"I, for one, am tired of conservatism being nothing more than some intellectual feast every day." Rush Limbaugh
9/2/15, "The Trump Movement Isn't About Conservatism -- It's About Americanism," Rush Limbaugh
"RUSH: Yesterday or the day before it was a really vicious piece, which I've got here in the Wall Street Journal by a guy named Bret Stephens who said if you're not appalled by Donald Trump, you are appalling. That's how it opened.
So there's all these conservative media types pulling their hair out. They're thinking that you people supporting Donald Trump have abandoned your conservatism. What they don't understand is that support for Trump is about much more than conservatism. I don't even think it's about conservatism per se. But they are so threatened. And these are the people, many of them, who don't do anything but write, who don't try to end up provoking people to action.
They just write, and they want people to say, "Wow, that was really smart, man....That's a smart commentator," but beyond that, they don't do anything. And now these people are all of a sudden feeling threatened by Trump. They're missing the whole point of why people are supporting Trump, I think. Trump's not even claiming to be a conservative, for crying out loud. He's claiming to be an American.
CALLER: Right, and what we're sick of, for one thing, is the Republicans being the Washington Generals to the Globetrotters....
RUSH: Not only that, it's arranged beforehand that the Generals are gonna lose. It's not even a real competition. And that's what you're saying that it feels like to you. Anyway, she's got a great question here, folks, and it requires and deserves expansion of thought by me....
RUSH:...Our previous caller reminded me that people have been calling filled with despair in recent years-despondent, depressed-that the country was finished, that they did not see any evidence that traditional institutions and values were represented by a majority of the population anymore....
Now, prior to Trump, the conservative movement, the intellectuals in the movement were very precise in their definitions of what is and what isn't conservative and who is and who isn't a conservative and who's entitled to speak for it and who isn't....
When Buckley passed away it then became an open competition for who was gonna replace him....Who was gonna be the guy that determined what was and who was and what isn't and who isn't conservative. The battle's never been won. I mean, there is no singular figure, particularly in the literary world, to have filled the Buckley role....
As such, it has taken on many different identities. And the Trump insurgency here has--I don't know if the word "exposed" is right, but it has served to illustrate the fractious nature of conservatism as a movement. I have--and I say this honestly--I'm not trying to sound know-it-all-ish or condescending to anybody. Speaking for myself, I have never thought of Donald Trump as a conservative.
My whole life I've known him. I know him socially, play golf with him now and then, I mean, I can reach him on the phone if I want to. But I've never considered him a conservative, and I've never considered him a liberal, don't misunderstand. But as far as a movement conservative, Trump hasn't been. I've never been under the impression that he is. And I've never held it against him.
And I've never felt like, well, he's not worthy of speaking on things I believe in 'cause he's not a conservative. That's not my attitude. I know he's not a liberal. I know that he's nowhere near what modern day liberalism is. What I also believe fervently is that all of this support for Trump, this movement, whatever you call this that's happening with Trump, it's not about conservatism. And that doesn't bother me.
But some in the conservative movement are pulling their hair out over this. And, like I mentioned Bret Stephens writing in the Wall Street Journal, this piece, it is just vicious to conservatives. It's just over-the-top vicious. It stands alone in that regard, but there are others in the conservative movement who are also writing pieces admonishing people supporting Trump, that he's not conservative, you're being fooled, you're destroying conservatism by allowing Trump to carry the mantle of conservatism....
Some of these conservative intellectuals who are having a big problem...I think they're missing what this is all about. Now, why they're missing it is a whole other bunch of theories.
Now, I have the Bret Stephens thing right here and I want to quote from it. "The Donald and the Demagogues -- If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling." That's how this piece opens.
"If you have reached physical maturity and still chuckle at Mr. Trump’s pubescent jokes about Rosie O’Donnell or Heidi Klum, you will never reach mental maturity. If you watched Mr. Trump mock fellow candidate Lindsey Graham’s low poll numbers and didn’t cringe at the lack of class, you are incapable of class. If you think we need to build new airports in Queens the way they build them in Qatar, you should be sent to join the millions of forced laborers who do construction in the Persian Gulf. It would serve you right."
That's just the first paragraph.
