RUSH: Charleston, South Carolina. This is Carolyn. I’m glad you waited. Great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, Rush, I love you, I love you, I love you. My heart is beating so hard, I can barely speak. I’ve always wanted to meet you. To heck with the iPad. If you gave me an iPad, I would be like, “No.” I would want to meet you more than anything in the whole world, “Here’s it back if I can only meet you.”
RUSH: It may happen. You never know.
CALLER: Oh, my dream.
RUSH: I have friends in Charleston, South Carolina. I may be there some day.
CALLER: Rush, you have no idea what a pleasure this is. I know you are pressed for time, I’ll be quick. I, unlike some of your callers, agree with you 100% of the time and I thank my husband Mark for turning me on to you 13 years ago. I voted for Santorum, and I was feeling so deflated Saturday because I knew that the people here in South Carolina were listening to the media that Romney and Newt were the only ones who could beat Obama. I’m Catholic and I went to church Saturday night and, to my surprise, there was Rick Santorum and his family attending mass. They were so genuine and kind and I conveyed to them how upset I was that the media has ignored him, and he agreed, and gave me a big hug. I feel like he is the true conservative. I am from Pennsylvania, and they are rooting for him up there because they know that he truly lives and breathes conservatism through his whole life.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I’m so disappointed at these South Carolinians for being snowed by the media, and I fear for my one-year-old and two-and-a-half-year-old, and I feel like — and maybe it’s a conspiracy theory — but if Obama wins in November, that this country will fall into communism. Maybe it’s being too fearful, but I can expect anything.
RUSH: You ought to get my buddy Mark Levin’s book, Ameritopia.
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: His point is we already have.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: We’re already being governed outside the Constitution. This is a post-constitutional country.
CALLER: Oh, my God, yes, but what I wanted to ask you was two questions: What advice could you give Rick Santorum to get his polls up in Florida?
RUSH: Oh!
CALLER: And also, what happened with Goldwater? Because I wasn’t alive back then, and what specifics were there about that?
RUSH: Well, conservatism was brand-new back then. You were dealing with a popular Lyndon Johnson coming off a martyred president’s death, JFK. Conservatism was just totally brand new. I remember the media in those days. You know, Goldwater would say things, like he’d rip the East Coast, the mind-set of the Eastern Seaboard. So LBJ ran a commercial that was a floating wooden block of the country with a saw sawing off the Eastern Seaboard. And the man in the ad said, “Lyndon Johnson believes in the whole country.” Then there was the daisy ad. Goldwater was gonna blow us up with a nuclear bomb. A little girl picking daisies and a nuclear detonation happens. Well, the screen goes white as though there’s a nuclear blast. The countdown: Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock! Mother Teresa woulda lost in a landslide in ’64.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: Now, I’m reticent to give advice what Santorum could do. Look… (sigh) Jeez, you put me in a tight spot. You asked and I feel I have to answer.
CALLER: I’ve been dreaming of who would be your favorite because I know that I would follow you.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: I would follow you to hell and back. (giggles)
RUSH: Here’s what I would do: I would stop talking about myself. I’d stop saying, “I did this,” and, “I did that,” and “This is what I did, and those guys aren’t this, and those guys aren’t that.” I’d just start articulating conservatism. I would just make it the fundamental premise of every message of mine. Now you gotta mention the other guys at some point. If you want to highlight the fact that they’re not conservative, fine, but I wouldn’t make that the primary. You can portray yourself as the only genuine conservative by actually doing it, not saying it. It’s probably a fine line here. Santorum is who he is. That’s why I’m reticent to give people advice ’cause people are going to be who they are. And he’s got his people telling him the best way to go about this.
CALLER: But you’re the true conservative, and, hopefully, he would listen to you. (giggles)
RUSH: I don’t know. I don’t know. He’s out making fun of Newt’s grandiosity. I’d be grandiose. I’d try to be larger than life. Not in a phony way. But, look, I feel very uncomfortable because I like Santorum a whole lot, and he is the real deal and he is one of the most solid individuals that I know, and I’m at a loss to explain why anybody catches fire. I don’t think Newt is really catching fire. I know this is a fine, fine point. Newt is catching fire, but Newt’s message is what is inspiring. Newt is a vessel. Newt is getting people voting for him to tell the establishment what they think of the way they’ve been running this party.
Some might think that a distinction that’s too smart by half, but… (interruption) What advice would I give Obama? To do what? To win again? What advice would I give Obama to win? Oh, come on! Well, I’d have to think about that because I don’t think he can in a real world. Now, he clearly can. I don’t want to mislead anybody here. Look, there’s something else here, Carol, and again it’s a surface thing. You know how people are fed up with the Republicans having “dumb people who can’t talk,” and Newt sounds smart, and he can spout things from history that roll off his tongue? He comes off as smart, and I can’t TELL YOU how much that matters to people on our side. They’re sick and tired of people being nominated who can’t put two sentences together or sound like Cowboy Billy Bob at the time they’re doing it. They’re just fed up with it.
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