I was with some friends last night, and we were talking about this Michael Moore movie. And, my friend said, “Oh, of course I don’t need to see that. Of course I know it’s propaganda. But, Rush, don’t understand there are so many people in this country who are so malleable. They’re just going to go see this and they’re just gonna believe it?” I said I don’t know that. I’m not going to allow myself to think that everybody in the country as an idiot.In the first place, everybody is not going to see it. In the first place, a whole bunch of millions of people are not ever going to see this, contrary to the spin that’s out there. But even if they do, go back to the Wellstone memorial, how many of you thought, oh, gee, this is it, we’re dead? I thought the Wellstone memorial was the day that Democrats confirmed their loss of the 2002 elections. And we’re getting a Wellstone memorial every day from these people. Either the 9/11 commission hearings or all the 60 Minutes Bush bash book club or the Moore movie or the Clinton memoir, whatever, it’s nothing more than this over-the-top, irrational, based-on-nothing hatred. And I just, you know, and your life, too, my own life I can tell you that when I’ve been in the throes of pessimism and anger and rage I never got anything done. I retarded myself in progress, in fact, and most people do.Just to reassert this or remind you, my optimism here is not based on feelings. It’s based on an honest assessment of things. I could be wrong. Okay? But there’s no point in walking around acting defeated now because that certainly isn’t going to help anybody, not going to help you, and it’s not going to alert people, if you run around trying, “Hey, it’s really bad out there,” it’s not going to work. You know, warning people, threatening people that the world is going to end tomorrow if this thing doesn’t happen or that doesn’t happen, because the world is not going to end tomorrow. That doesn’t work. I’ve always found that optimism is far more infectious and happiness is far more infectious and it’s genuine. And so I don’t want anybody to misunderstand this optimism. I’m reacting to this last call we had. I get the impression that he was thinking that this is manufactured for whatever reason, performance reasons on the radio or just to try to keep people bucked up, and that’s not the case at all. I mean when I tell you what I think of the Democrats and their tactics and where they are and what it means for their future, I mean it.When I tell you that I do not understand a political party that has set itself up on purpose to benefit from this country’s demise, from this country’s defeat, from this country’s problems, from economic malaise. When a party sets itself up in such a way that a member of Congress celebrates when the stock market plunges by saying “For every hundred-point drop we get a seat in the House”, I have to say this is not what a successful, victorious leadership movement is based on, it never has been. And you know it as well as I do. And I’m telling you this, I’ll just one more time. You probably know all of this yourself, too. You’re worried about everybody else being affected by it just like when you watch the media, you’re not swayed by the anymore, but you’re worried about all the people that are. And I’m just telling you, there aren’t that many people who are being swayed, at least as there used to be. Things are moving in the right direction. Look it, do you know that thousands of people are still going to the Reagan Library to visit the grave site?We were talking about this last night, too. You look at that week. Here is a man who was a president, won 49 states in his landslide reelection in 1984 and won big in 1980. In fact, in one election, Reagan got more electoral votes than Mondale and Carter combined. They got 60 in two elections, Mondale and Carter. Fifteen years Reagan has not been on the scene. The outpouring of love and affection and respect for Ronald Reagan was not artificial. It was not trumped up. It was not disingenuous, it was real because people understood who he was and what he stood for, was a man of core principles and beliefs and never strayed from them. He was an eternal optimist, too, by the way. He was a leader. And to this day thousands of people have visited his grave site. There are no more cameras showing people this, but it’s still happening.Now. If that’s happening in this current climate — how can that happen in a climate of genuine Bush hatred? How can it happen in a climate where most Americans hate this country and don’t want us to succeed? It can’t! The America that you’re being asked to believe exists by virtue of all these so-called people that support the Democratic Party is a myth. And I’ll tell you another thing. The Democrats look at Bill Clinton at their Reagan. They’re doing everything they can and they have done everything they can to make him their Reagan. And you may think this cynical, but I’m telling you during that week of memorials for Ronald Reagan Democrats went into action planning their own memorial for Clinton to make sure that it’s bigger than anything Reagan got. But if it is, it will be staged, it will be produced, it will be bought and paid for, it will be Hollywood hiring extras to line the streets to stop traffic, and it will be an objective of the left now from this moment forward to make sure that whatever happens that Clinton’s funeral outdoes Reagan’s. Even if a lot of people now who are planning it are not alive when Clinton dies. And I’m just talking about the passage of time here, no particular individual. And the difference is, they’re going to have to stage it, they’re going to have to plan it, they’re going to have to produce it, because it won’t be real.None of the supposed success that we’re being told is accruing to Democrats today is real. I know there are Democrats winning elections, but I’m talking about in the argument over the major things we take. It’s a lot of spin, it’s a lot of buzz, it’s being made to look broader and wider than it is. This lack of support for the war on terror, this lack of support for President Bush, this lack of support for the war in Iraq. It’s probably far deeper, the support for all these things than you’re ever going to be told because there’s a giant spin effort underway with the willing accomplices of the media and the Democratic Party to make it look like something it isn’t. Because that’s the only way. The number of the people in this country who identify themselves as liberals is down to 18%, folks. That’s the number who identify themselves. Now, I know you got some moderates and independents who are afraid to call themselves liberals now, but what does that mean? So they call themselves, you know, some other name, progressives, independents, but they won’t call themselves liberals. Liberals running for office won’t call themselves liberals except in Massachusetts and California. What does that mean? I mean, if you look at this, and we may lose the election, I don’t know, but the rise and fall of movements and so forth is not determined on one election here and there, there are too many vagaries that go into it. But the point is we don’t know what’s going to happen in November, nobody does, a pollster doesn’t know, there’s not a soul who knows what’s going to happen, there’s not a soul who can tell you what’s going to happen. They can tell you that three states, the latest is, whoever wins two of the following three states’ electoral votes wins the election: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida.What’s that based on? Based on polling. May be true, may be not true. We won’t know till it happens, but all of that is designed to get people in other states thinking their votes don’t count. So just genuinely assess things. You know, use your brain and not just your feelings on this stuff, because your feelings are going to trump your intellect most of the time if they’re negative. And you’ve got a to realize when you’re telling yourself stories and when you are not.
END TRANSCRIPT