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RUSH: Martinsburg, West Virginia. Hi, Ray. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. It’s an honor to speak with you.

RUSH: I appreciate that. Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I just wanted to make a comment. I think there’s been a demographic shift in the political parties that either people have ignored or haven’t identified.

RUSH: What’s that, women running everything?

CALLER: (laughing) Well, part of that. But what I believe happened is during the Clinton years you had a known group that everybody referred to as the conservative Democrats, and what happened during the Clinton years was they became disenfranchised with the Clintons’ policies and they shifted to the Republican Party. And what has happened now is the Republican Party has become more center of the road and —

RUSH: Now, wait, wait, wait, wait just a second. Wait, wait just a second. I want to be historically accurate. You’re right but we’ve gotta explain why. It was a phenomenon. If you recall after the Republicans won the House in the ’94 elections there were massive numbers of Democrats quitting the Democrat Party. But why do you think that was, Ray? Do you think it was ideological? Do you think it was policy? What was it?

CALLER: That the Republicans won the House?

RUSH: It was that they want to be winners. They thought it was the end of their party. Remember, these people don’t have a long view about anything. If you’re a member of the House, your world is two years.

CALLER: Right. But what I see, there are a lot of Democrats out there who are Christians. They have strong faith. But they, for whatever reason, vote Democrat consistently, all the time. When the Clintons took office, they tried to push through the health care reform or whatever you wanted to call it back then, Hillarycare. I think that was part of the start of it, and then there were other things that came to light in the Clinton administration I think that pushed a lot of them to change to the Republican Party. What’s happened is Republican Party’s now become the center-of-the-road party, and as a result it’s created the Tea Party.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: Because people that are truly conservative —

RUSH: Hold your thought. Hold your thought. Hold your thought. Hold your thought. He can’t hear me, folks, ’cause of our incompetent phone system. Hang on out there, Ray. I gotta take a break. We’ll be back here in just a second and continue.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, we’re back in Ray in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Ray, I wanted to hold you over because I’m fascinated here by your theory and I want to see where you’re going to take it. As I understand it, what you’re doing is, you’re going back to nineties. Republicans win the House. You got Clinton and Hillary trying to take over the country with Hillarycare. It’s not wanted. A bunch of Democrats leave the party and join the Republican Party, for whatever reason.

Now, take that to the point you’re making about today. What is it?

CALLER: Well, I think the problem is you have a number of elected officials who are card-carrying Republicans who are conservatives, true conservatives. They live a conservative lifestyle, they have conservative beliefs, but they’re still trying to function within a party that has actually become a moderate party. I think really what’s happened is you’ve got the Democrats, which are really an extreme-left version of a political party, and the Republican Party has actually become a moderate party, and then you have the Tea Party, which is the true conservatives. They’re people that live a conservative lifestyle and vote conservatively.

RUSH: And you think this is ’cause of a demographic shift?

CALLER: Well, I think during the Clinton years when they initially tried to do the universal health care, it scared a lot of people. That’s why the Republicans won in the ’94 race. It woke everybody up to what the extreme left was up to.

RUSH: No, the Clinton… That really wasn’t the case. That was to come later. It was a factor, but the primary reason for Republicans winning in 1994, number one was me. Number two was the House Bank Scandal. Number three was the House Post Office under 40 years Democrat rule. Number four was the Contract with America. Number five was the fact they nationalized House races for the first time in history instead of running them as 435 local elections.

You know, they tried Hillarycare. Hillarycare was the forerunner of Obamacare, and that was a factor. But they didn’t need just that. It was all of Clinton. See, Clinton ran and he was called a conservative Democrat, a moderate. He gets into office, and he proved to be what everybody before the election was trying to warn people about: This guy’s a card-carrying leftist just like Obama, and people finally saw that. But the Republicans back then, the reason they won it wasn’t just by the American people decided to do it.

There was a reason. The Republicans gave people a reason to vote against Clinton and to vote for them. Contract with America, any number of things, and the House Bank and Post Office Scandal, and a bunch of dislikable Democrats like Jim Wright, who was the Speaker. Now, the real question is for me and why your point here is interesting to me is, demographic shift or whatever you want to call it. How do you go from 1995, 1996…?

That’s not that long ago, in real terms. It’s 18 years ago. How do you go from there to the outhouse as the Republican Party has? Now, they still run the House of Representatives. They won it back in the 2010 midterms, much the same way they won it the first time in 1994 and 1995, by being conservative and by offering an alternative. In that case, it was Obamacare that gave birth to the Tea Party. So the lesson here… What you’re saying is that the Tea Party is the right wing.

The Republican Party itself has become moderate. I think in a broad-based sense, what’s happened here is that the entire Washington establishment has never liked conservatism. They didn’t like the fact the Republicans won, didn’t like the fact that Reagan won. Both Republicans and Democrats. But the reason we’re where we are is the most amazing thing to me. Because the 2010 midterms were a recipe for victory, and so were the ’94 elections a recipe for victory, and the Republican Party refused to follow the recipe.

Mind-bogglingly so.

