RUSH: Andrew in Albuquerque, New Mexico, welcome to the program.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Good, sir.
CALLER: Thank you for having me on, sir.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Sir, I’ve been listening to your talks about conservatism for the past few days, and you say you don’t want conservatism to be redefined in the upcoming election. And could you just explain to skulls full of mush like me and those in Rio Linda, has conservatism ever been defined, or is it constantly being redefined? I mean, you look at somebody like Pat Buchanan, and then you look at Newt Gingrich, both call themselves conservative, but their positions differ drastically when it comes to things like foreign policy and trade. Who has the correct conservative position on things like that?
RUSH: Well, see, interesting question. Buchanan, back when I first started this program in 1988, and even beyond — in fact, when I was growing up in Cape Girardeau, Buchanan was one of the editorial writers for the St. Louis Globe Democrat, which is now defunct. It was the morning paper. Then he got his own syndicated column, and he was one of the people that inspired me. He was an original thinker, and he was as down the middle, solid a conservative as you could find, and many of the things that he touts today still are. But when he ran for president in 1992 in the Republican primaries, he adopted a lot of populist issues in order to appeal to voters, and one of the populist issues that he adopted was the anti-NAFTA stance and the free trade business. His stance now on internationalism and defending America’s foreign policy is not what I would call conservative.
I think Newt — you’re really making this tough on me — I think when Newt Gingrich buys into the global warming hoax and wants to use government to fix it, to come up with policies and so forth, and when he has a laundry list of policies, bold propositions, he calls for a new era, that all involve enlarging the government, it’s not conservative, and it’s not the kind of thing that the Contract with America was in the campaign that Newt ran in 1994 that successfully won the House of Representatives for the Republicans for the first time in 40 years. Conservatism, Andrew, you have strains of it. When I say redefine conservatism, I don’t want to have somebody who is pro-choice called a conservative. I don’t want to have somebody who is for tax increases, income tax increases, or opposes, more importantly, tax cuts, called a conservative. I don’t want to have anybody who stands in the way of individuals prospering on their own, triumphing on their own, called conservative. I could sit here and give you as complicated a definition of conservatism as you wanted or as simple a definition.
CALLER: May I ask you this question, sir?
RUSH: By all means.
CALLER: Just as an objective observer, I’ve been watching our field of candidates —
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: — and the guy that I see getting across his message of beating down government to size and letting the people of this country make this country great, the guy who’s getting that message across the best is Ron Paul, to me. I don’t know if you agree or disagree with that.
RUSH: I think the Paul campaign has embarked on an attempt to persuade, because — by the way, folks, have you noticed, since we started talking about this on Monday, all over the Drive-By Media, the debate is now being had, who’s a real conservative, who’s the real Reagan. I’m getting interview requests. We move the issues on this show. We move the news. And I think the Paul campaign is trying to move in here with their little sloganeering that he is the one true conservative, and I would profoundly disagree.