Yes We Can: The Reestablishment Of Conservatism Begins (Rush: Back To Core Principles Alert)

RUSH: Well, my friends, the new tone has finally come home to roost. For those of you perplexed by my meaning, I will 'splain this along with lots of other things as we engage in three hours of broadcast excellence from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, rebuilding the conservative movement. I take that back. The conservative movement does not need to be rebuilt. We had some people abandon the conservative movement, and we need to make sure they stay abandoned. Greetings, and welcome. Telephone number, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address is ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Conservatism did not lose last night. Conservative was not on the ballot. The Republican Party has not sought to be conservative since the new tone was initiated by the Bush administration in 2001. But I would like to congratulate President-Elect Barack Obama, ladies and gentlemen. Without Senator Obama, we would still be dealing with the specter of Hillary Clinton lurking around the Democrat Party seeking the White House. So I want to congratulate and thank Senator Obama for dispatching the Clintons, at least until he screws up enough to give them an opening to get back in. I am the Doctor of Democracy as you know, and today my waiting room is filled. (laughing) I can well imagine.

Lots to do on the program today, ladies and gentlemen. As you know in America today, the sun seems to be shining a little brighter; the birds are chirping happier melodies out there. I heard it driving in. The smell of spring has displaced old man winter. In fact, there's not going to be any winter. It will not come this year. Harsh winds will not chill the souls of man, nor will harsh winds chill the souls of women. There won't be any harsh winds. There will not be any winter. There will only be love and devotion and -- oh, I was just handed a note here: "President Dmitri Medvedev Orders Missiles Deployed in Europe as World Hails Obama." No big deal. I've just been handed another note: "Palestinians Launch Rocket Attack into Israel as World Hails Obama." No big deal. That's just the world being what it is. No problem. There will be no winter; there will be no wars; there will be no harsh winds; the shackles of the past, which for so long have bound too many of us, have been shaken loose. Yes, Snerdley, I'm not ready to take the field for another game. I'm on the field. We have taken the field, and we're getting ready, the game is begun.

The process of rebuilding the conservative movement has begun. The conservative movement, I guess it does need to be rebuilt in a sense, but it should be a lot easier than a lot of people think because a lot of so-called conservatives abandoned the movement in support of Obama and identity politics of their own and so forth. They got what they wanted. They got the candidate they wanted. They got the result that we all knew was going to happen when they got the candidate they wanted. And then when things started going south, a lot of these pseudo-conservatives, "You know what? I kind of like Obama, Obama can talk, Obama can speak," so let them stay on that side of the aisle. We've got the plays. We have the playbook. We didn't run the plays. We are going to start running the plays. And we're not going to have sideliners; we're not going to have draft choices on our field. They may be on the bench but they're going to have to prove themselves in training camp before they get in the game this time. A little football analogy out there for those of you who are not necessarily sports inclined. What we are dealing with today, the opportunity that we have actually is the rebirth of principled opposition, an opposition rooted in conviction, not opposition for opposition's sake, not opposition for political expedience. I don't know if you know this, I don't know if you heard this on television last night. Do you know that with the defeat of the moderate Chris Shays in Connecticut, we don't have a single conservative -- sorry -- we don't have a single Republican member of the House of Representatives from the great Northeast? All of those moderates, all those moderate Republicans, liberal Republicans who thought the only way to get elected and run the affairs of the House was to be moderate, was to be centrist. Guess where they are? Gone. They are gone. An opportunity for cleansing, ladies and gentlemen, like we haven't seen in a long time. This is all positive, well, for our side, the opportunity to build. We've got some serious challenges ahead in pushing back what no doubt is going to come.

