ever been said. I really don’t even want to accept the premise of this because that would mean it necessary to defend it, and there’s nothing to defend here, because this is a smear and a false charge. I’ve been to Walter Reed, the amputee rehab unit. I have been to bases, combat bases in Afghanistan on troop visits. I’ve raised millions of dollars and donated a lot to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. To have these people lied to like this is just shameless on the part of the people who are lying. What’s happening with all this, folks, I must tell you, people say, ‘Rush, what have you accomplished? I mean, what’s left to accomplish? Why do you keep doing this? You don’t need to do this.’ Folks, this stuff energizes me. They are energizing me. They are energizing conservatives throughout the country in ways that they don’t even understand. They are underscoring for the one thousandth time to our military and civilians alike how they lie about and abuse our soldiers and lie to them.
Folks, I am more energized and focused on the task of advancing liberty and victory than ever before. I am more energized and focused on the task of defeating Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Hillary Clinton than ever before. I will not rest. I’m not going to stop until they are exposed, until they are pushed back and defeated. They must not control our government; they must not be put in charge of our military; they must not gain the power they crave to shut down talk radio and free speech wherever they don’t like it. They must not control anything in which our future is at stake. Let me add another point about all this. It has not gone unnoticed here that only a handful of Republicans and conservatives have dared to speak up about what has been taking place here. I see it. Most of them think I can handle these things on my own and so forth, but there’s a fear out there. The fear and the weakness that permeates the Republican Party, and even parts of the conservative movement is also on display now, as it has been for too long.
We’ve talked about it at length on this program and on many occasions. It’s this fear and the weakness that you, members of the base of the conservative movement in the Republican Party, are sick and tired of, and I am, too. I was thinking about this last night. I have a theory to advance. Where are the Bill Buckleys of today who dared join up with Whittaker Chambers? That was gutsy. Whittaker Chambers, a defector from the Communist Party. My theory is that all these new blogs, and all this new cable TV, and all this media, has actually not been helpful to our side. I don’t want to mention any names, but it is apparent to me that many on our side are far more interested in image, reputation, getting time on television just to get time on television, rather than being focused on a movement, the issues, if you will. People who used to be of substance have lost some of the substance and now are focused on being media stars, focused on being on television. I think it’s been detrimental.
There is a fear that if they take on anything controversial, if they defend something that’s happening out there to somebody, that they will be associated with the smear and they’d rather not be associated with the smear, so they leave it alone, which is understandable if you understand motives and reasons, and it doesn’t bother me. I’m just passing this off to you because you and I talk on this program constantly: Where are the Republicans? Where are the conservatives? Why are they not responding? Well, they don’t want to defend President Bush because they’re afraid they’ll be tarred and feathered just like him if they do. This extends not just to elected Republicans, but also people in the media, who have their own little turf staked out, happy with what they’ve got, and they’ve got their TV appearances, and they want to hold onto those. They don’t want controversy swirling around them. So they hunker down and let these things play out as they might. It’s easier that way, and there’s less opposition.
But what are we conservatives about? We’re about liberty. We are about country. We are about faith. We are about loyalty to our troops on the battlefield. We are about winning wars. We are about sending whatever reinforcements and resources our soldiers need to defeat the terrorists or our enemies anywhere they appear on the battlefield. We are about, as conservatives, limited government and individual liberty, free, genuinely free, political speech. The freedom to exercise your religion, your private property rights, the right to keep most of what you earn. This is who we are. This is what we believe. This used to be our movement. These are things that Harry Reid, Tom Harkin, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrats work day and night to diminish. The left is about seizing and keeping power. They are about undermining the traditions and institutions that have made the country great. That would include the Constitution, which they dismiss as a living and breathing document, to be interpreted by activist judges at the behest of liberal trial lawyers. They want the Constitution to bend and shape to accommodate where they happen to be in a given year, in a given month, on a given day.
