Rush on Me-Too-Conservatism

What Follows is a transcript from Rush Limbaugh's Show. He makes it clear that it's up to us now. The coastal conservatives have gone soft. They want to be invited to all the right parties. I'm not on the list. Read this whole thing by Rush. It's really pretty well spoken.

Now, I have a great piece here by Tony Blankley that appears today at Creators Syndicate, and it's entitled: "The Birth of the Me-Too Conservative." His theory about what's going to happen is there will be a brand-new conservative movement that will have to be born if Obama wins because the conservative movement as it exists today is rudderless. You know the names, and I sometimes am hesitant to mention the names because I don't have anything personal here, but you know there are a bunch of people off our reservation in the conservative media and just lately the names being bandied about are Peggy Noonan, David Frum, David Brooks.

I don't know to what extent these people ever really were on our side, to tell you the truth. Christopher Buckley. He's never been a doctrinaire conservative like his father was. He set out to distance himself from his father like all sons do. And Kathleen Parker. Now, these names may not be household names to you, but they are pseudo-conservative writers, and now they're all requested on television all the time 'cause they're ripping Sarah Palin, they're ripping the conservative movement. They've got this new idea of what conservatism ought to be and they're trying to redefine it.

This is the crowd saying the era of Reagan is over. These are the people who are embarrassed by Sarah Palin 'cause she's not an intellectual and she didn't go to Harvard or have a college degree from approved universities and she drops her g's from words like morning and says mornin'. She embarrassing, and I think something else really bothering these people is that they believe that she may become one of the key leaders of the conservative movement beyond 2008 if she and McCain lose this. I've been trying to analyze what's happening to the conservative movement on our intellectual side. By the way, and I don't consider myself on the intellectual side at all; neither do they. Intellectuals are people that have what they think is an IQ and an educational commonality. Of course I'm disqualified from any of that, thankfully so, because I don't have a college degree, I eschewed college to pursue my dreams. But they're all over the place and the realignment here on the conservative side that's taking place is on the basis of so-called intellect.

That's why some of these people are drifting to Obama, he sounds smart, sick and tired of Republican leaders who can't communicate and they don't think McCain can communicate, they don't like the fact that Bush couldn't, and the reason this is happening, people say, "How come the conservative movement is fracturing,?" when there's a blueprint for winning it, 1980, there's a blueprint. McCain is not the blueprint for how Republicans win landslides. Going after moderates, independents, and all these yokels is not the blueprint. The blueprint's there, 1994, taking back the House, the blueprint's there. Why are these people ignoring it?

So why all of these "defections," if you will, to Obama from people that you've always thought were conservative? Well, again, these are conservative elites, conservative intellectuals. And they simply are embarrassed that McCain can't speak, in their minds; that Bush hasn't been able to talk; and that Sarah Palin's a hick. They're just embarrassed. So they align on the basis of style, not substance. These people are not associating or drifting to Obama because of his substance. It's not that they've abandoned conservatism; it's that they like the style. They're fed up with no style. Now, would this be happening if there were a strong elected Republican conservative who were showing the way? It would not.

Since there is not a strong elected conservative anywhere, then conservatism right now is sort of like wandering in the distance with every conservative thinking that they're the smartest person in the room trying to show the way to the light. The way to the light is plainly visible. But everybody wants to be considered the smartest people in the room, so they come up with all these new things like "the era of Reagan is over." One of the most recent things going on in the conservative movement is to figure out how we, too, can become distributists... redistributists... redis... redistribute... How we, too, can become smaller. I can't say the word! I just bugs me to say it. We've got people on our side trying to figure out how they, too, can make our party one that wants to re... re... redistribute it! But "smarter," but better. These are people who think the Republican Party has lost the Wal-Mart class because we don't care enough.

We're seen as not caring, so the way to show that we care is to also redistribute wealth, but smarter and better. This would never be happening -- this would never be happening -- if there were an elected genuine conservative who were showing the way. So we're in a vacuum right now. Tony Blankley writes about this today. "The Birth of the Me-Too Conservative." Quote: "Until the election of President Reagan five decades later, these me-too Republicans supported, rather than opposed, Democratic Party policies but claimed they would administer them better. Of course, this led to a half-century of Democratic dominance of American government and politics." Here are the last two paragraphs.

"I suspect that the conservative movement we start rebuilding on the ashes of Nov. 4 (even if McCain wins) will have little use for overwritten, over-delicate commentary. The new movement will be plain-spoken and socially networked up from the Interneted streets, suburbs and small towns of America. It certainly will not listen very attentively to those conservatives who idolatrize Obama and collaborate in heralding his arrival. ... The new conservative movement will be facing a political opponent that will reveal itself soon to be both multiculturalist and Eurosocialist.

We will be engaged in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country. As I did at the beginning of and throughout the Buckley/Goldwater/Reagan/Gingrich conservative movement, I will try to lend my hand. I certainly will do what I can to make it a big-tent conservative movement. But just as it does in every great cause, one question has to be answered correctly: Whose side are you on, comrade?"

So this is what I mean. One step at a time. We're going to drag McCain across the finish line then we start rebuilding the conservative movement. It's going to happen whether he wins or loses but especially if he wins.