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RUSH: David, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Welcome to the program, sir. Nice to have you here.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Hey. Good afternoon from the Sooner State, Rush.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah, thank you very much, sir.<\/p>\n
RUSH: David, you know what? This is very nice of you to say, but you\u2019re on to something that you may not be aware of. Thank you for the call. I\u2019ll expand on this.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Okay, the guy from Tulsa. What was his first name? (interruption) You “don\u2019t make a record”? Like if the New York state taxing authorities needed to know the name of the guy from Tulsa so that I could prove I\u2019m here and not in New York, we\u2019d be screwed? (interruption) Okay. The guy said — and he had, as far as it went, a good point. He said, “Look, Rush, you may not realize it, but having these guys sound conservative next to you is next to impossible. You\u2019ve set the bar…” He said, “You and Reagan, you\u2019ve set the bar so high for so many years that there\u2019s no way these candidates can do it.” Now, I appreciate what he\u2019s trying to say, but it only goes so far. What he\u2019s really saying is that we don\u2019t have a genuine, real conservative such as I am a real conservative in our roster of nominees, because if we did, they could articulate it.<\/p>\n
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That\u2019s not to be confused with our intention to oppose Obama every way we can and to support the eventual nominee, but we can\u2019t close our minds to issues and records. We gotta look at these people, regardless of what the liberals and the liberal media say or do — and if they can\u2019t articulate conservatism as well as I can, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s fatal. I understand the bar is raised high and it\u2019s next to me. I know what he was saying, but I know plenty of conservatives who can articulate it as well as I do, talk to \u2019em a lot. But I know a lot of people that can\u2019t. It\u2019s not because they\u2019re not articulate; it\u2019s because they\u2019re not fully conservative. It\u2019s no more complicated than that. You know, one of the things we strive for here is to avoid the creation of a third party and avoid the nomination of an establishment candidate.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t want that. But we\u2019re not Republican operatives here. We\u2019re conservatives, speaking for myself and I assume for most of you in the audience. Now, the assumption that all Republicans seeking the presidency are all establishment types is not an assumption I accept. You, the people, are gonna determine who the nominee is and who the nominee isn\u2019t. The assumption that all Republicans seeking the presidency are equal is not an assumption that I make here. They\u2019re not, and you\u2019re gonna make this determination on who you want the nominee to be by taking their measure. That includes looking at their records at governor, senator, speaker, congressman, businessman, what have you. You\u2019re gonna sift through it all. Now, we know what the left is looking for.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re looking for destroying all of them. But this is our primary, and we\u2019re looking for a conservative. We\u2019re looking for a winner, we\u2019re looking for somebody to save the country — and if we don\u2019t find somebody speaking that way then we know they don\u2019t agree with us about the condition of the country. And I can tell you, as I have told you, that in large pockets of Republicanism around the country, it is not conventional wisdom that the country is in bad shape, or that we are in peril, or that the country needs to be “saved” from anything. You would probably be surprised at the number of Republicans who don\u2019t think that at all. They just want to win because they want to win. They want the committee chairmanships in the Senate. They want the White House.<\/p>\n
They want to be in charge of the money, they want the power — and so the argument within the Republican Party is what it\u2019s always been. There are those of us who are conservative, who look at the country and the direction it\u2019s going and think that it\u2019s precarious, needs to be stopped and reversed — the future of our kids, grandkids and great-grandkids and so on is at stake — and others that don\u2019t think that at all. “It\u2019s the normal ebb and flow of politics and, yeah, Obama\u2019s pretty bad, but not a crisis.” There are people who think that. So when you find somebody that doesn\u2019t satisfy you in articulating conservatism, the odds are it\u2019s because they aren\u2019t, say, as conservative as you are. It\u2019s not that they don\u2019t know how. It\u2019s that it\u2019s not in them.<\/p>\n
It really isn\u2019t that complicated. Conservatism is not that hard to explain. I\u2019ve done it for 23 years. I did it at my CPAC speech. Liberalism is sometimes easier, \u2019cause it\u2019s all fake and phony. Liberalism is the most gutless choice you can make, \u2019cause all you gotta do is see some suffering and cry about it and make people think you care, and, bam! That\u2019s all you have to do. Conservatism is difficult in one regard, because so many people are opposed to you, so many people are gunning for you, but it is something that requires intellectual application. Even though it\u2019s the way most people live their lives, the seductiveness of the opposition is easy. Conservatism is a fairly clear-cut concept, and if you can\u2019t express it, it\u2019s probably because you don\u2019t understand it or you don\u2019t believe it, not that you are intellectually deficient.<\/p>\n