RUSH: Steve in Orlando, you’re first. It’s great to have you with us, and welcome.
CALLER: Letter carrier dittos from Florida, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I just want to say I admire you, and although I’m a little upset with you right now, I do love you. I’m one of those people who I’m going to protest, I’m not going to be voting, and let me give you some reasons why I’m not going to be voting. They’ve been in power for 12 years. We have a border situation, we have 30 million illegal aliens in this country, and they are not doing a thing about it. The Dems take it to us on everything, education, the judges, look what they’ve done to Katherine Harris. They basically have thrown her under the bus over here in Florida. I’m of the opinion that when you go to a restaurant and you get really, really bad service, I mean just abysmal service, you don’t tip them. And the Republicans basically right now have not —
RUSH: Let me ask you something. If you go to Cracker Barrel and have something to eat and you don’t like it, do you say, “Screw you! I’m never coming back here,” and you go to a place that will serve you poison?
CALLER: (Laughing.) I’m trying to see what your point is there. If I got really bad service, that’s one thing. You get a bad meal every now and then no matter where you go.
RUSH: You started with immigration. Let’s talk about that here for just a second.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: As you know, Congress has passed a border fence. The president is going to sign the bill and there will be a border fence.
CALLER: Don’t bet on it, Rush. I’m very skeptical of that.
RUSH: Okay. All right. Okay, forget the border fence. You’re right, absolutely right. It isn’t going to happen. We’re not going to do anything about illegal immigration, and we’re going to be overrun, and we’ve lost the country already; it’s time to get what you can and get out. But let me talk about your problem with the House, Republicans have had 12 years and so forth. Who are you really mad at, Bush or the Republicans in the House and the Senate?
CALLER: I’m not mad at President Bush, I’m not upset with him —
RUSH: And immigration is your #1 issue? If you’re upset at immigration you’ve gotta be upset at him.
CALLER: In that respect, yes —
RUSH: He is the reason the Republicans in the House are unable to pass an immigration bill that you want. They did anyway about two months ago or right before the August recess, they did anyway because they were fed up. They knew that people like you are out there thinking that this issue is important, and they broke with the president, and they did this in August, and they passed the bill. It went nowhere in the Senate, the White House said they’re not going to sign it because it doesn’t jibe with the bill. They want amnesty. The House bill does not grant amnesty, focuses on border security. They passed it. The Republican House did it. Now, they may not have done it soon enough, but I’ve explained this. They’ve got a Republican in the White House, but he’s not a conservative, he’s not leading a conservative movement. They are conservative in the House, the leadership is, and the majority. It is very difficult to buck your own president and survive. It’s much easier if the president on issues like this is of the other party, so that you can speak out. If your own president is not a movement guy, just a Republican, conservative on some things but not “a” conservative —
CALLER: Mmm-hmm. I understand.
RUSH: I don’t think you do, because you’re still going to sit out and think you’re doing a valiant thing here.
CALLER: I’m not saying I’m doing a valiant thing, I never said that, but what you’re doing — you’re antagonizing the conservatives. You’re speaking ill of fellow conservatives, which is one thing Ronald Reagan said we should never do.
RUSH: Gee. You have got to be kidding.
CALLER: No, I’m not kidding! I’m serious.
RUSH: Okay, so you want me to embrace the people in this party who will secure our defeat?
CALLER: I’m not saying embrace them. First of all, I see what you’re saying.
RUSH: It’s tough hearing the truth, isn’t it? It’s tough hearing the truth.
CALLER: No, no, no, no, no.
RUSH: What is it you really want? You want to feel like you’ve got some power in the political process.
CALLER: I want — I want —
RUSH: That has to be what it is, because nothing you’re going to do by not voting is going to advance anything you believe in. It’s not going to do one thing for… Well, then why do you care about the stuff if you don’t care whether it advances?
CALLER: Because they’re not conservative anymore. They’re not conservative. You’re going to sit there and tell me that they’re conservative as they promised me back in 1994? They have just very — very, you know, slowly gone more and more to the center, and almost to the left. Lets face it, the Democratic Party —
RUSH: Who are you talking about? Who are you talking about?
