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RUSH: We go to Wausau, Wisconsin and Jeff. Thanks for calling, sir. Nice to have you here.

CALLER: Well, Rush, I hope you say that after my call. I’ve listened to you for years and I love ya, and I’m going to say to you, ‘Nice try, but you’re wrong.’ You are wrong about the wise, conservative-to-the-core American people. I want to know how the wise, conservative-to-the-core American people stuck us with the president, who was the most far left voting candidate ever. My God, this guy is starting to make Bill Clinton look like George Washington. I tell you. And the wise, conservative-to-the-core American people are responsible for this. How in the world? I’m just a lunkhead sitting here in Wausau, Wisconsin. I knew this guy was the most far-left voting Senate candidate. I could see through the lies before this guy got elected. I mean, how in the world could not the rest of the conservative-to-the-core American people see this?

I mean, American people, are you listening to me? You are smart at some things. You are whiz-bang at technology and things like that, but in politics you are dumb and you are getting dumber. Could you turn off American Idol for frickin’ 30 minutes? Could you turn off watching crab fishermen for frickin’ 30 minutes and find out what the hell is going on in your country? Here we are now. We’ve got this guy for another, what, three years? And I tell you this, Rush, I’ll bet you a case of cat food for your cat, whatever it likes. This guy is a lock, he is an absolute lock to win reelection. I don’t care if there’s 40% unemployment and cities are in flames. This guy is a lock because the American people are smart in some things, but in politics they are dumb and they are getting dumber by the hour.

We’ve got this guy; now we’re stuck with him. Thanks wise, conservative-to-the-core American people. Thanks a lot. Sarah Palin, if you’re listening out there, dear, I love you. Stay out of it. Next time it’s going to be nothing but baby, baby, baby, that goofy ex-fiance’s going to be trying to earn every dime he possibly can. He’s going to be on every far-left TV show that he can possibly get on out there. They are going to destroy you, honey. They are going to destroy you. Take it easy. Enjoy some fishing. Enjoy life in Alaska. Stay out of it. The American people in politics are dumb and they’re getting dumber. Rush, I’ve tried my best to contain myself. I still love you. I’m still going to listen to you. I don’t know what you think about me now.

RUSH: Well, I love ya.

CALLER: (laughing) Oh, you do?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Even though I say you’re wrong about this?

RUSH: This is a great call.

CALLER: Well, thanks. I didn’t expect that.

RUSH: Well, we don’t always judge the quality of calls on whether the caller makes sense. Passion is —

CALLER: Wait a minute. I’ve got to think about that.

RUSH: Wait. Passion is the key. Passion is the key.

CALLER: A passionate caller who is not making any sense. To me, I make perfect sense.

RUSH: I know you are making perfect sense to yourself, and I know you passionately believe everything you said. You basically said the American people are a bunch of idiots.

CALLER: They are not a bunch of idiots, not across the board, but in politics. Look, McCain, McCain, these war heroes, I love him for what he did in the Hanoi Hilton. But these war heroes come back and they get witless when they go into politics. The guy wanted to be the great statesman, the guy wanted to be fair play, above the fray. What did it get you, Mr. McCain, if you are listening out there?

RUSH: Wait a second.

CALLER: What did it get you? Two more votes? Obama beat you in a landslide. The most far-left guy, a community organizer beat the war hero in a landslide. You tell me the American people are not dumb in politics.

RUSH: Hang on a second. Let me address this.

CALLER: All right.

RUSH: I would give the American people —

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: If you look at that campaign as it was run, I think it was pretty damn smart not to vote for McCain.

CALLER: Well, he might as well not been running —

RUSH: Let me finish now. The reason it was smart is because he wasn’t a conservative.

CALLER: That’s true.

RUSH: The whole Republican Party has gone south trying to become Mr. and Miss Moderate, Mr. and Miss Independent.

CALLER: It’s the same thing that happened to these people, if they get back into Congress next year, it’s going to be the same thing. Oh, they are talking now.

RUSH: Wait.

CALLER: But as soon as they get into Congress, ‘We want to reach across the aisle. We want to include the Democrats.’

RUSH: Hold it. There’s no point in talking to you if you are this fatalistic.

CALLER: I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

RUSH: I mean, if you are this fatalistic, if there’s no solution to this, I think you should go to Alaska and go fishing with Sarah and Todd Palin.

CALLER: Okay, please correct me then. Give me some hope.

