Posted on December 11, 2012

Limbaugh: Conservatism Didn't Lose Because Romney Wasn't A Conservative

RUSH LIMBAUGH: The Republicans have been giving away their identity year after year after year. The old analogy I gave you yesterday about old Coke and Coke Classic and New Coke. Coke figured out their mistake and went back to the classic. We haven't gone back to classic. We continue to try be more like these guys. When was the last time the nominee of the party forcefully made the case for lower tax rates? When is the last time the nominee of the party or the party chairman or any high profile elected Republican made the case for lower tax rates, increasing jobs, and increasing revenue and helping to reduce the debt?



You gotta buy the votes of taxpayers the same way Obama buys the votes of nontaxpayers. Obama gets it. It works, and it worked for Reagan. He never shied away from the argument and he didn't lose it. Why not brag about how much money taxpayers will save? Why not brag about the great things about our philosophy, economically, morally, you name it, why not brag about it? We don't have anybody that's willing to do that. They all act ashamed of it or defensive. Look at Obama's pitch in 2008. Ninety-five percent of Americans will get tax cuts, he proudly said it, if elected.



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LIMBAUGH: That's an instant sell, folks. That is an instant benefit. And Obama's following through now. He's doing everything he can to make the Republican Party concede, confess that tax cuts for the rich caused all of these problems. Obama's tax plan is a joke. The people bought it. I don't accept for a moment that conservatives have lost the argument. I don't think the argument has been made. Not by the party. Yes, I make it every day here and some people on Fox and other talk show hosts and the blogs, yes. But none of us get votes. Nobody's voting for or against us. We're not in that game. And how do we tell people to go vote for candidate X when candidate X refuses to sound like we do? When candidate X is relying on us to make the case for him so he doesn't have to so he can then benefit because somebody else is saying it. He's gonna have to say it. She's gonna have to say it. Whoever the candidate is is gonna have to make the case. And they haven't been.



That's why I don't think conservatism's losing. The only way you can say conservatism's losing is in the sense the Republican Party is afraid to use it. There's some conservatives in the party, but I'm talking about party identification. This party's doing everything it can to make itself look like it's squishy, moderate, center, uncontroversial, not gonna rock the boat, in favor of whatever you want, whenever you want it, except we can't outdo the Democrats on any of that. So we're always gonna be lite, l-i-t-e, whatever, tax-lite, welfare-lite. We're always gonna be the pretenders, 'cause that's not who the Republican Party really is.