I'm just sitting here, I have to laugh. There is another template that's established, and a lot of sideliners on our side of the aisle have picked it up. "Hey, he's going to govern from the center. Hey, he's going to govern from the center right. Hey, he can't go far left, he can't do all this." What little we know about this guy is precisely that he is a radical. That speech of his last night, did you see the faces of the people in the audience? Messianism was on display. They didn't care what they heard. I did. Again, he came out with an acceptance speech that said nothing better than anybody I've ever heard say nothing, other than he did say a couple of fundamental things that I'm going to point out to you as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today. Now, our road to rebuilding is going to be steep, but I know also that as a people, we will get there. As conservatives, we will get there. Can we oppose the idea that confiscatory taxation produces prosperity, when in fact it punishes economic growth? Yes, we can! Can we oppose the notion that our national greatness is derived from an ever growing government instead of the freedom from government our Founders envisioned? Yes, we can. I started laughing uncontrollably during the "yes, we can" stuff last night. I was having a great time last night. I actually was having a great time watching all this. I just flipped around various channels to watch the coverage and I was just laughing. Can we oppose the belief that one's earnings must be redistributed for the false promise of fairness? Yes, we can. Can we oppose the belief that it is immoral to secure our own borders or defend ourselves from terrorists intent on destroying us? Yes, we can. Can we do all that and more? Yes, we can. Because now it is plain for one and all to see that taking the moderate path of appeasement leads to abysmal defeat. The new tone came home to roost last night. I was watching, ladies and gentlemen, the speech by President-Elect Obama, and when I saw the setup, they showed us the setup a long time before he went out there. I said, "Come on, McCain, get out there and concede; they're going to lose control of that crowd in Chicago. That crowd's been out there," I didn't see any Port-a-Potties. What's that crowd doing? I knew they probably had some band, some concert activity going on. McCain went out and did his concession speech.

By the way, that concession speech, I heard a lot of people say, "Where was that during the campaign?" That was the campaign! The concession speech was the reason he lost the campaign. That concession speech was a testament to his campaign that went down in flames. Now, help me out here. I had some people watching at my house with me, and they were telling me -- when I hear crowd noise watching television, I can't tell if it's cheering, bickering, booing, or what have you. Was McCain booed last night? Was he being heckled? He was not? All right, because I was told by some that he was being heckled. I doubted that. But, anyway, the concession speech was a testimony to why his campaign faltered. And I'm watching, I'm looking at the setup for Obama's speech, and I thought, "My God, they've moved the UN to Chicago." They had that background, all these flags, they were all American flags, but it looked like the UN, looked like a world body that was gathering. And the funniest part, the funniest part of Obama's speech last night to me -- and, by the way, did you catch the open where he said, "We are not a collection of individuals?" See, people think that this speech was sort of vapid and soaring. That's substantive. He believes we are not a collection of individuals, and yet later in the speech he talked about the founding of the country on the mode of self-reliance. Now, how can there be self-reliance without a collection of individuals? We're either a collection of individuals or we're not. And if we're not a collection of individuals, there's no such thing as self-reliance, and it was epitomized by what I thought was the funniest part of the speech. You gotta remember the attitude. These people are staring, they're crying. The Reverend Jackson was crying. Oprah was crying. Jesse hated being part of the mob. He couldn't believe he wasn't on the stage, and that's why the tears. Oprah was down there, they found her, the camera found her crying. There were a lot of tears in the crowd at Grant Park last night because the politics of the crowd, we're all equal here, we've won, it was a surreal moment. Then Obama started talking about all this sacrifice we're all going to have to make. The crowd seemed very perplexed.

The crowd seemed very perplexed when he told them we all had to sacrifice. The faces in the crowd when he told 'em we're all going to have to do more, to work harder, to sacrifice, to make things happen, the looks on the faces of the crowd said, "We are going to have sacrifice? That wasn't the deal here, bro. We are going to sacrifice? No, no, no, I thought they are going to sacrifice." And Obama is saying, yeah, the sacrifice is going to happen with the tax cut that you don't get. I thought the theme of the speech was "to be determined." I couldn't detect a theme of the speech. After every roaring sound bite or applause line, I looked at some friends and said, "What does that mean? What did he just say?" I'm also curious, so much rage and so much anger on the left. Where's it going to go? Rage and anger does not go away, and that party is built, the Democrat Party is built on rage and anger. Where is it going to go? Well, I know, everybody says it's going to be aimed at me, and I'll do my best to be the vacuum cleaner that sucks up all the rage. I'll be honored to have the rage be focused on me, but seriously, where is it going to go? It may subside for a while because a lot of these people, "okay, okay," but they're still enraged, go to the website, they're still enraged, 2000, the election of 2000 they think it is finally over.

