RUSH: So Obama’s out there now in the Rose Garden, and he’s attacking the Tea Party and claiming that a small percentage of one political party has decided for whatever reason that they wanted to shut down the government and so forth and so on. And it leads me to a sound bite I want to play for you. To me, this is an opportunity here to be quite illuminating. Last night Bernard Goldberg was on Fox on the “O’Baxter” Factor. The host Bill Baxter was asking Goldberg about the battle between Republicans and conservatives that’s going on. And the question was, “Okay, Bernie, look, you are in a controversy with some far-right people who object. The Republican Party split, right, Bernie?”

GOLDBERG: Rush Limbaugh. Nobody articulates conservatism as clearly and passionately as Rush Limbaugh. He’d be the first to acknowledge that he couldn’t win a national election. The true blue real conservative Republicans need to understand is that, despite what they think, most Americans don’t think the way they do. They’ll never elect a Dennis Kucinich on the left, and I don’t believe they’re gonna elect a Ted Cruz on the right. The only reason Barack Obama, who’s more liberal than all of them, got elected, wasn’t because of his politics, but because he created a cult of personality, and that’s what the Republicans need, a real conservative with a great personality, and those people are hard to come by.

RUSH: Now, Bernie, who I like, chose to speak for me there and put words in my mouth that I would not have agreed with had I been sitting next to him last night. It may well be that even if I wanted to be president, that I wouldn’t win, but it’s not because I’m conservative. The reason I couldn’t win is that I’ve been demonized. My reputation has been demonized and assaulted for 25 years. And even had I chosen on each occasion to respond to it and to try to defend it, it wouldn’t have mattered, because I woulda still been a lone wolf. The truth of the matter here is, it’s not conservatism that can’t win. It is that conservatism has been so ogre-ized and so demonized by an alliance of the Democrat Party and the media.

I know some people that I’ve met over the course of my life. And when I first met them, they used to tell me what, quote, “You Republicans need to do. You need to soften your approach. You all sound like you’re heartless, no compassion. You don’t care about people and you hate women and minorities.” And I said, “But we don’t, and you know me.” “Yeah, but you’ve got –” In other words, the onus was on us. And then, as these people, who met me and I became their friends, as time went by, they came to understand that it wasn’t conservatives and conservatism that was engendering what they used to think about us. It was the media.

As they got to know other conservatives they realized they’re really nice people. They’re fun people to be around. They don’t hate anybody. They’re responsible. They’re self-reliant. They’re nothing like what the media portrayed. And so now some of these same people will say to me you guys are never gonna have a chance because the media’s so in the tank against you, and that’s the bottom line. It’s not conservatism that can’t win. You know, the media is such an oppressive — and it’s not even media, folks. There is no news media anymore. In fact, whatever news media there is will be found on the right. I do more genuine news on this program than you’ll find in the Washington Post or the New York Times.

Now, true, I have a conservative agenda here, but I’m honest and up front about it and I make no bones about it. But I also tell you exactly what the left is doing. I explain what they’re doing before I knock it down. I don’t have to demonize them, I don’t even try. I take them on in the arena of ideas. That they do not do with us. They do not debate our ideas. They do not take our ideas on. They take us on personally. They can’t beat our ideas. So they have to discredit and destroy anyone in the conservative movement or the Republican Party, take your pick, who they fear. And right now they fear Ted Cruz. They used to fear Sarah Palin. They fear the Tea Party. They will tell you every day what they’re afraid of by who it is they are attempting to destroy.

But there isn’t a news media. There is a media, but it’s nothing more than a branch of the Democrat Party. It’s nothing more than a branch of the American left. They get to operate under the guise of being media so that low-information voters think that they are reading and consuming news when they read about how rotten this or that conservative is, or when they read how mean-spirited that conservative policy is. I don’t read women’s magazines, but it’s been brought to my attention that there’s no wonder the female vote goes Democrat. All you’ve gotta do is open any women’s magazine, from Cosmo, to Oprah’s magazine, to Women’s Wear Daily, whatever, they’re nothing more than branch offices of the Democrat Party, and they carry forth the agenda.

It isn’t that conservatism can’t win, because it can and does and will win again. So I want to here and now reject the statement by Bernie Goldberg that I couldn’t win because I’m conservative. Now, I don’t want to be president, don’t misunderstand, but I’m saying if I did want to be, it’s not my ideas that would seal my defeat. It’s not what I believe. It’s not my view of this country. It’s not my love and devotion to this country and what it stands for and how was it founded that would result in my defeat. It would be the demonization that’s taken place over the last 25 years ago. And why has that happened? I’m just a guy on the radio.

I’m just a guy on the radio who they have lumped into the political system and treat me as though I am a political leader and a candidate, and they treat me as somebody who is out seeking votes, and then they judge my success or failure on that basis, when I’m not even in that business. I take it as a great compliment, don’t misunderstand, I’m not complaining about any of this. It’s just the lay of the land. It’s simply the way it is. And this fact is what has resulted in such fear from the top to the bottom of the Republican Party. The Republican Party knows everything, and they believe, just like Bernie Goldberg said here, that conservatism is the problem.

