Rush Limbaugh: Status Quo Holds in Election, Press Calls It Dem Sweep/Bush Defeat

RUSH: Have you noticed when the liberals lose elections, the elections were stolen? I toyed with the idea today of trying to start this big movement that all these elections were flawed yesterday and that the voting machines were tampered with and that people tried to vote and weren't allowed to vote and there was discrimination against conservatives, and I wanted to lead the charge, saying these elections are illegitimate because they were stolen. But then I stopped, and then I realized, no, that's not the way to go about it. Because, as losers in these elections, those that we lost, we're actually the power. We're the winners, because the minority has rights! So the minority is actually the winners. We are in the minority; we probably now control New Jersey and Virginia. This is a lesson we have learned from the left. The left, the Democrats lost the Senate but they say they still run it, minority rights and so forth. So, given the way they think, we still control New Jersey. In fact, we actually won last night because we lost, as in the same thing with Paul Hackett. Did Paul Hackett win? No, he lost, but he won! Well, we lost, so we won! It's a great day! See how you play this if you're a Democrat? They're making all this noise. What they did was hold two seats that they already had. This was what everybody's talking about, the governor's race. I said yesterday, "It's the Democrats that face the test." The Democrats were the incumbents in New Jersey and Virginia.

It was the Democrats that faced the test yesterday, not the Republicans. But, of course, the media already had its story written, the media template was already written, and so it doesn't matter what the real news is. The real news, according to the press is, Bush lost last night even though he wasn't on one ballot anywhere, Bush lost, so he should resign. Cheney should resign, the Republican Congress should just hand power over to the Democrats now because it's a fait accompli because we all know that last night's handful of state races and ballot initiatives were votes in favor of liberalism, in favor of big government, in favor of appeasement, in favor of abortion on demand, in favor of the entire liberal agenda. That's what one last night according to our experts in the mainstream press. They want you to believe that the entire liberal agenda was embraced by the American people last night, those who voted, and the vast majority of Americans who didn't cast the vote because there was no election are ignored. So, my friends, what we have here is a case of the Democrats and the press once again assuming a reality to be true that isn't. These are off-year elections, and I'm sure if you spent some time reading this yourself you have seen stories about how these off-year elections are not harbingers of the next on-year election. For example, the elections yesterday are not harbingers of what's going to happen in 2006, and this is a historical trend, goes back ten years, in some states 20 years and others. These are state races, local races.

The national agenda was not a factor here. Let's go New Jersey first. In New Jersey, does anybody really ever expect a Republican to be the governor of that state? I mean, can we get serious about something? All these pre-election polls, "It's neck and neck! Forrester is pulling ahead!" Come on, folks. The most corrupt candidate is going to win in that state every time he runs. I mean, this is New Jersey. Anybody really expect a Republican is going to be elected governor there? In Virginia, you had a governor that was a Democrat. He's going on to other things. The lieutenant governor moves in. What they don't tell you -- did the AG win that race? The lieutenant governor is a Republican. The AG, that race is still too close to call. You go down the ticket, Republicans did well in Virginia. Just the governor held his seat. Well, the party held the seat, but that also traditional in Virginia. They always, it seems -- not always, but very frequently, more often than not. The party in the White House never holds the governor's seat in Virginia. It's one of these odd things. There's no real news here other than the status quo was maintained. But the status quo was maintained. (interruption) No, no, Snerdley. It wasn't a sweep. That's what I am telling you. The press is calling it a sweep but it wasn't a sweep. And all of these ballot initiatives, the ones that counted in Ohio, they were sent packing.

MoveOn.org takes it on the chin once again. I don't know what those clowns have ever won other than anything in California, and yip yip yip yip yahoo! You know, a liberal losing in California would be as big news is a liberal losing in New Jersey. I mean, it just isn't going to happen. So this is really not a whole lot of news here. It's a status quo election, and you can even make the case that in some circumstances -- like in Virginia. I don't want to bash our guys. I really don't want to bash our guys, but it's clear if you look at some of the campaigning in Virginia, that you had a reluctant conservative on certain issues. He was pretty strong on some but when it came to taxes and other things he was indistinguishable from the Democrat that was running for governor. If you're going to run as a conservative do it confidentially and be bold about it and don't be timid. But, you know, conservatives in the Beltway area, northern Virginia is the heavily populated Democrat region of the state, you gotta go out and make sure you don't make anybody mad, don't offend anybody, the press, and all that. But if you want to know, I'm in a great mood today. I am not dispirited by it. The stuff in California is disappointing, but I'm not surprised by it. I think Schwarzenegger did as well as he could do out there. Look at the odds he's up against out there: teachers unions, and the pro-abortion crowd. These people, they think Geena Davis is president, and they think The West Wing debate was an actual political debate affecting the country. It's a different world.

