RUSH: Let me tell you what I think, and I’m gonna tell you this in a balanced way — a balanced and fair way. What I think is really going on here is our president, Barack Obama, if you’ll note, really never talks about plans and proposals to solve problems. What he does is position his political opponents as the enemy. Everything he did today in the debt limit Q&A in his press conference, and even in the setup, was about the enemy. The Republicans are the enemy.

He’s not proposing solutions to anything. He’s not interested in solutions. As far as Obama’s concerned, there isn’t a problem, other than the existence of opposition to him. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. The biggest problem to Obama is the existence of opposition. And I’m telling you: I firmly believe everything going on in Washington today — everything inside the Beltway, in the media, in the think tanks, in the halls of Congress, everything — is oriented toward eliminating a viable opposition.

Be it on the radio, be it on television, be it in Congress, wherever.

I think both parties have this goal. I think the Republican establishment is of the same frame of mind as Obama is, that the opposition is conservatives. The opposition is conservatism. And that’s why we’ve had some people ask me, “What was Colin Powell doing?” Colin Powell was on Meet the Press yesterday doing what Scarborough did on MSNBC this morning, which is what a lot of Republicans are doing, and that is criticizing conservatives. Every problem we’ve got, from the gridlock to intransigence to spending, it’s all the fault of conservatives.

And even the Republican establishment agrees with this.

Conservatives nominate losers like Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle, and we gotta stop the conservatives. New York Magazine, the New Yorker, has a piece about how the Democrats are now trying to isolate the South again. Geographically, isolate the South. (That’s where a lot of conservatives are.) So the Democrats, and I think some of the Republican establishment, clearly have that goal. To understand everything happening in Washington, understand that the objective is the elimination of any serious potentially viable political opposition to Barack Obama and the Democrats.

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RUSH: I’m trying to come up with an easy way for everybody to understand what’s going on. For example, when Colin Powell — and I’ve got these sound bites, and I’ve had so many e-mails from people, “What in the world?” I mean, here you have the titular head of the Republican Party going on Meet the Press, accusing the conservatives of being racist, new racists, using racist lingo and so forth, and people are scratching their heads. They know that Powell endorsed Obama, but why is he still a Republican? People are asking me, “Would you explain what Powell’s doing.” It’s not just Powell. It’s every other moderate Republican and the Democrats.

I’m telling you that the way to understand this debt limit thing, for example, the way to understand the fiscal cliff deal, the way to understand anything going on in Washington right now — I mean this from the bottom of my heart — is to understand that the objective, the political objective inside the Beltway is to eliminate any effective opposition to the Democrat Party. And yes, Republican moderates are complicit in this because they, too, dislike conservatives. Republican moderates hold out hope that the Republicans will win the White House again someday, and they will be in charge of all the money. A Republican moderate doesn’t talk about reducing the size of government, doesn’t talk about reducing spending. They just say they’re smarter and better at it, and they won’t go into debt as fast, but the conservatives are the problem.

The conservatives — and the latest example is Richard Mourdock. See, if you let the Tea Party and the conservatives handle this, they’re gonna nominate losers in the primaries. They don’t have any prayer of winning. We had a seat there, the Lugar seat, we lost it because the Tea Party conservatives are a bunch of neophytes and idiots, plus they’re conservative. So the objective, the moderate Republicans — and this isn’t new. I’ve mentioned this to you on previous occasions — really want to eliminate the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Don’t like ’em, pro-lifers, churchgoers, that sort of thing. The Democrats don’t like ’em for different reasons, but they don’t like ’em, don’t like conservatives. And Obama modus operandi is to not have any opposition.

The only remaining serious opposition to what’s happening in the country today resides in the minds and hearts of conservatives. Nowhere else is there any opposition to this. And, therefore, it is the conservatives, wherever they are found, who are the objectives. Eliminating them, reducing their numbers, depressing them, dispiriting them, getting them out of office, humiliating, embarrassing them, caricaturing them, character assassination, whatever it takes. The primary focus is to make sure that whenever a conservative speaks, everybody laughs at him. Whenever a conservative speaks, the reaction, “Oh, listen to that extremist.” Whenever a conservative says anything, “Ah, listen to that racist, that sexist, that bigot.” It’s been set up for quite a while, but there is a real full-court press on this now.

That’s what was happening here in Obama’s presser, the debt limit, he was blaming the Republicans, and he means conservatives for this, but he’ll get rid of the Republican Party, too. The one thing the Republican moderates don’t get is who this guy is. The Republican moderates are really, sadly, a clueless bunch. I don’t think they have the slightest idea of what is happening and what’s not just headed their way, but has hit them already. They don’t see it because they, too, are focused on eliminating as much conservative influence in the party as Obama is.

I mean, you’ve got Colin Powell on TV yesterday saying Republicans did not use to be this way. The GOP looks down on blacks, minorities. Look at the Senate. The only black senator is a Republican. The only two Hispanic senators are Republicans, but here’s Colin Powell saying Republicans look down on minorities. And they’re racists, and they’re using code, dog whistle language now. The titular head of the Republican Party. The Republican that everybody in the media says we all should emulate, Colin Powell, that’s what he went on TV to say yesterday. There’s a real concentrated dislike for conservatism and conservatives. The “why” is easy to understand as well. We’re talking about people that are devoted in their lives to the concept of Big Government, living in it, working in it, controlling it.

