RUSH: I want to answer one question that was asked of me by Susan from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, about conservatives who voted for McCain, and I want to say up front here that this explanation that you are about to hear is one of these that will be ripe for taking out of context by my friends on the right to once again smear my meaning. Here goes. I said just before the previous hour concluded, I don’t hold it against any conservative who voted against McCain. Remember, now, going into the election last November, we had a choice. You vote for Obama, you vote for McCain. If you vote for McCain, theoretically you stop the mad dash of liberalism that we would get with Obama.
However, if, if, if you vote for McCain, then you can kiss conservatism good-bye as we’ve always known it, because he wasn’t it and you say, ‘Okay, the way to win elections for the Republican Party is to become like Democrats.’ That’s the options that we face. Okay, do we Republicans want to become like Democrats, do we want to throw Ronald Reagan overboard, the era of Reagan is over, and just to win elections, do we do what Democrats do, just so we can win? Ad infinitum, I said, what have we gained as a Republican Party or as a conservative movement if we have to have liberals among us as liberals to win, not converted, not Reagan Democrats, not newly convinced conservatives, we’ve lost. Now, what people will say here — let me interrupt myself and predict something. What people will say is that what I just said, ‘Well, see, see, Limbaugh is putting his own ideas in front of the country. Limbaugh is hoping conservatism loses rather than win with a governing coalition,’ or blah, blah. Not at all. Because, you see, ladies and gentlemen, to me conservatism is America. We conservatives are conservatives because we can trace roots back not just to our great philosophers, but also to our founders.
So I don’t begrudge any conservative who voted against McCain, because right now, we have the opportunity, the greatest that we’ve had since the eighties, the seventies with Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, we have the greatest opportunity to contrast American conservatism with American liberalism, and if we’ve got leaders, elected leaders who will eventually stand up and proudly proclaim what conservatism is and how it is best for America, then we can reclaim it, we can reclaim the country as conservatives for the good of the country, for the good of the people, because we love people and we want the best for people, and we want everyone to succeed. We do not want wards of the state. We do not want a nation of victims. We do not want a nation of people who have no hope. We don’t want a nation of people who are willing to sacrifice their liberty and independence to depend on somebody else or a government for crumbs. That will not continue a great country, will not give us a great country, it will not prepare a country that your children or grandchildren will want to live in. So for me it’s not a dicey question at all. It’s very simple.
We’ve got Obama and we see what he’s doing, and we see how fast he’s trying to do it, and we have the antidote, which is not Obama-lite, it’s not Democrat Party-lite, it is conservatism. And now with this whole ‘I hope he fails’ comment, voila. Remember, when I first made this comment back on January 16th, I said, ‘I hope the Drive-By Media plays this every day, day in and day out, I hope he fails, I hope he fails,’ they have done it, they have granted my request, because it has opened up the whole question and the debate on just what the role of a president is. He’s not a king. The president is not the country. We have checks and balances designed to make sure that a president fails when he should. You can see it in the founding documents, you can see it in the separation of powers, the division of powers, the Federalist Papers. If we wanted to conflate the president and the government, then we would have a king. We don’t have a king, but we have a cult going on right now. But all this is good.
Had McCain won, I don’t know what the congressional differences would be, but we would have a watered down conservatism that would be in no shape to assert itself. We’d be back where we were largely with Bush in several instances where conservatives had to take a back seat to party loyalty, given all of the assaults that were made against President Bush and so forth. We’d have cap and trade with Senator McCain. We’d have national health care. We wouldn’t have this giant stimulus Porkulus bill. We’d have more campaign finance reform. We would have McCain going full bore on global warming and all that, according to liberal Democrat agenda, because we had a man who was eager to cross the aisle and work with the other side. So my philosophy is what it is, and we have to make the most of it and realize what an opportunity this is, and we delay the opportunity every time we water down our beliefs by saying, ‘Great guy, what a great family. His policies are disastrous, but, oh, man does he look good, what a great guy, have you seen the family, oh, the family, oh, ho-ho-ho man. Policies are going to wreck us for years, but what a great guy, so likable.’ And until that approval number comes down and we can do it, we can drive the approval number down, and that’s what they know, and they’re scared to death of that happening. The approval numbers, symbolism over substance, is what the Obama team is going to use to keep him propped up.