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May 5, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:39
May 5, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 Podcast.
Say, folks, I have a question for you.
Very simple question.
If you turn on a drive-by media each and every day and each and every night, if you read the newspaper each and every day and each every night, you would uh you'd be forced to come to the conclusion that the Republican Party is dead, that the conservative movement is dead, unless it moves to the center and becomes more like liberals and Democrats.
So the question is this.
If conservatives, particularly Republican Party is a different animal, but if if conservatives are as dead as the left says we are, why in hell do they spend so much time dancing in our graves?
Greetings and great to have you here.
Another three hours of broadcast excellence.
The uh telephone number is 800 282-2882, the email address, L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
I want to thank the folks of the Heritage Foundation.
I addressed over a thousand people last night, the Reagan Center, the Reagan building in uh in Washington, D.C., and it's pretty much the subject that I discussed with them.
Why are we laying down?
Why are we playing dead?
Why are we rolling over?
Why are we why are we accepting every premise that the left advances, including that we have to be like them in order to grow our party?
And I pointed out the left, you know, the left in 2000, 2004, they didn't try to become like us.
They didn't try to become like uh Republicans, they drew contrasts.
They went far left and they did what they had to do to draw contrasts and differences, they energized their far-left fringe kook base.
Now, true in 2006, uh, in order to take back Congress, they had to run some conservative Democrats in a few conservative districts where they beat conservative Republicans who had sort of wandered off the trail.
But the overall identity of the Democrat Party was to move as far left, anti-Bush in the case of the Iraq War, anti-America as they could, and they kept up the drum beat and they had the drive-by media with them.
Now they have won big, they think they've won a huge landslide here with Obama.
They control the House, they control the Senate, and yet you turn on their house organ cable networks or read their newspapers, and they're obsessed with us.
They're obsessed with what we're doing.
They're obsessed with what I'm doing.
They're obsessed with what I say.
Why is that?
If we're dead, we shouldn't matter to them.
They ought to be laughing at us, they ought to be ignoring us.
But if you follow the news topics, you'd think that the Republican Party is the most powerful political party in the country, and that the conservative wing of the Republican Party is in near total control of this country.
If you if you believe what you're watching.
If somebody from Mars landed in this country, turned on our television, they'd think I run the country, they would think that my party runs the country, and that we pose the greatest threat to humankind ever.
We got to be stamped out, even though we already have been stamped out.
They wiped us out in the last election.
I mean, for all intents and purposes, I've that that's actually not true, but I mean, in the in the in the electoral sense, given our lack of power, it is true.
So many columns they write, so many editorials.
Even today we got more conservative columnists writing about this or that and how we got to get back to being more moderate, big tent party and all that.
It's just mind-boggling.
We get people on the left, the Democrat Party and the media, obviously, some people on our side writing so many columns, so many editorials, so many op-eds, hell-bent on trying to diminish the influence of conservatism in the Republican Party.
Why?
If we're dead, as they say we are, why are they continuing to try to kill us?
I mean, of course, in a political sense, it's because we're not dead.
It's because we still threaten them.
And we threaten them precisely because they are a collection of lies and deceit and phony ideas, and ours are ideas of substance that properly articulated, connect with a majority of the American people.
So they're going after anybody on the on the right who can articulate these things and uh setting out to try to destroy them.
Me, Sarah Palin, you name it, whoever it is, they're trying to destroy the people who could and can articulate The um the beliefs and the principles that the left actually fears.
To me, this is an opportunity.
It's what I told the people at Heritage last night.
It's an opportunity.
We have a great opportunity to contrast ourselves with the most liberal quasi-socialist administration in history.
We've got the country more afraid of this administration than I have ever seen.
We've got people that I know more afraid of their government than they have ever been.
This is not our country.
This is not the country we were raised in.
It's not the country we want our kids and grandkids to inherit and continue to keep great.
The opportunity is just.
It's ripe, almost every news network, every cable news channel.
