RUSH SPEECH: (FREE: <a href=”http://mfile.akamai.com/5020/wmv/rushlimb.download.akamai.com/5020/Video/hfspeechclip1.asx”>Video Clip A </a>) What’s happened, the left is still, our friends the liberals are still trying to define the results of elections within the context of why they lost, and everybody is running around: “Why did we lose! Why did we lose!” They didn’t lose; we won! We kicked their butts, folks! We won! (wild applause) So don’t start asking us, “Why did they lose?” I am the to talk to you don’t about why we won. We all know why they lost. It’s real simple. They’re liberals! (Woo! Applause) It’s no more complicated that that. I will get a little bit more detailed, but still, we won because we had a president who was unequivocally conservative in this campaign — and it’s about time. There was no question. He was decisive. He was forthright. He was honest. He was decent. It was no match for what the left put up.
RUSH: Like that, Mr. Snerdley? How about that crowd reaction. Here’s even more, folks.
RUSH SPEECH: (FREE: <a href=”http://mfile.akamai.com/5020/wmv/rushlimb.download.akamai.com/5020/Video/hfspeechclip2.asx “>Video Clip B</a>) During this year our party, our movement, our core beliefs have been under assault. They have been under assault from every quarter. They’ve been under assault from old Europe — or new Europe, rather. They’ve been under assault from documentary makers here in America, under assault from Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, NBC, ABC, CBS. I call them “ABS, NBS, SeeBS, CNNBS.” (Laughter). Seriously, ladies and gentlemen, this is crucially important, and during this year, I’ve had people call my program thinking, “It’s all lost, Rush. We can’t compete with this. The mainstream media is ripping Bush every day and Bush isn’t responding and nobody is responding except you and other people we hear on radio and TV. Oh, woe is us! What are we gonna do? How do we compete with this? Why doesn’t Bush fight back?” and throughout all of this year — and I don’t say this for any reason other than honesty, and it can be checked with my radio transcripts if anybody chose — throughout this whole year, I have felt extremely confident and optimistic that the result we all enjoyed last Tuesday night and Wednesday was going to be the case, and I’ll tell you why. I learned a lot from Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan. I love Ronald Reagan. He was one of the greatest inspirations to me. (cheers, applause) I never met him, but Ronald Reagan, among many other things, never wavered in his belief in the decency and the goodness of the people of this country, and I have seen evidence of this throughout my whole life. I have studied it. I have watched it. Yes, there have been hills and valleys, but what we have come to learn is that the decency and the goodness of the American people has triumphed again.
RUSH: And let’s just keep rolling here, folks.
RUSH SPEECH: There is a new day in America. There is no more media monopoly. They’re not getting away with this,” but people were still negative. Now, here’s the thing that I take away among many things from these election results, and to me this is one of the most important and most positive. It is that we can continue to have faith not only in the American people and trust them. We can have faith that our values and our core principles are solid — and as we know, they endure. The things that we are teaching our children today, the things we were taught growing up, have not changed throughout time: Honesty, decency, character, trying to do the right thing, educating yourself — all of these things — depending on one’s self, lending a helping hand when it’s needed. All of these things were validated, and the campaign, if I may be so bold, the campaign did nothing but articulate them. The campaign didn’t go out and say, “We’re going to go out and fight this with X.” The president was just who he is.
The president was a man of decency. The president was a man of character, and is. He was a man of decisiveness. He did not waver. He had confidence in the American people. So for any people, anybody, any of you that might be concerned — and there is no doubt there’s an attack on our pop culture and our culture in general. There is an assault and there always will be and there always has been, but we can take away from these results among many other things the fact that these ideas on the strength of their very existence triumphed, ladies and gentlemen. They didn’t have to be bamboozled. They didn’t have to be tricked up. They didn’t have to be pounded. They didn’t have to be promoted. They didn’t have to be spun. They spoke for themselves. Now, I know that the election featured a lot of votes for people who don’t believe in this, but that doesn’t matter. We triumphed, and it’s something to build on — and more importantly, it’s something about which to remain confident.
RUSH: Well, the point that I’m trying to make here — in case there’s some people are still not clear — is that there’s a big difference in saying what you’re gonna do and being who you are. We didn’t have to go out and say, the president didn’t have to go out and say, “I am going to be X. I’m going to believe in X. I’m gonna use my character.” It just spoke for itself, particularly when compared and weighed against the sheer hatred and vitriol and seething rage that was mounted by the left. It stood out! This to me is one of the most important aspects of this election: Decency, honor, character, integrity, stood out like a sore thumb in comparison to the campaign run by the left. It didn’t need to be spun. It didn’t need to be amplified or promoted in any way. It just spoke for itself as it exists, these core values. It’s something I think ought to inspire everybody. It’s something that ought to make all of us feel extremely confident.
