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RUSH: Here’s Matt in Southaven, Mississippi. I’m glad you waited. You’re next on Open Line Friday. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s an honor to talk to you, sir.

RUSH: Yes, sir, thank you very much.

CALLER: My question is based on this apparent campaign strategy that the fear and loathing of Hillary will be enough to win, and the whole concept of opposition politics, in 2004, John Kerry’s entire campaign relied on people simply disliking Bush, and look where it got him. So my question is, is wanting someone else to lose ever enough to actually win?

RUSH: In Hillary’s case it might be, because she has a higher disapproval rating than anybody who’s ever been elected president. Her polarizing numbers are such that her negatives are up to 49%. So it’s already there. There is already fear, anger, loathing of Mrs. Clinton, and it’s only going to intensify if she gets the nomination, we get down to the election. John Kerry, the haughty John Kerry who served in Vietnam tried to run a hate campaign against Bush. The problem there, Bush is not unlikable.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Bush is not. Hillary is. Hillary is, at first glance, unlikable. The Republican strategy is no doubt to unite the party on the basis of fear and loathing of Hillary. Don’t doubt me on this.

CALLER: I guess I just don’t like the idea of turning over our party, turning it into something that is just against something else. I mean, aren’t Republicans supposed to be for things?

RUSH: Too late. Too late now. We gotta work on putting the party back together. The point now, the real focus now, is House and Senate races. The conventional wisdom is the Democrats are going to clean our clocks, and they’re going to expand their majorities now. They may, but the House and Senate are going to be crucial to thwarting the liberal agenda that’s going to come from the Democrat majorities in both those places. Look, the Democrats only have a one-seat majority in the Senate right now. They’re going to have a much greater majority than that. Right now, Harry Reid needs nine votes to get anything done. Mitch McConnell can afford to lose something like, what, 14 of his Republicans. What are the odds? That’s why Dingy Harry hasn’t gotten anything done. In the House, it’s much the same way. The House hasn’t even tried to pass serious legislation. They’ve just made their political statements here for the kook fringe base. But the margins in both houses are very close right now, and if you could keep it this close in the Senate, you could stop the liberals from getting things done in the Senate, regardless who the president is. That’s gotta be a focus. Some of these Senate seats that everybody is sacrificing, ‘Ah, the Republicans are going to lose ’em.’ Who says? It’s only February.

The presidential race is going to be McCain against somebody. There’s nothing that can be done about that. There’s nothing that could be done about the RNC strategy here about getting McCain elected, and that’s this: Unify the party on the basis of fear and loathing of Hillary and reach out and try to bring in liberals and independents to the party. We can’t stop that. That happened when Romney pulled out of the race and Huckabee was never a nominating factor. But that’s done. For the next four years, the Republican Party is going to grow by attracting people you’d never vote for, by people you’d never see in a Republican polling place under normal circumstances, but that’s going to be their outreach. That’s who’s running the party now, gang. The Washington establishment country club blue-blood Republicans are running the party. They don’t like conservatives being the dominant force in the party. They want our votes on Election Day, but beyond that we should shut up and go away and certainly don’t protest any abortion clinics. Then they’re going to go out and start attracting all these liberals and independents, because they think that’s how you win elections. It isn’t, but they think that’s how you do it, coupled with the fear and loathing of Hillary.

So the objective has to be how do we limit the damage in the next four years regardless who the president is? Limiting damage, the greatest chance we have is not on talk radio, it’s not getting phone calls to Washington because you can only do that so many times before those guys will start ignoring it. The way to do it is to get enough of our people in the House and Senate to be a bulwark and to slow down Democrat majorities there. Don’t sit the election out. Don’t sit there and say, harumpf, harumpf. McCain’s the nominee, the party is defined now for what it’s going to be for the next four years, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, or the end of the day, or the end of the year. Who McCain picks as his veep is going to be pretty important here, too, for a bunch of reasons I’m not going to mention, but it is. More important than perhaps it’s been in many, many moons, folks, for reasons I’m not going to mention. But don’t sit this out, and don’t think that all is lost. I don’t care if it’s Obama, Hillary, or McCain, with a Democrat majority in the Congress, we’re going to get Democrat things done. ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, what if we had a real conservative Republican?’ Well, hard to say. There hasn’t been one that fits the mold like Reagan. But Reagan, I’ll show you what can be done.

