{"id":28147,"date":"2008-01-17T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:20:36","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T04:20:36","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:20:36","slug":"rush_to_saunders_and_brooks_mccain_s_liberalism_is_the_problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/01\/17\/rush_to_saunders_and_brooks_mccain_s_liberalism_is_the_problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Rush to Saunders and Brooks: McCain\u2019s Liberalism Is the Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
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RUSH: I got into New York last night. Had a couple meetings after work, down at the EIB Southern Command and hopped a jet, got up here. I guess I got to my fashionable Upper East Side abode, what was it, 7:30, quarter of eight or something? I took some time to get away from it all, and after I got away from it all, I went back and got involved in it all, and I prepared myself a fashionable adult beverage. I\u2019m sitting there in my little study, and I got the computer on and I\u2019m starting to do a little show prep for today\u2019s show. And, you know, folks, I am written about every day. So it\u2019s no big deal to me. I used to have, when I was much younger and greener, all these news alerts that would alert me when my name had appeared anywhere in the World Wide Web. It got to be so arduous keeping up with it, I canceled them. I thought I canceled them all, but I must have missed one last night because one came in, and the title of it was, ‘Old Warrior, Go Home,\u2019 and it was from the San Francisco Chronicle. <\/p>\n

So I clicked on it. It\u2019s a column by my old friend Debra Saunders, who I met when I was in Sacramento. I\u2019ve stayed in touch with her off and on via e-mail all these years. So I read her column, and the first two words of her column are my name. She\u2019s really a great conservative, and she\u2019s a classy lady and I\u2019ve enjoyed her company, but we have a little bit disagreement here about Senator McCain, and I didn\u2019t know it \u2019til I read her piece. She starts this way: ‘Rush Limbaugh launches daily rants against John McCain. Fellow conservative radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham dismissed the Arizona senator Wednesday as ‘the Democrats\u2019 favorite Republican.” Then she quotes something that Hugh Hewitt, another famous talk show host, said on his blog. She goes on to make some observations, and, Debra, I want to thank you because you have enlightened me, and I\u2019m going to be able to pass this on to a lot of you people as the program unfolds today. <\/p>\n

Many of us who call ourselves down-the-road middle, rock-ribbed conservatives, good old mainstream conservatives, sit here and puzzle over the adoration, the love, the attachment that people we thought were also conservatives have for somebody like Senator McCain, or, in some cases, Governor Huckabee. I thought I figured out a bunch of reasons why, and in some cases, I chalked it up to various conservatives being embarrassed of some of the other conservatives that are in the Republican Party, others wanting to modernize the Republican Party, all these ideological reasons. But Debra alerted me to something that I may have thought about, but I didn\u2019t really process, and some of you might have. But I want to thank her for alerting me to the real reason some of these conservatives find an attraction to Senator McCain. Number one, it is his heroic status as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Oh, and, by the way, guess who is back? The little hand grenade with a bad haircut, Ross Perot is back on the warpath against McCain. He called Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, did you see this? He called Jonathan Alter of Newsweek to really rail against McCain, and it\u2019s about the POW issue. <\/p>\n

Now, nobody talks about this much in the mainstream media, but there are a lot of prisoners of war who think McCain has a lot of explaining to do in not being fully interested in getting all the POWs out of Vietnam when we left. It\u2019s a long, convoluted story, and McCain dismisses it, says there\u2019s nothing to it, but others hold quite a grudge against Senator McCain for his apparent lack of interest, they say, in getting everybody, every prisoner of war missing in action accounted for and out of Vietnam, and that\u2019s where Perot comes in. Vietnam was a big deal to him. Let me remind you of this. If you want to know why Perot was on the warpath against George H. W. Bush, it has to do with POWs and it has to do with Vietnam, and I\u2019ll go through that story when we get to the Perot segment of the program, but I want to stick with Debra Saunders here, which will dovetail into a sound bite from David Brooks, conservative, ahem, columnist at the New York Times who was on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night during the commentary segment with Mark Maxi Shields, and Brooks was talking about me. <\/p>\n

