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Why a Conservative Voted for Obama

by Rush Limbaugh - Oct 23,2012

RUSH: Billings, Montana. Mary, I’m glad you called. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush! I am so honored to speak to you.

RUSH: Thank you very much. Same here.

CALLER: I’m a first-time caller. I raised a Rush Baby who is now in college, and I now have a Rush foster baby.

RUSH: Wow.

CALLER: Maybe your first publicly identified Rush foster baby.

RUSH: God bless you.

CALLER: She’s fighting your battle at her senior high school every day.

RUSH: God bless you, madam! God bless you.

CALLER: (giggles)

RUSH: I really appreciate your saying that. Thank you so much.

CALLER: I have to confess, I voted for Obama in 2008.

RUSH: Okay. Next call! Who do we have. Let’s see… Where are we going?

CALLER: (giggling)

RUSH: Just kidding.

CALLER: (giggling) I know! I know! It was the first time I’ve ever voted for a Democrat for president.

RUSH: Tell me why. Tell me why and be honest. There’s no criticism.

CALLER: (giggling)

RUSH: Nobody’s gonna criticize you. Why did you do it?

CALLER: I was disgusted with the Republican Party because it kept nominating fiscal moderates. I believe George H. W. Bush was not fiscally conservative. I believe George W. Bush was not fiscally conservative. And then along comes McCain, and you know he’s not a fiscal conservative. And then he picked Sarah Palin, who — although I think she is a very good conservative voice — I don’t think she was ready to be commander-in-chief by any stretch. I thought it was premature for her to come to that public stage at that time. And at that point I thought the nominees of my party were not conservative.

RUSH: Did you think Obama was?

CALLER: No. But I thought, “If we’re gonna let a liberal program run this country, let’s put a name on it that matches the program,” and it was a liberal — or at least a moderate — program. So let the Democrats own it, because right now they do own it and Obama has done such a thoroughly horrible job —

RUSH: Let me… I want to make sure I understand. Was part of your thinking, “Look, as long as we’re gonna elect a liberal Democrat, let’s go hog wild and let’s have them own it. Let’s show the country what it’s going to be like with these people running the show”?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Was that part of your thinking?

CALLER: That is my entire thinking right in a nutshell. Good job. Yes.

RUSH: Do you realize how close you came to participating in the destruction of this country?

CALLER: Well, sometimes you have to grab the American public by the lapels and say, “Do you really want to give everything you earn at work away to people who choose not to work?”

RUSH: Do you think that is why Obama is having trouble now, ’cause people have figured out that he is not good for them economically?

CALLER: Well, hell yeah! He’s not good for me.

RUSH: Let me ask you this. What impact…? What impact, if any…? Have you always been for Romney in this campaign?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Okay. Never mind, then. I was gonna ask you what impact did Romney’s first debate performance have on you, but like I thought. You’ve been all-in for whoever the Republican nominee is ’cause no more liberalism, no more Obama, doesn’t matter. You’re all-in with the Tea Party for all intents and purposes, we can’t handle this anymore, right?

CALLER: We can’t. We cannot allow four more years of this, because we are headed toward the same kind of fate as Greece. There aren’t enough people that work like myself to support and carry every who’s not working. I mean, look: 47 million people on food stamps, as opposed to, what, 30-some million before?


RUSH: Right. Twenty-three million people are not working. The labor force participation rate shrinks weekly. One out of every six Americans is in poverty, and Obama wants to take even more money away from the remaining members of the workforce.

CALLER: I’m a single mom. I am hardly making it on my own, and it’s hard to do it. I can’t see another four years like the last four years.

RUSH: Do you have any guilt over what you did?

CALLER: I absolutely do not, because we had to bring America to (scoffs) a sobering moment to say, “I’m conservative, damn it, and I’m proud of it, and I want conservative fiscal policy!”

RUSH: You think that your vote — which helped elect this disaster. You think your vote ultimately has saved America by educating and informing enough Americans of exactly what they’re gonna get with guys like Obama and the rest of the Democrat Party? Is that what you think?

CALLER: I think so. I hated to do it. My parents didn’t talk to me for three weeks after I told them I voted for Obama. (giggles) But I thought, “This country has to be ready to embrace fiscal conservatism again because we haven’t been proud of it since Reagan. We have not embraced it or fought for it.”

RUSH: Do you think Romney is a fiscal conservative?

