RUSH: It’s so heartwarming to see a bunch of high-minded people out there on the left, you know, the no-labels crowd, come out of the woodwork and pay the bail of the serial rapist Julian Assange. I guess he was using a condom after all, otherwise how could he get bail? Michael Moore is contributing to the bail. I mean who knew that they were such fans of serial rapists out there, my friends? Of course they would help a thousand rapists if it would mean that one America hater might go free, but I think it’s still great to see the accused rapist Julian Assange get bail. I mean how could he be a flight risk? He’s only got a bunch of fake identities and passports and so forth. What’s the concern here? It’s amazing what hating America will get you in court, and in this country as well. It really is.
A little pop quiz. What was the No Label label before they changed their names? I mean this bunch that came up with a new group, No Labels, what was their label before they changed their name? (interruption) Well, losers, yeah, but that was not their label. They had a label. (interruption) Well, no. (interruption) Progressive is it! The broadcast engineer, Mr. Maimone, gets it. Progressives, exactly right. When liberalism was rejected liberals called themselves progressives, and now that progressives are being rejected, former liberals, former progressives, are now calling themselves the No Label group. How many more changes are there gonna be?
Ben Smith, Politico, notes that the No Label group has stolen its icon design from a graphic artist named Thomas Porostocky, a very unhappy graphic artist for good reason. Mayor Bloomberg is big in this group and he has lots of money which means he could easily have just paid for the designs that his group stole. Their icons, their logos, are side by side here, there’s no question that they’ve been stolen, which is typical. From The Politico here: ‘No Labels Short on Republicans — The group ‘No Labels’ kicked off its first conference Monday at New York’s Columbia University with just one label largely absent: ‘Republican.’ The non-partisan initiative with the slogan, ‘Not Left. Not Right. Forward,’ –‘ Why would anybody want to emulate MSNBC and their slogan? I mean theirs is leaning forward. ‘– is seeking to fill what the American people regularly tell pollsters is the vital center: a non-ideological space where the commitment is to getting things done. And its speakers — who ranged from Republican moderates like ex-Virginia Rep. Tom Davis to liberal Democrats like New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — sang the praises of cooperation and compromise.
‘But the only Republicans present at Columbia University’s modern, square Alfred Lerner Hall seemed to be those who had recently lost primary races, such as South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis and Delaware Rep. Mike Castle, or former Republicans like Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. No other senior elected Republican officials were in attendance, though a range of Democrats were present, some of them seeming a bit mystified by the bipartisan cast of the event.’ (laughing) Why do you have Republicans here? They are mystified by the bipartisan cast and yet they’re setting themselves as No Labels: Not left. Not right. Forward.
‘The effort at non-partisanship was, however, earnest. The stage was framed by two posters featuring a variety of half-red, half-blue animals — a giraffe, a snail, four penguins of bipartisanship staring skyward.’ These are the stolen icons and logos from a graphic artist. So, again, what you have here is simply a bunch of people, a bunch of Democrats out of work who want to target big money politicians and get ’em to go in as a third-party candidate or as an independent. If you were a liberal Democrat or progressive, you wouldn’t want to be labeled that, either. And they’re sucking in a bunch of Republicans on this. That makes it look like they are the future, they are the smartest in the room, they are the ones with all the magnanimity. These No Label people, ‘We’re the ones who really have the finger on the pulse the American people. The American people want compromise.’ They do? Nobody wants compromise. Nobody wants to compromise on this tax deal. If we’ve got compromise going on, where’s all the praise for it? There isn’t. You can’t take labels off of things, as I so astutely pointed out yesterday. Labels are part of the English language. You can’t take labels out of our conversations, political our otherwise.
Last night on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, cohosted here by Judy Woodruff, she spoke to the No Labels movement cofounders Kiki McLean, a Democrat campaign consultant looking for her next candidate, and Mark McKinnon, a Democrat campaign consultant whose only Republican client — well, he had Bush, and then McCain, but he quit McCain, he said, ‘If you guys start attacking Obama I’m outta here,’ and when the slightest bit of criticism of Obama was mounted by the McCain campaign, McKinnon split the scene. So these are the two No Labels people, Judy Woodruff said, ‘Mark, what’s the dream scenario here? What would you like to have happen?’