Not only did they not follow the recipe, the Republican Party today seems to believe its future is in Democrat light. Mind-bogglingly so. I’m not disagreeing. I don’t think demographics has as much to do with it as ideology. The fact is the Washington establishment never has been conservative, and when the Republican Party has been victorious is when it was unabashedly conservative. But the forces of the establishment are such that they make it painful, uncomfortable, miserable to be a conservative.


Look at what happens to any prominent conservative in that town. Look what’s happening Ted Cruz right now. Look what’s happening to Mike Lee. Any of them that rise up, they get shot down, by their own party included. That’s just the power of the Washington ruling class. Pure and simple. This doesn’t even include the role the media plays, which is rather significant, by the way. (interruption) Mmm-hmm. No. I haven’t seen that. Snerdley just said that Wall Street is ticked off ’cause they’ve got no influence in the Tea Party. I haven’t heard that.

I didn’t think Wall Street wanted any influence in the Tea Party. I thought Wall Street hated the Tea Party like they hated Christine O’Donnell. I didn’t know they wanted any influence in the Tea Party. I’m not denying that exists. I just haven’t seen it. Anyway, Ray, I appreciate the call, I really do. I’m glad you took the time. I don’t mean to be disrespectful when I say I don’t think demographics is the reason. We may be saying the same thing with just different terminology. I just don’t think it’s complicated. The Republican Party, when it abandons conservatism, is a nonfactor.

I have no idea what’s gonna happen in 2014. All I know for sure is that the Democrats and the media are going to launch everything they’ve got. Let me tell you something. Barack Obama hates this crap that’s going on. The fact that there’s opposition, that just frosts him, ruins his day. He has to deal with these little gnats, deal with these creeps. The whole modus operandi of Barack Obama is to get rid of opposition, not beat them, but get rid of them.

They want 2014 so bad ’cause there won’t be any opposition. There won’t be any lame duck. They can do whatever they want to do and nobody can do anything about it, nobody will be able to stop ’em. So they’re gonna be loaded for bear. 2014 for them is their next — that’s why they’ve been delaying all the bad things, as many as they can about Obamacare. Again, Ray, thank you for the call. I appreciate it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We go back to the phones to where I used to live in a shack. Overland Park, Kansas. Hi, Rick. Great to have you here. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, it’s an honor and a thrill to speak with you. I can’t believe I got through.

RUSH: I’m glad you did, sir.

CALLER: Well, I just real quick wanted to expand on what Ray said, your last caller, and there’s a term for what’s happening to the Republican Party, and it’s called velocitize. It happens with morals. The analogy is, you come off of the highway going 75 and you all of a sudden realize, “Holy cow, I’m driving way too fast,” and you jam on the brakes, and you go back to the Tea Party, and I think that’s what happened. But that’s just beside the point. I’ve had a lot of time to think here in the last hour.

But the reason I called was because of the Republican donor issue that you talked about where they’re getting nervous about Ted Cruz and the Mike Lee and they want ’em gone before they’re gonna start donations. Well, I think the opposite is actually true. And I know I can speak for a number of people because both my brother and I have been longtime donors. We own a company here in Kansas, Hardcore Hammers. We’re a small manufacturer of hammers, and we are conservatives. The Republican Party constantly calls us and calls us and calls us for donations. I finally got fed up with them and I said, “Look, until you guys can make a principled stand on conservative values that you ran on to be elected in office, we are withholding any future funds.”

RUSH: You know, you’re not alone. You are not alone. There are a lot like you. But the story that’s out there is that it is donors that are demanding an end to the Tea Party influence of the party that are holding out. Money is the driving force in pretty much everything, and it is here. I need to spend some time explaining this tomorrow, what really is going on here, because it really isn’t, in this battle between the Tea Party and the mainstream, it really does in many ways boil down to how the ancillary players are gonna get rich. The ancillary players, the bundlers, the consultants, not the candidates, not the elected officials. They’re a different world. There’s a lot of different things driving this and it would probably be worth our time to delve into it. Rick, thanks for the call.

Folks, before we get outta here. One of our sponsors is FreedomWorks, and there have been some stories lately about the Republican Party having infiltrated FreedomWorks. And if you happen to have heard this story, you haven’t heard the whole story. That did happen last year. There was an attempt by the mainstream of the party to take over FreedomWorks and to replace the founders with establishment Republican types — again, it was about money — but it was also about power, and it was also about trying to deemphasize the organization. But the founders maintained control and agreements were reached and FreedomWorks is a Tea Party organization.

There were attempts to take it over, but they were repelled. I just want to make sure that you’ve heard the whole story if you’ve heard that at all. It’s been going around. It’s something I don’t want you to worry about. If you have gotten involved with FreedomWorks, if you’ve gone to the website, FreedomWorksforMe.com, and you’ve heard that the establishment took over, not true. They tried. It’s a year-old story. FreedomWorks is still out there doing everything can. They are working with people like Cruz. They are working with people like Mike Lee.

They are working with anybody who is interested in giving their last ounce of energy to stopping the funding of Obamacare and making sure the right thing happens with the debt limit, they’re there. If you have had any desire to join them and be part of it, learn how you can help, feel free. They are the Tea Party. FreedomWorksforMe.com.

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