RUSH: To Lemay, Missouri, not far from St. Louis. Okay, Ed, you can take down the music there. Here’s Mona. Mona, nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I’m a longtime listener, and I have some things to say to you that —
RUSH: You have the nicest, breathiest voice.
CALLER: Well, I’m glad. I’m glad you think so. No, thank you very much.
RUSH: You’re welcome.
CALLER: That was a lovely compliment. Anyway, I want to say some challenging things to you, and I don’t want you to do what you usually do when you’re challenged, which is say a few words and then say, ‘You know, I’d love to say more about this but we have a hard break coming up and I can’t. Thanks for calling.’ I really want you to answer these. First of all —
RUSH: Gee whiz, when did we get married?
CALLER: You wish. The first thing is —
RUSH: This is a fireplug here, folks. You’re good, Mona, you’re good.
CALLER: Yeah, I’ve had some practice, but anyway, you’re the cream of the crop. I love arguing with you. Anyway, you are scared to death of the whole third-party issue. And one thing I’d like to say to you when you always say, ‘Oh, they never work, so we shouldn’t do that,’ is that, as far as I can remember, it’s never been tried when the constituency of the actual candidate in place is hate the candidate in place.
RUSH: You’re talking about Senator McCain?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: So you think a third party would work because most of the Republican Party hates McCain, or most Republican voters hate McCain, so this would be an ideal time to do a third party?
CALLER: Right. He’s not a Republican. He’s just seized the power of the so-called Republican Party, and he’s off doing his own thing. This is a McCain trip that he’s on.
RUSH: She’s actually right, you’re right about that, Mona. I mean, I can’t argue, and, in fact, I have further comments of my own coming up on this in the next hour.
CALLER: Well, you know, I just believe that if a third party was organized around a real conservative, John McCain would be left in the dust, you know, wondering what happened, left just where he was ’til he suddenly rose to power so quickly. The other thing I want to say is it seems to me, I don’t believe that you have another plan for Operation Chaos. I know you say you do —
RUSH: Uh-oh.
CALLER: I don’t think you do, Rush. I think you’re scrambling around, you know, barbecuing steaks trying to think of something and that the person who’s got the real power in this election is George Soros. And I wonder why you’re letting George Soros be the real power that’s going on in this election process, and you’re standing around talking about Operation Chaos, when there’s nothing coming and you’re just anxious to sell the rest of your caps and T-shirts.
RUSH: Oh, okay, now we got to the nub of it, now we’ve cut to the quick.
CALLER: You should be the power in this election.
RUSH: All I care about is selling my Operation Chaos —
CALLER: No, that’s just —
RUSH: You’re reading my mind. You’re out there, you’re telling everybody what you think I’m thinking. I don’t really have an Operation Chaos plan going forward. All I want to do is sell my fashion line from Operation Chaos. You don’t care, you just want to sell T-shirts. You’re letting George Soros ace you out in the power game. You think that’s what’s in my mind, you’re reading my mind?
CALLER: Well, I think I’m reading your mind better than you’re reading your mind, because you don’t want to admit to that. But if you have big plans and if you have as much power as all of us know you have, then where is it, why isn’t it doing something, and why are you letting George Soros get away with all the stuff he’s getting away with? I consider you the ultimate power in this country.
RUSH: What is George Soros getting away with?
CALLER: He’s getting away with backing Obama and getting all the media and everybody —
RUSH: All right. All right.
CALLER: — he’s the one that —
RUSH: Mona, Mona, Mona.
CALLER: — everybody to do all this stuff.
RUSH: Mona!
CALLER: Huh?
RUSH: I have to go to a hard break.
CALLER: You better not.
RUSH: (laughing) Can you hang on?
CALLER: Only if you promise to come back.
RUSH: I’m going to come back. It’s going to be a while because I got a hard break, but don’t go away.
CALLER: I’ll be here.
RUSH: I know.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We now go back to Lemay, Missouri, and Mona. Now, Mona, we have some serious time ahead of us here so I don’t want you operating under this false notion that I run away from challenging callers by saying, ‘Oh, looky, a hard break, we have to go, sorry, Mona.’ That’s not going to happen to you.
