On the 17th of January 2008, Rush Limbaugh covered the topic much better than I ever could, as you'll read below. How can I ever forget all the times McCain has stabed us conservatives in the back? Posted on 01/21/2008 11:53:49 PM PST by Yosemitest
On the 17th of January 2008, Rush Limbaugh covered the topic much better than I ever could, as you'll read below. How can I ever forget all the times McCain has stabed us conservatives in the back?
The Gun Owners Of America also have excellent research material on McCain, and I highly recommend you to scan their material if you're seriously considering voting for this RINO.
But on to the centerpiece of this rant...
Rush to Saunders and Brooks: McCain's Liberalism Is the Problem
January 17, 2008
RUSH: I got into New York last night. Had a couple meetings after work, down at the EIB Southern Command and hopped a jet, got up here. I guess I got to my fashionable Upper East Side abode, what was it, 7:30, quarter of eight or something? I took some time to get away from it all, and after I got away from it all, I went back and got involved in it all, and I prepared myself a fashionable adult beverage. I'm sitting there in my little study, and I got the computer on and I'm starting to do a little show prep for today's show. And, you know, folks, I am written about every day. So it's no big deal to me. I used to have, when I was much younger and greener, all these news alerts that would alert me when my name had appeared anywhere in the World Wide Web. It got to be so arduous keeping up with it, I canceled them. I thought I canceled them all, but I must have missed one last night because one came in, and the title of it was, Old Warrior, Go Home," and it was from the San Francisco Chronicle.
So I clicked on it. It's a column by my old friend Debra Saunders, who I met when I was in Sacramento. I've stayed in touch with her off and on via e-mail all these years. So I read her column, and the first two words of her column are my name. She's really a great conservative, and she's a classy lady and I've enjoyed her company, but we have a little bit disagreement here about Senator McCain, and I didn't know it 'til I read her piece. She starts this way:
Many of us who call ourselves down-the-road middle, rock-ribbed conservatives, good old mainstream conservatives, sit here and puzzle over the adoration, the love, the attachment that people we thought were also conservatives have for somebody like Senator McCain, or, in some cases, Governor Huckabee. I thought I figured out a bunch of reasons why, and in some cases, I chalked it up to various conservatives being embarrassed of some of the other conservatives that are in the Republican Party, others wanting to modernize the Republican Party, all these ideological reasons. But Debra alerted me to something that I may have thought about, but I didn't really process, and some of you might have. But I want to thank her for alerting me to the real reason some of these conservatives find an attraction to Senator McCain.
Now, nobody talks about this much in the mainstream media, but there are a lot of prisoners of war who think McCain has a lot of explaining to do in not being fully interested in getting all the POWs out of Vietnam when we left. It's a long, convoluted story, and McCain dismisses it, says there's nothing to it, but others hold quite a grudge against Senator McCain for his apparent lack of interest, they say, in getting everybody, every prisoner of war missing in action accounted for and out of Vietnam, and that's where Perot comes in. Vietnam was a big deal to him. Let me remind you of this. If you want to know why Perot was on the warpath against George H. W. Bush, it has to do with POWs and it has to do with Vietnam, and I'll go through that story when we get to the Perot segment of the program, but I want to stick with Debra Saunders here, which will dovetail into a sound bite from David Brooks, conservative, ahem, columnist at the New York Times who was on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night during the commentary segment with Mark Maxi Shields, and Brooks was talking about me.
So, in addition to the POW/MIA thing and McCain's heroic status, that's one of the things. But I want you to listen to this paragraph that Debra wrote in her piece.
And Debra continues:
Then she says,
Amnesty for illegals hatched under the cover of darkness, no debate. That bill would have been the destruction of the Republican Party. That was the Register Illegal Immigrants as Democrats bill. And we were frustrated and angry as hell here that a lot of Republicans in the Senate didn't see that. His outreach to Democrats and independents is also meant to destroy the Republican Party. If you're going to go out and appeal to independents and Democrats in today's playing field to get them to vote Republican, what do you have to do? You have to appeal to them as a liberal; you have to appeal them to as a moderate, and, certainly, you don't go out and appeal to them as a conservative to get moderate, liberal votes to abandon the Democrats and vote for Republicans. Then there's the Gang of 14.
