RUSH: This silly talk now from the Republicans, “Well, we gotta change the way we view Hispanics and the immigration issue.” Right, right. The Democrats, the Democrats are gonna give us some of their voters, right? They’re just gonna sit idly by and watch us change our policy on immigration and magically some of these immigrants are gonna vote Republican when they get here because of what the Republicans’ verbiage changes will be? It’s silly to think that this is the way to expand our voter base, to be Democrat-lite. The Democrats are out there, “You Republicans, you are so mean-spirited and cold-hearted. You’re going to have to change your ways with Hispanics.” Oh, really? You want us to improve with Hispanics, right? You Democrats really want to help us improve with all these groups that are voting for you; is that right? It’s bogus.

They have no intention, because here’s the bottom line. The Democrats can always and will always find an extreme position to take that the Republicans will eventually draw the line and say, “Sorry, we can’t go there,” and that will enable the Democrats to once again say, “See? They’re anti-Hispanic. See, they’re anti-Latino. See, they’re anti-immigration.” There is not one social issue that we can take away from them. Let’s look at abortion. I give you just as an example, abortion. Let’s say that the Republican powers-that-be think, “You know what? The single women vote, we’re gonna have to relax our views on contraceptives and abortion. We’re gonna have to do it very publicly.”

So a bunch of Republicans go out and start saying this. However they say it, they try to convey that they are moderating and they can understand why it might make sense for the federal government to demand that employers provide birth control pills. “Yeah, we can see where this might be necessary.” So the Democrats, you think they’re just gonna let us run in and take over that voting segment? They’ll come up with some new idea on contraception or some new idea on abortion like making partial-birth abortion as legal as any other abortion. They’ll come up with something that we will say, “Sorry, we can’t support that,” and then the claims start anew. Anti-woman, anti-Hispanic, anti-immigration.

My point is that the Republicans are never going to succeed in having the Democrats and the media stop characterizing them the way they’re characterized now. There is nothing the Republicans can do to stop the Democrats and the media from calling us racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes. There’s nothing. They’re going to do it no matter what. Look at this polling data. Ninety percent of voters believe that the middle class pay a higher tax rate than the rich. Why do they believe it? Because Warren Buffett went out and said how crazy it was that he pays a smaller rate, lower rate than his secretary. That’s all it took, Obama amplifying it.

So my point is ultimately that the Republicans are worried about what is said about them, and they’re trying to come up with policy changes that will stop people from saying these things about them, because it is people saying these things that causes others to believe them and think them, so that Republicans think we gotta stop them saying this about us. So we’ll relax what we say about abortion and we’ll relax what we say about contraception and immigration, and then the Democrats will stop saying these horrible things. No, they won’t.

So winning these voters is going to be much more than semantics. Winning those voters, if that’s what the Republicans want to do, they want to peel off some of the Hispanic voting bloc and some of the single women under 30, they’re not gonna be able to do it by going on TV and, say, criticizing me or others that they think are too strident, they’re not gonna be able to do it by going on TV and saying, “We need to moderate our tone. We need to moderate our view.” They’re not gonna be able to do it by proposing legislation. In 1984, Ronald Reagan reelected, landslide, 37% of the Hispanic vote. Two years later, Reagan signs amnesty, Simpson-Mazzoli, 1986. Two more years, 1988, two years after signing amnesty to get the Hispanic vote, George Bush runs for reelection, as a Republican, as an open borders guy, got 30% of the Hispanic vote.

We lost Hispanic votes after being the impetus for amnesty. How does that work? Why didn’t we just show all those Hispanics we want them here. Why, we granted them all amnesty. Why didn’t they all vote for us? Not only did they not all vote for us, fewer of them voted for us after amnesty than before. Why? Well, go back to what the Democrats were saying. And they were saying that even after amnesty, that Republicans really didn’t mean it, that it was just a token move, that they’re still anti-immigrant, they’re still racist, sexist, all of this stuff. You cannot, as a Republican or conservative, adopt liberal policy or liberal-lite policy and peel off some of their voters.

You’re gonna have to get to these people before they become Democrat voters or we’re gonna have to come up with ways to peel ’em off using other tactics. Now, I know what the other tactic is, and it’s something the Republican Party is reticent to use: called conservatism. For some reason they don’t like it. You know the Republican Party, since Ronald Reagan, has nominated one candidate who was pro-Reagan since 1980. You know who it was? McCain. Every Republican nominated since Reagan was not a Reaganite, did not espouse Reaganism. Distanced themselves from Reagan, in fact. Kinder, gentler America, compassionate conservatism. McCain was the only genuine Reaganite, but he had other problems.

Conservatism is the answer to this. It always has been. It’s not liberalism-lite. It’s not sounding like ’em; it’s not acting like them; it’s not doing what they tell us we should do.