So, in addition to the POW\/MIA thing and McCain\u2019s heroic status, that\u2019s one of the things. But I want you to listen to this paragraph that Debra wrote in her piece. ‘Sure, Mac-bashers admit, he\u2019s good on Iraq and the war on terrorism, but look at his apostasies. McCain co-authored a campaign-finance reform bill that enraged far-right (and far-left) advocacy groups.\u2019 Debra, it enraged everybody. It was not just far right; it was not just far left. This thing enraged America. Seventy-seven percent of the American people, when they found out about this, were angry as hell. And you saw, ladies and gentlemen, real conservatism in action in the people of this country telling the government to stop getting so big and to stop disrespecting us. That bill was put together purposely, under cover of darkness in a back room with La Raza in there and its purpose was designed to keep the American people from finding out what was in it, and that effort was led by Senator McCain. Senator McCain was saying things like we gotta get the politics out of this, we gotta get it passed. What does he mean by get the politics out? Get the debate out of it. He didn\u2019t want any debate on this. He didn\u2019t want any hearings. He wanted to ram this thing through, and when the American people found out about it, 77% strong, it was over. <\/p>\n

And Debra continues: ‘He co-authored global-warming legislation with Sen. Joe Lieberman, then a Democrat.\u2019 Yeah, but that\u2019s not just a throwaway. That\u2019s huge! Just yesterday, in South Carolina, McCain made a huge turn left all again making sure to trash ANWR and drilling in ANWR. Everybody\u2019s talking about energy independence and coming up with ways to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and so forth. For crying out loud, he compared ANWR to the Grand Canyon and other really beautiful, great tourist protected sites in this country in the continental US, which is absurd. It is barren. There\u2019s nothing there, particularly the area in ANWR, it\u2019s a very small area, which has been targeted for drilling. Anyway, Debra also said that ‘McCain infuriated the GOP base last year when he championed an immigration bill that would have set up a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The bill tanked, and deservedly so, but not before McCain gratuitously insulted bill critics.\u2019 She mentioned this as though we need to forget this. <\/p>\n

Then she says, ‘I have to think that what really sticks in the Limbaugh\/Ingraham\/Hewitt collective craw is the fact that McCain has been a darling of the media. And some Democrats and independents say they could vote for him. Like those are bad things in an election year.\u2019 Bam, light went off. So people like Debra — and, by the way, folks, I have to tell you she\u2019s a brilliant lady. I don\u2019t want you misunderstanding anything about her. She\u2019s devoted, rock solid. But I figured it all out. These people, one of their primary attractions to McCain after the POW thing is he can get Democrats and liberals and moderates and independents and the Jell-Os to vote Republican, and that\u2019s magic, somehow that alone is magic. So I wrote Debra back, we had a little e-mail back-and-forth last night. I said to her, ‘Debra, it isn\u2019t that the media like McCain. That\u2019s not why I don\u2019t like him. It is why the media like McCain that bothers me. They know that McCain can be pulverized in a national election. I mean, the Drive-Bys will always tell us, Debra, who the nonconservatives are by virtue of who they love and support, and right now that\u2019s McCain and Huckabee. But it\u2019s far more than just that; it\u2019s policies.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Amnesty for illegals hatched under the cover of darkness, no debate. That bill would have been the destruction of the Republican Party. That was the Register Illegal Immigrants as Democrats bill. And we were frustrated and angry as hell here that a lot of Republicans in the Senate didn\u2019t see that. His outreach to Democrats and independents is also meant to destroy the Republican Party. If you\u2019re going to go out and appeal to independents and Democrats in today\u2019s playing field to get them to vote Republican, what do you have to do? You have to appeal to them as a liberal; you have to appeal them to as a moderate, and, certainly, you don\u2019t go out and appeal to them as a conservative to get moderate, liberal votes to abandon the Democrats and vote for Republicans. Then there\u2019s the Gang of 14. <\/p>\n

Now, McCain\u2019s out there promising he\u2019d do everything in the world to appoint the right kind of judges. But then, why have the Gang of 14, which basically destroyed our effort to stop Democrat filibusters on great judges? There\u2019s just too much here of substance that we can\u2019t overlook, plus the opposition to tax cuts. And, of course, some people say we need McCain\u2019s strong anti-terrorist and pro war on terror, pro Iraq, I agree with that, but I want to repeat this. If Democrats win the White House, folks, I have to tell you, they\u2019re not going to pull out of Iraq and guarantee defeat wrapped around their necks, they\u2019re just not going to do it, and anybody who thinks they are is buying and drinking Kool-Aid. Now, the Democrat base, this is all posturing, fundraising, and so forth. Iraq\u2019s off the table as an issue anyway. It\u2019s the economy. The economy is the issue that the Democrats and the liberals and the Drive-Bys are going to try to destroy the Republican Party on. I mean, hell, you\u2019ve got the energy secretary today, Sam Bodman, ‘Yeah, I think we\u2019re heading to a recession.\u2019 Well, that\u2019s just great. I remember the administration saying so. I guess they want to hype their stimulus package. <\/p>\n

