RUSH: Today begins our 32nd year at the EIB Network, and I just have one more audio sound bite from the past. And actually it’s a portion of my CPAC speech from February 28, 2009. I have made this point recently, like in the past three weeks. It’s about who we are as conservatives and what we are. And this was the speech that was televised nationally by all the cable networks. So I treated this as my first address to the nation. And this is a portion of the speech, and I’m replaying it again because of what will follow it.
BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: Let me tell you who we conservatives are: We love people.
CROWD: (applause)
RUSH: When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see — what we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government.
CROWD: (applause)
RUSH: We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
CROWD: (louder applause)
RUSH: We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life.
CROWD: (cheers and applause)
RUSH: Liberty, Freedom.
CROWD: (wild cheering and applause)
RUSH: And the pursuit of happiness.
CROWD: (roaring cheers and applause)
RUSH: Those of you watching at home may wonder why this is being applauded. We conservatives think all three are under assault.
CROWD: (cheers and applause)
END ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: Right on. Right on. Right on. This is just a month after Obama had been immaculated. We’re on the way to the stimulus. At this point, there aren’t any Republicans pushing back. Remember, this is shortly after I had announced that “I hope he fails,” when they asked me what are your hopes for the new administration? Well, I hope Obama fails. I don’t want socialism. That was mischaracterized, misreported.
But I thought it would be helpful to define conservatism for people because nobody else was. Everybody just assumed conservatism’s this or that, small government, less taxes, you know, all this stuff, but it’s really about people. It’s about our understandings of people. It’s about our faith, trust in people. It’s about the knowledge that it is people that make a great nation. It’s ordinary people pursuing and accomplishing extraordinary things with the freedom and the ambition to do so. And I just thought it needed to be pointed out.
The reason I wanted to relive it is because we’ve put together a montage that will demonstrate the love and compassion that you in this audience have shown consistently for 31 years. Now, we’re in the middle of the Stand Up for Betsy Ross project right now, which is a $27 T-shirt, one of the greatest T-shirts that’s ever been made, by the way, in terms of the fabric, our design is the Betsy Ross flag, it says under it Stand Up for Betsy Ross because Nike and Colin Kaepernick decided to attack Betsy Ross and the flag and suggest that shoes with the flag on it should not be sold.
And, see, we don’t think the flag is political. We don’t think the flag deserves equal time to people that don’t like it. We don’t think that Betsy Ross is political. We don’t think people need or deserve equal time to respond to Betsy Ross. These are symbols of our founding and our freedom and our liberty. They’re symbols. The left has politicized them, and they’re not political. They shouldn’t be by any stretch of the imagination. So we came up with the Stand Up for Betsy Ross T-shirt for people to push back — and in under three weeks, we sold enough $27 T-shirts to be able to donate $3 million and counting.
We had thousands of orders yesterday, and there wasn’t a single mention of it. I need to give our fulfillment staff a day or two off to catch up with their work! We’re gonna be fulfilling throughout the entire month of August on this, and we’re not through! Betsy Ross isn’t political, the flag isn’t political, but there they go politicizing it. So people want to push back, and they’re snapping up these shirts as fast as we can get them made.
We now own every size XL blank white T-shirt of this style in existence in America, and we’re gonna run out of them at some point. So we have plans. I can’t tell you what they are yet, but we have plans. The point is that you people in this audience demonstrate my point about who we are as conservatives consistently. It’s been mistakenly reported that this $3 million has been donated by me, by Kathryn and me, my wife. It’s not us. It’s you.
I’m the passthrough. The RushLimbaugh.com store where you go to buy the shirts is the passthrough. Proceeds, a portion of the proceeds go to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which takes care of victims of 9/11, first responders. They’re retiring mortgages. They’re building houses for people. Doing phenomenal work. It’s all being made possible by you. What we wanted to do was review the 31 years of your compassion, demonstrating who the people of this audience are.
