RUSH: I think I’m becoming a psychologist in explaining the Republican Party. It’s the only way you can explain ’em. It’s psychological. And so I will endeavor to try that today. But that’s a lost cause. I mean, even if you get it right, you explain it right, then what? They think I’m the problem.
The New York Times has a story today. The New York Times has a fascinating story. It’s a story by Thomas B. Edsall who used to be at the Washington Post. This is the guy who wrote the piece in November of 2011 explaining how the Obama campaign was going to give up on the white middle class vote. I think he’s at the Huffing and Puffington Post or maybe he left there and is now at the New York Times. I can’t keep track of these people. It’s a revolving door with all these different liberal institutions. But he has a piece today quoting Republican after Republican after Republican saying, boy, they’d be winning everything if it weren’t for talk radio. The Republicans would be winning everything, including the White House.
And, Snerdley, my first book is even quoted. This story claims that The Way Things Ought to Be was the beginning of the end of the Republican Party winning the White House. I, folks, kid you not. This story quotes some Republican saying that. I’ve got it here in the Stack. I wasn’t gonna talk about this right now. This is just how this show happens. I’ve got it buried somewhere down in the Stack here.
They’re going on the record. They’re named. I mean, I’m only mentioned twice by name and then the book, but talk radio in general is mentioned throughout, and traditional conservatism is mentioned throughout, as the problem with the Republican Party. It’s nothing I haven’t warned you about. This is why I say it’s not surprising. I told everybody this has been coming. This is not even the first such story. Snerdley is now hustling to the computer and Googling it because he’s rightfully outraged and is trying to find it.
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RUSH: “Has the GOP Gone off the Deep End?” I tell you, the thing about this — and not just this story, because there are many like this about the Republican Party. We’ve got gay bashing going on, we have race bashing, and right in there in the mix is conservative bashing. Here’s the thing, though: We conservatives don’t control anything. Nothing happening in this country is because conservatives are in charge.
This country is in a state of decline, a state of decay. This country is rotting from the inside out, and we don’t have any say. We don’t control anything. We don’t. Conservatives don’t control anything in government. Zero! Conservatives don’t even have any hold on the GOP. The Republican Party leadership is not conservative. We don’t have any say-so over the Republican Party system, and yet everything’s our fault.
Their inability to win — their inability to get along with people, their inability to be liked by Hispanics, their inability to be liked by blacks, their inability to be liked by gays — it’s our fault, folks. That’s what this New York Times piece essentially says, even though we conservatives don’t do anything. We don’t have any power. We don’t control anything. Nothing that is happening in this government is happening because of us. And yet we’re being blamed!
This is just the latest piece. It may be one of the most pointed but we, all of us — you and I, all of us conservatives — are being blamed. And in this piece, I and “talk radio” specifically are being blamed for the plight of the Republican Party, as though the Republican Party and what it’s doing has no effect on how it is perceived. The Republican Party’s actions apparently have nothing to do with the Republican Party’s political status right now, the status of its political fortunes.
It’s the most amazing thing.
We don’t control anything. We barely have a voice in the Republican Party. We have a couple senators, we have a couple members of the House, and that’s it, and yet this is all our fault. And it started with me and this show, and my book The Way Things Ought to Be, and then talk radio. Fox News is not mentioned in this story, I don’t think. This is just a bunch of Republicans (they’re named, by the way) dumping on conservatives and talk radio and me.
But, folks, how in the world is it our fault what’s happening for the Republican Party? Well, let’s explore one of the theories in this piece. They say that talk radio and conservative opposition to amnesty has provided or given an image of the Republican Party that’s caused people not to like Republicans. But we don’t control anything. The Republicans are in office. The Republicans are the ones that have the political power.
But somehow, they escape any accountability. It’s almost like there’s a Limbaugh Theorem that attaches to them, just as there is Obama. Intellectually, it really is the most amazing thing. I don’t have the power to do anything. I can’t raise anybody’s taxes. I can’t approve amnesty; I can’t stop amnesty. Nobody on talk radio can, and there isn’t anybody in the conservative movement who can.
Yet it’s us who are responsible for the poor image Republicans have? They have nothing to do with it themselves? Their own actions are irrelevant? The Republicans are perceived as really a bumbling of nice guys, but talk radio is making people doubt them. The Republicans are perceived as a bunch that really want to compromise, really want to get along with people. They really want to make deals. They really want to be bipartisan.
But they can’t.
The Republicans can’t because of me and my first book and talk radio. It’s the most… That’s why I say this is psychological. Here you have the people in politics on the Republican side with the power. I mean, John Boehner is the speaker of the House! The Republicans run the House of Representatives. Somehow they’re not able to really do what they want to do ’cause of me or because of you or because of talk radio.
