RUSH: I’d like to share with you what I think, my friends, are — and it was tough to limit this to ten — the Top Ten Republican Moderate Moments.
Number ten: Newt Gingrich does a PSA on global warming with Nancy Pelosi in 2008. Number nine moderate moment in GOP history: Bush-Quayle ’92. The number eight moderate moment GOP history: Dole-Kemp ’96. The number seven most moderate moment in Republican history: Ford-Dole ’76. Do you see a pattern here? Top ten moderate moments in Republican history number six: Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords jumps from the Republican Party. Top ten moderate moments in Republican history number five: Arlen Specter switches parties. Top ten moderate moments in Republican history. Number four: Richard Nixon resigns in disgrace. Top ten moderate moments Republican history number three: Dede Scozzafava endorses the Democrat, Owens, in New York-23. Top ten moderate moments in Republican history number two: The McCain campaign of 2008.
And — dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut! — The number one top ten moderate moment in Republican history: Colin Powell endorsing Barack Obama, the Democrat, for president in 2008! If you want to talk about moderates and you want to look at great moderate moments in Republican history — and I’m sure you can add to this list, and we can come up with a thousand of these. But these are the top ten. And every one of them got us where? Every one of them took us where? Backwards! Every damned one of them. These are the people and these are the things that should define the Republican Party. You know, I hear David Plouffe and yesterday was Axelrod wringing their hands over losing moderates and independents and the Republican Party, it’s just horrible! Oh, they’re losing them.
And, you know, I then remember them saying that Colin Powell, General Powell, the ideal future Republican. And people like David Brooks said the same thing. The ideal! If the Republican Party loses people like Colin Powell, it’s over. And so General Powell, in a strategic moment of timing, endorses the Democrat candidate. After we’re told that he is the epitome, he is the prototype Republican, and the endorsed the Democrat. And I’m sitting there saying, ‘Why do people in our party allow themselves to be defined, manipulated, flaked, formed, shaped, whatever, by these Democrats?’ ‘Cause they appease them. They want to be liked. They want to be accepted where they live, in Washington, DC, and in New York.
By definition, folks, moderates cannot be governed by principle. They can’t be. Moderates don’t have principles. If they had principles, they’d be one thing or the other. Moderates like to think, ‘Well, you know, we’re smarter than the average person. We’re a cut above. We examine things issue by issue. We’re not narrow-minded. We’re not narrowly locked into a single narrow set of agenda items. No, no, no, no! We are far more sophisticated and nuanced (sniff) than the ideologues in our party. We see the right way on abortion, these social, cultural issues. Yes, yes, yes.’ And they’re just a bunch of arrogant, conceited — and at the same time ignorant — people.