Conservatism Won the Election,
Left's Hatred Causing Self-Destruction |
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| November 8, 2004 |
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Listen to Rush…
(...cover the on-going hatred causing the left in America to fall all to pieces)
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
Ladies and gentlemen, I have to fly to Washington after the program today. I'm delivering a speech. I agreed to do a speech about four months ago to a group, the Heritage Foundation, and four months ago they asked me to do this speech analyzing the election. So I rolled the dice  and said, "Okay, I'll do it," because I figured four months ago that we were going to win, and that's part of what I want to talk to you about today. I also to want share with you some of what I'm going to say about that. (program observer interruption) No, no, no. I'm not staying overnight in Washington. Heck no! I'm not going to become co-opted by the Beltway crowd. I'm just going to bop in there; I'm gonna go do the speech; I'm going to bop right back outta there.
I'm going to bop right back down here at home, and I'm gonna come home and I'm gonna go to bed because I am one exhausted talk show host, folks, let me tell you. It was just a bang-up weekend all over the place, but no R&R on the weekend, flying all over the place; left on Saturday, had to go somewhere, then went to Pittsburgh Sunday morning, had to go back somewhere after Pittsburgh, drop somebody off then come home last night. I tell you, I slept well last night but it was interrupted by sunlight. (Laughing.) It really was. But, anyway, I want to talk to you about four months ago. It may even be five months ago they called and asked me to do this, and I thought about it for two days, and I said, "Do I really want to go a week after the election to Washington and explain why Bush lost?" Because if I thought Bush was going to lose I'd have said, "No." |
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I'd have probably begged out, because I don't do these things very often, as you know, anymore. But I said, "No, I'll be glad to go tell people why we won." I said this four or five months ago, and this is part of what I want to talk to you about today here. I want to remind all of you -- and I'm not doing this for kudos, and I'm not doing this for brownie points or anything. I'm not doing it for nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah! See I told you so -- I'm actually doing this for the same reason that we do a lot of things on this program: It has to be inspirational and uplifting and motivating because I think that's what positivism is. It's far more advantageous than pessimism, optimism is, and negativism gets you nowhere and that's my point. Four or five months ago I thought we were going to win this, and I thought it six months ago and I thought it nine months, thought it last year. I have.
Throughout these past nine months to a year, whenever the incessant, unending attacks from all corners of the left began on Bush, what was it that I said over and over on this program? Well, I said that the era of dominant media is over, but I said something more fundamental than that. I said, "Hate is not how you build a leadership movement. Hate is not how you inspire people. Hate does not carry anybody to victory. There are no books in the library: Great Haters in American History." I mean, there's nobody inspiring you, nobody suggesting you go out and follow the path blazed by a bunch of people who hated. It doesn't get you anywhere. All it does is make you angrier. If you get consumed by your hate then you have become what your enemies are in your mind -- and that's what happened to Dan Rather. Dan Rather became Richard Nixon. Dan Rather so hated Nixon he became Nixon.
Nixon warned of this in his little farewell speech to the White House staff on the day either of his resignation or the day before after Watergate. He warned everybody on his staff and everybody in his counsel (paraphrased): "Don't hate them. Don't hate your enemies, you'll become them. They win if you do that." Throughout all of this -- and again I say this as a reminder and also there's, you know, a new-tune-in factor. Every time we win elections we get a swelling audience here; people tuning in for the first time. So those of you who have not been here for a great length of time and those of you who have, please indulge me. Throughout the darkest moments of this campaign, I said to you, "This isn't going to work, and the reason it isn't going to work is because George Bush is a decent man. He's a likable man. Nobody hates George Bush. This is all irrational. This is not how people build a movement," and no responsible Democrat disavowed Michael Moore.
Wesley Clark wouldn't during the primaries even when Peter Jennings gave him a softball hanging curve ball to knock it out of the park to disavow Michael Moore. He wouldn't do it because they're too valued this time. You know, they loved Moore and these other people saying what they wanted to say but couldn't say. But after a while they couldn't contain themselves any longer and it became obvious there was no difference in the Kerry campaign and the Michael Moore movie. There was no difference. To show you how widespread it got, there was no difference in the Osama bin Laden tape and the Kerry campaign and the Michael Moore movie. So the point here is: Don't succumb to the hatred that is aimed at you by people who don't understand you. Don't succumb to it and hate them back. Smile and understand that they are in the process of self-destructing. They are destroying themselves, and that's exactly where the Democrat Party is today.