MCKINNON: We’d like to provide a vehicle and a channel for the millions of Americans who today don’t feel like their voices are represented. They look at Washington, they see the hyper-partisanship, they see loud microphones on the left, loud microphones on the right, and nobody really rewarding good behavior in the middle. People are just — in fact, they’re getting punished whenever they try and extend their arm across the aisle or work in a bipartisan fashion.
RUSH: Loud microphones. I knew it. I knew it, folks, at the end of the day this about me, loud microphones. You know what else this is about? These people, these Democrats, they don’t know what to do. All these centrists, all the independents have moved to Republicans in droves, and the Republicans didn’t have to do one thing but stay alive to get ’em. The independents have abandoned the Democrat Party. The independents have abandoned the left. And they’ve done so in a most profound way because they finally have seen liberalism wide open, up close and personal. They have seen it. They don’t have to rely on people to tell ’em what it is. They’ve seen it. For two years they’ve seen how it destroys, they’ve seen the destruction that liberalism is, and they want no part of it. Ergo here come these people. And they don’t care about the American people. You know, this, ‘We’d like to provide a vehicle and a channel for the millions of Americans who today don’t feel their voices –‘ a lot of Americans do feel their voices are heard. A whole bunch of them were heard last November, Mark. That was a huge election, and the majority of Americans voted a certain way, and their voices are being heard. They don’t have any question about that.
Their voices might be ignored now and then, but they know their voices are heard. But let’s get to the bottom of this. You guys don’t care about the people. ‘We’d like to provide a vehicle and a channel for the millions of Americans who today –‘ you care about yourselves. You guys are the ones on the outs. You guys are the ones looking for clients. You guys are the ones looking for work. This No Labels crowd, they have been rejected. Everything they said the last two years about what wins elections has been proven to be wrong. They have been totally discredited. So now they seek a new home trying to redefine themselves in the name of what the American people want. If these people knew what the American people want they would have victorious clients on their resumes, but they do not have other than McKinnon and Bush. Kiki McLean took her shot next. Judy Woodruff said, ‘Kiki McLean, you also hear people say what’s wrong with feeling strongly or feeling passionately about issues? There’s a lot at stake here. Why shouldn’t we be arguing these things, debating these things vigorously?’
MCLEAN: Passion and partisanship is okay. Hyper-partisanship is not. If the goal when you start a conversation — start a conversation is to make sure somebody else loses, we all lose, and there’s too much of that going on today.
RUSH: (laughing) Can you blame me if I think this is about me? (laughing) If the goal when you start a conversation’s to make sure somebody else loses? Yeah. I mean, Kiki, what happens in elections? Elections are campaigns. Campaigns are conversations. What happens in elections? Somebody loses. One of the honchos of this group, John Avlon, wrote a book with a label for a title, Wingnuts. And he mentioned me in this book a lot, hoping I would mention his book so that it would sell. But here’s a No Labels head honcho with the title of his book in fact a label, Wingnuts. Even Judy Woodruff is having trouble with this. She finally says this to both Kiki McLean and Mark McKinnon.
WOODRUFF: Mark McKinnon, I heard you say today that the rest of the country is not as polarized as Washington, and yet I’ll tell you quite candidly, I was around the country covering several Senate races this year, this is anecdotal, but I found people pretty partisan in their views.
RUSH: The idea that Washington is more partisan than the rest of the people, the rest of the country not as polarized as Washington? Mark, who’s been running Washington the past two years? Your guys, the liberal Democrats. Next these pantywaists are gonna want to outlaw high school and college debate clubs because somebody loses. I mean there’s a conversation that started and the purpose is for somebody to lose. These people are either sad they can’t compete, or they don’t want to compete, or in truth follow the money. They’re looking for political candidates, rich political candidates to be clients. There are a number of politicians who love this whole idea of being in the center. Bloomberg is one of them. But he’s not a centrist. He’s an uber-leftist. Look at his policy ideas. Too much salt in the city, too much trans fat, can’t smoke here, can’t do that there. He’s a full born uber-leftist. He’s a Democrat. He called himself a Republican to get elected.