Now, I know there’s still many of you in the audience that are doubters. “But, Rush! But, Rush! These values don’t win every time.” Yes, they don’t win every time. You need the right messenger; there’s no question, and it helped to have the opposition that we had. But the fact of the matter is throughout time, we wouldn’t have lasted as long as we have as a country, folks, were it not for the timelessness of the institutions and traditions and core believes and values that we all use to define ourselves. The country wouldn’t have lasted that long. There have been people trying to tear down this country since it was a country, and afterwards, and there always will be. The point here is to understand: You don’t have to compromise with depravity. You don’t have to compromise with people who are less than what we consider to be good and decent and ideal.
All you have to do is stand up. You’ve seen it in your neighborhood. Everybody, every neighborhood, every town has a pillar of the community. Who is this person? It’s a person whose character and life speaks for itself. He doesn’t need a PR firm. He doesn’t need PR releases out there telling people how good he is. It speaks for itself. This is my point. This election illustrated the same thing and not just about George W. Bush. Of course, he’s the vessel for it because he got the votes. He was the candidate. He epitomized it. There’s no question. But this, often referred to as this great “silent majority” out there, Nixon first coined the term, but whatever you want to call it, it’s there, and it was the people — not an “it,” the people — who comprised this so-called silent majority were sitting out there making their own judgments independently on their own and more than likely the vast majority were repulsed by the campaign run by the left and spoke so on Election Day.
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RUSH: We’re reviewing my speech last night in Washington at the Heritage Foundation, and we have — I’m not playing the whole speech for you in bites. We’ll post the whole thing at RushLimbaugh.com on the subscriber side, couple bites, video, too. The video is not the greatest quality, but we still have some. And we’ll post a couple bites on the free side as well. Three more bites, each about two minutes, six you minutes in total. The whole speech ran 25 or 30 minutes, so let’s go with the other three bites here. If you think this was a stemwinder, you’re right.
RUSH SPEECH: I wouldn’t be what I am today were it not for people like these at the Heritage Foundation, the people we have never met, working in the basements, writing the papers (Applause) that people like me can read and learn from and this is all going on during this period of time. Bill Buckley at National Review — I mean, the list is long — Ronald Reagan, Goldwater clearly was a factor. All this was going on but the left was so arrogant (sniffing) and snooty that they had no idea it was going on, and when they did realize it was going on, they laughed at it and joked at it and they just considered us a bunch of jokes. All the while, we were being challenged on what we believed. The people who disagreed with us made fun of us and laughed at us and impugned, and we had to come up with ways of explaining what we believed, and in the arena of ideas, after years and years and years of being challenged and being told we don’t understand, “What are you talking about?” we developed ways to become persuasive. 
We learned to persuade people in the arena of ideas via their minds and their hearts. We didn’t get in their face and wag a finger and say, “You’re wrong.” We didn’t get in their face, wag a finger, and say, “You’re stupid! You’re dumb! You don’t know what you’re talking about! Shut up!” That’s what the left has always done. We were building a very slow movement that was underneath the radar. Nobody saw it, and in the process we learned to be able to explain persuasively to anybody what we believe. We were able to convince them we were right. We were able to convince them to give us a chance. The left throughout their period of monopoly never had to do this because it was given them. Their media buddies never challenged them. They didn’t accept our challenge and take it seriously. As a result, they cannot today compete with us in the arena of ideas, which is why they can only have a campaign based on hate. (Applause)
RUSH: Oh, Cookie, I told you to leave the applause! The applause went on and on and on and on and on throughout that. I want the applause left on there because it just kept going and going and going! I mean, it was just a tremendous night. This felt so good last night to be there, amongst all these friends, and everybody was so up. Well, let’s see. I’ve got two more bites. I’m going to try to squeeze them in here before the bottom-of-the-hour break.