I'm actually very suspicious of the results last night, ladies and gentlemen. Nobody has dared, nobody has the courage to bring this up. But this wasn't any big landslide. And this wasn't a big record turnout. It wasn't a big record turnout. The numbers I have is less than 2004. But regardless, whether it was record turnout or not, how many of those votes were stolen? All that early voting, we don't have Election Day anymore, we have election month. All these early voters out there standing four hours in line. Folks, I gotta tell you, I voted yesterday here in Florida, you should have seen our ballot. It was welcome back to the magic marker days. We had to go in and connect two lines with a black magic marker and these ballots were huge. The environmental impact, negative impact caused by Florida ballots is going to be incalculable. Then we had to feed these things into a machine to be read. But you know, here we have machines involved.

I talked to a bunch of people whose votes were not read by the machine here in Florida, and the guy said, "Well, don't worry about it, we'll put 'em in the emergency box." And the friend said, "No, I don't want them in the emergency box. I want another ballot, you throw this away, and I want it scanned." "No, no, no, we'll put it in the emergency box. We count everything in the emergency box." Early voting. I also detected last night in the speech that the United States sounds like a horrible place to live. It really sounds like a horrible place to live. We've been so rotten, we have been so mean to people, but now all that's going to change. America sounded like it's a horrible place to live. And finally, ladies and gentlemen, proof of what we have all suspected, we may have risen above a bunch of stuff last night. But it's patently obvious, looking at the election returns that we have not risen above our own public education. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Seriously, ladies and gentlemen, I spent a lot of the morning doing show prep, scouring our own websites (supposedly our own websites) and I have detected a theme, and the theme is, "All right, we need to be gracious and we need to extend our congratulations. That is historic." The underlying reason for this that I picked up is that people on our side want to avoid acting like the left did when they lost 2000 and 2004. Remember when they were out there saying the election had been stolen and they were filled with rage and anger. They have always been filled with rage and anger; it was just heightened after those two elections. But once again the fatal flaw... I'm not against graciousness, and I'm not against being congratulatory and so forth.

But the motivation for it troubles me greatly, as we seek here not to rebuild the conservative movement, by the way, but to simply reestablish it and take it back from a bunch of frauds and pretenders who want to "redefine" it. I never see liberalism be redefined. I never hear liberals say they have to redefine liberalism. I never hear them say we've got to end the era of FDR. They keep trying to rebuild it! Yet the wizards of smart on our side continue to try to tear it down, and they continue to tell us that the only way we can win is by branching out -- and, in their own way, Balkanizing voters. We gotta start looking at voters, a Wal-Mart voter over there, and a Joe the Plumber voter over here, and some other kind of voter over there. That's not how you win elections.

You win elections with core principles and beliefs that you stand steady on, and you attract people to them because they work. Like I say, we got a playbook. We have a blueprint. And there are people (for reasons that escape me, I don't care what the reasons are) who want to abandon all that and try to set up this new thing with themselves in charge, and they're going to do that. There's going to be a series -- you mark my words, there's going to be a series -- of conservative intellectuals and thinkers. They will convene a number of conferences among themselves to plan a new plan of attack. We got what they wanted! Everything they suggested that we do has come to pass, from compassionate conservatism to the new tone -- and now here we are.

We have just lost an election. Let me continue to add a caveat to this. Conservatism did not lose. In fact, when it was on the ballot, it won. How about Prop 8 in California? The people of California passed Proposition 8 telling the judges of California that you cannot override what we do in this ballot initiative, and marriage will be between a man and a woman. In California! When conservatism is on the ballot, and it's clearly defined, it doesn't have any problems. It is where conservatism gets watered down, where we tend to be moderate. "We need to explain that we don't hate people. We don't dislike people, that we're not racist, sexist, bigot, homophones." Then you get watered down, you have no identity.

The Republican Party brand is shot! Exit poll data shows it; preelection data surveys show it. The Republican Party, nobody knows what it stands for. Because the people that run the party don't know what it stands for, other than, "Let's be defensive," and so today we're told, "We must be conciliatory, we must congratulate, and we must be gracious and so forth." Why? Beyond just being those things, why? Because we still think that it is important that we differentiate ourselves from the left. From what I saw today and from what I heard, the reason people want to go overboard congratulating Obama on the racial thing, the historical aspect of the first black president, is to send a message to the left, to send a message to the media.