That’s why they think they can eliminate, or if not eliminate, they can marginalize this demonization if they are also a little bit for amnesty, and if they moderate on abortion and a woman’s right to choose, or if they go along with some form of national health care. And of course that’s guaranteed to lose because then they’re just pretenders, they’re not the real deal. The Democrats are the real leftists. But it has resulted in so many people, and not just politicians on the Republican side, but Republican media people being literally cowed, literally scared to death.

Now, there are people — you know them, you’ve met them; there’s nothing wrong with this, don’t misunderstand — to whom their reputation is everything. Particularly their reputation with people that don’t know them. And they will do whatever they can to avoid bad press. And if you happen to be a Republican or conservative, and your mission is to avoid bad press, you have to deny who you are. You have to be stealth. You have to cover up who you are, and that’s no good.

Now, I’m like anybody else. I value my reputation, but in my case, it’s among people I know. My take on it is that I can’t control what people I don’t know think. You are all people I know. You in this audience are people I consider to be almost an extended family. I know you. I do care what you think, but I’m not worried about what you think because you’re here every day. And whenever any of these demonization efforts take place I don’t worry about it where I’m concerned because I know you are informed enough to know what is a lie and what’s not true and what the effort is and why it’s being undertaken by the left. And you have always, for 25 years, been in there.

You’ve stood tough. You’ve hung in and you’ve stayed here, and you’ve, in your own way, by your show of support, that equals your defending me. I am fully aware of this, and that’s why I have such profound appreciation for every one of you. But there’s no doubt, I mean there’s no mistaking — I get calls from people all the time who used to think X, Y, and Z about me, and then they started listening and they found out it wasn’t true. You may be one of those people. There are more and more of them each and every day. But this is what’s happened. And the sad thing is that the Republican Party now believes what Bernie Goldberg said, that conservatism can’t win, that conservatism is the problem, and it isn’t.

Conservatism is not the problem. Conservatism is the founding of this country, essentially. Conservatism isn’t even really an ideology. Conservatism is just what is right, proper, decent, and moral. That’s all it is. Liberalism is an ideology. Liberalism is a structured belief system that is essentially a religion that takes the place of standard organized religion, and that’s why they so fear standard organized religion. That’s why they’re just petrified, for example, of the Catholic Church. That’s why they would do anything to take it over and corrupt it. Liberals have to do away with everything that scares them. They do not want to co-exist with people that disagree. They have to destroy those people. And that is what has happened.

It’s been going on for longer than I’ve been doing this program. I’m not even the primary recipient of all of this. I just happen to be one of many who has been targeted for this kind of destruction. There’s a famous TV writer. I played golf with him one day, and he said, “You know what, you’re really a nice guy. I think I’m gonna do a good story on you just to tick off my friends.”

“What do you mean?”

“The last thing they’ll want me to do is humanize you.”

I’d never encountered that phrase. This was early on here in the 25-year history. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, humanizing you.”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

“Well, you’re not human to them. You’re just a monster. You know, you’re hateful. You’re this and that, and if I do a story, a profile on you that humanizes you, they will just be livid at me.”

And it happened, and they were. They dumped all over him. His other friends in the media dumped all over him for daring to humanize me. Imagine that. It took me the longest time to learn all of this. Wish I’da learned it much sooner. I wasted too many years thinking the media could be straightened out. I spent too many years thinking the media could be corrected, that their mistakes on me and others like me were correctable. And they’re not, because they are purposeful. They know they’re making things up about us. They know that they’re getting away with it.

It’s a strategy, folks, to destroy the character and reputation of their political enemies. It’s a practiced art. It’s one of the ways journalists climb their ladder of success. The resume, how many people have you destroyed in a clever way that’s not actionable? The Democrat Party is fully aware of the friendly alliance that they have with the media because, again, it isn’t media. It’s disguised as media. There is no news media. When McCain chose Sarah Palin, she was the governor of Alaska. And at the moment in time that McCain chose her she had the highest approval rating of any governor in the country. How long did that last?

How long did it take them to destroy George W. Bush and everything that he wanted to do? It took them years, but they were relentless, they never stopped. And they didn’t care the outcome. Bush wasn’t even a conservative. Bush was just a good old standard rock ‘n’ roll establishment Republican, and they still had to take him out. As I say, the problem here is that Republicans know this, and people who are just obsessed with their reputations among people that don’t know them, their goose is cooked. They’re going to easily compromise who they are in the pursuit of being liked and loved.

It really is a dual-edged sword. But I’m here to tell you that, if I wanted to be president and if I were ever serious about it, the biggest thing I would have going for me is that I’m a conservative. So I respectfully disagree with Mr. Goldberg. And I think Ted Cruz, if he ever wants to be president, the biggest thing he’s got going for him is that he’s conservative. This ongoing effort, even now among Republicans, to place an albatross around the necks of conservatives — we’re not the problem. We are not the problem. We are the last-gasp effort to stave all of this off. Conservatives in this country are the only ones fighting any of this, really.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We were just talking yesterday, folks, about a big story in the Washington Post. The country is more conservative today than it has been since 1952, and we were told the base of the Republican Party has become very conservative. So what’s the problem with being a conservative? The problem with being a conservative is the establishment media. Conservatism isn’t the problem. It is simply people who will not stand up and defend themselves or others when under assault that leads to the media being successful in demonizing conservatives.