Liberals Plan to Separate Elected Republicans from Their Voters

RUSH: Redding, California. Robert, nice to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Good morning, Rush. Extremely frustrated dittos.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. I’m unhappy to hear that you’re frustrated, however.

CALLER: Rush, I’m 40 years old, you know, never gone without a job and I’ve worked all my life, extremely conservative in many views and my thoughts.

RUSH: There’s no such thing as an extreme conservative.

CALLER: Okay. Well set in my conservative beliefs, how about that?

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: Sir, I’m sure I’m not alone. What can I and other people do? It really seems like we’re fighting a losing battle. It seems like responsibility for what you’re doing and not thinking that the government solves every problem that you could ever have is dying. I mean it seems like more and more people are believing the opposite of that, and it’s really frustrating, and I don’t know that I want to run for office, but there’s gotta be something, you talk ’til you’re blue in the face to people and try and get them to understand, it seems like a losing battle. It’s extremely frustrating.

RUSH: Well, you know, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought because I get this question frequently. And right now the focus of attention on the American people is worthwhile. It’s going to be a big project, because right now the American people are not thinking, and we’ve gotta find a way to reach them by virtue of emotion, at least the Obama supporters and some of the cult followers. And there are a lot of Republicans in this group, too, by the way. I don’t think reason is the way to approach them right now. Reason will be automatically rejected, because they view this not within the realm of reason, but within the realm of emotion and hope, all these ethereal things that are not tangible. I think the only thing that’s going to turn people around will be time, and that will require the failure of Obama policies to work. That will happen, and I think 2010, 2012 will both provide pretty good opportunities for significant Republican gains in the House and Senate, maybe even the White House back, but limiting the damage between now and then so that even after Republicans win in 2010 or 2012, that there’s still something left to fix, that’s not so far gone.

Like if they get national health care, I mean that’s a tipping point. We may have had it in terms of the structure of the country being a republic and founded on the notion of individual liberty, democracy, and all that. The focus needs to be on the elected members of Congress. How do we reach them? I actually think we might want to hire lobbyists to reach our own elected officials. It seems that these people when they get elected end up going to Washington and they metamorphose into cheap imitations of the dominant culture there, which would be the liberals. Everybody that has a vested interest in Washington lobbies. Now, I know voters think that they shouldn’t have to lobby their own representative, their own representative or Senator is up there to represent them. But everybody else is competing against the voters, and the people that are competing against the voters are doing it with money. And the voters are just doing it with civics. I’ll guarantee you, you put your average politician on a stage and say, I want to give you six minutes of a civics lesson or $6,000, and I’ll guarantee you the guy’s going to find a way to take the six grand.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: So we might actually want to hire or create a lobbying firm.

CALLER: Rush, can I mention one other thing?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: You, sometime back, shortly after your bout with some of the issues that you’ve had, have mentioned that you were tired of the language being twisted to suit the Democrats. And the other night on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour they actually referred to, on the same day that Barack Obama got inaugurated, they actually referred to Feinstein as the Democratic from California.

RUSH: Well, don’t think that’s —

CALLER: Democrats, not Democratic.

RUSH: Didn’t they say Democratic senator?

CALLER: No, no, they said the Democratic from California.

RUSH: I think that’s a slip of the tongue. I’ll bet you what happened was that whoever typed up the script left out Senator and it just wasn’t on the teleprompter. I guarantee you, they’re not going to start calling them Democratics. They call it the Democratic Party and so forth. That’s the least of our problems out there. We need to hire lobbyists. I’m dead serious. No, I’m dead serious. I’m trying to also make a point. But, look, I think what’s coming is going to be a concerted effort by the Obama administration to separate our elected officials from us on the Republican side. Colin Powell is working on that. Colin Powell is already out there saying Republicans should ignore Limbaugh, meaning conservatives, plus me. McCain, New York Times story today, ‘The Maverick is Back.’ And what does that mean? It means he’s back criticizing the Republican Party, and they’re celebrating it. So I think what’s going to happen, Obama had a meeting with congressional leaders today, and it’s a wild guess, but my assumption is that there’s going to be an attempt made to separate elected Republicans in the House and Senate from their voters.

The effort’s going to be, ‘Don’t listen to what your voter says. It’s not the way this is going to get done. We’re not going to get things done up here unless we work together my way.’ That’s what Obama is going to say. Now, I know you’re laughing, you’re probably outraged, why should we of all people have to hire lobbyists? Well, everybody else dealing with them is a lobbyist. ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, we’re constituents, we elect ’em, and we reelect ’em.’ I know, but when have they learned that lesson? I mean they started screwing up after 1996, ’98 and their numbers dwindled every year, other than the Bush election years, 2000, 2004. There was a steady attrition of Republicans in the House I’m talking about here. You would think they would get their lesson. I know they had some problems, the Republican president is not being a conservative on all things, it’s hard for the House to oppose their own president. That was a problem, too, but, no, everybody else lobbies these people. ‘Well, what lobbying firm, Rush?’ I don’t know, maybe we’ll create one. ‘But, Rush, aren’t there other conservative interest groups that already have lobbyists?’ Yeah, but do you see it working?

