| Liberals Don't Understand Us But We Understand Them |
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October 13, 2005 |
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RUSH: Well, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page in the break here at the top of the hour has requested from me an op-ed on the conservative crackdown, as opposed to the conservative crackup for their Monday edition. So I agreed to do it. I'll sit down pen in hand -- well, keyboard at fingertips -- and get this going, because I'll tell you, folks, this is going to be one of those seminal moments that the left is going to be scratching their heads about all next year not understanding what went wrong, just like they don't understand to this day what went wrong in 2002 at the Wellstone memorial. They didn't understand what went wrong in 2000. They don't understand what went wrong in 2004 -- and especially when it comes to us. They'll never understand conservatives. It's not in them. They're not capable of it. They never will, no matter how open and how honest we are and I think that's one of the problems they face. They just don't know how to deal with honesty. It's like when Bush campaigned in 2000 and 2004, then set out to do what he said he was going to do, the Democrats said, "That's a trick! Politicians don't do that. They lie during campaigns, and then they go do what they want to do. Bush is tricking us! He's actually doing what he said he was going to do!" So don't let this Miers stuff or any of that get you down in the dumps here, folks. This movement is too big. There's a new media. The media monopoly is over. The shift, the paradigm shift that's long been in the works the last 15 years, has got a lot of momentum. It's going to keep going.
 I'll tell you something else. You know, you talk about this base being fired up. Let me tell you what I know about you people. I know that a lot of this audience is the conservative base, and there's a lot of the conservative base not listening to the program right now for one reason or another who are of the same mind-set here that I'm about to describe. The liberals have no concept of how they are perceived. The media, Democrats, have no concept of how they're perceived, but I'll tell you what we haven't forgotten. We haven't forgotten forged documents to try to bring down a president. We haven't forgotten "Bush is a Nazi." We haven't forgotten Abu Ghraib. We haven't forgotten Club G'itmo. We haven't forgotten the efforts to demonize and criminalize Republicans and conservatives simply because they are conservative and Republican. We haven't forgotten all of the character assassination, the filibustering of qualified men and women to sit on the federal appellate bench. We haven't forgotten any of this -- and we're not going to forget it because an attack on all of those people is an attack on us. We have not forgotten that they think we are racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes. We are nowhere near having settled the score with these people, and letting them know exactly where their words and their policies have taken us, and I'll tell you something else the vast majority of this base knows better than anything else: This country's national security cannot be trusted with the likes of any Democrat seeking the presidential nomination in charge of it.
We cannot trust the national security of this country to a Hillary Clinton. We cannot trust it to a John Kerry or an Al Gore or whoever on their side wants to win the nomination. We simply can't. And the conservative base, the Republican base is an issue oriented voting bloc. It is not a personality oriented voting bloc, and it is educated and informed on these issues. It is not brainwashed, and there is absolutely no effort; there's no inclination whatsoever on the part of the Republican base to cede defeat to the people, especially the left, especially the way they've gone about trying to achieve it. The party of Cindy Sheehan, the party of Michael Moore, the party of books on how to assassinate President Bush? We haven't forgotten these things and we're not going to forget these things and they're going to be part of any campaign that comes up next year or in 2008, and Democratic candidates are going to be forced to either side with the people who have made these outrageous claims or distance themselves from them. If you want Michael Moore sitting next to you at the Democratic convention, you'd better be prepared to have him at your campaign rally in 2006. You want these liberal left-wing blog extremist kooks that have become the Democratic base? You want them formulating your policy, you better be ready to damn well support them and to mention them by name and praise them; because if you don't people are going to know that you're a little afraid because we're going to remind people of it. Who the left is, we know. We know them like every square inch of our glorious naked bodies.
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 RUSH: Then there's David Broder today in the Washington Post. "For Democrats, a Path Back to Power." Tim Russert said on the Today Show today, Democrats are "giddy" over these poll numbers that have come out. I just told you that Bush's low-point poll numbers are higher than the seven previous presidents at their low point. None of that gets reported. It's all ignored because they think it's over.
"Oh, we got Bush right where we want them! Conservatives are cracking up," and so forth. So I'm going through this Broder piece -- and listen, Broder at least gets the power and influence of these activist extremists on the Internet, these Democrat bloggers. "Because that path..." This is an excerpt. "Because that path aims down the political center, it will not be easily accepted by many of the activists..." Meaning there's a group advocating that the Democrats become more moderate, and Broder is saying -- Third Way is the name of the organization, "the Third Way." It's a bunch of people that again want to lie about who they are. A liberal is a liberal is a liberal, folks. There is no left-wing extreme liberal, moderate liberal. They're all liberals. It's just you have degrees of liberals trying to cover it up and liberals honest about who they are, and the liberal activists on the blogs, they're the honest liberals. They're the ones that say, "Hey, this is who we are. This is what we believe. This is the language we use. This is the language we want to hear." Then you've got all these subgroups of Democrats who mask themselves to one degree or another, or camouflage trying to hide just how liberal they are.