Despite all the attempts to impugn you and me, to criticize us, to label us improperly as racists, as sexists, or bigots. While our critics supposedly own all of the compassion and decency, these are the true tightwads that don’t donate to anything. Their own cities are drug infested, feces infested, rat infested, and they sit there and attack us. For 31 years, you have proven and demonstrated time and time again my explanation of who we as conservatives are.
BEGIN MONTAGE
RUSH: (October 19, 2007) The Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, it’s now official, is going to get in excess of $4.2 million, because I am matching Betty Casey’s bid on eBay — $4.2 million.
RUSH: (December 4, 2012) Because of you, Two If By Tea has donated over $1 million in product and monetary donations to incredible causes, including the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation.
RUSH: (April 28, 2003) Folks, you have done it again. You exceeded $1 million in charitable donations to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America.
RUSH: (April 21, 2008) We ended up with a total take of $2,519,643 with the Leukemia-Lymphoma Society Radiothon last week.
RUSH: (April 16, 2012) Yes, my friends, it was a record. Leukemia-Lymphoma Society radiothon. Excess of $3 million.
RUSH: (April 11, 2016) It was another record amount donated — and, folks, it is phenomenal. The final number’s gonna come somewhere north of $3 million.
RUSH: (July 5, 2011) We sent a truckload — it was about 3,000 cases — of Two If By Tea to the Joplin Fourth of July celebration.
RUSH: (June 24, 2008) …Move America Forward. They’ve got a giant telethon planned all day. … the largest care package ever of items of interest to American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
RUSH: (April 1, 2015) …Michael Milken and the Prostate Cancer Foundation…
RUSH: (May 19, 2014) …the Boys and Girls Clubs of America…
RUSH: (March 14, 2017) …the Els for Autism charity golf outing…
RUSH: (November 17, 2006) All the proceeds went to the Fisher Houses…
RUSH: (October 8, 2014) The Adventure of Rush Revere Series is a proud sponsor of The Navy SEALs Museum.
RUSH: (December 12, 2014) Liberty delivered a whole bunch of books to the Toys for Tots program today.
RUSH: (June 29, 2015) American Heritage Girls, we’re happy to be able to help, because I think groups like yours are unsung heroes.
RUSH: (November 30, 2005) We have thousands upon thousands of donors here in the Adopt-A-Soldier Program.
RUSH: (July 19, 2019) We have zoomed past 100,000 T-shirts, and there were 14,000 new orders today. … The amount of money that we are able to donate to Tunnel to Towers is $1.5 million.
RUSH: (July 22, 2019) We had so many more sales over the weekend that we have upped the donation to Tunnel to Towers from $1.5 million to $2 million.
RUSH: (July 29, 2019) Today, a monumental achievement: We have now raised $3 million for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
END MONTAGE
RUSH: And we’re not through yet. The T-shirts continue to fly out of the store. They’re not on shelves because this is an internet buy — and again, another warning. There’s only one place to get the authentic shirt. There’s only one place to get it at the price we’re selling it for, and there’s only one place where if you buy it, the proceeds go to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. That’s at RushLimbaugh.com and our store. There’s a direct URL to it, RushLimbaugh.com, buh, buh, buh. Just go to RushLimbaugh.com and find the “Store” tab and you’re there.
We’re up to 250 bootleggers, 250 knockoffs. We’re slapping ’em down as quickly as we can get to ’em. Some of them were charging people $1,500. That’s not what they were advertising. That’s what you were being charged, ’cause they knew they were gonna get shut down. It was a get-rich-quick scheme. There’s nothing we can do… If you get taken in by one of these fraudsters, there’s nothing we can do about it, and people are getting ensnared by Google searches.
You’re going to Google, and Google is directing you not to RushLimbaugh.com, ’cause we’re not seen in a good light by the guys at Google. We’re conservatives. So they’re sending you to the fraudsters — and, again, I wish that weren’t happening, but it’s one of the realities of this. RushLimbaugh.com and the store is the only place to get the Stand Up for Betsy Ross shirt, an ongoing project with new announcements coming soon. I tell you that.