RUSH: Here is Kevin in Fort Myers, Florida. I’m glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Longtime listener, first-time caller.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I’m coming up with a premise I think is a winning formula for Mitt Romney to become the head of the Republican Party, win the nomination and become the president. Now, I may be starting from a false point of view, but my point of view is I think we want a president that’s mature, experienced, probably a governor who’s actually run something —

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: — who’s educated, maybe even ran a business as well, and is a mature practical guy. If I’m Mitt Romney, I say, “Here are the 19 things that are affecting our country to the negative. And these are the 19 things I’m gonna talk about.”

RUSH: Nineteen things?

CALLER: I’m not gonna talk about abortion. I’m not gonna talk about Bain Capital. I’m not gonna talk about my money. I’m not gonna talk about this or that. These are the 19 things I’m gonna talk about. And, Mr. Press, if you bring ’em up, I’m gonna say I’m not gonna talk about that. In addition, he presents or publishes a position paper on these 19 elements and the top 10 things he would do in the first hundred days in office on each of these 19 critical problems that the country has. And the hell with the press, say, “Hey, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna talk about that, and that’s all I’m gonna do. And I’m not gonna talk about these incendiary, false straw men issues and obstacles you want to put in front of people that are just not obstacles.”

RUSH: Why are you choosing Romney to do this?

CALLER: Well, I started out with looking for a guy with high caliber, high talent, good experience, and he’s actually run something like a state and a company. I don’t see a lot of those guys around. I see a lot of career politicians that have not done anything else. And I think that’s the last thing we need. We need a practical solution to a series of practical problems that can be overcome.

RUSH: Okay. So one of the things you want him to avoid: abortion, his wealth —

CALLER: Bain Capital.

RUSH: — Bain Capital. Well, but that’s part of running a business.

CALLER: I understand that, but we can talk about running a business instead of talking about specifically a private equity business. There are principles that he believes in. For instance, I’m in business, and I have absolutely key core operating values. And no matter what you say, no matter what you do, I’m not gonna violate those core operating values.

RUSH: Okay. Let me ask you a question. Let’s say Romney does this. He identifies these things he’s not gonna talk about, and two of them are abortion and Bain Capital. What does he do when that’s all the media wants to talk about? And then when he says, “No, I’m not talking to you.” what’s he gonna do when that’s all they write and broadcast about?

CALLER: Well, the additional thing that I added to this action plan is that of the 19 critical issues that are affecting our country, he publishes a position paper. I don’t care if it’s 10 pages or 40 pages, on each one. Before he runs, he says, “If you want to know what I’m interested in, if you want to know what my solutions are, here they are, go research them. I’ll be glad to talk to you about ’em. I want to talk to you about things of substance. I don’t want to talk about burning logs that you want to throw on the table to disrupt this discussion and this election.”

RUSH: I know, but the bottom line is that the Republican candidate will never be able to define what he will not or will talk about. And if anybody says to the media, “I’m not talking about abortion,” that’s fine, that’s all they will talk about.

CALLER: The discussion of abortion —

RUSH: And he can have 15,000 position papers, and they will ignore the position papers.

CALLER: The discussion of abortion should be acknowledged for what it is. It’s a straw man. It’s a burning log. It’s an incendiary device that they just want to put on the table. The bottom line is, it’s not an area that’s affecting the future of our country. Our country is not gonna rise and fall on what the presidential candidate or the president thinks about abortion. It’s just not gonna happen.

RUSH: Well, maybe. But as an issue, yeah. As a defining characteristic, it could be relevant. But I understand what you’re saying about it, you think it’s an automatic loser, the media hypes on it, scares women, women are never gonna vote for anybody. That’s what Stephanopoulos did by asking Romney what he thought about contraception. And Romney said, “Nobody’s talking about it, George.” “Well, I’m asking you, what do you think about it?”