CALLER: I’m talking about the Republican Party in general.
RUSH: No, give me some names. They’re moving to the center. They didn’t do what conservatives said they were going to do. In fact, they’re moving to the left. Give me some names.
CALLER: Well, I can’t give you names, Rush.
RUSH: Well, then why do you think this?
CALLER: I mean as a party. I mean as a party.
RUSH: Let me ask you, are you going to switch parties and become a Democrat?
CALLER: Absolutely not.
RUSH: Well, you may as well because if enough people join you, Nancy Pelosi is going to be the speaker, and we’ll have you to thank.
CALLER: Well, I can see your point. I honestly — I can see where you’re coming from. But what upset me the most was the way — you’ve given — you’ve given the left some ammunition, and they’re starting to use it.
RUSH: I’m giving the left ammunition?
CALLER: Right. I mean, you’re sitting there and you’re basically impugning the Republican conservatives who are —
RUSH: Let me tell you something. I can understand why you think that, Steve, old buddy, but you think they need any? What have they been doing for as long as you’ve been alive? Impugning conservatives, making fun of conservative Christians, laughing at them. That’s one of the things I don’t understand. Why you’re not more angry at them for what they are trying to do than you are angry at people on your own team. I’ve been through this enough. I’ve walked people through the stages of this, and I don’t want to sit here and devote every show to this and end up being redundant, but politics is like life: You don’t get everything you want.
You don’t get perfection. There are mitigating circumstances in everything, but you are on a team. You can look at the two teams out there, and there’s nothing that you can find on one of those teams that’s going to advance anything you care about. In fact, they’re going to do just the opposite. They’re going to make the things you care about get worse. At least the team you’re on has people in it who believe things like you do and are fighting to get them done. But if you abandon the team, you’re not making the team stronger, you’re not advancing your own principles, you’re simply engaging in punishment, and you can do that. I mean, people can vote or not vote for any reason they want.
If you want to punish your own team, that’s fine, but you’re not immune from the punishment you’re meting out to yourself as well. Anyway, I’m glad you called. I appreciate it, but I don’t think I’m antagonizing anybody here — and if I am, then it just proves one thing to me. I think, Steve, there may be a factor here. Let me ask you, how old are you? Is he still there? (interruption) He’s gone. Did he sound young to you? (interruption) He did not sound young? Okay, he did to me. This is something that happens, and I have noticed this over the 18-plus years that I have led this program and this movement, that is younger people are coming in it all the time.
Younger people, they’re the ones fired up. They have the idealism, and they’re the ones most let down and disappointed by the failures of the people that they really believed in, and they’re very enthusiastic. This is all new at them, and it all makes sense, conservatives, and they love it, and they’re all riled up, and then the minute it goes by the wayside or doesn’t meet their expectations, they feel let down, abandoned, and then they get angry. They say, “Yeah, I’m going to teach you.” I think a lot of this is comprised of people who feel powerless, who don’t want to feel powerless. They want to feel like they’ve got some power, and they’re angry, and they want to reach out and punish those who have let them down, lied to them, they think, or what have you.
In the process, make no mistake about it, there are people out there who will be very happy if they can convince themselves they’re the reason their side lost, because it will give them meaning, it will give them a sense of power that goes along with their powerlessness, and all of this is quite natural because we all want to matter. Not everybody can matter as much as I do, but we all want to — and people will take oftentimes many steps, many different types of action in order to make themselves feel like they are relevant and have power and matter. There’s also something exciting about bucking the trend, going against what they perceive to be conventional wisdom and being mavericks and so forth. I think these are all factors in this.