TV commentary seems to open and close with criticism of conservatism, conservatives or potential conservative leaders.
It's like I had some things yesterday to say about this listening tour.
And how they left out Sarah Palin.
And the drive-bys are all over this.
So when do you hear these sound bites?
I didn't even know this was happening last night because I was, of course, making speech of the Heritage Foundation.
But I'm getting notes.
It looks like you forced a Republicans to include Palin in their in their listening tour.
I told the people at Heritage last night, we don't need to listen.
Our people are already on board.
We need to teach.
We need somebody to provide them leadership.
We don't need we don't need to go out and learn and listen.
This is that that's that's pandering.
And when you end up pandering, is what I told them last night.
When you end up pandering and you give people what they want, what if what they want is wrong?
What if what do they want as bad for themselves?
It's not that voters are like children, but but at some point, those who understand what we're talking about, the principles of conservatism and so forth, and how to make this country the best for the most, which has been demonstrated that it happens, just need to go out and and and and and tell people this.
You know, I went through the story, people say, Rush, why don't you run for office?
And there's that the pay cut.
Well, what would you say anyway?
I would say something that I wouldn't last one day as a political candidate.
Getting audience is different than getting votes.
I'd stand up and I'd say, you're not, you know, I'm the antithesis of President Obama.
Don't look to me to solve your problems.
Look to you to solve your problems.
I'm gonna get myself and this government out of your way.
You are making what makes the country work.
I'm not.
I'm just here to ride steward on the Constitution and make sure that this government does not get in your way and punish your achievement.
But it's up to you folks.
You're far better than you know you can be.
But Obama's doing just the opposite.
Every day Obama goes out and he presents a crisis and a problem and himself is the solution.
Don't worry, I got it under control.
I can handle it.
Making people uh waifs, wards of the state, if you will.
Why are why are they still kneecapping Sarah Palin?
I mean, I know I'm fair game, I'm out there, but why are they still kneecapping Sarah Palin?
They're out there kneecapping Bobby Gendal.
Uh they're they're still kneecapping uh the drive-by's of Democrats, Rick Santorum.
They're still jumping on Joe the Plumber, a private citizen for heaven's sake, all he did was ask Obama a question.
Why are they continuing to try to destroy virtually anyone and everyone who can articulate conservatism?
It's because they are afraid of us.
If you think that they think conservatism is dead, why'd they spend so much time trying to discredit the Tea Parties?
Why did they spend so much time trying to destroy the concept and the the uh the the thoughts, the impetus behind the Tea Parties?
Why did they have to do that?
If we're dead, and if we're just a small pocket of renegades, let us run around and make fools of ourselves.
Get out of the way.
You they say the old standard rule of thumb and whatever business, if your opponents committing suicide, get out of the way.
Let it happen.
Well, if we're supposedly so wrong, so bad, so horribly out of step, let us go on about our way and make fools of ourselves.
Why do they have to continually attack us?
Why are they so vicious?
Why are they so ugly?
Why are they so demeaning?
It's because they're not journalists, number one, they are liberals.
But the point of all this is all this criticism of us and our side, of so much TV commentary, hellbent on trying to diminish the influence of the conservative movement and the Republican Party.
It doesn't compute in the template or the prism in which all of this criticism is taking place.
What it is what they in fact know is that they've built a house of cards.
They have as their I think uh part and parcel of their existence is to stamp out opposition, to wipe it out.
They are afraid of opposition.
Liberals have been for the longest time.
Political correctness is about silencing opposition.
My only point in bringing all this up is rather than have this stuff depress you and dispirit you.
It ought to fire you up.
It ought to let you know that there's still a lot of fear out there.
I love being feared, by the way.
I love the fact that these people are afraid of me.
It doesn't bother me at all.
What do you mean I should explain?
What's why now why do I have to explain that?
Why do?
Mm-hmm.
People don't understand liking to be feared.
No, it's not being mean spirited.
I mean, if if I I guess I'm stunned.
Snurdly thinks I have to explain to you why I like being feared.
