RUSH: At the top-of-the-hour break, Snerdley’s question to me was, ‘Do you think most people don’t get the concept of limited government because they’ve never seen it?’ And I said, ‘Well, partially, but I think it’s more than that.’ Twenty-four-seven, for I don’t know how many years, the American people have been told how rotten their country is. They have been told how hopeless their future is. They have been told that the people who succeed in this country have somehow done it by hook or by crook. They have cheated, or they’ve had an unfair advantage, and the only reason they’ve got all the money that they do is because they’ve stolen it from everybody else, and there’s basically no chance. The public education system, along with much of higher education in this country, has for years and years, decades, taken our little skulls full of mush and told them how rotten the country is and how sinful it is. The multicultural curriculum has told them that we destroyed the great Indian civilizations, that we brought disease and pestilence, syphilis and this sort of thing, that we had slaves and that we’re basically an immoral people and that we have a price to pay. They tell them that we steal the world’s resources. We’re only 3% of the population and the rest of the world’s suffering because we’re taking more than our share.
You combine all that with the up-and-down economic cycles, and even in good economic times, it is not reported as good, it is reported as, ‘This isn’t going to last. This is a bubble. This is all going to head south or we’re heading to a recession soon.’ People look at government as the one place that has an endless supply of money! They see the government giving it away! It just becomes easier to take a little bit from government than it does to work hard and get it yourself, especially when that whole concept isn’t being taught anymore. Great institutions like the Boy Scouts are under assault. All of these institutions and traditions that teach self-reliance and rugged individualism have been under assault and under siege for years, because that leads to unequal outcomes. It’s not fair that somebody should be smarter than somebody else and be able to use that additional intelligence for their advantage. No, what we need to do is make sure the people that are not quite as smart as everybody else have just as much and the way we do that is not by lifting them up, rather by taking or punishing those who have more, be it intelligence, be it ambition, be it money, you name it.
So we’ve gotten ourselves into a circumstance here where so many pseudo, quasi-conservatives are so dispirited and defeated, particularly those in Washington — remember what I said earlier about Washington. When you’re in Washington, you want to be part of the power structure. What is that? Well, the current power structure, if you are a conservative journalist, and you look out across your countryside, which is the nation’s capital, all you see is government. That building, this building, and you see think tanks, and all they do is deal with government. They say, ‘Well, I want to matter here. So I got two presidential candidates, okay, I’m going to go with McCain because if I really talk up McCain and I really sing McCain’s praises, he might hire me, either be a press secretary, or better yet, a policy advisor in his administration, and then after I finish that, I can really go out in the private sector and make big, big bucks, and then I get to go to the speechwriters convention and then I get to go to all these inside parties and so forth.’
It’s all about the acquisition of power in one way or the other. So the so-called conservative intelligentsia, it’s what was great about Bill Buckley, never caved, never gave up the fight, never gave up the intellectual battle against liberalism. Our side is beginning to do that, and rather than fight them intellectually, ‘Well, you know, they’ve won that, they’ve won this. We’re going to have to admit that, Mr. Limbaugh. We’re going to have to admit they’ve won the global warming argument. We’re just going to have to, you know, get over there and tweak it, do what we can to limit the damage.’ Really? Well how did we come to lose the argument? Maybe you guys weren’t fighting it or maybe you got yourself aligned behind a candidate on our side who’s also wrong on it and you’re afraid to make him mad because you want a job with him someday. So I have the solution. I wrote this down earlier this morning. Using the conservative intelligentsia, I’m talking about our pseudomedia guys. I mentioned Jonah Goldberg the other day. He wrote a column saying that McCain ought to pick Democrats as a vice president. David Brooks has a column this week saying that Obama ought to pick Democrats, McCain ought to pick Democrats. Sounds like being Democrat is the way to go. That’s the way to reach people, isn’t it? That’s the way to go.
So, using their guidance and using their thought processes, how about, ladies and gentlemen, if I were to announce today and use my powers as a pied piper over all of you mind-numbed robots to declare our support for Obama, for this reason: Some of the key issues that our candidate supports are signature issues of McCain. Obama and McCain are inseparable on key McCain signature issues: fighting global warming, closing Guantanamo Bay. Obama and McCain both want to do these things now. Amnesty for illegal immigrants. Punishing the oil companies. These are key signature issues for McCain, and they’re identical positions to those of Obama. But we would declare, saying, ‘Okay, we hear you, we hear you conservative intelligentsia, we hear you pseudo-conservative media types, we understand where you’re going. We understand how to win. We support Obama because he would be far more effective in getting all of these signature things done with a Democrat Congress. On these issues: fighting global warming, closing Gitmo, amnesty for illegal immigrants, punishing the oil companies — let me rephrase. We’re not fighting global warming. McCain and Obama are all for enlarging government to fight global warming. They both want to close Gitmo. They both want amnesty for illegals.
It seems to me that the path we’re headed down — since we want to accept the terminology of the left and since we’re supposed to accept the premises of the left — why not just become the left? Why not just become Democrats? If McCain’s supposed to pick a Democrat VP, let’s all become Democrats. If that’s the way to go, if that’s what our side is going to tell us to do, fine. We support Obama because he’s going to be better at getting all these things done — I mean our side is not going to fight ’em. Our side’s going to be too small to fight these things inside the House and the Senate. So why do we want to vote and support somebody who will have less of a chance getting these things done than Obama would? Why are you frowning, Snerdley? Have I not made my point? Have I not made myself clear here? I have made myself clear. If the idea is to become the left and then tweak around the edges, if the idea is to accept their premise, why not just go all the way and vote Obama and show the left how really good we are, how really open-minded we are, how really big we are? I mean, global warming’s a real thing, right? This hoax, a lot on our side believe it. Anyway, you get the point.
