RUSH: Imagine if you were listening in the first hour, “Rush, you’re painting a very hopeless case.” No, not at all. My point here is there’s a counter to all of this. There is a way out of all this, but it’s not just winning an election. I’m not trying to diminish the importance of winning the election, but I do want to keep it in perspective.
We have way more to do than just win an election, folks, if we are serious. If all we want to do is temporarily stop what’s going on, okay, win the election. But if we’re serious about wanting to reverse this and roll it back and reimplementing the founding ideals of this country, then that’s gonna require some things.
So whereas you might have concluded that I was painting a picture of hopelessness and despair with that first hour, the last sound bite, “Oh, my God, people still blame Bush! And it’s so bad the recession is permanent! This economy is the new norm. It’s permanent because of Bush?” There’s a way out of this, but I’m telling you the way out of this is not to shut up. I’m all for the Democrats imploding. But why does the Democrat implosion, why can that only happen if we shut up?
Have you noticed, too, as we get closer to the November elections, let’s be honest about something. The Democrats, I don’t care what the Drive-Bys are saying. I don’t care about their polls right now that show the Democrats that there is no wave election. The Democrats are probably going to get skunked. But look at what’s happening here. Notice that as our odds improve for the midterms, the more out of touch we seem. Isn’t that an interesting phenomena?
How does that work, exactly? And so the solution. Well, as I say, I hope I didn’t leave you with a feeling of despair and hopelessness after this first hour. Let’s go back to the seventies, because this is often said that Obama is the Jimmy Carter second term. The Jimmy Carter economy was just as bad as this. Well, respectively for the times, the Jimmy Carter economy was as bad as this. It was so bad that we had a misery index to measure it, calculate it, and even Jimmy Carter himself described it as a period of malaise. And one might say that some people back then thought that Carter’s economic damage was so bad that it, too, might have been permanent.
I was 28, 29 when Carter and Reagan were seeking the presidency in 1980. So I remember well the attitudes back then. And, folks, it was bleak. It was really bleak. Even during the presidential campaign of 1980 it was bleak. I think the poll taken two weeks before the 1980 presidential elections showed Carter up in landslide proportions. You remember that, Snerdley? People forget these things. The Reagan landslide was totally unpredicted. It was totally, totally unpredicted by any polling data. But everybody knew it privately. Everybody knew it privately, but publicly nobody knew it.
So even in our past, there is a period of time where people thought the economy was permanently damaged and forever tepid and unremarkable. All that’s needed here, folks, and I don’t mean to diminish it, I mean, it’s a big “all we need.” We just need somebody who can cheerfully, artfully, persuasively, happily articulate our message, running for office. We don’t need somebody who knows how to shut up. We don’t need somebody who knows how to be quiet and not offend people. We don’t need anybody who says, “Don’t say that, the Hispanics might hate us. Don’t say that, the women might hate us. Don’t say that, we might tick off the moderates.”
We don’t need people like that. Arguably that’s what’s gotten us here. We need somebody that’s fearless, believes in the country and is looking further ahead than just the next election. But not only does this person have to be able to articulate what we believe, this person has to also be able to tell the people what we’re up against and why we’re where we are. This person needs to be able to say, “If you’re having trouble finding a job, it’s not because of George W. Bush, And this recession that we’re in need not be permanent.” And give some historical context. Just give some American history, and be optimistic and inspiring and uplifting.
I don’t make any assumptions that this is a cakewalk. I don’t agree with this idea that we have to descend into identity politics ourselves to win. Like this story in The Politico about women and how the Republican Party is hated by women. I mean, it’s a Republican poll putting this stuff out, and that the only solution is to get rid of social Tea Party conservatives, find a way to diminish them and we’ll get the women back. That won’t get the women back. I don’t even believe any of this. I think the premise of all this is ridiculous anyway. And the same thing with Hispanics.
The idea that we can get the Hispanic vote and be loved by ’em by standing for amnesty, if that’s true, then the America that you and I believe in, the America of the founding is gone anyway, if that’s what it takes to win elections. And I just simply don’t believe that. I know the branding problems the Republicans have. I know the image problems they face. But those are nothing new. It’s just a shame there’s only one guy we can point to when these discussions happen, that’s Reagan. It’s a shame there’s only one guy. It used to be — you’re gonna laugh — but for a short period of time it used to be we could point to Newt Gingrich, before he became Speaker.