Now, it's I'm not so most people are probably hearing that if you're right.
And uh and they hear me saying, uh I like being disliked, and most people don't want to be disliked.
Uh I don't want to make people afraid of me.
Don't misunderstand, but the fact that some people are, is simply a measure of success.
I'm a harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
I'm a guy on the radio.
I can't raise anybody's taxes.
I can't send anybody off to war.
I can't do any of the things that Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, or Barack Obama could, and they are scared of me.
I'm honored.
There has to be a reason.
They're scared of Sarah Palin.
They're not scared of Senator McCain.
They are not afraid of Arlen Specter.
Do you get this?
There's a reason here.
They pose no threat to them.
We pose a threat to them, folks.
And this is an opportunity that should not be squandered.
I must take a brief time out.
Brian, are those air-conditioning people going to get here today?
You know, when I start the program, the root the temperature in this room goes up four degrees just because of my energy output.
And we've known for 24 hours what the problem is.
I tell you, if I allowed myself to be, I could be really irritated today over a whole bunch of stuff.
But I'm trying my best to channel that irritation to where it's in the back of my fertile exploding mind.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with Hi, we are back, Rush Limbaugh Talent On Lawn from God.
And it was a great night at the Heritage Foundation last night.
It was a weird room.
I mean, the it was a giant room in the Reagan building.
The ceiling must have been 200 feet tall.
When I'm standing backstage listening to my introductions, it sounded like a mass of a uh funeral mass was going on in there.
Just at the acoustics, because I under couldn't understand what anybody was saying, but um went on for about an hour, a little lit, a little late getting on.
But I'd say the Heritage Foundation is one of these people, one of these groups that's holding firm.
They're not dilly-dallying around and they're not wishy-washy on things.
And we talk about Askheritage.org, which is a uh a website area of the of the think tank.
It's a membership uh website.
A lot of the people in the audience last night were new members of of Heritage and Askheritage.org.
But uh you need to thank and you need to be able to rely on some people during times like this, because it seems like so many people are wavering and writing off the reservation, and uh either they're faltering or they're uh they're not exuding any confidence uh in what they believe.
Trust me, the Heritage Foundation, Ed Fulder and his gang uh are not wavering, they're not embarrassed, and they don't have to feel like they make excuses for themselves that you will find things on their website that you won't find in other conservative places.
Sadly, sad to say, but it's the truth.
And if you know this this uh website, Askheritage.org, you realize what's at your disposal with a website, ask heritage.org, whatever you want to know from the stimulus spending to type spending to the Chrysler bailout, ask it.
You'll get the scholarly view of it, facts, figures that refute all the liberal BS, and you'll be able to understand it and explain it to uh to people.
Now, Mitch Daniels, who is the governor of Indiana, is just a man after my own heart.
Because I also, in my speech last night to the people of Heritage, made the same point essentially that Daniels is making.
He's urging Republican leaders in Washington to stop whining in order to mount a serious opposition of President Obama and the Congressional Democrats.
Mitch Daniel said, I I I hear Republicans whining about the Democrats not being bipartisan.
You know, we weren't included in this, we weren't at the table on that.
Well, get over it.
That's the way those people are.
This is an interview that ran Saturday in the National Journal.
To me, there's not a lot of upside and whining, Mitch Daniels said.
He said Republican leaders have behaved erratically since the beginning of the Obama administration, frequently offering process arguments rather than competing policy prescriptions.
And this is exactly the point that I made at CPAC, and a bunch of conservatives disagreed with me about this.
It's the point that I made last night, and I made it at the Milken Institute last week in Los Angeles when talking about the liberals advance an idea like we need national health care.
And rather, as conservatives stand up and say, no, we don't need national health care.
We stand up, well, let's see if we can accept the premise and maybe make it better on the margins.
Um, or let's go, let's do a listening tour, and let's find out what the people want and pander to them and so forth.
And what Governor Daniels of Indiana is saying here, you get involved in the process arguments.
