RUSH: Let’s face it, folks. The Republican brand and I’m not even big on that kind of lingo, but since it works in helping to communicate things, it’s worth talking about it in that sense. The Republican brand right now is really damaged. It’s damaged to a point that there’s specific things that are gonna have to happen for it to be fixed. The brand has been damaged over the years by what? Paid smear ads for one thing; indoctrination education; Hollywood; the pop culture; the Democrat Party with their allies in the media who cannot to this day even triumph in the arena of ideas. So they don’t even go there. They create the illusion they are in the arena of ideas, but they’re not. Their entire tactic is to discredit and impugn, smear their opposition. They’ve done it well because the Republicans have never known what to do about it.
Let me give you an example of this. I just ran across this this morning. It’s from a couple of days ago: $500,000 grant for Obamacare education. I said, “Now what the hell is this?” Five hundred thousand grant for Obamacare education. So I read this. You know what this is? The California Endowment, whatever the hell it is, announced a half a million dollar grant for Obamacare education to a group called Hollywood Health & Society.
Okay, so what is Hollywood Health & Society? Well, do you know what it is? It is a program at USC, at the Annenberg Norman Lear Center. Norman Lear, of All in the Family, a huge leftist, has endowed a division or a wing or whatever the hell, of a school at USC, and you know what it does? It provides TV show producers and writers and movie producers and writers with, quote, accurate and timely information for storylines on health and climate change in television shows and movies.
So to rephrase this. The California Endowment has given $500,000 that will be used to train people who write and produce television shows and movies the correct quote/unquote, the proper quote/unquote, information for storylines that they will include about Obamacare and global warming. So the left is essentially, in this instance, buying and purchasing propaganda, except it’s not thought to be propaganda. The recipients of the money, these eager beaver writers and producers show up and they are told what they think is the truth about Obamacare and global warming so that when they write about it or produce TV shows or movies, they have the Democrat Party spin. But it is presented to them in the form of formal education via a grant from the Norman Lear Center at USC.
This is how it is done. Now, what do the Republicans do in this regard? What similar effort do the Republicans have to inform or teach or whatever word you want to use, writers and producers in Hollywood, what effort are the Republicans engaging in to tell these people, “You know, you’re being propagandized. You’re not learning the truth. You’re learning the Democrat Party spin.” Not every writer and producer in Hollywood is a Democrat. Not every writer and producer, nor actor in Hollywood, is a liberal. The vast majority of them are, but not everybody is. And this is just half a million dollars, but that’s not the point. The point is that a foundation essentially was set up, and it looks scholarly, but all it is is a propaganda machine.
That’s all it is so that when Hollywood writer X decides that an episode of Revenge wants to do a side story on Obamacare because one of the character’s is in the hospital, here’s how to put the pro Obamacare spin in your script in a pop culture story that the low information voters are watching so that they learn the quote/unquote truth. These people live for this stuff. They are not interested in going to the American people in the arena of ideas and competing for their hearts and minds. They are totally into propaganda, totally into mind control.
The Republicans haven’t the slightest idea about any of this. This is just one little half million dollar grant. In many cases it isn’t even necessary because the writers and producers already are pro Obamacare and pro the liberal spin on climate change and would ordinarily not need to be told how to include such propaganda in their storylines. But what this ends up doing is furthering the notion of destroying or damaging the Republican brand.
Would you agree with me, Mr. Snerdley, if I were to say in a descriptive way here that the word “Republican” in certain elements of our culture has itself become a pejorative? The word “Republican” to some people is a joke. The word “Republican” means racist. I was touching on this yesterday in terms of what is in the minds of low information? What is a conservative today? Somebody who is 25 years old, growing up, what have they been told conservative is? They don’t know Reagan. What do they think conservative is? Bush. And look at how they successfully propagandized and manufactured all of the lies and the hatred about George W. Bush.
They have done to the word “Republican” what we have done on this program to the word “liberal.” We’re not alone in this, but the problem is the Republican Party doesn’t join our efforts here to play the game defined by the aggressors, which in this case is the Democrats and liberals. The Republican Party so scared of its own shadow and so scared of its own tail wants to try to avoid any of this criticism. A lot of Republicans don’t want to be thought of as Republicans or conservatives because the destruction and damaging of the brand has been so successful. And they are not interested in fighting back. That’s the last thing they want to do. But the American people are willing to fight back. The American people want to fight back and that’s why they are electing people like Cruz in Texas to go do it.
Have you noticed also, folks, that this AP poll here…? “Poll Finds Little to Like in Washington — Americans are finding that they like little about Obama or either party. Few people approve of the way the president’s handling most major issues. Most people say he is not decisive, not strong, not honest, not reasonable or inspiring.” But have you noticed that in the media there is never… I can’t remember the last time I heard this discussed, the idea that the Democrats “lose their base.”
