{"id":30806,"date":"2008-11-05T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:10:15","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T03:10:15","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:10:15","slug":"yes_we_can_the_reestablishment_of_principled_conservatism_begins4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/11\/05\/yes_we_can_the_reestablishment_of_principled_conservatism_begins4\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes We Can: The Reestablishment of Principled Conservatism Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"
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RUSH: Well, my friends, the new tone has finally come home to roost. For those of you perplexed by my meaning, I will ‘splain this along with lots of other things as we engage in three hours of broadcast excellence from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, rebuilding the conservative movement. I take that back. The conservative movement does not need to be rebuilt. We had some people abandon the conservative movement, and we need to make sure they stay abandoned. Greetings, and welcome. Telephone number, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address is ElRushbo@eibnet.com. <\/p>\n

Conservatism did not lose last night. Conservative was not on the ballot. The Republican Party has not sought to be conservative since the new tone was initiated by the Bush administration in 2001. But I would like to congratulate President-Elect Barack Obama, ladies and gentlemen. Without Senator Obama, we would still be dealing with the specter of Hillary Clinton lurking around the Democrat Party seeking the White House. So I want to congratulate and thank Senator Obama for dispatching the Clintons, at least until he screws up enough to give them an opening to get back in. I am the Doctor of Democracy as you know, and today my waiting room is filled. (laughing) I can well imagine. <\/p>\n

Lots to do on the program today, ladies and gentlemen. As you know in America today, the sun seems to be shining a little brighter; the birds are chirping happier melodies out there. I heard it driving in. The smell of spring has displaced old man winter. In fact, there\u2019s not going to be any winter. It will not come this year. Harsh winds will not chill the souls of man, nor will harsh winds chill the souls of women. There won\u2019t be any harsh winds. There will not be any winter. There will only be love and devotion and — oh, I was just handed a note here: ‘President Dmitri Medvedev Orders Missiles Deployed in Europe as World Hails Obama.\u2019 No big deal. I\u2019ve just been handed another note: ‘Palestinians Launch Rocket Attack into Israel as World Hails Obama.\u2019 No big deal. That\u2019s just the world being what it is. No problem. There will be no winter; there will be no wars; there will be no harsh winds; the shackles of the past, which for so long have bound too many of us, have been shaken loose. Yes, Snerdley, I\u2019m not ready to take the field for another game. I\u2019m on the field. We have taken the field, and we\u2019re getting ready, the game is begun. <\/p>\n

The process of rebuilding the conservative movement has begun. The conservative movement, I guess it does need to be rebuilt in a sense, but it should be a lot easier than a lot of people think because a lot of so-called conservatives abandoned the movement in support of Obama and identity politics of their own and so forth. They got what they wanted. They got the candidate they wanted. They got the result that we all knew was going to happen when they got the candidate they wanted. And then when things started going south, a lot of these pseudo-conservatives, ‘You know what? I kind of like Obama, Obama can talk, Obama can speak,\u2019 so let them stay on that side of the aisle. We\u2019ve got the plays. We have the playbook. We didn\u2019t run the plays. We are going to start running the plays. And we\u2019re not going to have sideliners; we\u2019re not going to have draft choices on our field. They may be on the bench but they\u2019re going to have to prove themselves in training camp before they get in the game this time. A little football analogy out there for those of you who are not necessarily sports inclined. <\/p>\n

