RUSH: Yeah, it looks like it’s exactly what we predicted it would be. In Virginia the GOP simply didn’t want a Tea Party candidate winning there. They just didn’t. ‘Cause they coulda won that race, folks. I mean, it’s really a shame. I was gonna say stunning, but it really isn’t stunning.

Anyway, great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. Here we are on hump day already, middle of the week, great to have you with us. The telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Phenomenal news to share with you later about Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, I mean, just phenomenal news. The mission is well underway. I can’t wait. This horse, Liberty, is getting fan mail like you cannot believe and I can’t wait to share one of those with you.

Let’s talk about the election yesterday, the two big ones, and the first white mayor in Detroit in 40 years, not many people talking about that, but that happened. You know, the Associated Press is saying that Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe won in Virginia because he followed the Clinton model. (interruption) Well, now, wait, don’t pooh-pooh that. Why are you pooh-poohing? He followed the Clinton model. The Clinton model of running in a three-way race where there was a ringer candidate to siphon off votes from his opponent.

If you look at the end result in Virginia, more people voted against McAuliffe than voted for him. It’s no different than Ross Perot in the race in 1992 siphoning votes away from Bush 41. And just like in Clinton’s two elections, more people voted against McAuliffe than voted for him because of this fake Libertarian candidate who was bought and paid for by an Obama bundler who ended up getting 7% of the vote.

Cuccinelli was supposed to lose this thing in a landslide. He ended up losing it by one to two percent. So it fits the Clinton model to a T. Bagman candidate, third-party candidate that’s a bogus placeholder, to siphon off votes, and it worked like a charm. But the details coming out of Virginia are even more frustrating and maddening than that. Even though they were predicted, it’s still frustrating to see it happen.

And I must tell you, folks, I’ve got audio sound bites here, I’m somewhat surprised, because in a series of these sound bites the Drive-By Media is not all that ecstatic over what happened in Virginia. I mean, they’re not looking at it as a repudiation of the Tea Party ’cause they know that’s not what happened. You know who wants you to think it’s a repudiation of the Tea Party? The GOP establishment. There’s some fascinating numbers here. The Republican National Committee in 2009 in the gubernatorial race there for Bob McDonnell, the Republican National Committee spent three times as much money four years ago on the same race as they did this year.

They spent $1 million. That’s it. One million for Ken Cuccinelli. Their candidate. The Chamber of Commerce spent zero helping Cuccinelli. Cuccinelli begged Chris Christie to come in and campaign for him. Christie said no, he wasn’t gonna do it. The Chamber of Commerce spent a million dollars four years ago in the governor’s race in Virginia, as I say, not a dime on Cuccinelli. And here we go again. Just like Mitt Romney. Cuccinelli won independents by nine points, 47 to 38%.

Now, what have we been told collectively for decades by the media? Well, hell, by the political establishment? That is, “You need to win the independents. You can’t win without the independents.” That’s what they’ve all told us. And that has been part of a trick that the media and the Democrats launched to great success against the Republicans. The theory has always been that the Democrats are gonna get 80%, the Republicans are gonna get 80%, and then there’s that great unwashed in there, that 20%. And every political candidate has been approached by every political consultant and the consultant has said, “I’m the guy that can get you that 20% of the vote. I’m the guy that can get you the independents.” And what that did was make the Republicans abandon their base and campaign, rather than for everybody, the Republicans end up with a centrist, moderate, wimpy, linguine-spined campaign aimed at so-called independents, at 20%.

Cuccinelli didn’t, by the way. But in national elections, the Republicans end up making this move. They get talked into believing that you win the independents and you win. Well, Romney won the independents going away, and he lost, didn’t he? And Cuccinelli won the independents going away. He won independents by nine points, 47 to 38%. And you now know what they’re saying? “Well, the independents are different than the moderates.” Oh, that’s new now. Now that Republicans are running the independents, it isn’t any big deal anymore. No, now you don’t need the independents. Now you gotta go out and win the moderates.

Well, what is a moderate? Tell me, Snerdley, how would you, if somebody asked you to explain to ’em what a moderate is, what would you say? It’s a liberal without the guts to say so. A moderate is one of two things: a liberal that won’t admit it or somebody that waits to see which way the wind’s blowing and joins the crowd. By definition, a moderate isn’t passionate about anything. Can’t be. But now we gotta go after the moderates.

