RUSH: So I took a gander at the Rush 24/7 e-mail. I’m stunned at how fatalistic people are. I am stunned at how negative, defeatist, and — you wouldn’t believe the number of people, “Rush, she’s right. You don’t have a ground game to keep up with their fraud. You gotta tell people to get out there every day.” What have I been doing?
You ever heard of FreedomWorks? The Freedom Connector? How many times, I practically say it in my sleep, you want to do more than vote, you want to — people always ask this — how many times have I talked about this? You want to do more than vote, you want to answer phones, you want to get together with people in your neighborhood, in your community, who want to do more, you want to find out who they are, go to the FreedomWorks website, FreedomConnector.com. Largest Tea Party group out there, doing everything they can to get people involved.
I have told people repeatedly, when you see somebody standing in line at the grocery store, somebody you don’t know, tell ’em to vote, tell ’em who to vote for, tell ’em why. I just happen to believe that optimism is a much better way to inspire and motivate people than fatalism is. I can just tell you this. When I’m around a bunch of defeated fatalists I turn it off and I run the other way. I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to even talk to them. I don’t want them dragging me down to wherever it is they live. How did Ronald Reagan motivate? Yeah, he was constantly negative, constantly fatalistic, he was always warning people. The thing about Reagan, he was optimistic, he had good cheer.
“Yeah, well, these are different times, Rush.”
Yeah, they’re different times, they’re our times. But there are certain aspects of human nature that don’t change. I’m also not gonna look good news in the face and not believe it. I just don’t do this. I’m not a person who is afraid of success. I never have been. I’m not somebody that says that success happening to me is not deserved and then proceed to destroy it. I’m also not dishonest. So I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that I think all is lost until I think it is.
But I tell you, reading some of the e-mail, I can’t believe how many people think it’s over, we have no choice, because of all the fraud, because of the media, because how much they’re gonna cheat, the Democrats are so much better than we are, the Republican establishment’s not in the game, they don’t care, it’s only the Tea Party. How did 2010 happen? There was nobody organizing anything in 2010. How did it happen? A bunch of people who weren’t gonna put up with it anymore. I think you’d be amazed at the number of self-starters there are in this country.
One thing that’s always amazed me about people on our side is they think they’re in a vacuum. They’ll watch the news, they’ll see media bias, think nobody else sees it, think everybody else is fooled by it. They’re out working answering phones or knocking on doors, think nobody else is, they’re the only one doing it. They gotta get everybody else involved. Things are not optimal here. I could list the things that all of us wish we could improve on, but we can’t improve on any of them. There are certain things we’re stuck with here and there are certain things that we have to make the best of. There are other things that can be changed or can be worked on. And those are being worked on.
But it’s not in my nature to come in here and start bleeding on all of you and tell you how, “Oh, woe, is us. Oh, geez, they’re better than we are. Oh, I don’t think we have much of a chance, oh, this or that.” It’s just not my nature. I’m not consumed with negativism or fatalism or defeatism. I’m very uncomfortable even faking it to make a point for fear that people are gonna believe me. I don’t even want to go there. One thing I know is, it is easy to be fatalistic. It is easy to be negative. It is easy to be defeatist.
Nobody has to write a book to tell you how to do any of that. Nobody has to write a book to tell you how to fail. We all know how to do that. But the guys that write books on the power of positive thinking become multimillionaires, because it’s hard. The people that write books on how to be successful and make a lot of money, because it’s hard. It’s not something that apparently comes naturally. Not everybody is oriented towards it. It’s much easier to be pessimistic. When you’re pessimistic you can explain away a lot of things. Being optimistic also requires a commitment. By the same token, people who are falsely optimistic, who refuse to see reality, and there’s a term for people like this: rose-colored glasses. That irritates me just as much as the people on the other side.
If you want me to tell you that I don’t see how we have a chance here, folks, the deck is so stacked against us, I’m sorry, I can’t do that. That’s not how I feel about this. It’s not what I think about it. This is why I make a big deal out of the fact that I am the mayor of Realville. And that’s also a place with a small population. That’s why I could be elected mayor. There aren’t any other voters. I’m it. But I don’t understand why, when there are reasons for optimism, you want to ignore ’em. I totally understand the psychology of, “Well, Rush, it’s better to play from two points behind.”
I don’t know anybody who thinks this is in the can. I don’t know anybody who thinks this is in the bag. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t care about it. I don’t know anybody who thinks this is over and that we’re winning it. I don’t know anybody who’s decided to forget it because it’s over, we’re winning. I don’t know anybody. All I know is people who care about this more than anything they’ve ever cared about in their lives. Starting in 2009 when the guy was inaugurated, it peaked in 2010. In fact, I don’t think it has peaked. I don’t know what’s changed from 2010 to today, in terms of the things that turned people out in 2010, the things that scared them, the things they opposed, what’s changed? It’s only gotten worse.