Now, what is the difference, folks, in a partisan and a hyper-partisan? I mean Kiki McLean said here that passion and partisanship is okay but hyper-partisanship is not. What’s the difference? I mean that’s how cockamamie these people are. Here, last night, CNN’s Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer spoke with David ‘Rodham’ Gergen about the No Labels movement. Blitzer says, ‘Is this a moderate version of the Tea Party movement?’ Now, how can you have a moderate version of the Tea Party movement? The Tea Party movement is very active. They are grassroots, and they are conservative. And yet the question, ‘Is this a moderate version of the Tea Party movement?’ And get this answer.
GERGEN: It is, Wolf. This is a group that’s — it’s new, it’s nascent, it’s small, but it’s trying to give voice to the many disgusted Americans who just watch our politics, see it as hyper-partisan, paralyzed, and they worry about the future of the country and would like to give a fresh voice to the middle, people saying, ‘Look, it’s fine to be conservative, fine to be liberal, but sometimes you guys have gotta meet and agree upon things and get the country moving. We simply can’t be paralyzed.’
RUSH: And what Gergen and all these people mean is Republicans have to compromise. Conservatives are the ones that always have to compromise. That’s how you meet in the middle. So why are we calling these No Labels people by their names? Shouldn’t they assign themselves numbers? A name is a label. Kiki McLean, she should be number one and Mark McKinnon should be number two, and this Avlon guy, make him number three. You know, names are labels. What these people are is anti-conservative. They are anti- the people. They don’t like the outcome of the November elections. That’s why they’ve formed. They’re not interested in the middle. They are interested in anti-conservatism. They’re interested in defeating conservatism. And this No Labels nonsense just shows you how idiotic and how out of touch they are. The nation is at a crossroads. We do have to choose a direction, and they’re talking about No Labels, which has nothing to do with anything that matters. A better name for this group would be No Brains.
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RUSH: Mark McKinnon says, ‘We’d like to provide a vehicle and a channel for the millions of Americans today who,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We already have that. It’s called the Tea Party. Average Americans who want to be heard and represented? It’s called the Tea Party. And this after listening to David Gergen for almost a million years. David Gergen’s had his shot at the American people for I don’t know how long. He’s worked in administrations, worked at ABC, and he’s working at CNN. He’s had his chance to coalesce a group of people behind him. I checked the e-mail during the break. I always do this and find out how people are reacting. ‘You care about this group? This group is stupid. They’re not going anywhere.’
I hope not. That’s the whole point. I’ve been fighting this whole notion of how important ‘the center’ is in this country ever since I’ve had this program — and remember during the middle of the Christine O’Donnell/Mike Castle race, after Christine O’Donnell won the race, a Washington insider consultant Mike Murphy posted a piece on the website Ricochet in which he identified himself as one of these latte-sipping, wine and croissant people. He said (summarized), ‘You go ahead if you know how to do it!’ He was really bent outta shape here. ‘If you know how to do it, then you guys do it! You quit your jobs and you get this woman elected,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I made the point then that these political consultants concede the following:
They look at every presidential election this way — and in fact, a lot of local elections for state, member of House of Representatives. They look at it as 80% is already committed (40% gonna go Democrat, 40% gonna go Republican) and 15 to 20% always undecided, and that’s where they make their money. They make their money there. They pitch their services to candidates by saying, ‘I can show you how to get to the middle. I can show you how to get the middle of the vote. I can show you how to get the moderates; I can show you how to get the independents.’ So a political consultant that’s a Democrat or a political consultant that’s a Republican still makes their living on that 20%.
So to them it always exists. They will always be ‘the center’ and it’s always the most important because that’s their bread and butter, and they got everybody hopped up on this notion that elections are made in the center. Everybody falls for this as though it’s just inside the Beltway, standard operating procedure. It’s conventional wisdom. Nobody ever questions it — except I, El Rushbo. And like to illustrate as my point, if you even want to say that the November elections the Republicans won big? Yeah, they won big because the independents went to the right. Well, what caused the independents to go to right? The Tea Party movement did not have a consultant per se.