And there’s also another lesson that’s being said here by the Republican establishment. They’re looking at Christie, they’re looking at Cuccinelli, saying, “If Cuccinelli would have just been for amnesty, and if he woulda just moderated on the social issues, who knows, he coulda won. But we couldn’t support him when he didn’t.” It’s just absolutely obscene what’s happened here, if you ask me.

Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton bagman, outraised Cuccinelli by almost $15 million, and in the last weeks of the campaign, there were two weeks that Cuccinelli had no media. Something like two weeks before the election, the last two weeks of the campaign Cuccinelli had no media because the RNC wasn’t there, the Chamber of Commerce wasn’t there. Do you know, folks, the unions spent as much money in Virginia as the RNC? I mean, before you even get to what the DNC poured in there, the Service Employees International Union basically just canceled out whatever, quote, unquote, help Cuccinelli got from the Republican establishment.

And even The Politico is wondering in their story if Cuccinelli was beginning to turn the tide against this War on Women narrative, because the Democrats were doing that. They were using this tired War on Women narrative, and McAuliffe’s lead with women was at 24% on Election Day. In polling it was down to 9%. But true to the Clinton model, you had this third-party spoiler candidate in there, 7% this guy got, and his campaign was bought and paid for by a Clinton bundler, or fundraiser.

I’ll tell you, it’s a shame what happened to Ken Cuccinelli because he was betrayed by his own party. The man is a great guy. I don’t know him personally. I just interviewed him once for the Limbaugh Letter. I told you earlier this week I came away from that interview, this guy was tough, no nonsense, he was fearless. I don’t know how he ran the campaign every day. I don’t know if he faltered here and there on a couple things; I don’t know. I’m just telling you, the interview I had, he seemed to be a no-nonsense guy. But the Republican established, they’re out there, “Well, he’s unelectable, he’s Tea Party. He’s unelectable. He can’t win anything.”

They didn’t want him to win. This is the dirty little secret. I don’t think it’s even a secret now. I’m telling you, such is the animus toward the Tea Party in the Republican Party establishment that they are perfectly comfortable with a Christie win and a Cuccinelli loss because to them that’s a Tea Party loss. So now the Republican establishment can run around and claim the Tea Party is an albatross around their neck.

“The Tea Party is the death knell,” they’ll say. “The Tea Party is why we’re gonna keep losing. Look, we had this. We coulda won Virginia. Our party had it, and you nominate this Tea Party guy, this Cuccinelli guy. There’s nothing we could do.” They didn’t want to help, and this was a squeaker. They were worried all night at McAuliffe headquarters, and, according to pre-election polling, it was supposed to be a huge McAuliffe sweep, especially with this placeholder third-party candidate.

That ought to be a lesson to any of you who are still toying with the idea of third party. It’s just a guaranteed way for Democrats to win when they — and the takeaway is that in the Virginia race, more people voted against McAuliffe than voted for him. Well, The Politico… I donÂ’t have too much faith in The Politico. I mean, they were stunned by the results. Here’s Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake of the Washington Post.

“Six Takeaways From Election Night 2013.” Now, the crux of this whole piece — and this is the crux; the rest of the takeaways just support this initial claim — is exit polls showed Christie winning among women and running even with his Democrat opponent among Latinos. If Republicans could emulate that in other states, they would win just about all of them. So, you see, according to the Washington Post the way forward for the Republican Party is clear.

All the Republican Party has to do is embrace amnesty and moderate its tone on abortion and they’ll never lose another election. Well, that’s 25%. I mean, that’s what the Washington Post says. They have six takeaways. That’s the crux of it, and every takeaway after that supports this takeaway. You note here how the goalposts are constantly moved. All of a sudden now it’s not enough to win the independents.

They’ve been telling us for decades, “You win the independents and you win the election.” Now we’re told that the GOP has to win the so-called moderates. From this article in the Washington Post, quote, “Republicans don’t need independents; they need moderates: Despite CuccinelliÂ’s loss, he actually won among self-described independents. At the same time, he lost by more than 18 points among self-described ‘moderates’…”

Well, who are they? As I say, they’re liberals who don’t want the label. All this time… See, I don’t know about you, but all this time, I thought the independents were the moderates. Didn’t you? Isn’t that what they tried to tell us? Independents, undecided, moderates — McCain, moderate, maverick — whatever, weren’t you under the impression the independents were the moderates, and they were the undecided because they were smarter than everybody?

