RUSH: Eagle River, Wisconsin. Hi, Joe. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Nice talking with you. Back to the black woman who you referred to at the outset of your program. I don’t believe in hyphenated Americans. I happen to be an American of Italian ancestry, and I love lasagna, Pavarotti, and Sinatra. But I can’t stand Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, and Bill de Blasio. It would be nice if we could stop with identity politics.
RUSH: See, you have just swerved into what I think is a brilliant point here to make about immigration, if I may. The people like you and your ancestors and all of our ancestors, when they came to this country they came here for two reasons, essentially. The first was to escape wherever they were. The second was to become Americans, and to become an American meant something specific.
There was a distinct, unique American culture, and people wanted to be part of it. So let’s take your case. Italian-Americans came, and they became Americans. They held on to their traditions and there were Little Italys in various cities around and all the vestiges. But they were Americans first, not Italians first. And they were not demanding that America change to accommodate what they had brought with them.
They changed to fit into what America was.
They essentially were assimilating into a distinct American culture that they craved to be part of. And you, sir, are an active, living demonstration of it. You here are an Italian, but your loyalty is not to Italians; it’s to the country and what you think is best for the country. That allows you to understand that even though he’s Italian, Andrew Cuomo may not be the best thing going, or that Bill de Blasio may not be the best thing going, or anybody else that you happen to mention.
You’re able to draw a distinction and you’re not blinded by any kind of nationalistic loyalty other than to America. What’s happening to immigration now is there is no desire to assimilate. People want to get here and get in on the gravy train however they define it, work or welfare. But they are coming here and demanding that America accommodate their culture and change. The left in this country’s perfectly happy with that, because they blame America for all the world’s ills anyway, and they say, “It’s only fair that we must change and accommodate all these different cultures because that equals the melting pot,” and it doesn’t.
CALLER: Exactly, Rush. I would say my mother came to this country as a young girl with her brothers and sisters, and though they only spoke Italian when they first landed at Ellis Island, they soon found out that they had to learn English and assimilated very well. They came through the front door, Rush. They didn’t sneak under a fence; they didn’t come through the back door. Now I think there’s a report today about how several thousand illegal aliens have been released. Have you seen that on Drudge or anywhere?
RUSH: Yeah, 68,000, and it’s a blatant attempt by Obama to get votes.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Yeah, I saw it. I’ve got it in the Stack. It’s coming up as today’s program unfolds.
CALLER: One last point, if I may. I’d like to commend Mr. Snerdley, who’s a wonderful person from what I can tell and from the little bit I know about him. He’s a brother of mine. Even though he’s a black man and I’m a white man, “You can’t talk about the brotherhood of man without talking about the fatherhood of God.” I think the white Bishop [Fulton J.] Sheen said that. I wish we would stop identifying people by the group they belong to — like the black community, the Hispanic community — as through it’s a monolithic way of viewing things. We’re all individuals.
RUSH: Let me tell you something about that. I happened to speak about three weeks or a month ago to a Republican who is going to seek the presidency. The name is not necessary at this time. It was an admitted, agreed-to, off-the-record conversation. He said to me, “Rush, the thing that you have to realize is that the Republican Party can no longer win elections simply by turning out its base. The Democrats can, but we can’t.”
I said, “I’m not sure that I agree with that. If you go back to 2012, there were four million Republicans that didn’t vote, and had they turned out, we’d have beaten Obama by two million votes,” and they were, by definition, Republicans (i.e., the base). Well, he spelled out the way he was going to seek advancing his career, and he has a message for this group and that group.
I said, “You know, this is the problem. It’s why I don’t understand your business. I’m not in your business. I’m not getting votes and you are. I’m getting listeners, and they’re totally different approaches. I’ll just tell you: If I were a candidate, I wouldn’t do this group thing. I wouldn’t have a message for this group or that group. I’d just have to say, ‘We’re Americans,'” just like what you just said.
You know what he said to me?
He said, “Rush, we’re just gonna have to admit some things. Americans are now organizing themselves by group, and they are expecting to be treated and approached as such.” So what I heard was that we are gonna have to moderate the way or modify the way we go after groups, and we’re gonna need a tailored message for every different group — geographical or racial or what have you — as Republicans if we are to get their votes.
He said, “I don’t need every one of them. If I just get 10% of every one of these groups, we got a landslide.” Which is true, by the way. It’s just that the approach, if you have a message for women… Single women, the Democrats own single women. So we come up with a message for single women. “Well, what if that message happens to offend married women or what if it offends men or what have you?”
“No, no, it won’t, Rush. But we’ll come up with one, ’cause it’s all gonna tie together into one America the way we’re gonna do that.”
I said, “Well, good luck with that. I hope it can happen. But when you start tailoring…” This guy’s very smart, by the way. “When you start tailoring messages like this, I guess that’s what people in politics think you have to do to get votes, and since I’ve never gotten a vote for anything…” Well, I take it back.
I was elected to the Senate at Missouri Boys State, when I was a teenager. I actually was. We went to Boys State and I was elected to the Senate there, and do you know why? (laughing) It’s ’cause I reminded them that they had not left enough time in the administrative day for lunch, and that got me the votes. That put me over the top.