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RUSH: Folks, I have to ask for your forgiveness in advance here because I can’t stop laughing, and I know there’s nothing to laugh about. I mean, this is not funny. But I can’t stop it. Maybe it’s the post-stress release where you just get uncontrollably giggly or whatever, but I’m going through my sound bite roster today, I’m watching stuff on television, and I’m hearing what people say.

I’m reading stuff here in the show prep and I just can’t stop laughing at the futility of it all! Anyway, I’ll walk you all through it. Great to have you here, the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Do you know, for example, folks, that I slandered Obama voters yesterday? (laughing) Yeah, right here on ABC! I slandered them. In fact, I was all over the news last night.

They’re asking Haley Barbour, “Rush Limbaugh says you gotta change your ideology on abortion. What are you gonna do?” I got some other Republicans. “Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that you gotta do this. What are you gonna do? Rush Limbaugh says over here you got… What are you gonna do? Rush Limbaugh…” Jennifer Granholm accused me of accusing the Democrats of stealing the election, which I didn’t do. I slandered Obama voters by calling them “moochers.” (laughing)

I said they voted for Santa Claus, so that’s slandering them. I’m watching Arthur Laffer today, he the big tax cut guru. He’s on Fox with Martha MacCallum, and he said, “Martha, I’ve never been more enthused in my life. I’ve never been more optimistic in my life!” (laughing) “I’ve never been more excited!” Her eyes were bugging out of her head. “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, look at what’s going to happen! We’ve got a really great guy as president, but he’s a horrible president. He’s rotten. So we’re gonna get massive tax increases. We’re gonna get economic depression. We’re going to get all kinds of slowdowns. Martha, this is going to set us up for 2014 like you cannot believe, and then when 2016 comes around we’re gong to clean up! I’ve never been more optimistic!” (laughing) Well, if it’s going to enable us to clean up in 2014 and 2016, why didn’t we clean up this week? And about that, ladies and gentlemen…

Oh, there’s another thing happening, and you knew this. You instinctively knew this. I talked about it yesterday. Let me review just a bit in setting up this whole Santa Claus thing. By the way, did that take off or did that take off? A little throwaway line and it becomes a central discussion point. All afternoon yesterday, on cable news, and I wasn’t even aware of it ’til I got home last night. Anyway, so we’re hearing in the election aftermath that of course the demography did the Republicans in. The Republicans, all they want to do is win votes with white people. They just want to win votes with old white guys. And of course those days are over, and the old white guys are dwindling in number, and this is a country now, you gotta get the gay vote, you gotta get the black vote, the Latino vote, get the single women vote, the demography, and the demography is killing the Republicans.

So I said, “Let me ask you a question. Let’s go back to Republican convention.” I point out we’ve got more elected Hispanics, the Republican Party does, than the Democrats in elective office, federal, state, local, all over the country, far more elected Hispanics than the Democrats have. At the Democrat convention, Condoleezza Rice, one of the most achieved, accomplished people in our country, happens to be female African-American. Suzanne Martinez, the Hispanic Latino governor of New Mexico, achieved, successful. Marco Rubio, Hispanic, Republican, Senate. And the list goes on.

There are quite a few minority participants at the Republican convention. I said, “What did they all have in common?” They all had an up from nothing story, their families or themselves came from nothing. Their families sacrificed for them, and they engaged in hard work, and they overcame all kinds of obstacles to reach the pinnacle of their profession, and then I said, “Why doesn’t that count?” Well, there’s an answer to why that doesn’t count. The hard work story doesn’t resonate, folks. I hate to tell you, but it’s not resonating with Obama voters. We don’t have a demography problem, but the Republican Party today is convinced that they do, and so there are discussions ongoing right now, I raised the question yesterday, “Are we supposed to now be for amnesty and illegal immigration? Are we supposed to come out and be pro-life to get those voters? Are we supposed to support gay marriage, legalize pot, is that what we’re supposed to do?”

That’s where it’s headed. What’s the answer to that, seriously. Then let me give you a startling bit of news. And, you know, I mentioned this at the top of yesterday’s program and I apologize to you because it didn’t register to me what I was saying at the moment I was saying it. It’s crucially important and I glossed over it. It shoulda stopped me dead in my tracks. It may have stopped many of you dead in your tracks when you heard me say it. Two-point-eight million votes is the number of votes Romney lost in the popular vote to Obama. But get this. Mitt Romney got three million fewer Republican votes than McCain. Do you realize what that means? Did anybody think that Romney would underperform McCain in Republican turnout? Nobody did.