RUSH SPEECH: David Brooks in the New York Times had a great point in his Saturday column…finally. (Laughter) Something happens to our guys when at the come in contact with New York Times people. You know, I don’t know what it is, but he had a great point on Saturday. He said, “The left…” and this is why we can’t let these people spin the election because it’s not about why “they lost.” It’s about why “we won.” They say, Brooks said (summarizing), “If you notice, the left has to always spin their losses in such a way that they remain morally superior, and so they zero in on this exit poll question — and who can trust these things anyway? — that said most people, at least one-fifth of people voted on values, and that, then, became, ‘Ah-ha! Gay marriage! A-ha!” and then they began to say, “See, we lost on gay marriage and we want to lose on gay marriage because those people on the right on racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes, a bunch of hayseed, pickup-truck-driving, gun-rack-in-the back-of the-truck hicks, (Laughter) but we are sophisticated liberals. We are enlightened and we are accepting of aaaaaall alternative lifestyles and behaviors,” and so they’ve spun this in their perverted minds as though they’ve won, when they’ve lost! (Laughter) But that’s how they do it. That’s why (Applause). Folks, it’s ridiculous to debate them on this. Don’t waste your breath. Don’t waste your time debating them on gay marriage or any of these other value things because it wasn’t about gay marriage and it wasn’t about values solely. It was about the fact that every time — and I so believe this; Ronald Reagan proved it and it’s been proven ever since any time somebody’s tried it, particularly in presidential elections — the candidate in the campaign that offer the people of this country a clear, conservative agenda are gonna win every time it is tried (Applause) and that is what happened. (Applause)
RUSH: And so, ladies and gentlemen, I have to tease you. There’s only one bite left, but I don’t have time to squeeze it in before the bottom-of-the-hour break, and again, I don’t think this stuff needs too much explanation. You’ll notice I’m not stopping my tape. A lot of these audio sound bites, I say, “Stop the tape!” especially when I’m playing liberal sound bites to explain what they’re really saying. But notice how clear and notice how self-evident the truths expressed in these sound bites of mine are. Don’t need to stop the tape, don’t need to amplify, don’t need to explain anything because it’s crystal clear as it is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Dawn here had an interesting reaction. “I see,” she said, “I see you saved your gloating for the Heritage Foundation.” I don’t know what she means by that. I don’t think I’m “gloating” here. We’re just… You know, the crowd wanted red meat and I gave them fillet, and it was a tremendous amount of fun. By the way, I’ve asked Cookie to go ahead and cart some more up because this is pretty good. I mean, I thought it was good when it was over and people said it was good, but you never know till you hear it and it was a fun night. So I asked them to cart up some of the things that are not on the original six here. But nevertheless, here is what I guess what would constitute the biiiiig finale.
RUSH SPEECH: They had set themselves up politically to benefit when the country engages in bad news. Bad news was good for the Democrats. Good news for America was bad news for them. Who wants to occupy that position? I don’t. I don’t want anything to do with that. (Applause) I don’t want to have to hope that we lose in Iraq. I don’t want to have to hope that we never find bin Laden. I don’t want to have to hope that the economy stays sour in order for my political fortunes or power to increase. It’s not the way it’s done, and this is why, folks, they were destined to lose this race. I know you think back during the darkest moments of the campaign, during the debates or whatever, “Oh, we’re getting skunked here. What are we gonna do? These guys are just running away with it. What about the forged documents? Why hasn’t Rather been fired?” Dan Rather doesn’t need to be fired. He’s been more humiliated going to work every day and having to work Election Night and report those results than anything could have been done if he got fired. (Wild cheers) I’m glad he was there. Yes! (Arm pump) You can say it a whole bunch of different ways. “What goes around comes around,” whatever it is. These philosophies are timeless. Decency and goodness and optimism and decisiveness and character, they triumph. Never forget it, folks. It’s been a pleasure being with you. I wish I had more time to keep dazzling you, but you have to eat, and I have to fly home. Thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed this immensely. You have made my day. Thank you so much. (wild cheering and applause)
RUSH: A little gloating there, huh, Dawn? (Laughing) So, as I say, Cookie is preparing a few more. There won’t be a whole lot more but there will be a few more, perhaps. Ed? No. Ed Fullner introduced… Oh, I’m having a mental block on the woman’s name. Barb Van Andel-Gaby. We ought to play her. Hey, Cookie, if that introduction is on there, got to get that introduction. In fact, the introduction was so good when I got up there I said to her, “I don’t need to say anything after this,” after her introduction to me. It was just a fabulous introduction, one of the best introductions of me. Ranks right up there top two, top three. So that’s a good idea, Cookie. Go ahead and cart that up, because this was great. I met her before the event. There was a little reception, as there always is at these things, prior to it starting. She came in and I met her there, and Ed Fullner, who is the president, chairman, grand pooh-bah of the Heritage Foundation, he came in with a lot of people.