The architects of the disaster have only kept doing the same things that got everybody scared and angry in the first place. The debt is higher. The number of people in poverty is higher. The number of people on food stamps is higher. Unemployment has not improved. There hasn’t been any improvement. I don’t understand why it’s automatically concluded, then, that people are getting lazy. But I can tell you this. When it comes to motivating and inspiring people, I think optimism does far more than pessimism does. Pessimism, by definition, is defeatism, and with defeatism comes loss and a feeling of there’s nothing you can do, so why do anything? Optimism creates just the exact opposite. It’s gotta be genuine and real. But there are reasons for that. And there are also reasons for concern. And I don’t know anybody who’s taking anything for granted here.
I am a little alarmed at how much fatalism there apparently is, I understand it, but I think there’s plenty of evidence to suggest we don’t need to be fatalistic. The media doesn’t win every time. The Democrats don’t win every time. And even if they do cheat every time, they don’t get away with it every time. In fact, we’re making great inroads. This James O’Keefe guy and his Project Veritas exposing all this. There’s progress being made. I just don’t understand why people want to sit out there and be consumed with stuff that’s gonna make you miserable. We only get one life. You gotta try to enjoy as much of it as you can while accepting the responsibilities and rigors of life at the same time.
(interruption)
Well, that’s the point. Snerdley said, “How much of it is just worry because the stakes are so high?” That’s my exact point. There are people scared to death for their lives and scared to death for their freedom. They’re scared to death for everything that it stands for to be an American. They’re scared to death that’s all on the line. Exactly right.
So how does that translate into people getting overconfident and thinking it’s over and not working hard? I think it’s just the exact opposite. But those are not the fatalists. The fatalists are the people who think there’s no hope. There’s no way we can overcome any of this, that we have already lost our freedom and we’re never getting it back. And if you want to… There are some people who are comforted by that in ways I don’t understand psychologically.
But there are people who find a common link to people who feel the same way. It’s somewhat comforting. Look, I learned this early on in my career. I could easily find, with no trouble whatsoever, people who had failed in this business and would tell me I was going to, too. I had no problems finding people to tell me I didn’t have a chance. I had no problems finding people to tell me I wasn’t good enough.
I had no problems finding people who were jealous and envious. Whatever the reason, I had no problem. They were all over the place. People that had failed and thought the business was unfair. “Don’t get into it, Rush.” People who liked me said, “Don’t get into it. It’s gonna chew you up and spit you out. It’s not fair! I’ve given it my best shot. You don’t have a prayer. Even if you succeed in it, it’s still bad.”
I said, “How am I gonna learn from this?” I found people who had succeeded at it. I found people who loved it like I did, and I hung around them. And those are the people I used as role models, or at least if they did offer advice, it was that advice I listened to. But what point was there in listening to people who told me I had no chance or that the business was unfair, and because they had failed, everybody else was gonna fail?
There was no attraction to that. I just have never been drawn to it. It’s never been a magnet to me. But I understand. I also talked to some people who write financial newsletters. The best thing in the world for subscriptions is a story they can write that says the world is ending tomorrow. “‘The Financial Collapse is Next Week — Here’s how you can protect yourself!’ I goose my subscriptions with that.”
I understand how all this works, and so I understand there are people that will profit from this. They profit from the fatalism, profit from the negativism. They do any number of things. That’s why I’ve always just retreated into being as real as I can. I don’t come up with phony controversies. I don’t play games with you psychologically. I also have a great respect for your intelligence.
I think you understand what’s at stake, which is one of the reasons why I approach all of you the way I do every day. I don’t think that you are a bunch of idiots that don’t see what’s going on, that the wool is being pulled over your eyes and there are bogeymen here and bogeymen there. You know what’s up. You know the score. That’s why you’re here. So I didn’t intend to sound dismissive or insulting of our first caller.
But she was obviously not happy with what she was hearing from me.
She was not pleased with my attitude.
I said, “Well, how do you want me to behave? What do you want me to do?” And the things that she suggested that I do are things I’ve been doing every day. “Spread the word, word-of-mouth. If you’re in line, if you want to do more than vote, here’s a way to find people in your community who are doing that. They’re finding out how they can secure support.” The number of times I’ve talked about “grassroots” and how you could be a part of it?
If that had been the word in a drinking game for people listening to this program, there would be a lot of people dying from alcohol poisoning by now.
I’ve got the audio sound bites from CBS covering up for the president, covering up. Another thing we do here: We expose the fraud that’s on the left every day so that you know what we’re up against. But it doesn’t… To me, it doesn’t depress me or defeat me. To me it’s enlightening. It’s education, information. “Okay, here’s how they operate and here’s a way to combat them,” which is another thing that we’ve been doing here for coming on now 25 years.
So sit tight. We’ll come back and we’ll squeeze all this in. We got a full boat now. How many fatalists have called in? How many pessimists? (interruption) I’m not saying this with any… (interruption) Okay, but… (interruption) Okay, I’m just saying. Understand, I’m not saying this in a challenging or disrespectful way. I was just asking you, without looking at the board myself.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: There’s also, ladies and gentlemen, in the number of e-mails at the Rush 24/7 subscriber e-mail account… In those that I’ve checked, there seems to be — and I didn’t get a whole lot of e-mails read in the limited time I had here. There seems to be an opinion that the “hype” surrounding Romney is not real, that the mainstream media is hyping all this Romney momentum, but there really isn’t any.
