A Pep Talk for Conservatives

RUSH: I have not forgotten the pep talk. I’ve not forgotten Pete in Houston. My fertile mind wanders in many directions. They all relate. I never lose my place. What Pete in Houston wanted, what Mona from Lemay, Missouri, wanted yesterday, is to hear an answer from me that would never satisfy them, no matter what I said, it wouldn’t satisfy them. No matter what answer I give would be annoying. Did Pete want me to tell him that McCain is conservative? ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. He’s going to be fine once the election is over, once he’s won, he’s got things to do here, he’s gotta go out and get Democrats, independents, but don’t worry, McCain is going to be a conservative, he’s going to be fine.’ Did Pete want me to tell him that McCain can’t be trusted, so don’t vote? Did Pete want me to tell him to go third party for somebody like Bob Barr? Pete wanted me, Mona wanted me yesterday to fix what’s gone wrong, to fix what has occurred.

I am not responsible for what’s gone wrong. I am the rock. I am the bulwark. I have not wavered. What has gone wrong is not because of me. I’m not trying to absolve myself of having any involvement here or having a role, but in terms of having a role with what’s gone wrong, it hasn’t been me. People are seeking answers to questions that you know really have no good answers. If they were good answers, I would have been the first to come up with one. There really aren’t any good answers for this situation. It has nothing to do with leadership; it has everything to do with common sense and logic. But there are things that we can do nevertheless. I tried to discuss this yesterday with Mona. Look, at some point, however it happens, the Republican Party, as it’s currently constituted, is going to have to lose, and it’s going to have to lose big. Can I tell you what’s really happening with all this? You keep asking me, why do the country club Republicans and the blue bloods and the liberal Rockefeller Republicans, why do they want to control the party? It’s follow the money, folks. You ever heard of K Street? You ever heard of lobbyists, special interests and all this sort of stuff? Look, Washington Republicans and Washington Democrats have a lot in common. And that is an agreement to sort of trade off on who runs the town every now and then so that both sides get to dip both hands in all the pockets that they can.

You and I are not of Washington. You and I, we don’t get to pal around with lobbyists, we’re not special interests, we don’t find ways to go to Washington earning $140,000 a year and ten years later come out of there multimillionaires. They do. We care about ideas. We care about the country. We’re not interested in power for the exercise of power. We’re interested in preserving the country as it has been preserved for us by our forbears. But sometimes that doesn’t become the objective of political parties. The Democrat Party cares about power, their own, forever, uninterrupted. Our side is happy for a couple little periods of time where they can get their hands and their beaks moistened as well. This is why Reagan was never really loved by the blue-blooded Rockefeller types. He brought ideas to the party, and he brought landslide victories. But he was not universally loved, even in his own party. So what we’re really up against here is a party apparatus that does not have the same objectives. Inside Washington — I’m not talking about the state parties. The state parties are whole different animals. And that’s why I say, and I’ve gotta go real quickly here: Focus on the people in your local government, state legislatures, governorships, that’s where the conservative farm team is. Bobby Jindal is an example, from Louisiana. That’s where they are, find ’em, support ’em, promote ’em, make ’em confident because that’s where the next cycle of the fix will lie.

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RUSH: Here is Franz in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. Hi, Franz.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Mega dittos.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: Rush, I want to tell you: the last caller that was calling you a wimp? That’s so not the truth. You are the person, you’re our coach. And I know it’s a tough day for you, and I don’t expect you to give us a big pep talk today. I want you to sit down and I want you to give us — I mean I am 38 years old. I do want to run for politics. But you’re afraid that everybody and their brother is going to hammer you because you’re a Republican. You know, you have a little joke there where you come into the schoolyard and you turn down the radio. I live in a very Democratic society, my in-laws, everybody. I’m the only Republican, and I take abuse day after day. I love what you said about the president yesterday. The man is a great man. Sure, things right now don’t look so good. Twenty years down the road when the history is written, it’s going to look — it’s going to be great.

RUSH: It won’t take that long. I predict to you that three years from now, maybe four, people are going to be looking back and saying, ‘You know, that Bush guy wasn’t so bad.’

CALLER: I agree with you. I think the thing that you need to do for us is — you know, maybe on the website — give us some direction for the young guys, because I know I’m not the only guy out there that wants to run that’s scared of getting hammered. I think if you give us a little bit of guidance, I think my generation — out of any of us — we’ve been given so much, and we give our kids so much, that we need to start pulling back, and we need to start saying, ‘Hey, we can… We can… There’s not that much wrong with it.’

