{"id":19245,"date":"2011-06-21T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T00:17:55","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-07-20T00:17:55","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T00:17:55","slug":"complaint_from_an_independent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2011\/06\/21\/complaint_from_an_independent\/","title":{"rendered":"Complaint from an Independent"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: James in Oak Hill, Ohio. Great to have you on the program. Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hello, Mr. Limbaugh, and this is a pleasure and an honor.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you very much. <\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019m a first-time caller.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I appreciate that.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Um… Okay, I chatted with your screener a little a while ago, and it seems like you\u2019re — on independent voters, it seems like you\u2019re — being a bit critical and hard on us independents. It seems like you\u2019re thinking that most of us are more liberal-oriented than conservative-oriented; and I don\u2019t have any facts or figures to support that, but I\u2019m thinking it\u2019s probably the other way around, that we\u2019re a bit more conservative than liberal. And it just seems like lately you\u2019ve been kind of… um… Well, a bit — a bit critical and hard on us independent voters.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I can understand why you would think that, and I said earlier in the program long before taking your call that my real complaint is not so much with the independents. I mean, you\u2019re who you are. My real beef is how you are portrayed; it is how you are characterized. You are characterized as unique and special. You\u2019re the smartest voters around. <\/p>\n

CALLER: (chuckles)<\/p>\n

RUSH: You\u2019re not ideologues. You\u2019re open-minded. You make up your mind issue by issue. You hate partisanship. You hate bickering. You hate arguments. You hate confrontation. You do not like it when Republicans start talking about Obama — and when that happens you\u2019re going to run right to Obama. <\/p>\n

CALLER: Okay.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And these people that are offering this characterization are advising candidates of this. They\u2019re telling candidates that that\u2019s who you are and how to get your vote is to go soft on Obama and don\u2019t be critical of him and all that kinda of stuff, and I think it\u2019s bogus.<\/p>\n

CALLER: It is bogus, sir. I personally… Yeah, I know that\u2019s what the liberal media wants to portray it as, but I don\u2019t mind getting in a liberal\u2019s face. I have no problem with that at all, and I wish that the Republicans would do this a lot more. You played the Reagan thing<\/a> a little a while ago with him directly taking on Carter. That was great, and too bad that there doesn\u2019t seem to be somebody in place right now that\u2019s doing the same thing. Take \u2019em head-on. Take him on directly is the way I would prefer that they would do it.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right. Well, I appreciate that, and as I say: I totally understand why you might think I\u2019m going after you. You\u2019re who you are, and I\u2019m not gonna change who you are. But I do really resent the way you independents are portrayed, and I resent the fact that consultants and everybody else says that an independent by definition is undecided and therefore every election turns on the independents. And everybody says this! Media pundits on both sides of the aisle say this. It\u2019s as though 80% of the electorate doesn\u2019t matter. “Forty percent will automatically vote Republican; 40% automatically votes Democrat.”<\/p>\n

If this were the case, campaigns wouldn\u2019t cost what they cost. It\u2019s patently absurd to believe that 80% of the American people are not reachable during a campaign. That they\u2019ve already made up their minds and are not gonna change their minds, “They\u2019re partisan, and they\u2019re rigid, and they\u2019re ideologues; and they\u2019re this and that and the other thing, but the independents? Ahhhhh, yes,” as everybody spends their time trying to persuade them. Sorry, I don\u2019t buy it — and I also don\u2019t buy what we\u2019re always told about you independents, and that is that the slightest bit of criticism of any Democrat, and you are not going to put up with it; and you\u2019re going to run back to the Democrats in droves because you don\u2019t like partisanship and mean-spiritedness. <\/p>\n

I happen to think the biggest partisans, the most mean-spirited extremists in American politics today are Democrats — and the very idea that a Republican who might be critical of Obama\u2019s gonna run you into the arms of Barney Frank or Anthony Weiner or some of these other vociferous, loud, offensive, mean-spirited extremist Democrats is just patently insulting to me — and there\u2019s something else, too. The independents, if you accept everything that\u2019s said about you — that you guys don\u2019t even want a clear-cut choice, that you like muddle; you like things muddled up and not quite clear because it takes a special mind, it takes a special discipline to navigate and wade through all of the gunk. The things that were said about you — and both parties do it — I just don\u2019t happen to be a believer in. I think people who are persuaded by these people to run for office only trying to appeal to 20% of the voters?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder those people lose, and who are the nominees of these people? Who are the candidates that these consultants and everybody put forth as the surefire winners? They\u2019re the ones that lose! Poor old Bob Dole! John McCain. These are the people that end up losing, and who do they lose to? They lose to firebrand partisans on the left. I think all of this is a giant… a trick or whatever. I think it\u2019s a scheme, and I think the left has hatched this as a means of getting Republicans to shut up. It\u2019s a scheme designed to get Republicans not to make their case, to not draw the contrast. If national elections were only about 20% of the voters, George Soros would just go out and buy them. George Soros would not be investing all the money in all the liberal think tanks and media watchdogs and so forth trying to influence opinion. He would just buy the votes of those 20% of the people. <\/p>\n

This is all such a crock. <\/p>\n

There. I said it very clearly.<\/p>\n

END TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

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RUSH: James in Oak Hill, Ohio. Great to have you on the program. Hi. CALLER: Hello, Mr. Limbaugh, and this is a pleasure and an honor. RUSH: Thank you very much. CALLER: I\u2019m a first-time caller. RUSH: I appreciate that. 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