We know who they are. They are John Kerry, who was celebrated when he lied about our soldiers in Vietnam in testimony before a Senate committee, who met with the enemy while still in the military, and who has spent most of his career smearing the military and undermining them. It’s about Jack Murtha, who is now the subject of a lawsuit for calling our brave Marines murderers of innocent civilians before any facts were known, and he did it at a press conference, not the floor of the House, just to make sure the entire world would hear it. It’s about Dick Durbin, the number-two Democrat in the Senate, who actually compared our soldiers to Nazis, to Stalin’s assassins, and to Pol Pot’s killers. It’s about Ted Kennedy, who compared our military to Saddam Hussein’s henchmen. What he said was, during Abu Ghraib, ‘No difference, just under new management, the US military.’ It’s about Harry Reid, who declared the war lost, while brave men and women are on the battlefield winning the war against the terrorists. These are the leaders and the voices of the Democrat opposition.
Not a single resolution was offered by any Democrat or Republican repudiating these libels against our armed forces. Not a single vote was taken to condemn any of the things these Democrats have said and offered. Why would there be? These are the beliefs of the Democrat leadership, and the Republicans are too scared and weak to confront them. So I confront them, with you, my audience, giving me the strength to do so, because I know that you are always going to be there. I denounce them, I expose them, again with you, my audience. We are disgusted with the abuse of our soldiers — hell, our entire country. We are fed up with the abuse our entire country has taken at the hands of Reid and Pelosi and the rest of them. We are sick and tired, getting up every day and looking at the news and listening to Democrats about how this is wrong and that’s bad, everything is going to hell in a hand basket. Every day is a crisis. We’re going to die of global warming. We’re going to die of too much coffee. They scare us, they are doom and gloom apocalyptic pessimists, and we are sick and tired of this abuse of our military and our country.
We don’t want to sit quietly while they try to lose this war, while they stab the troops in the back, lying to them, misleading them, while they run roughshod over anyone and anything they perceive as standing in their way. They wage war on me with greater energy and more sense of purpose than they wage war on the enemies of the United States of America. They wage war on President Bush with more fervor and more energy, more passion, more desire, than they join the war on genuine enemies of this country. We are not going to sit quietly while their hit operation, MoveOn.org, trashes the very general who is leading our troops in this current victory and who cannot defend himself against these vile attacks and attackers. We’re not going to be silenced; we’re not going to be intimidated by these same political hacks who have lied repeatedly about what I said. More importantly, didn’t say. They can try to use Hillary’s group, which she admits to helping found and form, Media Matters. They can try to use their favorite anti-war organization. They can write all the letters they want. They can introduce resolutions; they mean nothing to me. They can’t do a thing to me.
There are tens of millions of us, both in this audience and outside this audience, who have had enough of what these people are doing, and that is why Congress rates at 11% approval, an all-time low. We despise, do we not, what these people are doing to our country? But we can remove them — that’s what elections are about — one by one if necessary. For example, I don’t believe the people of Nevada thought they were voting for an anti-war, big government, big taxing character assassin when they voted for Harry Reid. Reid tells his constituents he supports the troops. Somebody tell me how? I guess you support the troops by attacking me. He’s proclaimed defeat, waved the white flag of surrender, said the surge wouldn’t work, offered numerous resolutions to bring the troops home in defeat. Somebody name a single way in which Senator Reid’s helped fight the war in Iraq and the war against the terrorists genuinely?
He tells his constituents he is a frugal steward of their tax dollars, yet in Washington he demands massive new spending and tax increases. He better represents the views of the people of Massachusetts than the people of Nevada. He tells the people in Nevada that he supports good people being named to the federal bench, but back in Washington he leads filibusters to block some of the greatest legal minds from becoming judges because he, in truth, supports activist judges who undermine the Constitution. One day he’s going to have to answer to the people, Harry Reid will, as do all of these politicians. They’re just temporary inhabitants of these public offices, and when they abuse their offices, as Reid does every day, it eventually catches up with them. Ask Tom Foley. Ask Tom Daschle.