RUSH: I want to grab a phone call, because this guy has a great point and I want to add something to it. This is Jason in Muskegon, Michigan. Jason, thank you so much for waiting. I appreciate it. How you doing?

CALLER: No problem. Thank you for letting me be part of the excellence.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. You are. You are here as part of the excellence by association.

CALLER: Good. Yeah, I was thinking that there’s no better way to motivate a group than by attacking them, and by attacking Kavanaugh they’re basically essentially attacking the entire Republican base who showed up in ’16 and voted Trump. Part of that reason was for the Supreme Court nomination, and here we are. Democrats are gonna make the midterms about a Supreme Court vacancy, and they think that they can last through 2020. So they’re not really pressing the issue as hard as what Republicans could, knowing that if we want to get our guy in there, you know, we’re gonna have to show up in the midterms. They’re gonna have an adverse effect if they keep delaying this.

RUSH: I’ve heard people say this. Jason here thinks that all of this is gonna backfire on the Democrats and motivate Republicans to show up and vote. Not just now, 2018, but again for Trump in 2020. Let’s go to the audio sound bites on this. Jason, thank you much. We’re gonna start here. This is Fox & Friends Weekend on Saturday morning. Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is one of the hosts, is talking to CBN political correspondent David Brody about all this. And she says, “Well, we know the Democrats have already been really energized about the midterms. I don’t know how much more energized they could get. But I’m sensing that Republicans have become very energized this week. This hearing has really fired the Republicans up.”

BRODY: From my reporting and from that deplorable evangelical base, I can tell you they say the Democrats’ dirty tricks have riled them up like never before. I know Rush Limbaugh has talked about how if Kavanaugh is not confirmed it’s gonna be real tough for the Republicans. Actually, if Kavanaugh is not confirmed, that would even rile up that deplorable evangelical base — and the GOP base — I believe even more, at least for people that I’m hearing from. And so, look, I think that’s a big part of what’s going on here.

RUSH: Now, look, you can’t blame David Brody for being 50% informed because I pulled back that original prediction after it had gone viral all over the Drive-By Media. That’s why it’s still prominent in people’s minds. And my retraction of that prediction has barely received any whimper because it doesn’t serve the Drive-Bys any good. When the Drive-Bys hear me predicting Republican doom, they can’t help themselves. They gotta put it all over the world in the media.

“Rush Limbaugh says Republicans guaranteed to lose House if Kavanaugh not confirmed.” That prediction was based at a specific point in time on if the Republicans caved. If the Republicans didn’t fight for Kavanaugh. If the Republicans just whimpered out, I predicted that would happen. But once this began to unfold, I retracted that prediction and said it could end up being the opposite here. But of course that prediction didn’t go viral. And Jason in Muskegon, I want to thank you for bringing it up so that I could make the case. Here is one more bias on this.

This is C-SPAN Washington Journal Saturday morning. Jesse Holland is talking to a correspondent at the Weekly Standard, Andrew Egger, about me.

HOLLAND: There several conservatives including Rush Limbaugh who warn that Republicans could lose their majority if they don’t get Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court. Is that something that Republicans in Congress are really thinking about, midterm consequences?

EGGER: Arguments like the one that Limbaugh makes are a little convenient. Uh, whether or not Kavanaugh gets through, I think this whole situation has really fired up Republican voters.

RUSH: Once again, somebody else… You can’t blame ’em, folks. Don’t get mad at ’em, because my original prediction was everywhere, literally all over the place. It was on Saudi TV. It was on the BBC. It was on Russian television. I think even the North Koreans had it. The little pot-bellied dictator mentioned it in his Saturday night message to the people. It was everywhere. When Rush Limbaugh says, “Republicans are gonna take it in the shorts,” everybody in the media covers it.

Again, I made that prediction at a time where it looked like they were getting ready to bail on the entire nomination. When that didn’t happen, when the Democrats went a couple of steps too far and caused the Republicans to engage them in this, then I revised the prediction.

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RUSH: Jeff in Sarasota, Florida. Hi. Great to have you here, sir. What’s up?

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Just wanted to make a suggestion or an idea. It’s kind of a fantasy. It would ever work but, you know, the left has always behaved like bullies, and they’ll do anything, and they’ve never had real pushback from our representatives on the right in Washington. So, you know, when you have no ethics and your dirty tactics pay off and they have benefits for you coupled with the fact that, you know, you never have to suffer consequences on yourself? It’s like a bully. There’s no reason to stop. When your tactics work there’s no reason to stop.

RUSH: Exactly.

CALLER: No bully has ever stopped until they get punched in the mouth.

RUSH: Exactly.

