What Can Conservatives Do Now?

RUSH: Bill in Stuart, Florida, right up the road from here. Nice to have you on the program, sir.

CALLER: Yeah, hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: Here in Florida, and yesterday you came on the program and first said — man, I’m nervous, so I’ll just try not to look like an idiot — but you said why do we wait on the Supreme Court every year in June. Well, why we wait, Rush, or why we listen to what they have to say, because they’re the law of the land. Anthony Kennedy has been the most powerful man in the world for the last three weeks, and we don’t have congressmen, we don’t even have a president who will stand up to him. Last night I saw on TV Bobby Jindal, and I know you probably heard this, he said that since the Supreme Court won’t let ’em give the death penalty to a child rapist, now they’re going to castrate ’em, and he said he didn’t care what the Supreme Court thinks. I tell you, I like to hear guys like that, Rush. But what I want to know is, is how do people like me, how do the people like us, conservatives, how do we get our country back? I want to tell you, if you’ll let me talk just a second, my wife last week on the oil prices, the subcommittee, my wife got on the e-mail, tried to get through to the congressmen who were on the subcommittee. If you’re not in their district, you can’t even get in their e-mail. Mel Martinez, conservative from Florida, who I voted for, sends you out a form letter, never answers your questions once you send him anything, says it’s the oil companies’ fault. How do we get rid of these people? How do get our country back?

RUSH: You vote them out of office, and you focus on voting on conservatives, not Republicans.

CALLER: Okay, Rush, that’s a good answer. When Mel Martinez ran —

RUSH: But it’s not going to happen tomorrow. It’s not going to happen tomorrow. It’s not going to happen next year. This is something that’s going to have to be the focus of a long-term project, and it’s going to take people willing to be involved in a long-term basis. Nothing, nothing happens tomorrow. Now, this business about Bobby Jindal and the thing — well, let me address something else that you said first. What I actually said yesterday was that I’m distressed that the people in our country have been manipulated to the point that every June we sit around and pant — (panting) — waiting for the Supreme Court to tell us what is. The Supreme Court is no longer just the ultimate authority on legal and constitutional matters. The Supreme Court has now taken upon itself the role to determine our political outcomes as well, to decide controversial political outcomes. And, of course, these people are not elected. They’re nominated and then confirmed by presidents and the Senate, but they are not elected. And once they’re there, you can’t vote ’em out, and this is not what the Founders intended.

The people who make the political decisions, the political calls, the laws and what have you, are people we elect. This is all about conservatism beating liberalism. It’s really no more complicated than that. It’s just that we don’t have any elected conservative leaders — look, I don’t want to go through this again. This is Open Line Friday, it’s the end of the week. I’ve been through this I don’t know how many times, the psychology of Republicans in Washington, we all know what it is. The focus here and in a lot of the so-called New Media is simply discrediting and defeating the left. That’s about what we can do. When there’s somebody on our side we’re promoting, we promote ’em, but if there’s not, we don’t. It’s just that simple. Now, as for Bobby Jindal, yeah, he said he was going to castrate ’em, chemically castrate ’em. Bobby Jindal also said, and so did Mayor Daley, Mayor Daley is out there, said, ‘Screw this. That was a law that affected the District of Columbia and not the states, and I’m not going to abide by this.’ The NRA, Wayne LaPierre is going to go up there and sue everybody. The NRA, now there’s a gang that shows you how to act on offense. The NRA doesn’t take any prisoners, and they are going for the throat of the left, and they’ve won! They have won. And look how hated they are. And that’s what people can’t put up with is being hated.

They can’t put up with being lied about and they can’t put up with being impugned, but LaPierre and his gang don’t care. They don’t care what the left says about them. I think the number one thing that has to happen to our side is they need to get a steel spine and not care. The left is going to lie about ’em anyway. As I grow older, I have to tell you, I have so much impatience with people who are so concerned with what others think of them, especially people they don’t even know. I can understand if you’re concerned what your wife or husband thinks about you, that matters, and I can understand you’d be worried what your kids think about you, but that matters less because they’re going to hate you at some point, too, that’s natural. They’re going to think you’re an old idiot when they’re teenagers. But people that they don’t know. I couldn’t care less what they say about me in the newspaper or the media. I don’t know those people. I know what the truth is. I know what the truth in my heart is, and you do, too, those of you who listen to me. I got over this a long time ago. I don’t care what people think of my brother. I love him. People that don’t know him, my cousins, members of my family, I don’t care what they might say. I care if what they say about me harms them.

