Rush Limbaugh (CPAC speech)
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you all.
I can't tell you how wonderful that makes me feel. It happens everywhere I go, but it's still special here [Laughter].
Now, before I begin, I would like to introduce to you my security chief, a man who runs all of my security. His name is Joseph Stalin. Joseph, would you please -- [Laughter]. I am safe from any liberal attack, in public, because they would be afraid of offending Stalin [Laughter]. Because, seriously now, if there's one thing that all liberals love, it's Joseph Stalin. Liberals love Joseph Stalin as much as Joseph Stalin loved Liberalism. Now for those of you at home, just in case you just tuned in, I'm linking Liberalism and Stalinism. The two go together, well, like liberals and Stalin [Applause].
Now the opportunity here to address the nation, is a serious one, it really is. And I want to take it seriously.
I want to address something. I know that people are probably watching this who never have listened to my program and may not even really know what conservatism is. They think they do based on how they've been told—the way we've been impugned and maligned and so forth in the so-called "mainstream" media [Boos], in Hollywood [Boos], and in books [Boos], some of which are available in university [Boos] libraries [Boos] in foreign countries [Boos] like France [Huent].
Now, seriously, for those of you watching on publicly-funded [Boos] C-SPAN [Sound of crickets chirping] as well, and on Fox [Cheers], I want to tell you who we all are in this room. I want to tell you who conservatives are. We conservatives have not done a good enough job of just laying out basically who we are because we make the mistake of assuming people know. What they know is largely incorrect based on the way we are portrayed in pop culture [Boos], in the Drive-By Media [Boos] who investigate and report the things that we do and say and believe, sometimes quoting our popular radio programs [Cheers] to use our own beliefs, words and actions against us [Boos].
Let me tell you who we conservatives are.
We love people [Applause]. When we look out over the United States of America [Raucous applause], when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, when we are anywhere seeing people who are anywhere, in groups or anywhere there are people where we are seeing groups of people anywhere, we see Americans [Cheers]...except when they're people who, say, believe in the lie of Global Warming [Boos], made a documentary [Boos] about it and who tried to used the activist liberal Supreme Court [Boos] to deny the right of Americans to elect a Republican [Cheers], George W. Bush [Silence broken only by an uncomfortable cough], or, more currently, they're really people who were not born in the USA [Boos] but who somehow managed to "win" a "democratic" "election" over a patriot and true American like John McCain [Cheers], who was born in Panama [Confused silence]...Panama City [More confused silence]...Panama City, Florida [Cheers].
We see human beings; individual people with individual lives, united, individually, in a common cause to take back America [Cheers] from the liberocracy [Boos]. We don't see groups, we see a monolithic voting block that's easily brought out to vote by hot-button issues like abortion [Boos], governmental corruption [Boos], so-called gay "marriage" [Boos], and birthday party clowns [Chorus of gunfire]. We don't see a nation of victims. We are the victims [Cheers]. We don't see people we want to exploit, as Americans are already too exploited by Big Government [Boos] to be further exploited. We, as Americans in the US of A [Cheers] see the people of the rest of the world as people that we want to exploit [Cheers], bully into respecting us [Cheers], or bomb into democracy [Cheers]. What we see here, what I see here, where we, and I, see human beings who are here being people in groups, is human people seriously individual group now beings [Confused applause].
We want every American to be the best they chooses to be [Chorus of "USA! USA!"]. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence [Applause], to the point that the documents themselves are more important than the ideals which they symbolize. We also use them as cheap rhetoric to piggy back on the nationalism of nationalistic Americans [Cheers] in America [Cheers], which is our right as Americans [Cheers] in America [Cheers]. We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth; that we are all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them Life [Applause], Liberty [Applause], Freedom [Applause], and the Pursuit of Happiness [Applause]. Those of you watching at home may wonder why this is being applauded. We conservatives think all three are under assault [Applause]. Thank you. Thank you.
We don't want to tell anybody how to live.
We respect your right to be wrong, even if we see your right to wrongness as a waste of rightness. We look over the country as it is today, we see so much waste, human potential that's been destroyed by fifty years of a welfare state, lead by such powerful, conservative crushing, union forming, tea drinking Democrats as John F. Kennedy [Muted boos], Lyndon Johnson [Shrugs], Jimmy Carter [Malaise], Bill Clinton [Boos] and Bill Clinton [Boos]. That's fifty solid years of “tax and spend” Democrats controlling America, pissing on the Stars & Stripes, driving cars from Sweden [Böös] and polluting the purity and essence of our natural fluids [Boos].
We love the people of this country [Applause]. And we want this to be the greatest country it can be, but we do understand, as people created and endowed by our Creator, we're all individuals, created equal; equal individuals equal in their individuality. We conservatives resist the effort to group us, to classify us into simple black & white categories. That's what liberals do. Unlike them, we resist the effort to make us feel that we're all the same. We're all different and equal and created equally individual by our Creator.
We don't hate anybody. [Stony silence]
We really don't [More stony silence] -- I mean, the racism in this country, if you ask me, I know many people in this audience—let me deal with this head on. You know what the cliché is, a conservative: racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen of America, if you were paying attention, I know you were, the racism in our culture was exclusively and fully on display in the Democrat primary [Boos] last year when Hilary Clinton [Hisses] attacked Obama [Boos] Hussein [Boos] Barrack [Boos]; a fact which the mainstream media [Boos] ignored entirely. The liberal media [Boos] then hypocritically criticized our criticism of Obama [Boos] Hussein [Boos] Barrack [Boos]. We conservatives never once mentioned his brownness, his fondness for watermelons and fried chicken, his membership in the Black Panthers and we definitely didn't use those pictures of him dressed up in tribal Muslim African clothing to imply that he was a tribal Muslim African. And, while I’m on the subject of things that we didn't do, Sarah Palin [Whistles & catcalls], who in 2012 will be Commander-in-Chief [Applause], didn't link Barack [Boos] Hussein [Boos] Obama [Boos] to terrorism by mentioning offhandedly that he pals around with terrorists. She didn't have to because, and I can't stress this enough, seriously, Barack [Boos] Hussein [Boos] Obama [Boos] did, does, and plans to continue to pal around with terrorists, especially those that share his extreme liberal values [Boos].
You know why we never smeared Barack [Boos] Hussein [Boos] Obama [Boos]?
We want the country to succeed, and for the country to succeed, its people—its individuals—must succeed, even if those people happen to be Democrats [Boos] who we want to fail [Applause]. We want Americans to be the all they can be [Cheers] and, as a nation united as a group in its individuality, we don't want to help when you fail [Cheers], get cancer [Cheers], lose the house [Cheers] and die forgotten in an alley [Cheers]. We love people just that much [Cheers]…unless they're Obama [Boos] Hussein [Boos] Barrack [Boos].
Take a look at all the special interest groups [Boos] that for fifty years have been depending on the Democrat Party [Boos] to improve their lives. They're still complaining, still griping, still whining about the same problems. "Waa, waa, waa. I'm homeless. Waa, waa, waa, I have no health insurance. Waa, waa, waa, the Democrats moved my company to Mexico. Waa, waa, waa, Obama [Boos] Hussein [Boos] Barack's [Boos] socialist [Boos] liberal [Boos] policies made me lose both my legs in Iraq [Boos]." Their problems don't get fixed by government. And those lives have been poisoned. Those lives have been cut short by false promises, from government representatives who said "Don't worry about it, we'll take care of you. Just vote for us." [Applause]
To those people, to those forgotten people, to those broken people, to those bitter people, to those scared people, to those desperate people I say...
"Don't worry about it, we'll take care of you. Just vote for us." [Cheers]
See also
