RUSH: Now, let me close the loop on immigration. We sit here, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s the end of the Republican Party. The polling data all shows it. The people that would be granted amnesty are not gonna vote Republican because of this or anything else. I mean, not without a lot of work. And the Republican Party being so publicly for amnesty is not going to change how these people vote. I don’t know if the Republicans think that’s going to happen. I do know that the prevailing thought or theory is really baked in total defensiveness.
“Don’t criticize the president. Delicately, even hesitantly suggest a different approach to the same objective, whatever the objective is. If it’s Obamacare, we have an alternative. If it’s amnesty, we have an alternative. Whatever Obama proposes, we’re not gonna oppose it, because it will not be helpful. That’s what the Tea Party does, and the Tea Party’s hated, and we hate ’em, and we don’t want to be the Tea Party, and we want to show the American people that we can be bipartisan, cross the aisle and work with the Democrats.”
Look, it defies logic that there are still Republicans and consultants who believe this, but they do. But there’s another possibility, and I’m really uncomfortable in addressing it, mentioning it. I did yesterday ’cause I’m like everybody else trying to make sense of this, and it doesn’t make sense. Politically, this is not gonna grow the Republican Party. It’s not going to change the direction Obama’s taking the country. Why do it? Well, many in Congress make no more than what their salaries are. Chamber of Commerce, very much pro-amnesty, very much pro-immigration. They’re really, really pushing it. I mean, it’s almost like the Chamber of Commerce has been infiltrated and taken over by a bunch of leftists. That doesn’t make any sense to me, either, folks. It’s been a rather quick evolution here. The Chamber used to not be oriented this way. They’ve been trending toward it, but it seems like it’s overnight.
Now, if you are a member of Congress and you want to leave, and you probably know you’re gonna get beat after you make amnesty happen, well, what if somebody’s promised you a job with health care and a couple million bucks, what would you do? And if that’s the only way you think you’re ever going to make any money… let’s say you’re in Congress and you want to leave Congress, and you don’t know what you can do out there that will pay you as much as what you’re getting now, let’s say it’s $175,000. I hate even thinking this, but, remember, this is the place that had the House bank and the House post office. And this is the place where a lot of people have shown up to Congress with nothing and they end up becoming millionaires while there. Not just in Congress, but the whole citywide.
I hate thinking this, but I’m telling you, I’m at wit’s end trying to understand it. Look, the political aspects, okay, they hate the Republican Party base, fine. And they want to get rid of their Republican base, fine. They don’t like the Tea Party. They don’t like pro-lifers. They don’t like social issue conservatives. Fine. They want to get rid of ’em, and the fastest way to get rid of ’em is pass legislation they universally oppose. Fine. And then they want to rebuild the party with a whole new base made up of moderate, independent types. And even if that takes ’em 10 years, that’s fine. Getting rid of the conservatives, the Tea Party, getting rid of our current base, that’s what we want to do. That may be the case, too, and they may be willing to wallow in the wilderness ineffectively for 10 years while they try to reassemble a new base and a new coalition where they can win elections.
But that’s doesn’t make sense either. On the one hand it does, but it really doesn’t. Who would want to purposely take action that’s gonna cause you to be a permanent minority, unless you’re not gonna be there when the permanent minority is the permanent minority. I mean, it really doesn’t make any sense. You can come up with logical explanations that are outside of politics, but it really doesn’t make any sense. Folks, they have been hell-bent on getting this done since the early 2000s. Well, maybe even longer than that, but it intensified, as you know, in the early 2000s. And back then, just to refresh your memory, we were told in the early 2000s that this was the only way to grow the party. In fact, I’ll tell you, I remember, ’cause I’ve had the lecture.
They came down here and tried to get my mind right. They sat me down and said, “What you’re missing is, if we can pull off immigration, convert the Hispanic population to voting for us the way the black population votes for the Democrats, we will be the permanent majority party.” That was the original impetus behind this from the upper levels of the Republican Party in the early 2000s. That was the thinking, as it was explained to me. It was about wiping out the Democrats, which made sense as an objective. I’m all for that, wiping them out, turning them into a permanent minority. I’m all in. But this isn’t the way.
