RUSH: This is Steven in Jacksonville, Florida. Hi, Steven.
CALLER: Hi. I’m a first-time caller, longtime listener. I’ve been listening to you on and off since November ’88 shortly after you went nationwide.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. I appreciate that.
CALLER: Like you, I’m a conservative who refuses to vote for McCain, and there’s a lot of them out there from listening to you and Sean and to other conservatives. There’s a whole batch of them out there. And what I would like you to take a look at is another conservative rebellion that took place back in 1993 to the neighbor — to the north, Canada, and what happened was the conservatives were really angry at the Progressive Conservative Party — now, that’s kind of an oxymoron, progressive and conservative — but, anyway, they rebelled against their newly elected leader, Kim Campbell, who was elected to replace Brian Mulroney —
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: — when Mulroney retired. And so the Progressive Conservative Party split three ways. The Quebecers went off and formed their own party, Bloc Québécois, and the conservatives were so irritated and so angry that they went to a newly formed party called the Reform Party of Canada. And what happened is the progressive conservatives split three ways.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: And the conservatives in the Reform Party did real well in that election. In fact, they got more votes than the Progressive Conservative Party got in that election. And that was the year that everybody remembers when the progressive conservatives went down from over 150 seats, a majority in the House of Commons, which of course is important because they elect who is prime minister —
RUSH: Let me guess. Where you’re headed here is why don’t we do that here? Why don’t we just stand up and say, ‘The Republican Party has given us the shaft, it’s left us, it’s time to form a third party and make it a Conservative Party’?
CALLER: At least for now. Because what happened is the reformers stayed in their party until the progressive conservatives in 2003 said, ‘Okay, we give up, we’ll merge.’ And the first thing they did is got rid of the ‘Progressive’ off the name of the party and it became the Conservative Party of Canada.
RUSH: How they doing up there?
CALLER: Well, they’re in minority, but nobody can have a majority unless they win Quebec, and that can’t be done as long as Québécois owns the election in Quebec. So they now have the most seats in the House of Commons and have the government, a former reformer is now in as prime minister of Canada and they’re in the drivers seat now. So we may have to rebel for a while, but the Republican Party needs to be told in living color that you don’t put forth anybody other than a conservative because conservatives just will not go for it.
RUSH: Yeah —
CALLER: And I see all across the country, Jim Dobson, people on your show, people on Sean’s show, saying, ‘We’re not going to vote for McCain.’ Okay, give us an alternative, a third-party alternative, and that way we can show exactly what we feel. Now, there will be conservatives who are Kool-Aid drinkers and they will vote Republican just because it’s a Republican, but I used to be a staffer of the Republican Party, and I will not vote for McCain even if the guy ran for dogcatcher. I would vote for his opponent just because, because I do not like McCain —
RUSH: What did McCain do — wait, wait, people need to hear this. What did McCain do to you?
CALLER: Okay, well, the first one is McCain-Feingold. That was the most anti-free speech piece of legislation that’s ever come —
RUSH: Right —
CALLER: — maybe the second, the Anti-Sedition Act back in the 1800s was probably more anti-free speech, but anyway —
RUSH: What people misunderstand about this, like if there are Drive-Bys listening to you right now or others, they don’t understand that the Chris Matthewses of the world and all these other cable jockeys, they do not understand the passionate, almost personal dislike some people in our party have for John McCain. They have no clue, and even if you tell them to their face, they can’t grasp it because they love him and they can’t figure out what is so unlikable about Senator McCain to these people. What they forget is that we didn’t start this. We were minding our own business. It was Senator McCain and some of his aides who really left the reservation and did so in a pique because of South Carolina in 2000, started taking potshots at the party and so forth, and, you know, the Drive-Bys, I think they think that the first thumb in the eye was at McCain. I think it came from McCain, but regardless, there is a lot of this sentiment out there. I don’t know how much it’s going to hold up once we get to November.
When we get to November, and we’ve got either Hillary or Obama on the other side of our vote, it’s going to be interesting to see, I’m not doubting you all, don’t misunderstand, not doubting you, and I’m not predicting the future. I just know that a lot of things can change, particularly emotionally, from now through November. I just wonder if some of this anti-McCain sentiment is going to hold up. I suspect that it will. I think this is genuine. You talk about a third party, I understand the attraction. I just have never believed in them. There have been so many attempts at them in this country, and they just don’t go anywhere. It may be time to think more seriously or in a different way about that, but I haven’t given it much thought until your phone call. Now, as for my scenario, can we get down to November? We got stark contrast. There’s McCain, and let’s say it’s Hillary, let’s say Hillary gets this nomination. I’m thinking of voting for Hillary. I’m thinking of endorsing Hillary, in fact. John McCain said she’d be a fine president.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Darrell in Kansas City, Missouri, thank you for waiting, sir. I appreciate your patience. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush —
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: — from a retired First Class Petty Officer from the United States Navy. How are you doing, my good friend?