San Francisco? I mean, they had some ballot initiatives in San Francisco. They're going to do their best to keep recruiters out of schools, military recruiters out of schools. I mean, they're just moving further and further to the left -- and that's the message of the Democratic Party is just moving further and further left, and it's able to hold onto what it has but it's not able to grow. But as I say, the real test, I think, yesterday was for Democrats, not Republicans. But, of course, the template has been rewritten. The truth is, though, that nobody voted for or against George W. Bush last night, nobody voted for or against Congress. I've talked to some people in Virginia. As you know Virginia is very close to Washington, and I don't go there much so I don't know much about Virginia, but I talk to people who live there. And what's going on in Virginia is this. Northern Virginia, suburb of DC, has become heavily Democrat over the last ten years. It's still a Republican state because of the down state population but it's becoming less so. Now, the governor, Mark Warner, is a perceived moderate. But he raised taxes under the pretext of balancing the budget like Clinton. And the economy picked up, the national economy picked up, the states benefited from that. Now there's a big surplus there as a result of his raising taxes. Well, not as a result of his raising taxes, but rather as a result of the economic boom that has been going on throughout the country.

So he gets credited with the surplus, when it's actually Bush's. (Laughing.) Warner never did anything controversial, and now he has high popularity. He didn't tackle a whole lot of big things, like Clinton didn't, and he focused on keep his approval numbers up and that kept the seat strong for the Democrats. Now, when Warner -- this is Mark Warner; when he first ran for statewide office many years ago, it was against John Warner, and he almost won that race because people were confused about which Warner was who. Now, Tim Kaine, the guy who was elected governor of Virginia, huge lib, huge lib, former mayor of Richmond, but what did he do? He ran to the center on taxes, abortion and the death penalty. He tried to blur his liberalism! He tried to keep that out of focus, which is what liberals always do. They have to when it comes to tightly contested races. He was able to conceal his liberalism. He ran ads in rural and conservative areas of Virginia suggesting he was pro-life. He ran ads in more liberal areas claiming he was pro-choice! He ran a Paul Hackett campaign in Ohio. Whoever the audience was, that's what he was; that's where his ads ran. If he was running ads in the northern part of the state, why, he was the biggest pro-choicer you've ever seen! Ads in the southern part of the state, you'd get the idea that Kaine was pro-life. It's a devious campaign, but if he gets away with it, it's a smart campaign. Kilgore, the Republican, his ads weren't as good and he allowed Kaine to define both of them. You know, the lieutenant governor switched parties from Democrat to Republican in Virginia.

As I say, the attorney general's race is still too close to call. But this coverage that we're seeing in the press, this orgasm, this inability of them to contain themselves, it's sort of like the template for Hurricane Katrina and Scooter Libby. The story is already in the can. The story is already written. In the case of this election they want to argue some overarching statement by the American people rejecting Bush is behind these election returns. Now, one other thing -- and I don't mean to be taking shots here. I'm not taking shots. I'm just pointing something out. There's an AP story that came out last night quoting Larry Sabato. He's a political scientist at the University of Virginia. He said in this story, "There's no way to spin this than anything other than a major defeat for Republicans and for President Bush." Well, fine. Let's take a look at his track record. I went back; I found a piece published in the Birmingham News. This is August 8th of 2004, right in the thick of last year's presidential campaign, and Larry Sabato was speaking in Point Clear, Alabama, and was speaking to the business council of Alabama, their governmental affairs conference in the grand hotel Marriott resort. He said, "The growing unpopularity of the Iraq war is the biggest factor hurting Bush's reelection chances." In August of 2004, Larry Sabato said, "He really will need a miracle to win, and the last miracle was for Harry S. Truman. He bet his presidency on Iraq but he's this close to losing the bet," and he held a finger and thumb about an inch apart. So even after August, Sabato was predicting Bush the loser, Kerry the winner in the presidential race. Last night AP gets him to say there's no way to spin this as anything other than a major defeat for Republicans and President Bush. It is neither. It is not that, not when the incumbents hold seats. It's an off-year election. Bush, Congress, none of that was on the ballot; national issues weren't on the ballot. But this is what the left is left with, grasping at straws. They're in quicksand. They think they're at the beach; they're in quicksand, and they think they just had a piña colada handed to them, and in fact it's nothing more than a little Propel water and they'll be lucky to get all that down.

