RUSH: This is Denise in Nampa, Idaho. Great to have you. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Rush, thanks so much for having me on.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I’m calling because you were talking earlier about how the Republicans are just so intent on getting the Senate. And I think they just lost that Senate seat in Mississippi. I don’t think the Republicans are gonna vote for Thad Cochran, not after what he did. And for too long we’re told we need to hold our nose and vote Republican because, you know, God forbid the Democrats get in office. What’s the difference?
RUSH: I’m hearing this more and more. Even Sarah Palin the other day said the same thing. What’s the difference? Why go Republican if all they’re gonna be is Democrat lite? You really think that a bunch of Republicans will sit home in November in Mississippi rather than vote for Thad?
CALLER: Well, they sat home for McCain. They sat home for Romney.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And Thad has given them every reason in the world —
RUSH: I tell you, if I were a Republican primary voter in Mississippi, I’d be so flipped off, I would be fit to be tied given what happened here. I mean, the word going out that I — you know, it’s not just — you put out a pamphlet that says McDaniel is gonna try to deny blacks the right to vote — I could see it. I, of course, would never encourage that here, not gonna advise people how to behave on Election Day. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they do ’cause I can see — would be livid over how this all shook out.
CALLER: Oh, yeah, definitely. So that’s all I wanted to share.
RUSH: Well, Denise, you have 35 seconds left —
CALLER: — shot themselves in the foot. (crosstalk)
RUSH: You have 35 seconds, you can’t go yet. You now have 30 seconds you have to fill.
CALLER: Okay. You know, your caller earlier was talking about how, you know, oh, we have to vote Republican, we have to do this, we have to do that. How many years have we been told that, Rush, and nothing has changed? I realize I’m saying the same thing, but it’s amazing that people are still telling us to hold our noses.
RUSH: Well, I know, but that caller was speaking from the standpoint of a third party. He was hearing a lot of people suggesting a third party, and he was thinking, no, that’s the wrong way to go. That was the point that he was making.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Folks, let me throw a… Well, yeah, I guess it’s a theory that I recently came across. Let me throw a theory at you about the Republican primary in Mississippi yesterday in which Thad Cochran, benefiting from Uncle Toms for Thad, emerged victorious over Chris McDaniel. Now, the e-mail I got from somebody said, “Rush, you have often said that politics is a business.
“It’s not Civics 101 as we all grew up being told, that candidates campaign on the best ideas and the best ideas and the best candidate will win a majority of the vote from an attentive citizenry. Rush, you’ve said it that it isn’t that way. You’ve said it’s a business. You’ve said it’s cutthroat.” This guy’s point was, folks, that the Tea Party doesn’t yet know how to play in this league; that the Tea Party is gonna have to roll up the sleeves.
It is gonna have to get down in the muck and get dirty if that’s where the opponent takes the campaign. For example, good old Thad — in probably one of his remaining fleeting lucid moments — actually admitted not that long ago that as a young boy in Mississippi he had done “despicable things with animals.” Now, what do you think he was talking about? Do you think he was talking about murdering ants with a magnifying glass?
Do you think he got a rubber band and was squishing them with a rubber band? What was he doing with animals? (interruption) In Mississippi? Well, anywhere, what is “despicable things with animals”? And he had a big smile on his face. (interruption) The point was made that the Tea Party chose not to exploit that or go there even though good old Thad had opened the door for them himself. Now, I do not know.
I didn’t follow it on a daily basis, so I don’t know if the Tea Party groups and McDaniel actually did get down in the muck with Cochran as the professional politicians do. I mean, winning the election is a separate entity. It has nothing to do with governing, sadly, as we have come to learn. For the professional politician, the election is one of these damn things they’ve gotta do. The Constitution says so.
They’ve gotta go out and they’ve gotta win it, whatever it takes, and then it’s over and you start fundraising for the next one, but it has nothing to do with how you serve. It’s simply a pain in the rear that you have to put up with, just something you have to do. It’s the one part of the job that you hate. And this guy’s theory to me was that the Tea Party’s still too idealistic about all this stuff and really, really doesn’t know how to get down and get dirty.
It’s more than having rallies and talking issues and stuff. What do you think of that theory as run it by you there? I mean, folks, I have to tell you, I don’t know. Snerdley, were you paying attention to that race? Did the McDaniel campaign do anything with Thad’s admission he’s done despicable things with animal? (interruption) So you don’t know for sure but you didn’t see anything? (interruption) Yeah. Well, by the same token, I don’t know what I would have done with it. (interruption)
Well, I mean, how would you “have had a field day”? Would you…? (interruption) Well, would you have asked Thad for details or would you have found pictures of Thad with horses and leave it up to the imagination? What would you have done? (interruption) Is that what you…? (interruption) Okay. (interruption) Well… (laughing) “Abused Animals for Thad.” Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. Make that “Old Thad Cochran had a farm, E-I-E-I-O! And on the farm he had a pig. Oh, wow, did he!”