So they've got this group called "the Third Way" proposing a more moderate approach, and Broder says, while " that path aims down the political center, it will not be easily accepted by many of the activists in the organizations that control the Democratic Party at the grass roots and dominate its fundraising, whether they be Hollywood millionaires or Internet Deaniacs," and they're not just Deaniacs, Mr. Broder. "These men and women -- who provide most of the energy in Democratic campaigns," these are the kooks; it's become the base, "ardently oppose both the domestic and international policies of the Bush administration and yearn for candidates who would reverse President Bush's direction on Iraq, taxes, gay rights, abortion and other issues. Because of the work they do and the money they raise for the Democratic Party, elected officials -- especially in Washington -- heed their views." Yes, they do! They won't invite them to their parties, and they won't show up at their rallies, but they do speak their language when it's time. "Their influence..." The kook base. "Their influence is reflected in Democratic votes against everything from the Central American Free Trade Agreement to the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts. Then he goes on to say that "the perception [sic] that the Democrats are weak on confronting activism and hostile to culture of the deeply religious has cost the party dearly, especially among married women and Catholics." By the way, that's not going to change, because this hostility to the deeply religious -- and the deeply moral, I might say -- is a foundational building block of liberalism. They're not going to moderate on this. Now, Broder thinks that they can, but they can't.
He says, but IF they can, IF they can change course on that. This is like saying, "If you could automatically become a girl, you could have a baby." It would be that hard. You know, if you're a guy in the audience, and I say to you, "You know what? If you could become a girl you could have a baby, it is possible." Oh, really? Same to a liberal: "Hey, look, if you can change your viewpoint on the deeply religious and the deeply moral, then you might win the election." Right. The religious and the moral offend liberals like nothing else does. They're not going to moderate on that. But Broder then, after assuming that this is possible, says this: "This opens the way for Democrats to recoup ground if they find a candidate who conveys strength of conviction on national security -- the opposite, say, of Kerry saying, 'I actually did vote for the $87 billion (for Iraq and Afghanistan), before I voted against it.' It would help," Broder writes, "if the candidate also had a solid marriage, a churchgoing habit and an ability to express sympathetic understanding of those who disagree with his or her personal support of abortion and gay rights." Well, what is Mr. Broder suggesting the Democrats need in order to win the White House? A Republican! That's what's laughable about this. It reminds me of the time I was at the Democratic convention in San Francisco in '84. Mondull was the nominee, and a good friend of our family...
I'm from southeast Missouri, Cape Girardeau, and a little town south of us is Sikeston. There's a good friend of our family's who was a very powerful player in the Democratic Party in Missouri who was at the convention, and my dad told me to look him up when I went out there, and I did and he invited me to one of the receptions. It's where I met Gephardt and a bunch of these other guys. It was one of these fancy, bancy little hotel blooms that you don't think Democrats ever go in because they're "the men and women of the little people." There they were with their cut glass and crystal and gold surroundings in this ballroom, sipping champagne and accepting money from other rich Democrats with Tip O'Neill arriving in a limousine and so forth. But this friend of the family came up to me, and he said, "You spot me a hundred electoral votes and we can win this election." I looked at him and said, "Spot you a hundred electoral votes? You mean you're that close?" [1984 Outcome: Reagan 525 | Mondull 13] This is no different than when Broder says, "If the Democrats could find a candidate who conveys strength of conviction on national security, and a candidate who also had a solid marriage, a church-going habit, and an ability to express sympathetic understanding to those who disagree with his or her personal support of abortion and gay rights." You have a candidate like that surface in the Democratic Part -- if you can find him or her, and that's the challenge they would first face, if you can find that person -- then they cajole that person to actually become the nominee, this kook left-wing base is going to destroy that person! |
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 It ain't going to happen. So Broder is essentially saying, "The Democrats need a Republican candidate in order to win the White House." That's what he's saying. So don't fall for this business here, folks, that this crackup is happening and that all the left has to do is sit around and watch and then get the vote out and show up and they will win, because the truth of the matter is, the one thing the left never does is examine itself. The one thing the left-wing media never does is honestly report it itself, and they are not facing their problems, and they are not admitting their problems, and as such, they're not working on solving their problems. So they're sitting around finally thinking that all this negative attack business that they've been engaging in for all these decades has finally worked. They think, when the conservative movement is mad at George W. Bush -- who they still continue to run against. If I didn't know better... You know, people ask me today, "Rush, who do you think the '08 nominee is going to be?"
I'd say, "Bush."
"What do you mean? He can't run again!"
"Well, as I listen to the Democrats; that's who they're running against!"
So I think Bush is going to change the Constitution. Rove is going to change it, whatever, and Bush is going to be on the ballot in '08. That's who the Democrats are running against. Well, they think they've finally split Bush's coalition. That means they've beat Bush; that means they win. It's cockeyed. It is loopy, but that's where they are. We often say there is a saying: "If your enemy is destroying himself get out of the way and let it happen," but that's not what's happening. Their enemy is not destroying themselves; there's not a crackup from within or anything of the sort. In the meantime, they're not doing one thing to address the problems they've got, and as you read things like Broder what they need to do to win. Oh, yeah, it all sounds great, but in reality it can't happen. You can't keep the base that they've got by nominating essentially a Republican as your nominee and calling him a Democrat. It ain't going to fly.