Now, I will say this. John Boehner came out of that meeting today with the president, and he said some pretty good things. He said, ‘We’ve gotta remember here that we’re not spending our money. This is not ours to spend, this is our kids’.’ Right now, just the cost — forget the deficits that have already built up to a trillion to two trillion dollars, annual deficits — just the cost of this stimulus, as it stands now, is about $6,700 per family if they came and collected it from us. At some point, we are going to pay that, somehow, some way, by hook or by crook, with increase in fees, increase in taxes, we’re going to pay this, and it’s not going to stop at $6,700 a family. And Boehner is pointing out that Republicans, Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions, there’s some people up there that are willing to oppose this and stand up to it. And there’s some who aren’t. But it’s going to require a strong backbone and the guys that oppose are going to have to know they’re supported for doing so. I’m talking about elected officials.

This is not civics 101. This is not Thorndyke Foghorn being elected by his constituents and going up to Washington and always keeping his constituents in mind because, once Foghorn Thorndyke or whatever gets up there, here comes this lobbying group and here comes that lobbying group, and I have nothing against lobbyists, don’t misunderstand, it’s the way of the world. They’re just trying to get things passed that their clients, also American citizens, maybe organizes a business or political group, they want done. And we don’t lobby ’em. We write letters, we call phones, some of you do, but we don’t lobby ’em. They’re used to being lobbied. Just something to think about.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, stop what you’re doing for just a second, will you? If you’re driving, keep driving and pay attention. But if you can stop, stop what you’re doing. Something profound here that just came across the Bloomberg wire and I wish to share it with you. And as a setup, as a preamble, I said last night in the part two of my interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News as we were discussing the problems in the Republican Party, and I said — split any number of ways, but I said, ‘What it really comes down to, Sean…’ and you’ve heard me say this from behind the Golden EIB Microphone. What it really comes down to is that the Republican Party is made up of a bunch of elites, moderate Rockefeller types. And the dirty little secret is that they resent being in the same party with a bunch of people who are pro-life, because the pro-life people are from the (southern accent) South, they’re Southerners, and they like NASCAR and they chew tobacco-uh.

And they just hate going to the conventions, the Republican Party conventions and they get teased by their liberal elite buddies in New York and Boston and the whole Northeastern corridor and California, too, for having these Deliverance types, is what they think of them as, in the same party. Plus these guys, these Rockefeller liberal Republican guys, wives are always nagging ’em about abortion, to get the Republican Party to get rid of it ’cause, ‘You can’t win with it,’ even though we’ve won landslides. I said this last night, and it’s probably one of the first times it has been said so directly and powerfully on television. I’ve said it on this radio show numerous today. That’s the preamble. A Bloomberg story out just this afternoon by Heidi Przybyla: ‘Republican Battle for Party Chairman Pits Leaders Against Base.’

Now, wait. It’s not what you think. ‘Republican leaders’ efforts to select a new national party chairman are stirring concerns among a vital constituency: Republican voters.’ Tell me if you believe this. ‘Rank-and-file…’ This is what it says here. ‘Rank-and-file Republicans are telling their leaders they want more ethnic, gender and age diversity in a party that is dominated by white males. They also want party leaders to cooperate with President Barack Obama, according to surveys.’ Now, let me continue. ‘After losing the White House and 28 seats in Congress last year, some party leaders still aren’t hearing the message from voters who are urging them to claw their way back to power by promoting minorities and striking a less partisan tone, said Rich Bond, a former Republican National Committee chairman. ‘We need…”

This is Rich Bond who used to run the party. ”We need a great deal more tolerance for the other guy’s point of view,’ Bond said. ‘Not everybody comes from the same constituency as a majority-white homogenous district in the South where all people care about is keeping their guns and taxes.” Rich Bond, yeah, he ran the party back during Bush 1. He was President 41. I met him in Houston. Now, look, I asked you, if you believe this. This is not the first… Well, I asked you if you believe that rank-and-file Republicans — those of you in this audience are rank-and-file Republicans — if you are telling Republican leaders that you want more cooperation with Obama, that you want ‘more ethnic, gender, and age diversity in the party leadership,’ do you believe this? They’ve taken surveys, and this is what the surveys of Republican, the base has come back and said.