Things like that you would have done?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Jeff in Bloomington, Illinois. You’re next, and I’m glad you waited. It’s great to have you, Jeff. Hi.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: You briefly touched on my comment with the previous caller, and that was gonna be that if I was a voter from Mississippi and voted for McDaniel yesterday, then seeing what has happened, come November. I’d be out at the polls at six o’clock voting for whichever Democrat is running against Cochran. I think that would send a message to the GOP to not interfere with primaries. I think McDaniel had strong following, and I think they could do that, and I think the times to make some changes.
RUSH: You know, Jeff, I don’t think that that would be productive ’cause all you’re gonna do is end up electing a Democrat. But here’s the problem. I know what you’re trying to do. You want the Republicans to know how angry you are and you want them to be punished for it. You want them to learn a lesson. I don’t think that they are teachable. I don’t. I don’t think the Republicans will learn. They’re defiant. They’re not gonna learn whatever lesson that you want to teach.
There is a lesson: They would not have won if it were left to Republican voters last night. That’s what they ought to be taking away. They’re not gonna take that away. If they’re gonna take anything away from it, they ran a big trick, they ran a Reverse Operation Chaos, and they got some black voters to cross over, and they don’t care. They won, and that’s it. They’re not gonna look at the fact that they would have lost among Republican voter. They’re not gonna learn anything from the Eric Cantor situation. They’re gonna become more defiant.
This is the nature of the establishment. The establishment is not going to learn anything from us plebes. They’re just going to become stiffer spinned and even less flexible on things. If what you suggested were to happen, let’s go forth, it’s November and a bunch of Republicans cross over, and it’s known, and elect a Democrat, it’s just gonna make the establishment angrier at the Tea Party and they’re gonna double down on their effort to get rid of the Tea Party, just like there’s no teaching the Democrats a lesson. When the Democrats lose like they won what they expected to win in the midterms in 2002 when John Kerry — they don’t learn any lessons. They double down and become even bigger liberals.
You have to look at it in a little bit longer view, too. What if the Thad Cochran seat is the seat that is the difference in getting rid of Harry Reid as majority leader or not? I mean, what’s worse, Thad Cochran in the Senate with no Harry Reid as the majority leader or Thad Cochran losing and learning a lesson with Harry Reid still the Senate majority leader? You tell me, what’s worse? To me, Harry Reid’s worse. I know that’s no solace, and I know there’s a desire to teach a lesson, and I know there’s a desire for people to learn from the lesson, but we’re not dealing with open-minded people here. We’re dealing with people who have attitudes like monarchs, kings. You’re not gonna teach those people lessons. They are the ones who teach you lessons.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Folks, don’t misunderstand me. I have no brief for Thad Cochran, and I wouldn’t care if he lost in November, personally. The more these guys lose, the better off we all are in terms of party, changing it, opportunity down the road. Just gotta put up with more Democrats winning in the meantime. But look, if you want to know about teaching them a lesson, did they care that they were gonna lose the Virginia governor’s seat by not supporting Cuccinelli? They didn’t care. The Republican establishment would just as soon Terry McAuliffe have that seat as the conservative Cuccinelli.
So the point is they don’t care if they lose a seat if the Tea Party loses it. The Republican establishment was perfectly fine with The Punk, Terry McAuliffe, becoming the governor of Virginia. They could have won that seat. They could have had a conservative Republican governor. The Republican establishment, none of them went in there to help him at all. So if they don’t care, if they establishment doesn’t care when we lose a seat, why should we?
Okay, so if Cochran loses his seat, tough for Thad. The way I look at it, he doesn’t deserve to win this seat given what he did yesterday in this campaign. He did not win this seat. It’s a Republican primary. If left to Republican votes, he didn’t win it. He needed Democrat crossovers. He needed Uncle Toms crossing the aisle to vote for him. At some point, folks, we gotta get rid of these people if you’re gonna replace ’em. And it may be you have to endure Democrats for a while. I understand what the previous caller was saying.
I fully expect a lot of Republicans who have been called racist by Thad Cochran with that pamphlet yesterday, I fully expect a bunch of them are gonna sit home in November and leave him dangling with his Democrat constituency. Let’s see Thad, old buddy, old pal if you can put it together again in the general. And you know that all of a sudden in November there won’t be any Uncle Toms to cross the aisle and vote for Thad. That frosted me, this Cuccinelli business. Republicans didn’t care. They would prefer a Democrat like McAuliffe over a conservative Republican. They don’t care if they don’t keep a seat, so why should we?
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