Archive [December 1998]

So it’s come to this. The Honorable Judge Kenneth Starr sits for 12 hours — 12 hours! — for an inquisition by snarling socialists, because he dared follow the law, and because he dared demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt, and by a preponderance of evidence, that the President of the United States perjured himself, among other felonies. The Honorable Judge Starr is pilloried, vilified, impugned, for defending the rule of law.

And we who love justice are grateful, because in the last few minutes of that 12-hour inquisition and after years of calumny, someone, in this case Majority Counsel David Schippers, allows the Honorable Judge to meekly assent that yes, he has served his country with integrity in a career of public service spanning over two decades. We are grateful that a man of high achievement gets a few moments’ grace.

On “Nightline” that night, Ted Koppel actually said this: “As long as he did not show up before the House Judiciary Committee … in a stained trench coat with a copy of Hustler magazine under his arm, he was bound to exceed expectations.”

And Eleanor Clift somewhat grudgingly conceded: “He doesn’t have horns.” This, about one of the most brilliant and accomplished jurists this nation has produced.

Then there was a throwaway line from George Stephanopoulos: “Ken Starr made a strong case that the President broke the law, but there were no big bombshells.”

Yes, it’s come to this in the year of our Lord 1998, that a high-level government lawyer successfully making the case in an official government proceeding that the President of the United States broke the law … is not a bombshell.

“Given that the political winds are at the backs of Democrats these days,” observed The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “Starr and the committee Republicans were on the defensive all day.”

Let’s take a look at those political winds, blowing hard since November 3. That is the weather in which all will unfold in the next two years, and we must rightly analyze the climate if we are to make a course correction. The rule of law may depend on it.

I feel extremely lucky, to tell you the truth, after the elections. With a campaign that was horrible, an agenda that was absent, a leadership that was directionless, we still — despite some of the most glaring ineptitude in modern politics — won at least numerical control of the House, the Senate, and the governorships.

I am flat-out amazed at that, with the spineless campaign that was run. I defy anybody to look at the campaign and say, “I know what the Republican message is.” Because there wasn’t one.

Generally what happens when you don’t offer a message is you get creamed. Compared against expectations and spin, we got creamed. We got shellacked. But despite the shellacking, even despite getting creamed, we still run the show. I don’t know that we deserve to run the show. Generally, people who win deserve to win. And people who lose deserve to lose, on balance.

Now, we’re faced with the media telling us that the wave of the Republican future is the governors, who are moderates. But the governors are not moderates — not the way liberals define moderate. To liberals, moderate means liberal. These governors who won are not liberal people. Jeb Bush is not liberal. George W. Bush is not liberal. Tommy Thompson is not liberal. John Engler is not liberal. Still, the press is urging everybody to follow these “moderate” guys. True, they’re the ones now who know how to get it done. But let’s not misdefine who they are.

But when you are the party of Ronald Reagan, the playbook is out there for us. Do we need to remind everybody what Reagan did? He had the same media that we have. Hated his guts; just as liberal. Reagan, in his first term, had a Democratic Congress — with 75 or 100 seats more than the Republicans had. And he got a 25 percent across-the-board tax cut through. With the House of Representatives in the total control of the opposition. And he won two landslide elections.

The playbook is there. We’ve got a lot of people who look at the Reagan playbook but they don’t open it. We have a lot of people who want to be Ronald Reagan, but they don’t want to be like Ronald Reagan. When you are the party of Ronald Reagan, and you act like the party of Nelson Rockefeller, you are going to lose.

Look at what the Democratic Party offered the voters this year. They offered them zilch. All they offered them was fear, which is what they always offer them; they offered them crisis, which is what they always offer them; they offered a bunch of poll-tested, empty, and bitter words.

Thus the Democratic Party, as evidenced by this election, stands for lying, fear-mongering, and race-baiting. And a lot of you are depressed. “What’s happened to America? How can that work?” I’ll tell you how it can work. Anything will work in a vacuum. And there was a vacuum. The classic “prevent defense.” It fails every time it’s tried in the National Football League. But we’ve been in prevent now for years, it seems.

And this remains to be seen, but it’s likely that the Constitution suffered, because now it’s less likely that a President who is a felon, who has committed perjury, will be held accountable. The table was set. We had a President, caught with an intern, lying on videotape for four consecutive hours before a grand jury, and we couldn’t do anything with it. Because we were afraid of angering people. We’ve got a $1.3 trillion surplus projected over ten years; we weakly proposed, “Maybe we’ll try for an $80 billion tax cut…” and then we folded on even that.

We fought for nothing on the budget. We caved. Gave the President and the Democrats everything they wanted, all for the expressed purpose of getting along — to avoid a campaign, we said, that would feature negative attacks against Republicans.

What planet is that from? Negative attacks on Republicans is called politics. The only way you counter the negative attacks against you is to not let them occur in a vacuum.

Let me quote an excellent observation from Harvey Mansfield in The Weekly Standard:

When the Republicans failed to make an issue of Clinton, they gave him a pass. Motality always has to make an issue of itself. Morality is about praise and blame, and it cannot afford to fall silent because silence is abdication, and abdication is consent. The Republicans kept waiting for the morality of otdinary Americans to appear, and to give the presumptuous cad Clinton a mighty swipe. But they feared appealing to morality. Having taken the easy way out themselves, they should not be surprised that the American people did the same.

But despite all this, despite all this, we are still the majority. Unbelievable. So there is one last chance here.