The Tea Party was not represented by a candidate who had a consultant molding the campaign. It’s always issues that matter, and it’s always conservatism that wins when it’s articulated, when it is explained, when it is lived — or, on the other hand, when liberalism is as clearly viewable and seeable as it was. So the great unwashed, all these precious independents, look where they ended up, and there wasn’t one political consultant that got ’em there. What got ’em there is Barack Obama and the rest of the Democrat Party, and that’s what has this No Labels bunch just totally out of whack because they’re all Democrats. They’re all liberal Democrats and they’ve seen their precious middle move, and they had nothing to do with it.
So now — for the sake of their jobs, for the sake of their careers — they have to form this group which, again, at the end of all this is supposed to highlight their (and theirs alone) talent and ability to get these people to move in whatever direction they want to the benefit of their particular candidate. And in the process, this group, No Label, will seek to defeat conservatism. It’s conservatism — and, by the way, the whole buildup of the so-called moderate, centrist movement is in fact oriented toward just that: Defeating conservatism. That’s why I’m interested in it, and that’s why I keep pounding it so that more and more people will understand exactly why this is happening, who these people are, and why it’s phony, why it’s a trick, how it’s a trick and all it is. It’s just plain as day to see if you know who the players are.
And I, El Rushbo, do.
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RUSH: I’ll tell you another reason why these washed-up losers joined this group, the reason why people join the No Labels group. Even Fox News is falling for this. These people end up being the ‘balance’ on TV talk shows, and Fox News, I’ve seen it there. They’ll have somebody from the left and they’ll have somebody from the right — some Republican flack, some Democrat flack — and then they’ll give the last word to some self-described ‘centrist’ from this group, who will give the final and true analysis. The No Labels guy or girl gets to go on and explain why both of these extremes happen to be wrong. If you listen very carefully, the No Labels guy will sound an awful lot like the Democrat guy. Well, one other question here: Who is the center?
Who defines the center? Isn’t it the left that’s always defining the center? Isn’t it the media that always defines the center? And guess who is never in the center? Republicans. Conservatives. Even in this group. The story on this group points out that there weren’t any Republicans that showed up on the meeting, the big inaugural meeting, except for Mark McKinnon. Where were the Republicans here? Well, folks, what if you and I are the center in American politics and American life today? What if we happened to be the center? You know, we have been characterized as conservative, far right, right-wing, what have you. But what if we’re the center? I would maintain, ladies and gentlemen, you and I are the mainstream of this country.
You and I represent that large swath of people that make this country work. Even geographically. You get the great flyover country, great unwashed in the center of the country. You got the far left on both the coasts. You got liberal Republicans on the Right Coast and so forth. Geographically, ideologically, in life we are the center of the country. For this group to exist, we have to be defined as ‘hyperpartisans’ on the right. This No Labels group, let me give you another idea of who they are. This is an extension of what liberals have been forcing on us slowly for several generations. This No Labels group and the things that they say is the same liberal mind-set that we see in Little League baseball.
We’re not supposed to keep score. There aren’t any losers. (New Castrati impression) ‘That’s right, Mr. Limbaugh! Losers would simply be humiliated and young children do not need to learn to be humiliated. It could be destructive and it could shape them badly for the rest of their lives!’ Right. The only thing wrong here is the kids do keep score. The parents are out there thinking they’re all advanced and compassionate and sheltering their precious little babies from any pain and suffering, and yet the kids, they’re keeping score. They keep score silently. They know who’s winning and losing, even though an official score might not be being kept. They don’t want to admit the score.
The score right now is ‘Conservatives 63 – Liberals 0’ in the US House elections. It’s 6-to-nothing in the Senate, for those of you keeping score. It was about 700-to-zero in the various state legislatures, about 12-to-zero in governorships. That’s why they don’t want to keep score, because they’re losing. That’s why they want to get rid of labels. They’re losing so they want to unplug the scoreboard. They want to ‘level the playing field,’ make things fair, help people feel better. They might have had enough time to make it work with the general electorate had they kept winning elections, but they didn’t. They bombed out. So that’s why this is important: It’s just a bunch of liberals trying to reposition themselves for the future, under ‘No Labels.’
