RUSH: Here’s Tim in Champaign, Illinois. I’m glad you called, sir. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Sir, it’s an honor. I just wanted to call and thank you. About three years ago I found you and you kind of opened my mind and educated me on the whole process. I was a Democrat since I was able to vote. I voted for Gore, Kerry, and I am sorry about this, but I voted for Obama. But today I want to say that I’m proud and I voted for Mitt Romney.
RUSH: Well, that’s encouraging news. Why were you a Democrat? There’s no wrong answer here. I’m just curious. What was it?
CALLER: I grew up in a Democratic family. I grew up in Chicago. My mom worked for Democrats. She worked for a couple aldermen out there, mayor, and —
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah.
CALLER: — I just kind of got brainwashed with the whole Democratic Party thing, thinking that the Republicans were for the rich and they were the bogeyman and et cetera, et cetera. And I kind of fell into that trap that, you know, you were the bogeyman, not to listen to you. In ’08 when I voted for Obama, I kind of fell into that whole —
RUSH: Were you listening — let me ask — I don’t mean to make this about me, but I’m genuinely curious for professional reasons. Were you listening to me in 2008?
CALLER: Kind of on and off. Not too much. I didn’t give you too much credit or whatnot. I believed the old Democrat thing that you were a bad man, lying, all this.
RUSH: When you did hear me in 2008 during the campaign critical of Obama and warning about Obama, you just ignored it, rejected it, or thought that I was full of it, something like that?
CALLER: Pretty much the whole thing. I just rejected the whole thing. I was like, Obama’s a good man. He’s gonna give us hope and change, et cetera. I voted for him, and after about a year, you know —
RUSH: And you were mad at me for not seeing that about Obama? Or were you mad at me that I was saying such —
CALLER: No, I wasn’t mad. To each his own. It was your own opinion. I just ignored it. I thought you were completely wrong. Like I said, I was brainwashed, so I was in that Obama phase where —
RUSH: Well then what was it that I said — and I’m not trying to make this about me, there are professional reasons for asking this. What was it that I said that reached you?
CALLER: Basically you started telling the truth, and I started realizing, “Hey, you’re not lying –“
RUSH: But I always was telling the truth.
CALLER: Yeah, I understand, but —
RUSH: What made you start hearing it?
CALLER: Just a lot of the actions that Obama was doing, you know, after he got voted in everything he was doing, and then it coincided with what you were saying.
RUSH: This is important. I didn’t talk you out of anything. Obama exposed himself as the fraud?
CALLER: True.
RUSH: See? This is why I was asking. I didn’t talk you out of anything. Obama was not what he was said to be.
CALLER: No, he wasn’t.
RUSH: He was not what he said he was gonna be. He was not what the media said he was gonna be, and you saw that.
CALLER: Yeah, and the bad thing about it is, you know, at the time I didn’t see, I didn’t much care for Bush, but our finances were fine at the time with me and my wife ’cause we’re middle class, and since Obama’s taken over, me and my wife are essentially living paycheck to paycheck. We’re paying higher for fuel, higher for efficiencies, our gas and all that, higher for food. His presidency has taken a real huge toll on our finances.
RUSH: To me it is totally reasonable, totally understandable why you would hate Bush. A, you’re born a Democrat, you’re raised a Democrat, and during that period of time, the media is doing nothing but dumping on Bush for five years straight. Bush’s lying, Bush is this, Bush is Hitler, counting the number of deaths in Iraq. If you’re a Democrat, you couldn’t help hating Bush.
CALLER: Oh, yeah. And like I said, I had a closed mind. I wouldn’t open myself up to listen to you until after Obama, and then after that, I found you and Hannity and Levin and, you know, started realizing, “Hey, these guys are telling the truth, you know, they’re not just out here making Obama out to be a bad man.”
RUSH: Right, but what made that happen was that somehow you saw through Obama. Obama revealed himself to be unlike what you thought he was when you voted for him.
CALLER: Yeah, absolutely. And I just wish some of the people I knew who —
RUSH: My point is, you’re not the only one to whom this has happened.
CALLER: No. And like I said, I just wish some of the other people would realize that. You know, over the years my mind has been opened up by what he’s done.