RUSH: Tell you what I'm going to do, folks, I'm going to keep a sharp eye on the media in Virginia and New Jersey. I want to keep a sharp eye on the punditry in those two states, because I know I'm going to find it. It won't be long, because I'm going to find stories in the New Jersey and Virginia media dedicating themselves to what Republicans have to do to regain power. Well, that's what Democrats say when the Democrats lose. That's why we got four years of that nonsense in the mainstream press when the Democrats lose the White House, Democrats lose the House, Democrats lose the Senate. We get two weeks of intense focus: What do the Democrats have to do to regain power? So I think we'll see those kinds of stories in Virginia and New Jersey, right? What do the Republicans have to do to regain power? Snerdley, you don't think we'll ever see those stories? Come on! Come on! The media is the media. You know they'll be fair about this. What will the Republicans have to do to regain power? And I wonder if they themselves will investigate voter irregularities. By the way, I haven't been able to find out. Did Kwame Kilpatrick win in Detroit? He was 12 points behind in early voting and he ends up winning by six. I know there's an investigation. Well, the absentee ballots, we had the story last week. This babe was sending out absentee ballots already marked for herself and Kwame Kilpatrick, all the absentee ballots went out and they were already marked. I'm sure we're going to get stories from the mainstream press and Detroit media about the voting irregularities that resulted in Democrat wins. So we'll keep a sharp eye out for all of this. Let's go to Dayton, Ohio, and Matt, welcome. It's great to have you on the program. Nice to talk to you. Welcome.

CALLER: Yeah, hi, Rush. Hey, I feel good about what happened yesterday here in Ohio. Issue two, three, four and five got crushed.

CALLER: The margin was 65% NO, 35% YES. The others were about 70-30. Ohio voters smashed the Reform Ohio crowd.

RUSH: Yeah. This was George Soros and MoveOn.org that was their attempt. They can't win Ohio so they wanted to change the way voting takes place, they wanted to change the way Ohio is districted, and it went down to a stinging defeat. Now, if there's a harbinger of anything, I mean, you could look to Ohio, because those four ballot initiatives were a direct result of the Democrats losing the state last year, 2004, correct?

RUSH: That's right. So they come up with these four ballot initiatives which are designed to speed along a Democratic victory in Ohio; they got crushed. They literally got creamed. Here's the story: "Voters soundly rejected four issues Tuesday that would have overhauled the way Ohio runs its elections, ending a high-pitched campaign that had hoped to capitalize on a Republican investment scandal and complaints about last year's presidential election. The issues would have opened absentee balloting to all voters, lowered the cap on individual campaign contributions, and put boards instead of elected officials in charge of drawing legislative and congressional districts and overseeing the state's elections. Reform Ohio Now, a coalition of unions and other Democrat-leaning groups," it was George Soros and MoveOn.org, "wanted to wrest control of elections from state officeholders, now a virtual Republican monopoly. Republicans resisted, forming an opposition group known as Ohio First," and they were profoundly victorious. You have to dig deep to find this story in press coverage today, folks. You have to dig deep. I told you that the Democrats didn't overcome any opposition. They held onto what they had. They didn't succeed in really changing anything anywhere, so I don't see what all the big deal is really. Well, I do know what the big deal is. They're just reporting the news that they wish were the news. See, these are state elections, and they turn on state issues. Presidents can't really affect them a lot. Past Virginia Democrat governors have been unable, in their retirements, to affect things even.

Apart from this election, apart from this election -- and this is a key element here, I think -- GOP voter turnout in 2006 and 2008 will be determined on what? Nothing that happened today or yesterday. Three weeks from now, these elections are going to be forgotten. Nobody is going to not vote or vote next year or 2008 because of what happened yesterday. Voter turnout, Republican voter turnout in 2006 and 2008, will be determined on clear, important issues: illegal immigration, cutting spending, cutting taxes, national security in the judiciary, and maybe one or two more. That's what's going to get Republicans out to vote. It's not going to be a Bush election. They're going to cast it as a Bush election; that's my whole point. They're going to try to say that next year's congressional elections are Bush. They're not going to be. They're going to be about issues. This is where, if we just have candidates that go out and run confidently and boldly on issues, we can skunk the left because they're not going to have issues. They're going to be running against Bush who will not be on the ballot. But I'll tell you, if the Republicans in Washington don't get their act together they will suffer some losses. I have said this forever and it is true now as it has ever been. You run on conservative principles, you will win. If you lurch to the center, if you try to be a moderate, you will lose. That's why I think McCain is going to have trouble in a general election in 2008. Republican voters are just not going to turn out with great passion for McCain, and Democrats will vote mostly for the Democrat as they always do. But I'm getting way ahead of myself. I'm just telling you: ISSUES. Run on them -- boldly, confidently -- and libs don't have a prayer, especially when they think it's about something else.

I was thinking about this last night, all that happened here in Virginia and in New Jersey is that 'Rats were elected to replace other 'Rats. The 'Rats had won both governor's races in 2001 and the media seemed to think that meant that the GOP would lose the House and Senate in 2002 -- but the GOP actually picked up seats in 2002.

In Virginia we actually had a net gain by picking up the Lt. Governor's office, that means that there will be no high ranking official to run for the 'Rats in 2009.

