RUSH: Jason in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, nice to have you with us on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I just wanted to say thanks for the education I get outside of my college classroom and also thank my dad real quickly, who actually gave me your Limbaugh Letter when I was 13 years old because he feared I was being indoctrinated.
RUSH: Smart man. Smart, smart man. I’m proud to know you.
CALLER: I just wanted to call and ask, you know, with this conservative Hoffman that we have, which I think is a great thing, assuming he wins, and you made a comment earlier about how possibly 12 other people are going to be running as conservatives, do you think that it’s going to have a bandwagon effect where we’re going to have RINOs disguised as conservatives simply because of the cornerstone that we have in the Republican Party?
RUSH: Well, this is quite possible. This is a very, very informed and educated question by you. I can tell you you’ve been reading the Limbaugh Letter and listening to this program. And, yes, there have been many fraudulent, fake conservatives. I mean I can name two right off the top of my head that I won’t because it won’t serve the purpose here, it would be unnecessarily provocative. But, yes, if the RINOs see that the way to victory in the Republican Party is to spout conservatism, they’ll spout it and they’ll try to make you think that they are. For example — Cookie, get together with Mike and get that RNC ad that we ran yesterday, it’s a radio ad. By the way, I asked yesterday, ‘Why didn’t they mention his name?’ And the RNC sent H.R. a note saying they legally couldn’t. Independent expenditure or independent something, they couldn’t mention his name, which is why they had to harp on the fact that he’s conservative. But the point is, I listened to that ad and I haven’t heard any official Republican National Committee member say anything like that for eight years.
Here it is. Now, listen to this. I’m glad they’re running the ad, it’s just a radio ad, but it proves that somewhere in the building they get it. But it goes to his great question. Will they bring it out of the hat and use it when they have to? Yeah. But do they mean it? If RINOs see that the only way to get elected as a Republican is to go conservative, they run that campaign, there’s a bunch of them in the House of Representatives. It happened. They ran as Republican conservatives, they got up there and for whatever reason forgot who they were or never were who they told us they were. There was a mixture of both. And the interesting thing about this is that most of the RINOs, we’ll be able to find out if they’re fake, we’ll be able to find out if they’re RINOs. They’ll have a record. The people that are going to be popping up initially, depending on how this all goes tomorrow, they’re going to be genuine conservatives. This is going to provide some momentum. Listen to this ad. It’s for Hoffman, but they can’t mention his name, and I want you to ask yourself, when is the last time any member of the RNC or a powerful Republican anywhere, elected or otherwise, said these things?
ANNOUNCER: The eyes of the nation are on the north country. What we decide on Tuesday will echo from Albany to Washington. Whose side are you on? The Pelosi-Paterson tax-and-spend train wreck or do you believe in Republican, conservative values, like thrift, personal responsibility, and family? Let’s tell the liberals enough is enough. No more bailouts, taxes, and budget-busting spending. It’s time to create jobs with proven conservative ideas like lower taxes. Let your voice be heard. Join the movement to bring real conservative change. Tell the politicians, ‘No more. We won’t let you bankrupt America.’ We need conservative leaders who stand up for our values, fight back, vote conservative. It matters like never before.
RUSH: Now, had we had a candidate running last year that actually believed that stuff and could articulate it, it would not have been a contest. Barack Obama would not be anywhere near the White House. He would be resuming his five-minute career in the Senate. So it’s in the building. I mean somebody had to write this. Maybe it’s a recycle from the Morning in America days. I don’t know. I’m not jumping on the RNC here. When I heard this ad yesterday, ‘Whoa, where did this come from?’ I mean, this wasn’t just a ‘let’s get close to sounding conservative.’ This was hammering the left, ‘bankrupting the country.’ It’s exactly what has happened. Liberals, that word used throughout this. You wouldn’t hear McCain talk about liberals. You wouldn’t hear him be critical of these guys at all. (imitating McCain) ‘Need to work with the other side of the aisle. I’m the guy that can cross the aisle, I can cross the aisle, I’m the one guy that can work with the other guys. Get it?’ As though that’s what the American people wanted.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just got a note from somebody listening to every syllable of this program today. ‘Dear Rush: Listening to you today it sounds like the smart people think that the best thing that could happen for the good of the Republican Party is if it never won an election again. Only by never winning can the party attract enough people to keep on never winning.’ Now, that’s an interesting observation, because we played David Plouffe, we played Gloria Borger, we have had Axelrod yesterday and a couple other sound bites. ‘Republicans are destroying themselves! I mean, they’re losing all these moderates and losing all these independents,’ and so these smart people think the best thing that could happen for the good of the party is if it never won an election again by holding onto those people, which is exactly what they want!