I guarantee you just as global warming sucked a lot of people in, this has the potential to suck a lot of people in. I don’t think it’s gonna suck any more than already think they’re in the middle. We have a lot of people in the country — not a lot, but we have a certain percentage — who think they are in the middle. You know, moderates think they’re smarter than everybody else, they’re more open-minded. That’s why they like to call themselves moderate. (New Castrati impression) ‘That’s right, Mr. Limbaugh! We make up our mind issue by issue! We are not rigid ideologues tied to something, willing to be wrong just for the sake of our ideology.’ Well, neither are we. We conservatives are right about everything. We are right about everything.
We are honest and truthful, and we are right about everything.
We are not interested in being wrong and trying to trick people into going along with us. We don’t have to lie to people about what we believe. We don’t need what we believe on teleprompters or on cue cards. We don’t have to have somebody tell us in an earpiece what we believe when a question is asked. It’s in our heart. We don’t have to make it up; we don’t have to lie; we don’t have to take polls; we don’t have to calculate what people want to hear when we’re asked our opinion of an issue. We know we’re right. We’re happy knowing we’re right, and we’re also happy knowing the left knows that they’re wrong. As I love to say, ‘Do you think Obama would have been elected president if he ran on the agenda he’s implemented?’
He wouldn’t-a gotten 20% of the vote. He would not have gotten 30% of the vote. (interruption) He wouldn’t have, Snerdey, if he had run promising policies that guarantee 10% unemployment, a deficit of $1.5 trillion. This was the result of his policies. If he had run on, ‘This is what we hope to bring about,’ would he have won? No. He had to lie. He had to lie about every aspect of his campaign. He had to lie about it otherwise he wouldn’t get elected. Mike Castle. Mike Castle ran as a conservative to try to win in the primary against Christine O’Donnell. Where’s the No Labels group on that, by the way, Castle running as a conservative?
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RUSH: Hey, one more thing, a little flashback, a news flashback on this No Labels business. Back to October 20th of 2009, from Kinston, North Carolina. Does that alone ring a bell? Kinston, North Carolina, October 20th, 2009: ‘Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party,’ being identified on the ballot. In other words, the regime said Democrat voters in Kinston, North Carolina, are so stupid that without the D next to the candidate’s name they won’t know who to vote for.
‘The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor –‘ these are local races, obviously, ‘– went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their ‘candidates of choice’ – identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.’ Do you believe this? Do you remember this now? So, in addition to everything else, No Labels is racist. No Labels is a racist organization, because the Justice Department, no less, of the regime has said that black voters in Kinston, North Carolina, have to have the word ‘Democrat’ next to the candidate. Black voters can elect their candidates of choice, identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black. So the Justice Department here is saying that the only way to have a fair election is for blacks to vote Democrat. Blacks have to vote Democrat or it’s not a fair election, and the only way to ensure a fair election, fair to blacks, make sure that they do vote for the Democrat, is to make sure that the D is next to the candidate’s name.
‘The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.’ Racist, insulting. This is what the regime’s Justice Department thinks of black voters in North Carolina, that they are so dumb, that everybody knows that blacks are gonna vote Democrat, that’s just assumed, but you gotta put the D up there, otherwise they won’t know. This is done under the guise of civil rights. ‘On top of that, you have an unelected bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., overturning a valid election. That is un-American.’ This is some people who disagree with this. So, you see the No Labels people at the end of the day even end up being racist. But the Justice Department demands labels so that blacks will know who to vote for in North Carolina.
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RUSH: And let me tell you some more about the No Labels mind-set. The No Labels mind-set leads to not being willing to admit who the terrorists are. Oh, we can’t say Muslim, can’t say Islamist extremists, we’re all in the middle, can’t say that. You can’t identify people, especially our enemies, you can’t identify ’em. It’s the mind-set that leads us to submitting to strip searches at airports for blondes and little old ladies with blue hair while burqas and young men with one-way tickets go untouched. It’s that mind-set. That’s why this is important.