Guess who's guess who's setting the process?
The process is always determined by the left.
Even when we are in power, they got to determine the process.
Rather than putting up competing policy ideas rather than drawing contrasts, the Republicans are saying, oh, well, they're not helping and I'm being bipartisan.
There is no such thing as bipartisanship.
Bipartisanship, as is defined today as Republicans caving on what they believe to agree with Democrats.
Mitch Daniels said what they should say instead is well, here's the way we would spread health insurance and not ration care and not take away your freedom in the process.
If they'd let us in the room, that's what we'd suggest.
An alternative to socialized medicine, an alternative to health care taken over by the U.S. government.
You know, I tried to emphasize this point last night.
I don't know how well I did.
I emphasize this point on this program all the time, and I try to emphasize it at the Milken Institute forum last week.
But there is a golden opportunity.
I look at Obama and the Democrats as vulnerable.
There is no way what they're doing is going to work.
You simply cannot sustain budget deficits that have been programmed and written by the Obama administration.
It just can't happen.
You have to oppose it.
You don't want to let horrible things happen and then benefit from that by virtue of winning elections.
You want to try to stop some of this bad stuff from happening.
Because the bad stuff that Obama has planned is going to result in the loss of liberty and wealth for a tremendous number of Americans.
And we don't want that to happen.
So we have to move in and stop it.
There's a great example of what I'm talking about here.
I have paid attention to the way Jack Kemp is being written about.
After his death.
And one of the things...
Like when somebody mentions Jack Kemp to me...
The thing that strikes me about Jack Kemp...
Is Kemp Roth.
Which were the Reagan tax cuts...
Supply side economics.
Jack Kemp is who made that happen with the Reagan administration.
And by the way, he was working with the Heritage Foundation to make it happen.
Jack Kemp and Arthur Laffer and Reagan Kemp made it happen, and he was the he was the uh the the House version of the tax bill in Camp Roth.
And but all of a sudden, all of a sudden I'm hearing people eulogize Jack Kemp as somebody who reached out.
Jack Kemp is somebody who went beyond pure conservatism to reach out.
As in enterprise zones, uh bringing uh investment to inner city communities and so forth.
Well, he may have done that, but he won the argument from the conservative vantage point.
He didn't reach out with liberalism to the other side.
He didn't become a moderate when he reached out.
He attempted to attract people who were not yet fully understanding what conservatism was into our tent.
They're trying to people say that Jack Kemp tried to build a big tent.
The Reagan tax cuts were not based on a big tent.
The Reagan tax cuts were considered radically conservative until they were promoted, embraced, and adopted.
The same people, folks.
You may not remember this.
You may not have been paying close enough attention, you may not be old enough, but the same people who attacked the Reagan tax cuts back in the early 80s, including George Bush, 41 during the Republican primary.
He called it voodoo economics.
All those people later came to embrace those tax cuts, which is the point.
Those tax cuts, everybody was saying, well, that's just a right-wing class oriented and all the usual criticism that attaches to conservatism.
And these tax cuts, the Reagan tax cuts did not come about through a listening tour, and they didn't come about by preaching a big tent.
As if anybody knows what the hell that means.
They came about because people had a firm belief in the principle that served as the foundation for the policy.
And that's what we have to get back to.
Now try to follow me on this, folks.
The Reagan tax cuts did not come from a listening tour.
The Reagan tax cuts were not the result of somebody preaching a big tent.
The Reagan tax cuts came about because of a commitment to a philosophy that gave birth to a policy.
The philosophy behind the Reagan tax cuts is that people deserve to keep most of what they earn.
And if you let them do that, then they will go crazy earning.
And people will hire other people because they'll have more money as their businesses take off.
And it does trickle down.
It certainly does as you as you release or lighten the burden on the job creators.
They are able to create more jobs.
This creates more taxpayers.
A lower tax rate on everybody creates thus more tax revenue.
This was not a policy that was devised as some trick to go out and get a certain segment of the voting public to elect Republicans.