"Since Mr. Trump joined the GOP presidential field and leaped to the top of the polls, several views have been offered to explain his popularity. He conveys a can-do image. He is the bluntest of the candidates in addressing public fears of cultural and economic dislocation. He toes no line, serves no PAC, abides no ideology, is beholden to no man. He addresses the broad disgust of everyday Americans with their failed political establishment.
"And so forth and so on -- a parade of semi-sophisticated theories that act as bathroom deodorizer to mask the stench of this candidacy. Mr. Trump is a loudmouth vulgarian appealing to quieter vulgarians. These vulgarians comprise a significant percentage of the GOP base. The leader isn’t the problem. The people are. It takes the demos to make the demagogue."
Well, this is the perfect illustration of the problem that so-called conservative intellectuals are having with the Trump insurgency or the Trump campaign, to the point now that they feel it necessary to insult the people supporting Trump in addition to insulting Trump.
Now, these are the people who routinely tell us that we are racists or nativists or whatever because we do not believe in their policy of open borders, and because we are intolerant of this invasion of people which they call illegal immigration, which we term it invasion, since we're not tolerant, we're not sophisticated. We don't have the ability to understand what this country's all about and what this country needs for a vibrant future and so forth. And it's one of the biggest disconnects I've ever seen in my life between Washington and the rest of the people in the country....
Explaining the Trump phenomenon is not that difficult. At the top of all of it is this invasion. At the top of the list of reasons why Trump has a large and growing following, it's all about immigration and how the establishment inside the Beltway is now openly, not even disguising,
what they've thought about average, ordinary Americans for years
now. And that is
unsophisticated,
rubes,
uneducated.
I mean, take any insult that you want.
Appalling,
stupid,
you name it....
RUSH:...The problem, I think, with all of the conservative literary people at the magazines and websites and the columns and so forth who are writing so disparagingly of Trump and of his supporters and followers -- how best to say this?
Well, they are establishment people, yeah, I know that, and what they're actually trying to do is engender support for the (Republican) party at the end of the day here. And anything that doesn't do that is considered damaging and threatening....And these people are all devoted to the Republicans winning because that...keeps the ruling class together, gives them their power and so forth.
But to me it's deeper than that, because many of the people that are complaining in their writing and in their columns and in their blog posts and so forth--I'm not trying to offend anyone, but all they do is write. They comment, and that's it, as though that's an achievement in and of itself. There isn't any action that is inspired or suggested by all of it. And those are the people now complaining at the action that is taking place that's a direct result of events happening. People here supporting Trump are not supporting Trump 'cause they've been fooled or bamboozled or told to. It's because of real things happening in the country that apparently some don't see.
RUSH:...Conservative principles. What good are they if all that's ever done with them is written about? What good are conservative principles if all anybody ever does is talk about it? What good are conservative principles if that's all they are, if there's no associated lifestyle? If there's no associated action, if there's no associated political objective with it, what good is it? I, for one, am tired of conservatism being nothing more than some intellectual feast every day....
What's happening with Trump...this is not about conservative principles. ....who has them and who doesn't and who's sacrificing them or who's giving them up or discarding them. What this is about is a whole lot of Americans thinking they had representation in Washington, and they've discovered they don't....
A political party has been campaigning promising to do X, Y, and Z and they've been getting voted for. They've been given majorities House and the Senate. But that's where it's all stopped, at the party level....
It's there, it's growing, and it's gonna continue to grow, as long as Washington remains unresponsive, which Washington appears to be more and more unresponsive as the days go by. So all these people that have got their underwear in a wad over people supporting Trump? They need to look in the mirror to explain why. If they really want to know why all this is happening, they just have to look in the mirror. You can only tell people they're stupid and dumb so many times.
You can only tell 'em they're unsophisticated so many times when they're staring the loss of their country in the face with this invasion illegal immigration and Obamacare and all of these executive orders that Obama's doing, and there's not a single ounce of apparent opposition to any of it! It's not about conservative principles, and these people that are writing about it in those terms are simply, I think, doing what they can to marginalize Trump and his supporters in an apparently convoluted effort to maintain support for the RINOs or the establishment or ruling class, whatever you want to call them.
Anyway, I have to take a break. I want to get back to the phones here, folks. I could spend another 20 minutes explaining this, but I think you get it, at least my thoughts on this by now."
"END TRANSCRIPT" Image above from RushLimbaugh.com
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