Now, McCain's out there promising he'd do everything in the world to appoint the right kind of judges. But then, why have the Gang of 14, which basically destroyed our effort to stop Democrat filibusters on great judges? There's just too much here of substance that we can't overlook, plus the opposition to tax cuts. And, of course, some people say we need McCain's strong anti-terrorist and pro war on terror, pro Iraq, I agree with that, but I want to repeat this. If Democrats win the White House, folks, I have to tell you, they're not going to pull out of Iraq and guarantee defeat wrapped around their necks, they're just not going to do it, and anybody who thinks they are is buying and drinking Kool-Aid. Now, the Democrat base, this is all posturing, fundraising, and so forth. Iraq's off the table as an issue anyway. It's the economy. The economy is the issue that the Democrats and the liberals and the Drive-Bys are going to try to destroy the Republican Party on. I mean, hell, you've got the energy secretary today, Sam Bodman,
The best stimulus package is a tax cut. Then you've got Bernanke up there testifying before the House committee today,
Debra, we don't look at it as global warming or campaign finance reform and just throw it away as issues that McCain was wrong on. We look at global warming and campaign finance reform as a destruction of the US economy in the service of junk science and a hoax. We look at campaign finance reform as a suppression of core free speech rights in the service of protecting mostly Democrat incumbents. These things are not incidental. They're very substantive to us. It has nothing to do with personalities. It has to do with defeating liberals. Not attracting them to our own party, for crying out loud. I just now understand.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let us also not forget, ladies and gentlemen, that back in 2004 the haughty John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) asked Senator McCain to be his vice presidential candidate, asked him to be his vice presidential running mate, and McCain took how many months to say no? (McCain impression)
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: David Brooks was on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night with Mark Maxi Shields and the commentary segment of the new hour with Jim Lehrer, and my name up. This is Lehrer asking Brooks a question.
BROOKS: The big problem Huckabee faces, McCain's also, is Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh all week has been on the warpath against Huckabee and McCain, as people who are not real Republicans. He says they're drawing independents; they're drawing Democrats; they're breaking up the Reagan coalition. He calls them Jell-O people [sic] because they're soft and squishy, and a lot of people listen to Rush Limbaugh, and a lot of talk show hosts repeat what Rush Limbaugh says. He's been a very pro-Romney force in the past week, and it's bound to eat into Huckabee because there a lot of Republican primary voters who listen to Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH: That's David Brooks analyzing what's been happening on the program here. One thing we gotta correct. I didn't call the candidates "Jell-Os." I called moderates and independents Jell-Os. Let's go back to the broadcast archives. This was Monday on the Rush Limbaugh program.
RUSH ARCHIVE:
RUSH: All right, now, the Jell-O term here is applied, therefore, to independent and moderate voters. I've decided if we've got a bunch of Republicans who go out and act like liberals or moderates in order to get those people to vote for a Republican, I'm going to insult the moderates, and I'm going to see to it that they don't want to vote in the party I'm a member of. (laughs)
Somebody's gotta do something here. Now, seriously, folks.
It is one thing to go out and attract the so-called Reagan Democrats, these moderate conservatives that have been Democrat by tradition.
It's one thing to go get them by talking to them from the standpoint of conservatism and freedom, American exceptionalism, and greatness;
but it is not good to go get them if you're going to pander to them with populism and make them also dependent on the Republican Party as they already are on the Democrat Party. That's not what we're about.
I'm not going to dispute that, but I'm going to tell you: there's not going to be much difference in terms of policy or what's going to happen to the Republican Party.
Look, the Republican Party matters to me in the sense that it is the vessel -- it is the host, if you will -- for conservatism.
Now, too many Republicans look at themselves as the host, and conservatives as an infection -- as a virus that has been spreading throughout the Republican Party and slowly eating it away.
Wrong.
That's what will happen if we succeed in having a candidate -- I don't care who it is -- who is so enamored with getting independents and moderates and certain liberals, by going out and trying to be like them and telling them that our party is in fact their home. It's the Invasion of the Body Snatchers all over again in a political sense.
Now, I keep talking about Ronaldus Magnus. Pete Wehner has a great piece today at Commentary, their website, and I'll share excerpts with you in a second. But remember, now: My devotion to Reagan is not a cult of personality. I think a lot of people's devotion to McCain is. I think a lot of people's devotion to Governor Huckabee is a cult of personality. Reagan didn't invent conservatism. He just showed how to apply it, and he showed how it attracts voters.