The problem with the Republicans is that they are so concerned what the New York Times says about them and the Washington Post says about them, or what the AP says about them, ’cause they have to get elected every so often, and they think it matters. I think if they ran around and showed people they don’t care — Wayne LaPierre doesn’t care what people say about him. Charlton Heston didn’t damn well care. Charlton Heston had a big victory yesterday, too. He didn’t care what people said about him. I mean here was a guy who at one time, because of his movie career, was Moses. And he ended up hated and reviled by the American left, and no more wonderful a man would you ever meet than Charlton Heston. He didn’t care. He had an objective. He didn’t let what people were going to say or what he thought they might think intimidate him. That’s our biggest problem. And until our side gets over that, it isn’t going to be able to do other things, because that’s going to be the prison that they’re going to constantly be in. ‘What are they going to say about me if I say this? What are they going to say about me if I advance this bill?’ You’re dead. You’re dead. What they need to be concerned about is what are my voters going to say? Is this good for the country, what I’m trying to do here? Screw what they say about it. I know they’re going to criticize it ’cause it’s good for the country. A little interesting question for you, Bobby Jindal. Supreme Court said you cannot execute a child rapist. But the Supreme Court also said yesterday that you can have a gun in your home. So, a rapist enters your house, 11 o’clock at night, finds his way to your little girl’s bedroom, you spot him raping your child and you shoot the rapist, and the rapist dies, what are they going to do to you? You can have a gun now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yes, I know. I’m in the process of trying to find something here, a great example to illustrate what I am talking about, and I’ve gotta find this. I may not be able to find it here. I have so many stacks here. I thought I put it in this stack, but it’s not in this stack, it doesn’t appear. It won’t take long. Yeah, here we go. It’s two things, actually three, along the lines here of, ‘What do we do here to overcome the problems that we’re in?’ Now, again, I don’t want to sound like a broken record here, but we have been through this. There’s a lot happening to the Republican Party. The country club, blue-blood, Rockefeller types are trying to take it over, and they’re trying to exclude as much of the Republican base from that party as possible, and here is an example. It’s a story from Maclean’s in Canada. ‘The Decline of America’s Religious Right — Why Obama May be Poised to Lure Churchgoers Away from the Republicans.’ Given that 10% of Americans believe that … Obama is a Muslim…’ who said that? Where is that poll? Have you seen that poll? Ten percent think that? Whatever.

‘And many more believe he followed a preacher who is radical if not unhinged, the Illinois senator seems an unlikely candidate to deliver religious voters to the Democratic ticket.’ They go on to make the case here that the religious right is close to migrating to Obama. Part of it is global warming, ‘stewardship of the earth’ and so forth, but part of it is that they are very much aware on the religious right that the Republican Party is telling them to go to hell, that the Republican Party is not interested. They’re embarrassed of them. You’ve got the conservative intelligentsia. By the way, if this happens — if the religious right, in significant numbers, goes to Obama and votes for him in November — you’re going to see the biggest turnaround. The Drive-Bys are going to love the religious right. They are going to talk about them as the most enlightened voters in America to have seen the light. No more will it be making fun of the stills in the backyard. No more will they be making fun of gun racks and NASCAR jokes, and pickups on Saturday night in a church parking lot to get a close parking space.

No jokes like that at all. No more calling them the Clampetts. They’re going to be among America’s most respected voters, the religious right that cross over and vote for Obama. In the midst of all this we have, ladies and gentlemen, an enlightened new conservative intelligentsia in the media — and it is led by names that you have heard, among them David Brooks at the New York Times — and this new branch of conservatives, pseudo-conservatives, really believe in Big Government. They believe in an activist government that has conservative tendencies, which is an oxymoron. It cancels itself out. A large government with conservative tendencies is not possible. And what these people have done is they have basically accepted the premises of the left. There’s a new book out by a couple young conservatives. I don’t remember their names.