RUSH: Well, I want to change the premise. I want to go back and have you relive that campaign.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: You were smart enough to figure out Obama, but most people who were getting a lot of their news from the State-Run Media had listened to seven years of how absolutely rotten Bush was. Bush never defended himself, leaving his voters out to dry. They were never defended. He never defended himself. The lies that the media told about the economy, the war in Iraq, domestic spying. The American people wanted change, anything. But you put up the war hero and the one-foot-in-the-grave campaign he ran versus this smooth-talking, eloquent liar who had people believing they are going to get the exact opposite of what they got. People wanted what Obama was promising. You may have been smart enough to see it, but people vote emotionally in a lot of cases. In addition to falling for Obama, the people who didn’t fall for him really had nowhere else to go. There was no passion. Like you’ve got passion. There wasn’t any passion in the Republican electorate.

CALLER: Are the American people going to be smarter the next time around?

RUSH: Well, this is what my theory is, that real-life experience, this guy’s not who he said he was. This guy’s a fraud. He’s practicing deceit. Their lives are being destroyed while he tells them they are being rescued.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Now, at some point people are smart enough to know that they can’t afford food. They are smart enough to know when they don’t have a job to go to. They are smart enough to know when their spouses start complaining to them about hanging around the house all day. They are smart enough to know gasoline prices start going up. They are smart enough to know they can’t afford a new car unless the government gives them $4,500. They are smart enough to know a lot of things as they live them.

CALLER: Well, Rush, let’s hope three years from now when that old Obama campaign begins rolling again, they are smart enough to know then, too.

RUSH: To hell with three years, 2010. There’s got to be some stop to this agenda.

CALLER: Only if you are Speaker of the House and keep them guys in line, or maybe the whip. Maybe that would be better.

RUSH: I am the Speaker of the American House.

CALLER: Rush, I know you’ve got to let me go. I still love you. I think you are wrong about this but I hope you can prove me wrong.

RUSH: Well, it’s not to me. It’s the American people. I have faith they will prove you wrong. Do you not take any heart and solace in the fact that Obama’s cratering issue by issue in the polls?

CALLER: He’s cratering right now, but I got a feeling that he’s going to come bouncing back for some reason. I don’t know. Maybe it will be a war that lands in his lap or something, or something.

RUSH: All right. Here’s the key for you.

CALLER: If the election was next week, maybe so.

RUSH: Well, look. I’m not quitting.

CALLER: No, I’m not quitting, either.

RUSH: I certainly sure as hell don’t want you to. Now look, here’s the thing, because I do now have just one minute. The key to all of this is taking back the Republican Party so that we have a political vehicle to advance the conservative movement, Jeff. The American people, by every legitimate study, are more conservative than liberal. We have to have a nominee who is conservative, who can speak conservatism, who can speak American patriotism, who can respond to left-wing arguments, who is confident in his knowledge. This is the challenge. The challenge we have is making sure the moderates, the genuine stupid elitists in our own party do not control it come the next two elections. If we put up a candidate like that, we’ll win. We always do when we put up a candidate like that in national races. We are making the case for our case on radio in books to have somebody to vote for. And that’s how you turn out the vote in national elections, to get you, your passion lit up in everybody else, to get this current agenda fixed and gone and the only way that passion that you exhibited in this call is going to erupt for a Republican candidate is if he is or she is a genuine conservative. And if that passion can be aroused, the Democrats don’t have a prayer, especially with the damage they are wreaking on everyday people and their lives.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, folks, what choice did the people have in 2008? We had a Democrat promising to do traditional Democrat things and we had a Republican telling us his big asset was his willingness to work with Democrats to get done what they wanted to get done. What choice did the American people have? Give them a choice. It works every time it’s tried.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m getting a lot of e-mails on that last caller: ‘Hey, Rush, I want to hug and kiss that guy, right on, the American people are stupid. I loved it. I loved it when he said turn off American Idol.’ Yeah, and turn off all the fishing shows. (laughing)

Let me address this again in a segment here where I have a little bit more time about that caller. The key is taking back the Republican Party so that we have a political vehicle to advance the conservative movement. The American people, by every legitimate study, are more conservative than liberal. It’s like 42% to 21 people who identify themselves, 35% independent. More people identify themselves as conservative than anything by any number of legitimate studies. So we have to have a nominee who is conservative, who can speak conservatism, who can inspire and motivate, who can arouse their passion; somebody who can respond to left-wing arguments; somebody who’s confident; somebody who has knowledge. This is the challenge that we face in future elections.