How can you do better than a 49-state landslide? A fifty-state landslide, but it's pretty damn close. Anybody want to tell me that Reagan was campaigning as a moderate, independent? Anybody want to tell me that Reagan was running around campaigning and telling people how to become dependent on the government? Come on, folks! It's time to wake up here. I understand going out and "expanding the base" and having a chance at electoral victory and so forth, but if it means destroying the Republican Party -- and certainly losing, by the way. Does anybody think that the way to be elected president is to out-liberal liberals, to out-moderate moderates? Some of this just escapes me, especially when the history is not that long ago. It's fairly recent; it's the eighties. Even the Contract with America and the Republicans winning the House of Representatives in 1994, you think we did that with liberalism? You think we did that by attracting moderates? We had a little help there because there's so much corruption on the House of Representatives on the Democrat side, but how did anybody know about that? Talk radio -- which, back then, was me. Well, still is me. Ha-ha-ha! Anyway, don't forget the main point here. There's no magic and there's nothing valorous about going out and attracting people to our party by being like them, and having them think that our party is a new home for them, because of whatever deficiencies there are with Hillary or Obama or what have you.
That expediency to win is going to set us back.
For those of us that are conservatives first and Republicans second, this is something that matters deeply.
As I said, global warming and campaign finance reform are not just little throwaway issues that McCain made mistakes on and maybe apologized for (which he hasn't). They're substantive. They're crucial. I think this notion that we've gotta go out and broaden the base of the party by forsaking our own roots, by forsaking our own base, I'm going to tell you: You talk about this notion,
Well, hell, I'm all for "modernization," but not destruction.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, about this modernizing business, my friends, and you know this, I do not blow my own horn. I do not tout my own whistle. I do not call attention to myself. That just happens. I do not say,
Mr. Brooks, I have all the respect in the world for him, for his education and what he has accomplished, but what does he do? He writes for the New York Times. That means he's writing conservatism for liberals. He's writing conservatism for a liberal audience, and of course you can't help when you do that to try to seek the liberals' acceptance. That's not what we do here. We're not trying to seek their acceptance. We are trying to beat them because we feel that they are destructive.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have a couple of audio sound bites from the previous hour that I meant to get in. We got a little bit out of order there. The first one is from Senator McCain. The second one is from Governor Huckabee. This was on The Big Story last night on the Fox News Channel, John Gibson's show with Senator McCain, and Gibson said,
MCCAIN: In New Hampshire, we won all segments of the Republican base, and I believe, again: Conservative Republicans are most concerned about the issue of our nation's security. I think it's clear that my involvement in every national security challenge for the last 20 years will, I think, attract a good portion of them, and most of them I hope -- and I think I'll match my conservative record up against anybody that's running and I don't switch positions (laugh), either.
RUSH: All right. Now, there's something. I'm tempted to just leave this alone. David Brooks was on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer saying
We're not looking for purity. We're looking for people that want to beat liberals, not join them, and not have them join us. That's not the future.
Do you ever hear liberals say -- do you hear Obama and these guys running around saying --
This embarrasses me. He's citing Reagan in great ways. He's not citing Reagan on policy.
He wouldn't dare do that, and he's taking a risk doing it anyway. That group over there despises Reagan even more than some of the country club, blue-blood Republicans on our side despised Reagan -- make no mistake, they did.
Nevertheless he's out there citing Reagan, but he's doing it in the context of attitudes and uplifting sentiments, optimism and hope and inspiration. The kind of things our people ought to be doing, Obama is out there-doing. I'll have more on this because Pete Wehner -- my buddy from the White House who is now at Norman Podhoretz's shop, Commentary and is running a blog over there -- published a piece today, and I want to get to it as the program unfolds.
Here's Huckabee up next. This was from the Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough's show, on PMSNBC. By the way, did you hear...?
Cookie, you don't need to go get the audio on this, because it's very short. I'm just going to pass this on. I don't want you sweating and slaving in there while you're trying to fix your iPhone.
Speaking of the iPhone, they had this big software update and it's cool. It's got some neat things on it. But the one thing it needs, they haven't done yet. It's frustrating. People ask me all the time,
Ha-ha! Do I have any power with Apple?