But as far back as 14 years ago this was what was thought to be the magic bullet. This would do it. This is how we would persuade Hispanics that we are worthy of their vote. That we are on their side; that we will be looking out for them; that we have their best interests in mind and that voting for us is the best thing that can happen to them and their families economically, culturally, societally, you name it, and it was really based on taking them away from the Democrat Party. And it may well be that you still have upper echelon Republicans who think that that is what is going to happen. And you do have a number of them who say that. I don’t know whether they still believe it but they do say it.
You’ve heard ’em one way or another, you’ve heard ’em say, “The demographics in the country are changing, Rush, and we’ve got this influx of Hispanics. Forget immigration. They’re being born. We’re gonna have to convert these people to Republicans, and one of the ways to do it is be for amnesty, because we all know that every Hispanic wants every other Hispanic to be able to come to this country legally whenever they want to. And that’s how we’ll show them we love ’em; that’s how we show them that we’re on their side; that’s how we show them they can vote for us.” So we’re gonna get into identity politics? That’s something we’ve never done. We’ve stood for everybody.
Conservatism doesn’t see groups, doesn’t see victims — well, other than people that vote Democrat. But we don’t want to capitalize on it. We want to remove them from victim status. We want to teach them self-reliance, rugged individualism. We want them to be able to provide for themselves. We want them to maximize their lives. We want them to get the most out of life possible. We want them not depending on a political party, no matter which one.
But that doesn’t seem to be the objective now.
It seems like our party’s looking at things in this identity politics way. “Okay, we’ll have a position to get the Hispanics, then next we’re gonna have to do something for women. You know, this War on Women they’re gonna say? That’s killing us. We’re gonna have to do something to convince the women that we don’t hate ’em like the Democrats say.” What’s that gonna be? I shudder to think what that’s gonna be down the line.
But that isn’t who we are.
We don’t see people as members of groups or sexes or orientations. We see Americans. We see a country. We see a distinct American culture that’s the envy of the world, that provides more opportunity for people who want to work for it than has ever existed anywhere in the world, and we don’t understand why… Well, we do understand why. But we don’t understand why people wouldn’t want have beliefs like that be the primary definitions of our society and the country.
They’ve convinced a number of people — 91 or 92 million people are not working and they’re still eating, so what’s the problem? I understand what we’re up against. But what the Republicans are doing in this simply doesn’t make any sense.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I need to make not so much a clarification, but I need to draw a distinction. I have been using the Republican Party generically, and I should not have. I should have been specifying it’s the Republican Party leadership that is hell-bent on ramrodding through this amnesty plan. Now, the Republicans are at their retreat on the frozen shores of the Chesapeake Bay, and from what I understand, there was what’s called an open microphone at these meetings when these issues come up. Members of the House are allowed a minute or two to speak and the leadership gets all the time they want.
There was an embargo placed on anything coming out of there, an embargo on the leadership position. It turns out the leadership distributed their own position on amnesty to the media. The upshot of it is that it seems like two-thirds of the House rank-and-file is opposed to what the leadership in the House is trying to push. It might be three-fifths. But the point is it’s probably more accurate to say it’s not the entire Republican House. Obviously you have some Tea Party people in there, and you’ve got some great straight down the middle conservatives in there.
But it’s the leadership that is tied to the Chamber and is getting their view out as though it is the view of the chamber when it’s just the view of the leadership. I wanted to draw that distinction. ‘Cause I meant leadership every time I said Republican Party. Leadership is who’s making things happen. Anyway, in case I fail to draw the distinction in the future, when I talk about the Republican Party, I’m talking about House leadership, maybe Senate leadership, and certainly the Republican consultant class, the people that run campaigns and devise strategies for members to win elections. They are tied to the leadership, most of them in many ways, at least a lot of them are.