Reagan, massive tax cuts with the Democrats holding, what, a 200-seat majority in the House, or 150-seat majority in the House? For many of Reagan’s years a Democrat majority in the Senate, and look what he got done. How did he do it? The power of ideas and principles and the ability to communicate with the American people over the heads of the Drive-By Media. Reagan wanted to expand the party, too, but he wanted to bring in converted liberals and converted independents. And he did. They’ve now gone. They’re back to their own party. The country club blue-bloods didn’t like them in the party as conservatives, because they were from the South. They were pro-lifers, had pickup trucks, gun racks, went to NASCAR. Not cool for the blue-blood country clubbers to associate with at fundraising parties. So gotta start all over. Now, let’s say there was a candidate out there that was close as you can get. By the way, we’re not whistling Dixie here. This is not pining away for a personality. We’re talking about ideas, principles, and so forth and sticking to them. If there was somebody out there that could have been — and there wasn’t, there was not — but if there had been somebody in this race, in our primaries who was rock-ribbed conservative and got the nomination, and then got elected and beat Hillary, that person would have a far greater chance with the power of ideas, personality, intellect, and ability to communicate with the American people to forestall a Democrat majority.


It has been shown that conservatism properly articulated with good cheer and optimism can forestall a huge Democrat majority, led by professionals like Tip O’Neill, not rank amateurs like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Reagan was dealing with the primo of the primo of the Democrat leadership. Tip O’Neill and people like that, those guys were no slouches. The majority leaders in the Senate that were Democrats back in Reagan’s day, Dingy Harry is a water boy compared to those people. Reagan beat them back and beat them back and beat them back and fought them. Iran-Contra, you might not like it, but he fought them. That’s not going to be happening, folks, I’m just telling you. With our nominee, the Democrats are not going to be fought on very much, because you won’t get anything done, and presidents like to say they got things done. At the end of the day, doesn’t matter how it happened or what it was, they can just say they got things done. So to stop the wrong things from getting done, the focus now has to be House and Senate, and not just this election, but down the road.
I urge you, I implore all of you that pay attention to this stuff, start paying attention to your state senators and legislators. They may escape you now, their work may escape you, but guess what? That’s where the next members of the House and Senate are going to come from. So if you’ve got people in your state legislature that are good tax cutters, they’re good on the culture, they’re good on immigration, you support ’em, you vote for ’em because that’s the farm team for the future House of Representatives. Normally what you’d like to do is have a very good articulate leader of a movement president to stop the renegades in Congress. The way this has shaped up what’s going to have to happen is that the true conservatives and leaders and the people with guts and gumption to stop the movement of this country left is going to have to happen in the Congress, and you elect ’em. So don’t sit it out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, just a review, folks, because there’s going to be a weekend here, I don’t want you to forget this. Just to review, the presidential race is what it’s going to be. It’s going to be McCain or Hillary or Obama. But it’s also going to be enlarged, according to the conventional wisdom, Democrat majorities in the House and Senate. It doesn’t matter who is elected president, because of who our nominee is, it doesn’t matter. So the thing that you’re going to have to focus on here to keep the country from moving left is to focus on House and Senate races, support as many Republican conservatives in both the House and Senate in your state as you can and try to limit the so-called vast increases the Democrats are expecting in this presidential election. Look, our nominee is who he is. If he gets elected, he loves walking across the aisle dealing with Democrats on a number of different things, they’re going to be the majority. Presidents like to get things done, defined as walking across the aisle and doing legislation that both parties think is hunky-dory. It is what it is. The only way it can be limited is if there are enough conservative Republicans in the House and Senate to prevent voting majorities from bill after bill after bill. That’s it. This is true.

I don’t care if it’s McCain who wins the presidency or if it’s Hillary or Obama, the point is, this is not the time to sulk and sit out and forget the election. This is what happened in 2006. People sat out in 2006. I played the sound bite from October 18th of 2006, a couple of weeks ago before that election, I predicted if you sit out and you turn the House and Senate over to Democrats, you’re going to get a McCain Republican presidential nominee, and that’s exactly what we got. I played that sound bite. I’m not going to play it again. It will be all over the website when we update later this afternoon to reflect the contents of today’s program. So that’s where we are. You know it is what it is. Reality is reality. The only way to stop this is to get enough Republicans, conservatives in the House and Senate to provide a bulwark when it comes to voting on certain pieces of legislation.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Joy in Washington, Michigan, thank you for waiting, and welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hi, Rush!

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: You’re a great American.

RUSH: Well, thank you.

CALLER: I have this theory. I’m going to go vote for McCain, go home, and take the hottest shower I’ve ever taken. And the reason I’m going to do that is there are three evils up there; and I’m trying to figure out who’s the worst of the evils. But I have hope, and I —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What are we talking about, the three evils?

CALLER: Well, Obama, Hillary, and McCain.

RUSH: Let’s not use the word ‘evil.’