RUSH: You know, let me tell you. I don’t have a lot of time.

CALLER: Sure.

RUSH: This being hammered?

CALLER: Mmm-hmm?

RUSH: That’s the one thing I can tell you about very briefly. Look at it as a badge o’honor! Of course you’re going to get hammered as a Republican conservative! The meaning of you being hammered is precisely because you will have been effective and that will scare them. You’re going get hammered. Of course you are! You need to look at that as a badge of honor and hope that you keep getting hammered.

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RUSH: Tammy in California City, California, next up you are on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I was listening to Pete, and he was saying that he was going to vote for Obama to send a message that, you know, he doesn’t like the way things are done; but as far as I can remember in my 47 years, the only time things weren’t done the Democrats’ way was when President Reagan was in office and when Newt was the speaker of the House. All the rest of my life —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Newt… Wait a minute, now. The only time things weren’t done the Democrats… Oh, okay. I misunderstood you. Okay, go ahead.

CALLER: So the Republicans never get their way except for those two times. The Democrats just roll over the Republicans all the time, so how does he think it’s going to send a message?

RUSH: Well, because the theory is that Obama is such a disaster and with a Democrat majority in the House and Senate, that they would literally wreck the US economy. It would be Jimmy Carter’s second term, which led to Ronald Reagan, by the way, among many factors. I’m not trying to take anything away from Reagan, obviously. But Jimmy Carter with 21% interest rates and 14% unemployment and 68-degree thermostats in the winter, and Jimmy Carter telling people that the problem was the American people being lazy and so forth, that led to a 44-state landslide by Ronaldus Magnus. So the theory is, if the Republicans are not going to stand up for themselves and are not going to provide leadership in opposing liberalism, all right, fine. Also, part of the theory is, ‘Just clean house. If there’s some deadwood in the Republican Party in elective office, get rid of them! At some point, start over. If they’re not doing their job, then clean house and get rid of them. It’s too important to just leave to chance.’ So that’s why the people that like Pete are anything in that regard. There’s also a second aspect to it. If indeed you have these huge majorities in the House and Senate, okay? And you got McCain as president. Well, McCain agrees with Obama, global warming, illegal immigration, cap-and-trade policies. What’s the difference?

CALLER: (laughs)

RUSH: Besides, McCain loves going along with his Democrats. That’s how he gets his credentials. If the Democrats are a vast majority in the House and Senate, and if the country’s going to go down the tubes anyway, who do we want to get the credit for it or the blame? Do we want Democrats or Republicans to get the blame for it?

CALLER: Definitely the Democrats ’cause it’s all their doing.

RUSH: That’s why people are thinking, bite the bullet, four years of Obama. Look, let me just shoot straight, folks — and I’m glad you called, Tammy, because I’ve gotta get to these McCain speech sound bites. Let me just shoot straight. This is what we face, just in a real world situation — and we all can do it. We have done it throughout our lives. One of the things about this whole discussion that sort of gnaws away at me is how focused we are on what’s going on in Washington here. Now, I understand there’s a logical reason for it. It’s a presidential race, and we would love to have somebody leading the country, articulating our values, and inspiring the American people. That’s not going to happen. We have got to face it. As conservatives, we are not going to have an inspirational leader articulating our values, inspiring the American people. Thus, therefore, we are going to have to inspire ourselves. We are going to have to lead ourselves — and we’ve done this.

We did it through the Clinton years. We have done it through any number of previous administrations. For those of you old enough, we had to go through LBJ. We had to go through any number of bad presidents. Jimmy Carter. We triumphed. At some point, when this is all over, when this election season is all over, what we’re going to have to realize here is something that’s always true, regardless who’s in the White House: We have the power to make ourselves content. We have the power to pursue happiness on our own without regard to who’s in Washington, realizing that Washington is going to be a huge obstacle. It’s just going to require more fortitude from all of us to work past it, to work harder, to overcome the obstacles that are going to be placed in our way. State governments are going to be raising taxes, too. There are going to be some serious challenges to economic prosperity if the Democrats get as much control as they seek, because they will try to wreck as much of the economy as possible. Now, they may not look at it as wrecking it, but that’s what’s going to happen if they follow through on all these things they’re promising.