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RUSH: If we gotta get rid of labels, can we say ‘Merry Christmas’ anymore? No. I mean, taking these people literally — and as you know, I live in Literalville. … This No Labels bunch. This is, I think, a last-ditch effort here. If we do this right, we can discredit this whole mind-set of the ‘moderate center’ being the defining group in American politics, because this No Labels group is going to end up illustrating what a fraudulent idea that whole concept of, ‘There are people, uh, who decide issue by issue. On the left they like certain things, on the right they like certain things, and they want to matter at the table — and hyper-partisanship is acing them out.’ This is just code lingo for they lost the last election and that liberalism has been discredited. Now, this No Labels bunch — and, yeah, this does matter a lot to me, because this is all about electoral politics.
This is all about liberals trying to reinvent themselves and come back to life in the midst of a shellacking, and they’re on the ropes here if we don’t let up and if this is done right. ‘Cause this No Labels is gonna be attractive to some people. You know the people. You know them. They don’t like bickering, they don’t like confrontation. They just don’t like the argument. They just wish we could all get along. ‘Stop the fighting, please!’ They don’t want to fight. ‘Please, stop!’ They’re gonna gonna be sucked in by this. They have to know that they’re being sucked in and they’re suckers. That it’s not possible. None of what this group advocates is possible. This is the mind-set that leads to a President and a general unwilling to admit to Fort Hood soldiers who just killed 13 of their buddies.
This is the mind-set that leads people stealing nativity scenes from the fronts of Christian churches. This is the mind-set, ‘We can’t keep score!’ This is the mind-set, ‘We can’t offend!’ This is the mind-set, ‘We gotta get rid of dodge ball! It’s to dangerous.’ This is the mind-set that wants to take all conflict and controversy out of life, which is not possible. But more than that, they’re just liberals who have been defeated and they’re trying to reinvent themselves with a new label now since liberal, Democrat, progressive has been so shellacked.
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RUSH: Maggie in Oregon, Ohio, you’re next. Great to have you with us on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s great to be here. I want to say ahead of time, Merry Christmas to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I’ll get to the point here. I caught these two guys — I wish I would have DVR’d it. I didn’t, it would be more insightful, but I don’t remember their names. One is a Republican; one is a Democrat. And Chris Wallace was interviewing them, and he interviewed ’em and then asked them, ‘Well, it sounds to me like you would vote for a Democrat.’ And neither person could give him a great answer.
RUSH: He’s talking to the No Labels people? Is that what you mean?
CALLER: Yeah, I’m sorry, yeah, the No Labels people.
RUSH: He was talking to a couple of No Labels people. When was this?
CALLER: Sunday.
RUSH: On Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace?
CALLER: No, it wasn’t his show, he was just doing the news.
RUSH: Okay, it was after Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, yeah, because he goes over to the Fox News Channel and does some stuff on Sundays. So he had two No Labels guys on to talk about No Labels?
CALLER: Right, one was Republican, the other was — I believe he was a Democrat.
RUSH: Right and so he said to one, ‘It sounds like you guys would vote for a Democrat,’ and they wouldn’t answer them?
CALLER: Yeah, they seemed real sheepish, they didn’t want to really answer him one way or the other, but that’s how they came across.
RUSH: Well, at some point they’re gonna have to vote for somebody, even if they are No Labels, they’re gonna have to vote for somebody because No Labels does not have a candidate. Who would be the No Labels candidate? They want it to be Bloomberg. That’s who they want because Bloomberg’s a billionaire and these people, ‘Oh, Bloomberg, he’s a perfect mark. Bloomberg’s out there talking about the great center,’ da-da-da-da. They think he would be easy to separate from his money, and with a billionaire you just tell him what he wants to hear and make him pay you for the privilege. But there’s not gonna be a candidate from the No Labels party. At some point you’re gonna have to vote for a Republican or Democrat, and that was great question because these two guys did not want to admit they would vote Democrat. Otherwise they would have discredited the whole No Labels movement. They’re gonna get caught if they’re not already. It’s silly. Bloomberg is only No Labels ’cause he didn’t want to have to run in the Democrat primary, that’s all. He doesn’t want to have to run against Obama. He doesn’t want to challenge Obama. He doesn’t want to be Republican ’cause that’s just — yuk. So No Labels is perfect for a guy like him. But we know that he’s not a No Labels guy. We know that he’s not a centrist. We know that he’s a hard-core liberal.