It was a philosophy born of the constitutions and the declaration of independence references to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
It was born of a belief in natural law.
It was born of a philosophical belief that an oppressive large government will choke off individual economic freedom, growth, and liberty.
So we didn't have to build a big tent.
We didn't have to go out.
Now, to pass it, to pass these Reagan tax cuts with a Democrat-dominated house and a Democrat dominated Senate.
What did we have to do?
We didn't sell Tip O'Neill on these tax cuts.
We didn't sell the Democrats on the philosophy and the policy of the tax cuts.
If we had of, they wouldn't be promising to raise everybody's taxes every time they opened their mouth.
What happened was we beat their butts in the eyes of the American people.
Ronald Reagan was able to explain this to people, and Jack Kemp and his other and the whole army was able to explain this to people.
The Democrats had no choice but to vote for it because the American public had elected Reagan in a landslide on substantive issues.
He had a mandate, and this was part of the mandate, cutting taxes.
But don't think they ever came to believe it.
They are afraid of tax cuts.
They are afraid of the principle of burgeoning economic freedom and liberty because the more of that you get, the less need there is for liberals.
So they were never persuaded, they were beaten.
They were defeated.
And this didn't come about by reaching out.
It didn't come about by building a big tent.
It didn't come about with a listening tour.
It came about because of a devotion to a principle that gave birth to a policy.
Now look, anybody is free to be a Republican.
Anybody's free to run for office.
But like anything else, there are winners and there are losers.
We support the people we agree with.
We oppose those we don't agree with.
That's the nature of politics in elections.
Well now we're being told that we're supposed to exempt liberal Republicans from this very process.
We're supposed to support them even though they don't advance the cause.
We're supposed to somehow immunize them from any challenges.
We're supposed just because we somehow need Northeasterners in the Republican Party.
We need liberals in the Republican.
Yeah, we need to make Tent Roche.
We need to reach out.
Well, it no, that is not how you build a movement that appeals to the base of the party.
The base is being torn apart and divided by all of this rhetoric.
Jack Kemp is remembered for one of the most important and successful acts of conservatism.
Conservatism, slashing taxes across the board, slashing them for individuals, slashing them for businesses, cutting taxes wherever and whenever possible.
The same people who tell us to give up on Reagan must certainly have to tell us to give up on Kemp, because Kemp was right there with Reagan.
But I don't hear anybody saying we have to give up on Kemp.
They're saying we need to do what Kemp did and reach out.
That's not what Kemp did.
That's not what Kemp is known for.
When he did reach out, he reached out as a conservative trying to persuade others to join us.
Not sacrificing or changing what he believed in to join them.
These so-called moderates out there are they are without, by definition, folks, moderates are without a core belief system.
They float, they meander and they wander and they settle wherever a majority happens to be where there is the path of least resistance because they don't like confrontation and they don't like fighting.
And they just want everybody to get along, and they also think they're the smartest people in the room, and they think they're the elites.
But moderates have no political base.
Moderates have no political strategy.
Otherwise, why would every election in every four years, we gotta go get those independents, we've got to get the moderates, because they don't have a base.
They're not anchored anywhere.
But if you want to go get them, you have two ways.
You can pander to them, which is the most confusing thing to watch, and it's the most frustrating to watch people pander to moderates.
To watch moderates be pandered to an exercise in you remember in high school and junior high, the little big click always ran around passing notes in the hallway between classes.
Nobody, it didn't matter what they were doing.
They were irrelevant, but boy, they thought they were something special because they were in a little click.
They're all listening to each other, not caring about what anybody else is doing or saying.
It's the same way with moderates and so-called independents in politics.
They talk in generalities, they talk about big tents, they talk about reaching out, but they think small.
They think inside the beltway.
No connection with the base of a party, no connection with reality.
They're just drifting constantly.
They're in motion.
And they're always like water.
They seek the path of least resistance.
They contradict themselves all the time.
And yet, look at Jack Kemp.
Jack Kemp, look at all the things being said about Jack Kemp.