If you were to go back to 1992, on the day after Bill Clinton was elected, and someone were to tell you that six years from now, we are going to have a 12-seat advantage in the House, a 10-seat advantage in the Senate, and we’re going to have 31 of the nation’s governors, who would have believed you? Nobody. They would have committed you. But that’s where we are.

I know a lot of you are frustrated: “Rush, low-life politics is working.” Yes, low-life politics does work. If you’re playing not to win, but rather, playing not to lose, if you’re in a vacuum, then low-life politics or any other kind of politics is going to work.

What was it that won 52 seats in 1994? It was the Contract With America. What was it that had the Democrats on defensive in 1994? It was the Contract With America. Yeah, they did everything they could to try to distort it. They did everything they could to try to defeat it and confuse it. Which is what they are supposed to do. They’re not supposed to sit around and be swayed by our ideas. The Democrats are going to say evil things. And they’re going to have their friends in the media give them a forum to do so.

But the lesson of the Contract With America is that substance works. It was an agenda. It was real clear. They published it in TV Guide. We went out and we asked the American people, “What’s most important to you?” Then we told them, “Here are the top ten. This is what we pledge to work on in the first 100 days.” Bammo. The American people said, “You got it, guys. Here’s 52 seats. Go to it.”

So what happened in 1998? I defy you to find for me any Republican message in the last three months of this campaign. Find for me any reason for people to vote, other than the way they did. It just wasn’t there. So I don’t look at this election as a fair measure of the American people. Here was the choice: You can have a bunch of fake Democrats running the show or real Democrats running the show.

They went for the real thing rather than the imitations. Besides, how can you go out and have a campaign that says you’re for tax cuts when you don’t fight for tax cuts?

That’s what’s so damned disappointing about this. Based on the campaign that was waged I don’t think that any of our ideas have been rejected. We didn’t advance any! Folks, we sat by and hoped that they screwed up. And they didn’t. We got what we deserved.

And despite all this, we still control the House. We still control the Senate. We have the vast majority of governorships. Somebody is giving us one last chance. We’ve got one shot. We’ve got another opportunity to reverse this. But it’s going to be tough.

Which brings me to the e-mail note I received on Veteran’s Day:

“Dear Rush; Sorry, my friend, I truly enjoy your show, but enough is enough. Being too well informed in today’s America is hard on the attitude. I see what Clinton and the Democrats do, and then watch as Gingrich and the Republicans do nothing other than worry over how they will be portrayed in the media. Truth, justice, the American Way is no longer an ideal, no longer a goal. We’ve become a country filled only with the need for self-gratification, without the slightest regard for the principles upon which this nation was founded.

I can’t stand it. I’m withdrawing into my little world. I’ve canceled my delivery of the newspaper. I will do my best to avoid any and all news broadcasts. I no longer even see the need to vote. The decay is well advanced. The odor is too strong. I’m retiring to gratify my need of blissful ignorance. Final dittos.”

This letter, while I understand it, embarrasses me. How many of you are similarly at the limit of your frustrations, and have thought the same thing: “Ah, the hell with it. It doesn’t do any good to do the right thing. I’m quitting.” How many of you have felt that?

If you have, let me tell you how embarrassed I am for you. Is life that tough? As you read this across the bountiful and free fruited plain — you are free today because of the great devotion, never-say-die, never-quit attitude and conduct of the men and women who have worn the uniform of the United States. That’s why we’re able to move our lips and utter syllables and say whatever we want as brilliant or stupid as it is, because people have given their lives for us to be able to do so.

We think we have it tough because of an election? Because of a couple of years of not being able to advance our ideas? So we quit? Is this what people gave their lives for? Is this what people died for? Is this what people stormed the beach at Normandy for? Is this what over 500,000 people died for in the Civil War? To protect this nation? To preserve it? So we can give up, after an election in which we retain control of one of the branches of government?

I don’t think those patriots would have any sympathy whatsoever for anyone who claims to be depressed beyond the ability to cope. Because while you are depressed beyond your ability to cope, and you claim to want to retire to your enclave of blissful ignorance, I’ll wager it is replete with creature comforts. I’ll wager that your life, even as you retreat to your blissful ignorance, is not one of challenge and stress that in any way compares with that faced by those who offer their lives in sacrifice so that you can exercise your opportunity to be blissful and ignorant at the same time.

Ask yourself, “What if my predecessors had quit?” At any time: Civil War. World War I. Great Depression. World War II. What if they had quit? Where would you be now? It has yet to be demonstrated that people quitting anything had a positive effect on the outcome of anything.

Have you noticed that the left never gives up? In 1994, the left had it far worse than what happened to us this November. They faced dire consequences — near political vaporization. Did you see them give up? Did you see them start to eat their own? Did you see them start to tear up their belief system? Nope. Never once in 1994 did the left say, “Our ideals and beliefs are the problem.”

What you face is nothing compared to those who have lost their lives for this country. You give up? You can’t deal with a little stupidity? A little setback here and there? Not the time to quit, folks. Nobody is going to applaud you for having the courage to say you can’t handle it anymore. That’s not the way to win converts and to prevail in the arena of ideas with what you believe. You don’t quit.

One thing I’m getting real impatient with, ladies and gentlemen, much as I love you people, is to be told by some of you that I don’t “get it” unless I agree that, “America stinks, America is over, the bad people have won, there is no hope.” If that’s what getting it is, then count me out, ever.

Get a grip. As long as we are fighting, the bad people will not win. Don’t you understand what being an American is all about?