RUSH: This is Erin, Salt Lake City. Erin, welcome. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s great (garbled). I just first wanted to say this is my first time calling and I’m new to listening to you full time and it’s a pleasure.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I think… I think to just allow me one second to just explain who I am. I think it’s important to my point. I am a 37-year-old mother of three who has multiple sclerosis. And I have, you know, like I said three children. And I live with my elderly parents who my father has two terminal cancers and is getting dementia and I take care of my mother every day. And I’m also a young adult author. So I think I’m a person who (giggles) has a lot of, first, education, but also a lot of sympathy and compassion and I’m a very busy person. And so I find it offensive in a way when people in the media say about Mitt Romney that his followers are not real true followers, that we’re not passionate about him.

Because I am extremely passionate about Mitt Romney, and I know so many other people that are. I’ve been rooting for him since 2008. And I’m, frankly, just really… (sigh) I don’t know what to do. And I know that you used to be his supporter, and now you’re not. And I really haven’t had the time to listen continually to you to know exactly those reasons why. But I don’t really understand what he could do now to like, for example, for you or for Sarah Palin, when she says, “He just hasn’t convinced me enough that he’s a conservative. We still just need to be convinced.” And I really don’t know what he could do or say to convince you guys now.

Because I feel satisfied in the things that he has said. Like this whole thing, for example, with Obamacare, and everyone’s like, “Romneycare, Obamacare, that’s a liability.” I don’t see that. I see that he has explained his position, how it’s different, states’ rights. You know, he’s trying to take care of those 8%, and so forth. And I think that blaming him for Obamacare — and excuse me. You know, since I am a young adult author…but blaming him for Obamacare is like blaming Stephenie Meyer, the author of the famous Twilight, for all of the vampire-werewolf books that are all over the bookshelves now. Because she wrote this book and everybody wanted to be like her —

RUSH: Okay, I —

CALLER: — it’s not her fault.

RUSH: I need to ask you a question. However, I need you to hold on through the break to do it.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Can you do that?

CALLER: Yes, I can.

RUSH: Thank you. And we will be back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Get back into the groove here and go back now to Erin in Salt Lake City, Utah. You might be surprised at my question for you. What is a young adult author as opposed to an author?

CALLER: We write for young adults. When you write you have a certain genre, and it’s hard to cross over, so once you become a young adult author, until you have a lot of following, you continue to write in the same genre.

RUSH: What happens when those people grow up? Do you grow up with them or are you still writing for young adults?

CALLER: You still write for young adults, but you can if you’re famous enough, like Stephenie Meyer, you can usually cross over to adults or women’s lit or something.

RUSH: Right. Now, the reason I ask, there’s a movie out there staring Charlize Theron, and it was up for an “Epidemic Award” called Young Adult, and I thought maybe you were telling me you wrote the screenplay for the movie. “I’m the Young Adult author,” and I thought, “Wow, we’ve got a Hollywood…” Then I figured, no, when I heard the rest of your call, that wasn’t the case, because this movie doesn’t sound like something you would write about.

CALLER: No. No. I didn’t actually see it, either.

RUSH: Okay, you’re asking me about Mitt and so forth. I’ll just tell you that in 2008 the opponent was McCain. In 2012, everything’s different. And given what existed in 2008, Romney was the closest thing to a conservative there was. In a lot of people’s view he’s not this time around. He’s not the closest thing to a conservative, and this is ball game. There are a lot of people who just don’t want a moderate, who don’t want the next Republican Party’s “it’s his turn” candidate.

We don’t want somebody from the establishment who’s not gonna ruffle it up, and there are people who question Romney’s genuine conservatism because of Romneycare, because of things that he has said. He’s openly said, (paraphrasing) “I’m not a conservative. I am a moderate. I’m proud moderate. I’m not one of those right-wing conservative guys.” He said this back in a debate with Ted Kennedy in ’94 running for the Senate. They agreed with each other for the first 45 minutes. I mean these are things that people don’t forget.

CALLER: Don’t you think people change?

