RUSH: Here is Richard in Everett, Massachusetts. Hi, Richard. Great that you waited. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you. Mr. Limbaugh, it’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’ll be honest with you: I’m fed up. I was a Democrat most of my life, and I turned independent about 20 years ago, but I vote Republican, ’cause I didn’t like the way the country was going with the Democrats. What I’m really upset about is our leadership. Republican leadership like Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain talk a good story but don’t stand up to this dictator.
RUSH: Really? When have they been talking a good story?
CALLER: I don’t think they stand up to ’em, sir. I don’t think they stand up to him. I mean, he does what he wants to do the way he wants to do it, and you mean to tell me that they can’t stop him from doing what he wants like going around Congress and not being able to do anything about it?
RUSH: Let me ask you this: What makes you think they want to stop him?
CALLER: I don’t think they want to stop it.
RUSH: Why do you think that?
CALLER: Because they’re all in cahoots, as far as I’m concerned. I think they’re so wrong. I hate to say it, but I think —
RUSH: Just go ahead and say it. We got a delay button here. Let loose.
CALLER: I think they’re corrupt. I think they’re corrupt, and I think they’re all in it together, and I’m fed up with them all, sir. I love my country, and I don’t like to see where it’s going. These people that we put in there are not doing their jobs — and, you know, we have so many uninformed, uninterested people in this country. They don’t give a damn, and I’m fed up with them, too. I just think the mainstream media has it over most of them. What our party stands for, they get the word out. So I think our side should be putting the word out as hard as they can. Fight back. I mean, man, they’re just sitting around and they tell people this, tell people that, and things in the past go in a hole. I blame them for half the troubles we’re having right now, the Republican base. The leadership, we put them there for a reason, but they’re not doing anything.
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: I’m tired of it, sir.
RUSH: A lot of people are. To a lot of people, this doesn’t make sense, and a lot of people like you think they’re all in cahoots. They’re all part of the same political class. They are of Washington. They are all invested in being stewards of a Big Government, and they are all stewards of an… You know, this is the thing. You’ve got the Republican Party leadership, and you’ve got several conservative media bigwigs who have convinced themselves that the American people…
This is one of the arguments that takes place inside conservative media and the Republican Party. There are some conservative media types who believe that the argument, the debate, over Big Government’s over, we’ve lost it, and that the American people want it, and we are never gonna win elections until we realize that. If we keep fighting that, we’re gonna always lose. At some point, we’re just gonna have to understand that the people of this country get what they want.
And they want Big Government, and they want government benefits, but what they also want is a responsibly run Big Government, and that is where these people claim they should be elected and put in power over Democrats, because they will do it smarter, and they will administer an active executive branch, an engaged executive branch with a much greater sense of responsibility, both fiscal and moral, and that they will be much better equipped to govern this country with this massive government that people want.
So that’s what you’re up against is that argument that takes place inside the Republican Party, and certain elements of conservative media. Whereas, you know, I can hear it in your voice, Richard. You believe in limited government, like the country was founded. You believe in small, limited, out-of-the-way government. You want the government to be like officials in the NFL: Never the story. When the game’s over, you don’t even know what they did. That’s how you want government to be.
You don’t want the government throwing flags, getting involved in everybody’s life at every stretch of every play, determining the outcome, reversing it for whatever nefarious reason ’cause they don’t like it. We don’t even want to see you. But that’s not how it goes. The people alive today who want to work in government, want it as big as it can get. They want it as powerful as it can get, ’cause that means they are. That gives them all this money to use to buy influence or to wield power with.
There really are precious few genuine conservatives to be found in Washington, DC, right now. Even in the Republican Party.