CALLER: Maybe it’s time that, you know, we don’t want to become them, but maybe let’s for a year let’s become them. Let’s show them that anything destructive they can do to other human beings, it can —

RUSH: Now, wait a minute. You know, one thing. I reject this whole argument… By the way, I don’t disagree with you. I reject this argument. We don’t have to become… Did we have to become Hitler to beat Hitler? Did we have to become the emperor to beat the Japanese? No. Decency can beat these people. It’s just that decent people are not conditioned and primed for it every day. When you’re up against indecency, a lot of decent people don’t know what to do about it. But smash-mouth is right. Doing what they do? Maybe it’s time.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, folks, one other thing here. We just had a caller who said that we don’t want to become them, but it’s time to start playing this game the way they do. I made the point you don’t have to become them to beat them at this game. We didn’t have to become Hitler to win World War II. We didn’t have to become the Japanese emperor to win World War II in the Pacific Theater. That’s always been a bogus thing. “We cannot go after these people at the risk of becoming who they are.”

What a crock. That’s nothing more than some limitation that’s in utter denial of people who are already found to be of a fine character. You can enter into tough battles without losing your morality and your moral character and so forth. But as an example of how we almost do it now and then but then we pull back, I call your attention last week to when Lindsey Graham unloaded on the Democrats. He unloaded on ’em, and he was a thousand percent right in every allegation he made.

A couple other Republicans echoed Graham but with no passion and with no energy. They just echoed what Graham said intellectually. Now, according to our caller, that should have been the starting point! People should have been picked up on Graham’s opener and run with it, and it should have become the daily identifier of the Republican Party. They should have been throwing back, firing back right at the Democrats in their faces every hour of every day. It’s exactly what Graham did.

Make that the ongoing battle. Put them on the defensive, make the media repeat these charges that Graham laid out. But instead, it was a standalone. Graham said it — it was great, it was impassioned — and that was the end of it. It was never to be heard again out of the mouth of any Republican. So Graham’s impassioned allegation of the Democrats was followed by agreement with Jeff Flake’s demand that the FBI be allowed to do one more week of investigation, thereby nullifying Senator Graham’s point.

He even went along with Flake. You can’t do these things as one-offs. If you’re gonna tell people who the Democrats are, if you’re gonna try to inform the country what’s really going on here, you have to do it every day, and you’re gonna have to do it multiple times a day. It’s gonna have to become the central focus of your strategy on a day-to-day basis. But it never does. We’ve had plenty of occasions in the past where some Republican has done a one-off like that and it’s been great and we have celebrated it, and we’ve cheered it. “Way to go!”

And it dies, except for here on talk radio or maybe on Fox News. But it dies. Well, Lindsey Graham didn’t have to become them to do what he did. He just had to be honest, and he was. Lindsey Graham didn’t have to worry about losing his soul in order to take it to these people. And, by the way, did you notice not a one of them on the Democrat side cared a whit about what Graham said? None of them even got mad at it.

Not a single one of them even wanted to refute it. They didn’t care. The only thing got a rise out of them was when Feinstein was accused of leaking her letter. So she turned around and asked her staff, “Did you guys leak it? No, they said they didn’t leak it, Mr. Chairman. We didn’t leak it. I just asked my staff. They said they didn’t.” Oh, what about an investigation, huh? Well, Tom Cotton says we’re gonna investigate Feinstein, and we’re gonna investigate some of these other things.

That needs to be followed up on! There needs to be follow-through. But I, for one… I know investigations are necessary, but I’m getting tired of ’em ’cause all they are is further delay. How hard is it after on stand up and say, “Brett Kavanaugh is credible in his denial”? Why is that so hard? She doesn’t have any evidence! “But she made a credible witness.” How? “Well, she was really suffering and in pain.” So? None of that establishes credibility.

An attitude doesn’t give us credibility. Pain and suffering doesn’t equal credibility. Democrats are always in pain and suffering over something. Now, I want to go back to my prediction. My original prediction was that if the Republicans do not vote on this, if they don’t vote out Kavanaugh in that committee — if he doesn’t get voted on, if he’s not confirmed — the Republicans are gonna have hell to pay because voters are going to be fit to be tied with being let down again.

Then the Democrats kept pulling stunts, and it became conventional wisdom. “If this keeps up, Republican voters are gonna get so ticked off! Republican women and mothers are gonna get so mad, ’cause they’ve got sons and they hate seeing what’s happening to Kavanaugh. They don’t want to imagine it happening to their own kid. They’re gonna show up in droves!” Well, I want to take you into the future and I want you to think about something.

If Brett Kavanaugh… Just think about this as a hypothetical. I’m not predicting it. If Brett Kavanaugh is not sworn in early next week — if you can hypothetically envision the day where Kavanaugh is not confirmed, not sworn in, are you gonna be fit to be tied? Are you gonna be so mad that you can’t wait to vote, or are you gonna be so mad that you feel betrayed?

Because if that happens, that moment where Kavanaugh is not sworn in — meaning he is not confirmed in the Senate — do you think it’s gonna be easy for the Republicans to say, “Did you see what happened to Kavanaugh? We’re in the majority, and we couldn’t get him confirmed! You need to come out and vote for us!” How does that work? That’s gonna be pretty difficult.

Asking Republicans to come out and vote to keep the majority when Kavanaugh’s not sworn in? Everybody thinks that what voters are gonna remember in November is this, the unfairness to Kavanaugh, the dirty tricks the Democrats are playing. But stop and think. Kavanaugh is not sworn in, and the Republicans think, “Wow, we’re set up now, man!

