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.”
One problem was an unwillingness to acknowledge public sentiment over the last year, and getting stung a bit in the 2005 elections.
It was amazing how both of those factors were minimized and dismissed on FR. The electorate has been telling Dubya and the GOP that they stink for about 15 months or so. They never seemed to care.
There you go.
Michael Barone say 8% skewed to dims. He knows!
LLS
Excellent post.
close ... except the base didn't even make it - 40% just ain't cutting it ;(
Yeah, in the end Santorum was just too conservative for many of his constituents. I'm all for standing for your principles, but past a certain point you have to remember that you're in the Senate to represent every citizen in your entire state, not just yourself. If you're unwilling to compromise on some of the stronger stuff, then you'll have to accept the risk that you might get voted out next time around. (For the reverse side of the same coin, look at Ned Lamont in Connecticut, who was far too insane of a moonbat even for a deep blue state.)
Likewise JD Hayworth, a strong conservative, campaigning as a conservative espousing conservative positions, in a conservative-leaning state (supposedly), anti-illegal immigration in a state threatened to be overwhelmed by illegal immigrants, and he gets beaten? Come on.
LOL! Me too!
Look at it another way....see it it as a whole...don't look at individual candidates.
To: kristinn
For what it's worth, there's absolutely nothing to gain politically from piling on to Michael J. Fox.
The old ladies love him.
5 posted on 10/26/2006 12:04:27 AM PDT by soupcon
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Rush wrapped up Missouri, put a big bow on it and handed it to the Dems. So he liberated himself.
True enough, IMO.
Listen up, all you McCain and Giuliani campaigners here for the last 6 months!
Rush said this:
Rush thinks that conservatism is found on the Democratic side. I think Rush couldn't be more wrong.
Rove was anticipating a 65% turnout. A lot of conservatives decided to stay home.
What we have gotten, is Teddy Kennedy writing No Child Left Behind and Prescription Drugs. And as Rush stated on his show, now we will get Amnesty. Teddy Kennedy had more impact in this administration than Clinton's.
If Bush Sr. were a great Pres, he wouldn't have left Saddam in power, and let him kill all those Kurds, marsh Arabs, etc.
I keep coming back to Dennis Hastert's indignant attempts to protect William "Freezer Queen" Jefferson
You are correct about that.
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