CALLER: What does contraception have to do with our economy? What does contraception have to do about energy? What does contraception have to do about paying back a $20 trillion debt? What does contraception have to do about the future of our children? Nothing!

RUSH: Absolutely nothing. I’m not suggesting that they should be — I’m just telling you, I know what the media’s gonna do. If you taunt them and tell them what you won’t talk about, they will make sure that’s all they report on where you are concerned. They’ll tell everybody, “Romney, for some reason, will not explain his position on abortion or contraception.” They’ll make it an issue. That’s not the way to go about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, Kevin in Fort Myers, Florida, our last caller, if it sounded like I was giving him short shrift, I wasn’t. There wasn’t much time. I didn’t have time to ask him questions with in-depth answers, up against it on time. I didn’t want to ask him to hold on for 10 minutes of the break and so forth. So let me tackle here his basic premise. It was that Romney needs to run again, only this time Romney needs to have 19 things that he’s gonna talk about, and a few things that he’s not gonna talk about.

He’s gonna tell the media he’s not talking about abortion. It doesn’t matter a hill beans. It has no impact on what’s wrong with this country. It has no impact on fixing what’s wrong with this country. It’s not gonna be a factor the way I govern the country. I’m not talking about it. I’m not gonna talk about Bain Capital. It has nothing to do with anything. And a couple of other things that he wanted to mention.

Instead, put out position paper, 10 pages, two pages, five pages, 19 points, A, B, C, and D. Here’s who I am, this is what I believe, this is what I’m gonna do. Don’t bring up that other stuff. My immediate reaction that I did not voice in the phone call is this: I have noticed that there are some people who are trying to revive a Mitt Romney rerun in 2016. And Romney himself has stated that, “Well, you know, all kinds of things change. Who knows what 2016 will bring.” Leaving it open, of course.

Now, you know, you people do not make this easy. But I must respond honestly, truthfully, and straightforwardly. I don’t understand the Romney rerun. He lost. He lost quite handily. And he lost not because of abortion. He didn’t lose because of contraception. He didn’t lose because of Bain Capital. He lost because of Romneycare. He lost because of a bunch of blue-collar Democrats chose to stay with B. Hussein O., and he lost because four million Republicans who had voted in 2008 decided not to in 2012. I’ve seen a number of different analyses, that if those four million Republicans had showed up, that Romney would be president.

See, people react to the media and I know what drives a lot of this. I’m just like you. Look, I despise ’em too. So predictable. Every Republican candidate, no matter who it is, is going to be asked relentlessly about abortion. The media wants to stigmatize the Republican nominee as anti-reproductive rights, as anti-female freedom, and they’re not gonna stop until they do it no matter what the candidate says. The Republican candidate’s not gonna have to say a word.

If anybody Republican candidate goes through the entire campaign and doesn’t talk about abortion, he’s still going to be categorized as anti-female reproductive freedom. There’s no requirement the media be honest about Republican nominees, why do we expect it in 2016? When you ask Romney not to talk about Bain Capital while at the same time asking him to focus on his business experience, how can you leave Bain Capital out of it? Kevin in Fort Myers, Florida, said (paraphrasing), “Well, you gotta leave Bain Capital out because that’s investment banking and that’s got a bad connotation to it.” People think investment bankers are, you know, whatever.

Okay, so he ran the Olympics and he had some businesses, but Bain Capital is where he hung his hat. And to shelve that and ignore that while talking about other business, the media’s not gonna let that happen, either. Even if, take your pick, any Republican candidate whatsoever, pick your favorite one. Whatever baggage — look, Romney hates animals because he put his dog on the roof of the station wagon on vacation. Look at Harry Reid lying and making up the fact that he didn’t pay his taxes.