The best stimulus package is a tax cut. Then you\u2019ve got Bernanke up there testifying before the House committee today, ‘It\u2019s not a recession.\u2019 He\u2019s trying to tell them we\u2019re not headed to a recession. It\u2019s going to be a slowdown, but it\u2019s not going to be a recession. But here\u2019s the thing. This election — and I also wrote this to Debra — this election is about defeating the left. This is crucial. The future of the country is at stake here. This is not about attracting a big tent of Democrats and liberals and doing it by being like them, to get them. That\u2019s going to destroy the party. That\u2019s why I say, McCain or Huckabee, if they get the nomination, this party, as we know it\u2019s finished. It\u2019s going to be reconstituted somehow and you\u2019re not going to recognize it. What\u2019s the value in getting liberals and moderates and so forth if you gotta be like them and say things like to get them? That\u2019s not what Reagan did. McCain is no Reagan here, when it comes to the Reagan Democrats and so forth. The climate change insanity, we cannot overlook this. <\/p>\n

Debra, we don\u2019t look at it as global warming or campaign finance reform and just throw it away as issues that McCain was wrong on. We look at global warming and campaign finance reform as a destruction of the US economy in the service of junk science and a hoax. We look at campaign finance reform as a suppression of core free speech rights in the service of protecting mostly Democrat incumbents. These things are not incidental. They\u2019re very substantive to us. It has nothing to do with personalities. It has to do with defeating liberals. Not attracting them to our own party, for crying out loud. I just now understand.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Let us also not forget, ladies and gentlemen, that back in 2004 the haughty John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) asked Senator McCain to be his vice presidential candidate, asked him to be his vice presidential running mate, and McCain took how many months to say no? (McCain impression) ‘I\u2019m very flattered. Flattered! See? I reach out to everybody. Everybody! Democrats love me.\u2019 <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: David Brooks was on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night with Mark Maxi Shields and the commentary segment of the new hour with Jim Lehrer, and my name up. This is Lehrer asking Brooks a question. ‘Going back to South Carolina specifically: You think Huckabee has a real good chance of scoring big? If he does, that hurts McCain, but what does that do to Thompson?\u2019<\/p>\n

BROOKS: The big problem Huckabee faces, McCain\u2019s also, is Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh all week has been on the warpath against Huckabee and McCain, as people who are not real Republicans. He says they\u2019re drawing independents; they\u2019re drawing Democrats; they\u2019re breaking up the Reagan coalition. He calls them Jell-O people [sic] because they\u2019re soft and squishy, and a lot of people listen to Rush Limbaugh, and a lot of talk show hosts repeat what Rush Limbaugh says. He\u2019s been a very pro-Romney force in the past week, and it\u2019s bound to eat into Huckabee because there a lot of Republican primary voters who listen to Rush Limbaugh.<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s David Brooks analyzing what\u2019s been happening on the program here. One thing we gotta correct. I didn\u2019t call the candidates ‘Jell-Os.\u2019 I called moderates and independents Jell-Os. Let\u2019s go back to the broadcast archives. This was Monday on the Rush Limbaugh program.<\/p>\n