I do believe it. I’ll tell you why I believe it. I found something that was published by someone. I don’t remember his name, but he’s fairly well known in a certain region in the country. I’m not sure of the region. A religious leader. It was November 5th. It’s a newsletter to his flock, and there were four things in the newsletter. And one of the things is, ‘As a Christian, we must cooperate for the good of the country with the new president.’ Now, a lot of the people in the Republican Party are Christians. Some are evangelicals, some are Catholics, and some of their spiritual leaders are advising them that we have to cooperate for the good of the country with the new president, that it’s the Christian thing to do or it’s the religious thing to do or it’s the right thing to do.

So I do believe that somebody can go take a poll of a sample of Republican voters and get this result. What I really believe, what I really believe is what Rich Bond is quoted as saying. I know it’s Bloomberg, I know it’s the media, but Rich Bond, a former Republican National Committee chairman, ‘We need a great deal more tolerance for the other guy’s point of view,’ meaning liberals. We need to be more tolerant of them. He’s saying we need to be less tolerant of our own voters, those in the South. He says ‘Not everybody comes from the same constituency as a majority white homogenous district in the South where all people care about is keeping their guns and taxes.’ Now, Rich Bond sounds exactly like Howard Dean when he says this.

Now, I believe that Rich Bond said it, and I believe he thinks it, and I think a lot of the other elite, country club, blue-blood… You know, the old stereotype of the rich Republican fat cat smoking a cigar? Those people are largely Democrats now. But the Republicans still have their elite, and Rich Bond is typified it. I know this from personal experience ’cause I encountered it. I’ve told you the story. Big, big dinner party, powerful, powerful people from New York, it was out in the Hamptons. And after dinner out on the deck of this stylish seaside mansion (a very powerful, a name you would know) fundraiser and donor for the Republican Party, came up and tapped me on the back and said, ‘What are you going to do about all these religious people in our party?’

‘What am I going to do?’

‘Yeah, they’re killing us! This abortion, it’s killing us.’

This is back in the nineties. This is the early nineties, and they laughed. ‘I’m just kidding you. I’m just kidding you. You’re the guy that can talk to them and you’re going to have to get them off of this abortion business or our party is going to die,’ and you’d have to say the party is dead and these guys are running it, are they not?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have read a little bit more of this Bloomberg story, and it gets worse. I just shared with you Rich Bond, a former Republican National Committee chairman, said, ‘We need a great deal more tolerance for the other guy’s point of view,’ meaning Democrats and liberals, ‘Not everybody comes from the same constituency as a majority-white homogenous district in the South where all people care about is keeping their guns and taxes.’ You know, I said it sounds like Howard Dean. It sounds like Obama and his bitter clinger comment it. It actually sounds more like Barack Obama. So the Republican Party, which swept to landslide elections with Republican voters from the south would just as soon now be rid of you, and the reason why is because they have no Republicans in the House from the northeast.

I read this further. ‘The hard line taken by the leaders has already cost the party.’ They’re saying there has been a conservative hard line taken by the party. I would like to see it, ’cause it is nonexistent. There has not been a conservative hard line taken by the party. Anyway, ‘The hard line taken by the leaders has already cost the party, which has become increasingly rural and Southern. With the defeat last year of Representative Chris Shays in Connecticut, Republicans no longer hold any House seats in socially moderate New England. The party also lost three House seats in New York, one in New Jersey–‘ Yeah, you know who they’re losing ’em to? Conservative Democrats! They’re losing these seats to Democrats who are more conservative than these Republicans. Nothing against Chris Shays, but it was about time. He was nothing but a RINO, Republican in name only. I tell you what, what we’re learning here — and we don’t even need to learn it, we know it — with these guys, it’s party first. Ideology is second, third, fourth, fifth, maybe not even that high.

If the conservatives walk from the base, the base would be about 30 million people, maybe — yeah, around 30, ’cause what did McCain get, 55 million votes? And the people we’re talking about, the 24, 30 million people in the evangelical, pro-life, southern, it’s not necessarily geographic here, but that’s about how many votes they represent if they show up is 24 to 30 million people in a presidential race. So you’d figure if they bolted McCain would have gotten 30 million votes, not 55 or 58. But that’s what they want. I don’t know, it’s stunning. And these cultural issues, you know what Obama had to do to wrap up all this? He had to move to the center during his campaign. He had to go right. Look, all the Blue Dogs, look at how Paterson just appointed this Blue Dog Democrat who wins in a Republican district ’cause she’s more of a conservative than the Republicans in her district in New York are.

