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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: I mean look at this. The Republican Party — look at me — the Republican Party was dead twenty months ago, dead. They were in full surrender. They were lamenting they may have to become a regional party. They were all worried we don’t have any Republicans in the Northeast, oh, no, might have to become a regional party. Our conservative intelligentsia and the media suggesting that we need to really listen to the American people. ‘The American people want big government. They just want it responsible. We better listen to ’em. We better understand they want more Social Security. We had people on our side saying this. We better understand it, where the people of America are, they want big government, they want an energized executive running big government efficiently, that’s where it is. Twenty months ago that was being said.

I, El Rushbo, refuse to accept those terms, that we were dead, that the American people wanted big government. I’m telling you, some of the most reputedly intelligent people on our side — David Frum is one of them, Ross Douthat, writes for the New York Times, Brooks at the New York Times, you know, the usual crowd. They were saying, ‘Hey, you know what, we may have to shrink the regional party. This era of Reagan is over. The American people want big government. They want an energized executive. They want us in charge of it, though. They want efficiency; they want more Medicare; they want more Social Security,’ twenty months ago. This is where their brains were telling us we had to go to save ourselves, twenty months ago. But I, El Rushbo, refused to buy into it. I refused to believe that’s what the American people were saying with the election of Obama. I refused to believe that a majority of the American people want big government, want more Medicare, want more debt, want more Social Security, they just want it run by Republicans and that this is the new conservatism, the era of Reagan is over? I mean that was insane. It wasn’t just stupid. But it was passed off as brilliance.

So what happened? Well, we refused to accept defeat, you and me. We insisted on following conservative principles as the only way back, and now look where we are. Sixty percent want big government repealed, health care. Sixty percent want this whole agenda repealed. Nowhere near a majority of the American people want big government, just Republicans in charge of it. In fact, that’s one of the reasons Republicans got shellacked in 2006, ’cause people did not want — in their own party, Republicans did not want big spending, big government, big Washington party. Back in March of 2009, TIME Magazine ran a cover story: ‘Is the GOP Party Over?’ It was by Michael Grunwald and it featured the same kind of thinking as I just recounted for you. The defeat or the loss of Arlen Specter suggested the end of the Republican Party. If the Republican Party cannot welcome someone like Colin Powell or Arlen Specter, then it really doesn’t exist. That’s just twenty months ago. The elites, the people who consider themselves to be in the ruling class on our side. Many of them are mere wannabes, but they do consider themselves nevertheless the ruling class of the elites.

Look at where we are: the Democrats are on the run. Many of them will not even use the word ‘Democrat’ next to their own names. Nobody is campaigning on the notion that Americans want a bigger government. Nobody. Now, I can understand if a bunch of liberal intellectuals were telling us this, I could understand if it was Doris Kearns Goodwin telling us this or Robert B. Reichhhh, or somebody from MoveOn.org. But people on our side, ostensibly, telling us that they’ve read the tea leaves and the people of the country, not just Republicans, people of the country want big government now, that’s what all these elections are telling us. That was the new conservatism: era of Reagan is over. Twenty months ago. Twenty months ago. You and I refused to act as lemmings and fall in line with this malarkey.

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