RUSH: Try this headline: “Toad Case May Reveal Roberts’ Philosophy.” This is an AP story. “Appeals court vote may show inclination toward states’ rights,” and the opening sentence is: “A toad may offer insight into John Roberts’ legal philosophy.” A toad! A frog for crying out loud, folks. They’re going nuts out there on the left, and there’s such an opportunity here to capitalize on it. I mean, for example, look at how easily Bush quieted the Democrat bullies on the left simply by recess appointing Bolton. Look how easily he put down these bullies and undermined them. It’s a good lesson for Senate Republicans or Republicans everywhere. You don’t have to be on defense with these guys; you don’t have to always be reacting. Just do what you want to do and spread the message at the same time.
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RUSH: Bolton and Roberts both, my friends, present us with opportunities to transform the debate and transform the country. If we just argue over tactics — which Republicans seem to do — we’re not going to do nearly enough. “Tactics” and “process” are not what’s important here. You know, what questions should be asked? I mean, this is a tactical thing. “Should we ask about Roe vs. Wade or should we not?” “What documents should be turned over?” I mean, those are easy questions. You can slap those away with a flyswatter. We have a majority. We do what we want! We’re going to give you the documents we want you to see, and that’s it. If you don’t like it, take your lumps.
If you don’t like what questions are going to be asked. If you don’t want to be able to ask those questions, take it, we run the show. We’re the ones with the majority. But what we’re not doing is debating substance. We’re not telling the country our view of the court versus the left’s view of the court. We’re not telling the country of our opposition to the UN versus the left’s embrace of it.
You know, future elections are not won debating over process. They’re won on big ideas. They’re won on leadership. We have a Supreme Court nominee, which means we have a wonderful opportunity to explain to the people what our beliefs in government are, including the proper role of the judiciary — and instead, we’re responding to the stupid demands of the minority. I say crush the minority, get on with our agenda, and use the bully pulpit to explain and educate what we’re doing. Why do we always have to be on defense?
“These guys are demanding documents, what are we gonna do? Oh no, they want documents. Should we answer this question, Roe vs. Wade?”
Screw all of that. We’ve got an opportunity here — particularly as I say with the Democrats finally demonstrating who liberals really are — to blow them away. We can explain that we support the Constitution, representative government, the proper role for the judiciary, that we support elections, not the tyranny of a handful of lawyers wearing black robes. That we support property rights and gun rights and political speech rights, and we support a limited central government in order to protect our individual liberties. We stand with Madison and Franklin and Washington. The liberals do not, and it’s plain as day. But it needs to be articulated from the bully pulpit. We don’t believe terrorists ought to receive due-process rights that have never before been conferred on an enemy during war. We don’t believe the courts ought to be conferring benefits on illegal immigrants. We believe the cultural issues about marriage, sex, and religion, ought to be decided by the people, not five or six lawyers in black robes on a court. We’re missing a major opportunity to explain ourselves and properly define the left. Sort of what happened after 1994. We won in 1994; we took the Congress back on ideas.
Contract with America, whatever you want to call it, but we explained who we were and we went to the people and we explained what we believe, and it worked, and then shortly after we assumed that that election meant the people were converted and convinced and we stopped explaining all this stuff and we just started implementing and the Dems did their usual attack politics and put us on the defensive again, and it seems like it constantly happens, and I think it’s probably because for so many years the Republicans were in the minority, a psychological mind-set sets in, but it’s time to broom that.
You know, Roberts may be limited on what he can say when he’s up there answering questions, but there’s no reason he should be limited in explaining his judicial philosophy — and it’s okay if he’s asked about that in detail. As far as I’m concerned, senators aren’t in any way constrained and yet where are the Republican senators? Where’s the White House on this? You know, I get weary, folks, listening to Republican after Republican claim to be like Reagan, when they’re not. They don’t have Reagan’s commitment to the movement or his willingness to speak out. They’re always reacting. They’re always avoiding, always playing defense — and I think probably one of the reasons is that there’s this fear of being partisan. I don’t know where this comes from, but it gives rise to people like McCain and so forth, the “moderates.” This fear of partisanship, if it’s really genuine, they’re in the wrong business. This is a battle of ideas.
A partisan is somebody who’s convinced his ideas are right, believes them in his or her core. That’s what makes one a partisan. That’s what elections are all about. Elections are all about partisan politics, and if you don’t want to be partisan, pick another line of work. But what’s happened here, I think, is more and more politicians are starting to copy McCain, which is simply practicing the politics of the cult of personality, and I prefer the politics of principle and big ideas. We’re not always going to win, but you always can make the case, the more often you make the case the greater your chances are of persuading more and more people who agree with you, especially now with the opening the Democrats are giving us by showing everybody who they truly are. In the case of McCain, what does he stand for? His reputation is big moderate, understanding, reasonable, not a partisan and so forth.
Well, what does all that mean? What does it mean when he stands for moderation? Does it mean that we’re to trust the man because he’s McCain? Yeah, it does, but that’s completely opposite of Reagan. We supported Reagan because of what he stood for. The left to this day continues to smear Reagan, and they were scared to death. A forty-nine-state landslide in 1984! Reagan, they said, was “slick marketing and packaging people fell for.” Nope, it was his ideas. It was his ideas. Now, you can be a McCain if you want and try to develop a personality that says, “I’m going to go with this because it’s McCain,” but I’d rather go with something because of the idea, because of what a candidate stands for.