CALLER: Well, I’ve heard you do it before.
RUSH: Look, forget that. It’s because it happens to be true. There are things called hard breaks.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: But look what happened here, I have held you through two of them.
CALLER: Okay, well, I’m very grateful.
RUSH: You have wounded me to the heart here, Mona.
CALLER: I’m very grateful.
RUSH: You have wounded me to the heart because you have accused me of bluffing on Operation Chaos and having nothing further planned. I have a 20-year broadcast history on this program, and I have countless examples of where I have had substance, we have had successful campaigns, programs, what have you, and all of that seems to count for nothing. Now you say I’m just bluffing because I want to get rid of my Operation Chaos fashion line.
CALLER: Rush, listen, you’re misunderstanding me. You don’t have to convince me of your talent and all the wonderful things you’ve done. In my estimation, you are my hero. They don’t come any higher than you and I’m not a lockbox woman, I’m just a very passionate woman, and I feel like I’m being threatened by Obama and McCain, and I’m waiting for you to come save me, really.
RUSH: All right, one of the things —
CALLER: You’re the one that can do it, and I don’t see you doing it, and you’re my hero.
RUSH: Mr. Snerdley told me during the break that there are there some more people with the same questions, on hold. He gets a lot of phone calls from people who appear worried because we got Obama, and it’s a known quantity, we have McCain, and there’s really not that much difference when you get down to brass tacks as far as conservatism is concerned. What do we do? Can’t stomach voting Obama, just can’t do it, just can’t see it. But voting for McCain is not exciting at all, either, so what do we do? I have attempted to address this in recent programs. One of the things that I think anybody in a circumstance like this, be it in a national political campaign or even something like this in your personal life, what you have to do is assess honestly where you are. And here’s where we are. And it’s not pleasant to say and it’s not pleasant to hear. Where we are is we have squandered every victory we had since 1993, 1994, the House Republican freshman class taking over —
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: — Bush winning in 2000 and 2004 with a majority Republican Congress for much of his two terms, we squandered it.
CALLER: I realize that.
RUSH: All right, so it is what it is. That means it has to be rebuilt.
CALLER: Yeah, but the way that you suggest doing it is not, you know, you don’t sound like —
RUSH: What is fundamental to rebuilding it, though?
CALLER: This is what you sound like. Did you see the movie High Noon with Gary Cooper?
RUSH: Yeah, a long, long time ago when I was a little kid.
CALLER: Yeah, well, he comes out in the street and he takes care of it. He doesn’t say to all the townspeople, ‘Look, you know, there’s some bad guys around here, and what we need to do is rebuild this town, and 20 years from now it will be great again.’
RUSH: What do you want me to do, run for office?
CALLER: Well, of course, but you would never do it. I know you would never do it.
RUSH: That’s right, because of the pay cut.
CALLER: You could be like George Soros and find somebody who could run and who everybody would love and everybody would vote for, you could do that. If he can do it, you can do it.
RUSH: Now, you know, this comparison that you’re making to me and George Soros is a bit flawed because George Soros is an independently wealthy multiple billionaire.
CALLER: I didn’t say you had to pay for this whole thing yourself. I’m just saying you could organize it. There has to be jillions of really wealthy Republicans and conservatives, excuse me, in this country who would rally around a real conservative and everybody could, you know, chip in.
RUSH: At the right time. This is not the right time. Nobody’s going to put that kind of money behind what, at this late date; would be a losing effort. This is what I mean about assessing where you are. George Soros, for the most part, has lost far more than he’s won. George Soros did not get Kerry elected. George Soros did not get rid of George W. Bush. George Soros has given $40 million to a group here to bash McCain that said that Soros might be the guy behind Obama, but Soros would support whoever the Democrat nominee is. He’s just anti-Republican, period. Doesn’t matter who the Republican is. Even if McCain is as close to Soros as any Republican ever will be, he hates Republicans. He’s just going to get rid of them no matter how.