Now, let’s go back to the polls, the preelection polls, and they all were showing Democrat samples of plus six, plus seven, and plus 11, and we pooh-poohed it. Let’s go back and remember how these samples happened. The pollsters do not go out — let’s say the CNN, 49-49 tie, this is the day before the election with a Democrat plus 11 sample. They don’t go out and find a sample that’s a thousand people. They don’t purposely find a sample with 11% more Democrats or a sample of plus 11 more Democrats. It’s just the way it happened. They called their sample of a thousand people, and of the thousand people, when they finished, that sample had a Democrat plus 11 advantage. It turned out to be dead right. Well, not plus 11, it was Democrat plus six or plus seven. Dead right. There was a significant — there were enough Republican votes that sat home.

If the Republicans who didn’t vote had voted, Mitt Romney would have won the popular vote by 180,000. I don’t know yet what it might have been in the Electoral College, and no, I’m not crying over spilt milk. This is crucial to understand in terms of what the Republican Party’s doing and how they’re analyzing why they lost. They did not lose because of demographics. Three million of their voters stayed home. Now, who are they? We don’t know yet. But let’s play. Let’s say three million white voters didn’t vote. Let’s say that of the three million who didn’t vote, half of them are evangelicals. Let’s say some of them are the wrong poll group. Let’s say some of them are just fed up with Republicans nominating moderates. Who knows. We don’t know yet. But it is significant, and it is a mistake — the Republican Party didn’t turn out its base, is what happened.

The Republican Party did not turn out their voters. We did not get beat primarily because of demography. I don’t want anybody to misunderstand. I’m not sweeping the demographic characteristics of the electorate off the table in terms of it being important. I’m not doing that at all. That’s not the point here. My point is that there is a whole bunch of erroneous analysis taking place by the Republican Party with the aid and comfort of the Democrats and the media who would love for the Republican Party to give up on its ideologically principled positions, and the Republican Party, depending on how you hear these sound bites and of course the panicked aftermath of every election, like Boehner. Boehner, he’s a great guy, he’s a good man, and Art Laffer was saying, “He’s a good man, these two guys,” I mean Art Laffer is saying that Boehner’s a great family man, like Obama’s a great family man. “Wonderful guys, but I’ve never been more optimistic, Martha.”

Yeah, right, okay. The night of the election, what was Boehner saying? We are the firewall. We are the last stand. There will be no tax increases. That’s out the window now. Yesterday, the Speaker of the House said, “Mr. President, we’re willing to be led, we want to be led, we’re willing to put new revenue on the table,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this happens. After the 2002 midterms, the Democrats learned via the exit polls that they got beat by values voters and so for the next two weeks all the Democrats did was pander to value voters. It happens. You can’t say that what the Republicans are saying and doing today is gonna define what they’re gonna be doing next year after Obama’s immaculated the second time. But they’re making an error, a huge error if they think that demography did ’em in. They didn’t get their base out. Three million Republicans sat home. This is not insignificant. Obama got ten million fewer voters than he got in 2008.

There was not… Folks, this election was not the way… The outcome is not the way it’s being spun and portrayed for you everywhere in the media. I don’t care where you look, everywhere it’s being spun that Republicans lost because of the Hispanic vote and the single women vote. And the Republicans wouldn’t have lost if they got their base out. This is a stunning number, and it’s a number that nobody factored.

Everybody figured that every Republican alive would be voting in this election, did we not? Or am I alone in that? I’m looking at people across the glass here and nobody looks surprised. I had this number at the top of the hour yesterday, and I mentioned it. You can go back and look at the transcript, and I just zoomed past it. It didn’t register until last night when I got some corresponding numbers to put it in some sort of perspective.

There’s also, ladies and gentlemen, a piece by Heather Mac Donald. Heather Mac Donald is a demographic researcher. She is a conservative libertarian, I think. She’s at the Manhattan Institute. She is highly reputed, highly respected throughout the conservative academy, the genuine conservative academy. And she had a piece yesterday that just blew me away. And then the Wall Street Journal today has an editorial and it couldn’t be further apart.