But we don’t control anything in government.
We don’t have one say-so about anything.
I mean, literally zero, folks.
We don’t control anything. We haven’t been elected to anything. We don’t have any power whatsoever — and yet, look! Obama somehow is not held accountable for what he does. That’s our fault. The Republicans are not held accountable for what they do. That is also our fault. George Zimmerman wasn’t held accountable for what he did. That is our fault. If I didn’t know better, reading this piece, I would think the media wants Republicans to win the White House.
There’s just one problem: Me. If I didn’t know better, I would say the media and the Democrat Party really do want the Republicans to come back. They really want the Republicans to start winning things. But, damn it, there’s talk radio!
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RUSH: So this explains why the left is always trying to drive me and other conservative talk radio hosts and other conservatives off the air. They’re trying to save the GOP. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you what this means. I’ve told you over and over again that the left — and I’m now gonna expand that to say “Washington.” Washington will always tell us what they fear. That was why they set out to destroy Sarah Palin.
They fear you.
They fear conservatives.
Conservatives are the monkey wrench.
You all are the only thing standing in the way of Washington transforming this country into something it was not founded to be, and this story in the New York Times has multiple purposes. It tells us who they fear, and it also illustrates who they’re going to try to destroy and who they have been trying to destroy. We even have people in the Republican Party who profess to be conservatives, but they’re not. They profess to be.
They’re constantly urging “caution” and “reason” and “restraint” and things. And while doing that, they claim to be objecting to the same things we do. They claim not to like Obamacare. They claim not to really like amnesty and immigration reform. But their solutions are to trash us — to trash conservatives — and prepare ineffective, minimalistic policies that end up involving more government.
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RUSH: All right. Here you go. Thomas B. Edsall, the writer of the New York Times piece we’re discussing today. Thomas Edsall is currently the Joseph Pulitzer and Edith Pulitzer Moore professorship in public affairs journalism at Columbia University. He writes a weekly column for the New York Times online edition. So what do we have here? We have a journalism professor at the nation’s foremost J school practically calling for the silencing of opposing opinions.
The silencing of talk radio.
You know, these guys, they love Europe. They want to be just like Europe. You know, there’s no talk radio in Europe. That’s why they think Europe is bliss.
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RUSH: Here’s the story by Thomas B. Edsall in the New York Times. Headline: “Has the GOP Gone Off the Deep End?” It starts this way: “Thomas Doherty, patronage czar and political enforcer for former New York Governor George Pataki, reached the breaking point last week when he read that House Republicans were preparing to ‘slow walk’ the Senate immigration bill to death. Doherty turned to Twitter:
“‘If Senate Immigration bill gets ripped apart and ultimately defeated by House #GOP I’ve decided to leave my political home of 32 yrs #sad.'” So here’s a guy, supposedly a patronage czar and an enforcer for Pataki, former governor of New York, all upset that the Republicans might not cave and go ahead and support the Senate amnesty bill. The Senate amnesty bill is a disaster! Even Rubio is trying to walk back from it.
The Senate amnesty bill is utterly unworkable. It’s another instance of Obamacare, and this guy said he “reached the breaking point last week when he read that House Republicans were preparing to ‘slow walk’ the Senate immigration bill to death.” He tweeted, “If [that] bill gets ripped apart and ultimately defeated by House,” he’s going to leave the party, and then Doherty talked to the writer, Thomas B. Edsall.
He said he had “come to the conclusion that my party has elements within it that dislike homosexuals and think America is still in the 1940s. And while we talk about freedom and liberty, that liberty and freedom only seem to be acceptable for some.” So Thomas Doherty tells this writer for the New York Times, not only is he mad that the House may not take up the Senate amnesty bill (which is a disaster), he then has to say he’s ticked off because he’s “come to the conclusion that my party has elements within it that dislike homosexuals and think America is still in the 1940s.
“And while we talk about freedom and liberty, that liberty and freedom only seem to be acceptable for some.” And this guy is portrayed as a mainstream Republican who wants the Democrats to get whatever they want? Thomas Doherty apparently wants the Democrats to get whatever they want and then blames a bunch of people that don’t have any power whatsoever. Folks, you and I… What can you do?
You can call Washington and that’s about it, but in terms of real power? You and I don’t have any real power over this. Over anything. We have none. We don’t have any hold on the GOP. We control nothing in government, zero — and we’re getting blamed for this. This goes on. It says here, “Doherty, no liberal, is representative of the growing strength on the right of the view that the Republican Party has gone off the deep end.”
So this guy, Doherty — who wants the Democrats to get their amnesty bill, who wants the Democrats to get their gay marriage bill, wants to agree with the Democrats on everything — is said to be “representative of the growing strength on the right.” He’s not on the right! These guys are all caving to the Democrats. They are all caving. This is psychological. I am convinced this is a psychological issue.
