RUSH: Now, there are bright spots. There are bright spots. Let’s go to the audio tape. Sound bite number 21. Wednesday morning on the Fox News Channel, Fox & Friends they interviewed the victorious senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss. Brian Kilmeade said, ‘You fought off Bill Clinton, you fought off Algore, you fought off Ludacris, the rapper, in that order. They came down to fight for Jim Martin. In the end, if success leaves clues, Senator Saxby Chambliss, what can the party learn from your win?’
CHAMBLISS: Well, I think we’ve obviously got to take away from this that there are lessons out there that we needed to learn in 2006. Maybe we didn’t, but in 2008, we’ve gotta look back and make sure that we build up towards 2010 on a foundation that Ronald Reagan told us about years ago —
RUSH: Uh-oh.
CHAMBLISS: — and that is Republicans stand for.
RUSH: Uh-oh.
CHAMBLISS: — smaller government, fiscal responsibility.
RUSH: Uh-oh.
CHAMBLISS: — more individual rights and freedoms, and lower taxes. And we’ve gotta get back to those fundamentals. That’s what we talked about on the campaign trail, and obviously it resonated with our constituents here.
RUSH: Well, hallelujah! The only damn problem, and I’m sorry for yelling here, the only damn problem is that the people in his own party think he’s nuts! People in his own party think Ronald Reagan, the era of Reagan is over. You know what they’re going to say about Saxby Chambliss, the Republican Party, I’ll tell you what they’re going to say in Washington and in the elite corridors of the Republican Party, ‘Well, of course it’s Georgia. Of course, it’s the South. It’s the South, and that’s where the pro-lifers are, and that’s where the NRA crowd is, and that’s who embarrasses us in the Republican Party.’ Of course, it’s patently obvious. Was there anything like this in Saxby Chambliss’ first campaign that finished in the need for a runoff? Did he run on Reagan in his original campaign? I’m not sure, but I don’t think it was as foremost and pronounced as it was in the runoff. I’ll tell you something else that was missing and we cannot eliminate this. There was no Obama. There were just Obama surrogates. And as there was no Obama, what else was there not? There was no image. There was no PR. There was no charisma. And there certainly weren’t any ideas, because Obama ran on no ideas. He’s still not putting forth ideas.
Obama is still in the process of being, not doing. He’s hiring all these other people to do. When Obama’s not on the scene, it just proves this election was so winnable, is what I’m getting at. It was so winnable if again we had just not been afraid of the historic aspect, if we had not been afraid of the charisma, if we had not been afraid, if we had not treated the nation like a bunch of whiners and said, ‘Yeah, we believe we should give to you, too, we’ll just do it.’ (doing McCain impression) ‘Yes, and we’ll be bipartisan about it. I’m going to work with the Democrats.’ I don’t think Saxby Chambliss said one damn word about working with Democrats in the runoff, did he? I’ll bet you he didn’t. And I know as sure as hell as I’m sitting here that Sarah Palin, when she went in there, did not talk about working with Democrats. The Saxby Chambliss campaign — and you can read it and weep, Republican Party — is your ticket, and that’s what’s so maddening about this.
In fact, the Republican Party in certain areas is still trying to destroy Sarah Palin. Barbara Walters in the interview, I don’t know if it’s going to make the cut tonight, but in the interview, she tried to upbraid me for liking Sarah Palin. She yelled at me. And I yelled back, ‘What didn’t you like about her?’ ‘She was uninformed.’ I said, ‘One interview, one interview, Katie Couric, and you’re willing to throw her overboard?’ I told her how much I admired her, loved her, and so forth, and Saxby Chambliss basically said the same thing.
CHAMBLISS: You know, Brian, I cannot see it diminishing. I mean, I can’t overstate impact she had down there. All these folks did a great job coming in. They all allowed us to add momentum to where we were in the campaign, but when she walks in a room, folks just explode, and they really did pack the house everywhere we went. She’s a dynamic lady, a great administrator, and I think she’s got a great future in the Republican Party.
RUSH: That’s Saxby Chambliss talking about Sarah Palin who put him over the top. He had everybody down there, had Romney down there, Rudy down there, Sarah Palin. And our party is too clunk-headed to — I still don’t think they get it.