They’re talking about immigrants.

Now, the Wall Street Journal says what most every conservative says: People immigrate to this country for a better life. They come here and they want to find the American dream. They come here and they want to get a job and they want to work and they want to find their way in our culture and climb the ladder and so forth. Heather Mac Donald’s piece yesterday said that’s not true. Let me read to you what she said.

“If Republicans want to change their stance on immigration, they should do so on the merits, not out of a belief that only immigration policy stands between them and a Republican Hispanic majority. It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic [P]arty…” Yeah, see, now look at it that way and why do the Hispanics gravitate to the Democrats?

The Republicans look at that question, and they come up with an answer and then they think they need a competing pitch to get them. But why? Why do…? What is the bond, the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democrat Party? Well, what’s the Democrat Party known for? Folks, are you ready for some honesty here? I’m sure I’m gonna be called, what, slandering Obama voters.

I just read to you what Heather Mac Donald says here: “It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond…” In other words, Hispanic voters are not voting for Democrats because they’re for amnesty. Hispanic voters are not voting for Democrats because they’re for open borders. That’s not why Hispanics vote for Democrats, according to her research. The reason they vote for Democrats is the reason anybody else votes for Democrats.

Santa Claus!

My term, not hers, but I’ll just read what she says here. “It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic [P]arty, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation. Hispanics will prove to be even more decisive in the victory of Governor Jerry BrownÂ’s Proposition 30, which raised upper-income taxes and the sales tax, than in the Obama election.”

And, lo and behold, we did our Morning Update on this. With Prop 30 in California, the California citizenry voted to raise taxes on itself. Now, they’re gonna get screwed because they were promised there wouldn’t be any new spending if they voted for these tax increases. We’ve been there, done that. That isn’t gonna happen, but they bought it. Ms. Mac Donald’s point is that when they break this all down, they’re gonna find that a decent, large number of Hispanics voted for raising taxes on the rich in California.

Enough to put Moonbeam over the top on his beloved Prop 30. So, okay, two competing visions here in the Wall Street Journal. They come for a better life. They come to work hard, the traditional American dream route. Heather Mac Donald says they come here and vote Democrat, but that’s not why they come. It’s why do they support Democrats. That’s the key. We want them to support Republicans, theoretically, right?

Okay. These simply say that we better be honest here. They’re voting Democrat not ’cause of immigration policy. They’re not voting Democrat ’cause of open border. The border’s already open. They’re voting Democrat ’cause the Democrats are the party of free stuff and raising taxes — “progressive taxation” — on the rich to pay for it. Now, you put that together with the fact that three million Republicans didn’t vote, and then you add to the mix that the Republicans think they lost because they are not for amnesty.

I’m telling you, I don’t know what you can do but laugh at the futility of it all. It’s not funny. I don’t want you misunderstand. But in the panic of defeat, in the aftermath here — and, by the way, all the smartest thinking on our side is agreeing. “We’ve gotta do something. We gotta moderate our amnesty position.” That’s not at all why the Democrats enjoy a majority of the Hispanic vote.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Where’d I get these numbers? I first got the election numbers yesterday from a Wall Street buddy and then last night Jeff Lord at the American Spectator sent me a blurb and a guy named Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics has analyzed this. These numbers are pretty consistent no matter where you go to find them, the turnout numbers and so forth. I don’t know that anybody is disputing them.

But, folks, that’s a separate issue from the point here that the Republicans think they’ve now gotta somehow moderate their position on amnesty in order to get the Hispanic vote. Heather Mac Donald has been at this a long time, and she’s not in the business of being wrong, either. She’s an academic. She’s making it very clear: Look, it’s not immigration policy that makes the Democrat Party attractive to Hispanic immigrants. It’s not. It’s Democrat ideology.


Let me put it to you this way, folks. If it were true that the primary reason that people (illegal immigrants) were coming here is to work, then Democrat Party would be the ones building the fence on the border. Why do you think the Democrats welcome them? Why do you think the Democrats want amnesty? They know that they’ve got them as voters. Why do they have them as voters?

Not because they’re open borders. The Republicans fall for this. La Raza has their meetings and their protests and demand the borders be opened, and the Republicans believe what is said about them, that they’re hated and disliked because they’re exclusive and they don’t want amnesty. So the Republicans say, “Okay, we gotta be more inclusive.”