The liberals have always and purposely lied about Reagan’s attraction, first and foremost it was his ideas are what attracted us, his leadership in promoting those ideas attracted us, and to the extent that George Bush succeeds it’s also on the same basis, his big ideas, his specific ideas in a campaign. He gave people reasons to vote for him and when he got elected, bango! He starts implementing what he said he’s going to do. Democrats say this is a trick. But, you know, it’s just an opportunity here. And what brought it all home was this recess appointment, and looking at this hysteria, this unhinged hysteria from the left today and last night about how horrible this is, because all it means is they have been rendered impotent. They didn’t defeat Bolton. They might want to say they did, but they didn’t. He’s at the United Nations as the US ambassador and he’s probably up there bullying Kofi Annan right now.
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RUSH: This is Joe in Silver Spring, Maryland. Nice to have you on the program, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, welcome back.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, so it’s funny, the sore loser mean has gone around, the Washington Post had an article today — I’m sorry, an editorial about it, and I think it’s funny. It mentioned conflict resolution. The Democrats’ conflict resolution in this area when they’re losing is to run away, to not play the game because they’re the sore losers. It reminds me of what happened in Texas when the Republicans took over the state legislature, they ran away, they ran to Oklahoma so they couldn’t vote on the redistricting.
RUSH: Exactly. But the New York Times today has an editorial on Bolton, and it’s simply deranged. The New York Times editorial today says (summarized): “Well, it really doesn’t matter because the UN’s already started a bunch of reforms up there so it really doesn’t matter.” If it doesn’t matter then why all this effort to oppose the guy? I’ll tell you why. I don’t know what’s in the water or else in the air at the New York Times building, but some of the stuff they’re writing is so convoluted, so obviously born of just seething rage that it is incomprehensible, supposedly from the newspaper of record. I got an interesting e-mail note from a friend a moment ago. “Rush, as usual you are right about Chris Dodd’s comments on Bolton and the whole question of bullying Democrats, but Dodd’s comments make it clear that the challenge here is far greater than just that. Having established the principle that the Constitution means what it doesn’t say.”
What he’s talking about here is liberal judges find things that are not in the Constitution and claim that they’re there — like abortion, or rights to racial quotas, sodomy, whatever it is. The liberals are now pushing even further by telling us that the Constitution does not mean what it does say. They’re saying, “This is an abuse of power,” the Bolton nomination and sending him up to the UN is an abuse of power.
Well, it’s a specifically enumerated power of the president in the Constitution. So the libs went after the Second Amendment and their argument there was, if the Founding Fathers had any idea what would have happened at this time in our history they would have never written that amendment. So the amendment that was there, that shouldn’t have been there, then they go find a right to privacy that gives us abortion, which is not there — and that’s been their practice. That’s been what they’ve done. They don’t like the Constitution. It doesn’t suit their needs, doesn’t fit their lifestyles. So now all of a sudden they’re going to tell us that what is in the Constitution is not there, just as they tried to do with the Second Amendment. Then the takings clause.
You know, the Constitution says that you cannot do what the Supreme Court said New London, Connecticut did — and gave them the right to do it. So now we’re rewriting law to reestablish what the Fifth Amendment already says in it. Now we’re to recess appointments. You know, they’re trying to say that this is an abuse of power. Bill Clinton used the recess appointment 140 times and not once did they say that it was an abuse of power. Glen in Tampa, nice to have you on the program, sir.
CALLER: Greetings, you beautiful human. Mega albeit disagreeable dittos, Rush. What an honor to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: What an honor to talk to you, but I’ve got to shed some light into the truth factory here. You have taught me all these years, I’ve tried to call a billion times, but today is my day ladies and gentlemen, never give up. John McCain has been a good partisan from time to time. He rejected in a Republican partisan way John Kerry’s reaching out to him to be his vice president. He supported President Bush and continues to support President Bush on his war on terror. John McCain is a man of principle, although as a good Libertarian, I do not agree with a lot of his principles. Ronald Reagan was a great communicator who articulated his principles and was a very likable man. You’re perplexed by the Republicans’ problem. True conservatism, or Libertarianism, if you will, is laissez-faire by nature because we want people to be proactive. Liberalism — socialism, if you will — is by its very nature proactive. We know better than the people. The six tyrants in black know better than the people —
RUSH: Wait a minute! Hold it just a second. Conservatism — I understand what you’re trying to say when you say that it’s laissez-faire, but we are in a battle right now and it still has to be explained. Conservatism just can’t sit around and be laissez-faire and hope people figure it out. The libs are proactive and they’re proactive in lying about what they believe and lying about the results that they’re going to get. As to McCain, you know, he flirted with Kerry for a long, long time. He has opposed Bush on tax cuts. He gave us campaign finance reform. He’s done a number of things to try to stymie Bush. He’s there at reelection time because he knows he wants the Republican vote during his own chance to run for president. I gotta go. I wish I had more time on your first successful entry to the program but I just don’t have any.