And that the mainstream media is doing this to create a false sense of security on the part of Romney voters so that they’ll think it’s over and then maybe stay home and not vote, even, in addition to not getting out and working hard ’cause they think election’s in the bag. I’m sorry. I don’t know anybody who thinks that. I don’t know anybody. I don’t know one person who doesn’t want to vote. Forget the early voting and absentee voting.
I don’t know one person who doesn’t wish the election were today!
I don’t know one person. People can’t wait to vote and get this over with. I don’t know one lazy person. I don’t know anybody feeling overconfident, disinterested. It is new. I’m not aware that people think the media is “hyping” all of this Romney momentum and that it isn’t real, but when I examine the polls… (sigh) I can only tell you, they seem to make no sense to me. Like yesterday, we went through every poll.
Romney is up double-digits in independents. We’re told independents are where you win election by Republican and Democrat consultants. Political policies. Every four years: “Forget the 40% that vote Democrat and forget the 40% that vote Republican. That 20% in the middle, that’s where the election is won!” You’ve heard it. You know it. You hear it every four years; I’ve heard it every four years for my whole life. Okay?
So I look at these polls, and in independents Romney’s up 10, plus 11, plus 13, plus 19, plus 16, plus 8. The swing of independents to Romney is profound in these polls. The gender gap has closed. It doesn’t exist anymore. Romney and Obama are tied in women. The regime is out today saying, “Don’t believe those polls. Any poll that show Romney and Obama tied with women is a poll that can’t be believed. I wouldn’t take that poll to Vegas save my life.”
These people are obsessed with Vegas.
So now they don’t like the poll. The gender gap is gone, Romney’s plus double digits with independents, and yet in every one of these polls Obama’s down two, down one, or even ahead one or two. Sorry, it doesn’t make sense to me, and when it doesn’t make sense I just tell you. It doesn’t make sense. We got a guy running for reelection on what? “Trust me! Trust what I say! The other guy is a bulls—ter. The other guy is a liar.
“The other guy is just making it up! Romney is just lying to you. Trust me. Trust what I say.”
I’m about ready to produce a bunch of series of lies, Obama. You want some trust, buddy? Well, what did you tell us the unemployment number was gonna be about now? What did you tell us was gonna happen because of the stimulus? What about all these wonderful, great things? The sea levels falling, the planet healing, the world is gonna love us, all this other rotgut stuff that you promised? Bull… Bull whatever. He owns it. Obama owns it!
He’s the architect of it all.
My friends, we knock it out of the park here each and every day, and that’s what I am going to continue to do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Lerline in Lewes, Delaware. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush, for taking my call. It’s a privilege to speak with you. You’re my lifeline for so many years, that I don’t even want to tell you how many it is. I called because of I was concerned about Pam from Texas. She’s supposed to be working a campaign. You know, if she’s listening to your show and she’s seeing the numbers, I don’t quite get it, do you?
RUSH: You’re talking about the woman —
CALLER: Yeah, the first caller you had today. She really upset me because she’s so negative. I mean, the numbers are good.
RUSH: She said that I wasn’t being realistic — that I was being too positive, optimistic, and causing maybe overconfidence — and that I needed to urge people to vote. She said that the Democrats have a much better ground game than we do and they’re out there. They could steal the election and I wasn’t pushing people enough to work hard in the grassroots, or something like that. That’s who you’re talking about?
CALLER: Yeah. I don’t know what else you can do. I mean, you keep everybody informed. Between you and Fox, if she’s watching Fox and she’s listening to you, you know, I don’t know what her problem is as far as being negative and saying that you’re not doing your best because you are.
RUSH: No. I wasn’t negative enough, is the way I heard it.
CALLER: (laughs)
RUSH: I was being too optimistic, and being too optimistic was making people perhaps too overconfident. That was her concern. And when you get overconfident, when you think something’s in the bag, you stop working hard. And she was afraid that my attitude might result in people becoming overconfident and not man phone banks, not get out the vote, not do grassroots-type work to secure victory.
CALLER: Well, in my opinion you’re doing a great job.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that.
CALLER: And I tell you, I wanted to jump up when you had Gina on the phone! I wanted to jump up and say, “Right on!” I wanted to jump up, but I’m not healthy enough to do that. (chuckles)
RUSH: She was great. There’s no question.
CALLER: She was really great. I mean, and the way she said that they were helping elderly people get down so they could hear Romney speak? He does have a plan, and he’s concerned about our economy and he loves seniors.
RUSH: Well, I agree. You know, but it’s only recently… I’m gonna get in trouble for this. It’s only recently that this has become about Romney. This has always been about Obama, starting in the 2010 midterms. It’s always been about Obama. It’s Obama who’s firing everybody up. What more do I need to do when we got Obama out there?
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