They are in the middle of a self-destruct, and it is not finished yet because they still don't understand it. The media is in the midst of a self-destruct, and I have made this point over and over again, and you could say this about both institutions, the media and the Democratic  Party: One of the reasons they're in the midst of a self-destruct is that they have knowingly lost their monopoly. They used to have a monopoly of power. You know, monopolies are very dangerous. There's no competition, or you don't think there is, and so you lose touch. You know, one of the things about conservatives that continues to serve us well, is that we always -- and we always will, by the way, I hope -- as long as there is a "mainstream media," whatever we call it (We can call it "the legacy media," the "old media," the "elite media,") as long as they're there behaving as they do, you know what we're all going to feel like? Underdogs. |
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We're all gonna feel still like we're in the minority and I hope we never lose that, because it is that which energizes us. I think this is part of the problem that happened in 1994. We won the House in '94 and we stopped assuming we were in the minority. We assumed we'd won it, and we assumed that the country had decided conservatism was for it, and that they were all now conservative, and so we stopped doing what had been done to get us to that victory. Well, some did. I didn't, but some people did. The conservatives in Congress, not all, but a lot of them, said, "Hey, okay! Time to set about, you know, governing," which is okay, but the whole process of education stopped, or at least intensely so. But when we think that there is a big mainstream media, a big, bad wolf trying to destroy us, we stay vigilant and we don't lose sight of the goal, and we don't lose our focus, but more importantly we don't get cocky, and we don't get arrogant.
Now, it's going to be tough to do that, but it shouldn't be. The press... Here, listen to this sound bite, and I've got a stack of things here. I could go through this program today if you wanted me to, and I could give you some of the richest examples of sheer denial and stupidity that you've ever heard. It's only getting stronger. The libs are only ratcheting it up, more and more talking about "leaving the country." People in San Francisco think it's not for them. Geraldine Ferraro is out saying, "Well, if the blue states seceded, then what would the red states have? They'd have nothing because all the creativity and talent is on the coasts." Chris Matthews the other night on Hardball was talking to somebody, I forget who it was, and he suggested maybe the mainstream press start covering the red states "the same as they cover foreign countries," that maybe we need foreign correspondents to go cover Missouri and Alabama and Arkansas and the north part of Florida. He said this! David Westin at ABC News has pretty much echoed those sentiments, we had a sound bite for you on that that came from yesterday. Here is a montage for you. This is Bill Schneider of CNN, Kelly Wallace of CNN, Tim Russert of NBC, and Karen Tumulty from TIME Magazine and Jon Meacham of Newsweek. This is a montage, and I guess it's from over the weekend, Friday night through yesterday on some of the chat shows. Listen to the recurring theme here.
SCHNEIDER: Richard Nixon didn't have much of a second term. A little problem called Watergate.
WALLACE: Second terms can be marred by disappointments, scandals and infighting.
SCHNEIDER: Ronald Reagan had a little problem called Iran-Contra.
RUSSERT: And second terms, Ronald Reagan, we had Iran-Contra, Richard Nixon, Watergate, Bill Clinton impeachment.
TUMULTY: With Clinton it was impeachment, with Reagan it was Iran-Contra. But I would argue that it's -- it's going to get rockier from here.
MEACHAM: Second terms almost never work out very well.
SCHNEIDER: Bill Clinton had a little problem called Monica.