CALLER: I think he has come to that belief and realization. I don’t think he was there four years ago, but I am very much in confidence and hope that he believes it now because he’s a smart man. He’s a smart businessman. He sees what’s happening in Europe. I believe he has come to the same points that a lot of Americans have that we have to get our fiscal house in order or we will sink like the rest of these countries we’ve seen over the last year or so. We’ll just fall apart.

RUSH: Or worse.

CALLER: Or worse.

RUSH: I actually think —

CALLER: We’re the last bastion. If we don’t do it —

RUSH: I actually think if this guy gets reelected… That thought scares me like I haven’t been scared before. It really, really, really does.

CALLER: I hope everybody’s as scared as you and I are.

RUSH: I think more people than we realize are. Well, Mary I appreciate the call, appreciate your honesty here. You called here and you willingly admitted culpability.

CALLER: (wild giggling)

RUSH: And you did so with great aplomb and even confidence. You have great pride in what you’ve helped bring about here. Your hope is —

CALLER: It had to happen! It had to happen. I mean, too many Republicans apologize for wanting conservative fiscal policy, and we gotta stop apologizing for that, and I think we’re there now.

RUSH: Well, that’s yet to be seen, but we’re on the right road in that regard. Look, I don’t want to go there now. I’m gonna do that after the election, but there are challenges. Mary, let me just tell you one thing about that, ’cause I don’t want to be accused of teasing. So let’s do hypothetically. If Romney wins — and it’s the reason I asked you the question — if Romney wins, there will be a competition in the Republican Party for people who want to take credit for it. Basically you’re going to have two factions. One faction will be the Republican establishment, which will say their strategy of moderation, cooperation, reaching across the aisle, not scaring the independents, Romney’s first debate performance, that’s what did it.

The other faction will be the Tea Party and conservatives who will say, “If you guys don’t wake up and realize that what won this election for you is this far-left agenda of the Democrat Party scaring this country to the point that people didn’t want any more of it, if you don’t realize what that means, you’re gonna have to go back to the 2010 midterms. If you want to understand why Romney won this election, go back to the 2010 midterms. Everything Obama stands for was rejected and there wasn’t a Republican on the ballot then.”

CALLER: That’s right. I agree.

RUSH: But that’s for down the road. That may not even materialize. But if it does, that will be the… you know, even in the best families, there are arguments and there are disagreements, and it’ll be the case here in due course. But if Romney wins, there will still be a lot of work to do. You know, we gotta win the Senate, too.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Mike in Houston, Missouri. It’s great to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. We didn’t need to re-indict Obama last night, and that’s why the prosecutor, Romney, didn’t have to on any other subject but the economy. And November 6th will be the conviction and sentencing.

RUSH: Okay, let me ask you a question. Now, seriously, I’m not trying to put you on the spot; I’m trying to learn. You just said something intriguing to me. You said essentially, he doesn’t need to indict Obama on Benghazi; everybody knows about it.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Well, everybody knows about the economy, too. And we love it when he hammers Obama on the economy. I mean, everybody’s living this economy. Everybody in the world is living this economy. When Obama gets hammered on it, when Romney recites those stats, we stand up and cheer, and that’s what a lot of people wanted to do last night on Benghazi, they wanted to stand up and cheer. We’re talking about four dead Americans here, and Americans, they don’t want the apparent result that Obama’s getting away with it. Your opinion is that he’s not getting away with it, everybody knows that Romney didn’t need to go there.

CALLER: Rush, this president’s done enough to have been impeached two or three different times, and we know after the last episode that November 6th is when he will be impeached.

RUSH: In a manner of speaking.

CALLER: In a manner of speaking.

RUSH: In a manner of speaking.

CALLER: In a manner of speaking.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: But thank God we have that ability to get someone like this out of office.

RUSH: Yeah, but along with it, the opportunity to put him in office. The people that put him in office are as scary as he is. Except they’re coming around now. You know, there were a lot of people — that caller we had who voted for Obama, she was just fed up with the GOP. She was not even voting for Obama. She was just protesting. She’d had it with W, and McCain comes along, and, folks, we all know, I mean, that was a stinker, that was a hold your nose and pull the lever. She said, “To hell with it.”

There are a lot of people that voted for Obama because they thought it was historical, first black president. A lot of people voted for him because they bought into this “never had anybody like this” so we’re gonna get rid of all the problems. Regardless of what the reasons were, that’s the context you have to look at Obama today in, 2008. He doesn’t measure up in any way. In not a single way does Obama remind anybody of who he pretended to be and who they told us he was in 2008. That’s what he can’t overcome, and he doesn’t have an economic record he can tout. Mike here is right. He’s been indicted by the American people already.