RUSH: Just as I predicted, ladies and gentlemen — wait ’til you hear the sound bites — this election was lost because of your host, Rush Limbaugh. I am the primary reason.

There are others, but I’m the primary reason the Republican Party lost. And I am, by the way, the primary reason the Republican Party will keep losing, until I am denounced by the Republican Party. Which, I’m gonna predict to you… What is today? The 12th of November. I’m gonna lay out a possible scenario where that could happen, because we’re trending in that direction.

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RUSH: Do you remember that piece by Angelo Codevilla that came out in summer 2010 in the American Spectator called “The Ruling Class”? We spent a lot of time here analyzing it and talking about it. That’s what we face today. And our guys in the upper echelon of the Republican Party want to fashion themselves as members of the ruling class.

We, the country class, are not in the ruling class. We’re the problem. A couple of sound bites, then I’ll illustrate. Let’s just pick a couple at random, but grab number one. Meet the Press during the roundtable. The guest is Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who authored the John McCain defeat against Barack Obama in 2008. Steve Schmidt, the consultant who came up with the plan that secured defeat in the presidential election, has the answer.

SCHMIDT: The Republican Party needs to get it together on its outreach to Latinos. And it’s good to hear that Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer are going to start advancing comprehensive immigration reform again, because we have to get this off the table as a political issue for the party. And we also have to have a zero tolerance with the terrible tone that’s coming out of the talk radio universe and some of our leaders in Congress who are serially disrespectful to this fastest-growing demographic in the country.

RUSH: He wasn’t finished. He continued…

SCHMIDT: To too many swing voters in the country when you hear the word “conservative,” now they think of loons and wackos. We gave up five US Senate seats over the last two election cycles by people who were just out there, completely extreme, manifestly unprepared for the offices that they’re running for. Our elected leaders are scared to death of the conservative entertainment complex, the shrill and divisive voices that are bombastic and broadcasting out into the homes. And this country is rejecting the social extremism of the Republican Party on issue after issue.

RUSH: Actually, ladies and gentlemen, that is not what’s happening, but the Republican Party is too frightened — and the consultant class is too interested in its own financial well-being — to see that. Do you realize that if Mitt Romney had received the votes of every married couple, he would have won in a landslide? The problem the Republican Party gets into is misidentifying the reasons that they lose.

Of course, here you hear that it’s me and the entertainment complex, “the terrible tone coming out of … talk radio.” Let me ask all of you Republicans a question. Do you really think…? I have a series of questions here. I want you to really think about this, now. Do you really think that the Democrat Party will ever allow you Republicans to be seen as pro-Latino and pro-immigration? If you do, you are incompetent and unqualified.

It means you have no idea who you’re dealing with. Do you really believe the Democrat Party and the media will ever allow the Republicans to be seen as pro-Latino and pro-immigrant? Never happen. The media and the Democrats will always find a way to say Republicans are anti-immigrant. Let’s give you an example. Let’s say that officially (and this is coming) the Republican Party goes all-in for amnesty. All-in.

All it will take is one person, either an elected Republican Tea Party member of the House or Senate who disagrees, or somebody on talk radio — all it will take is one person — disagreeing with the direction the party is taking, and the Democrats and the media will focus on that person and say, “See? The Republicans really are anti-immigrant! All of this that you’re hearing from the Republican Party in Washington is just a fake. The real Republicans don’t want any part of immigrants!”

That’s what they will do. They will say that I am the real leader of the Republican Party and that the Republicans are just faking you out. “They don’t really like Latinos. They don’t really like amnesty. They’re just acting out of fear.” If you Republican officials really think that the Democrats are going to cede any ground to you on this issue, I shudder to think where you are coming from.

But this is, by the way, the track or the path that will be taken to where I will be (and others like me will be) officially denounced by the party. But I’m gonna tell you: The Democrats will always come up with a position that tests the Republicans’ limit. They’ll always find some extreme position that the Republicans just can’t agree with in order to be able to claim the Republicans are anti-female, anti-woman, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant. There’s no change in this.

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RUSH: All of this was predicted, but Politico has even written a story. And it starts out: “Rush Limbaugh could not have been more right.” It goes back and talks about a prediction I made last year. If Obama wins the election, I predicted what would happen, conservatism and the Republicans on talk radio would be blamed and The Politico story is all about how I was right and that I am to blame to boot. (laughing) But you just heard Steve Schmidt, who said, (paraphrasing) “You look at all these wacko conservative Tea Party senators. They have no business running, not qualified.”

You take a look at who lost the election. We had a moderate, Scott Brown, lost, Massachusetts. Moderate Christie Whitman; moderate Tommy Thompson; moderate Linda McMahon for the second time; moderate Linda Lingle in Hawaii, and a bunch of other moderate to liberal Republicans lost elections this time. Same thing in 2010. But as far as the powers that be are concerned in the ruling class part of the Republican Party, as we’ve been predicting to you for more than one or two years, folks, that every election loss, it’s conservatives who will be blamed because the Republican Party doesn’t like conservatism.

