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RUSH: Jeff in Pleasant Hill, Missouri, you are next on Open Line Friday. Hello.

CALLER: Hi.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: Mega dittos. I wanted to give you an award first of all, if you’ve got time for that.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: It’s the first time I’ve heard the First Commandment [‘Do not have any gods before Me.’] explained properly in any media. When you talked about global warming, you did some quotes that were very similar to a large catechism of the Lutheran Church. I’m a Lutheran pastor, and it’s the first time I heard that. So mega dittos for that.

RUSH: Thank you. When did you hear that?

CALLER: A couple weeks ago.

RUSH: Yeah, the whole concept of God and how can we think that we have the power to destroy all creation. Yeah, I remember. Well, thank you, sir. I’m happy to receive any award I get.

CALLER: Okay. My question is about something I heard on NPR last night. Somebody from the Pew Institute said that in America, record levels of people think that the government should take care of people who cannot take care of themselves, and I wanted to know what your truth detector said about that.

RUSH: Well, it’s a Pew Research Center poll, and I have that story right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. So let me go through this for you, because I can explain this. For a moment here, let’s hypothetically accept the survey data — and here are the basic details. ‘Public allegiance to the Republican Party has plunged since the second year of George W. Bush’s presidency as attitudes have edged from some of the conservative values that fueled GOP political dominance for more than a decade, a major new survey has found. The survey, by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for People and the Press, found a ‘dramatic shift’ in political party identification since 2002, when Republicans and Democrats were roughly at parity. Now, half of those surveyed identified with or leaned toward Democrats, and 35 percent aligned with Republicans.’

I’ve always said that one of the things that happened in the last election, the November election, was that Republicans lost the so-called center, the undecideds. I think that is the partial explanation for this, but there’s more. ‘The survey found the public attitudes are drifting toward Democrats’ values: Support for government aid to the disadvantaged has grown since the mid-1990s. Skepticism about the use of military force has increased and support for traditional family values has edged down. Those findings suggest that Republicans’ political challenges reach beyond the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and Bush.’ Let me tell you something, Jeff. There’s no surprise in this to me. I’ve been saying this for I don’t know how long: When you have a president who will not articulate conservative principles, who will not lead a conservative movement as Reagan did, this is what you get.

When there is no elected conservative leadership in Washington articulating conservative values, there’s a bylaw: if something isn’t conservative, it by definition will become liberal. That’s the power and pervasiveness of liberalism. Conservatism must be constantly articulated. It must be used as an inspiration and something as a leadership tool, and it hasn’t been for the longest time throughout the Republican Party. The support for government aid to the disadvantaged, well, you see stories every day about people dying in Hurricane Katrina, and nobody caring about it. Add the Oprahization of America and everybody going forth with their feelings and so forth, trying to assuage them, and they’re answering questions in this poll: ‘It’s terrible! I think we ought to do more,’ makes perfect sense to me. Get some articulated conservative leadership up there, and this is going to change dramatically.

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