But the interesting thing is, to me, is that we hear none of this going on in the Democratic Party. Why, those Democrats, they are so unified. Why, they’re all at one, and in love with each other in their party. There’s not one disaffected Democrat in this country, you know that? There’s not one Democrat who’s saying I don’t care about this, I’m not voting, there’s not one Democrat who’s thinking of not voting for a Democrat. There’s not one Democrat who is going to vote for a Republican. No, folks, it’s a juggernaut out there! These problems only exist in the Republican Party. And yet when you go look at Democrat turnout in their primaries this year, you see that it was 15%. So, again, we’ve got a media template and an action line that is designed to create feelings as expressed by our previous caller.
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RUSH: I want to say one thing to those of you out there who are frosted about illegal immigration, and I want to remind you of something. Long ago, back in the summertime, when the talk of Republicans losing the House was up and down during the year, it was cyclical — and just before the Foley thing hit, the Republicans were trending back, president and everybody else. But one of these occasions when Republicans were heading down, the media was giving the reasons for it, I pooh-poohed their reasons. There’s going to be one reason the Republicans lose the House, it’s going to be immigration, it’s going to be illegal immigration.
I saw this thing on Fox this morning about what’s going on out in Oregon with Republicans surging head, Democrats on the offensive and losing because they’re on the wrong side of the illegal immigration issue, and it’s simple. However, I want every one of you people that’s just fit to be tied over illegal immigration, and I’m one of you. I’m one of you. I want to just remind you of one thing. The only reason the McCain-Kennedy amnesty for all of them immigration bill isn’t law right now is because of House Republicans. That is the only reason. They refused to even convene a serious conference committee report with the Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate over this bill.
I don’t want you people to misunderstand. I am not describing perfection here, and I’m not a paid political consultant, and nobody’s asking me to do this. I’m sharing, as I always have and I always will, what’s in my sizeable cranium, rapidly firing neurons and my little gray cells and in my heart — and I’m just telling you: If it weren’t for the Republicans in the House of Representatives, there would be amnesty right now for all these illegal immigrants, however many it is. Everything in the McCain-Kennedy bill would be law today, except the House Republicans. They are the only reason that that bill is not law as we speak today.
Now, it’s getting… I want to say frustrating. I enjoy talking to every one of you who call the program, but I just have to add, those of you who are the Cut-and-Run Conservatives out there, abandon the cause for whatever valiant, valorous reason that you have concocted, I wonder how many of you have gotten involved in party politics at the local and state levels, and I wonder how many of you have worked in the primaries for conservatives against more moderate candidates in the Republican Party. I wonder how many of you have actually gone out and gotten involved, as opposed to how many of you are — there’s no criticism here, but it’s a point, how many of you are — just watchers.
You’re just spectators, and you care, and you’re sitting around watching all this stuff, and how many of you have ever gotten involved, and how many of you have seen up close and personal the damage Republican moderates have done to the conservative cause? Republican blue-blood country clubbers, how many of you have seen the damage that they have caused? And then when you realize the damage that they have caused is manifested by people like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton being elected, look at the damage Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did to this country. They continue to wreak havoc on this country. They are the two ex-presidents alive today who freely comment in a partisan political way on their successors. George H. W. Bush never did.
Gerald Ford doesn’t. Ronald Reagan never did when he was alive. These two guys take the cake, along with Al Gore. Look at the damage Nancy Pelosi and Dingy Harry Reid would do to the country. When you’ve worked up close and personal and hard for this, and you’ve seen your efforts go awry because of that, it changes your perspective on all this, and it doesn’t make you want to cut-and-run and get out. It makes you want to stay in the mix and to help further expand the movement within your own party, and that’s what I think is missing in a lot of circumstances here. Now, you and I believe the same things.
If this program had a mission statement, it would be that we believe the people in this country get essentially what they want. There are exceptions. The way people get what they want is to become informed, more informed than the other side, as informed as they can be and take that information to the polls and vote. You win it in the arena of ideas, and I know you believe that, too. When you see yourself losing in the arena of ideas, that’s when you get mad and you think, “Well, you know, they’re letting me down,” or whatever reason you conjure up. But the ongoing effort to strengthen your own team, strengthen your own party is something that’s never going to end. Your party, your movement, is never going to be exactly what you want it to be, ever.
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