Conservatives want to eliminate as much government from people’s daily lives as possible. That makes them the enemy. Makes ’em the political enemy. They’ve got to be nullified. And that is what is happening. That is the way to understand everything. It’s not about policy. It’s not triumphing on policy right now. It’s not finding solutions to problems. It’s not about fair and balanced negotiation or any of that. It’s about eliminating any serious, viable conservative opposition.

Now, I’ve got this story here, and it’s not just in Washington. I have a story here from the New Yorker, by George Packer. “Southern Discomfort: The Political Isolation of the American South,” is the title of this piece. And what this is about is a very approving story from the New Yorker about the attempt here to isolate the South. To make the South an island unto itself, made up of oddballs and kooks and weirdos who have to be ignored, who also have to be defeated.

Here’s a pull quote: “Now the South is becoming isolated again. Every demographic and political trend that helped to reelect Barack Obama runs counter to the regionÂ’s self-definition: the emergence of a younger, more diverse, more secular electorate, with a libertarian bias on social issues and immigration; the decline of the exurban life style, following the housing bust; the class politics, anathema to pro-business Southerners, that rose with the recession; the end of AmericaÂ’s protracted wars, with cuts in military spending bound to come. The Solid South speaks less and less for America and more and more for itself alone.” That’s a pull quote. The Solid South speaks less and less for America and more and more for itself alone. And this is being done by design. They’re trying to isolate the South again because the South is conservative, and it’s not just the New Yorker.

Last week, Salon.com had a story called, “Welcome to the new Civil War — Lincoln’s Unfinished War Rages On, as the Neo-Confederacy Tries to Turn Back the Clock on Women, Gays, God and Guns.” Have you asked yourself why is Hollywood so gaga over Lincoln, the movie? Why is Bill Clinton all of a sudden out there at the Golden Globes last night being brought on stage to thunderous standing ovation to talk about Lincoln and what he did during the Civil War?

What did Lincoln do, as far as these people are concerned? He wiped out the South. But he didn’t finish. According to Salon, he did not finish. “Lincoln’s Unfinished War Rages On…” So what the left is admitting that they are doing today is, once again, trying just finish it off. Lincoln did not fully finish. The South is trying to go back to the old America, which doesn’t exist anymore. They’re turning back the clock on women.

They’re turning back the clock on gays and gay marriage. They’re all focused on God and guns in the South. They love both of them! So the South has to be wiped out again. I’m telling you: Essentially, there is an all-out effort being made to marginalize conservatism, because it’s the last remaining shred of opposition to what most who live in Washington want, both Republicans and Democrats.

There is no effort to solve a problem. There’s no effort to get the deficit under control. There’s no real effort to control spending. We’re going to grant amnesty. We’re going to open the border. We’re going to do all these things the left and Big Government types have wanted to do for the longest time. We’re gonna make moves on guns. They finally got health care done, and now we’re on the march. So wherever there’s opposition to it, we’re gonna take it out.

Of course not by the argument. They can’t take us out via argument. They’ll never win an argument with us on ideas. They’re taking us out via smear. We’re racists, we’re sexists, we’re bigots, we’re whatever. The effort to take conservatives out is being done in the media by caricature, character assassination, impugning the integrity of conservatives. It’s the same thing they did to Romney, folks. And he’s not even a conservative, but he was a Republican who could have won.

So then they finished off Romney. Of the people who voted — it’s an important subgroup of the population. Of the people who voted, 81% thought Barack Obama cared about ’em. Only 19% thought Romney did. They thought Romney didn’t have a problem with a guy’s wife dying of cancer. They thought Romney subjected his dog to pain and suffering on the roof of his car on vacation.

They thought Romney was a felon, that he was hiding money, that he was not sharing money, that he was selfish — is a reprobate. That was the focus of the Obama ad campaign. Obama wasn’t running ads or running a campaign on the supremacy of his ideas. So that’s what’s underway now. You see, if you have any prominent conservative you admire — either in elective office or in the media — I’m just telling you. The next time you see them being taken to the woodshed or roundly criticized on the media, I want you to understand why.

And, by the way, none of it’s based in truth. They’re not racist, sexist, bigots, homophobes, all this garbage. But, again, truth is irrelevant. It’s whatever they can make people believe. They just want people to basically be scared of conservatives and their ideas. And not so much the ideas. They want to accomplish that by making people afraid of conservatives because of who they are. They’re old-fashioned. They don’t want you to have a good time. They’re judgmental. They’re like strict parents that you try to get away from.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, folks, isolating the South is also a greased path to the claims of racism, and that is a fundamental aspect of the current ongoing effort to discredit any conservative opposition. “It’s all a bunch of racism, and they — conservatives — are a bunch of racists.” And, of course, if you isolate the South as a bunch of old-fashioned fuddy-duddy conservative racists, it’s easier for you to make the case ’cause half of that’s already built in.

But the truth, as always, with Democrat politics is irrelevant.