RUSH: I appreciate that. Oh, I’m doing fine. Most people ask me and don’t stop and wait from an answer, so they really don’t mean it, but you actually paused. I’m doing fine. Thank you.
CALLER: All right. Sir, my question is to you, do you think Governor Romney will run the RNC? Governor Romney has good organizational experience, strong administration skills, as well as good communication.
RUSH: No, no, no. I have no idea who’s going to run the RNC. All I know is that eventually whoever the nominee is, that’s going to be McCain, that’s the guy that runs the party. He’ll install somebody at the RNC that he wants. If he wins the presidency of course it will probably change and install somebody else at that point. But the Republican presidential nominee is the de facto architect who runs the party and fills all those spots and I don’t know if he would select Romney. And I don’t know that Romney would necessarily want that. That’s a fundraising job. One of the great things about Romney, we never had to worry where his money was coming from because it was his.
CALLER: I was going to say that, well, in my opinion, I think McCain needs Romney more than ever because Romney’s stance on immigration —
RUSH: No. No. No, no, no.
CALLER: — a few other things.
RUSH: No, no, no, no. He may need Romney, but he will never admit that or realize it.
CALLER: Well, Rush, the question I would follow up on that is, my universal question would be is that if McCain’s not going to enforce the immigration laws, then how can I trust McCain to enforce the drug laws?
RUSH: Well, this is the strange thing. Immigration laws are being enforced now. There’s another series of stories I have in the stack, I haven’t gotten to them today, all over, Arizona, in Rhode Island we had yesterday, the states are saying we can’t afford continued benefits, health care and so forth for the children of illegals. They’re starting to enforce the law. And there’s a natural attrition that is happening, and this is what opponents of the McCain amnesty bill, the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill say, just start enforcing the law. You don’t need a new comprehensive bill that’s amnesty. You don’t need all of this. You don’t need to create a new bureaucracy that won’t get anything done, just enforce the law. So this thing comes up, (doing McCain impression) ‘Comprehensive, meaningful, comprehensive immigration reform, went down the tubes because of guys like Limbaugh.’ The states have no choice now to enforce the laws, and it’s working. I know what you mean, McCain said that if the same bill came before him he would sign it again, but it’s not that time, we’re past that and so forth. But McCain is who he is.
Susan in Overland Park, Kansas, nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: My question is — well, first of all, I’m one of those conservatives who does not like McCain mostly because he called people like me names because we disagreed with him on immigration. So it’s very difficult to consider voting for him. However, my question is, why is no one trying to organize a write-in campaign for somebody like Romney or somebody other than that, that we might really consider as a real conservative?
RUSH: Well, I could only hazard a guess, because people know that the write-in campaign is not going to work. It’s not going to elect anybody, and the people that you’re talking about have bowed out of the campaign. Romney, Giuliani — if they wanted to proceed under the concept of a write-in candidacy, they could do that, but they’ve pulled out. The impetus in something like this has to be provided by a candidate, and the candidates just are not there. There’s nobody in that roster of candidates on the Republican side that is so distant from the current structure of the Republican Party that’s going to run against McCain. Their futures would be doomed. I mean, the only guy who might is Ron Paul. But none of the others will.
CALLER: Well —
RUSH: It doesn’t stop you from doing a write-in, though.
CALLER: No, I was considering that, but I wish we’d get a draft going or something like that so — I just would like to put the word out there.
RUSH: I’m getting calls like Susan’s. This is the third or fourth one today, and they happen every day. I don’t think the Republican Party has the slightest idea how much of this kind of unrest there is out there. I don’t think they have the slightest clue. I think they think it’s temporary. I think they think it exists, I don’t think they realize how deep it is, how passionately emotional these people who say they’re never going to vote McCain feel about it. I think they’re in for a rude awakening. I don’t know what they can do about it, because if McCain tries to make a move to people like this, then he’s going to anger the independents and moderates who think he’s a maverick and the whole straight talk thing will be out the window and he’d be thrown out of his own bus, in a sense.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The official program observer, Mr. Snerdley, informs me that we could have a full three hours of calls from people who claim they’re not going to vote McCain. He says he’s only giving me a very small fraction of those calls, but his note here says, ‘Every day, every hour could be a full board with anti-McCain calls.’ We’re spacing these out, of course, because we don’t want to be a one-note samba here.