What we are dealing with today, the opportunity that we have actually is the rebirth of principled opposition, an opposition rooted in conviction, not opposition for opposition\u2019s sake, not opposition for political expedience. I don\u2019t know if you know this, I don\u2019t know if you heard this on television last night. Do you know that with the defeat of the moderate Chris Shays in Connecticut, we don\u2019t have a single conservative — sorry — we don\u2019t have a single Republican member of the House of Representatives from the great Northeast? All of those moderates, all those moderate Republicans, liberal Republicans who thought the only way to get elected and run the affairs of the House was to be moderate, was to be centrist. Guess where they are? Gone. They are gone. An opportunity for cleansing, ladies and gentlemen, like we haven\u2019t seen in a long time. This is all positive, well, for our side, the opportunity to build. We\u2019ve got some serious challenges ahead in pushing back what no doubt is going to come. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m just sitting here, I have to laugh. There is another template that\u2019s established, and a lot of sideliners on our side of the aisle have picked it up. ‘Hey, he\u2019s going to govern from the center. Hey, he\u2019s going to govern from the center right. Hey, he can\u2019t go far left, he can\u2019t do all this.\u2019 What little we know about this guy is precisely that he is a radical. That speech of his last night, did you see the faces of the people in the audience? Messianism was on display. They didn\u2019t care what they heard. I did. Again, he came out with an acceptance speech that said nothing better than anybody I\u2019ve ever heard say nothing, other than he did say a couple of fundamental things that I\u2019m going to point out to you as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today. Now, our road to rebuilding is going to be steep, but I know also that as a people, we will get there. As conservatives, we will get there. Can we oppose the idea that confiscatory taxation produces prosperity, when in fact it punishes economic growth? Yes, we can! Can we oppose the notion that our national greatness is derived from an ever growing government instead of the freedom from government our Founders envisioned? Yes, we can. <\/line>I started laughing uncontrollably during the ‘yes, we can\u2019 stuff last night. I was having a great time last night. I actually was having a great time watching all this. I just flipped around various channels to watch the coverage and I was just laughing. Can we oppose the belief that one\u2019s earnings must be redistributed for the false promise of fairness? Yes, we can. Can we oppose the belief that it is immoral to secure our own borders or defend ourselves from terrorists intent on destroying us? Yes, we can. Can we do all that and more? Yes, we can. Because now it is plain for one and all to see that taking the moderate path of appeasement leads to abysmal defeat. The new tone came home to roost last night. I was watching, ladies and gentlemen, the speech by President-Elect Obama, and when I saw the setup, they showed us the setup a long time before he went out there. I said, ‘Come on, McCain, get out there and concede; they\u2019re going to lose control of that crowd in Chicago. That crowd\u2019s been out there,\u2019 I didn\u2019t see any Port-a-Potties. What\u2019s that crowd doing? I knew they probably had some band, some concert activity going on. McCain went out and did his concession speech. <\/line><\/p>\n

By the way, that concession speech, I heard a lot of people say, ‘Where was that during the campaign?\u2019 That was the campaign! The concession speech was the reason he lost the campaign. That concession speech was a testament to his campaign that went down in flames. Now, help me out here. I had some people watching at my house with me, and they were telling me — when I hear crowd noise watching television, I can\u2019t tell if it\u2019s cheering, bickering, booing, or what have you. Was McCain booed last night? Was he being heckled? He was not? All right, because I was told by some that he was being heckled. I doubted that. But, anyway, the concession speech was a testimony to why his campaign faltered. And I\u2019m watching, I\u2019m looking at the setup for Obama\u2019s speech, and I thought, ‘My God, they\u2019ve moved the UN to Chicago.\u2019 They had that background, all these flags, they were all American flags, but it looked like the UN, looked like a world body that was gathering. And the funniest part, the funniest part of Obama\u2019s speech last night to me — and, by the way, did you catch the open where he said, ‘We are not a collection of individuals?\u2019 <\/p>\n

See, people think that this speech was sort of vapid and soaring. That\u2019s substantive. He believes we are not a collection of individuals, and yet later in the speech he talked about the founding of the country on the mode of self-reliance. Now, how can there be self-reliance without a collection of individuals? We\u2019re either a collection of individuals or we\u2019re not. And if we\u2019re not a collection of individuals, there\u2019s no such thing as self-reliance, and it was epitomized by what I thought was the funniest part of the speech. You gotta remember the attitude. These people are staring, they\u2019re crying. The Reverend Jackson was crying. Oprah was crying. Jesse hated being part of the mob. He couldn\u2019t believe he wasn\u2019t on the stage, and that\u2019s why the tears. Oprah was down there, they found her, the camera found her crying. There were a lot of tears in the crowd at Grant Park last night because the politics of the crowd, we\u2019re all equal here, we\u2019ve won, it was a surreal moment. Then Obama started talking about all this sacrifice we\u2019re all going to have to make. The crowd seemed very perplexed. <\/p>\n

