RUSH: This is Danny in Miami. Hi, Danny, glad you waited, great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, I appreciate it. Listen, yesterday I spoke, and I wanted to appreciate, you know, you calling me back. Basically what I wanted to say was the last two years of Obama, all he’s gonna end up doing is trying to pass laws as if he’d ever cared anything about the minorities. He’s gonna try to pass the laws just like he’s trying to do with the free colleges for two years. But the Republicans will reject it and he’s gonna make us look bad.
RUSH: Well, now, you called yesterday. What I wanted to continue talking with you about was your suggestion that the Republican candidates —
CALLER: Right. Right. And that’s what I was just gonna get to right now in reference to basically going with that —
RUSH: Well, now, hang on, hang on, hang on. We’re not gonna have time to get to it before the break. I’ll hold you through the break. So let me react to what you just said about Obama not having been all that great for minorities. Do you happen to watch the new series on Fox called Empire?
CALLER: I have not, no.
RUSH: You have not seen Empire?
CALLER: I saw the previews, but, no, no, I have not.
RUSH: Well, you need to watch it. It’s a good show. It is Nashville for the hip-hop crowd.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: And it is entertaining as it could be. It’s really, really good. I mean, it’s got its share of — I mean, there’s no cultural surprises in it. It gets in the gutter like every other show does. But it had a fascinating segment in it. I didn’t watch it from the beginning, so I had to binge watch the first five episodes. So I forget which episode this happened in. I think it was episode three. It’s about the founder of a record company and his estranged wife who goes to jail for him for 18 years on a drug charge.
As the series starts she’s getting out, and she comes back, the record company has grown and it’s become this massive thing while she’s been in jail. She gets out, she wants her share, which she thinks is half of it, so they set up a battle between them. They’re no longer married, the founder Lucious Lyon is his name, and his wife coming out of prison, but they have kids, and they’re both — well, two of them are performer stars, the other’s an executive. And one of them is a budding up-and-coming thug type rapper. I have to stop there, but I will tell you what is noteworthy about this when we come back from the break and then get into your theory about what the Republicans have to do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, back to Danny here in Miami. Very quickly, Danny, one of these sons of the mom-and-pop entrepreneurs that founded this huge music company has got a new song going, and he ends up singing this song impromptu at a place, a club where an event there is being televised.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: In the song, he ends up ripping Obama to shreds as a fraud and a sellout to black people.
CALLER: Interesting.
RUSH: The next day, the owner of the record company is depicted on the phone with Obama. The scene starts with Lucious Lyon, the head honcho of the outfit here. He’s on the phone. He says, “Barack, I know. He’s young. He didn’t mean it. He’d been drinking. He didn’t know. He loves you! Barack, please…” And then there’s a pause, and he looks at the phone and says, “Barack, you do not have to use that kind of language to me.” Anyway, so Obama’s on the phone cussing out and yelling at the entrepreneur creator of this record company and hangs up on him.
Now, I thought, “Wow.” I couldn’t believe that that was depicted in this show, because clearly the impact you’re left with is not that the kid was wrong. It was that Obama was called a sellout to black people and got really mad about it, and calls the entrepreneur head honcho and hangs up on him. It’s not refuted. There is no apology. There is no, “Sorry, I got it wrong. Barack Obama’s the best thing in the world ever happened in the African-American community.” I was just reminded of it when you made the point and basically said the same thing here, that for African-Americans Obama has not been what everybody thought he was gonna be.
CALLER: Yeah, well, my point yesterday — and I appreciate you letting me say about it — was, in order for the Republicans to win the election in 2016, whoever the candidate is has to speak directly to the African-American as well as the Hispanic population. By that I mean too many times the perception is that the Democrats are the only ones that care about them.
RUSH: So what’s he gotta say? Let’s cut to the chase here, Danny. What’s the Republican nominee gotta say to the black community or the Hispanic community?
CALLER: They gotta speak directly to the camera every time they have to speak, and speak directly to them so that they know that they’re actually listening to them, because just like my wife. My wife knows I love her, but she needs to hear it. The African-Americans and Hispanics need to here that we’re actually care about them, not just all Americans, but specifically to them. We need their vote.
RUSH: Okay. But —
CALLER: After the perception that we don’t care anymore is thrown out, then we approach them and go to town hall meetings –
RUSH: Wait. Hold it now. I got a little problem. I don’t think the Republicans are guilty of that. I don’t think the Republicans are guilty of conveying that they don’t care.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: I think the media and the Democrat Party have told African-Americans that Republicans don’t like ’em and are racist. But the Republicans, if you ask me, have bent over backwards not just with African-Americans, but with the Hispanics. So my question is: What is this candidate, whoever he is…? Let’s say Mortimer Snerd is the GOP nominee. You think every time Mortimer is on TV, he’s gotta address the black community?
CALLER: I do.
RUSH: And say what? “We love you”?
CALLER: By talking about the education, by talking about jobs that we want to do for them to get ’em out of the poverty. Not just to mention it in generalized terms. They need to hear it. “Oh, wait! He’s talking to me. I’m African-American! He’s talking to me.” They’ll listen.
RUSH: Will they? That was my next question: What do you do if they don’t want to listen?