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RUSH: This whole thing is entirely deceitful, this No Labels business. The Tea Party movement was a spontaneous, grassroots movement. This No Labels ‘movement’ is not a movement at all. It’s all about top-down political operatives, ex-politicians who are, frankly, irrelevant. It’s a top-down effort by irrelevant political hacks to make themselves matter again. It’s out-of-work political consultants who are trying to find work by establishing a new niche for themselves where they can fleece potential candidates from their money while seeking office under these auspices. But they portend something really dangerous. I know it sounds like it can’t possibly happen.
I know it can’t possibly happen, but the point is you don’t want this to ever be seductive to an increasing number of voters — and, folks, there are a lot of people who want to think of themselves as smarter than everybody else. There are a lot of people who want to think of themselves as, ‘Ahhh, open-minded. People who decide things issue by issue, smarter than the people who are partisans,’ and a movement comes along like this, it can very easily seduce these self-important snobs, ’cause this is a movement of snobs and snobbery, and it could be seductive for a while. It’s just like when I heard the Sierra Club say in 1996 or 1997 they were coming for the SUV, I spent about an hour on that warning people, and I got laughed at.
‘Aw, come on, Rush! You know, we really like listening to you but sometimes you just go so over the top. Nobody’s gonna ever take away the SUV! These are a small, little minority bunch of wacko activists just fundraising, Rush. They’re never gonna get rid of the SUV,’ and here we are. Yeah, and the same bunch of people went after Joe Camel. (chuckles) Joe who? So I mean they’re always out there. This is just liberalism wearing a new mask. They never go away. They are always seeking new ways to defraud people and to be deceitful. They must. They have no chance. How would the Democrat Party survive if we did away with the label ‘the rich’? The one thing they won’t do is do away with labels. They’ll never stop using them. Big Oil? Big Pharma? Big Food? Labels!
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RUSH: Mark in Jupiter, Florida. I have about a minute and a half, but I wanted to get to you, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Mega dittos from south Florida —
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: — in West Palm Beach about three miles west you right now.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I just wanted to point out that, you know, every time the Democrats take a shellacking and the liberals get their head handed to ’em, we hear all this talk about ‘no labels.’ I started hearing about it in the early nineties. And if you remember, there was a lot of fanfare surrounding the Concord Coalition with Warren Rudman and Paul Tsongas, and it was all supposed to be nonpartisan and doing away with labels and they were gonna bring America together on sensible policies and all of that.
RUSH: Yeah, that was about the national debt. It was about deficit spending.
CALLER: Correct, but it was the same kind of an impulse, and the Democrats seized on it, a lot of them, to try and conceal who they were. But if you look at the people behind these so-called movements to get rid of labels, it’s always the liberals. It’s always the left trying to conceal who they are and what they want.
RUSH: Yeah. That’s a good point. There are a lot of forerunners to this. They’ve just been brazenly honest about (chuckles) what they’re trying this time. The Concord Coalition, that was Warren Rudman. There’s another one out there that Pete Peterson has, I think. He’s the Blackstone Group, one of their big guys. I can’t remember what it is but you’re right. Every time they lose, they come up with something, a new technique to hide who they are and to try to give themselves the high ground morally, politically. Thanks for the call out there, Mark. I appreciate it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Snerdley, are you afraid to call yourself a conservative? (interruption) Nor am I. I don’t know any conservative… Well… Yes, I don’t know any conservative, I don’t know any genuine, real conservative who is afraid to tell you what they really are. Of course, people on the left are afraid to tell you at all truthfully what they are. But we don’t have that problem. We don’t have this label problem.
We’re proud of our label.
We like our label.
We like ourselves.
We love you.