The American people will be there if we get that candidate. If we put up a candidate like that we will win. That’s why all the focus on this program and even the Greta Van Susteren interview I told them what the problem with the Republican Party is. That wasn’t just a bash Obama interview or bash the Democrats. The Republican Party is headed up by a bunch of country club blue blood Rockefeller liberals and moderates that don’t want any part of conservatism because they are embarrassed about the abortion issue. They don’t like social issues being part of their party, and if we put up a genuine conservative we will win. We’re making the case for our case on this radio show every day, and others on their radio shows and in books. We don’t have the power right now, and we haven’t had it for some time because the Republican Party’s taken a wrong turn.

So it’s really kind of a mistake to just lay it all off on the American people as being dumb and stupid. If you vote for people who claim to be one thing and turn out to be another, it’s pretty smart to not vote for them again. The American people, the conservative voter is not stupid. The conservative voter is simply not going to vote for a fraud in his own party, or her own party. What choice did we have in 2008? What choice did we have? A lot of people voted against Obama, not for McCain. We didn’t have anything to vote for. There was nothing affirmative for us in that election, in that whole campaign. You’ve got to have somebody to vote for. That arouses passions.

So the choice in 2008, we had this smooth-talking agent of change and hope speaking platitudes and creating a cult-like following. And the Republican was somebody whose main selling point was he gets along with Democrats. He can walk across the aisle and be bipartisan. Our candidate bought the notion that the American people want the two parties to work together and put aside their differences. McCain also promised cap and trade. McCain also promised his own version of health care reform and immigration reform. Where was the opportunity for conservatives to rise up and get passionate about the election in 2008? It wasn’t there. If the Republican Party keeps putting candidates up like that, we’re cooked, but not because the American people are stupid, but because the Republican Party seeks not to win. If we all just say, though, that the end is inevitable, if we just say the American people are stupid and they want all of this, that there is no hope, then we can’t build a movement to stop this. We can’t build a movement to take back the Republican Party. We can’t take back the government and begin the process of unraveling this.

If we just say that most of the people are stupid and want this, they don’t care because they got American Idol on twice a week in the winter and the spring, well, then what’s left? Why even stay engaged? Why stay involved? In the end, if people want this, they will get it. I don’t believe the people do want this. The polls show they don’t want this. Obama knows they don’t want it. Pelosi knows they don’t want it. Their entire strategy is based on lying to the people and ramming through their agenda before the working tax paying people of this country know what hit them. That’s why the speed. Obama may well be destroying the Democrat Party. We will know soon enough. The Democrat Party represents an ever-shrinking percentage of the population the American people are. And, Lord, if I didn’t think this, I’d be playing golf somewhere, probably New Zealand.

The American people are at their core liberty-loving, competitive, innovative and independent, and this is precisely why the Democrat Party — from Pelosi to Reid, to Obama, to Rahm Emanuel, to the public sector union bosses — have to lie about what they’re doing. They have to lie that they’re saving jobs when they’re not. They have to lie that they’re giving tax cuts when they haven’t. They have to lie about all the new jobs of cap and trade. They have to lie about deficits. They have to lie about what they’re actually trying to do with health care. The reason they have to lie is because the American people do not agree with them and do not want this, and we are seeing evidence of it. What we have to hope for is that this passion lasts.

The Democrat Party’s a very narrow ideological bunch of radicals. They are led by people who spend their every waking moment conspiring against the public and lying because that’s the only way they can advance. As I said earlier, we get the latest round of this. We get attack the insurance companies, attack the attendees at town hall meetings, make all these wildly irresponsible arguments, promises about government health care. I could go on. The conservative movement is going to have to rally and unify and take back the Republican Party. The conservative movement’s also going to have to understand one thing in dealing with Barack Obama and the Democrat Party at-large. You can say this about Clinton, too. Vladimir Lenin believed as a totalitarian, as a dictator, as an authoritarian, as a politician that there was no truth, that words were just tools. So the facts never, ever got in the way, just had to come up with the right words, the right tools to overcome the things that got in your way.

The conservative movement is going to have to understand that the power of fact, the power of truth alone up against a strategy of deceit and fraud is not enough by itself to overpower it. While facts are being presented, the truth about the opposition must also be presented. Facts of policy, facts of ideology, but whoever runs for office has got to have the guts to stand up and say the Democrat Party is lying to you. Nancy Pelosi is lying to you, or they’re not telling you the truth. And people know this. It’s going to be easier and easier to do because it will be something that people already agree with. You won’t have to persuade them they are being lied to. You won’t have to persuade people out of work that the economy’s improving. You won’t have to persuade people that Obama’s lying about that, but you will have to say it because, to the other side, there is no truth. There are no facts.