Before he became Speaker, Newt Gingrich — I wish you people could hear Newt Gingrich during special orders on the Florida of the House in the late eighties during Iran-Contra while the Democrats were trying to destroy Ronald Reagan. The Newt Gingrich prior to being Speaker of the House, you could have pointed to him. Something happens to people. I don’t know. There are a couple of others. Dick Armey, Phil Gramm, yeah, we had a lot of people that believed it. We had a lot of people who spoke it. We had a lot of people who were fearless. Whether they could win presidential elections, that’s another matter, but we had a lot of people that were Reaganites.
They were all over the place. The establishment’s done their best to weed them out and intimidate them and silence them and kick ’em out of town. I understand that. They didn’t like Reagan, either, but he found a way. So it can be done, is my point, it can be done. I’m thinking of something here. The media is a tough thing to overcome, but that too can be done. It’s been shown. I saw a friend of mine — and I can’t tell you who my friend that sent me this is because he’s very famous and very public, and he would get a lot of grief if I mentioned his name and I don’t want that to happen to him. You’ll be seeing and hearing his name a lot down the road. Not a politician.
He sent me a YouTube video, 12 minutes, titled, “The Humor of Ronald Reagan.” I’d seen it all before, but this was a compilation of just Reagan being real down to earth, honest to goodness funny man, just genuinely, harmlessly, I mean, good taste, good-naturedly funny. It caused a bunch of nostalgia to well up, and everybody that sees this, “Why is this so rare and unique in politics?”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to the phones. People have been patiently waiting, as they always do. This is Darrell in Elkton, Virginia. Welcome to the program, sir. Great to have you. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. I gotta tell you, this first hour this morning has just depressed the hell out of me. I know that you’ve always told everybody that you’ll let us know when it’s time to panic, but can you give me anything to be optimistic about right now?
RUSH: Yeah, I can. I’ll tell you the —
CALLER: If we win we lose; if we lose, we win.
RUSH: No, that’s why I went to great pains on this to open the second hour. I’m trying, in saying that, to pigeonhole the people on our side who are shortsighted. I don’t want to diminish the importance of winning an election, but to way too many people, that’s all there is. That’s why I give the analogy: You know, the Democrats are trying to score touchdowns to win the game; we’re just trying to get a first down.
And if we ever do, “Oh, wow!” We’re ready to call the game and say, “Hey, we’re happy now. We at least got a first down.” I’ll tell you what keeps me inspired and what keeps me optimistic, ’cause this is nothing new. Darrell, the circumstance in Washington is nothing new. You and I know full well that most of the people in that town don’t want to return to anything different. The status quo is what they’ve been fighting for and what they want to hold onto.
They live there, they work there, they want it to be the center of the universe. They want as much money flowing to that town as possible. They want to get their share of it. They want to get elected to Congress, they want to get elected to the Senate, serve their time, be very nice to all the lobbyists and defense contractors and so forth during their service — and then after they leave office, get hired by those firms.
I know how the game works, and it’s all about money. Everybody wants to get rich, everybody wants to be wealthy, everybody wants to have a nice lifestyle, and a lot of people have figured out there’s a lot of ways of getting there without having to work. Meet the right people, do what those right people want you to do, and they’ll reward you later on down the road — and the town feeds on itself.
So what we call the Ruling Class or the Washington establishment doesn’t want any rollback. They don’t even see what everybody’s so upset about. They don’t think the debt’s a problem. They don’t think the national debt is bad. “It’s always been there. It’s just a little higher. It gets higher every year. Big deal! The country’s still here. ISIS schm-ISIS! Who gives a…? There are always wars and there’s always gonna be war. We want to get our piece.”
What continues to fuel me is right in front of me, and that’s you and all of you out there, the American people, the Tea Party. It’s the fact that I still believe a majority of the American people don’t want any part of it, and I think this majority is waiting. Even with all we we’ve seen from the Tea Party, I think they’re still waiting to be ignited, and it’s just absent leadership right now. Who knows when it’s gonna pop up.
But it’s worth, I think, holding on for.