It’s a constant discussion about Republicans. Not only that, not only are the Republicans losing their base, they should because the constant discussion is the Republican base is a bunch of fringe kook extremists. We never hear a word about the Democrat base. No matter what Obama does, there’s never any fear or thought that he will lose his base. This is a one-way street. The media isn’t the media. The media isn’t news. The media isn’t journalism. It’s just the Democrat Party.
They never give their base a reason to get mad or leave. It’s not even something that’s conceived to be possible, that the Democrats would lose their base. But in every discussion of Ted Cruz, every discussion of the shutdown, every discussion of trying to limit Obamacare, defund it or delay it, there’s always the discussion of the Republican base, and in this case it’s the base that’s the problem, and the Republican Party believes the media when they tell them that their own base is the problem.
We never hear about the Democrat base.
Obama… There isn’t a single Democrat out there that ever has to even worry about losing his base. There’s never any pressure on the base anywhere. They may as well not even exist. In fact, the Democrats don’t have a base. Everybody that votes Democrat is the base. There is not a war within the Democrat Party, we’re told. There aren’t any moderate Democrats left; they’re all just Obamaites. The perception of that is 100%, total unity. On the Republican side the very word “Republican” has become a pejorative.
Now, what would a business do if this had happened to its brand? Well, a business would do a couple of things. The first thing a business would do would be to try to improve the product and then the business would hire new leadership. It might even change the name of the brand. But that’s the last thing to happen. Normally, if your brand has suffered some damage…
Like the makers of Tylenol did not change “Tylenol,” did they? To get rid of the name, they had to change the perception of the product and they had to work really hard to do it. I can give you any number of other examples. They would improve the product, they would hire new leadership, and they would reintroduce the brand with a better marketing team. None of that’s taking place on the Republican side.
Think of the base as heavy users, the best customers if you want to continue the business comparison. Most businesses would never throw away their base. Most businesses would never discard their best users. In fact, I gave an example of how most businesses treat their best users last week or the week before in a sterling example of how capitalism works with cellular carriers and their pricing.
Sorry if you missed it. I’m not going to take time to repeat it. But the point is that a successful business treats its best customers first, and does everything it can to hold onto them. The Republican Party is not doing that. The Republican Party is essentially trying to rid itself of its best customers because it doesn’t like them. Now, I understand the analogy between the political party and a business is flawed and it’s not the best, but it is somewhat analogous, which is why I’ve toyed around with it.
I’ve got to take a break here, but we’ll continue this when we get back with the other side and get your phone calls in on all this too. So sit tight. Don’t go away.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know Reagan had to deal with the communists trying to take over Hollywood. The communists had a plan for propagandizing the United States. It was very simple: Just take over Hollywood. Just take it over and just run it. Some would argue that they have. Now Reagan was the president of the Screen Actors Guild and fought it and so forth. Those were different times, a different era. But nevertheless, there was the pushback.
Our old buddy Jeffrey Lord of the American Spectator is writing about this for a piece that’s coming up in the American Spectator next week. But there’s always been pushback. Is it a woman, Line 1? I guess it is. It’s Shelly, and there’s not enough time to get to you now, Shelly. So just hang on. But she wants to know how I can go on, how’s it possible? Everything’s so disheartening. No matter what, we can’t win because the media’s stacked against us.
I totally understand the sentiment, and — but there’s a reason for it. There isn’t any pushback. I take that back: There is pushback. There’s Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. And look what happens! The Republicans fight just as hard to keep Ted Cruz tamped down as do the Democrats. If the party that you support was actually engaged in pushing back every day and informing and educating and standing for something, you wouldn’t feel lost. You wouldn’t feel despondent.
You wouldn’t feel as though the deck’s stacked and you don’t have a chance. It’s patently obvious most of you actually understandably think you’re in it alone. You don’t see anybody pushing back. It’s just one or two people — and then when they surface, both parties set out to destroy them, which is happening with Cruz and Mike Lee right now. So the Republican brand is in tatters and the Republicans don’t seem interested in fixing it, or at least their recipe for fixing it is to become Democrat lite.
But the problem is in terms of the opposition that the Republican Party represents or stands for, they’ve watered it down. They’ve watered down the content of the product, the content of the opposition — and the front men, the pitchmen, the salesmen, they’re old and they’re worn out and they’re failures. I say it in a non-pejorative way. McCain is an example. And then they actively work against what their heavy users, what their best customers, want. There’s a reason you feel despondent, but it’s not your fault.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We also never hear about Democrats losing their donors, do we? We only hear about Republican donors being mad. The Democrat National Committee’s broke. The Democrat National Committee does not have any money. We never hear about things like that.