The crowd seemed very perplexed when he told them we all had to sacrifice. The faces in the crowd when he told \u2019em we\u2019re all going to have to do more, to work harder, to sacrifice, to make things happen, the looks on the faces of the crowd said, ‘We<\/emphasize> are going to have sacrifice? That wasn\u2019t the deal here, bro. We<\/emphasize> are going to sacrifice? No, no, no, I thought they<\/emphasize> are going to sacrifice.\u2019 And Obama is saying, yeah, the sacrifice is going to happen with the tax cut that you don\u2019t get. I thought the theme of the speech was ‘to be determined.\u2019 I couldn\u2019t detect a theme of the speech. After every roaring sound bite or applause line, I looked at some friends and said, ‘What does that mean? What did he just say?\u2019 I\u2019m also curious, so much rage and so much anger on the left. Where\u2019s it going to go? Rage and anger does not go away, and that party is built, the Democrat Party is built on rage and anger. Where is it going to go? Well, I know, everybody says it\u2019s going to be aimed at me, and I\u2019ll do my best to be the vacuum cleaner that sucks up all the rage. I\u2019ll be honored to have the rage be focused on me, but seriously, where is it going to go? It may subside for a while because a lot of these people, ‘okay, okay,\u2019 but they\u2019re still enraged, go to the website, they\u2019re still enraged, 2000, the election of 2000 they think it is finally over. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m actually very suspicious of the results last night, ladies and gentlemen. Nobody has dared, nobody has the courage to bring this up. But this wasn\u2019t any big landslide. And this wasn\u2019t a big record turnout. It wasn\u2019t a big record turnout. The numbers I have is less than 2004. But regardless, whether it was record turnout or not, how many of those votes were stolen? All that early voting, we don\u2019t have Election Day anymore, we have election month. All these early voters out there standing four hours in line. Folks, I gotta tell you, I voted yesterday here in Florida, you should have seen our ballot. It was welcome back to the magic marker days. We had to go in and connect two lines with a black magic marker and these ballots were huge. The environmental impact, negative impact caused by Florida ballots is going to be incalculable. Then we had to feed these things into a machine to be read. But you know, here we have machines involved. <\/p>\n

I talked to a bunch of people whose votes were not read by the machine here in Florida, and the guy said, ‘Well, don\u2019t worry about it, we\u2019ll put \u2019em in the emergency box.\u2019 And the friend said, ‘No, I don\u2019t want them in the emergency box. I want another ballot, you throw this away, and I want it scanned.\u2019 ‘No, no, no, we\u2019ll put it in the emergency box. We count everything in the emergency box.\u2019 Early voting. I also detected last night in the speech that the United States sounds like a horrible place to live. It really sounds like a horrible place to live. We\u2019ve been so rotten, we have been so mean to people, but now all that\u2019s going to change. America sounded like it\u2019s a horrible place to live. And finally, ladies and gentlemen, proof of what we have all suspected, we may have risen above a bunch of stuff last night. But it\u2019s patently obvious, looking at the election returns that we have not risen above our own public education.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Seriously, ladies and gentlemen, I spent a lot of the morning doing show prep, scouring our own websites (supposedly our own websites) and I have detected a theme, and the theme is, ‘All right, we need to be gracious and we need to extend our congratulations. That is historic.\u2019 The underlying reason for this that I picked up is that people on our side want to avoid acting like the left did when they lost 2000 and 2004. Remember when they were out there saying the election had been stolen and they were filled with rage and anger. They have always been filled with rage and anger; it was just heightened after those two elections. But once again the fatal flaw… I\u2019m not against graciousness, and I\u2019m not against being congratulatory and so forth.<\/p>\n

But the motivation for it troubles me greatly, as we seek here not to rebuild the conservative movement, by the way, but to simply reestablish it and take it back from a bunch of frauds and pretenders who want to ‘redefine\u2019 it. I never see liberalism be redefined. I never hear liberals say they have to redefine liberalism. I never hear them say we\u2019ve got to end the era of FDR. They keep trying to rebuild it! Yet the wizards of smart on our side continue to try to tear it down, and they continue to tell us that the only way we can win is by branching out — and, in their own way, Balkanizing voters. We gotta start looking at voters, a Wal-Mart voter over there, and a Joe the Plumber voter over here, and some other kind of voter over there. That\u2019s not how you win elections. <\/p>\n