RUSH: Well, we’ll see how many have. I don’t think you’re alone by any stretch of the imagination.
CALLER: Well, like I said, I am proud today. I went and I did cast my vote for Mitt Romney. I’m not ashamed to say that. You know, hopefully tonight he’ll be the president and we can move forward.
RUSH: I can’t imagine how you feel. I mean, I know you feel liberated and happy. But for myself, I can’t imagine this happening to me the other way around. I can’t imagine somebody opening my eyes and, for example, making me vote Obama. For this to happen to these people — I mean these people that voted for Obama were committed for one reason or another. This could be big.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, from The Politico, it is more blame in advance if Obama loses. This time it’s the youth vote was ignored. If Obama loses, Rock the Vote, youth vote, was ignored. The story, in a nutshell, is that whoever runs Rock the Vote says, nationally, most young people have been ignored by both campaigns and the youth enthusiasm just wasn’t what it should have been.
Well, folks, we got a major problem here. I was watching earlier before the program started and that loco weed, Van Jones, was on CNN, and they asked him, “What’s gonna be the difference in the election today, Van?” And Van just said, (paraphrasing) “The youth vote, you watch, that’s what nobody’s talking about, the youth vote. They’re gonna come out in bigger numbers even than in 2008 for Obama.” And here Rock the Vote says nobody’s paying attention to us. (laughing) There’s no enthusiasm in the youth vote.
I’ve heard plenty of anecdotal evidence, stories that college professors have said their students couldn’t care less this year, compared to 2008. They’re just not into it. This last guy that called, the longtime Democrat, voted for Obama, did you hear what Realville was for him? Realville for him: gas prices, the economy, living paycheck to paycheck. Did you hear what he said? He said he hated Bush, but the economy was okay then. The economy was okay then. He thought Obama was gonna make it better, but it’s gotten worse. Those are real-life things. And that coupled with the bloom came off the Obama rose and then that mixed with the fact that he was finally hearing things uttered by me and others that started to make sense to him when combined with all the other things he was thinking and feeling.
But I was telling Snerdley and everybody during the break, we hear from Democrats on this program all the time who say that they’re former Democrats now and they’ve been listening to this show for a long time and they finally switched. They call here and they’re very happy about it, which is great. I’m not trying to impugn that at all. Don’t misunderstand. Snerdley, I think, misunderstood the point I was making, and I don’t want you to. See, I can’t imagine that happening to me. There’s nothing that anybody could say, and there’s nothing that could happen, short of Obama doing a 180 and becoming a different guy, that would make me support him. It would just never happen, because conservatism is an intellectual pursuit, and it results from an attachment to the founding of the country and to the notion of freedom and liberty and the role of government and that whole equation.
It’s not a popularity contest to me. It’s not about who looks better or who makes me feel better. Well, that’s not entirely true. Reagan made a lot of people feel good about being Americans again. So that does matter. But I could never imagine that happening to me. And we hear about it frequently on this program, Democrats giving it up, chucking it and becoming conservatives, or Republicans. And it’s a major thing, is my point. It’s not an insignificant thing when that happens. I’ll never forget after the 2002 midterms, when the Democrats thought, because of history, that they were gonna pick up seats. They hated Bush, they were just starting in on their opposition of Bush on the way he was handling 9/11, and the Republicans gained seats in the 2002 midterms. Tom Daschle at the time was the majority leader of the Democrats in the Senate, and he blabbed something he shouldn’t have said.
The Democrats were really rocked by that election. And that was the election where the exit polls showed that value voters made the difference. So the Democrats were all out there saying, “Well, we’re gonna become value guys. We’re gonna pay very close attention to values,” blah, blah. And Daschle said, “Our experts told us that it’s not just Republicans who listen to Rush Limbaugh. There are Democrats who listen to Rush Limbaugh, and they change their minds. And we are very concerned.” And it’s ever since then that their efforts to impugn and discredit me have really ratcheted up.
Can any of you imagine, of just changing your mind and becoming an Obama voter? I don’t think there are very many Republicans in this election that are gonna vote for Obama. The CNN poll said 99% of all Republicans votes are going to Romney, 1% are gonna go to Obama.
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