RUSH: Peter in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Yes, sir, it’s a privilege to talk to you, sir.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: You’re a neighbor. Anyway, I’m talking about the waning liberalism that you talk about from time to time.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Just keep ’em around just so we know what they stand for, anyway. But I’m a member of the Republican Party, and Mel Martinez being the chairman of the GOP? I don’t think he’s a conservative, and I’m just saying, “Where’s the waning?”
RUSH: Yeah, I can understand the question. I think that liberalism still is waning. I don’t believe liberalism “won” last year’s elections, but — see, here’s the thing. Elections have consequences. I hearken back to the month of October when I was reading more and more blogs and listening to more and more callers tell me that the Republicans “need to learn a lesson.” It’s kind of like the liberals are now saying America needs to learn a lesson, so we might as well lose the war in Iraq? Republicans were calling, conservatives calling, “We might as well lose! They need to learn a lesson. They haven’t done what we wanted.” They have consequences. Now the election results are in, and it doesn’t matter why; the result, the perception of the result is that liberals won, and they are back in power in the House. They don’t have as much power in the Senate, but they are there. It doesn’t, to me, mean that liberalism is gaining and has become more and more part of the fabric of American life.
It’s a fabric of a significant portion of life, academia, entertainment, Hollywood, that kind of thing. The big thing that happened out there is that conservatives stopped being conservatives, and your example of who’s now running the RNC is a great example, although he doesn’t do day-to-day operations. Somebody else does. But all this is the result of one thing: The absence of elected conservative leadership in Washington. I am telling you, Peter, that if there were that, then you would see conservatives in this country rallying in droves. Ronald Reagan won two landslides. I hate to keep talking about Reagan, but he was the last elected conservative president who was an actual conservative, not just conservative on certain things. People react to leadership, and when it’s not there — especially at high office, elected levels — then people are going to navigate on their own. They’re going to freelance, and you appear to have chaos out there. But make no mistake about it, liberalism is not gaining, but it appears to have with the election results.