CALLER: I can’t imagine a time in history when real conservatives in this country would be more apt to rally around and act on a real conservative who was put into the race even at this late date. It’s not all that late, considering the negativity that people have for John McCain.
RUSH: Mona, I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. In terms of the way you’re describing the mind-set of a lot of conservatives. But the time for something like this has to be right, and don’t forget, the people of this country generally get what they want, and the reason I say that, and the reason I’m making a point here about assessing where we are is — by the way, don’t for a minute think I am not just as distressed as you are. Here we have the Democrat Party in an abject free fall, nominating somebody that ought to be losing in a 49- to 50-state landslide, and who have we nominated? I’m as frustrated as you are by this. But the problem is that we conservatives who are not in government, those of us in media, those of us in the think tanks, those of us just in the grassroots, it’s great that we’re here, and it’s great that we’re making all these advances, but the problem is, there hasn’t been any elected conservative leadership in the Republican Party advancing it. And so it’s had nowhere to go, other than as a voice. But it has not been a movement. President Bush has not led a movement. There have not been any Republicans in Congress to lead the movement because the president is the titular head of the party, and to do so would be going against the president, that’s political suicide.
CALLER: Well, I think the response has to meet the problem. And the problem we have is so serious that if we wait another four years, or ’til the next election — to think of what could happen in —
RUSH: The first midterm election is the target here. Not 2012, but 2010. But your third-party thing, let’s say that we could do it, let’s say that a number of us could get together and find the ideal conservative and get out there and have this guy right now start running say as a third party under the so-called Conservative Party ticket, I’m going to tell you with as much honesty as I can the only thing that would happen as a result is guarantee the election of Obama. We would be splitting the Republican vote because right now, much of the Republican Party elitist machine money is behind McCain, they are deeply invested in him, and they are not conservatives first, they are Republicans first. What’s going to have to happen — and you don’t want to hear this — what’s going to have to happen is these people are going to have to lose, and they’re going to have to lose big time and they’re going to have to have the Republican Party become a minority party once again like it was for all of those years before it is ripe to be reformed and taken over again. This will happen because the people running this party and the people responsible for nominating McCain have guaranteed that they are just the Democrat Party Light, and when you have a chance to vote for the real Democrat or the Democrat light, you’re going to vote for the real one. When this party is more closely associated with Big Government liberalism as the Democrat Party is, it cannot win.
CALLER: So what can Operation Chaos possibly do that’s going to make any difference?
RUSH: What Operation Chaos and what this program and what all of us need to focus on is discrediting the whole notion of Big Government liberalism and tax increases in the minds of the American people. This is where it must continue to start and must continue to operate, because creating an informed, participating electorate is the first key to winning elections. Then you need the candidate running on an agenda that these people support. Look, right this week, the US Senate is debating the most massive transfer of wealth in the history of the country, the so-called climate tax bill, or the Warner-Lieberman bill. Now, it doesn’t have a chance of passage this time around. There are even a lot of Democrats opposed to it. Bush is going to veto it. The House of Representatives is not going to take it up. But the fact is it’s going to be back next year. Now, the only way to defeat this bill ultimately is going to be the same way the immigration bill was defeated, and that is with an informed public refusing to accept it. But they’re going to have to be told what’s in this bill.
CALLER: Yeah, but you’ve been educating people for 20 years, Rush, and you still have to admit now that the greatest threat to our country is ignorance, after all this time, there’s still —
RUSH: I know.
CALLER: — there’s always going to be ignorance.
RUSH: It’s the most expensive commodity we have. But I’m telling you, where would we be without this, where would we be without 20 years of this program and the associated conservative media that’s sprung up? We would never have won the house in 1994. We would not have won the White House in 2000. You gotta be honest and assess the progress that’s been made.
CALLER: Well, you know, when Ronald Reagan came around, I don’t think it was because there was — you know, the whole country had a mind-set that was ready and willing for Ronald Reagan. He just appeared; he did it.
RUSH: Wrong.
CALLER: I think that’s what we’ve gotta do.