RUSH: Yeah, it’s a question of people believing the change. When a politician tries to change it’s very tough. People think politicians are routinely sneaky, and Mitt, that’s the business that he’s in. Now, Mark Steyn, who guest hosts this program, came up the other day — I’m gonna have to do this from memory — his way of illustrating that Romney doesn’t have a core, that he speaks platitudes and talking points rather than from his heart. He says, if he hears one more time Romney say, “I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that millions of Americans love and believe in, and I’m that American that millions of Americans believe in, I’m an American.” And people ask, “What did he just say?” That’s a parody of some of the Milquetoast talking points that some people think. And so when that happens they question, is it really in there, or does it have to be written and committed to memory.

CALLER: Can I say something and I might just be opening a can of worms.

RUSH: Are you sure that you are not Sarah Palin?

CALLER: Oh, my gosh, I promise.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: No, if I could just say something, like I said, I might be opening a can of worms, but really, this is what me and many people feel. The issue that people just cannot connect to Mitt Romney is because he’s a Mormon. And I’m a Mormon, okay, Harry Reid’s a Mormon, and I would —

RUSH: In Florida he won the evangelical vote.

CALLER: I know. But can I tell you, it’s interesting, when I was on hold with you earlier today, they had Ron Paul on Fox, and he was saying how he really felt like he had a good shot in Nevada because of all the Mormons over there, which people say will go to Romney, and this is true with what he said. Okay, for example, Utah, we are Mitt through and through and that’s not because he’s a Mormon, because so was Jon Huntsman. We love him because of the Olympics, but what Ron Paul is saying is that because we are constitutionalists, we love the Constitution. It is very sacred to us. And I know the people say, “I don’t know who Mitt is,” and I personally have never met Mitt, but I can tell you, I know who he is.

RUSH: Let me just tell you, I don’t think this connection bit even is being discussed in the way you’re talking about it. I don’t think it’s connection from audience to Mitt. I think the people talking about it say that he doesn’t connect, and it’s because of that parody, “I believe in millions of Americans who believe in an America where millions of Americans love America.” I know all about connecting with people. And the problem, it’s not that you don’t connect, not that his supporters don’t, it’s that he doesn’t really connect with them. The people who say that, Erin, let me just tell you, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, what they’re saying when they say that is that he’s not genuine. The people who say that and believe it, nothing to do with Mormon, it is that they just don’t think he’s genuine, that he doesn’t believe the stuff he’s saying.

He’s saying it because he’s trying to convince people that he’s conservative because he’s really not one. That’s the rub, that’s what I hear from people. Pure and simple. You asked. You asked. And one thing I will never do is run for the hills from a question. I love the questions. Thanks, Erin, very much, for the call. I appreciate it. (interruption) What do you mean it’s not an intangible? The whole notion of whether people are genuine or not matters. It matters and it’s not something you can teach somebody to do. You either connect with an audience or not. Nixon was never able to, until 1968. Roger Ailes did put him in a circle in the round format on TV where the audience totally, Nixon answering questions, going back and forth, turning circles, standing up and that was Nixon’s rebirth.

In 1968 he did an appearance — I remember watching it — and it was the time in his life that people thought he’d ever really connected and given them some of who he really is. It is an intangible. It’s hard to say what that is, when you want to define connecting with somebody in a mass sense. You know when you meet surface people in your private life, in your personal life. You know when you meet somebody that you don’t think is telling you who they really are, phonies. You know ’em right off the bat. That’s all that’s being talked about here. And in politics criticism often gets vicious, ’cause to a lot of people, the election is ball game. It’s not about what the Republican establishment thinks in terms of whose turn it is.

People’s lives are at stake here, they think. Their futures, their kids’ futures. They’re not gonna happily vote for somebody who they don’t think really gets that. If they think somebody’s just telling them that they agree with them and understand it and feel it when they don’t, it’s gonna be a tough sell. It’s going to be a real tough sell. Obama connected to young people, Grant Park, yeah, he connected. But he connected on superficial stuff. He connected on platitudes. He was able to convince people. When he said he was gonna lower the sea levels, the crowd that that mattered to thought that he really meant that he was going to do it and could. That’s the connection. He didn’t connect with me ’cause I know it’s a bunch of crap. It’s harder to connect with conservatives, ’cause it’s not an emotional connection that we look for. And when you try to connect with people with emotion, when that’s not what the game is, that comes across as even more of an effort to connect, and it isn’t going to work.