CALLER: You know, after a while I think we have to remove that perception that the liberal media has been giving. If we continue to talk to them and they continue to listen, at one point they’re gonna say, “Wait, I’m not gonna listen to the liberal media. They are actually talking to me.” Then we can actually go to have a town hall meeting like you said yesterday. Now, I understand that it could be backfire, but if we remove that perception that we’re not being listened to —
RUSH: Okay, look.
CALLER: — then we can go to a town hall meeting —
RUSH: I understand what you’re saying conceptually. But we’re still not getting to the chase here, and that is: What does the candidate say? So let’s actually pretend to do this here. You are the African-American audience, and I’m the GOP nominee. I’m talking here right now, and I don’t know what you want me to say to you. What do you want to hear? Do you want me to say, “And for those of you in the African-American community, do not believe what you have been told about me or my party. We think you are just as valuable as any other citizen, and we want for you what we want for everybody in this country! I am not a racist. I do not dislike black people.” Is that what you think they should say?”
CALLER: I don’t think they have to go to the “I’m not a racist; I don’t dislike black people.” But I think the other parts where you were saying, yes. I think they can address those issues, saying, you know — and then also for the jobs. “I want to get you guys out of poverty.”
RUSH: Ah ha.
CALLER: Say, “I understand that there’s more — that you guys, the minorities for whatever reason, that’s why…”
RUSH: Okay, now, wait just a second. Now, let’s take that one. You want me as the GOP nominee to tell an African-American audience, “I want you to get out of poverty.” Okay, how do you want me to tell them to do that? Because I know what the way out of poverty is, but I don’t know that it would work if I said so. The way out of poverty is jobs.
CALLER: Jobs, right.
RUSH: All right? I would say, “The quickest route with the quickest escape to poverty in this country is work and a job, and I am gonna do everything I can to revive the economy of this country so there are jobs for anybody and everybody who wants one.” Now, I haven’t touched on what they’re all screaming at me out there: “Yeah, but I won’t be hired ’cause there’s racism in America and I’m never gonna be hired! The white guys are gonna be hired!”
I haven’t touched on that yet. So how do I deal with that? How do I say that? “I know some of think you’re never gonna get hired because you’re African-American and there’s latent racism in the country and here’s what I intend to do about.” It seems to me that all of this is gonna happen on the defensive and it doesn’t stand a prayer of working. I understand the need to reach out.
But I have been hearing Republicans talk about it and doing it ever since Jack Kemp in the 1980s, and I don’t see it working. I’m not opposed to it at all. I just don’t know that there’s any desire for outreach. I don’t think so. In the 95% or 93% of the African community that’s gonna vote for the Democrat every presidential election, I don’t know how many of them even want to hear from the Republican.
CALLER: No, I understand. I — I just… I — I don’t know. I guess I don’t know what the exact answer, then. But I think we gotta do something more. We need their votes. We need the Hispanic vote more, and I understand that we’re doing everything possible.
RUSH: Look at George W. Bush. He had the first African-American secretary of state, female. He had more African-American minorities in his administration than Obama has or Clinton combined. And last I looked, Bush was still the biggest idiot on earth, biggest racist, biggest down cowboy. He did everything he could according to what the left says! He was diversity in spades in terms of the way people looked, and it didn’t buy him anything.
CALLER: Very true. Very true.
RUSH: So don’t misunderstand. I’m not rejecting your premise. I’m telling you that there has been a desire on the part of the Republicans/conservatives for as long as I’ve been alive to dispel the lies and the lies and the myth that the Democrat Party has gotten away with setting in for 50 years about racism and bigotry and the Republican Party and all that. I know people that have been trying to figure this out as their job, as their profession.
What I’ve concluded is, you can have the most brilliant outreach program in the world, but if nobody wants to hear it — or if they’re not open to it — then it isn’t gonna matter. So maybe everybody’s putting the cart before the horse, ’cause maybe what needs to happen here is to figure out how to actually open the door first. And then there’s another thing about this. I am not certain that I agree with the whole premise that’s contained here, which is essentially identity politics. I’ve often said that if I were a candidate, I wouldn’t even address whether I’m talking to women or men or blacks or whites or whatever, that I’m talking to Americans.
And everybody in politics that I’ve told that to says, “You don’t have a chance, ’cause Americans live in groups, Rush, and if you don’t learn how to address them as groups, we lose. We’re not individuals anymore.” Whatever Republican consultant (or any consultant, period) tells me is, ‘We don’t live as individuals anymore. You can’t talk to people. You’ve got to talk to ’em as a member of a group they’re in or that they think they’re in. And if you don’t know how to do that, then you don’t have a prayer.”
A couple of Republican candidates now seeking the presidency have told me that. They’ve come down here wanting to kiss the ring, and in the conversations, that’s what they’ve all said to me. I said, “Why are you having to reach out program for blacks? Why don’t you just talk to everybody? We’re all Americans.” They say, “No, we’re not anymore, Rush; that’s the thing,” and then they say, “And, Rush, it’s now to the point the Republican Party can no longer win the presidency with Republican votes alone.”
And, I’m sorry, I don’t believe that, either. But they all do, which is what counts, ’cause that’s gonna dictate the way they campaign.
Anyway, Danny, you lit a big fire here. You made the host look good. That means you’re a good caller, and I’m glad you let us call you back today.