You win elections with core principles and beliefs that you stand steady on, and you attract people to them because they work. Like I say, we got a playbook. We have a blueprint. And there are people (for reasons that escape me, I don\u2019t care what the reasons are) who want to abandon all that and try to set up this new thing with themselves in charge, and they\u2019re going to do that. There\u2019s going to be a series — you mark my words, there\u2019s going to be a series — of conservative intellectuals and thinkers. They will convene a number of conferences among themselves to plan a new plan of attack. We got what they wanted! Everything they suggested that we do has come to pass, from compassionate conservatism to the new tone — and now here we are. <\/p>\n

We have just lost an election. Let me continue to add a caveat to this. Conservatism did not lose. In fact, when it was on the ballot, it won. How about Prop 8 in California? The people of California passed Proposition 8 telling the judges of California that you cannot override what we do in this ballot initiative, and marriage will be between a man and a woman. In California! When conservatism is on the ballot, and it\u2019s clearly defined, it doesn\u2019t have any problems. It is where conservatism gets watered down, where we tend to be moderate. ‘We need to explain that we don\u2019t hate people. We don\u2019t dislike people, that we\u2019re not racist, sexist, bigot, homophones.\u2019 Then you get watered down, you have no identity. <\/p>\n

The Republican Party brand is shot! Exit poll data shows it; preelection data surveys show it. The Republican Party, nobody knows what it stands for. Because the people that run the party don\u2019t know what it stands for, other than, ‘Let\u2019s be defensive,\u2019 and so today we\u2019re told, ‘We must be conciliatory, we must congratulate, and we must be gracious and so forth.\u2019 Why? Beyond just being those things, why? Because we still think that it is important that we differentiate ourselves from the left. From what I saw today and from what I heard, the reason people want to go overboard congratulating Obama on the racial thing, the historical aspect of the first black president, is to send a message to the left, to send a message to the media. <\/p>\n

‘Hey, we\u2019re not as bad as you think.\u2019 As long as that motivation counts for what you do, and as long as the motivation for behaving a certain way is to try to convince people that already hate your guts that they ought to like you, you are going to fail every time. So we congratulate Obama. We recognize the historical nature. We also understand that more than him being black, he is a radical extremist who is not going to govern from the center. Pelosi and Reid are not gonna govern from the center. What the hell do people think they wanted to win this election for? When do liberals govern from the center? The only time they do that is when they have to, when there are enough Republicans around to keep their extremism in check — and that\u2019s going to be interesting to see if we have enough now.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah, so we\u2019re being told here today by the wizards of smart on our side, ‘We need to be gracious in defeat.\u2019 My answer to that is, ‘Screw defeat! Screw this whole notion that we have to sit around and try to show these people that we\u2019re the nice people, that they don\u2019t think that we are.\u2019 It\u2019s like one of our guys in the Congress gets in trouble, and we\u2019re the first to throw him overboard. Get rid of him! Why? Not because we think he ought to go, but because we think the left will like us and the media will understand us better and think that we\u2019re fair. Meanwhile, they never throw any of their people overboard. We need to understand this as a war that there are several skirmishes and battles in and we just lost a battle, and we gotta be honest with ourselves about why we lost this battle. Any time you fail, if you don\u2019t examine yourself first, you will never understand what happened. <\/p>\n

As long as you start making excuses and saying that other people did this and the media did that or what have you, you\u2019re never going to get to the core of the problem. And the core of the problem is that the Republican Party (for some inexplicable reason that I don\u2019t care about now) decided to abandon conservatism. And we see what happened when the Republican Party abandons conservatism. John McCain\u2019s concession speech last night was a testament to his campaign. His whole campaign was a concession speech! We have now demonstrated to one and all how to lose. We know how to lose. We have been the architects — well, not we. But there are those that we are talking about here who have been the architects of this defeat, and it is going to be crucial to point this out as the reestablishment of conservatism takes place. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to have a great opportunity to do it because this notion, ‘Obama\u2019s going to have to govern from the center, Rush. He\u2019s going to have to because look at the economic crisis and look at all the bailout money and look at terrorism.\u2019 Read the New York Times today! They are demanding, A, he close Gitmo; B, he raise taxes right now; C, he get out of Iraq. The left thinks they got somebody that\u2019s going to implement their agenda even before he gets to the White House. Their rage is going to go someplace. These people live and thrive on rage. It is their fuel, and they\u2019re going to find an outlet for it somewhere. They are perpetually miserable. They are perpetually unhappy. They might be in a moment right now of bliss, but the hard stuff hasn\u2019t started yet, and it\u2019s going to very soon. <\/p>\n

