A Referendum on Barack Obama

RUSH: Chris in Provo, Utah, you’re next, and welcome to the program.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, how are you doing today?

RUSH: Just fine, sir.

CALLER: I wanted to talk — you know, I agree 100% with everything that you’ve been talking about with respect to Obama and the danger that he poses for conservatives. But I’m not really 100% convinced that the bigger danger doesn’t lie with McCain. Not so much that I support Obama in favor of McCain, but that… Well, let me explain. You know, the Republican establishment — not the base, but the establishment — they’re moving left. They’re moving towards the left and this is just another symptom of the fact that they pushed McCain on us. They’re moving in this direction because they have the conservative vote; they know they have the conservative vote. So in order to keep their jobs, in order to consolidate their power, they’re wanting to attract voters — more moderate, more left voters — and my fear is that if McCain wins this election, McCain will win, and the establishment will know forever that they do not need to appeal to conservatives any longer. Conservatives will be less down the lurch. They’ll know that they have the conservative vote. They know the conservatives will vote with them no matter what.

RUSH: Yes. This is —

CALLER: We’ll never get a conservative elected into office.

RUSH: Ohhhh, yes, we will. This is the Limbaugh Echo Syndrome. One of my warnings to people has been that if the Republicans win… Here’s the other half of it. In addition to what you said, if things hold as they do now — and, by the way, there are still many, many, many weeks to go. This is subject to change, because there’s a lot of time for all kinds of wacko crazy things to happen, but if things hold as they’re projected to now the Democrats are going to end up with a much bigger majority in both the House and the Senate. So no matter who the president is, the Democrats are going to be setting the agenda. If we elect McCain, we’re already electing a guy who likes working with Democrats anyway. So that’s a second prong of the problem. What you said is exactly right. The establishment country club blueblood Rockefeller types, after a McCain win, will come to all the conservatives — and they’ve hated us.

Not hated us; they’ve been embarrassed of us. They’ve been embarrassed of conservatives in the party because (Southern accent) a lot of us are from the South and a lot of us are pro-life.’

CALLER: (chuckling)

RUSRH: ‘You know, a lot of us have pickup trucks and guns. It makes it tough to go to the Republican convention, with all the hicks showing up at the same time wanting to get into our parties. You know, we want to go to these black tie things. We want to have refined, sophisticated parties, canapés, Chablis and so forth — and here come the Clampetts showing up looking at the ce-ment pond at the place we’re having our party!’ That’s how they look at us, these country club blue-blood Republicans, and they do not like it. So they would be more than happy to be able to sweep to victory and say to the conservatives, ‘See? See? This party doesn’t need conservatism to become a winning, broad-based coalition majority party,’ and they will be dead wrong, because they will have attracted people who are not Republicans to vote for them.

The reason that these people will be attracted is because we’ve got a candidate that’s more likable as a liberal than their candidate is. So what’s going to happen is that the Republican Party is going to lose big in future elections unless there is a conservative vice presidential running mate for Senator McCain. It is a problem, but this is why I say, Chris, that this election is a referendum on Obama. This is going to be an up or down on Obama. It will be, for the vast majority of people voting here. And they’re going to say, ‘Do I want this country led by Obama?’ and as we’re now beginning to learn, all of these old-time, time-honored dinosaur party hacks. Do we really want the Clinton administration back in power? Do we want somebody from Clinton administration running NSA? Do we want Jamie Gorelick back at the justice department? She created the wall that prevented us, our intelligence agencies from assuring information on terrorist activities overseas.

Do we really want to bring friends of Algore back? Because that’s what this is shaping up to be. Do we really want Obama with his friends like Jeremiah Wright and the whole circus that he runs around with? These are gonna be the questions that people vote on. The women that are upset that Hillary didn’t get it, they’re still going to be upset. So it’s going to be a referendum on Obama, pure and simple. The sad thing is McCain has so many opportunities here to shore up the base. He took a step today by going all-in for oil exploration and drilling on the US continental shelf. There are many, many opportunities Senator McCain has here to really draw a distinction between himself and Obama. And he doesn’t even have to, you know, cross the aisle and shake the hand of these conservatives that he doesn’t like. The next thing is, if he would just peel off on this global warming carbon footprint thing, that would be a huge thing. You know, hang tough on low taxes, making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Hang tough. Stop talking about punishing the oil executives, all that sort of thing. It wouldn’t take much and he could really, really draw some distinctions here that would not cause him to lose any independents that he so desperately wants.