RUSH: We have a 15-year-old young guy from — how do you pronounce this town. His name is Evan. How do you pronounce the town in Wisconsin where you’re from?
CALLER: Yes. Mequon.
RUSH: Mequon. Wisconsin. It’s great to have you here, Evan. Welcome.
CALLER: It’s an honor to speak with you, Mr. Limbaugh.
RUSH: I appreciate that. Thank you.
CALLER: I’ve been listening to you the past week, and I’ve kind of gotten the drift that a Conservative Party wouldn’t be a good thing. But my friends and I, we’re in high school, you know, and we go to a primarily liberal high school. We’re out there. We’re on the battlefield every day fighting the liberals. We’re pushing ’em back, but the three candidates that are running, they’re just different shades of blue.
RUSH: Wait a second, Evan. You’re 15?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I want you people in this audience to listen to this guy. Here he’s 15, fighting liberals in high school or junior high? You’re in secondary?
CALLER: I’m a freshman, going to be a sophomore.
RUSH: Freshman in high school. All right.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Well, when I was a freshman in high school they still put us in junior high. That’s why I wanted to clarify. Okay, so you’re a freshman in high school.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: Fifteen years old.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Fighting the liberals in high school, pushing back.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: There are a lot of adults in this country could learn from you. So you keep speaking and making your point.
CALLER: Okay. Well, like I was saying the three candidates that are running, they’re just different shades of blue. And (sigh) the Republican Party no longer stands for what we conservatives believe in — and many callers have said this. ‘Oh, I’m fed up with McCain.’ Obama, and Hillary. They’re just putting on a laugh show over there and that’s good for us. We get some entertainment out of it, but they could seriously hurt this country, badly — and, I’m sure everyone listening knows this, but you’ve said that a third party will not work and we should, you know… (sigh) You know, it’s a hard situation that we’re in here, and I know you know this, but we’re fighting. My friends and I, we’re fighting under the Republican Party flag that doesn’t stand for us. So we’re rogue troops. We’re out there: Our funding’s been cut, our morale has been cut. It’s like what the Democrats are trying to do to us in Iraq, but (sigh), we’re fighting ’em. And we don’t know, we’re just lost.
RUSH: How many friends in your gang?
CALLER: (chuckles) Oh, about 11 our 12 of us.
RUSH: Eleven or 12.
CALLER: But then that spreads out.
RUSH: Eleven or 12 of you, and you’re out there fighting your whole school?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I love you, man — and I don’t think you’ve suffered any demoralization.
CALLER: Oh, no, no.
RUSH: You guys are leaders. This is what you have to do. Whether you know it or not, you have assumed leadership positions and you are acting that way. So that has to give you a certain mind-set, attitude naturally that you should not forget and abandon. Do not consider yourself a minority. You are a leader, and you are leading something that you believe in. You’re right on the money about where the Republican Party is, but let me explain my third-party business. It’s just historical. It’s not going to win anything. Right now the practical effect of a third party… Let’s say if somebody did try to split off a third party from the Republican Party, all it would do is guarantee the election of Obama or Hillary or whoever the Democrat is.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: This is what happened with Ross Perot back in 1992 —
CALLER: Mmm-hmm. Yeah.
RUSH: — and George H. W. Bush, although there’s some polling data that suggests H. W. Bush might have lost anyway, but that’s up for grabs. The key is — I said yesterday, Evan, what’s going to happen here if this keeps up — and, by the way, to show you the desperation of some conservatives and Republicans, they just are hoping and praying that what McCain is saying and doing now is simply a ruse to attract —
CALLER: Ugh.
RUSH: — a whole lot of people away from the Democrat Party and vote for him, but that when he gets in there, ‘He’s going to be a Goldwater-type Republican. He’s going to really go pedal-to-the-metal and he’s going to be a real conservative.’ That’s just hope.
CALLER: Well, the thing is with my mom she hears one thing one day and says, ‘Oh, I have to vote for him. I can’t let the Democrats in,’ and then the next day she goes, ‘I can’t believe John McCain! I can’t believe it! I can’t vote for him.’ So my mom, she’s in a bind. But the thing about the third party though is, if we make a threat, it might maybe, you know, bring the Republicans back in line.
RUSH: I’m going to tell you something. No, Evan, it won’t.
CALLER: It won’t?
RUSH: No, no. Because the people who are taking over… There are two things happening here that are devastating. One, Rockefeller Republicans are taking over the Republican Party, making it like it was back in the days where it was a perennial loser. Liberal, country club, blue-blood Republicans. The second bad thing that’s happening is that third- and fourth-tier pseudoconservatives, mainly in the media, are trying to redefine today’s Republican Party as the New Conservatism, and that’s where people like you come in. There is no New Conservatism. Conservatism is conservatism. Conservatism is you, Evan, and the 11 or 12 other guys in your gang. Conservatism is me. Conservatism is all the people in this audience who are conservatives — and we are not going to sit by and let it be watered down and redefined. And I warned people about this a year ago. So what has to happen, it’s a sad thing to say, but these pseudointellectual conservatives — third and fourth tier, these Rockefeller Republicans — are going to have to take this party down to the dregs of defeat where it has demonstrated it doesn’t win.
And even if McCain wins, it’s going to delay this for a while, but at that point we’re going to have to start rebuilding all over, and that’s where you come in! You’re young. The Republican Party is going to be yours someday, and that’s what you need to focus on. The Republican Party is going to be you and your gang’s and every — there are more conservatives on college campi today than people know. And they’re out there working doing the same thing at higher levels of education as you are in high school, fighting the libs, fighting the professors, fighting the structure, and they are just as livid about the status of the Republican Party as you are. And what happens when two or three generations come along to pollute everything up, younger generations like you come along, you look at what you’re facing and say, ‘I’m not doing it this way,’ and you clean it up. Don’t change, Evan. You are the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement — guided, of course, by me.
CALLER: Yes of course. You, my mother, and Ronald Reagan are my role models.
RUSH: Fifteen years old here, folks. Fifteen! This is why you can’t give up, because the inspiration happens to people who you don’t even know are hearing you. Evan, I’m glad you called, all the best, and hang tough, bud.
CALLER: Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh.