RUSH: Mark in Chicago, you’re next. Welcome, sir, nice to have you here.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call, and happy Thanksgiving to you.

RUSH: Same to you, sir, same to you.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, I just want to know —

RUSH: By the way, you know what would be an interesting question, serious question, just randomly ask Americans on the street, “What is Thanksgiving?” Just a thought off the top of my head. Go ahead. What was it you called about?

CALLER: Okay, Rush, thanks. Hey, with all due respect to John, just the flip side of it, and you know, Rush, I got a little frustrated listening to the monologue today in terms of Rush Limbaugh’s America is dead and not alive. Let me help you explain how it is alive and it is rising.

RUSH: Wait a minute. This is a guy writing in the New York Times. That was not my monologue. I’m reading from his column in the New York Times yesterday. He’s happy. He thinks we’ve lost the country, and he’s happy that there are more tax consumers than taxpayers. He wants the tax consumers to win the upcoming battle on the debt cliff, the fiscal cliff, over the taxpayers.

CALLER: Rush, I’m gonna tell him right now why you are alive. Outside my father, you have been an amazing inspiration in my life. I worked for the same company for 32 years. I’ve been very successful. I’ve worked hard. I’ve had the same wife for 30 years. She’s a wonderful lady. Got two kids. One just got promoted at work. The other is a United States Marine, he’s a firefighter, he’s in paramedic school. We do everything we can to give back to help people at church, and I manage a national ministry honoring our fallen soldiers and Gold Star family. Your America is alive. Your influence is alive. It continues, and you made a point earlier to somebody, I can’t remember, think it was the first caller, we just need to keep doing what we’re doing. And our example will eventually win in the end.

RUSH: That’s right, he asked me if the political leaders aren’t doing it, what can we do. Live it. You live conservative. You live of your life. You influence as many people around you as you can.

CALLER: And you have done an amazing job. I know I’m not the only one out there today. There’s a lot of people listening going, “Rush has done the same for me,” and with that, Rush, God bless you, and you’re a great American, buddy.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate your call. Thanks very much. I really appreciate this. Folks, I’m not taking these attacks on me personally. Because I understand, I’m here on the radio, and the way you have to interpret these guys, they have their business. It is the political consultancy business, and their business is a specialty, in their view. And it requires specific training and knowledge and experience and hard work and experience, that kind of thing. And they are the experts because of all that. Here I am, I’m an outsider, I’m a guy on the radio. I’m a guy on the radio who they think has somehow intruded on their business, and I, in my world here on the radio, am giving them problems doing their job. And I’m not qualified do that ’cause I’m not a consultant, and I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m just some yahoo on the radio.

So they’re lashing out. They’re the ones losing elections, but they have to get hired by the next losing candidate, and so they have to make sure that their list of potential employers thinks that it’s me losing elections and not them. I don’t have a record of election loss. I have yet to run a campaign. I have yet to pick a candidate. I have yet to script a convention. I haven’t authored a political ad. I haven’t come up with a political strategery. I comment on it. I suggest things that I would do, but I have never once inserted myself in their business. I have never gone to a candidate and said, “This consultant is undermining you.” I’ve never done that, never would, not my job, not my business.

It’s no different, folks, when ESPN hired me, the reason that this McNabb thing happened was those guys didn’t like me being on their turf. Okay, I’m a political radio guy, and conservative to boot, sports is their turf. That’s their bailiwick, and here I came, expanding my base, and that wasn’t permissible. Isn’t gonna happen. It’s no different here. I’ve told you this. I have known for a long time that not every conservative considers every other conservative to be on the team. There are a lot of so-called conservatives who wish a bunch of us weren’t on the team. There is no conservative movement right now, by the way. There is not a conservative movement, and there is not a singular conservative leader in electoral politics.

There is not a conservative leader in the media side. There’s not a conservative leader in the pundit side. And there hasn’t been for years. There’s a lot of jockeying for influence and leadership power, to want to be the go-to guy, smartest guy in the room or what have you. And I am considered an outsider by all those people. I’m a radio guy. I didn’t even go to college, for crying out loud. I don’t even have a pedigree. I don’t have a piece of paper that proves I know what I’m talking about. So I’m an interloper. At every realm that I have attempted to comment on, I’m an interloper. And you heard Schmidt, by the way, don’t discount, “And we’ve got these guys making millions and millions of dollars talking to old white hicks and hayseeds.” People will tell you, if you give enough rope, they’ll tell you what really upsets ’em.

But I have always known, ladies and gentlemen, I’m the renegade, I’m the outsider. I’m not in this club. So as these guys continue to pick losing candidates and as they continue to run losing campaigns, they need to have the next losing candidate hire ’em. And so I’m the guy responsible for Republicans losing elections. Hell, before it’s all said and done, Romney will be exonerated for the Santa Claus analogy because he got it from me. They’ll even blame me on that before it’s all over to exonerate him. But, by the way, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, they have already drummed Romney out of the party. Romney doesn’t exist. Romney is persona non grata. I can’t believe how mean they’re being to Mitt Romney, this same consultant class, he doesn’t exist. I’ve read the pieces.