RUSH: Folks, I think this is really, in terms of understanding all this, please bear with me. Forgive me if I’m redundant and repetitive here, but for some reason I find this crucially important. Ron Paul’s farewell speech asking bluntly, why is selling freedom so hard to do? I mean, it’s the freedom of the founding, freedom from government, Constitution, the Bill of Rights limits what government can do. It celebrates the God-given freedom and liberty of each human being, and that’s what we stand for. But of course we also believe there needs to be guardrails on our culture and society. We call it morality.
What is so hard about selling freedom? And it is a tough sell, because to the people we’re trying to sell freedom, they look at us as their main impediment to freedom. We stand in the way of the way they define it. Their definition of freedom doesn’t involve government being in their way at all. We’re the ones in their way. They want gay rights, gay marriage. They want to redefine marriage any way they want, redefine the family any way they want. They want to legalize dope, you name it. They look at us as the obstacle. We deny them a good time. We deny them their fun. We deny them their freedom. Government, therefore, is to where they turn for action against us.
Now, we go to our convention, and we had speaker after speaker of achieved and dynamic and articulate, the best among those in their business, minorities, African-Americans, women, Hispanics. We have more Hispanic elected officials in the Republican Party than the Democrats do. And that convention did not sell. It did not win any converts, is what I mean. Apparently it did not. I didn’t have anything to do with that convention, I’ll just stress again. But why didn’t that convention work? I mean, here we had Marco Rubio, and he told a story, up from nothing, Susana Martinez, ditto, Mia Love, ditto, Condoleezza Rice, ditto. I mean, the list is endless. Didn’t work.
I think, on the other hand, our convention probably scared the people we were trying to convert. And Snerdley’s shaking his head, “What do you mean? How could that convention possibly…” Just think about it. Don’t make me provide the answer. Think about it, in terms of what we’ve discussed so far today in the first 40 minutes of the program. Here. “Groups backing an extension of unemployment benefits have launched a new round of lobbying to convince Congress,” to extend unemployment benefits $30 billion worth.
I thought we had a recovering economy. I thought jobs were being created. This was the news before the election. Why do we need unemployment extension? I thought the objective was jobs. Even the president I thought was talking about creating jobs. Now we’ve got people who want unemployment benefits extended. What about our convention scared people? What do you think, Snerdley? Okay, what is it? Hm-hm. Hm-hm. No. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. There was nothing in our convention that said anybody’s benefits are gonna get cut. That’s the answer. What did people we hope to convert see when they watched our convention? They heard testimonials to hard work, stick-to-itiveness, family, sacrifice, not quitting, not giving up. Speaker after speaker after speaker.
And then with our nominee, we had testimonial after testimonial of his charity and of his good works. This Republican convention touched every base. But what the Republican convention didn’t do apparently is let these groups that we’re trying to convert know that we understand their economic insecurities and we did not have a presence or an optics or an image of understanding their insecurities. So they decided, when it came time to vote on the election, even though — I mean, I’ve seen this analysis, they voted for a guy — honest to God, folks, I read this yesterday, I was on the airplane, I didn’t have a chance to print out. Oh, and 71% Hispanic vote voted for Obama. It was some Hispanic leader saying, “And they don’t even like him.” They don’t even like Obama. The Hispanics, I forget where it was. They don’t even like him. It’s just they hate the Republicans even more, because they don’t think the Republicans understand ’em or care about ’em or trust ’em or what have you.
So my question two or three days after the election, I’m gonna ask it again. If our problem is demographic, and if we lost the election because we’re not for contraceptives or that’s the perception, we want to deny people, nothing could be further from the truth, by the way. Abortion? What are we to do? Are we to now be for amnesty? Are we to, as a party, officially proclaim that free contraception is what we believe for any woman that wants it? Is this what we’re to do? I mean, what’s the answer? I just asked it open-endedly.