Elected Republicans don't defend Republican voters or themselves because they're scared to death the media will get upset. Conservatives have played by the rules and are laughed at everywhere they look. "Nobody fights back for 'em."
1/23/12, "The GOP Establishment in Abject Panic: They Don't Understand Their Own Base," Rush Limbaugh, transcript
"I've been doing this show for 23 years, and one of my themes from the beginning, from 1988, has been that the American conservative middle class are the ones playing by the rules. They are the ones that obey the law to the best of their ability. They raise their kids. They try to shield their kids from cultural rot and depravity. They try to keep them off drugs. They try to get them into college. They follow as best they can all the rules and they're laughed at and made fun of and they are impugned everywhere they look. They go to the movies, they're mocked and made fun of. They turn on the radio, listen to music, they're laughed at, mocked, and made fun of. They turn on television, watch an average television show, they are laughed at, mocked and made fun of. They open the newspaper, same thing. They've had it. They've been dealing with this for over 20 years, and nobody's fought back for 'em. Not one person ever has fought back for 'em.
The last time somebody actually spoke up in this large a forum, a presidential forum, would have to be Reagan; and Reagan did it not so much by what he said (although he had his moments). He did it by winning....Since then, the Republican leadership has not seemed focused so much on winning and they sit there and they take it. Whenever their own voters are insulted -- when their own voters are laughed at and impugned and called racists, sexist, bigot homophobes -- the Republicans don't defend them nor themselves because they're scared to death the independents are gonna be upset,
- or the media is gonna be upset.
So the base of the Republican Party, the voters, have been bottling up for 25 years, a resentment -- an anger, if you will -- that their own party won't fight for them, won't fight for itself, won't fight for what's right. So when Newt gets teed up with these questions from Juan Williams and John King and whoever else and simply says what they've been thinking for 25 years, they say, "Finally!" What they want right now is fight-back, what they want is push-back, what they want is kick-back, what they want is smack-down! What they want is for these people who have been laughing at them and mocking them and impugning them,
- put in their place.
They're tired of the cultural rot taking place in the country. They're tired of the incessant growth of government and spending. They're tired of it, and they're frustrated as they can be that members of their own party who get elected can't seem to articulate their own passions. Politics is about passion, and the Republican Party doesn't seem to have it! There's always fear of somebody. Fear of the media, fear of Democrats. Well, Newt doesn't act like he's got any fear. So how many wives does he got? "I don't care!" What did he do for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac? "I don't care." What are his national disapproval ratings?
"I don't care! Finally somebody's telling the bad guys who they are, what to do and that we're not gonna take it anymore -- or that we don't want to take it anymore." Now, you can sit there and you can say that that's cockeyed, that elections aren't won that way. Uhhhh, they aren't? Who just won? Who's already leading in the polls in Florida? George Will had a fascinating statistic over the weekend. Mitt Romney -- Mr. Electability, according to the Republican establishment; Mr. The Only Guy That Can Give Us the Senate -- is 9-and-16 in his election career. He's won nine and lost 16. He's nine out of 25. That, they tell us, is Mr. Electability -- and they're sitting around, the base is, and they're saying, "We don't care about this traditional stuff that you care about that's kept you in second place all these years."
It really isn't complicated. But the resentment for the base that the Republican establishment has is obvious, and of course the Republican establishment knows that. They know that the Tea Party is not embraced, that the Republican establishment's trying to marginalize the Tea Party. So really, at least for me, is not hard to understand. Now, there's an abject sense of panic that has set in over, "Oh, no! You mean this race is gonna go on? Oh, no!" Yeah. The race is gonna go on. See, they thought that this would be over before it started. Remember what I told you: They're gonna split the conservative vote and elect the moderate. They were gonna stand traditional theory on its head.
The traditional theory is: In the primaries, you play to your base, you win the nomination; then when you win the nomination and go to the general, that's when you go push moderates like McCain does -- and you lose. They decided, "We're gonna lose from the get-go. We're gonna nominate a moderate. We're gonna take conservatives in our party that we can't stand and we're gonna have as many of them up there as possible splitting vote," in this case splitting the polls, because there weren't any votes until January. But they were hoping the polls would end this race before a vote had been cast. So they welcomed Perry getting in and Ron Paul and Herman Cain and all these people,
- because it allowed them the opportunity to ridicule them.
I'm talking about our own establishment. Forget the media and Democrats. I'm not even talking about them yet....So the more conservatives the better. The more you can criticize 'em, impugn 'em, but the more important thing is you split the support. Romney versus all the others; Romney by default wins. They were hoping to create psychological attitude that said, "You know what? There's no way. 'Cause if all these guys stay in, Mitt's it. The conservative vote's gonna split itself when the votes finally start being counted and blah, blah, blah." Now look at what happened when you actually start voting! This is why they wanted to make sure the vote didn't count.
- They wanted it over before this.
Now, if you happened to watch cable TV on Saturday night...what did you hear? You heard the same pundits. I don't care what network you went to. You heard the same pundits lamenting the same things, worried about the same things (primarily their predictions being wrong), talking about how, "This can't go on. The longer this goes on the worse it is for the Republican Party," and I'm sitting there saying, "What's so bad about this?" There was total shock. Why was there shock? The polling data before South Carolina told us what was gonna happen.
The shock was that Newt won the women vote, he won the independent vote, he won every congressional strict in South Carolina. That was the shock. Everything that they told us Newt couldn't do, he did. Everything they told us a conservative couldn't do, he did. Every bit of conventional wisdom was stood on its head. Every bit of "electability" conventional wisdom from the so-called experts was stood on its head Saturday night, and so pundits and the analysts and the consultants are trying to analyze it and figure it out -- and the best they can come up with is, "We've gotta put a stop to this! If this goes go on,
- it's gonna kill the Republican Party. Oh, no."
- I'm talking about media."...
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