Colin Powell Does 180 from 1996

RUSH: I want to get this out of the way. It’s not related to anything specifically we’ve talked about today. It’s about General Powell. We had quite a few donnybrook phone calls yesterday about the Republican Party. I made the case, remember the moderate Republican called who actually was very conservative, I gave him the test, and he’s a conservative Republican down the line, he just wants to call himself a moderate Republican for whatever reason. He’s a nice guy. But what got him to call was my comment that I made that the Republican Party is the one that’s changed, I haven’t changed, I am who I am. For the last 20 years, I am who I am, I have not wavered but the Republican Party is changing and the reason the Republican Party lost is due to McCain, is due to Powell, and due to the moderates that are running it. And this guy called and said, ‘Look, I’m a moderate and I kind of don’t like the way you’re talking about us.’ This led us, I asked this guy during the test I gave, ‘Can you tell me one thing Colin Powell is for that you’ve heard him say he’s for, issue-wise?’ ‘Well, I guess he’s pretty strong militarily, ’cause he wore the uniform,’ but he couldn’t think of anything else because Powell hasn’t taken many stands on very many issues, on purpose. That’s how you maintain a 70% approval rating is you don’t tell anybody what you think about anything, you just act like you’re above it all.

Well, we went back, 1996, the Republican convention. Where was this, in San Diego? I think it was. The Republican convention in ’96 I think was in San Diego. And listen to this excerpt. Well, it’s a quote. I’m going to read it to you from Colin Powell’s convention speech, which was a barn burner, and he got a lot of standing ovations, I remember it. He said, ‘I became a Republican because I believe, like you, that the federal government has become too large and too intrusive in our lives. We can no longer afford solutions to our problems that result in more entitlements, higher taxes to pay for them, more bureaucracy to run them, and fewer results to show for it.’ That’s Colin Powell in 1996. Colin Powell in 2009 and 2008 said the American people are ready for bigger government; the American people are ready for higher taxes. He reversed himself 100% from his speech 13 years ago at a Republican conventional.

Now, my point here is that it is General Powell who has changed. General Powell articulated what used to be one of the planks in the Republican Party platform every election. The Republican Party used to always stand for lower taxes, less government, less bureaucracy, better performance by that government that does operate. And now he’s done a 180, and all of a sudden I’m the one not good for the Republican Party. I’m the one that needs to be thrown out of the party, I, who have not changed and who still hold dear the very principles that Powell laid out at the Republican convention, I’m the one that still remains loyal to them. He’s done a 180, and yet we have everybody telling us Colin Powell should be the one leading and running the Republican Party. This is why I said yesterday that the Republican Party’s fate and where it is today is because of people like McCain, like Colin Powell, and like the moderates who have basically obliterated the Republican Party’s traditional identity. And while they’re all over the board and doing their 180s and changes of phase and position, who is it that has not changed one iota on principle? It is I, your host, El Rushbo, and now I, El Rushbo, am blamed as the problem for the party, and I, El Rushbo, have to be somehow dispatched, made to be less influential, because I’m a balding white guy. That’s what the Republican Party, at least people running it, have become.