A 96-year-old woman walked in, a donor to the Heritage Foundation. She’s about five-feet-one inch tall, bouncy, vivacious, just happy as she could be. She walked in with her daughter and another woman, and posed for some pictures. I mean, it was just great. Everybody there was just in great spirits. Even the homeland security guards were applauding and having a good time! The elevator operator was having a good time. That’s the biggest elevator I ever been on in my life, by the way. I went in the loading dock because I’m a powerful, influential member of the media, I get special entrances, and this elevator is big enough to get two automobiles in because the Reagan Building is actually the International Trade Center, and they do expos there, and (laughing) I mean, you could have gotten 15 hospital gurneys on this elevator. We need elevators like this in sports stadiums for after the games in the press box, I’m telling you; just incredible.
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RUSH: We’ve got three more here now ready to go, but people have asked about the introduction. It was done by Barb Van Andel-Gaby and it was a four-minute introduction and we have it in two bites. Here’s the first of those two.
ANDEL-GABY: One of the greatest things about the man I’m introducing tonight and one of the things his enemies can’t stand about him is that his is truly an American success story, a story of an opportunity seen, then seized, by the right person at the right time, and with results even he could not have imagined.
RUSH: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
ANDEL-GABY: In August of 1988, something happened very quietly, something hardly anyone noticed at the time. A former sportscaster and music deejay named Rush Limbaugh started a nationally syndicated broadcast on AM radio. AM radio! (chuckles) A medium the market had left behind, and liberals had decided was not worth pursuing. What the liberals did not realize, however, was that by dominating all the major media of that time, they had created an imbalance in the market of ideas, an imbalance that the American people were tired of — an imbalance that, unbeknownst to the liberal media, would soon be corrected. Well, the rest is misery, at least for the liberals (laughter), and history for the rest of us. (Applause)
RUSH: An introduction that got a standing O. She then continued.
ANDEL-GABY: Fifteen years after his show began, Rush Limbaugh has become arguably the most popular radio host in history. He is heard on nearly 600 stations by 20 million people each week, and hosts the highest rated national radio talk show in America. He has won radio’s most prestigious honor, the Marconi Award for Radio Personality of the Year, and he has won it three times, and he has won the hearts of the American people. Rush has been #1 for ten straight years, and has held that spot ever since attaining it. I think liberals are, even today after all this time, simply stunned by this man who has the enviable trait of being able to see the abundance of funny material that they hand him. (Laughter) The liberal view of the world has been so contrary to the American ideal for so long that an immense pile of material has just been waiting for a guy who would point out and say it. “Hey, look, folks, this is really, seriously crazy.” (Laughter)
RUSH: (Giggling)
ANDEL-GABY: Of course, Rush Limbaugh doesn’t just crack jokes. He shoots rhetorical arrows that find their mark, and shoots them and shoots them and keeps shooting them, and he has turned AM radio into multiple batteries of conservative arrows that just keep shooting and shooting right into the heart of liberalism, and for that they’ve tried to take him down. Well, Rush is the last person in the world who would want anyone to feel sorry for him. In the recent past he has endured many things, including the discovery of his own deafness, which would make a lesser man want to quit. Yet, here he is, the survivor, our hero, still shooting arrows, encouraging all of us here to do the same. Rush, believe me, with you to encourage us, we will. I can’t tell you how much I respect this man whom George W. Bush has called “a national treasure.” Ladies and gentlemen, the broadcaster extraordinaire, liberal dragon slayer, president of the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, a man upon whom the Heritage Foundation has bestowed its highest honor, the <a target=new href=”//home/eib15th/mclef1.member.html”>Claire Boothe Luce Award</a>, I give you Rush Limbaugh. (applause, whistles, cheers)
RUSH: That’s Barb Van Andel-Gaby, and she’s a board of trustee member of the Heritage Foundation, and I take time here again to thank her so much for that introduction. It’s just heartwarming and humbling. It just is. We have time to squeeze in one more bite of my remarks last night to the Heritage Foundation, so let’s hit it now.
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RUSH: All right, we’ll play this bite that I didn’t have time to squeeze in before the break. We’ll play it now in its entirety, two more to follow that.