RUSH ARCHIVE: I\u2019ve got a new name for, by the way, these independents and moderates. I call them ‘Jell-Os\u2019 from now on. You independents, you moderates, you know who you are. You are shaky; we can see through you. You are transparent. You can be filled up with marshmallows and processed, mushy fruit like the garbage the Drive-Bys and McCain are trying to sway you with. You\u2019re just a bunch of quivering masses of little Jell-O out there.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right, now, the Jell-O term here is applied, therefore, to independent and moderate voters. I\u2019ve decided if we\u2019ve got a bunch of Republicans who go out and act like liberals or moderates in order to get those people to vote for a Republican, I\u2019m going to insult the moderates, and I\u2019m going to see to it that they don\u2019t want to vote in the party I\u2019m a member of. (laughs) Somebody\u2019s gotta do something here. Now, seriously, folks. It is one thing to go out and attract the so-called Reagan Democrats, these moderate conservatives that have been Democrat by tradition. It\u2019s one thing to go get them by talking to them from the standpoint of conservatism and freedom, American exceptionalism, and greatness; but it is not good to go get them if you\u2019re going to pander to them with populism and make them also dependent on the Republican Party as they already are on the Democrat Party. That\u2019s not what we\u2019re about. ‘But, Rush? But, Rush? What about winning the election?\u2019 I understand, folks, and I understand some of you that think any of our Republican candidates would be better than Hillary or Obama, and you\u2019re probably right about that. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to dispute that, but I\u2019m going to tell you: there\u2019s not going to be much difference in terms of policy or what\u2019s going to happen to the Republican Party. Look, the Republican Party matters to me in the sense that it is the vessel — it is the host, if you will — for conservatism. Now, too many Republicans look at themselves as the host, and conservatives as an infection — as a virus that has been spreading throughout the Republican Party and slowly eating it away. Wrong. That\u2019s what will happen if we succeed in having a candidate — I don\u2019t care who it is — who is so enamored with getting independents and moderates and certain liberals, by going out and trying to be like them and telling them that our party is in fact their home. It\u2019s the Invasion of the Body Snatchers all over again in a political sense. Now, I keep talking about Ronaldus Magnus. Pete Wehner has a great piece today at Commentary, their website, and I\u2019ll share excerpts with you in a second. But remember, now: My devotion to Reagan is not a cult of personality. I think a lot of people\u2019s devotion to McCain is. I think a lot of people\u2019s devotion to Governor Huckabee is a cult of personality. Reagan didn\u2019t invent conservatism. He just showed how to apply it, and he showed how it attracts voters.<\/p>\n

How can you do better than a 49-state landslide? A fifty-state landslide, but it\u2019s pretty damn close. Anybody want to tell me that Reagan was campaigning as a moderate, independent? Anybody want to tell me that Reagan was running around campaigning and telling people how to become dependent on the government? Come on, folks! It\u2019s time to wake up here. I understand going out and ‘expanding the base\u2019 and having a chance at electoral victory and so forth, but if it means destroying the Republican Party — and certainly losing, by the way. Does anybody think that the way to be elected president is to out-liberal liberals, to out-moderate moderates? Some of this just escapes me, especially when the history is not that long ago. It\u2019s fairly recent; it\u2019s the eighties. Even the Contract with America and the Republicans winning the House of Representatives in 1994, you think we did that with liberalism? You think we did that by attracting moderates? We had a little help there because there\u2019s so much corruption on the House of Representatives on the Democrat side, but how did anybody know about that? Talk radio — which, back then, was me. Well, still is me. Ha-ha-ha! Anyway, don\u2019t forget the main point here. There\u2019s no magic and there\u2019s nothing valorous about going out and attracting people to our party by being like them, and having them think that our party is a new home for them, because of whatever deficiencies there are with Hillary or Obama or what have you. <\/p>\n

That expediency to win is going to set us back. For those of us that are conservatives first and Republicans second, this is something that matters deeply. As I said, global warming and campaign finance reform are not just little throwaway issues that McCain made mistakes on and maybe apologized for (which he hasn\u2019t). They\u2019re substantive. They\u2019re crucial. I think this notion that we\u2019ve gotta go out and broaden the base of the party by forsaking our own roots, by forsaking our own base, I\u2019m going to tell you: You talk about this notion, ‘When you get down to nominations, Rush, and you get down to the presidential race, if it\u2019s McCain or Huckabee or any of our guys against Hillary or Obama, you really think that our guys are going to stay home and not vote for our side?\u2019 It depends. If our nominee spends a whole campaign acting like he\u2019s embarrassed at his own base; like he\u2019s angry at them, wants to diminish them and deemphasize them; and wants to instead build his party and his victory on members of the Democrat Party and liberals and moderates; yeah, it\u2019s going to make \u2019em mad! There\u2019s already an undertow of real anger at Senator McCain over immigration alone and McCain-Feingold, among the Republican base. It\u2019s just these moderates and squishy Jell-Os out there, those that are also in the media. They\u2019re out of touch with the Republican base as well. The Republican base embarrasses them. So these are the people that consider themselves to be the party\u2019s ‘modernizers.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Well, hell, I\u2019m all for ‘modernization,\u2019 but not destruction. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: You know, about this modernizing business, my friends, and you know this, I do not blow my own horn. I do not tout my own whistle. I do not call attention to myself. That just happens. I do not say, ‘Notice me. Notice me.\u2019 But I\u2019m going to step in here on something. All this talk about modernizing the so-called conservative movement or modernizing the Republican Party, how many of you have heard the term ‘New Media\u2019? You\u2019re responsible for it. Well, I\u2019m responsible for it, but you have sustained it, all of you in the audience. We are the New Media. I think that\u2019s modernization. I think the true modernization of the movement and moving it forward and, quote, unquote, of the party is happening in the New Media. We are leading it, and there are people who don\u2019t like that, either, within our own structure, within our own movement. <\/p>\n