I mean, you cannot dictate to the media what they will and will not talk about. That’s my only point here. And if you telegraph what you don’t want to talk about by saying “this is what I refuse to talk about,” you’re just begging them to dig as deep as they can into that area. Because when you say to the media, “I refuse to discuss abortion. It doesn’t have anything to do with the future of this country. It has nothing to do with the problems that we have. It has nothing to do with fixing the problems, it’s irrelevant, and I’m not going there,” the media is going to act like you’ve got something to hide, and they’re gonna start digging deep, and they’re gonna find instances where you have talked about abortion and play those. And they’re going to find instances where you’ve been involved with it, maybe, and they’ll play those.

And no matter what you tell them, the more you tell them you’re not gonna talk about something, the more they are gonna focus on it. I also remembered, because Kevin suggested that Romney have this 19-point plan. I remember that Romney had a 59-point plan. So I went back and I searched my searchable archives. I have mastered search, by the way. Some people are intimidated by it because they don’t know what to search for, don’t know how to construct a search, they don’t use tags. Some people keyword search but it doesn’t produce what they want so they don’t know how to narrow it. Searching is not automatic, but I have structured an information database for myself based on all of my show prep.

I go back and find things. So “point plan” is a search item for me, 59-point. I remember I made one, saved the story. Here it is. “Mitt Romney breathed new life into his presidential campaign Wednesday night, using the first presidential debate of 2012 to go head-to-head with Barack Obama over jobs, healthcare, and their competing visions of the role of the federal government. … Romney was well-prepared, even-keeled, and competent, deflecting accusations that he was being evasive by offering Obama a handful of specific policy ideas. But while these proposals may sound new, the ideas have actually been in Romney’s campaign platform for more than a year, as part of the candidate’s 59-point economic plan.”

So how is it being used in this story? If you remember that first debate, Romney skunked Obama and the Democrats were worried, scared stiff, if you remember. It was a slam dunk. I mean, it changed the landscape for a couple of days dramatically. Many on the Democrat side were worried that Obama didn’t care, didn’t look like he was engaged, lost interest. Romney looked sharp and competent and prepared, and it was amazing.

And then the next two debates, the second debate, ah, kind of lukewarm. The third debate, Benghazi was just waiting to be mentioned, and Romney didn’t go there, because it came to be understood that we thought we had it in the bag then so we were practicing in the third debate the policy we’re putting into practice now. Don’t say anything to tick anybody off.

Romney’s strategy in debate three was: don’t say anything. Don’t take a position, no, no, no. Don’t anger people. We got this the bag.” And then of course Candy Crowley came along and stood up for Obama and blew that to smithereens. But the point here is Romney had a 59-point economic plan, detailed everything he wanted to do. The media was making fun of it. While crediting Romney for a great performance in the first debate, they said, “But, this is nothing new. This is from his 59-point plan. It’s been out there for a year. So he didn’t come up with anything new in this debate. There’s no new Romney. There’s no real fresh Romney.”

So what this all boils down to, how is this all overcome, is the question. Kevin from Fort Myers correctly, whether he intended to or not, identified that our number one opponent in any election is media, and everybody, Kevin included, is trying to devise ways of beating the media, beating the media defined as rendering them ineffective against the Republican nominee. How do you destroy the media’s credibility as they tried to discredit the Republican nominee?

But the media really isn’t the opponent. The Democrat nominee is. And Romney, who is a decent man, I have no criticism of Mitt Romney as a human being whatsoever, but he refused to go after Obama. We still haven’t, folks. We still haven’t pegged Obama as a liberal, an extreme liberal statist or worse. We haven’t called him a tyrant, which is what he is. We don’t go anywhere near that. And it’s not enough to try to fashion ways of flummoxing the media. (interruption) That’s right.

My staff is yelling at me. You know what they’re saying to me? My staff’s yelling, “That’s right, Rush, only one person that we know of ever had the guts to say they hoped Obama failed.” That makes my point. We don’t have anybody going after him, I’m talking about in elected politics. You want to beat Obama, you want to beat the Democrats, show some leadership, characterize ’em, tell everybody who they really are. We don’t have to explain theory. We’re living it, we’re living who they are.

