Republicans Look to Talk Radio to Inspire Republican Leadership

RUSH: Ray, I’m glad you held on. Welcome on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Rush, how you doing?

RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Listen, I’m calling about this whole comment about you and those of us that agree with your approach to politics and the way the world is as being ‘seditious.’ It seems to me that there was another great American that was thought of as seditious, and that was Martin Luther King. And, you know, to me, it seems like these kinds of attitudes that they have, they have nothing else. They have nothing else to call us. They have nowhere else to go. The fact of the matter is is that we agree. You put into words the things that we think, the things we’ve been thinking for years, the way we’ve been seeing America. They have nothing but lies and oppression on their side, and we have the truth on our side, just like Martin Luther King did and the civil rights movement did.

RUSH: Mmm-hmm.

CALLER: — fact, Martin Luther King wrote a letter from jail in Birmingham in April of ’63 when he was jailed for participating in anti-segregation protests, essentially saying that he knows through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by an oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed. That’s all we are doing, those of us that sympathize with the tea party movement, those of us that have a worldview that limited government is the way America was founded —

RUSH: Oh, they are rrrrrreally —

CALLER: — or what we are founded on.

RUSH: — going to hate you. They are really going to hate you. You have called the most listened radio talk show in the country and have compared the tea party to the civil rights movement.

CALLER: It is! It is just like the civil rights movement except for the fact —

RUSH: The oppressed demanding freedom.

CALLER: It is demanding freedom for an oppressive, tyrannical government, which is the Democrat Party.

RUSH: Well, I’m going to let you say it.

CALLER: You, sir, are like the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

RUSH: Oh ho-ho! Not the wilderness anymore.

CALLER: (laughing)

RUSH: You are not only like Martin Luther King, you are like William Wallace, trying to get the lords of the Republican Party to come to the table. I won’t use any military terms, but to basically get a spine. That’s the word I’ll use on the radio.

RUSH: You know, you just reminded me of something out there, Ray. Over the weekend, sometime Saturday morning —

CALLER: Right?

RUSH: — I was at the computer minding my own business, offending and bothering nobody —

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — and I got an e-mail from a very high-ranking official in Washington, urging a strategy for dealing with Obama’s judicial nominations, specifically to the Supreme Court. And the essence of the note was that those of us in conservative media needed to inspire our Senate leaders to carry on the fight against these nominees. I looked at that, and my mouth just fell open and my mouth was agape. We in the conservative media must motivate our Senate leaders? Are they leaders if motivating them is our charge or responsibility?

CALLER: I am reminded again, as I’ve mentioned, like this movie Braveheart. In the scene where the nobles were gathered and William Wallace said to the chief noble there, ‘If you would just lead us, we would follow.’ Whoever comes, whoever wants to be president in 2012 can make that happen today. They just need to step up and lead us to the election of 2012 and quit namby-pambying around with these Democrats.

RUSH: Well, I think, even to this day, there’s a fear of the media inside Washington, and there’s lingering fear. Although, you know, House Republicans are great. I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I’m just reacting specifically to this thing about judicial nominees. ‘You know, we gotta really inspire them. We gotta buck up our Senate leaders out there, let ’em know it’s okay to kick ass.’ (laughing) Jeez! I think it’s been too long that certain Republicans in Washington have been content to let us take the arrows, do the dirty work so they can sneak in behind and execute whatever, thereby getting secondary and tertiary fire rather than the original broadside. I just find it a funny observation. Ray, I’m glad you called. I appreciate it. Those are very nice things you said and I appreciate ’em.

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RUSH: Tom in Dayton, Ohio, welcome to the EIB Network, great to have you on the program, sir.

CALLER: Hey, thank you, Rush. Hey, maybe Guam won’t tip over or whatever island it was after the earthquake.

RUSH: Yes, yes.

CALLER: Hey, I got a question. It seems like that no matter what happens with conservative talk radio and such that the march toward socialism is just not stopping. I mean if you look at your career booming for 20 years and I listened to you from the nineties, or probably late ’89 I’m guessing, as you’ve got more popular, our schools and that, I mean the socialist movement has just taken over, I mean it’s so firmly entrenched now, it’s pathetic. And number two, you know, you’ve also had your Glenn Becks and many other people throughout the last eight to ten years, and again it is very little, and then you have polls saying 80-20 and 70% of America believes in tea party, when in fact there’s poll after poll that says Obama would beat everybody — Palin, McCain, all these other people again if the election were held again.

RUSH: Wait, I haven’t seen that poll.

CALLER: Well, that poll was last week, in fact, it was the latest and it showed Palin losing as well as Romney losing to Obama. And that was Fox News, I believe, that showed it. So I’m sitting here thinking, as all this was going on in terms of conservatism, talk radio, and conservatives, different things, you know, I’ve never once in all my years ever been approached by a conservative individual saying, ‘Hey, could you sign this, could you sign this,’ but I lost count of the amount of times throughout my life that I’ve been approached by a left-leaning individual for some cause or another. It just seems like on the very bottom ground roots we’re losing it and we’re losing it very bad. There’s schoolbook after schoolbook that you can pull out where anti-capitalism, anti-America, anti-this, and yet there is no way the conservative movement is gaining a foothold and growing where it’s needed in this country.

RUSH: At this point, you might have a point, but we are in the process of slowing the inexorable march which has been going on for decades. I shudder to think where we would be if we hadn’t been here all these years.

CALLER: I agree with that a hundred percent, but — (crosstalk)

RUSH: We are the majority in the country. We are being governed by a minority that is governing against the will of the people, and they are much more adept at fraud and deceit. There’s so many differences between the conservative movement and the liberal movement. I’m hearing from some conservatives now that when it comes to these Obama judicial nominees, if they are going to violate the Constitution to keep our nominees out, we gotta play by the same rules. It’s too important. So we filibuster Obama’s nominees, we filibuster ’em even though we might think it’s unconstitutional, at some point we have to stop this. Where we conservatives play the game is in the arena of ideas. We’re the old-fashioned civics 101 people. We believe that an educated, informed public is the way to lead the country in the right direction. The left is scared to death of that, and that’s why they have sought to control all these institutions to pervert and corrupt public opinion and thought, to propagandize it, to indoctrinate in the schools, academies and so forth.

They are not trying to convince people that they are right about anything. They are not trying to win in the arena of ideas. What the left is doing and has always done is trying to destroy the credibility of any of the people who speak against them. And you have a good point, when you get to Washington, DC, and inside the actual arena of ideas there, you don’t have a whole lot of conservatism on display. You’ve got it on display outside Washington and outside state capitals, but where the elected officials are, the Republican Party, you don’t find a lot of conservatism going on, which is why the movement now is so oriented against a third party, it’s gotta be to once again do what Reagan did and take over and get the Republican Party to be a dominant conservative party. That’s what has to happen here. As they say, it’s nut-cracking time. We’re at that point now, and we’ve been playing nice and trying to play by the rules and they don’t. I find it fascinating to listen to how they think it’s the exact opposite. I’m always amazed by that. Look, I appreciate the call. Thanks much.