But they have the prescription, they say, for salvaging and saving the Republican Party, and their book is praised today by Mr. Brooks in the New York Times. Let me read to you what Mr. Brooks wrote about these two young, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Republicans who have an idea to save the party. They open the book with a working-class view of recent American history. [They] write admiringly about the New Deal.’ So we’ve got a book by two young Republicans, one of whom I think was an intern at National Review, saying that the secret to success for the Republicans is to go back and get working-class voters, that they have been abandoned. Republicans focus too much on the rich, and these two guys say we need to look to the New Deal to find out… Wait a minute. Stick with me here. We need to look to the New Deal to find out our salvation and where it is, as Republicans.

Now, Mr. Brooks continues: ‘They mention Roosevelt’s economic policies, but they also emphasize the New Deal’s intense social conservatism. Self-conscious maternalists like Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins ensured that New Deal programs were biased in favor of traditional two-parent families.’ So what do we have? We have a prominent conservative, so-called, writing conservatism in the New York Times, promoting a book, the focus of which is the salvation and future of the Republican Party by suggesting the New Deal was conservative. Now, that’s where we are. You wonder what you can do about it? I’m telling you, there’s an all-out assault on conservatism even from within the Republican Party itself, not to mention the Democrats and the liberals and what they would like to do. This is absurd on its face. You know what makes this even more absurd? We have these two guys, these two young guys writing this book about how to save the Republican Party and make it the dominant party, saying the New Deal is our answer.

Learn how government interacts successfully and compassionately with the most people and get yourself in charge of it, and make sure that the working class understands that we as a party are for them, and the way to do that is to get government working for them. Now, there is a usefulness to David Brooks in that he is a foil. David Brooks is illustrative of what has gotten the party where it is today. He doesn’t realize the Republicans have been taking the lead on this agenda. Why did they lose ’06? It wasn’t corruption. They were spending like drunken sailors, and they got caught up in the perks of power. The government is as bloated as it can be. The Republicans didn’t put the brakes on it whatsoever. The Republicans are doing earmarks just like the Democrats did, and Republican conservative voters — limited government, limited government, smaller government, get it out of our way — is the coin of the realm, and so what Mr. Brooks doesn’t realize is, this is exactly where the Republican Party has been headed for seven or eight years now, and he’s only noticing it now and commenting on it as though it represents our future.

Now, if the Republican Party has been doing this… They haven’t embraced the New Deal, but they may as well have been funding it, along with the Democrats, and if it was going to be our salvation, then how come everybody thinks we’re going to get shellacked in November? We’ve been doing what these two guys in their book and what Brooks is promoting in their book. We’ve been doing it for seven years! We’ve been growing government. We’ve been trying to use government to interact with people’s lives, ‘a powerful and engaged executive,’ and we have been trying to say, ‘We’re not mean, and we’re not cruel, and we love you,’ and we’ve been trying to give people as much of what government —

We even created our own entitlement, for crying out loud! The Republicans came up with a new entitlement! Can you believe it? The New Deal? We’re close. We should be in the stratosphere. The Democrats ought to be able to barely muster 25 to 30% of the vote if these guys are right! They’re not right. What’s happening is the Republican Party is falling apart. You take the guy that just called from Stuart, Florida. He’s frustrated. He’s got nowhere to turn politically to get what he wants. He doesn’t know who to vote for. His senator sends him a form letter after he inquires about oil drilling and a number of other things. The Senator is Mel Martinez. He doesn’t know where to turn. A lot of people don’t know where to turn. In the meantime, we’ve got McCain up in Ohio, and he’s assuring social conservatives that he’s going to be on board and he’s going to say the right things and do the right things, but then you run into this.

ABC News, ‘In an interview on the ABC News Shuffle Podcast yesterday, Senator Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut, made his case for the campaign of John McCain. He said, ‘I’m gonna make a provocative statement. In many ways, I think John McCain on foreign policy is closer to where Al Gore and I were in 2000 than where Barack Obama is.” Now, I like Joe Lieberman. I have a lot of respect for Joe Lieberman. But will you tell me how in the world it is going to help Republicans have confidence in McCain by saying his foreign policy is closer to Gore’s in 2000 than it is to Obama’s today? It ought not be anywhere near either of them! The McCain foreign policy ought to have very little in common with anything that a Gore or an Obama would do. So you put all these things together, and what you have is an assault on the Republican Party from within the party — and, of course, the natural everyday assault on the party that you get from the Drive-By Media and the Democrats.