Also, this notion of governing from the center? His first appointment, his chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel. Do we know if Emanuel has accepted? Rahm Emanuel wants to be Speaker of the House. Let me tell you a little bit about Rahm Emanuel. Hillary Clinton hates him. In the White House, Rahm Emanuel pushed NAFTA and made that go first instead of her health care baby, and her health care baby suffered. There\u2019s no love lost between Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton, and he is good a old-fashioned Chicago thug just like Obama is a good old-fashioned Chicago thug. On the night of the Clinton election, Rahm Emanuel was so angry at the president\u2019s enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign; Rahm Emanuel grabbed a steak knife and he began rattling off a list of betrayers.<\/p>\n

As he listed their names, he shouted, ‘Dead! Dead! Dead!\u2019 and he plunged the steak knife into the table after every name. This is not a bunch of people that are going to govern from the center. These are left-wing extremists. They are radicals, and we\u2019re not gonna let these people either on our side or on the left say, ‘Well, we didn\u2019t really know that much about this guy.\u2019 Now, for all of those of you out there (not in this audience, but the faint of heart on our side) who want to go through this rigmarole game of appeasement and conciliation, congratulations, work nice. McCain last night… The reason I asked you if he got booed last night, was because I was booing. When he came out and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my friends, my friends, I want us to come together tonight in unity with Senator and President-Elect Obama.\u2019<\/p>\n

I do not want unity with President-Elect Obama! Ladies and gentlemen, let me count the numbers here. What do we have? By the time all this is all over, 57 million Americans will have voted ‘no\u2019 on this stuff! I, for one, do not think it wise to abandon 57 million Americans who want no part of an Obama agenda, and I for one will not abandon 57 million Americans who want no part of it. Unity with Obama? Can you spell defeat? We still wanna cave. What\u2019s the point? I know McCain wanted to sound gracious, but what is the point now of saying unify with Obama? Does Obama say he wants to unify with us? No. He said, ‘I know there are people out there that didn\u2019t vote for me, but I\u2019m going to listen to you.\u2019 Yes, as in the Fairness Doctrine you\u2019re going to listen to us? ‘I\u2019m going to listen to you.\u2019<\/p>\n

Fine. You\u2019re going to listen to us all day long and do nothing about it, right? There is no unity with Obama. He doesn\u2019t cross the aisle. Let me go through a list of things here, ladies and gentlemen. Those of you who want to go out there and make nice, because you either want to be treated well, or you don\u2019t want to be targeted. You don\u2019t want them coming after you. You want to be invited to state dinners at the White House. Let me ask you which of the following Obama and Democrat agenda items you want to sign on to so that you can be looked upon and held in good favor. Do you want to compromise with them on the Employee Free Choice Act? These are things that they have said they\u2019re going to do. <\/p>\n

Do you want to sign on with the Employee Free Choice Act? Do you want to have union thugs in your small business being able to harass your employees who cannot vote secret ballot on whether to unionize or not? Do you want union thugs visiting your employees\u2019 homes to pressure them, to vote to unionize your small business? Obama, as I just said, ‘I know there are a lot of people out there that I didn\u2019t earn your vote, but I\u2019m going to listen to you,\u2019 as in, the Fairness Doctrine, Senator Obama. Any of you who want to make nice out there want to compromise and unify on the Democrat Party\u2019s position on the Fairness Doctrine? Chuck-U Schumer just yesterday suggesting that the federal government can legislate and regulate porn on the airwaves, what\u2019s the difference in talk radio? <\/p>\n