"Hey, we're not as bad as you think." As long as that motivation counts for what you do, and as long as the motivation for behaving a certain way is to try to convince people that already hate your guts that they ought to like you, you are going to fail every time. So we congratulate Obama. We recognize the historical nature. We also understand that more than him being black, he is a radical extremist who is not going to govern from the center. Pelosi and Reid are not gonna govern from the center. What the hell do people think they wanted to win this election for? When do liberals govern from the center? The only time they do that is when they have to, when there are enough Republicans around to keep their extremism in check -- and that's going to be interesting to see if we have enough now. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, so we're being told here today by the wizards of smart on our side, "We need to be gracious in defeat." My answer to that is, "Screw defeat! Screw this whole notion that we have to sit around and try to show these people that we're the nice people, that they don't think that we are." It's like one of our guys in the Congress gets in trouble, and we're the first to throw him overboard. Get rid of him! Why? Not because we think he ought to go, but because we think the left will like us and the media will understand us better and think that we're fair. Meanwhile, they never throw any of their people overboard. We need to understand this as a war that there are several skirmishes and battles in and we just lost a battle, and we gotta be honest with ourselves about why we lost this battle. Any time you fail, if you don't examine yourself first, you will never understand what happened.

As long as you start making excuses and saying that other people did this and the media did that or what have you, you're never going to get to the core of the problem. And the core of the problem is that the Republican Party (for some inexplicable reason that I don't care about now) decided to abandon conservatism. And we see what happened when the Republican Party abandons conservatism. John McCain's concession speech last night was a testament to his campaign. His whole campaign was a concession speech! We have now demonstrated to one and all how to lose. We know how to lose. We have been the architects -- well, not we. But there are those that we are talking about here who have been the architects of this defeat, and it is going to be crucial to point this out as the reestablishment of conservatism takes place.

We're going to have a great opportunity to do it because this notion, "Obama's going to have to govern from the center, Rush. He's going to have to because look at the economic crisis and look at all the bailout money and look at terrorism." Read the New York Times today! They are demanding, A, he close Gitmo; B, he raise taxes right now; C, he get out of Iraq. The left thinks they got somebody that's going to implement their agenda even before he gets to the White House. Their rage is going to go someplace. These people live and thrive on rage. It is their fuel, and they're going to find an outlet for it somewhere. They are perpetually miserable. They are perpetually unhappy. They might be in a moment right now of bliss, but the hard stuff hasn't started yet, and it's going to very soon.

Also, this notion of governing from the center? His first appointment, his chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel. Do we know if Emanuel has accepted? Rahm Emanuel wants to be Speaker of the House. Let me tell you a little bit about Rahm Emanuel. Hillary Clinton hates him. In the White House, Rahm Emanuel pushed NAFTA and made that go first instead of her health care baby, and her health care baby suffered. There's no love lost between Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton, and he is good a old-fashioned Chicago thug just like Obama is a good old-fashioned Chicago thug. On the night of the Clinton election, Rahm Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign; Rahm Emanuel grabbed a steak knife and he began rattling off a list of betrayers.

As he listed their names, he shouted, "Dead! Dead! Dead!" and he plunged the steak knife into the table after every name. This is not a bunch of people that are going to govern from the center. These are left-wing extremists. They are radicals, and we're not gonna let these people either on our side or on the left say, "Well, we didn't really know that much about this guy." Now, for all of those of you out there (not in this audience, but the faint of heart on our side) who want to go through this rigmarole game of appeasement and conciliation, congratulations, work nice. McCain last night... The reason I asked you if he got booed last night, was because I was booing. When he came out and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, my friends, my friends, I want us to come together tonight in unity with Senator and President-Elect Obama." I do not want unity with President-Elect Obama! Ladies and gentlemen, let me count the numbers here. What do we have? By the time all this is all over, 57 million Americans will have voted "no" on this stuff! I, for one, do not think it wise to abandon 57 million Americans who want no part of an Obama agenda, and I for one will not abandon 57 million Americans who want no part of it. Unity with Obama? Can you spell defeat? We still wanna cave. What's the point? I know McCain wanted to sound gracious, but what is the point now of saying unify with Obama? Does Obama say he wants to unify with us? No. He said, "I know there are people out there that didn't vote for me, but I'm going to listen to you." Yes, as in the Fairness Doctrine you're going to listen to us? "I'm going to listen to you."