They want the Republican Party to keep losing. Now, this big-tent thing. The current leaders who cannot be named of the Republican Party have built such a big tent on the advice of the Democrats, that nobody’s in it. Let me explain this, ’cause this is another profundity, ladies and gentlemen. We’ve had all these people, all these years say, ‘You know, you Republicans, you’re too rock-ribbed conservative. You got too many pro-lifers. You got too many religious right people in there and the angry talk show people. You got a gotta spread out!’ The Democrats, the liberals, the media, tell the Republicans, ‘You gotta have a bigger tent. You gotta attract independents in that party and you gotta have moderates in that party. You can’t continue to grow, you can’t continue to exist if all you are is conservatives.’
Of course, the Republicans who want to get along with those people say, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s a good point.’ So big tent. And we went out there, we did everything we could to attract all those people. Right? We nominated all the right people. General Powell even out there showing us how to do it by endorsing a Democrat. So we’ve got this giant big tent out there, built on the advice of Democrats in the media but nobody’s in it. General Powell left the tent. Christopher Buckley left the tent. Chuck Hagel left the tent. McCain essentially left the tent. McCain’s out there saying he wants to rebuild the Republican Party in a moderate image. Lindsey Grahamnesty left the tent. I mean, when you line up with John Kerry or whoever he lined up with on cap and trade, you don’t call yourself a Republican.
Arlen Specter left the tent. In some ways George W. Bush left the tent. Peggy Noonan left the tent. Newt Gingrich left the tent. Joe Lieberman! He was in the tent but he left. By the way, Dingy Harry’s out there saying (doing Reid impression), ‘Ah, don’t worry about Joe. At the end of the day Joe will be there voting for me.’ Told you. So Christopher Buckley leaves, Colin Powell leaves, Chuck Hagel leaves, McCain leaves, Lindsey Grahamnesty leaves, Arlen Specter leaves, George W. Bush walked out a couple times, Noonan left, Newt left, Lieberman walked out of the tent, and a lot of real conservatives walked out of the tent, too, and said, ‘To hell with it!’ So we got this giant big tent. Well, what the hell good is it if nobody’s inside? There’s no one inside the tent. Nature abhors a vacuum, and conservatives and independents are filling that vacuum today. So these smartest people in the room on our side, they built that tent just like the Democrats in the media told them and there’s nobody in it now.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I got an e-mail during the break here. And Snerdley even said, ‘You know, you need to go through this big tent thing again, because nobody, nobody looks at things that way. Nobody analyzes things that way, and you ran through that pretty quickly.’ Here it is, basically. I’m tired of all this talk — and we hear it all day today from select members of the State-Controlled Media on TV — about the Republican big tent. ‘What happened to the big tent?’ they say. Now that we nominated a conservative and the conservative may win in New York-23, the media and the Democrats are wringing their hands, ‘Oh, no! What happened to the big tent?’ as though they want us to be a big thriving party!
‘What happened to the big tent? (crying) For crying out loud, we’re so sad the Republicans are losing moderates and independents.’ Yet they say Republican registration, identification in polls in at an all-time low. If Republicans win today, if that’s true then we gotta be attracting somebody besides Republicans, do we not? This big-tent business here folks, the big-tent concept was not created by us. The big-tent concept, again, was created by Washington establishment elites on the left. Now, you also have in Washington establishment elites that are Republican, and the common denominator there is ‘elites,’ and they are the smartest dumb people in the country. They have an arrogance and a conceit about them, whether they’re liberals or conservatives and Republicans. They have an arrogance and a conceit about them that is insufferable, and it blinds them to reality.
But the Republican elites desperately want to be respected and liked and allowed into the Elite Club (capital E, capital C) by the liberal Democrat elites, both in the media, politics, and academia. So they do this by accepting every premise that the liberal elites put forward. And that is, ‘You’re never going to win with all those pro-life hicks down in the South in your party! I mean, for crying out loud, it’s bad enough you gotta show up at your convention with these hayseeds arriving with gun racks in the back of the pickup truck and then you gotta put up with the Pat Robertsons and the Jerry Falwells and the all-God crowd? Why you guys you’re never going to win, your wives are never gonna stop nagging you unless you fix this abortion issue.’