I’m sorry that I ended up depressing you so much. I didn’t intend to do that, because I believe there’s an antidote to all of this. There’s a way to overcome all of this. Whoever can mobilize this large majority of average, ordinary, everyday people like you and me — whoever can mobilize that majority into action and political action, political awareness — is the root of the beginning of the reversal of this, and then whatever specifics take place after that.
There are all kinds of people with different theories about how to deal with this, to roll it back, defeat it, and so forth. But it’s just not enough to beat Democrats if the replacements are people who are afraid to disagree with them. (chuckles) How’s that gonna change, even after they win? I just I don’t know. I refuse to give up or to be even pessimistic.
You trouble me greatly when you tell me that you just depressed as hell after my first hour, because that was not my intent. My intent always is to inform. I think everybody needs to know as best they can what we’re up against, what the circumstances really are, and really I just want people to think beyond an election. This election strategy is handcuffing what needs to really be done.
The election strategy is (whispering): “Shut up! Don’t say anything! Don’t tick off the Hispanics, don’t tick off the women, don’t tick off the moderates. Democrats are committing hari-kari.” Yeah, let me tell you something else. I could be dead wrong. I could be dead wrong, but using my own theory that brilliant marketers never tell you how they’re gonna try to scam you — and not even scam.
Brilliant marketers never tell you how they are going to get you. They just execute the plan. Remember not that long ago, every day Obama — and the Democrats, but even Obama — were talking about how upset he was that the Republicans were suing him. Then Obama’s out fundraising off of an imaginary impeachment proceeding! Not one Republican had ever talked about it.
Obama and the Democrats are out there every day telling people (impression), “And they want to impeach me! Do you believe that? Me! Your president! They wanna impeach me! They wanna sue me! Well, who…? Who…? I mean, that hurts my feelings. Why would they want to impeach me?” Blah, blah, blah. Nobody was talking about it, and it was a clear effort at goading the Republicans into doing it.
Well, for the past month, do you agree with me or disagree that it seems to be a fait accompli that by Labor Day Obama’s gonna grant amnesty to five million illegals? Right? The media’s reporting it. The White House press secretary and Luis Gutierrez say it. Everybody’s out there, “Yeah, he’s gonna do it. Maybe not by Labor Day, but he’s gonna do it before the election.”
“No, no, no! Don’t do it! Don’t do it before the election,” Democrats say.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry. I know what I have done that has unnecessarily depressed you. I know exactly what I’ve done, and I’m gonna very, very briefly here acknowledge it and try to change the focus. I know what I done. Everybody is looking to November as a big sweep. The Democrats are gonna go down in droves. We’re gonna win big and I come here today and say, “It doesn’t matter.” And I can understand you getting depressed if that’s what you heard me say.
I didn’t intend to say that winning the election in November doesn’t matter. I didn’t intend to say that at all. I’m just saying that doesn’t stop anything. The Republicans are still gonna be hated. The media’s still gonna be who they are. But Obama’s still gonna have his executive orders. He’s still gonna be able to do what he’s gonna do, and my point, the only thing I’m saying is if there’s no articulated opposition — let me not even put it that way. I don’t even want to address it that way. At some point, folks, there is going to have to be some articulated, upbeat, positive, inspiring, agenda-based opposition to this.
We just can’t triumph shutting up. We cannot triumph. What kind of position does it say we’re in, if our best odds are to not tell anybody what we think? That is succumbing and falling victim to yet another liberal Democrat media trick, which is, “They’re gonna elect you. You’re gonna win the election in November, but you’re so hated that you better not open your mouths or they’re gonna really hate you. You know the Hispanics hate you, and you know women hate you, War on Women, and you know that moderates and independents hate you.”
We get to the point we’re taking advice from Chuck Schumer (imitating Schumer), “If you guys want to win the presidency again, you better support amnesty.” What the hell is that? There is an army of American people waiting to be used, waiting to be mobilized, waiting to be put into some kind of political motion. We have not lost the majority of this country. If we had, there wouldn’t be any talk of the Democrats losing as big as they’re gonna lose in November, if we had lost the country. We’ve not lost the country.
So one of two things: Either the Republicans have been tricked into shutting up and not telling anybody who they are and what they think. Or, the Republicans simply are comfortable with the way things are going and just want their turn at running the show, but they’re not really interested in any kind of political fight. And I think with this current crop, I think there’s probably a lot of validity to that.