RUSH SPEECH: Let’s take a look at what happened this year. We had all of these caustic attacks. We had a campaign that was based on the Democrat side of nothing but seething rage and hatred. That’s all it was. I maintain to you that if John Kerry and John Edwards had decided on Monday for some reason to chuck it and not go on the ballot, they would have gotten the same number of votes that they got being on the ballot (Laughter) because this was not about Kerry. He didn’t inspire anybody. John Kerry is a charismatic dud. He didn’t inspire one person. This whole campaign, the Democratic Party was so filled with seething rage and hatred. You’ve heard it said, “Anybody but Bush” or what have you, and I told the members of my audience throughout these past nine to ten months, I said, “Folks, you don’t build movements on hate, not movements that last. You do not build a foundation of inspirational leadership on seething rage. Just calm down. The American people can see what’s happening, and it will not be rewarded.” Fahrenheit 911; forged documents at CBS, not only were those things — and the list goes on, as you well know — not only were those things not rewarded, they were risen up against. Make no mistake about it, ladies and gentlemen: The people of this country had had enough. (Applause)
RUSH: Yeah! Yeah! And of course I kept going.
RUSH SPEECH: This is an important event in American history because this — you heard people say, “This is the most important election in American history.” It may well be. That’s for others to decide, but the fact is, more people voted for a president in this election than ever have, and there’s a reason for this. There are countless reasons for it, and most of them are positive, and most of them are uplifting. I’d say virtually all of them are, and it’s important to remember this: Hate versus love. It’s much easier to inspire people with optimism, much easier. Human nature is such that it’s so easy to be negative. Everybody falls prey to this. Something in the future that you don’t know is going to happen, most people say, “I know it’s going to go wrong. I know we’re gonna lose this election. I can just feel it.” Why do you think that? Well, you can’t possibly know what the future holds. “Well, I do. I just…”
This tendency to look at things negatively, we all have it — which is why a bunch of people have become multi-gazillionaires writing books on how to think positively (Laughter) because it’s hard to do. You have to goose people to do it (Laughter), and I have spent the whole year — and listen, I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, and I can’t reach back there anyway to do it. (Laughter) You know, people on the left are just trying to understand my success, and for 16 years I’ve heard the same litany: I’m a fad, that I’m an angry white male, and my audience is mind-numbed robots. They’re just sitting out there waiting for marching orders from me every day. The truth of the matter is — and this is what gives me so much pride, happiness and a sense of exhilaration — the truth is that I came along, as have all of us in these so-called new or conservative media, and we have validated what people already thought and already believed but never heard expressed in the mainstream press, and so they gravitated to us because they were happy finally to hear what they believed being said. (Applause)
RUSH: Note the humility in these remarks. I could very easily last night have taken credit for this whole movement and gotten away with it, but I’m an honest guy and I know that isn’t totally true. One more bite to go.
RUSH SPEECH: Don’t misunderstand. There has been some persuasion. I know that we’ve taken some people on the left and straightened them out, too, but I mean the vast majority of this, there’s always been a large conservative majority. You know, people live their lives as conservatives, but damned if they go vote for liberals every election, all those years. It’s crazy. But if we can get to these people as we do with positive optimism and inspiration, it’s amazing how it works. I tell people that accuse you all in my audience of being mind-numbed robots, “You’re missing the point. You ever bothered to listen to my show?” (Liberal impression:) “Well, no but I’ve read all about it, Page 6.” Well, you ought to listen, because when you do you’ll hear nothing but upbeat optimism.
You will hear inspiration. You will hear people being encouraged to be the best they can be, to use the talents that they have, to don’t let somebody tell ’em that they can’t do it if they want to do it, to remember that 80% of success is the desire to get it done, all other things being equal. These are the kind of things I say on my radio program, and people gravitate to it because it’s a fundamental human value. Optimism. Can-do. The president took a lot of grief in the campaign because he said — and I firmly believe this — because he said that “liberty and freedom are gifts from God.” I’ve said that, too. The way I say it is that “liberty and freedom are the natural yearning of the human spirit.” They are not just gifts from God. Another way of saying it: They are part of our creation. It takes human beings to suppress that. It also requires, on occasion, human beings to promote that and liberate it, and that’s why there are leaders and that’s why there are followers. But I’m telling you, you are going to do a lot better if you want to lead people with love and respect and optimism and uplifting inspiration than you will doing it the way the Democrats have been reduced to.
RUSH: And that’s pretty much the sum total. As I say, what we’re going to do is post a large part of the speech with video on the subscriber side at RushLimbaugh.com today, couple of bites on the free side so that everybody will have a chance to see some of it and hear some of it in pretty much its totality.
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