RUSH: Doug in Bonita Springs, Florida. Nice to have you on the program.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Yeah, last hour you mentioned that President Bush has become a little bit more partisan lately, and I just had a general question. Do you think politicians advance their cause better by attacking the other side or by pointing out the benefits and strengths of their own positions and —
RUSH: I think you gotta do both because when you’re attacking the Democrats, you’re defending yourself. The way they’ve been on the rampage, Republicans need to fight back on some of this stuff. I’m talking about the guys running for office, the political aspirants. But at the same time you do have to have an agenda. You have to give people a reason to vote for you so that you have a mandate. People respond to ideas. You know, Reagan won two landslides, and the libs all said, ‘Well, that’s just slick marketing and packaging. The American people were fooled.’ Nope. People loved Ronald Reagan personally. They heard him. He communicated. They knew what his policies were. They were very simple: Cut taxes, rebuild the military, and wipe out the Soviet Union.
CALLER: On the Iraq war, all you hear is the Democrats attack. They don’t have any idea of what to do — and the Republicans, they never play up the strengths of the outcome of a positive —
RUSH: No, because they’re scared. They’re scared because they believe that the will of the people — it’s easy for them. This kind of makes me mad. The Republicans are saying, ‘Yeah, we lost the House and Senate because of Iraq.’ No, you didn’t lose it because of Iraq. It’s a convenient little excuse. Because when they say they lost it because of Iraq they’re shuffling the blame for their loss on Bush. Democrats do not have a plan for Iraq. You say, ‘Yes, they do. It’s called defeat.’ Their plan for Iraq having us get out of there is going to embolden the enemy. Ed Koch has column. A Democrat, Ed Koch has a column today that if they succeed in defeating the United States — if the Democrats succeed in defeating the United States military, pulling them out of there — we are going to face 20, 30 years of hell in this country from the militant Islamists who are going to be so emboldened. The Democrats don’t think that will happen. They must not think that will happen. They must think that the way to win this is to lose it. One of my biggest beefs with the debate was that there wasn’t nearly enough criticism of Democrats. I know the host and the moderators tried to limit that because it’s a Republican primary, but the answer to your question is both.
The dangers posed by Democrat success need to be spelled out. The pitfalls, the problems, the sunsetting of tax cuts, the welcoming back of an even — if you think the Republicans have been spending like nuts, wait ’til the Democrats get control, folks. You may think it’s bad out there now and you say it can’t get any worse. It can, and you combine massive new spending with the termination of the tax cuts, which is going to add up to a tax increase, and you combine that with the resulting economic slowdown. If you give them full reigns on power to start messing around with the economy based on global warming, it can most certainly get worse. The Republicans have a duty, I would think, to spell this out. You don’t have to personally attack Democrats to do it. This is about ideas. I believe people respond to ideas. I think people love learning. I think people like being exposed to actual thoughts that they can learn from that inspire and motivate them because that’s what’s going to keep them inspired and motivated through the election. You can’t just run around ripping Democrats for the sake of it. There has to be a reason to it, and there’s plenty of reasons, and there’s plenty of substantive reasons to criticize and attack Democrats and their ideas and policies. The primary one is they’re trying to hide what their real ideas are from everybody.