CALLER: Well, in the sense —

RUSH: Well, it’s Open Line Friday. If you want to use the word ‘evil,’ go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.

CALLER: Okay. (laughs) So what I’m saying is, I keep praying, and I’m saying, ‘What should I do here?’ I feel like that if we would… We just gotta stick together, hold McCain to the fire, not let him get away with this, and everybody get out and vote and show the Democrats that we can get together and we can change things; if we’ll vote for our congressmen and that, that if we hold him to his word, we’ve gotta make him do that as conservatives — and I think if we could do that, maybe we can change some things. Otherwise, if we just give it to the Democrats and say, ‘Okay, the next four years,’ the only problem is, it will take 30 years to undo what they’ve done.

RUSH: (doing McCain impression) ‘You see, Limbaugh? You see? You see! They think they can hold my feet to the fire? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. I’m the maverick! I’m the maverick! Nobody holds my feet to the fire; nobody holds my feet to anything else. The North Vietnamese couldn’t do it; what makes this woman in Washington, Michigan, think that she can?’

CALLER: (laughing) I don’t know. I’m just praying. I’ve done a lot of praying.

RUSH: No, the way to do this is you’re going to have to have conservative Republicans in the House and Senate do this. That’s been one of my themes today. I hate being a broken record. I hate repeating things over and over because I feel like I’m short-changing you people, but the die is cast for the presidency in the next election, on most issues. There are going to be some exceptions here but on most issues we’re going to go left, and this is really not so much an indictment of McCain as it is acknowledgement of reality, of who’s going to be running Congress. The Democrats are going to be running it. The idea is to keep their governing majorities, their voting majorities as small as possible. That’s why Dingy Harry cannot get anything done in the Senate now. He cannot get to 60 votes. But if the Democrats have 55 votes, after this next time around — you couple that with the Olympia Snowes and the Susan Collinses and, the liberal Republicans — Dingy Harry could get to 60. If we have a president, a Republican president, and this happens, who’s inclined to work with Democrats (doing McCain impression) ‘to get things done,’ then… (sigh) This is not pessimist, folks. I’m charting the course of reality here for you, and telling you the way things are going to shape up.

Not only to help you deal with it emotionally, but to offer strategeries here to try to blunt what’s going to happen. Throw McCain out. If it’s Hillary or Obama with these Democrat majorities, it’s going to be a little bit more left than it would go with McCain, but it’s still going to go left. It’s going to go left big time, and I actually think that with either Hillary or Obama, the Republicans in the House and Senate are going to be a lot freer to stand up and shout and stop and call ’em what they are. ‘We’re not going to take this country to the socialist left, President Obama!’ It’ll be much easier for them to say that. (interruption) No, I’m not signaling how I’m going to vote. I’m just telling you. I’m giving the reality. That’s one of the problems. That’s why I’m getting this hate mail lately. People say reality is just too hard. It’s harshhhhh. You want to live in the world of hope. Fine. You live in the World of Hope. I’ll live in the World of Reality, and I’ll meet you at Reality when you run outta Hope. You can count on where I will be.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Bob in Columbus, Ohio, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Cincinnati Bearcat dittos.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I enjoy the program, and your arguments and share most of your opinions. I’m calling to take exception to your premise and repeated emphasis of reelecting the Republican senators and House members, as well as your kind of ‘I told you so’ message about the 2006 election; that, hey, this is what we’re going to get if we don’t reelect these folks. Well, in order for the pendulum to swing right again, it’s gotta finish swinging left, and reelecting these RINOs out there — these Democrats in drag, if you will — it’s not going to stop that pendulum from swinging left.

RUSH: Oh, no. I agree with you. That’s not what I meant. I meant to work for as many conservative House members and Senate members as possible. It may not succeed wildly this year, but this is going to be an ongoing effort and ongoing project. I also pointed out that you’re going to have to ask people to pay attention to their state legislatures, to find the state senators and the state representatives who are voting against tax increases and all these things that we find conservative, and support them and inspire them to run for higher office. But I’m not suggesting reelecting the same old RINOs that are going to go along with the Democrats. In some cases, we’re not going to have any choice because some of them are not up for reelection.

CALLER: I couldn’t agree more. I mean, we bounced DeWine out of Ohio here. He was part of that Gang of 14. I think — correct me if I’m wrong — Voinovich may have been also. He’s up this term. If Voinovich wasn’t part of that gang, I know he was standing on the floor crying — literally — tears when W was trying to get Bolton appointed.

RUSH: I know. Look (sigh), you get who you vote for. You get who you vote for. We’re going to get who we vote for. Look, I have to run here, Bob. I appreciate the call.

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