Everybody says, “Well, why, Rush, why?” Because conservatives, we’re the only group left that doesn’t orient ourselves around government. We’re the only group of people left that does not want to earn our living off government. Everybody else does. People who vote for the Democrats are unwilling to earn a lifestyle that they desire. So they vote for people who will give it to ’em. Santa Claus. We have people on our side who want big government and want to be in charge of it, who want to run the committees that parcel out the money. That’s where they derive their power. So conservatives are a threat to both Republicans and Democrats because we’re the one group left that’s not oriented around government being the center of the universe or the center of everyone’s life.

We want to make our way in life without government. We don’t want to feed off of it. We want to reduce it. And, as such, we constitute a threat. You know, Marco Rubio won, Ted Cruz in Texas won, Rand Paul won, Mike Lee, bunch of others, and we got a great bench, and these are all Tea Party conservatives, and they won in spite of the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment, I’m sorry to say, is nominating people that lose elections. Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney, they all lost. They were all establishment-backed candidates. The very people out there blaming talk radio and blaming me today, and really about to make a grievous error in Republican Party principle, are really the architects of it.

Look, I’m not trying to play the blame game. I’m simply reacting to what I’m seeing out here, and I want to ask this question again, a series of them. We’re being told ever since the election that we have got to build a bridge to Hispanics. By the way, fine and dandy. I don’t want anybody to misunderstand here. We’re talking about principle policy, not whether we like or dislike groups of people. It’s absurd and it’s insulting to constantly hear that we dislike groups of people. We want the best for everybody. I don’t know how many times, how many speeches I’ve made, how blue in the face I’ve gotten making that statement and holding that desire close to my heart. I want this to be the greatest country on the face of the earth forever. Even though that defies history.

But I have to ask, you Republicans who think now you’re gonna have to moderate your position and stand for amnesty or pathway to citizenship, whatever you want to call it, do you really — and the Democrats are out there, “You guys had better change your ways. You guys are gonna have to understand, you better join us on amnesty.” The Democrats want to help us? We’re back to the ruling class, country class business here. The ruling class, made up of Democrats and Republicans, and they’re in Washington, they want amnesty. They want the new labor force. They want the new dependents to vote Democrat. They want all of this for their own reasons.

Is the Democrat Party really trying to help the Republican Party here? Or would the Democrat Party prefer the Republican Party be like it was when we had 135 members of the House and Bob Michel was the Republican leader and we didn’t even go to meetings, and that wasn’t that long ago. The Republicans just won control of the House of Representatives in 1992 for the first time in 40 years. We were in the wilderness for a long, long time. Does anybody really think, any of you consultants or Republicans really believe, the Democrats are trying to help us change our policy to improve our electoral position? Do you really think that the Democrat Party will allow you to be seen as pro-Latino or pro-immigrant? Because if you do, you are failing to understand who you are in competition with in the political arena.

The Democrats, the media, will always find a way to say that you are anti-immigrant. I’ll repeat my example again. Say the official in the Republican Party, everybody in Washington, goes all-in for amnesty, or a compromise on it, comprehensive immigration reform. You know that there will be voices out in the country who will oppose that, millions of them, millions of ’em, millions of Republican voters are gonna oppose that. And they’re gonna speak up, and all it will take is one of them. A local congressman, a member of the House, somebody on the radio, somebody on TV, somebody on Fox, all it’s gonna take is one person, and the Democrats have their target. And that person will be portrayed as who really speaks for the real Republican Party, that the official Republican establishment’s saying it’s pro-amnesty or pro-Latino, pro-immigrant, really isn’t. They’re fooling you, they’re lying. You know they don’t like you.

You know this is coming, folks. It’s just gonna take one person. Somebody like me, for example, disagreeing, and the media and the Democrats will then focus on me and other Republicans, too. “And Limbaugh, he’s still the leader of these people, the Republicans are still afraid to stand up to Limbaugh, and Limbaugh doesn’t want any part of this, and that means Republican voters aren’t gonna go along for it ’cause Limbaugh has more sway over Republican voters than Republicans do,” and that, my friends, is the path to me being denounced.

How that will happen is, I will be portrayed, or somebody else, but whoever they need to get rid of, will be proclaimed as the real leader of the Republican Party. The Democrats and the media will say, “Are you gonna stand up? If you really believe you’re pro-immigrant and pro-amnesty, you better denounce,” and it will happen, “you better denounce Limbaugh, you better, because until you do that, you’re never gonna be perceived by the people as pro-Latino, pro-immigrant, as long as Limbaugh’s out there.” So it will happen. It’s only a matter of time. It will happen. I can almost predict to you a list of five people who will do it, but it will happen.