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(NY Times: Democrats See Dream of '06 Victory Taking Form)
Headline: Conservative Crackup
Subheadline: How the neocons have developed a political exit strategy.
Source: Newsweek
By: Howard Fineman
Date: October 12, 2005
President George W. Bush may have no military exit strategy for Iraq, but the “neocons” who convinced him to go to war there have developed one of their own—a political one: Blame the Administration.
Their neo-Wilsonian theory is correct, they insist, but the execution was botched by a Bush team that has turned out to be incompetent, crony-filled, corrupt, unimaginative and weak over a wide range of issues.
The flight of the neocons—just read a recent Weekly Standard to see what I am talking about —is one of only many indications that the long-predicted “conservative crackup” is at hand.
The “movement” —that began 50 years ago with the founding of Bill Buckley’s National Review; that had its coming of age in the Reagan Years; that reached its zenith with Bush’s victory in 2000—is falling apart at the seams.
In 1973, Karl Rove met George W. Bush, and became the R2D2 and Luke Skywalker of Republican politics. At first, neither was plugged into “The Force”—the conservative movement. But over the years they learned how to use its power.
By the time Bush was in his second term as governor, laying the groundwork for his presidential run, he and Rove had gathered all of the often competing and sometimes contradictory strains of conservatism into one light beam. You could tell by the people they brought to Austin.
To tie down the religious conservatives, they nudged John Ashcroft out of the race and conducted a literal laying on of hands at the governor’s mansion with leaders such as James Dobson.
For the libertarian anti-tax crowd, they brought in certified supply-sider Larry Lindsey as the top economic advisor.
For the traditional war hawks they brought in Paul Wolfowitz, among others, go get Bush up to speed on the world.
For the traditional corporate types—well, Bush had that taken care of on his own.
But now all the constituent parts are—for various reasons—going their own way. Here's a checklist:
Religious conservatives
The Harriet Miers nomination was the final insult. Religious conservatives have an inferiority complex in the Republican Party. In an interesting way, it’s the same attitude that many African-Americans have had toward the Democratic Party over the years. They think that the Big Boys want their votes but not their presence or their full participation.
And what really frosts the religious types is that Bush evidently feels that he can only satisfy them by stealth—by nominating someone with absolutely no paper trail. It’s an affront. And even though Dr. Dobson is on board—having been cajoled aboard by Rove—I don’t sense that there is much enthusiasm for the enterprise out in Colorado Springs.
I expect that any GOP 2008 hopeful who wants evangelical support—people like Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum and maybe even George Allen—will vote against Miers's confirmation in the Senate.
Corporate CEOs
For them, Bush’s handling of Katrina was, and remains, a mortal embarrassment to their class, which Bush is supposed to have represented—at least to some extent.
These are people who believe in the Faith of Management—in anticipating problems and moving mass organizations. They also like to think of themselves as having a social conscience. And even if they don’t, they are sensitive to world opinion.
The vivid images from the Superdome were just too much for these folks. Recently, a prominent Republican businessman, whom I saw in a typical CEO haunt, astonished me with the severity of his attacks on Bush’s competence. And Bush had appointed this guy to a major position! Amazing.
Main Street: Smaller government deficit hawks
This is an old-fashioned but important core of conservatism: people who think federal spending should be relentlessly reduced, and that we should always view with suspicion any proposals to increase the role of the federal government in local and private life.
After binges of spending and legislating, backbenchers in the GOP, especially in the House, are in open revolt, having gathered around Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana and Sen. John McCain in the Senate. They tend to view the “Leadership’s” spending habits with alarm.
Isolationists
An old term, but still applicable. With the fall of Communism in Europe and Russia, the old anti-Communist wing of the conservative movement lost its role. Now the isolationists of old are back, and with a new crusade: immigration.
The relatively unchecked flood of illegal immigrants into this country is indeed a legitimate cause for alarm. But in the eyes of this crowd—one leader is my MSNBC colleague, Pat Buchanan—the Bush Administration is doing nothing.
Neocons
They think that the Middle East can be remade, and this country made safe, by instilling a semblance of democracy in the Fertile Crescent and beyond. But they seem to have given up on the ability of the Bush Administration to see that vision through.
They want more troops, not fewer; more money, not less; more passion, not the whispered talk of timetables for withdrawal.
Besides championing democracy, we need to show strength and resolve, they believe—and they are no longer convinced that Bush can show much of either.
Supply-siders
This is the one faction that the president has yet to disappoint in a major way. He pushed through two major tax cuts, and is pushing more—targeted ones—in the wake of Katrina.
Deep in their collective memory bank, Bush and Rove remember what happened when Daddy moved his lips and raised taxes. But now that the son has been reelected, will he move his lips, too? If the conservative crack up is to be complete—and I think it will be—the answer is yes.
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