No Matter what Happens in This Election, We Won’t Quit

RUSH: Here’s Troy in Houston.  Great to have you, sir.  Hi.

CALLER:  Good afternoon, Rush.  Appreciate your taking my call.

RUSH:  Yes, sir.

CALLER:  Having always said that you would tell your audience when you felt like it was time to panic or when you felt like we had lost the country, and seeing stories like one on TheHill.com today that posits the theory that Hillary could run away with in excess of 400 electoral votes, my question for you is, should something like that come to pass and should Hillary be able to pull off a victory with new landslide margins, might that be the catalyst for you to feel like we’ve reached that tipping point. And if not, how would you see this country recovering from such a possibility?

RUSH:  Well, first place, let me repeat something that I have always said.  There’s always going to be an America.  There are people now trying to transform America — Obama, the Democrats — into a country that it wasn’t founded to be, but there’s always gonna be an America, and there are always gonna be conservatives.  You know, if this ends up being a Hillary landslide, I am not going to believe that the landslide means that the nation has officially decided it wants no more of capitalism and wants to adopt socialism and communism, ’cause I don’t think that’s what this election is about. 

For whatever reason conservatism isn’t on the ballot here.  Conservatism is not being rejected.  Conservatism, on the other hand, can’t find a way to unify, either.  Conservatism couldn’t find a way to win the primaries.  But, on the other hand, conservatism, if there’s a Hillary landslide or even a Hillary win — I know you asked specifically about a landslide.  Conservatism is not going to be what’s been defeated here, in my mind.  I’m not going to stop doing what I do if that happens. 

The effort to educate the American people will never end.  The effort to persuade the American people will never end.  The techniques, the procedures, the strategies will have to change, and I think we’ll have to do a better job of informing people — or not informing them — a better job of having people understand that the things they think in their lives are going wrong are for specific reasons that they have voted for. 

It’s stunning.  Troy, it is stunning even now.  Barack Obama with a 55% approval rating, are you kidding?  That doesn’t tell me that 55% love what Obama’s doing.  It tells me that a lot of people do not link Obama to what they know is going wrong.  Everybody — well, not everybody.  That’s a bit of an exaggeration.  Majorities of people admit the country’s headed in the wrong direction.  They admit that the job market is bad. They admit things are not right. They admit student loans are way too high, college education is not what it is. 

The problem is they’re not associating that with the culprits.  The culprits are the Democrat Party, and for whatever reason, the people of this country are blaming Bush, blaming Republicans, blaming Wall Street, blaming the banks, blaming whatever, going all the way back still to the financial disaster of 2008.  Now, it’s gonna be problematic if they win, landslide or not, they’re gonna get Supreme Court appointments.  But as long as you have kids and grandkids, and as long as you have this fervent desire that they have the same opportunities you had, you can’t cave. 

By the way, back in those days, when I told you that I would tell you it’s time to panic, panic did not equal giving up.  Panic did not equal quitting.  It might have meant moving to New Zealand for a couple years, but it didn’t mean conceding.  And I don’t intend to concede.  I still am not convinced that a Hillary Clinton landslide win — Democrats don’t campaign on what they actually do. 

Obama didn’t tell anybody that the way things are is what he intended to do.  He didn’t promise that health care was gonna become scarce and insurance premiums were going to skyrocket and that jobs were going to be scarce and that average income would remain flat.  He promised you the sea levels were going to — and he promised you the end of climate change, he promised all this rosy stuff.  And it hasn’t happened.  And he doesn’t get blamed for it.  He’s not associated with it.  There are a lot of reasons for that, and one of them — and there are many — but one of the reasons is that the Republican Party at some point in the last 10 to 15 years ceased being an opposition party. 

So there are a lot of explanations for this that do not include the American people actively, consciously, happily choosing Big Government socialism.  There are a lot of people that do. I mean, there’s 94 million Americans not working, but they’re all eating, you know how the phrase goes there.  Panic in the sense that it’s time to get serious, yeah.  But not in the sense that it means quit, never that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Hey, folks, look, I know a lot of you are ready to throw in the towel if this ends up in a Hillary landslide, a Hillary win.  I know you’re probably ready to throw in the towel and forget this stuff.  You’re gonna think it’s pointless, at this so many years and can’t seem to triumph.  Look, I can’t win here no matter what I say because it’s all gonna be categorized as a equivocating or excuse. 

For example, when I say I don’t look at this as a defeat of conservatism ’cause conservatism wasn’t on the ballot, well, you could say, “Well, yeah, Rush, ’cause conservatism isn’t even powerful enough to win a Republican primary!”  And you might have a point with that, but at the same time conservatism not prevailing in the Republican primary may not be because conservatism is flawed, it may be for a whole host of other reasons.  I’m not in any kind of a state of denial here.  I don’t think this campaign was about conservatism, unless you want to redefine conservatism to be strains of nationalism and populism, which I don’t do.  Don’t think that’s the case. 

All I’m telling you is the whole idea “I’ll tell you when to panic,” I never meant that to mean give up and join me as I leave the country for parts unknown.  That’s never what I meant.  And I’ve also said — I know this is gonna sound cheesy, but if you check the archives of this program you’ll find it’s true, I have always said that there is good in everything that happens, personally, as far as nations are concerned.  Do you realize the Republican Party is in an abject mess?  Do you realize there are Republicans, actual Republicans who are eagerly awaiting November 9th so they can celebrate this loss?  Yeah, so they can celebrate it, so that they can gloat that they were right, that Trump was a disaster and that you need to trust us again, your Republican Party and establishment.  And that’s not gonna happen. 

So there’s things being blown up here before our very eyes that are gonna have to be reassembled.  Regardless of who you want to blame, don’t you find it frustrating as all get-out that whatever you call us, Republicans, conservatives, Libertarians, whatever you call us, that we can’t unify around the simple concept of defeating Democrats?  No matter who. 

If we had nominated Cruz, we wouldn’t have been unified.  If we’d nominated Rubio, we wouldn’t have been unified.  If somehow Romney had snuck back in there, we wouldn’t be unified, guaran-damn-tee you.  Take your pick.  If Jeb had won the nomination we are looking at four to six million conservatives sitting home again, I’m telling you.  There’s no recipe in that last primary where everybody ends up unified around the concept of defeating Hillary Clinton, and that is a huge problem.  And more on that, of course, as the days and weeks unfold.