Mr. Brooks, I have all the respect in the world for him, for his education and what he has accomplished, but what does he do? He writes for the New York Times. That means he\u2019s writing conservatism for liberals. He\u2019s writing conservatism for a liberal audience, and of course you can\u2019t help when you do that to try to seek the liberals\u2019 acceptance. That\u2019s not what we do here. We\u2019re not trying to seek their acceptance. We are trying to beat them because we feel that they are destructive. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I have a couple of audio sound bites from the previous hour that I meant to get in. We got a little bit out of order there. The first one is from Senator McCain. The second one is from Governor Huckabee. This was on The Big Story last night on the Fox News Channel, John Gibson\u2019s show with Senator McCain, and Gibson said, ‘Senator, there\u2019s been, as you know, there\u2019s kind of a conservative campaign against you from a lineup of conservative talk show hosts and think-tanks. What do you say to the conservatives who are asking themselves, ‘Is McCain conservative enough?”<\/p>\n

MCCAIN: In New Hampshire, we won all segments of the Republican base, and I believe, again: Conservative Republicans are most concerned about the issue of our nation\u2019s security. I think it\u2019s clear that my involvement in every national security challenge for the last 20 years will, I think, attract a good portion of them, and most of them I hope — and I think I\u2019ll match my conservative record up against anybody that\u2019s running and I don\u2019t switch positions (laugh), either.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right. Now, there\u2019s something. I\u2019m tempted to just leave this alone. David Brooks was on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer saying (paraphrased), ‘I was listening to Limbaugh this week and he seems to have thrown in with Romney.\u2019 I haven\u2019t thrown in with anybody. All I\u2019m doing, folks — as you who listen regularly know — is simply giving you my reactions as the news happens. I have not endorsed anybody, and I\u2019m certainly not implying an endorsement of anyone on the program. We\u2019re just reacting to some things, as we react to any other news story. McCain says, ‘I think I\u2019ll match my conservative record up against anybody that\u2019s running.\u2019 Okay, now, see, that\u2019s pretty clever. It\u2019s pretty clever, because one of the laments among a lot of conservatives is that we don\u2019t have a thoroughbred out there, that every one of these guys has some sort of a question mark about them that you can go to in their past. As I said once, ‘The only guy that doesn\u2019t have to defend a prior liberal governing stance or moderate governing stance,\u2019 well, and it\u2019s not even totally, ‘is Thompson.\u2019 But even Thompson went along with McCain on the campaign finance reform thing. So, nobody is a thoroughbred out there. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re not looking for purity. We\u2019re looking for people that want to beat liberals, not join them, and not have them join us. That\u2019s not the future. Do you ever hear liberals say — do you hear Obama and these guys running around saying — ‘We need to go out and attract conservatives to our party. We need to find out how to broaden or base?\u2019 Do you think if any one of those candidates — be it Obama, be it Mrs. Clinton, be it the Breck Girl — started talking in ways that would attract somebody like me, that their party would put up with it in order to win? (interruption) Well, they promised a middle class tax cut, but they don\u2019t deliver the thing. You know, it works when the conservative Democrats run in local, state, House of Representatives elections. That\u2019s how they won the House last time. That\u2019s another thing that bugs me. When the Democrats do want to win, especially in local House race, they run conservative Democrats, and they win. Our own side wants to shuck and jive conservatism; sweep it aside as something that\u2019s an antique, that needs to be modernized and so forth. It\u2019s patently absurd. Now, having said that, it is very interesting to listen to Obama cite Reagan. <\/p>\n