He reached out.
Jack Kemp's a great guy.
Jack Kemp resists that.
Yeah, but Jack Kemp could never rise to the level of vice president or president, could he?
He challenged Bush 41 in 1988.
He ran with Bob Dole in 1996.
Why?
Why could he never become president?
Because he ended up running with exactly the kind of Republicans.
Some are telling us we have to continue to support today.
And they're going to go down in flames against Obama and the Democrats every time they go up against them.
Jack Kemp was eventually seduced.
He was seduced into thinking that the big tent idea of the party was the way to win.
And I'm telling you, when the big tent people get hold of the party, all it does is lose and lose and lose, and it was that way before Reagan.
It's it's uh it's just these tax cuts, for example.
I I keep hearing people talk about how Reagan's tax cuts were focused on uh the middle and the working class.
They were not focused on anybody.
The tax cuts were for everybody who paid taxes.
They included big cuts in corporate taxes, incentivized investment in research and research and development.
And now even our side wants to come out and say, well, Reagan had these targeted tax cuts on middle class, uh, hard pressed middle class, working class vote.
If that's the case, how in the hell are the liberals gotten away with saying they were tax cuts for the rich?
They were tax cuts for everybody.
They were across the board.
The top marginal rate went from 70% to 28% in eight years.
That affected everybody, not just specific hard-pressed middle class or working class voters.
They weren't focused on that group of people.
You know, Jack Jack Kemp, he never sounded angry, never sounded embattled.
He was unabashed conservative.
Uh he was totally open and fresh.
It constantly was talking about economic growth, electoral growth.
The guy was quoting the Bible.
He came on this show once to quote the Bible, the old Testament, as evidence that supply side or tax cuts work.
Remember that?
He came on this program to talk about it.
He was committed to a philosophy and a policy that was that was birthed from it.
So the top marginal rate, 70% came down to 28%, and all the rates in between got cut as well.
They reduced the length of depreciation for capital equipment investments, they cut the cost of research and development, and and this is the point that you know I I tried to make it heritage last night.
Wherever I speak on this program or public, the point I'm trying to make is that good policy or policies build on foundation of philosophy and principle.
If you don't have a conservative foundation that's built on conservative principles, the policies you come up with are not going to have roots.
The policies are going to be the result of pandering.
But if you have policies built on conservative foundations and principles, applied across the board wherever possible, you end up with something not only good for the nation, but good for all citizens, regardless of their supposed economic class, because conservatism lifts all votes.
And we keep running around, some of us talking in socialist lingo about classes of American citizens.
Um to start categorizing people in this country is to adopt a European history and a left and left-wing language.
It undermines the whole principle and philosophy of conservatism.
We are about the well-being of all citizens.
That is a universal appeal.
If tried, it works.
If tried, it works.
What what what are everybody said we need new great fresh ideas?
We need a listening tour.
We need to send the Republicans out, start listening.
We need to learn, we need to listen, and we need to lead.
What are the ideas?
What are they?
Where are these great new ideas that will uh modernize or bring conservatism into the 21st century?
What are these ideas?
Are they not ideas borrowed from the left?
Are they not principles borrowed from the left because some people on our side don't have the confidence In their own beliefs, so for some reason we have to borrow certain ideas, policies or prescriptions from the left?
What are these great fresh ideas around which the public will rally and bring electoral victory?
So far, I'll tell you what what I hear as the new ideas.
We have to reject Reagan and nostalgia.
We have to forget about tax cuts, that was yesterday.
Don't talk about immigration.
But if you do support it in all its forms.
Don't talk about the social issues.
We'll lose, we'll lose if we talk about immigration, we'll lose if we talk about the social issues.
Don't talk tax cuts, don't talk about Reagan.
So tell me what are the great new fresh ideas that everybody's insisting are winners.
If we're going to throw away every idea that's won for us, what are the new ideas that are going to help us win?
And where do they come from?
Whose are they?