This global warming bill, which is theirs — and John Warner’s, but the Democrats are the ones running it through — is a great example of what they’re going to do. The whole global warming hoax debate is an example of what’s ahead. But America as a nation is made great not by who’s in Washington. On occasion, we do have greatness in Washington; we have monuments for those who have been great. They’ve saved the nation; they have persevered during wartime. We’ve got how many monuments, five or six, out of 40 or 41 presidents? But even during the times of great leaders and great presidents, they could have been great all they wanted, but it’s the people… See, it’s people that define greatness. Have you ever heard about American greatness, American exceptionalism? What is that? American greatness, American exceptionalism is all of us, not them — and I’m not making an us-versus-them argument here. I’m just saying we’re the ones who make the country work, you are. We’re the ones that get up every day and make this economy hum. They’re the ones who put obstacles in our way! Even when we have a friendly administration, we still have obstacles in our way.

There are previous policies that even our guys can’t get rid of. Yet we always triumph because we have the freedom, the inertia, the energy, the ambition, the desire, the drive. We’re just going to need a lot more of those things, and that’s what we face. But that’s such an opportunity, too, for genuine happiness. If you let your happiness and your contentment — because happiness is elusive; if you let your contentment — be permanently affected by whoever is in Washington, then you are sacrificing so much of your own potential as a human being, as a family leader, family member, or what have you — as an American as well. Yeah, it’s great to have leaders in Washington that are ours, but we’re not going to have that this time around. It’s just a reality. We’re going to have it on the EIB Network. There’ll be plenty of inspiration and motivation here. It isn’t going to be elected leadership. So all is not lost. These cycles have happened many times. You know, I was watching the other day — I meant to comment on this. Time just didn’t permit it. It was a ceremony, and I wish I could remember the soldier’s name, who got the Congressional Medal of Honor. What was his last name?

McGinnis. McGinnis. He was a nineteen-year-old soldier who threw himself on the grenade, yes, to save his unit. And there was a ceremony in the White House to present the medal to his parents, with the president, with an official military contingent, speechifying and so forth and so on. This got covered on the cable news channels. I think Fox covered a little bit of it. Yeah, Ross McGinnis, 19 years old. But in the heat of this presidential campaign there wasn’t a whole lot said about it. But as I was watching it — and particularly focusing on the parents of this 19-year-old man — I got to thinking, as I always do, it’s just such a shame that we honor these people when they’re dead. Congressional Medal of Honor doesn’t only go to the dead, but it’s still a shame. We name streets after people after they’re gone. We build monuments to them after they’re gone. We do all this for their families and for us and for the living, and it’s not going to change. I’m looking at his parents. They lost their 19-year-old son — and there are military families like that all over this country who have lost their sons and their daughters in this conflict and in previous conflicts. But I looked at those two people, and I saw the country.

Those are the people who make the country work: Ross McGinnis’ mom and dad, and Ross McGinnis. Those are the people who make the country work. They’re genuine heroes. It had to be a proud moment, but you could just see the combination of honor and sadness on both of their faces at the same time, and my heart just went out to them. My heart went out to these people because nobody knew who they were before this happened. They weren’t seeking fame. They weren’t making embarrassing life decisions, embarrassing their family and this sort of thing. They’re just salt-of-the-earth people, backbone of America. They raised a son who wanted to save and defend his country, and he did. He lost his life in the process. I said, ‘Those are the people that matter. Those are the people that deserve the respect and the awe and the honor that we all have when we think about the greatness of this country and American exceptionalism.’ It was right there in the White House that day with Mr. and Mrs. McGinnis and that Congressional Medal of Honor. And I don’t want to impugn any elected officials that were there, because many of them have served, some of them have, and have families that served, or family members that serve. But your heart didn’t go out to the people in charge of the ceremony. President Bush had tears in his eyes, as all this was taking place. So when you think about what you can do with all these obstacles, like somebody in the White House we disagree with, it’s really not much of an obstacle when you think of what other people have faced and lost and have to overcome. So, we just have to continue to make America great in spite of who happens to be leading the damn country. We’ve shown that we can do it in the past, which means we can keep doing it.

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RUSH: Folks, there are millions, millions, millions of people, you among them, out there working every day to make the country work. At the same time, there are others who are sitting around, trying to figure out how they can take away part of what you have worked for. After they have figured out how to take it away from you, they then scheme to find ways to give away some of it to others who haven’t worked for it, so that they will feel better about themselves, and vote for the people who are taking away from you what you’ve earned. We just have to work harder to overcome these obstacles.