You can’t look at the Republican convention this past summer and say the Republicans are not inclusive. The only way you can say the Republicans are not inclusive is because the Republicans are not willing to ignore the law. But it is a feint. It is a head fake. It’s a trick. Just like, “Don’t criticize the president! That’ll really tick off the independents.

“Don’t… Don’t do it. You be critical of the president and you’re gonna make the independents mad.” Well, Romney came through double digits in independents, by the way, and it didn’t matter, did it? So many things are being turned upside down, theories are being turned upside down as we examine the election results.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, some of you may be bothered by my little joke about if immigration was about work, the Democrats would be down there building the fence to stop it, but I mean, we are in the middle of some fundamental shifts in this country. And we are, if not outnumbered, we’re on the way, folks. I wasn’t just trying to use scare tactics yesterday. It used to be — in fact, you go back to Reagan, Reagan voted amnesty in 1986, Simpson-Mazzoli was the name of the bill. Three million illegals were given amnesty, three million. That was said to be the end of it. We’re gonna get really tough on it. Of course, that didn’t happen.

Hispanics that were beneficiaries of amnesty back then, still hate Republicans. Even though it was the Republican Party that gave ’em the amnesty back in 1986. Why doesn’t that last? It used to be that immigration was about jobs, and the concern was jobs lost. Even the Democrat Party, because of the unions, was concerned about illegal immigration because of what it meant for jobs. What happened to that? Why all of a sudden do the unions no longer care about that? No, no, folks, gotta face these questions. There are answers to these questions. Why now does the number one support group of the Democrat Party support amnesty, support illegal immigration? Why are they not worried about a massive inflow of people across the border?

Could it be that the unions have realized it’s not taking jobs. Could it be they’ve realized they’re not taking that many jobs. Could it be that Heather Mac Donald’s right, that the reason the Hispanic vote lines up with the Democrat vote is because they believe in the expansion of government and what government does, and they believe in raising taxes on the rich? See, where the Republicans are making their mistake here is they think that Hispanics, even legals, they think that the Hispanic vote supports the Democrats because of immigration policy, and that’s not it. Why does the Democrat Party get votes from anybody? From academia and Hollywood ’cause it’s cool and hip, everybody else it’s Santa Claus. What does inclusive mean? Republicans aren’t inclusive.

Doug Schoen yesterday, I mentioned this to you, Doug Schoen, the Democrat pollster. “I didn’t see any signs of inclusion from the Republican Party in this campaign.” What do you mean you didn’t? What was the Republican convention? Condoleezza Rice, Suzanne Martinez, Marco Rubio, not to mention Clarence Thomas, any number of achieved, really quality people of great character and morality. They’re all over the Republican Party, and that doesn’t count. Why isn’t that called inclusive? The Republican convention was not a dream. It really happened and those people did speak and they were given prominent roles and they were given prominent roles because they were to serve as role models. They were to show the Hispanic community and women and blacks, “Hey, look we are a good home for you.” Didn’t resonate. Why not?

Santa Claus, folks. What does inclusive mean? When it is said that the Republican Party is exclusive, what does it mean? Well, I’m giving you the answer. Inclusive means you are willing to give stuff to voting blocs based on gender, skin color, or ethnicity. If you are exclusive, it means that you aren’t. Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, who was fabulous. Mia Love, she lost, unfortunately. Mia Love, great African-American woman in Utah. I mean, the Republican convention was filled with highly accomplished, highly achieved minorities.

I know the Republicans are pulling their hair out, “Why didn’t it work? Why didn’t it work?” ‘Cause you’re misunderstanding what the Democrat terminology is. You’re missing the boat if you think that the Democrats are talking about hard work to anybody. Does really anybody associate the Democrat Party with hard work? When you think of the Democrat Party, what do you think is the attraction people have for it? Their compassion. What does that mean? Giving stuff away. We’ve got more people unemployed in this country than we had in a long time. They’re all eating. They’ve all got phones, they got televisions, they’ve got food stamps, and some of them have cars.

Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana. I mean, we got ’em everywhere, we got great Americans. John McCain did more for amnesty than any Republican ever has. Did it help him? Did he win the election in 2008? Did John McCain get the Hispanic vote?

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