{"id":27529,"date":"2007-11-16T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:40:14","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T04:40:14","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:40:14","slug":"state_of_the_conservative_nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/11\/16\/state_of_the_conservative_nation\/","title":{"rendered":"State of the Conservative Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Russell in Memphis, you\u2019re next, sir. Thank you for waiting. You\u2019re on Open Line Friday. Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it\u2019s an honor to speak with you.<\/p>\n

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

CALLER: I wanted to say to the last caller, Kevin, ‘We appreciate your service to this country,\u2019 and my question\/comment for you was, I was not around for the Reagan administration. I\u2019m 18. From everything I\u2019ve studied and looked at, he was a tremendous, tremendous president. I\u2019m also a big George W. Bush fan. Aside from immigration, I\u2019ve agreed with almost every single thing he\u2019s done. My question for you is: Where would you rank George W. Bush with Ronald Reagan?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, that\u2019s a tough comparison because they\u2019re not the same people. Ronald Reagan was the leader of a movement. He was a genuine leader of a conservative movement. Every speech, every public appearance, Ronald Reagan was defining conservatism as it related to America. He was defining America. Did you hear Sarkozy\u2019s speech, the sound bites we played from Sarkozy\u2019s speech when he spoke to Congress last week?<\/p>\n

CALLER: No, sir, I did not.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I\u2019ve gotta get those back out of the archives. Joe, if you can find a couple of them, get them to me. They\u2019re just awesome. That\u2019s what Reagan did. The message that he sent every time he spoke, was on the greatness and the potential of America.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Reagan is a better communicator than George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah, but it\u2019s not just communication skills. I\u2019m talking the message. Now, Bush is a Republican. He is conservative on some things, but he is not a <\/emphasize>conservative, and he doesn\u2019t view himself as — he doesn\u2019t want to be — the leader of an ideological movement. So you can\u2019t really compare the two. Now, if you want to talk about historical perspective, they\u2019re going to be looked at differently, but you have to understand the history of the Bush administration, the accurate history, will not be written until most of us are long gone. The historians that are going to write that history are not yet born. The people writing the history of the Bush administration now and for the next 30, 40 years are going to be the people that detest Bush and hate Bush. That\u2019s going to be filled with lies. It\u2019s going to be filled with distortions. The textbooks in American high schools, junior high schools, and colleges are going to be filled with the same gunk. But eventually, I think, Bush is one of few presidents who has actually sought to transform America\u2019s place in the world — and out of necessity, what with the 9\/11 attacks. <\/p>\n

He is a president that is attempting to establish a democratic-oriented beachhead in a part of the world where nobody thinks it\u2019s possible. Now, we\u2019ve had our arguments with him about doing that: ‘Should that be the priority or should it happen after victory?\u2019 Some of us thought, ‘Yeah, I love the idea,\u2019 because his theory is all human beings are the same. We all have a yearning spirit to be free. We don\u2019t like to be constrained. I agree with that a hundred percent, but I think focusing on that first rather than achieving victory first may be a strategic blunder. But if he pulls it off — if this happens, if Iraq becomes what his vision for it is — then historians down the road are going to write tremendous things about Bush and the way he persisted. Here he is supposedly a lame-duck president, and he is not acting like it at all. He does not portray at any time any of this stuff. The personal attacks, the policy attacks, the opposition to his primary policy of the war on terror, he never betrays that it bothers him personally. He just keeps plugging away at it — some people say ‘stubbornly,\u2019 or what have you. But at least with Bush in this regard, in this one area of his administration, he has not wavered on it at all. I\u2019ll tell you, given where the Democrats have been, thank God he hasn\u2019t. This could have been a disaster, had a lesser president with the same policies caved in the middle of it. We would have already been experiencing more terrorist attacks. We have had none since 9\/11. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Russell in Memphis, you\u2019re next, sir. Thank you for waiting. You\u2019re on Open Line Friday. Hi. CALLER: Hey, Rush, it\u2019s an honor to speak with you. RUSH: Thank you. CALLER: I wanted to say to the last caller, Kevin, ‘We appreciate your service to this country,\u2019 and my question\/comment for you was, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nState of the Conservative Nation - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/11\/16\/state_of_the_conservative_nation\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"State of the Conservative Nation - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Russell in Memphis, you\u2019re next, sir. 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