Free Choice Act. (chuckles) You want to compromise with them on abortion? You want to try to unify on the whole notion of that? How about the nationalization of health care? Well, sadly, Snerdley, there are people on our side who want to do their own version of that because they think that\u2019s how you get Wal-Mart voters and they think that\u2019s how you go out and get Joe the Plumber voters. Estate tax increases. How many of you want to unify with Obama on increasing the death tax when you croak? How many of you want to compromise on comprehensive immigration reform? In other words, let me put it to you this way. How many of you want to unify with Obama on driver\u2019s licenses for illegal aliens? <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s another thing. We lost New Mexico and we lost Nevada, and did you see how? John McCain of comprehensive immigration reform and ‘meaningful campaign finance reform to take the money out of politics,\u2019 and one guy raises 600 million, taking the money out of the politics. Hispanics\/Latinos, two-to-one for Obama. Now, I thought the opposite was supposed to happen. I thought we were supposed to go out there and, as the Republican Party and President Bush and Senator McCain sponsoring comprehensive immigration reform were supposed to show those Hispanics we love \u2019em and we care about them and they\u2019re all ‘God\u2019s children\u2019 and it didn\u2019t work, did it? It just didn\u2019t. You know how to get them? Conservatism will get them, not pandering to them! <\/p>\n

‘You want to come here illegally? Fine! We\u2019ll arrange it for you.\u2019 That\u2019s not how to do it! It\u2019s so frustrating, but, such an opportunity now. Such a glorious golden opportunity because the frustrating thing that I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll all agree with me about this campaign was we didn\u2019t really have a chance to contrast ourselves with Obama and the radicalism of his campaign, because our presidential campaign in four-and-a-half hours… Listen to this now. In four and a half hours of televised presidential debate, not one mention of Jeremiah Wright. In four-and-a-half hours of televised presidential debate, not one mention of any of the extremism that Obama has said he was for. <\/p>\n

Not one — and I don\u2019t care. Maybe it was fear of being called racist or what have you. Fear sometimes is a great motivator, but mostly it\u2019s a giant obstacle; and until you get it out of your way, you\u2019re not going to move forward. Capital gains tax increase. Let\u2019s unify on that. We don\u2019t want to unify on that? How about, let\u2019s unify on defense cuts. Barney Frank wants to cut the defense budget 25%, get out of Iraq, get out of Afghanistan; while Putin\u2019s loading up Europe with missiles and the Gaza Strip is coming alive here with all the peace that\u2019s broken out with the election of Obama. Hey, how about this? How about we unify around the notion of liberal judicial appointments to the federal bench, including the Supreme Court? Yeah, let\u2019s unify. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be gracious. Let\u2019s be conciliatory, and let\u2019s indeed govern from the center, as a whole bunch of more Stephen Breyer\u2019s show up for work at the federal courts every day. Yep, that\u2019s for me. How about racial and ethnic preferences? Yep! Let\u2019s admit that we\u2019re a bunch of racist pigs, sexist, bigots, homophobes, and let\u2019s go ahead and expand the whole concept of racial preferences and quotas and affirmative action. Let\u2019s go ahead, because we still have a price to pay, folks. Even though we got the first black president, we haven\u2019t accomplished anything. ‘We haven\u2019t accomplished anything. This doesn\u2019t mean anything. Obama doesn\u2019t have slave blood.\u2019 A black leader told me that. ‘His wife has slave blood, but he doesn\u2019t. So he doesn\u2019t come from the down-with-the-struggle crowd.\u2019<\/p>\n

We heard all this during the campaign. I\u2019ll tell you what do! Let\u2019s do this, too. Let\u2019s unify around the notion that what really killed McCain was Sarah Palin. How about that? That\u2019s what the left is out there saying. That\u2019s what the media is out there saying and that\u2019s what some of the wizards of smart on our stupid side are saying. ‘Sarah Palin was a drag on the ticket. They even exit polled that: 48% of voters said Sarah Palin was a drag on the ticket.\u2019 Who the hell put that question together and for what purpose? Sarah Palin saved this campaign! Sarah Palin was the closest thing we had to conservatism on parade on the march, and you see the crowds that she drew. You saw the enthusiasm. Sarah Palin, I don\u2019t know what her future holds \u2019cause I don\u2019t know what she wants to do. <\/p>\n

All I saw was, she skedaddled off that stage last night faster than I could have, and some people were asking, ‘Why did she get offstage? Why didn\u2019t she speak?\u2019 Well, vice presidents don\u2019t speak at these acceptance deals. I thought it very weird, too. Mostly, mostly at these acceptance deals they\u2019re in hotel ballrooms and the whole family comes out there, and while the nominee and the victor accepts and the loser concedes, the whole family is out there. Well, McCain\u2019s family was up there with the Palins; then Obama comes out with the family, Michelle and the two girls, and then he sends \u2019em backstage. He\u2019s out there alone. I said, ‘Whoa, he just kicked the family out of there,\u2019 and then after it was over, here came all the extended family except Obama\u2019s!<\/p>\n