 RUSH: Well, you don't need me to interpret this for you. They're sitting around salivating over the upcoming scandal that they can all "Impeach Bush." What did I tell you would be the objective of these people in the second term? Impeachment! Now, I thought it would be over Abu Ghraib, and it may still yet be. But they're already talking impeachment or scandal. Bush will not be able to serve out his second term. What this tells me is that they're not really doing introspection. They're going through the motion. David Brookes in the New York Times had a great piece on Saturday. Did you read this, Mr. Snerdley? He said the way you have to understand the way liberals are analyzing this is, they have to come up with an explanation that leaves them in their minds holding and occupying the moral high ground, so they blame it on values and specifically they blame their loss on gay marriage. That allows them to say, "See? We're still more enlightened. We are still more tolerant. We are still better people, even though we lost on these values, it is a bunch of numskull racist, sexist, bigot homophobes that beat us and we don't want to become racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes because we're not. We're better than that. We're superior. So we'll chalk the loss up to that." When in fact, that is not why they lost, and this is the second thing I want to point out. If you want to know why the Democrats... In fact, I'm sick and tired of the whole premise: "Why did the Democrats lose?" I'm not even interested in why the Democrats lost. I'm interested in telling you why the Republicans won. Would you like to know why the Republicans won and get away from this premise of trying to explain what the Democrats did wrong? Clearly that's a factor. But there's more to it than just what they did wrong. Sit tight and I'll tell you. It's real simple. Some of you are going to go, "Oooh, yeah." You may have even figured it out yourselves.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT |
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RUSH: As I said, ladies and gentlemen, it's getting funny listening to everybody explain why the liberals and why the Democrats lost the election, as though everything is up to them. Winning is up to them; losing is up to them. It's the wrong template to look at. It's the wrong premise to have. I'd like to tell you a little bit why I think we won this election, and at the top of my list is this. This election was a mandate for conservative principles from top to bottom. George W. Bush ran on a clear, conservative agenda on all fronts: economic, foreign policy, and cultural. He campaigned on Social Security reform, the "third rail," the dreaded third rail. You never bring this up. It's instant death, they say. I'll tell you something else that died in this whole election is conventional wisdom. Thankfully, finally conventional wisdom is out the door: Turnout favors Democrats.
All this happy-go-lucky, you know, muckety-muck. All these items of conventional wisdom you can throw out. He campaigned on Social Security reform. He campaigned on more tax cuts and making permanent the tax cuts that we currently have. He made it clear that he's going to act to limit government growth, that's part of what Social Security reform is about. He ran on faith-based initiatives, a constitutional amendment upholding traditional marriage, and Rove said yesterday on TV that Bush is going to take that up. He also promised judicial nominees who will apply the Constitution. They will interpret law, not write it. I mean, it's clear, and when you look at the Kerry campaign, you see no certitude. You see, "Go to my website, find my plan for this, or my plan for that." He was depicted as a flip-flopper but the fact of the matter is the term flip-flop -- we should have grabbed hold of this sooner -- is not serious enough. John Kerry is simply indecisive. There was nothing decisive about this campaign.
They let the surrogates run the campaign with all the hatred and vitriol aimed at Bush, while Bush is out announcing an agenda, campaigning on conservative principles. He ran a continuing promise to beat the terrorists, continue to the war on terrorism -- including in Iraq.  He promised a strong national defense. He promised strong homeland security, and he promised to maintain the Patriot Act. He didn't talk about secret plans. He is a plain-spoken man who made plain what he believed in, and what he wanted to do, and what he will do -- and to underscore this point: The purpose of his post-election news conference was to make clear to all that he ran on a specific agenda and was going to use his capital to advance it. This is one of the most well-articulated conservative presidential campaigns that there have been in a long, long time. That's why George W. Bush won, and I'm proud to be able to remind you of it.
I've said throughout my star-studded career behind this Golden EIB Microphone here, "Conservatism wins every time it's tried." Bush didn't go moderate. Bush didn't go squishy. He didn't try to peel off some Democrat votes in the campaign. Some of us thought that might have been what he was doing in the first two years of his domestic agenda. When it comes to this campaign, it was solid conservatism, wall-to-wall, front and back. There was no squishiness, no moderating the tone, no new tone, none of that -- and as I say, it's getting hilarious now to listen to everybody explain why the Democrats lost, as though they're in control of the template. They lost because they're liberals! It's no more complicated. They lost because they're liberals, folks. Liberals lose big time presidential elections, period. You don't need to go any deeper. You don't need any further analysis. Kerry was unable to conceal his liberalism. Clinton was able to conceal his.
END TRANSCRIPT |
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