Wow. I’m amazed at the baloney that’s circulating about Virginia’s election. Both in the LSM and to a certain extent amongst conservatives who should know better than to take the conventional wisdom, that is to say LSM wisdom, at face value.

I follow politics in Virginia fairly closely. All you need to know about the Gubernatorial race in Virginia is this: the Republicans ran a poor candidate who in turn ran a poor campaign and lost. The GOP base wasn’t motivated, and it didn’t bother to show up. End of story, roll credits.

Contrary to the spin of the LSM and so-called “experts” like Larry Sabato (who is busy trying to peddle a book), politics in Virginia have not taken a sudden turn to the left in reaction to the policies of President Bush. And here are a couple of inconvenient facts that fly in the face of that line of malarkey.

Inconvenient fact number 1: The number of votes cast for the three statewide offices indicate that the Republican candidate for Governor was very unpopular. Here are the vote totals for each of the Republican candidates for the three statewide offices:

Governor: Kilgore – 910,023
LT Governor: Bolling- 976,625
Attorney General: Mc Donnell-969,117

Notice something? The total votes received for the Republican LT Governor and AG candidates were higher than those for Governor. The candidate for Governor leads the ticket, not the other way around. If the vote indicated some sort of lingering discontent about conservatism or GOP policies in the general sense, the candidate for Governor might have lost, but would have gotten more votes than the candidates running for the other statewide offices. That didn’t happen. The indication then is that there was something wrong with the candidate for Governor.

Inconvenient fact number 2: the entire Virginia House of delegates was up for election as well. All 100 seats. Again, if the election had indicated some general discontent with conservatism or GOP policies in the general sense, you would have expected Republicans in the House to lose a significant number of seats. You would have at least expected some significant change. Well, the upshot is that out of all those 100 seats, several of which were open seats, the GOP is down a total of 2 seats. Losing 2% of the seats is not a landslide.

The sad thing is that the lessons that should be learned about the Virginia election won’t be learned. The Democrats will take away the lesson that there’s been some sort of sea change in Virginia politics. There hasn’t been. The Republicans will take away the message that conservatism was to blame. It wasn’t.

I have to disagree with Rush here, which is rare for me.

Sugarcoat it all you want, but it was a bad night for the GOP, for conservatives, and for the President. I'm no doom-and-gloomer: I think President Bush's ratings will rebound; I think his Supreme Court and Fed Reserve nominations will bode well for his popularity and for the future; and I am not worried about the 2006 Congressional and senatorial prospects -- at least, not at this point.

But the 2005 elections were a disaster -- fortunately for us, an itty-bitty disaster, as so few positions were up for election, and accordingly, a disaster from which recovery is possible, even likely.

I wouldn't argue that there has been a sea change in Virginia. I would argue that Virginia was never a conservative state to begin with. Republican, maybe, but never at any point conservative.

(Okay, there were a few moments during Allen's administration when I thought I had died and gone to heaven.)

The demographic trends don't look good either. I've lived in the southeast, the southwest, and the north; and have every urban area is a RAT stronghold. The mass migration to the GOP in the rural south seems to have bypassed Virginia. There're still loyal democrats who should be in our column.

Mark my words. By 2012, Virginia will be considered a "safe" democratic state and never turn back.

"The Republicans will take away the message that conservatism was to blame. It wasn’t."

There was a CONSERVATIVE running for governor in Va?

Seriously, I know what you mean. There is no way that RINOs will spin it any other way, and the MSM sure won't, so it'll be labelled a 'conservative loss.' Meanwhile, we know that where they weren't doomed from the start (i.e., California) the conservative issues and candidates actually WON, so we'll stick with `em and emerge victorious. And even in the states where we 'lost,' like California, the cost to the left has been terrific, so we haven't lost at all.

And good summation BUMP, btw.

Savage is the smartest epidemiologist homophode to ever grace this blue marble

Savage is not a "homophobe" if that is what you meant. He doesn't "fear" homosexuals, although the gay mafia is after him because he is not afraid to say the truth about their disgusting behavior. They want to shut him up because even high school drop outs recognize the truth in what he states. He is one of the only people brave enough to point out the truth about the homosexual agenda. He is considered dangerous by homosexuals (and maybe by you?) He understands exactly what the push for sodomy and homosexual marriage is all about.

There is a connection to the ACLU, anti-Christians (the Bible states the truth about homosexuality), and the destruction of the Catholic Church (by the homosexual pedophile priests). There is also a connection to the Brownshirts of Nazi Germany and homosexuals who were close to Hitler. If you haven't noticed there is a major push to rewrite the Bible and get rid of everything Christian from the public square. There is a culture war and you are ignorant if you think that Savage is on the side of the Clintons.

BTW, Bush did get creamed yesterday, esp. in Virginia and California.

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