There was no Aunt Zeituni; and even in his speech last night, he was talking about my brother\u2019s keeper, there was no Aunt Zeituni. He didn\u2019t go get George Onyango Hussein Obama from the hut. <\/p>\n

SNERDLEY: Aunt Zeituni didn\u2019t have the two forms of ID to get in!<\/p>\n

RUSH: I don\u2019t care if Aunt Zeituni didn\u2019t have the two forms of ID to get in! She\u2019s the aunt of the president-elect. Just get a helicopter in there with a couple Secret Service agents; bring the can of cat food. Where was his extended family? Then he comes out and he makes a speech. Sarah Palin, she got off that stage as fast as she could. You know why I think? I\u2019m just guessing. I don\u2019t think she likes losing. I think she wanted to get out of there. I don\u2019t think had anything to do with McCain. She just didn\u2019t like losing. So let\u2019s unify around the notion that the one strength that we had with Sarah Palin that was bad. She was a drag. <\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah. Let\u2019s unify with our side on that, let\u2019s unify with the media, and let\u2019s unify with the Democrats. Let them continue to set our agenda, right? So we can show that we\u2019re gracious and we\u2019re polite and we\u2019re understanding and we\u2019re conciliatory — and most of all, we are good people! We\u2019re not mean like you think we are. How about bans on drilling of oil? Let\u2019s unify around that. (laughs) How long is it going to be before we\u2019re not headed to a depression and the oil price starts going up? How long is the media going to start reporting this? Any number of things, income tax increases in general. We probably do. People on our side say, ‘Yeah, we probably do need more revenue. Let\u2019s think about unifying.\u2019 This is what the unity is going to get you. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re supposed to unify with all this. Senator McCain asked us to unify with Obama last night. Our side is asking us to be gracious and conciliatory and so forth — and frankly for me, folks, I am ready for battle. I am on the field. I have taken it. There is a golden opportunity here to rebuild the conservative movement. We\u2019re going to name some names of people that have no right to be part of this anymore based on their abandonment of it. They helped secure this defeat, trying to be the smartest people in the room. It\u2019s going to be epic. It\u2019s going to be epic, and the left is going to be coming at us with the Fairness Doctrine or some other sort of thing. We got a lot of epic battles ahead. They will be energizing. They will be purposeful. They will be meaningful, and we will succeed.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: A phone call real quickly, Sunday in Davenport, Iowa. I\u2019m glad you called. Welcome to the program.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Great to talk with you.<\/p>\n

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

CALLER: You, next to God, are my refuge and my strength today. And I\u2019m sure many conservatives feel the very same way. I woke up depressed, and I am no longer depressed. I am ready to fight and do battle, and I think a lot of us conservatives want to find out from you what we can do so that 2012 —<\/p>\n

RUSH: This is going to be long, we\u2019re going to be many days, weeks, and months into this. I can\u2019t spell it out in one day here, even one program, but I have to tell you, there are going to be a lot of people today dispirited. And they\u2019re thinking right now they will throw in the chips just for a while. Some, not all, but I think most people on our side already understand we didn\u2019t have a chance, we weren\u2019t on the ballot. We haven\u2019t been on the ballot since 1994. This is a golden, golden opportunity here now. I know it\u2019s frustrating because we had it all in \u201994, we had the House, if we had just stuck with&hellip; things happen. They are what they are and we face a situation we can\u2019t change. Look at it as an opportunity. Stay engaged because we\u2019re talking about the principles that define our lives and our country for your kids and grandkids and those never grow old because they\u2019re based on freedom!<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Look, folks, I know you\u2019re frustrated. You think I\u2019m not? The moment McCain got the nomination, everything I predicted came true. But I\u2019m fired up and jazzed \u2019cause now we\u2019re back on the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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I take that […]<\/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":"\nYes We Can: The Reestablishment of Principled Conservatism Begins - 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\/11\/05\/yes_we_can_the_reestablishment_of_principled_conservatism_begins4\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Yes We Can: The Reestablishment of Principled Conservatism Begins - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Well, my friends, the new tone has finally come home to roost. 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