They were not ideologues. They were not closed-minded bigots of the left or the right. No, no, no! These people decided candidates and issues issue by issue and candidate by candidate. They were the cream of the crop! The moderates, the independents, they’re the best among us. Blah, blah, blah. Romney wins a majority of them and loses. Cuccinelli wins a majority of ’em and loses, and now they tell us, “Well, no, no, no. It’s not it is independents anymore.

“You gotta go out and get the moderates,” which means, “You gotta get women who are pro-choice and you gotta come out for amnesty.” In reality, these self-described moderates are just liberals ashamed of the brand — and in reality, the Republican Party is the real party of the center. At least the conservative wing of the Republican Party is the real center, and the Democrats today are the party of the radical left.

But all of this — I mean, this Washington Post piece — is just part of the further Drive-By Media effort to move the country further leftward. What else are they trying to do? The lesson for you Republicans is, “See? Look at what Christie did! Come out for amnesty. You gotta want to go to Washington to work with Democrats. Don’t beat ’em. You can’t say you want to go to Washington and beat Democrats. If you Republicans want to win, you gotta go to Washington and say you want to work with Democrats.”

That’s what Christie did, and that’s what they’re citing. Christie said, “I’m the guy that can do it. I worked with Democrats here. I got things done. You watched me do it,” and they’re saying, “That’s right! What you Republicans need is somebody that can go to Washington and work with Democrats,” and what you and I know is we need somebody to go to Washington and Trenton or wherever else and beat Democrats. That’s what has to happen. I gotta take a break. We’ll do that and we’ll come back.

I’ll share with you some of the audio sound bites plus The Politico piece, “Why Terry McAuliffe Barely Won — A much closer-than-expected outcome blunts the narrative that this was a clean win for the Democrats going into 2014.” You know, both parties want that narrative. Both parties want that this was a big Democrat sweep. Both parties do. The Republican Party would not mind at all if the takeaway in Virginia was it was a Terry McAuliffe landslide against the Tea Party. I’m not exaggerating.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: A couple of takeaways from The Politico piece because it does differ from the rest of the Drive-Bys. The Politico piece does say that Obamacare nearly killed McAuliffe, and that’s right. Now, the establishment of both parties is saying Obamacare had no impact in Virginia. It had a huge impact. Obama went in there and campaigned for the bagman, but he didn’t even bring up Obamacare. Do not fall for this notion that Obamacare didn’t play a role. It did.

This election could have been won, folks, with just average effort from the Republican bias. Now, you go to New Jersey. The Democrats didn’t even mount a real opponent. Democrats never once attacked Chris Christie in that state. Do you realize this? I mean, if there was any opposition to Christie in that campaign, it was perfunctory and it was to make it look like there was some, but there was no real Democrat effort to unseat Christie.

Now, what does that tell you? And now you’ve got so many people in the media celebrating the Christie win as the road to the future for the Republican Party. What does that tell you? For one, I’m tired of the media picking our candidates for us, and they’re trying to do it here. There were exit polls in New Jersey, ladies and gentlemen, and you may have heard this. In New Jersey in an exit poll, Hillary Clinton beats Chris Christie in a presidential contest by four to six points.

Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz says, “Well, yeah, we sent a staffer in to help our candidate there.” They sent one staffer. Even the Democrat candidate against Christie in New Jersey is complaining that she got no help from the party. Why is that? Why do you think that is? Here’s a minor little detail from The Politico piece buried near the bottom of their story. “Despite the widespread criticism directed at Republicans for the government shutdown, an equal number of voters pinned the shutdown on Obama as they did congressional Republicans.”

Exactly what we predicted.

Nobody else in the media’s mentioning this, but the Republicans in exit polls were not blamed for the government shutdown. But the Republican establishment wants people to think that the Tea Party was responsible for it.

I never thought I would live to see this kind of self-sabotage.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So in the exit polling data, Cuccinelli won pretty sizably on the economy. He won pretty decisively on health care, big time on health care. But it was McAuliffe who won big on abortion. McAuliffe had a 20% advantage — this is exit polling data — on abortion and a nine-point advantage among women, but that gap was closing because at one point he had a 24% margin. And the abortion side and the women side is one of the things that’s got the Republican establishment scared to death.