Fine. You're going to listen to us all day long and do nothing about it, right? There is no unity with Obama. He doesn't cross the aisle. Let me go through a list of things here, ladies and gentlemen. Those of you who want to go out there and make nice, because you either want to be treated well, or you don't want to be targeted. You don't want them coming after you. You want to be invited to state dinners at the White House. Let me ask you which of the following Obama and Democrat agenda items you want to sign on to so that you can be looked upon and held in good favor. Do you want to compromise with them on the Employee Free Choice Act? These are things that they have said they're going to do.

Do you want to sign on with the Employee Free Choice Act? Do you want to have union thugs in your small business being able to harass your employees who cannot vote secret ballot on whether to unionize or not? Do you want union thugs visiting your employees' homes to pressure them, to vote to unionize your small business? Obama, as I just said, "I know there are a lot of people out there that I didn't earn your vote, but I'm going to listen to you," as in, the Fairness Doctrine, Senator Obama. Any of you who want to make nice out there want to compromise and unify on the Democrat Party's position on the Fairness Doctrine? Chuck-U Schumer just yesterday suggesting that the federal government can legislate and regulate porn on the airwaves, what's the difference in talk radio?

Free Choice Act. (chuckles) You want to compromise with them on abortion? You want to try to unify on the whole notion of that? How about the nationalization of health care? Well, sadly, Snerdley, there are people on our side who want to do their own version of that because they think that's how you get Wal-Mart voters and they think that's how you go out and get Joe the Plumber voters. Estate tax increases. How many of you want to unify with Obama on increasing the death tax when you croak? How many of you want to compromise on comprehensive immigration reform? In other words, let me put it to you this way. How many of you want to unify with Obama on driver's licenses for illegal aliens?

And that's another thing. We lost New Mexico and we lost Nevada, and did you see how? John McCain of comprehensive immigration reform and "meaningful campaign finance reform to take the money out of politics," and one guy raises 600 million, taking the money out of the politics. Hispanics/Latinos, two-to-one for Obama. Now, I thought the opposite was supposed to happen. I thought we were supposed to go out there and, as the Republican Party and President Bush and Senator McCain sponsoring comprehensive immigration reform were supposed to show those Hispanics we love 'em and we care about them and they're all "God's children" and it didn't work, did it? It just didn't. You know how to get them? Conservatism will get them, not pandering to them!

"You want to come here illegally? Fine! We'll arrange it for you." That's not how to do it! It's so frustrating, but, such an opportunity now. Such a glorious golden opportunity because the frustrating thing that I'm sure you'll all agree with me about this campaign was we didn't really have a chance to contrast ourselves with Obama and the radicalism of his campaign, because our presidential campaign in four-and-a-half hours... Listen to this now. In four and a half hours of televised presidential debate, not one mention of Jeremiah Wright. In four-and-a-half hours of televised presidential debate, not one mention of any of the extremism that Obama has said he was for.

Not one -- and I don't care. Maybe it was fear of being called racist or what have you. Fear sometimes is a great motivator, but mostly it's a giant obstacle; and until you get it out of your way, you're not going to move forward. Capital gains tax increase. Let's unify on that. We don't want to unify on that? How about, let's unify on defense cuts. Barney Frank wants to cut the defense budget 25%, get out of Iraq, get out of Afghanistan; while Putin's loading up Europe with missiles and the Gaza Strip is coming alive here with all the peace that's broken out with the election of Obama. Hey, how about this? How about we unify around the notion of liberal judicial appointments to the federal bench, including the Supreme Court? Yeah, let's unify. Let's be gracious. Let's be conciliatory, and let's indeed govern from the center, as a whole bunch of more Stephen Breyer's show up for work at the federal courts every day. Yep, that's for me. How about racial and ethnic preferences? Yep! Let's admit that we're a bunch of racist pigs, sexist, bigots, homophobes, and let's go ahead and expand the whole concept of racial preferences and quotas and affirmative action. Let's go ahead, because we still have a price to pay, folks. Even though we got the first black president, we haven't accomplished anything. "We haven't accomplished anything. This doesn't mean anything. Obama doesn't have slave blood." A black leader told me that. "His wife has slave blood, but he doesn't. So he doesn't come from the down-with-the-struggle crowd."