This party, whoever’s running this party is so out of it. And Colin Powell says, ‘You gotta stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.’ Trust me, General Powell, they have years ago, and now they’re just being honest about it. ‘We don’t like these supporters we have in the south, we don’t like them, they’re too white, too homogenous, all they care about is guns and taxes.’ (phew) If they succeed in this, if they alienate 25 or 30 million voters — one thing I don’t believe in this survey is I do believe that a certain segment of Republican voters wants to work with Obama, again, from the religious influence here. But that represents a cave-in, at least to most conservatives. But regardless, we’ll take it for what it is at face value, ’cause it is what it is. It just finally illustrates I have been right about this all along in talking about this party and where it’s headed and what they’re thinking at the leadership level of it. Don’t ask me what we do about it yet, folks. They’re imploding, they’re doing it on their own. They’re driving you out of it. All you can do is at the grassroots take it over. That’s had to have been done a number of times, by the way. It’s what Reagan had to do.

You wouldn’t believe the unsung heroes from 1976 on that were working the grassroots, people like Paul Weyrich and Phyllis Schlafly, you would not believe all the work that was going on without any fanfare, to take over the grassroots so that local elections and primary elections and congressional and Senate races were won by conservative candidates. That’s where it all starts, and it’s where it all stops. If the grassroots get these people elected and nominated and then these people go up and don’t follow through on the agenda, then the grassroots say, ‘Why should I work this hard if I’m just going to end up being betrayed?’ The left hardly ever betrays their people because they don’t renounce themselves. They don’t renounce what they believe.

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RUSH: Richard in Southern California. Glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Dittos to the Last Man Standing.

RUSH: Thank you. I certainly am that. After reading this story about where the Republicans are going, the Republican Party, honest to God: along with all of you people out there, I feel utterly alone.

CALLER: It sounds to me, Rush, like the appointee to the US Senate from New York is more conservative than John McCain or many of our Republican senators or party leaders.

RUSH: It does to me, too —

CALLER: And that’s scary.

RUSH: — based on what little we know about it, absolutely right.

CALLER: I’d like to leave you with a note on them. I predict that the Obama bubble, just like the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble will burst. I don’t know how long it will take, but I’m hoping to see that happen soon.

RUSH: Why do you call it a bubble?

CALLER: Well, it came on over three years of campaigning.

RUSH: A bubble is built on false premises, as bubble is built.

CALLER: Hot air.

RUSH: Hot air and assumptions that aren’t true about the future and never-ending growth and property.

CALLER: I think as we see the truth with Obama in the White House, we will puncture that bubble. It will burst.

RUSH: Well, yes, if we see the truth. Who’s in charge of us seeing the truth?

CALLER: You are, sir.

RUSH: Yeah, but —

CALLER: — just to keep the people informed.

RUSH: I know that. I’ll hold my end up, but the Drive-Bys are going to be presenting an entirely different picture. It’s going to be an epic battle, as Saddam Hussein said. Saddam Hussein Obama said, ‘This is going to be the mother of all battles.’ Have we heard anything about George Obama and the hut? It’s amazing. Fred in Richmond, Virginia, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, as you are aware it’s a privilege to speak to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Yes, sir. Were it not for you I would not have known about the latest Robert Reichhhhh gimmick with our infrastructure and who he intends to hire and not to hire — and being one of those who he intends not to hire, I’m outraged.

RUSH: You’re a white construction worker? A white male construction worker?

CALLER: That is correct.

RUSH: He doesn’t want any of you hired for the infrastructure project. You’ve got all the jobs as it is.

CALLER: It must be. We must have it all tied up. And surely you wouldn’t want an experienced welder working on your bridge when you can get someone who hasn’t a clue which end to set on fire on the torch.

RUSH: Well, it’s not about the work being done. It’s about the work being passed out and getting votes for that work. By the way, I don’t think Reichhhhh has an official opinion in the Obama administration. He said that on January 7th. You know, when egghead pseudointellectuals get together to talk about how they would spend the money, as though they have any authority to do it. He’s just there as a head fake.

CALLER: Yes, sir. Mr. Limbaugh, we appreciate all you do for us. You keep us informed. We hear through you things that we cannot get through normal channels because there are no normal channels.

RUSH: I understand that. Believe me. We are all alone.

CALLER: Thank you, and keep us informed.

RUSH: I will do so, Fred. Thanks very much. Rush Limbaugh, the Last Man Standing…all alone.

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RUSH: All right. I have been putting two and two together here — and when I do that, I get four. That doesn’t happen very often in our public schools, but it does happen here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. That Bloomberg story, polls show — internal Republican polls, focus groups, think focus groups, show — that the Republican base, a vast majority of Republicans want elected Republicans to work with the new administration. Now, we’ve all been saying, ‘What happened to Republicans? Why in the world are they caving? What is going on?’ Maybe we found our answer in the Bloomberg story. Maybe they are doing these focus groups, and maybe that’s what the focus groups are saying. One thing we know about politicians is they love, believe in, and listen to polls. So they may have concocted their Republican polls, showing Republicans don’t want any confrontation with Obama. That they think they’re doing what the right thing is.