“They’re so mad out there, we’re guaranteed to get their votes. There’s gonna be a Republican wave ’cause of what happened to Kavanaugh,” and then the Republicans start campaigning, and they start asking people to vote for them based on what happened to Kavanaugh. “Oh, you mean that he’s not there? You mean he didn’t get sworn in? You’re the majority. We know it’s very small majority, but you’re the majority, and he’s not sworn in, and you want us to…?”

How does this work, folks? My point is it’s very easy to sit here and say — in the midst of this all this Democrat trickery — that it’s gonna fire people up on the Republican side. “They’re gonna be so ticked off and so mad, they’re gonna show up and vote like they’ve never voted before.” But is that gonna be the attitude if he’s not sworn in?

Republicans have been asking for the majority for a long time. They keep working and voting mostly because of Trump, voters do. They keep showing up because of Trump. Trump alone will be able to make the case. Trump alone will be able to turn a Kavanaugh defeat into turnout. But Republicans in the Senate and the House? I don’t know how they do it. “Vote for us, Kavanaugh was defeated”? “Vote for us so it doesn’t happen to the next nominee”?

Is that really effective? See, I just don’t… I hear too many people talking about this. It seems like every time you want a big turnout, we have to lose something so that people get fired up. I’ve been hearing this since I’ve been doing this show. Back in 1992, people called here and said, “Rush, Clinton needs to win. Then people will see how bad the Democrats really are. People will see what skunks they really are.” I’d say, “Are you kidding? We lose and then tell ourselves we’re gonna win?”

We’re still doing it here with Kavanaugh. So Kavanaugh doesn’t make it. This is gonna really fire people up? Why do we have to lose to fire up the base? That doesn’t make any sense to me! It ought to be the other way around. This is another trick I think that gets played on Republicans. “Your base is gonna be really fired up if Kavanaugh doesn’t make it.” Wait a minute.

The Republicans are the majority. How in the hell is that advocacy for reelection or election that the guy doesn’t make it? “Well, Rush, voters are gonna be so mad.” Yeah. At what? The guy got railroaded and our guys couldn’t stop it and we’re supposed to say, “Well, okay, man, we’re really loaded now. That’s gonna really cause the turnup to spike up!” Sorry, folks. I don’t think it works that way. What people…?

In the hypothetical I just gave you, what’s gonna happen is that voters are gonna be out there saying, “Even when we vote Republican, the Democrats still run the town,” and it doesn’t equal show up; keep electing Republicans. Gotta be the other way. Got to win this! We’ve got to beat the Democrats, not lose to them! By the way, I’ve had a lot of emails from a lot of people who think they’re expert political analysts, and they all…

Well, not all, but a whole bunch of ’em have this theory that the way to get the base all fired… We want to let them destroy a great life, a great patriot, a great American — his whole career, his future, maybe his family — in order to win the midterms? How does that work? Your football team loses. Does that make you want to become a season ticket holder, or is it when they win that you want on the bandwagon and you want to be on the team?

Why do we have to keep losing to fire up our base?

You talk about a trap?

If you ask me, the media’s behind that, the Democrats, the Washington establishment.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Sharon in… This can’t… Lititz, Pennsylvania? How do you pronounce where you are?

CALLER: It’s Lititz.

RUSH: Lititz. Good.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: What’s happening?

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I’ve been curious about since about the beginning of this year, several times you mentioned that an incident or an occurrence has yet to happen that will affect or seriously affect the midterms. I was curious to hear if you think this Kavanaugh nomination that’s gone sour is that incident.

RUSH: Well, it could be, but the point was, I didn’t have anything specific in mind. It’s just that we get a poll in June or a poll in May or even July, and it tells us what the public is thinking of doing in the November elections. My point was: This is silly. This poll doesn’t mean anything. Does anybody remember the poll in July of 2016 or in August? It doesn’t mean anything ’cause it’s not when the election is. And I said the events are gonna shape the midterms haven’t happened yet. I said that in July, August, September. And this is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. But there’s gonna be something beyond this.

CALLER: Oh, dear.

RUSH: This is gonna get resolved one way or the other, and depending on how it’s resolved, yeah, it’s going to affect turnout. It’s going to affect votes. If the Democrats lose this, if Kavanaugh gets confirmed, then, you know, what are Democrat voters gonna do? They’re just gonna be really enraged and show up and vote or are they gonna be mad, depressed, and sit at home? Who knows? But this thing is gonna get resolved. If this is not resolved before the election then it’s a defeat anyway because all the Democrats want here is delay, delay, delay.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: But my only point was those polls in the summer are largely irrelevant because there are things that are gonna happen much closer to the election that nobody can predict that are gonna have a great impact on it. This is one of those things, yes. But I don’t know if it’s the final one.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: For example, who would have predicted back in July or August that we’d be done with NAFTA, we’d have a brand-new trade deal that gets rid of the horrible aspects of NAFTA, and have a new trade deal that’s pro-America? And then after that, how many people think that that is instrumental in voter turnout, hmm? What do you think?