RUSH: Here’s Tim in East Moline, Illinois. Tim, thank you for waiting. You’re up next. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Yes. Good afternoon, sir. How are you?
RUSH: Fine and dandy. I appreciate it.
CALLER: Pleasure to speak with you. Just a couple quick points, Rush. First of all, I find it deplorable that the president of the United States is palling around, shaking hands with communist dictators, like Mr. Chavez. It also gives credence to the associations with Tony Rezko, Blago, Daley, Bill Ayers — you know, all of the left-wing radicals that he’s hung around with in the past. I mean, it just lends credence to that, in my mind. Also I’m just wondering, with all the appeasement with the dictators and communists like Chavez and Ahmadinejad over in Iran — and this book that Chavez gave Mr. Obama. It’s probably the best piece of propaganda he’s had since Rules for Radicals, in my opinion. I mean, it’s straight from the source. But with the appeasement of these dictators and the 2010 elections coming up, what are the chances — and I know this is probably a long shot, but what are the chances — of winning back the House and the Senate for the Republicans and imposing some kind of impeachment process for Mr. Obama?
RUSH: Too many variables.
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: Too many variables that are still unknown to start predicting election results in 2010. For one thing, we know, for example, that in the generic ballot the Republicans have pulled even with the Democrats in House races. (laughs) That’s not being reported much. It’s being hidden, but it has 
happened. At the same time voters need leaders who have ideas and people to vote for — and the Republican Party and the conservative movement is still very fractious. There are many factions of the Republican Party and the conservative movement who are vying for leadership who want to ‘redefine what conservatism is,’ which you can’t do. Conservatism is conservatism. It’s like air is air. But there are people that, nevertheless, want to redefine it and the political approach to it.
And the most prominent… This is not, by the way, encouraging, but I’m going to tell you anyway. The most prominent faction among the dissenting conservatives is to go ahead and acknowledge that people want same-sex marriage and it’s going to happen, that people want large government. I mean, McCain’s campaign aide, Steve Schmidt, gave a speech last week and had a story written about it in USA Today. For the Republican Party to survive, we’re going to have to admit that gay marriage is something we have to support. If we don’t, we are denying people’s civil liberties like we did prior to the Civil Rights Act. So… I’m not kidding you.
The chief campaign strategerist for McCain, Steve Schmidt, said we gotta recognize that the country wants gay marriage. When it doesn’t. Thirty-three percent of the country does. But he says until we understand this, we as a party are never going to emerge victorious. The various factions of the conservative movement who believe we’re going to have to admit the American people want big government, we’re just going to have to figure out a way to give it to them. It’s the same thinking that said, ‘We’re going to have to come out for amnesty. We’re going to have to have to understand as a party, as a movement, we have to agree to amnesty for illegal immigrants. It’s the only way we’re going to get votes.
‘It’s the only way we’re going to win,’ and so you have people who are devising strategies for victory that in the process are casting aside foundational principles, and it’s happening both in the Republican Party and within the conservative movement (so-called.) So it’s too difficult to project what’s going to happen in the House races in 2010. I would assume — you would assume — that if unemployment continues to rise and if the economy stays in recession then it’s gotta redound negatively to the people in charge, but the Drive-By Media is going to help Obama blame Bush, and these people that are so emotionally attached to Obama who used to vote Republican are going to say, ‘Well, he’s trying to. He’s just got all these people like Limbaugh opposing him, but he’s trying to do the right thing. He doesn’t know. He only wants help.’ So it’s going to be really, really, really tough. It can be done, but it’s not (like anything worthwhile) going to be easy.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Daniel in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Daniel, hi, nice to have you here.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush? It’s an honor to talk to you —
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: — after years of watching you on TV on AFN when I was stationed overseas and listening to your show religiously. Can you please tell me, O wise one, when is America going to wake up? I watch the news, I consider myself a somewhat educated person, but how can the wool be pulled over so many people’s eyes without them realizing what’s happening?
RUSH: Oh, demagoguery is not a new thing. The wool’s been pulled over people’s eyes forever.
CALLER: I spent 24 years in the Air Force working on airplanes, and now I’m in the law enforcement career field, and —
RUSH: Wait a minute. You’re an ex-vet?
CALLER: Oh, yeah.
RUSH: That means the Department of Homeland Security thinks of you —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: — as a Timothy McVeigh.
CALLER: Yeah, I was going to ask you what you thought I was because —
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you what I think about that.
CALLER: I’m retired military and law enforcement, so —
RUSH: If one bad ex-military guy can force Janet Reno Napolitano to keep watch on all former military people, then I would think we also need to keep a sharp eye on all of Obama’s friends and associates, since two of them, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, actually blew up the Pentagon. They were domestic terrorists. I think we need to keep a sharp eye on every professor in this country who is advocating some of the most extreme radicalism to these students. If Janet Napolitano wants to really protect the homeland, and she’s really worried about domestic terrorists, then keep a constant tail on Bill Ayers when he goes to Venezuela and champions Hugo Chavez’s reformist education forums and so forth. That’s what I think about it.
CALLER: Yeah. So I’m okay, you don’t feel like I’m a threat to our country?
RUSH: No, I don’t think you’re a threat to the country.
CALLER: Well, I thank you. That means a lot coming from you, sir. I truly mean that.
RUSH: To the contrary, you’re not a threat to the country.
CALLER: I was holding up my sarcasm card.
RUSH: I understand that. I appreciate the phone call. People will wake up when enough things happen all at once. You know, this is water torture. You know, this is death by a thousand cuts and we’re at three or four cuts, and we gotta have a whole bunch of more cuts before people wake up. We’ve lost young people and young people are always the idealistic ones, and they’re the ones that more easily fall prey to utopian idealism. It just takes some growing up. It just takes some growing up. We’re in a position here, we don’t have the power to stop Obama, so he’s going to have to stop himself. And with nothing to stop him, there’s nothing to stop him. And as there’s nothing to stop him he’s going to continue to try to get away with as much as he can, and at some point people are gonna go, ‘Wait a minute, I didn’t think I was going to have to go to DMV to withdraw money from my bank,’ or some such thing.