We heard all this during the campaign. I'll tell you what do! Let's do this, too. Let's unify around the notion that what really killed McCain was Sarah Palin. How about that? That's what the left is out there saying. That's what the media is out there saying and that's what some of the wizards of smart on our stupid side are saying. "Sarah Palin was a drag on the ticket. They even exit polled that: 48% of voters said Sarah Palin was a drag on the ticket." Who the hell put that question together and for what purpose? Sarah Palin saved this campaign! Sarah Palin was the closest thing we had to conservatism on parade on the march, and you see the crowds that she drew. You saw the enthusiasm. Sarah Palin, I don't know what her future holds 'cause I don't know what she wants to do.

All I saw was, she skedaddled off that stage last night faster than I could have, and some people were asking, "Why did she get offstage? Why didn't she speak?" Well, vice presidents don't speak at these acceptance deals. I thought it very weird, too. Mostly, mostly at these acceptance deals they're in hotel ballrooms and the whole family comes out there, and while the nominee and the victor accepts and the loser concedes, the whole family is out there. Well, McCain's family was up there with the Palins; then Obama comes out with the family, Michelle and the two girls, and then he sends 'em backstage. He's out there alone. I said, "Whoa, he just kicked the family out of there," and then after it was over, here came all the extended family except Obama's!

There was no Aunt Zeituni; and even in his speech last night, he was talking about my brother's keeper, there was no Aunt Zeituni. He didn't go get George Onyango Hussein Obama from the hut.

RUSH: I don't care if Aunt Zeituni didn't have the two forms of ID to get in! She's the aunt of the president-elect. Just get a helicopter in there with a couple Secret Service agents; bring the can of cat food. Where was his extended family? Then he comes out and he makes a speech. Sarah Palin, she got off that stage as fast as she could. You know why I think? I'm just guessing. I don't think she likes losing. I think she wanted to get out of there. I don't think had anything to do with McCain. She just didn't like losing. So let's unify around the notion that the one strength that we had with Sarah Palin that was bad. She was a drag.

Yeah, yeah. Let's unify with our side on that, let's unify with the media, and let's unify with the Democrats. Let them continue to set our agenda, right? So we can show that we're gracious and we're polite and we're understanding and we're conciliatory -- and most of all, we are good people! We're not mean like you think we are. How about bans on drilling of oil? Let's unify around that. (laughs) How long is it going to be before we're not headed to a depression and the oil price starts going up? How long is the media going to start reporting this? Any number of things, income tax increases in general. We probably do. People on our side say, "Yeah, we probably do need more revenue. Let's think about unifying." This is what the unity is going to get you.

We're supposed to unify with all this. Senator McCain asked us to unify with Obama last night. Our side is asking us to be gracious and conciliatory and so forth -- and frankly for me, folks, I am ready for battle. I am on the field. I have taken it. There is a golden opportunity here to rebuild the conservative movement. We're going to name some names of people that have no right to be part of this anymore based on their abandonment of it. They helped secure this defeat, trying to be the smartest people in the room. It's going to be epic. It's going to be epic, and the left is going to be coming at us with the Fairness Doctrine or some other sort of thing. We got a lot of epic battles ahead. They will be energizing. They will be purposeful. They will be meaningful, and we will succeed. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: A phone call real quickly, Sunday in Davenport, Iowa. I'm glad you called. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: You, next to God, are my refuge and my strength today. And I'm sure many conservatives feel the very same way. I woke up depressed, and I am no longer depressed. I am ready to fight and do battle, and I think a lot of us conservatives want to find out from you what we can do so that 2012 --

RUSH: This is going to be long, we're going to be many days, weeks, and months into this. I can't spell it out in one day here, even one program, but I have to tell you, there are going to be a lot of people today dispirited. And they're thinking right now they will throw in the chips just for a while. Some, not all, but I think most people on our side already understand we didn't have a chance, we weren't on the ballot. We haven't been on the ballot since 1994. This is a golden, golden opportunity here now. I know it's frustrating because we had it all in '94, we had the House, if we had just stuck with… things happen. They are what they are and we face a situation we can't change. Look at it as an opportunity. Stay engaged because we're talking about the principles that define our lives and our country for your kids and grandkids and those never grow old because they're based on freedom!