In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, the rest of the world’s going conservative. France, Sarkozy has proposed massive government taxes on gasoline today. Germany, you name it, the rest of the world is going conservative and we’re not. Tax cuts, Sarkozy wants tax cuts, state tax cuts. Did I say increases? No. He wants tax cuts. Sarkozy wants massive state, federal tax cuts on gasoline in France. Childhood obesity rates have leveled off since 1999. I just saw that in the news today. That was going to give us even more government. We needed more government to deal with fat-slob kids. But it’s leveled off since 1999, after increasing through the eighties and the nineties. Now, this doesn’t mean the problem’s over, according to the news media. So good news is never good news. But guess what? The world’s not warming, either, and it isn’t going to warm the next ten or 12 years. They’ve been telling us this. And yet we’re going to sit around and we’re going to actually talk about adding more government control over our lives. It’s absurd. It is silly. If this is the way to go, then perhaps we ought to just all signal the fact we’re going to vote Obama. We’re all Democrats now. Yesterday we were all mavericks. Today we’re all Democrats.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Elizabeth in South Bend, Indiana, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush.
RUSH: Hey.
CALLER: How are you? I think you’re ready for the rubber room.
RUSH: The rubber room?
CALLER: The rubber room.
RUSH: The padded room? Why?
CALLER: The padded room. This idea about voting for Obama, it’s the last thing I would ever, ever do. He’s such a communist. I can’t even believe that you would even bring it up. I have my Rush Limbaugh fish tie from the eighties and I’m willing to put it on you and stick you in the rubber room.
RUSH: Come on, Elizabeth, don’t tell me you missed the whole monologue and that’s all you heard.
CALLER: Oh no, I listen to you every single day. I have listened to you for a long time.
RUSH: Do you understand I’m being facetious to make a point?
CALLER: But, you know —
RUSH: We’ve got conservative media fallouts —
CALLER: I know, I know.
RUSH: — telling us that McCain is not Democrat enough on his own, no, he’s gotta go out and maybe nominate a Democrat for vice president, he’s gotta get Sam Nunn or Lieberman or something. It seems to me if our side is saying the key to victory is be Democrat, let’s go all the way and be Democrat, what the hell do we need McCain for?
CALLER: You’re getting as frustrated as the rest of the public that’s out here listening to you and there’s nothing to show. We really need to have you and other commentators that are conservative come up with legitimate alternatives to this mess that we’re in.
RUSH: Before that can happen you have to have them aware of the problem, and I’m trying to alert them to the problem. And I’ve done it, I think, brilliantly.
CALLER: Oh, you’ve done —
RUSH: You think I’m ready for the padded room.
CALLER: Well, if that’s your only alternative you can come up with today, you bet.
RUSH: No, no, it’s not the only alternative. Look, it’s real simple. That’s the real frustrating thing here, Elizabeth. It’s real simple. I hear all these Republicans talking about how the brand is bad, the Republican brand has gone south, and we need to get rid of Reagan, the era of Reagan is over, Reaganism is over. Have the libs ever said the era of FDR is over? The era of JFK is over? The liberals won’t even say the era of Jimmy Carter is over. They’re not even embarrassed about that because they’re going to nominate a guy who’s going to give us Carter’s second term! The answer, Elizabeth, is conservatism. Let’s just go back to conservatism as the primary identity of the Republican Party. Look, a conservative media is fabulous, a conservative media is great, and who knows where we’d be without it. But we don’t have any votes. Conservatism is like any other ideology, it needs empowerment via a political party. The Republican Party is right now made up of a bunch of country club Republicans and former Democrats who became conservative for a while. Now they want to go back to their Democrat roots. They still call themselves conservatives, trying to redefine new conservatism, and so they’re trying to redefine the Republican Party as a bunch of Rockefeller country club Republicans. They think with candidates like McCain, with a Democrat vice president nominee, is the way to win. (laughing) The solution to this: conservatism. But this is why I did my brilliant, lengthy monologue earlier about why it’s so difficult for conservatism to survive intact in Washington, because of the Washington culture. The Washington culture is built to destroy conservatism. We need people with steel as spines when they go there. It’s tough to find. There aren’t that many Ronaldus Magnuses. Anyway, Elizabeth, thanks for the call.
Who’s next? Pablo in Las Vegas. Hi, Pablo, nice to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: El Rushbo, hello.
RUSH: Hey.
CALLER: It’s great to be here.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’m a Libertarian who voted for Bush, but I won’t vote for McCain because it’s a matter of conscience.
RUSH: What are you going to do?
CALLER: Well, I’m a member of — I’m an op for chaos.
RUSH: And so what are you going to do?
CALLER: Well, I’m going to do whatever you say, basically, I just can’t bring myself to vote for McCain.
RUSH: A-ha. Well, what if I told you to vote Obama?
CALLER: That’s classic. If you were serious, I’d do it, but I think you hit just the right tone with your comments on McClellan today. I had a comment about that. When this story broke, I never liked Scott McClellan. Half of it was he didn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the shed, and the other half was my instincts told me something was wrong.
RUSH: Well, that’s interesting. I don’t want to sit here and bash McClellan, tit-for-tat is not the way to do this. I never thought he was that great at what he did, but there’s far more than that here going on. Look, I appreciate the call out there, Pablo.