People are down in the dumps, can’t find jobs, tell them why. People have lost hope for the future, tell them why. I’ve got a Gallup poll here. “Americans are more than twice as likely to say they ‘strongly disapprove’ of President Barack Obama’s job performance as they are to say they ‘strongly approve.'” Thirty-nine percent strongly disapprove, only 17% strongly approve. This is a Gallup poll that’s out and it is devastating to Obama. You cannot take this poll and say any of it is Bush’s fault or the Republicans’ fault or the fault of the weather or the fault of hurricanes or whatever.

We haven’t had anybody willing to take the Democrats on and properly identify them. No, what are we doing? We’re trying to agree with them on such divisive things as amnesty and all that. Leadership. I was talking about it yesterday. There is a majority of people, we are still the majority of thinking in this country. We are not the minority. We’re being governed by a minority, folks. We’re being governed by a pretty small minority. They have the media, makes ’em look big, but there’s millions and millions and millions of you who are waiting to be mobilized, waiting to be energized, waiting to, in effect, be given marching orders. That requires leadership. And then it won’t matter what the media says or does. There’s evidence, there’s track records for this.

Now, the Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson twice, and it didn’t work out either time. I personally enjoy Mitt Romney very much, and I’ve had a couple serious conversations with him, meetings here at the EIB Southern Command, in fact, one of them. But he lost. And he lost big, and he lost in a key area: Republican base voters.

Look, I understand the frustration with the media. Folks, if I wanted to, I could come here and complain every day about what they’ve done to me. But you can’t do that. It’s the league that you play in, and there’s certain things that happen in this league, and in this league the media hates conservatives. And the more effective the conservative is, the more they’re gonna be subject to be destroyed. Credibility destroyed, because of the effectiveness. I understand that.

There’s not a day, there’s not a single day that I come in here and think my job is to make you think that what the media is saying about me isn’t true. The media is not on my mind on this program except to explain them and define them and to show you how they work. But I don’t think I have to defeat the media in order to get you to listen to this program. All I have to do is relate to you. And I find that easy because I’m no different than you. I want same things you do. I have the same desires. I have the same reverence for the country, the same hope for the future.

All I have to do is share it with passion, and then not cower away from it when the pressure ratchets up. I’m not comparing myself to politicians, but in one sense here, there’s not a day that I come in here and think that my job is somehow convincing you that what the media’s saying about me isn’t true, is my point. Yet you want candidates to do that, and they can’t. They’ve gotta get through to you on their own and whatever the media says about ’em won’t matter if they’re genuine, if they’re leaders, and if they are the right person for your support.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Annie in Miami. I’m glad you called. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Just fine. Thank you.

CALLER: I’ve been listening to you for many years. I just hope I have enough time here. You are one maverick. I’ve said it to your people there. We all love you, all over the place. After all, you are the most listened to broadcaster radio station person, over 600 stations. You are great. But one thing that identifies you with us people, the sane, is that you speak from the heart, and that’s what we need. You speak heartfully and you’re choosey and you are telling us to do likewise, to speak from the bottom of our hearts, you know, to speak out loud. And not to stay quiet, to be vigilant, to be alert, to choose our candidates.

These candidates have to have transparency, something that we don’t have in this administration, never have had it. We believe in the Bill of Rights, those Founding Fathers who made the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, which is the promise to stay true to our convictions living in these United States, to do it in the right proper way. We have the right to go to vote. Go to vote. Don’t give it up. In Cuba, they’re not allowed to vote, 90 miles away, okay? And we have to choose. We have to be vigilant.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate it. I know what you mean by heartfelt and saying what needs to be heard or said, and I appreciate that I am the most listened to person, station, 600s out there. It boils down to the people that run for office always seem so cautious, always on the defensive, always in fear of something, which is totally understandable, but it’s also very obvious. And it’s off-putting. I appreciate it, Annie.