Posted on 11/08/2006 4:50:12 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
Republicans lost control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, because they abandoned their conservative principles and in the end stood for nothing, Rush Limbaugh said today.
In his Wednesday broadcast, America’s top talker said that until Republicans begin asking themselves what’s wrong with themselves they are never going to fix their problems.
When things go wrong, Rush said, "you must look inward and ask first, ‘What did we do wrong? What could we have done better? What mistakes did we make?”
Commenting that although Republicans lost, "Conservatism did not lose, Republicanism lost last night. Republicanism, being a political party first, rather than an ideological movement, is what lost last night.”
The Democrats, he said "beat something last night with nothing. They advanced no agenda other than their usual anti-war position. They had no contract — they really never did get specific. Their message was one of ‘vote for us; the other guys have been in power too long.’”
Rush further admonished, "There was no dominating conservative message that came from the [Republican] top and filtered down throughout in this campaign.”
He added that if there was conservatism in the campaign, it was on the Democratic side: "There were conservative Democrats running for office in the House of Representatives and in a couple of Senate races won by Democrats yesterday.” He cited James Webb as an example.
He also said it was conservatism that won fairly big when it was tried yesterday, but it was Democrats who ran as conservatives and not their GOP rivals. He added that the Democratic leadership had gone out and recruited conservative candidates because they knew liberals could not win running against Republicans in red states.
Rush quoted Thomas Sowell as explaining that the latest example of election fraud is actually what the Democrats did — they nominated a bunch of moderate and conservative candidates for the express purpose of electing a far-left Democratic leadership.
"The Democrats could not have won the House, being liberals,” Rush said. "Liberalism didn’t win anything yesterday; Republicanism lost. Conservatism was nowhere to be found except on the Democratic side.”
The root of the problem, Rush said, is that "our side hungers for ideological leadership and we’re not getting it from the top. Conservatism was nowhere to be found in this campaign from the top. The Democrats beat something with nothing. They didn’t have to take a stand on anything other than their usual anti-war positions. They had no clear agenda and they didn’t dare offer one. Liberalism will still lose every time it’s offered.”
Republicans, Rush said, allowed themselves to be defined. "Without elected conservative leadership from the top Republicans in the House and Senate republicans are free to freelance and say the hell with party unity.”
That leads, Rush said, to the emergence of RINOs — Republicans in name only.
Republicans in Congress, Rush explained, were held captive by the party’s leadership in the White House. They were put into a position of having to endorse policies with which as conservatives they disagreed.
"The Democratic Party,” Rush went on to say, "is the party of entitlements; but the Republicans come up with this Medicare prescription drug plan that the polls said that the public didn’t want and was not interested in. That is not conservatism. Conservatives do not grow the government and offer entitlements as a means of buying votes. But that’s what the Republicans in Congress had to support in order to stay in line with the Party from the top.
"It is silly to blame the media; it is silly to blame the Democrats; it is silly to go out and try to find all these excuses,” Rush said. "We have proved that we can beat them … we have proved that we can withstand whatever we get from the drive-by media. Conservatism does that — conservatism properly applied, proudly, eagerly, with vigor and honesty will triumph over that nine times out of 10 in this current political and social environment. It just wasn’t utilized in this campaign.”
Rush also blamed the failure to embrace conservatism on Republican’s fear of being criticized from those in the so-called establishment. Republicans, he charged, go out of their way to avoid being criticized, fearing they will be characterized as extremists and kooks.
As a result conservatism gets watered down, and the GOP loses the support of the nation’s conservative majority Rush stated.
Anything can beat nothing, Rush concluded, "and it happened yesterday.”
Oh, but it can't be the candidates. They had an R after their name so they are blameless. /sarcasm
Preaching to the choir. Rush is no longer relevant, except for being a lightning rod for the opposition.
Correct...his WOT blather doesn't hold water when 5000 - 10000 future dum-o-crats are strolling across our borders unaccounted for each damned week............ go sell crazy somewhere else.
So we vote out the strong-on-the-border GOP House.
Cool.
2nd midterm elections are historically bad for the President's party. I don't think the election was a rejection of conservatism.
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AMEN!!! I am waiting for someone to point out that losing seats during a president's second midterm is what historically happens. Sure, we have a lot of work ahead of us but we need to keep this loss in perspective. If nothing else, we finally have the chance to get some real conservatives in leadership positions in our party.
On Tuesday night, volunteers at my local Republican campaign headquarters were calling and calling stacks and stacks of phone numbers of normally reliable Republicans, yet they would not come out to vote.
Why? I am certain it was not because of Rick Santorum or our local conservative (devout Catholic, father of six, squeaky clean candidate Michael Fitzpatrick.)
I believe that the Republican dilemma is that most Americans know in their hearts that we MUST continue a shooting fight with Muslim extremists in Iraq or elsewhere, but they just cant stomach to see our fresh young American boys coming home maimed or dead.
Freedom exacts a heavy price.
Unfortunately, an additional 10-percent of Americans on Tuesday loudly stated that they refuse to pay the price.
Thus, we find ourselves in a precarious position, especially if the Islamofascists make a big push these next two years.
Will they invade America and take over General Electric?
No, but they could create havoc in the world, to the point that it will take a BIGGER shooting war just to put things right.
Great post.
And he partially agrees with your point.
THE POWER OF THE PRESS WON THIS ELECTION.
Unfortunately, they like the bad guys.
Heck, one of you folks claimed, in the same post, that Libertarians totally voted for the GOP, but the GOP lost because it took them for granted.
I guess the math of that post was too difficult to handle for them.
I do not recall voting anyone "out".
I told Rove:"Sixty Four Cross Power Trap." But he wouldn't listen.
We would never have had a Republican majority to lose if it hadn't been for Rush.
I do not recall voting anyone "out".
The electorate voted out many strong-on-the-border GOP House members.
It was yesterday. Do you recall that?
Because the GOP ran a non-candidate Swann against Rendell for Governor. Philly came out big for Rendell which swamped Casey with votes. Add to that how Santorum had to tow the party line and endorse Spector which ticked of conservatives in PA and you have a Santorum loss. This is exactly what Rush is talking about. RINO's from the top making our conservatives tow their liberal policies. -_-
It sickens me. I would have hoped that we would have actually had someone to vote for against Rendell but the people I talked to had no idea who Swann was and those that did, didn't know anything about him.
I voted for both Swann and Santorum and wanted them to win but they didn't. However, that does not translate into "liberal" victory. Casey ran as pro-life, pro-gun and on the family name of his Daddy's conservative dem governor record.
The true loss was Murtha keeping his seat. We can all thank non-support for Irey from the GOP for that. I think if Santorum and the GOP had jumped into the Irey/Murtha race and took a clear pro-Iraq/pro-troop stance both Irey and Santorum would have been victorious.
Would've been Could've been is all in the past now. It's time to buck up and look for a leader for a Conservative Republican march to the Whitehouse in 2008!
I think it would prompt more phone calls and even generate more listeners. I might even be persueded to start listening t ohi magain. I haven't listened to him since 2000.
I guess it was the foolish comments that caused me to make that mistake. I stand corrected, you're some other kind of nutjob.
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