RUSH: We’re gonna start Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is Bruce. Thank you, sir, and welcome.
CALLER: Thank you, sir. It’s a privilege. The election. With what we’re facing, the elites, I don’t think 70 seats are going to be enough. I don’t think a help you seats are going to be enough. I really don’t.
RUSH: For what? To do what?
CALLER: In the House of Representatives, November 2nd. I don’t think winning a hundred seats is going to be affect what we’re facing with the Republican establishment. I just really don’t. We’re going to have to… I just don’t think they’re going to get the message.
RUSH: I think they’ve got the message now. They’ve got the message; they just don’t want to act on it.
CALLER: But is a hundred going to do it? I mean, is that wave of a hundred seats really going to do it? I just don’t see it.
RUSH: Let me tell you something. Wait a second now, wait a second. Stop and think of what you’re saying here. If Wednesday morning we wake up and the Republicans have won 100 seats, it’s never happened before in the history of the country. You don’t think that that’s a going to be enough?
CALLER: (sigh)
RUSH: It’s going to be enough to stop Obama, and that’s the first thing that has to happen. It’s going to be enough to stop Obama, it’s going to be enough to stop this notion of ‘compromise.’ The Senate’s going to be the problem with compromise.
CALLER: You’re… (sigh) I don’t know about John Boehner. At times Boehner sounds great, other times not. Boehner is going to be in the leadership position, and like you said, the Senate with the Murkowski types. I just don’t know, when Murkowski was in Mitch McConnell’s Kitchen Cabinet making decisions.
RUSH: Well, wait a second. Where is it written that Boehner’s gonna win the election to be Speaker?
CALLER: Well, I hope it’s Mike Pence, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.
RUSH: Well, we don’t know who is even gonna run. But look at, now, wait a second here. This is very tough. You can’t, you can’t throw cold water on a hundred seats. You can’t do that. If we win a hundred seats you can’t sit out there and say, ‘That’s not enough.’ This is the first of many here. We’ve gotta start someplace.
CALLER: I agree, but you — you yourself have said the reason you don’t go to Washington very often is because there’s a disease there, and you go there and you get out as quickly as possible. That mind-set… I mean, you were an honorary member of the class of ’94. You were brought in there, and ultimately, at the end of the day, your advice didn’t really mean a hill of beans, being in there long enough that that ’94 victory became business as usual —
RUSH: Well, let me tell you.
CALLER: — forward to Obama.
RUSH: Part and parcel of that, my advice was heeded by the freshmen almost universally.
CALLER: For a time.
RUSH: Well, there were 56 of them. Pretty much, they all heeded my advice. One of the problems in 1994, one of the problems that exists today in the conservative movement, is ego. Everybody wants to be the leader; everybody wants to be considered the smartest guy in the room. And if somebody is aced out of it then they turn liberal and left and run against and starting writing against conservative because they’ve got their noses out of joint.
CALLER: Like Trent Lott. Like Trent Lott and the Strom Thurmond thing. After that Lott became rather unreliable and turncoat in many ways.
RUSH: Well, yeah, you can mention individual examples of it to illustrate the point. No question about it. But the freshmen, the freshmen in ’94, they’re the guys, they’re the people that held together to stop Hillary Care. It does matter. Now, that was 56 seats. It was not a 56-seat majority. They won 56 seats. If we win a hundred — (nobody’s expecting that, by the way) you can’t look at that and say it’s not enough. Really, it would be huge. And as I said, you have to start someplace. But conservatism, it’s not a monolithic movement. There are all kinds of competing ideas in it. And there are all kinds of different egos, and we’re not monolithic. This is one of the problems that happens.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me tell you something else here, ladies and gentlemen. Once the population, once the people who make this country work… What is the biggest lament of people in the country, particularly those who don’t vote? ‘Eh, my vote doesn’t count. What I do doesn’t matter. That’s why I don’t vote. The system is rigged. Lobbyists, big money people, they run the show. Everybody knows that. That’s why I don’t vote.’ Well, once the populace, once the people who make this country work (the moms and pops) get the crazy idea that they do have control over elections — that their vote does matter, when they get that crazy idea — even in the legislation that comes out of Washington, you’re going to see a hell of a lot more citizen activism.
Once the people who make this country work lose their cynicism — and this could be an election that causes that to happen — you talk about 60, 70? Let’s even dream here, a hundred seats. You think it’s not enough? You think the message won’t be received with a hundred? Here’s the big thing. This is what the elites know. Once the people out there in the hinterlands, out in flyover country, once they figure out they can affect the outcome of legislation — and they had a taste of it with immigration. They stopped it, and they would have stopped health care were it not for a bunch of extra-constitutional crap. Were it not for a bunch of illegal crap, they had stopped health care. The American people were debt set opposed to it.
Once they figure out that their involvement does make a difference, you’re going to see a hell of a lot more of their involvement, and then you’re going to see a hell of a lot more politicians listening to them. Because one thing is not going to change, and that is the first objective of any politician is to get reelected. So this election could be the beginning of a major shift in the people who make this country work actually seeing that their vote makes a difference. Once they start thinking that, you’re going to have more turnout. Once they realize that it does matter how they vote, that it does matter that they get involved at the grassroots level, once they figure that out, get out of their way. Katie, bar the door. Get out of their way. That’s one of the potential things here that’s just lurking as a possibility with this election.