They are standing by and watching decline.
They are observing this decline, and do nothing about it — except try to help the left move their agenda — and you and I are the problem. “‘Their rigidity is killing them. It’s either holy purity or you are anathema,’ Tom Korologos, a premier Republican lobbyist and the ambassador to Belgium under George W. Bush, said in a phone interview. ‘Too many ideologues have come in. You don’t win by what they are doing,'” and there it is: “Too many ideologues.”
This guy, Tom Korologos, has let the cat out of the bag. The Republican Party has too many “ideologues,” i.e., too many conservatives. There aren’t enough just plain, old, average, run-of-the-mill Republican losers anymore. There are too many ideologues. And who’s responsible for that? Well, as you read the story, you found out I am. My book and me are responsible, and I’m gonna tell you something.
I have said, and I still say it. I stand by it, and I believe it bottom of my heart. The liberals are the biggest, most partisan ideologues in this country. I don’t care if you go to Los Angeles, New York, or Washington. The most partisan, angry, miserable unhappy ideologues are the Democrats — and everything they do is ideological. And here is a premier Republican lobbyist who doesn’t get it, who thinks that Republican ideology is the problem in Washington.
We’ve gotta get rid of and clear the decks of Republican ideology (which would just pave the road for the Democrat ideologues). Does anybody in here really believe the Democrats are not ideologues? That is all they are! Everything to the Democrats is political. I’m telling you, folks, this is a psychological issue. These people calling themselves Republicans are in the process of caving to the left or caving to the ruling class, caving to whatever.
They’re caving to something that is not Republicanism, and it is not conservatism. The next paragraph from Thomas B. Edsall: “A number of prominent figures in the Republican Party share this harsh view,” of Tom Korologos. “Jeb Bush warned last year that both Ronald Reagan and his own father would have a ‘hard time’ fitting into the contemporary Republican Party, which he described as dominated by ‘an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement.'”
What in the name of Sam Hill are these people talking about? Ronald Reagan fought these people! These people defeated Ronald Reagan in 1976, and he didn’t go away. He came back and beat them in 1980. Reagan fought these people! Goldwater before him fought these people. Bill Buckley fought them. These people don’t have any real agenda. They don’t have any real vision. They’ve abandoned limited government, constitutionally limited government, just as the left has.
But worse: They pretend that they haven’t.
They pretend that they still believe in limited government.
They still pretend they believe in limited constitutional government.
But I’ll tell you, the contempt that all of these people who are named have for conservatives and conservatism is abundant and apparent throughout. “A few months ago, [Jeb] Bush, who is expected to run for the party’s nomination in 2016, took it up a notch,” and they quote him at the CPAC convention in March. I don’t have time to get into that. Let me take a break. They next quote Dole.
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RUSH: I went back, ladies and gentlemen, back in 2009 — that would be four years ago, almost four years ago — in November of 2009 Thomas B. Edsall wrote a story with the headline “The Intolerance Party — GOP Strategists Worry Ideologues Are Bad For The Party’s Future.” 2009, first year of the Obama regime. And he’s back. He’s got it again. He just recycles the story. And in that 2009 story, Mr. Snerdley, he blames me as well. This professor of journalism at Columbia who’s writing articles suggesting that all opposition to liberalism be silenced, 2009, has a piece — he’s been saying the same crap for four years now, probably even longer than that.
So what happens? It’s time for the four-year revision. So he goes out and he finds a new bunch of Republicans to talk to. He probably calls ’em up and says, “Hey, I’ve got this premise that you guys are really cool but it’s guys like Limbaugh and conservatives that are holding you back,” and they’re more than eager. I mean, look, I don’t want to take Thomas B. Edsall out of the equation. This is his premise. The fact that he’s found Republicans to go along with it is its own story, but it’s his premise, and he’s had this story, again, almost word-for-word in the expression of the principle of it, the main contention, four years ago, and again blaming me.
From the 2009 article: “The dangers facing elected Republicans who share the views of the strategists are reflected in the firestorm that hit Georgia Republican Congressman Phil Gingrey when he had the temerity to confront Limbaugh.” So Thomas B. Edsall is livid at these Republicans who criticize me, then they hear about it from you and they cave and apologize to me. That just really ticks him off. It just really makes him mad. But he’s quoted in this story that’s out today, Bob Dole, Bill Kristol, Paul Krugman, Norman Ornstein, Thomas Mann, Ed Rogers, the chairman of the BGR Group (formerly Barbour Griffith & Rogers) and a top aide to both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
John Feehery, Pete Wehner, Bill McInturff. He’s got one voice in here who disagrees with the premise, and that is Bill McInturff, who’s a pollster. He’s the founder of Public Opinion Strategies. McInturff disputes the premise, but he’s the only voice that Edsall found. Again, folks, it’s his premise. It’s the New York Times writer’s premise, the J-school professor at Columbia, but he’s found plenty of Republicans happy to agree with him, happy to amplify what he believes. And I just have to remind you again, you and I don’t control anything in government, zero. We have no hold on the Republican Party, the Republican Party leadership, the party system. But we are the impediment. We’re the thing standing in the way of the Republicans being loved.