And I want to take you back again. Does anybody really think the Democrats want to see Republicans help themselves on the issue of immigration or abortion or any other social issue on which the Democrats think they have a decided advantage? Arriving Hispanic illegals, the vast majority of them, view government as the source of wealth. Do any of you Republicans think the Democrats are gonna cede these voters to you?

What you Republicans had… You ought to think about this. I don’t necessarily think that you will, but I think you ought to think about what you’re really doing. You are acting complicit in the importation and the registering of millions more Democrat voters. That will be the end result of this. Now, at the end of the day you might feel good about yourselves because you’ll say you were for amnesty or a pathway to citizenship or you wanted to moderate the Republican tone or what have you.

But I don’t see any evidence the Democrats want to give away any of those voters to you. Am I wrong about this, Mr. Snerdley? Am I misunderstanding? The Democrats, I know they’re the party of charity and helping people out and welfare. Are they really trying to help the Republicans here? Are they? Then why would the Republicans want to do anything that will help Democrats register more voters?

(interruption)

Fear of what.

(interruption)

Okay, so fear of losing the Hispanic vote for generations like they have lost the black vote for generations? Okay, what would be the key to getting a larger percentage of the black vote? What policy adjustments, what steps could the Republican Party take to make inroads there, too? Let me ask… Republicans might try to end slavery, like they did. Now, let’s say, folks, in the next few years the Republican Party officially announces the end of its opposition to abortion.

Believe me, it wants to.

Do not doubt me.

The Republican Party wants to kick that issue out of their platform so let’s pretend that they do. Next question: How many of you think that the women of this country, single women of this country will all of a sudden stop everything and say, “Wow! Wow! We love the Republicans now.” And, by the way, how many of you really believe, again, that the Democrats will permit this and their media will permit this?

They get away with running commercials claiming Mitt Romney’s a felon, that he sat idly by while a man’s wife died! See, they can do all that, by the way, and nobody says that that has no place in our politics. Our consultants never are critical of any of the lies and the mean-spiritedness or the extremism of the left. But on their own side, things that aren’t extreme and aren’t mean-spirited are called those things and then the Republicans act all embarrassed.

My point is this, for any of you Republicans who care: The Democrats will always be able to find a limit, an extreme policy position beyond which you Republicans will not go and agree with them. I don’t care if it’s abortion, immigration, taxes, whatever. The Democrats will always be able to find a position so radical and so extreme that you Republicans can’t agree with it — and at that point, what are you?

You are the anti-party all over again. In the media and in the public conscience, the Democrats are going to win every dispute. That’s where we are in our culture right now. The Democrats do not stop until they win every dispute. That’s the rule. The Democrats win every dispute, and any and all Republican opposition to whatever Democrat positions there are will always be labeled as anti-person.

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RUSH: I want to share with you just an excerpt from John Podhoretz and a column he wrote recently. He said, “The ultimate truth about this election is that if you…” Now, this may not be Podhoretz. I think he’s quoting somebody here. “The ultimate truth about this election is if you do things that convince voters you are deliberately insulting them, then they are not gonna like you.

“Middle ground means holding firm to basic principles while finding a way to talk about them that will not only appeal to more people, but will actually convey the justice, moral power, strength, and elevating quality of these ideas.” Now, what that means is that Democrat voters felt insulted by what they were hearing. Did Mitt Romney insult anybody? As you recall, Mitt Romney was a gentleman’s gentleman throughout the campaign.

In fact, who was it that was insulting throughout this campaign? Whose campaign was built around the insult? It was Obama’s. The entire Obama campaign was oriented around the lying about and destroying the integrity and character of Mitt Romney, just as it is with every one of their opponents. Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, you name it. Why is it that voters are never turned off by the rhetoric that actually comes from Democrat leaders?

Not their media.

Harry Reid? “No way!” he said before the election, “There’s no way I’m working with Romney. There is no way.” The rhetoric that comes from the Democrat Party is mean-spirited, it is extremist, it is filled with lies. It is oriented toward the actual destruction of someone’s credibility and character, if not their career. And somehow never are hands wrung over that. So we are left to conclude that the new rules of the game are that the Democrats can say anything they want about their opponents.

They can say it however they wish, and there will not be one problem with it. There will not be any Republican consultant to claim that it is “unhelpful” to our “civility,” to our overall “political discourse” and “dialogue.” Let Republicans or media come along and defend these lies — and attempt at the same time to tell the truth about the Democrats — and that’s not permitted now. That’s loony. That’s mean-spirited.

So the rules are written.

And they’re stacked.

And the same ones don’t apply to both sides.

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RUSH: As I recall, folks, I think it was Obama who led the most divisive, class warfare-filled, deceitful campaign in my lifetime. I don’t know about in the country’s history. But, I mean, if there was ever anything mean or extreme, and a bunch of lying going on out there, it happened to be on the Obama side.