Have you people, have any of you encountered — and I have — an opinion piece here or there attempting to explain Republican leadership today, in both the House and the Senate? And it is rooted in, “You know what? These guys really don’t want to win. They just don’t want the responsibility. It’s just too much. They know what Republican voters expect, and they don’t want to go that much against the grain in Washington.” Have you seen stories like that, the Republicans are comfortable being also-rans and losers? ‘Cause it’s less work, it’s less stress, it’s less pressure.
I’ve seen a couple those stories by people on our side attempting to explain the laziness or the ineptitude or what have you. But I want you to know something. I firmly believe, passionately so, that there are huge victories out there to be had. Not easy, but they’re not going to be had with a strategy of silence. And this Politico story with this Republican poll that shows the biggest problem the Republicans face is conservatives. There’s nothing new in that, either. That’s nothing new. Don’t get depressed over that. That’s been common knowledge, that the Republican establishment doesn’t like conservatives. And they didn’t like Reagan.
So there’s nothing new there that constitutes a surprise that we’re up against that we didn’t know. What bugs me, folks, if I can get personal with this, and I don’t know how else to say it but this way, and I don’t mean it to sound egocentric, because it’s not. In fact, it’s the opposite of that. But I just don’t understand why the only place you can go to find the principled articulation of what’s necessary to turn back what’s happening to this country is in the media. Talk radio or occasionally Fox News or what have you. And if I had to bet, if I had to guess, a lot of you people are the same way.
For those of you who’ve been here all 26 years, think back to the first few months when you heard this program. Why did you like it? What was so great about it? It wasn’t me personally. It was that finally, finally, after all of these years, there was somebody in the national media saying what you say, believing what you believe. Somebody other than CBS, ABC, NBC, somebody other than CNN, somebody other than the New York Times and the Washington Post.
I can’t tell you how many people have said that “validation” is what they really liked when this program started. Yeah, it was a good show, the content and all that, but it was a discovery that they weren’t alone, that there was somebody else out there in national media saying exactly what they already thought. You. That’s what’s missing today in the political universe or spectrum. There’s nobody in the political universe saying what you say or saying things that you believe. And, in fact, in some cases, there used to be and now they don’t see it anymore. People you thought were going to be those people as they matured and grew in office, have gone moderate, wimpy, establishment, what have you.
See, I don’t really think it would take much, because there’s already a pent-up — the Tea Party illustrates this — a pent-up, ready-to-explode majority political movement out there, fed up and angry and ready to show everybody what the real America is. That it’s not whatever is on TMZ. It’s not whatever’s on Comedy Central. It’s not whatever’s on CNN or ABC. You’re dying, you’re itching for this to be known. There just isn’t any elected political leadership representing what you believe. That’s all it is. That’s a big “all it is.” And if somebody surfaces that’s able to marshal all of that pent-up demand, support, energy, what have you, then Katie, bar the door. And that’s why I’m optimistic. And I’m not exaggerating a bit.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Just two more things before we head back to the phones here. I know exactly why, if you came here today all jazzed up and, “Hey, man, the Democrats are continuing to implode, it’s looking bad, wave election,” and then I come along and I basically tinkle all over it, in your mind, because I started saying and started talking about that one election doesn’t mean anything, and it means everything to a lot of people. Just beating the Democrats means everything to some people. That’s all. Do that and years of frustration can be vanquished with one election. And I don’t disagree with that. I totally understand it, but it’s gonna take more than that.
All I was trying to say was I just think it’s shortsighted to focus on — I was basically sharing with you some frustration. No matter where I go, I get questions, “Who do you think the nominee is gonna be, Rush? Are we gonna win in November?” I always assume, I interpret those questions as also being shortsighted and uninformed and that I can prove it by the way I answer, you see their faces when I answer. Anyway, enough on that.
The other thing is, if you think this first hour depressed, you ought to deal with what I have to hear every day from people. You think what I said in my first hour was negative, you ought to hear the defeatism and the pessimism I’m surrounded by wherever I go. I don’t mean you, Snerdley. I don’t mean the staff. I don’t mean that. And you are, too, I’m sure. Anyway, enough of that. Don’t be defeatist. All I’m trying to do here is the exact opposite, in fact. You know, I’m the mayor of Realville, folks.
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