We're supposed to embrace Jack Kemp and his death, but not Reagan.
We're supposed to embrace Kemp's tax cuts, but not tax cuts generally.
Jim Dement, who I met last night.
In fact, I gotta take a break here.
Jim Dement is another great example.
If Jim Dement is dead, and if he's so inconsequential, why is the left trying to destroy him?
Jim DeMint said I'd rather have 30 strong conservatives in the Senate than 60 wishy-washy moderates.
And I agree a hundred percent with him because we are in a rebuilding phase.
And we're not gonna rebuild by continuing to muddy and muddle the waters that have succeeded in misdefining us and confusing everybody about who we are.
I gotta take a break.
I'm way long here.
Sit tight.
Much more of this straight ahead.
Okay, so I get an email question.
Russia, you really saying that Obama's out to destroy prosperity?
My friends, read his books.
Barack Obama's primary objective is undoing Ronald Reagan's tax cuts.
Now, why would that be?
That's all he's doing, returning the nation's wealth to its so-called rightful owners.
He operates on the belief that every achiever in this country is a thief, that every achiever has stolen or has something that's genuinely not his or hers.
They've come by it unfairly.
He may not be about destroying prosperity, but he sure as hell is going to try to define it down.
My hope is that he can't destroy prosperity, that no one man can destroy the United States of America, even with his political party, because at some point we're going to rise up and not upset and not accept it, we're just not going to allow it to happen.
But I there's no question that he's defining prosperity down.
I mean, his objective is to undo the Reagan tax cuts.
Now, if his objective is to undo the Reagan tax cuts, I guess those are really big tent moderate ideas, huh?
We know Obama's a left-wing radical.
He takes a look at anything right wing and he wants to destroy it.
So now, and they go after everybody that makes sense.
Jim Dement.
I'd rather have 30 strong conservative ideologues to build a base of operations with in the U.S. Senate than 41 wishy-washy moderates who can't get anything done, including oppose this president.
Because there's nothing to build on, and he's exactly right.
I totally understand what he meant when he said that.
But now they're trashing him.
And that's only because they're afraid of meant.
They're afraid of conservatism.
If it were not something that bothered them greatly, they wouldn't be, they wouldn't give it the time of day.
So now we have to reject Jim Dement for being too conservative.
We have to go out and appeal to the likes of Specter and Lincoln Chafey and others.
Because we need a big tent.
Not so much for conservatives who are too narrow-minded.
That's the problem with the debating society.
We we have people who look at conservatism as a debating society rather than a foundation for philosophy and ideas that lead to a great country.
Well, I'm sorry, I left the debating society long ago back in high school.
To me, this is real.
This is for keeps.
It's not about sharing my intellectual ideas with other people I also think happen to be intellectuals.
It's about promoting what I think is the best for the United States of America and everyone who lives in this country.
You want to run around and emphasize process over principle and then claim that the process will give us principle?
Other way around, you cannot engage in a productive process without a foundation of philosophy and principle that leads to the development of policy that then becomes the process of trying to pass it.
We're supposed to talk, yeah, we can talk principles, not too much.
We got to talk more about process.
Because if we talk to principles too much, we'll turn off the middle class.
But we we we can't turn off, but we gotta talk process.
Turn off the middle class.
In other words, don't be confident in who you are.
Duck battles over substance and principle.
Get engaged in process, show people how smart you smart you are, and convince them that you're listening to them when you actually hold them in very low regard yourself, but you're gonna go pander to them to make them think you're listening to them just to get their vote.
The way they get their vote is to identify with them, tell them you understand what they think, teach them how to get it done, provide leadership for them, and then Katie, bar the door.
You'll have a landslide victory after this week.
Yeah, I mean, folks, it's as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning.
Now the libs are out trashing me for suggesting that we need a teaching tour rather than a listening tour.
Because a teaching tour is arrogant.
Of course, it's it's perfectly fine with Obama teaches.
But when I want to do a teaching tour, no, no, no, that's arrogant.
We need to listen.
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