This embarrasses me. He\u2019s citing Reagan in great ways. He\u2019s not citing Reagan on policy. He wouldn\u2019t dare do that, and he\u2019s taking a risk doing it anyway. That group over there despises Reagan even more than some of the country club, blue-blood Republicans on our side despised Reagan — make no mistake, they did. Nevertheless he\u2019s out there citing Reagan, but he\u2019s doing it in the context of attitudes and uplifting sentiments, optimism and hope and inspiration. The kind of things our people ought to be doing, Obama is out there-doing. I\u2019ll have more on this because Pete Wehner — my buddy from the White House who is now at Norman Podhoretz\u2019s shop, Commentary and is running a blog over there — published a piece today, and I want to get to it as the program unfolds. Here\u2019s Huckabee up next. This was from the Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough\u2019s show, on PMSNBC. By the way, did you hear…? Cookie, you don\u2019t need to go get the audio on this, because it\u2019s very short. I\u2019m just going to pass this on. I don\u2019t want you sweating and slaving in there while you\u2019re trying to fix your iPhone. Speaking of the iPhone, they had this big software update and it\u2019s cool. It\u2019s got some neat things on it. But the one thing it needs, they haven\u2019t done yet. It\u2019s frustrating. People ask me all the time, ‘Do you have any power with Apple?\u2019<\/p>\n

Ha-ha! Do I have any power with Apple? Apple is as embarrassed that I use their products, as Democrats would be if they welcomed me into the party. But they need a clipboard! They need cut and paste on the thing so you can cut and paste something for an e-mail to text message it to somebody, or cut and paste an address. It\u2019s gotta be simple to do, but they haven\u2019t done it yet, and I thought with that software update that came, version 1.1.3, that they would put that in. They got some cool things in there, some really nice things. But the thing that I really wanted on this thing since I got it, was cut and paste, clipboard, and it isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

Now, MSNBC. I\u2019m watching Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (Mika Brzezinski is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor to the peanut farmer: Jimmy Carter), and they\u2019re talking about conservatives in the presidential race, and Mika Brzezinski says, ‘I don\u2019t have any problem with morality in politics.\u2019 You don\u2019t have any problem with morality in politics? And that was somehow big news! <\/p>\n

The secularists are all over it. ‘No, I don\u2019t have any problem with morality.\u2019 It\u2019s like: I can stomach morality. <\/p>\n

Stomach it? See, that\u2019s the one thing that Pete writes about today in his piece on Obama and Reagan, the one thing — even I have forgotten to point out — one of the most fundamental aspects of Ronald Reagan\u2019s success was the morality of everything that he brought into play. He knew the Soviet Union would implode on the basis of its own immorality, if we just gave it the right nudge. He thought the same thing of liberalism. It\u2019s its own immorality, if you give it the right nudge, it will implode on itself. Reagan\u2019s morality was a fundamental aspect of who he was and how he took the concepts, the precepts, the contexts and principles of conservatism and applied them to the issues of his day. All right, I distracted myself, but didn\u2019t forget any of it, now back to Huckabee, who this all started with. He was on Scarborough\u2019s show on PMS yesterday. He says that there is a conspiracy out to get him.<\/p>\n

HUCKABEE: There\u2019s so much negative, it\u2019s amazing. I\u2019m the only guy that\u2019s just getting hammered from some of these special interest groups, and I think that will really turn for me and against some of these folks, because it\u2019s pretty obvious that there\u2019s gotta be almost this — I don\u2019t use the word ‘conspiracy,\u2019 but there\u2019s just an — anxiety that exists in the Washington power circles about our candidacy.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So that\u2019s another way of stating the Washington-New York Axis; the Wall Street-DC Axis; the one I belong to, that this mythical advisor said I was a member of, and Huckabee said no. Well, he didn\u2019t say no. He said we don\u2019t know who said it so I can\u2019t respond to it. David Brooks is Washington-New York Axis. I\u2019m not trying to put Brooks down. There\u2019s no feud here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: I got into New York last night. Had a couple meetings after work, down at the EIB Southern Command and hopped a jet, got up here. I guess I got to my fashionable Upper East Side abode, what was it, 7:30, quarter of eight or something? I took some time to get away from […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nRush to Saunders and Brooks: McCain's Liberalism Is the Problem - 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\/2008\/01\/17\/rush_to_saunders_and_brooks_mccain_s_liberalism_is_the_problem\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Rush to Saunders and Brooks: McCain's Liberalism Is the Problem - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: I got into New York last night. Had a couple meetings after work, down at the EIB Southern Command and hopped a jet, got up here. I guess I got to my fashionable Upper East Side abode, what was it, 7:30, quarter of eight or something? 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