Apple is as embarrassed that I use their products, as Democrats would be if they welcomed me into the party. But they need a clipboard! They need cut and paste on the thing so you can cut and paste something for an e-mail to text message it to somebody, or cut and paste an address. It's gotta be simple to do, but they haven't done it yet, and I thought with that software update that came, version 1.1.3, that they would put that in. They got some cool things in there, some really nice things. But the thing that I really wanted on this thing since I got it, was cut and paste, clipboard, and it isn't there.
Now, MSNBC. I'm watching Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (Mika Brzezinski is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor to the peanut farmer: Jimmy Carter), and they're talking about conservatives in the presidential race, and Mika Brzezinski says,
The secularists are all over it.
Stomach it? See, that's the one thing that Pete writes about today in his piece on Obama and Reagan, the one thing -- even I have forgotten to point out --
one of the most fundamental aspects of Ronald Reagan's success was the morality of everything that he brought into play. He knew the Soviet Union would implode on the basis of its own immorality, if we just gave it the right nudge.
He thought the same thing of liberalism. It's its own immorality, if you give it the right nudge, it will implode on itself.
Reagan's morality was a fundamental aspect of who he was and how he took the concepts, the precepts, the contexts and principles of conservatism and applied them to the issues of his day.
All right, I distracted myself, but didn't forget any of it, now back to Huckabee, who this all started with. He was on Scarborough's show on PMS yesterday. He says that there is a conspiracy out to get him.
RUSH: So that's another way of stating the Washington-New York Axis; the Wall Street-DC Axis; the one I belong to, that this mythical advisor said I was a member of, and Huckabee said no.
Well, he didn't say no.
He said we don't know who said it so I can't respond to it.
David Brooks is Washington-New York Axis. I'm not trying to put Brooks down. There's no feud here.
END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Background Material...
So this concludes my article on why McCain is UNACCEPTABLE AT ANY LEVEL... even with Hillary!!!
Unfortunately, not voting for the Republican will be no different than a vote for the hypocrat.
Hopefully, it’ll be Romney vs. Obama.
I'd vote for him, but far from wholeheartedly. More like ...extremely reluctantly. As far as "everyone else" is concerned, I wouldn't count on it. But yeah, many are now blowing smoke out of disappointment and frustation and will change their minds when their heads have cleared after contemplating the full implications of another Clinton Presidency.
Amen!
I'd love some photoshop of Clint taking on McCain.
"Unforgiven" is the PERFECT way to say it!
Two weeks ago I was right with you.
Not now.
"Conservative" will be redefined to equal McCain. We will never recover.
I am over 50. I will not hold back anymore. No More Rino’s, PERIOD!
McCain served in the military, so did I. He was unfortunate enough to get shot down. SO what!
His history in the republican party as a thorn in our side, is all I need to know. He turned his back on us years ago.
I wasn’t even thinking of the voters.
Thanks!
That’s interesting. Another poster suggested to me and asked on his own for a “McCain Truth File” made from my links and there was no response.
That must be the poster I’m thinking of.
If we ever needed a mcCAIN Truth File, it is now.
Outstanding work on your part, TE!!
I wasn't around at the time so I need help with the McCain Vietnam time line. It's a really basic question: Why didn't McCain take the Vietnamese up on their offer to let him return home but instead decided to stay a prisoner and be their Tokyo Rose?
Can I examine the history of presidential candidates who want to be my president or is that taboo?
Did you ever consider that he might have refused for his own self-concience,
or maybe even then, he knew he wanted to run for office?
Rush needs to be our President!!!!
I'll be the judge of what is a topic of interest to me.
Did you ever consider that he might have refused for his own self-concience, or maybe even then, he knew he wanted to run for office?
I don't want it to be a mystery where I consider various possibilities. I just want the answer to the simple question.
Why did McCain stay in Vietnam to serve as the enemies propaganda mouthpiece when he was free to return back home to the US? Your "considerations" of what the answer could be to that question are illogical unless you believe that McCain really believed in the propaganda that he was mouthing from Saigon.
Care for your brother-in-arms can also bond you to your oath. Only McCain can answer that question.
But I won't support him!
Why do you believe it is "self-respectful" for one to allow himself to be used as a mouthpiece for enemy propagandists when he has the option to freely return to the US instead?
People call McCain a "hero" because they have learned it by rote.
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