As conservatives, folks, we are really people who are intellectually applied to our beliefs. They’re emotionally applied and their emotional objective is to manipulate your emotions. They don’t want to deal with facts; they don’t want to deal with truth. They want to create their own using words as a tool or as tools. But we’re very intellectually active. We have to be understanding the American founding, understanding how conservatism works. It’s an intellectual application, a daily one, and even though people say, ‘Well, Rush, if conservatism’s so wonderful, how come the Reagan years didn’t teach everybody?’ Because every day during the Reagan years and every day since the Reagan years, the Leninists in this country have been lying to you about what happened. They lie and deceive every day. They have cronies in the media who repeat the lies, and who do not report what they’re doing. They simply repeat the lies. So on the one hand you’ve got the life you lived, the experiences you had, versus a deluge of lies about it.

My father, when I stayed out too late as a teenager, he would say, ‘Son, you thought you were having fun, but you weren’t.’ And I said, ‘What the hell does that mean? Because I had a great time.’ ‘You thought you were having fun, but you weren’t.’ You thought you did great in the eighties and you thought you did great in the nineties. Well, no, they wanted you to think that in the nineties because they were in charge. Remember they tried to convince you we were in a recession when unemployment was 4.7%, just two years ago. Hell, just one year ago. And they tried to convince you that we had never lost more soldiers in a war than the 3,000 in Iraq.

Have you noticed, speaking of that by the way, that there is no discussion in State-Controlled Media about the debacle taking place in Afghanistan? Our military leaders, they say we need twice the number of troops. The Brits are saying our strategy is a mess. Now, if George W. Bush was still president, that’s all we would be hearing to cover up the bad economic news. I take it back. If Bush were president, that’s all we would be hearing about along with lies about how bad the economy is. They would tell us how bad it is.

We have to send an ex-president over to North Korea to apologize to Kim Jong-il to get a couple of Algore journalists out of there. Hillary Clinton goes out and says it was a totally private visit. Now, that’s not possible. You don’t have an ex-president decide on his own to hop a plane over to Pyongyang, get off the plane, go meet with the potbelly dictator and get the journalists freed. The only thing she said that was truthful about it was she didn’t talk to him while he was there, meaning her husband. But now you got the Clintons back in the news cycle taking credit for all these wonderful things, Hillary’s over in Kenya kissing Obama’s grandfather’s grave and talking about whatever corruption she’s finding over there. Just a bunch of total BS. It’s all just a bunch of BS. There is no truth. And to the extent that they think you believe in truth, you are the target. You have to be disabused of that notion.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Peter in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, you’re next as we go back to the phones. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I just wanted to make a quick point because I’m talking on a cell phone while I’m driving, which is not a great idea. Everything you are saying about trying to make the Republican Party a venue or a platform for conservative ideas is absolutely correct as far as it goes. But it has to go farther and that is we have to be able to outspend our opponents. It seems to me that the main reason why Barack Obama won his election was that he was able to spend more than anybody else. John McCain just couldn’t keep up.

RUSH: Yeah, well, let me tell you something. In most election cycles when the Republican Party has a conservative candidate, fundraising isn’t even a contest. The Democrats can’t compete. Why should conservatives have sent the Republican Party money in that last campaign?

CALLER: I know I didn’t. Yeah, that’s just the point I wanted to make, Rush, and I think it’s got to be out there that there are practical and physical measures we have to take to win this back.

RUSH: Of course. Money is the mother’s milk of politics. That goes without saying. But I think the money will be there if somebody shows up to arouse the passions of people.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: John in West Islip, New York. I’ve got about a minute but I wanted to get to you. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Megadittos, Rush. Thank you for keeping alive, borrowing a phrase from the opposition. You know, the Democrats have it so easy. All they do is they get to propose stupid legislation after stupid legislation, billions and billions and billions of dollars. As conservatives, you know, all our guys can say is, ‘No, that’s not your role. No, it’s too much money. No, we’re going to run up the debt,’ and that’s just not, you know, as sexy as the job the Democrats do. So if this thing reverses in 2010, will the Republicans have the intestinal fortitude to reverse TARP, cap and trade if it gets passed, you know, so on and so on.’ I’ve just got to know. I’ve got to believe there’s some hope out there.

RUSH: There is, but this is… I’ll go back to what I said earlier. It depends on which GOP wins. If it’s a GOP with conservative policies and conservative foundations, yeah. If you elect people who wanted to go in there and rip this stuff apart… It’s been done before. It’s been done, 1994 with the Republicans when they won the House. Yes, it can be done. This is still the United States of America, and if you want to think that the end is inevitable, then of course nothing will get done.

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