RUSH: Look, folks, I know you're frustrated. You think I'm not? The moment McCain got the nomination, everything I predicted came true. But I'm fired up and jazzed 'cause now we're back on the field.

I said back in Feb that McCain was a terrible choice. That he might get the conservatives base to hold their nose and vote for him, but he won’t get their passion and enthusiasm.

And passion is what gets you donations, and get people to volunteer for you. And it’s the money and the free labor donated by the base that gets you the middle. Without that kind of support, you can’t win.

That’s why McCain had trouble raising money all summer, it was not until he picked Palin that he finally got some enthusiasm from the base. But by then it was too late. Donation can’t even go directly to his campaign any more at that point, and the grassroot organization should have been built already but wasn’t and it was too late.

McCain was doomed from the start, you can’t win a election when the base of your party hates you.

I think you're right. But I'd also point out that John McCain was about as uninspiring a candidate as we've seen from the GOP since Bob Dole.

It's about time we realized that nominating an old man -- especially one who looks even older than he is -- is a losing proposition in today's age of television-based political campaigns.

All we’ve had since Bob Dole has been Bush heh.. So that’s not saying much..

The democrats blew it with kerry, had they picked someone remotely slick/likable they’d have probably won then too.

The Republican brand name is mud now. It’s going to take awhile to recover.

I never held that against Rush. Anyone who knows these entertainment-type personalities will tell you that they are often something of a paradox . . . both remarkably outgoing and funny on the outside, but with a serious (often unhappy) side to them that you never see.

This is one reason why so many of them -- including Rush himself -- often have similar problems with substance abuse, unstable marriages, etc.

I normally wouldn’t hold it too bad, except that a conservative ‘leader’ is held up to a higher standard by everyone. Also, he went about it in a really shady way, getting his cleaning lady to do the dealing for him and stuff.

So now he’s going to re-promise after his promise in 2006 to push for actual conservative values? I’m waiting for Rush to someday do something helpful, other than just whine about it when things go wrong. According to Rush: Huckabee too liberal. Giuliani a good conservative! Whatever talent Rush once had has completely evaporated. If he’s going to be the voice of the conservative movement he better start focusing on the priorities and stop refusing to take a stand (ie an endorsement of Thompson or Romney WHEN IT MIGHT HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE.)

>>>”Hey, we’re not as bad as you think.” As long as that motivation counts for what you do, and as long as the motivation for behaving a certain way is to try to convince people that already hate your guts that they ought to like you, you are going to fail every time. <<<

Yup.

“Without Senator Obama, we would still be dealing with the specter of Hillary Clinton lurking around the Democrat Party seeking the White House. So I want to congratulate and thank Senator Obama for dispatching the Clintons, at least until he screws up enough to give them an opening to get back in.”

LOL! I love you, Rush. :)

“Because now it is plain for one and all to see that taking the moderate path of appeasement leads to abysmal defeat.”

Bumpity-Bump-Bump-Bump! I love you, Rush! :)

Just testing my new tag line...or should I go back to commenting on Chocolate?

Nah. It’s well past the time to kick @ss and take names. :)

“We have now demonstrated to one and all how to lose. We know how to lose. We have been the architects — well, not we.”

To hell with that self-righteous bloviating from Limbaugh. Rush could have sent the party faithful to a conservative in the primaries, chosen to endorse a primary candidate like Tancredo or Hunter or even Ron Paul to back, and he did not. He just sniped at McCain and flailed desperately into a Romney pick. He is just as much to blame for this debacle as anyone. Had conservatives all committed to a set of principles they demanded in a national leader, then drafted a candidate that fit them, not meekly submitted to the primary process, we would not be in this fine mess.

I’ve been going over it and over it in my head all day and I agree with you. I just don’t think it would have mattered who we ran this time- it was not to be. This was a protest vote against Dubya.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.