And the Republican elites stroke their chins, and say, ‘Hmm, I think they may have a point. Yes, we certainly don’t have much in common at all with (sniffs) these unsophisticated hicks and rubes that live down there. (sniffs) They really do have a point.’ And then the liberal elites say, ‘You know, you guys are going to have to expand your party. You’re too narrow. You’re just all conservatives, and those people, you know, they’re Neanderthals. You’re going to have to go out there and get people like us in your party. You’re going to have to go out and get intelligent moderates. You know, people that are not rock-ribbed ideological.’
And the Republican elites go ‘(sniffs) That sounds exceedingly wise and intelligent. (sniffs) Yes, and especially since this is what the people we wish to be accepted by think, too. We want to get along. W want to be considered part of the Elite Club, and if that’s what they think, we’ll think it, too.’ So, bammo! You get the recipe that Democrats tell these gullible elite Republicans (laughing), ‘Here’s what you need to do to start winning elections,’ (laughing) and the stupid elite Republicans say, ‘Oh, yeah!’ and they buy into it hook, line, and sinker when in fact it’s a recipe for eternal Democrat victory and eternal Republican defeat. So the big-tent concept was born, and the big tent concept was articulated in such a way that we want to attract people from across the aisle.
‘And we’re willing to walk across the aisle to deal with these people and meet them halfway, to show them that we don’t blame them, to show them that we’re good people, show them that we’re worthy of being loved and liked by the liberal elites who run Washington and who run New York.’ So the big tent concept is born, and this attracts the very people (supposedly) that we are supposed to get in order to win. And then these people, they are Republicans, happy in their big-tent party — and I would contend to you that the tent is empty. There’s nobody in the tent right now, and there’s a vacuum being filled by conservatives and independents who are filling the vacuum with the candidacy of Doug Hoffman and New York-23, Creigh Deeds and the McDonnell race in Virginia and of course what’s going on in New Jersey. Let me give you some names.
We were supposed to build the big tent to attract the very people who have left it. Colin Powell has left the big tent. Christopher Buckley left the big tent — and they didn’t just leave, they endorsed Obama. And on their way out of the tent, they lobbed some hand grenades at the people still in the tent for forcing them out. Chuck Hagel left the big Republican tent. McCain left the big Republican tent. Lindsey Grahamnesty, he left. I mean, he calls himself a Republican, but he’s making deals with Democrats. He’s doing exactly what we’re supposed to do to win elections, right? Arlen Specter. Arlen Specter left the big tent. George W. Bush left the big tent on a couple of occasions. Peggy Noonan left the big tent. I mean, the very people that the big tent was designed to accommodate and attract! The big tent has nobody in it.
Newt left the big tent. Joe Lieberman left the big tent. And a lot of conservatives left the big tent, too, because there was a big tent, but it was just a tent. There was no foundation, there were no principles, there was nothing identifying about this other than it had a bunch of disparate people in there who were more concerned about being liked and being thought of as smart rather than being guided by any principles. So there’s no one inside the tent. What good is a tent if no one’s in it? This tent was built on the advice of Democrats, and the Democrats achieved exactly what they wanted: Nobody in it! Republican Party identification is at an all-time low. Conservative identification is at a high: 40%; 20% liberal identification; 36% independent. So as you know there’s a vacuum in there, welcome back, and vacuums get filled up, and the people filling the vacuum are conservatives and independents.
And this party is now undergoing the first stages of being rebuilt from within. And these people who have left the tent, they’re going to want back in at some point when the party gets rebuilt, and they’re going to do the same thing that they did that caused them to leave it. They’re going to start running in and say, ‘Well, this party is okay, but it’s too strong conservative,’ and the whole cycle will repeat. I don’t know why it is that we should build a party on people who are gonna leave the tent, and not just leave the tent but they’re going to go join the other tent. The Big Tent State is New York. Now, how are they doing? New York’s a big tent. We got every kind of Republican you can imagine in New York, from Dede Scozzafava to Rabbi Nate Segal. How is that Republican Party working out? How is the big tent working out for New York? What’s happening in New York? What’s getting all the fire and brimstone going in New York? Why, a conservative candidate! So that, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s happening.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, folks, speaking of big tents, let’s count all the conservatives in the Democrat Party, shall we? And let’s count all the conservatives in the Democrat National Committee, and let’s count all the conservatives in the Obama administration. Let’s count all the conservatives in the Big Media. Let’s count all the conservatives in Hollywood. Let’s count all the conservatives in academia. You want to talk about big tents? Let’s talk about all of the pro-lifers in the Democrat Party. What happens to them? You know, this big tent stuff, throw it right back in their faces. Tell them they need the big tent. They’re the exclusionary ones.