RUSH: Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. We wouldn’t have had Reagan were it not for the bumbling ineptitude of Jimmy Carter. And look, by the way, look at how long it — wait a minute —
CALLER: — Bush, isn’t that good enough?
RUSH: Look at how long it took Reagan, Mona. He lost his first presidential bid against the establishment Republicans who have taken the party over again now. He lost against Gerald Ford. He was the star of the convention, he was the hero of the convention, but the delegates still went for Gerald Ford, he was the incumbent president. It took Reagan — his first Goldwater speech was 1964, then he runs for governor. It took Reagan 16 years to get to the White House from the moment he first had eyes on it, 16 years. And if it weren’t for Jimmy Carter and all the malaise, the message that Reagan had would not have resonated. The reason it resonated was twofold: Reagan’s a great communicator, and he was right. But people were miserable, and they were fed up with their own president telling them they were the reason the country was in the tank, when the fact was the reason the country was in the tank was because of Democrats like Jimmy Carter. And Reagan came along, and he said, Big Government is the problem; Big Government’s not the solution. Our problem today is that too many Republicans and pseudoconservatives in the elite media think that Big Government is the answer. We’re always going to fight this battle. We’re always going to be fighting it.
CALLER: We’ve had enough of George Bush to know that Big Government isn’t the answer. Everybody’s already set up, everybody’s already ready for the Ronald Reagan of our time who happens to be you, and it’s just too bad for the rest of us that you won’t be president, because that may be what it takes, but since you’re not going to do it, you know, we might as well all just give up.
RUSH: Well, you’re so sweet, and you’re so nice, I don’t know. You’re making me feel a little embarrassed here, you’re making me feel even a little inadequate, Mona, you know, that I’m not doing enough. I understand the role of leadership, I really do. But part of leadership is getting people —
CALLER: You have people.
RUSH: — to do things they don’t want to do, getting people motivated and inspired to follow. I’ve gotta answer some questions for a reporter in a couple days, and his first question is, ‘Imagine you’re president, you have unlimited power, what are the five or six things that you would do, five or six agenda items that you would use in the exercise of your power?’ And the first thing that I wrote down in answering this question was, the first thing I would do is I would tell the American people that they’re the ones that make the country work, not me, and that they’re going to have to continue to make the country work, and my job is gonna be to get as many obstacles out of their way as possible, and I’m going to talk to them about American exceptionalism, and I’m going to remind them how great their country is, and I’m going to tell them I’m sick and tired every day of hearing in the news media how we’re going to hell in a handbasket. I’m tired of hearing about the gas price. I’m tired of hearing about oil. I’m tired of hearing about global warming. I’m tired of hearing about a recession. I’m tired of hearing nothing but negative, negative, negative. We live in the greatest country on earth. You all know it. It’s time for you to get busy and to keep making the country work as you always have and I’m going to get the people that stand in your way out of your way.
CALLER: Well, I’m just going to end by telling you that, you know, I think that if you got up and said those things, everyone would listen to you, because I think you are the Ronald Reagan, at least in my eyes, of this country, and I can’t imagine anybody people would listen to more, other than you, or who could get things done other than you. You’re my hero, and I guess I just wish things could be different.
RUSH: They will be. They will be. Not going anywhere. Now, Mona, not going to go anywhere. And I thank you so much for what you said. I’m still learning to take compliments even after 20 years. It’s sort of embarrassing to be compared to Ronald Reagan, but nevertheless, I want to send you away on as much of a positive note as I can. The biggest threats to our prosperity this nation’s faced in the last 20 years has been stopped right here on this program: national health care, Hillary Clinton, unfettered illegal immigration, stopped right here, global warming, stopped right here. It is not going to happen this year. It’s not going to happen as long as we’re around, these big-time tax increases expanding the federal government. Obama, the messiah, the untouchable, we’ve exposed the phoniness of Obama. This is not the time to give up on anything, Mona. It really isn’t. More progress has been made than you realize. You’re just down and out because of McCain. I understand this. We’re going to deal with it. Now, I gotta really go, Mona, because I am seven minutes beyond my hard break and I did it for you, and it was well worth it. Thanks much.