RUSH: I want to take you back to this program February, this year, mere weeks ago. I was talking about the Republican Party. They were angry. They weren’t being public with their anger, but I was hearing about it through surrogates. They were angry at me for talking about social issues. “Don’t talk about ’em, Rush, the social issues, independents don’t want to hear about abortion, that stuff, please.” Here’s what I said.

RUSH ARCHIVE: The Republican establishment in panic over the fact I’m killing the party. And you know how I’m killing the party? By not relegating discussion of social issues to the ash heap. They don’t want it talked about. Oh, no, they just can’t handle it being discussed. They think it’s gonna send the independents driving away and the electoral history of this is anything but.

RUSH: That’s right. The electoral history. And I was talking, there was a book. Jeffrey Bell wrote a book about how social issues being predominant in the Republican Party has led to presidential victory. And this was the point that I was making. This is an illustration about how the inside-the-Beltway Republicans are out of touch and don’t get it and how northeastern liberal Republicans are scared to death of the abortion issue, when they win with it. So I want to follow this up with Brian Kilmeade today on Fox & Friends. They just had a new Fox presidential poll out. Listen to Kilmeade here.

KILMEADE: Among independents, the key voting bloc, who would you vote for if the election was today, 46 to 33, Mitt Romney, a dominant lead.

RUSH: Now, you heard him say “the key voting bloc.” See, that’s my pet peeve. “So here’s Kilmeade. Among independents, the key voting bloc, who would you vote for if the election was today?” Romney up by 13 among independents. And that’s after six weeks of this phony war on women stuff that was supposed to send independents running back to the Democrats. Don’t buy it. Don’t believe the conventional wisdom.