It’s one of the reasons that they like the Tea Party being seen as a loser, ’cause they think the Tea Party’s a bunch of radical extremist conservative kook freak pro-lifers. They’ve thought this, folks, since I’ve been paying attention. I mean, I’ve shared with you the story about how I was practically accosted at a dinner party in the early nineties to do something about the Christians, by a bunch of moneyed, elite Republican establishment types. That’s back when I was naive and thought we were all on the same team. I didn’t realize then that they looked at me as the enemy, too. I thought I was there as a friend. I didn’t know it, but I was the enemy.

Poking me in the chest, “What are you gonna do about the Christians?”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

“Abortion. It’s killing us. We’re never gonna win another election. We gotta get rid of this.” And I’m telling you, that’s the root of this. Of course there are other aspects to it. Conservatism in general repulses the Republican establishment. The Tea Party repulses them because they don’t control it. They don’t even know who to attack. The Tea Party doesn’t have a singular leader, so they go after any candidate supported by the Tea Party, and they launch both barrels. And the way they launched here was just to offer no assistance, compared to the assistance they offered back in — and you know what, folks, I have to tell you something. I remember back, I forget the years now, they all run together, but you remember the year that Christine O’Donnell ran in Delaware, and Sharron Angle?

They were Senate races, admittedly, but Sharron Angle in Nevada, remember all these Tea Party candidates won and the Republican establishment runs around saying, “Well, well, we can’t support these people. They don’t have a prayer, and we’d rather support Mike Castle,” who’s really a Delaware Democrat named a Republican. Remember back then, what really concerned the Republican establishment was winning the Senate. They wanted to win the Senate. They wanted to control the committees. They wanted the chairmanships on the committees because they wanted to be in charge of the money.
So when people like Christine O’Donnell won their primary and Sharron Angle because of Tea Party support, the Republican establishment just had a cow and started mobilizing against ’em and the consultants mobilized and they all started going on TV, “Well, these people don’t have a prayer. I mean, there goes our chance, there goes our chance.” They started wringing their hands and complaining in public, “There goes our chance to win the Senate. There goes our chance to get the committee chairmanships.” I don’t think they were honest about wanting the committee chairmanships. That’s what I knew they wanted. They claimed they wanted to win control of the Senate.

But what it really boils down to, folks, you and I think the country is at a crisis crossroads, and nobody else does. Democrat, Republican establishment types do not think there’s any problem at all with this level of debt. “It’s just the debt. It’s always been high. We’ll manage it. It isn’t any big deal. We’ll have a carbon tax. We’ll raise taxes. We’ll deal with it. We’ll have the Fed print money and give it to the stock market. Everything’s fine. We’ll keep interest rates low. There’s no crisis here. Obamacare? Well, hell, it’s just health care. The government’s gonna have a bigger role in it. Big whoop. It isn’t any big deal.”

They don’t think there’s anything particularly crisis related about this, and you and I do. To them it’s just politics as usual. They want to win with their people in charge, ’cause they don’t want to have to reform anything. They don’t want to have to change the way Washington works. They don’t want to have to get rid of the debt. They don’t want to have to reduce the size of government. They don’t want to do anything that will promote an increase in individual liberty or freedom. They love the government being big and they want their chance to run it.

So I just found it fascinating. They’re having a cow over Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle and some of the other Tea Party candidates that came later, not supporting them. There was their chance to win the Senate. Well, here was their chance to hold a statehouse, and they didn’t care. Here was there chance to hold the state of Virginia. Here was their chance to have a Republican governor in the state of Virginia, and they didn’t care. They cared everything they had about winning the Senate. They were willing to support every moderate in the world and every liberal Republican in the world in order to keep or win the Senate and get their precious chairmanships, but they didn’t care about keeping a statehouse in Virginia.

We’re sitting here trying to devise ways to beat Democrats for the good of the country, and we’ve also gotta devise ways here to overcome opposition to us in our own party as well. It’s admittedly tough, although I, you know, not phony optimism, think that it can be done, power of the people. Cuccinelli, he didn’t win, and it’s coulda, woulda. There are no moral victories. Don’t misunderstand. You know, no attaboys ’cause he got close, that’s not what I’m doing here.

But it could have been won. That’s the really frustrating thing. It could have been won. Now they’re going ape. They are so happy they can’t see straight, that Chris Christie is now the front-runner for the Republican nomination. The Democrats are excited about that. The media is excited about that. The Republicans are excited about that. Go ahead and connect the dots.