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RUSH: That’s right, Snerdley, if you read — by the way, I’m through. I’m not gonna read you anymore of this silly piece in the New York Times. I’m just gonna tell you what it’s really about. It’s about amnesty. It’s about the amnesty bill fading away. It’s about more and more people recognizing the Senate amnesty bill is an absolute disaster, and it is an attempt to put pressure on Republicans to end up supporting the Senate version of amnesty in the House. That’s what this is about, about shaming and humiliating Republicans as cowards, being afraid of people like me. I do want to find the passage talking about my book.
But before I get to that, let me just go back to the 2009 Thomas Edsall piece, which is simply another version of this piece he has in the New York Times today. It’s the same piece, 2009, too many ideologues in the Republican Party, and the ideologues are led by me, and it was just the next year that the Tea Party caused this massive down-ballot defeat for Democrats. Thomas B. Edsall writes this piece about how the Republican Party is being killed by the ideologues, the conservatives. He wrote that piece in November. The very next year, the 2010 midterms, we know what happened. So he was really ticked off when that happened.
But in the 2009 piece, he also quotes Thomas Doherty, who is the first person quoted in the piece today, the former enforcer for Pataki. So he recycles Thomas Doherty from 2009: “One of the most outspoken GOP strategists is Tom Doherty. … Doherty contends that one of the biggest liabilities of the GOP is an image of intolerance. Leaders ‘need to set up a process where all Americans are equal in the Republican Party, whether gay, straight, transgender or bisexual. That is our biggest problem: we are viewed as a party dominated by the far right.'” Gay bashers, and now immigrant bashers.
So back four years ago, Doherty was complaining about gays. Four years later today, Doherty is complaining about amnesty, and this whole New York Times piece today by Thomas B. Edsall is about amnesty and the Democrats losing it. And the House slow walking it, the Senate amnesty bill. They’re telling us who they fear. But again, I’m struck because they’re blaming us, and we don’t have any control of anything. We don’t control the GOP. We don’t control anything in government. We have no hold on the Republican leadership or the party system, yet we are the problem.
Now, listen to this passage. This is gonna be it from the story today. “There is a striking correlation between the rise of conservative talk radio and the difficulties of the Republican Party in presidential elections. In an April Reuters essay, ‘Right Wing Talk Shows Turned White House Blue,’ Mark Rozell, the acting dean of the George Mason University School of Public Policy, and John Paul Goldman, a former chairman of VirginiaÂ’s Democratic Party, wrote: Since Rush LimbaughÂ’s 1992 bestseller ‘The Way Things Ought to Be,’ his conservative talk show politics have dominated GOP presidential discourse — and the RepublicansÂ’ White House fortunes have plummeted. But when the mainstream media reigned supreme, between 1952 and 1988, Republicans won seven out of the 10 presidential elections.”
So you see, folks, the Republican Party was much better when I wasn’t around. The Republican Party, when it was just the mainstream media, when they had their monopoly, well, yeah, the Republicans were winning everything. But then I came along and I began to sow the seeds of Republican Party presidential politics defeat. It has nothing to do, of course, with who the Republicans nominated. Bob Dole, 1996, George H. W. Bush in ’92, really didn’t care, didn’t appear to care to win reelection, or didn’t take any opposition seriously. And we had George W. Bush for eight years. I guess that was in spite of me.
“The authors continue: ‘The rise of the conservative-dominated media defines the era when the fortunes of GOP presidential hopefuls dropped to the worst levels since the partyÂ’s founding in 1856.'”
Isn’t it amazing how Thomas B. Edsall and the boys want the Republicans to win the White House? Isn’t that amazing? Who knew? Did you know that? Did you know that Thomas B. Edsall of the New York Times is sitting out there disappointed the Republicans aren’t winning the White House anymore? They’re really kind of sad that Obama won. They really wanted a Republican to win, damn it. This Limbaugh guy’s running around and he’s getting in the way of our Republicans winning. Did you know that? Did you know the Democrats really want the Republicans to win the White House? It’d be happening if it weren’t for me. This is another one of those occasions I just wish my father were alive. He would not believe it.
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