RUSH: Schenectady, New York. This is Mike. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. I think Newt’s problem is the same problem we’ve seen with a lot of other Republicans that have almost been forced to call your program to make right in the immediate aftermath of their remarks, and that problem is, they want to curry favor more with the press than they do with Republicans. They’re more concerned about what the DC villagers are thinking and saying about them than they are about holding true to Republican ideals. Now, I’m a liberal, and I remember 2008 when you had another candidate like that, John McCain, who you just absolutely refused to endorse.
RUSH: That’s right.
CALLER: I think part of the problem was, back in 2008, you refused to endorse any other candidate, either. So McCain snuck in there without — I mean honestly I think you probably lead the Republican Party. And you could crown, you could play kingmaker here.
RUSH: Shhh! We don’t want everybody to know that, but, yeah.
CALLER: Well, I really wish you would because, as a liberal, I want Obama to feel threatened. Listen, if the Republicans go out there and compete for that mostly middle, they’re competing on Obama’s turf.
RUSH: Wait a second.
CALLER: And Obama’s going to continue working in that mostly middle, calling for more drilling and not closing Guantanamo and starting new wars in Libya and all the rest. What I want is a hard-core conservative so that Obama can, you know, kinda highlight the differences between the parties. I want him to make an appeal to his base.
RUSH: I have to take a break because of time. This is amazing, you listen to this kind of stuff. I’m not buying that. This is crazy. I mean, he means it, but this is crazy.
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RUSH: With all due respect to our last caller, Obama is going to run as a conservative. He would love a squishy moderate Republican so he can own the conservative stuff in the campaign. That’s the only way he can win reelection. He can’t win election as a full-fledged liberal, and he knows it.
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RUSH: Let’s go back to the previous caller we had, a liberal who said he wants me — (interruption) what? Yeah, I’m gonna get to the Bachmann, hang in. — wants me to actually go out and name a candidate, that I’m the leader, pick somebody conservative ’cause this guy doesn’t like the way Obama’s moving. This is a hard-core liberal. I question how hard-core ’cause he was really nice. We had him on for a full minute, he didn’t call me a name once. Could have fooled me. If he hadn’t said he was a liberal, I wouldn’thavebelieved it. But he wants me to pick the candidate because he’s worried that Obama’s moving too far to the right here. He doesn’t like the fact that Obama’s gonna go drill now. He doesn’t like that Obama’s ratcheting up in Libya. He doesn’t like all the stuff that Obama’s doing. Guantanamo is still open.
Look, for all that we say about our side, you have to say when Obama does his flip-flop on drilling for oil, you gotta know the people on the left are going bonkers. You just know they are. And so the proposition was put forth that if I would name somebody, just really rock-ribbed conservative, and that person would thus get the nomination, this would free Obama to go back to being full-fledged Marxist socialist, and win with ease. What’s the point? This guy is saying that Obama is gonna lose by moving to the right. He wants Obama to not even try to occupy the right because I will pick somebody who owns it. Again, for all of you people on the left, the last thing Obama wants is to run against a real conservative. Obama hopes to hell he gets a squishy moderate, middle of the road McCain type. He wants somebody who is afraid to occupy conservative positions. He wants a Republican who has been convinced that that is the wrong way to go.
I’m telling you, they will do anything. They will tell us what they fear. They’ll tell us who they fear. They will do anything to keep a demonstrable, genuine conservative from getting the Republican nomination, because they know that they will lose and lose big. And Obama, forget labels for a second here, you leftists. Forget whether it’s conservative or liberal for Obama to flip-flop on drilling for oil. Why is he doing it? You know Obama does not want to be a conservative, he isn’t one, but he does want to be reelected. I have postulated and theorized for the last week or so that the internal polling in the White House on Obama reelect is disastrous. I think drill, baby, drill, his flip-flop on drilling, I think going after Bin Laden, I think all of that is evidence of how bad it is inside the polling data, deep inside the internal polling of the White House on Obama’s reelection. I think it looks horrible. There’s no other explanation.
But look, this country, for all the talk in the media, for all of the pop culture, this country is not a center left country. It’s not a liberal country. It’s not a socialist country. If it were, folks, Obama would be proudly running on his record. He would be promising 10% unemployment instead of trying to reduce it. If Obama’s proscriptions were the genuine solution to problems he’d be doubling down and running on them instead of trying to make people think that he is for things he’s not. The real Barack Obama does not want to drill for oil. But the real Barack Obama realizes he’s got to say he’s interested in it or will look at it if he has a chance of being reelected. If he is reelected, it will be easy within a day or two or a month or two to say, “You know what, I worked as hard as I could,” but he’d change his mind within a week after the election and throw it away. His left and base would be extremely happy.
This idea here that conservatism is a loser, that’s folly because Obama is trying to angle so that he has perception of being anything but a liberal as we head here toward the presidential campaign. It’s fascinating to watch, and it happens every time. The left always has to move to the center at election time. They didn’t have to so much in ’08 because they weren’t challenged on the right. Obama was not challenged on the right. He was challenged from the middle. He was challenged from somebody who really didn’t even want to challenge him, per se, which is McCain.
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