RUSH: This is the 45th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s Barry Goldwater speech. Today is the 45th anniversary of the speech that launched Reagan’s national career, the ‘we have a rendezvous with destiny’ speech forty-five years ago. Now, many in the Republican Party and many in the so-called conservative media say the era of Reagan is over. And of course this is folly, it is silly, it is stupid. This being the 45th anniversary, this speech took place during the Goldwater-Johnson-Kennedy 1964. I remember watching it and I remember saying, ‘Get this guy on the ticket!’ I’m 13 years old and I’m watching with my dad. We have sound bites of this speech. (interruption) Of course I remember this. I have never forgotten this speech. I’ve wanted to lift the phrase ‘you and I have a rendezvous with destiny,’ but I can’t because everybody knows it’s Reagan’s.

Now, this dovetails very nicely, and we’re going to start very soon on some of these sound bites from this speech. You’ve got to hear them. People say, ‘Rush, we need to uplifted, we need to inspired, we need to be motivated.’ Well, you’re gonna get that today before we start attacking Obama’s health care plan, the latest folly with Harry Reid and so forth. There’s a great piece in the UK Telegraph today — you get real journalism over there — this is by Nile Gardiner. ‘Barack Obama Has Failed to Defeat Conservatism in America.’ He plays off that Gallup poll, 40% of the people in this country say they are conservative, 20% say they are liberal, 36% say they are independent. Now, Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator, and he appears frequently on television, both here and in Great Britain. The point of this is that not only are we not defeated, we are rising from the ashes, we’re fighting in the shade out there but we are fighting. After you listen to some of Ronald Reagan’s Goldwater speech from October 27, 1964, I’ll share with you some of the details here from Nile Gardiner. Here’s cut one, Ronald Reagan.

REAGAN: I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers. Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, ‘We don’t know how lucky we are,’ and the Cubans stopped and said, ‘How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.’ And in that sentence he told us the entire story: If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to, this is the last stand on earth.

RUSH: 1964. You will marvel as you hear this. Same battle taking place in NY-23, and that will take place in elections over the next year.

REAGAN: This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election, whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well, I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down. Man’s old age dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

RUSH: Ronald Reagan, 45 years ago. The point of this is that the left never changes. The left is always on the march. The left is always who they are. Totalitarianism is always what it is. American exceptionalism is the notion that we have avoided that because of our founding. We have avoided the role that human history has dictated for most people who have ever lived on this planet. The vast majority of people who have ever lived on this planet have lived in tyranny or some sort of relationship to it, dictatorship or what have you. The concept of American exceptionalism is that we are, and have been since our founding, the lone outpost and beacon for freedom. If we lose it here there’s no place else in the world to go to have it. If we fall, then the rest of the world falls with us. That’s why it is so dangerous what is happening now. Here’s another from President Reagan, October 27, 1964.

REAGAN: Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government. Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as the masses. This is a term we haven’t applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that the full power of centralized government, this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people and they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

RUSH: When you listen to this you get chills up your spine. Ronald Reagan, the father of modern conservatism, and this is why I just get livid when I hear the so-called elites in our media and on our side of the aisle in politics say that Reagan and his era are over, that Reagan’s time has come and gone, we cannot continue to make ourselves a movement in the image of Ronald Reagan. Remember the left had to do everything they could to try to destroy Reagan. He was an amiable dunce, he was an idiot, just like George Bush was a dumb idiot, things do not change, Ronald Reagan was hated as much as George W. Bush. The reason you don’t know that is because Reagan was likable on television. He was able to overcome the effort to make people despise him. It takes a unique personality to be able to do that. Now, consider this next as Obama goes around the world apologizing for America and dithers on deciding whether we should try to win the war in Afghanistan or hand the country and the people who live there back to the Taliban.

REAGAN: We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immortality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, ‘Give up your dreams of freedom, because to save our own skins we’re willing to make a deal with your slave masters.’ Alexander Hamilton said, ‘A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one.’ Now, let’s set the record straight. There’s no argument over the choice between peace and war. But there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace, and you can have it in the next second. Surrender.

RUSH: This speech was 45 minutes, we’re just culling bits of it. But consider, want peace? Fine, you can have it right now, you surrender. You won’t have any war, but you’ll also be a prisoner. And consider that remark as Obama is plotting whatever course he’s plotting in Afghanistan. Speaking of that, there is a story in the New York Times today claiming that the brother of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is on the CIA payroll and is involved in the poppy trade in the southern city of Kandahar, a place I have been. Folks, this is reminiscent of what JFK did in Vietnam, allowing a coup against the leadership in South Vietnam, the only one that was willing to stand up to Ho Chi Minh. It’s amazing. The Karzai brothers have responded, saying this is all lies; this is nothing more than an attempt by some in the media and the New York Times to affect the outcome of this runoff election and have my brother, the president, defeated. It’s all lies. The Karzai brothers never said it. We’re not part of the CIA; the CIA is not paying us. Now, for the New York Times to get this story has to come from somewhere — and we know full well — well, I don’t know full well but I wouldn’t doubt for a minute that this is the Obama administration trying to get rid of this guy. I know that is exactly what is happening here so that they can then set the stage for whatever surrender policy they want in Afghanistan. Here’s some classic Reagan lines on government.

REAGAN: No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.

RUSH: And this.

REAGAN: You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

RUSH: Ronald Reagan, 45 years ago, televised campaign address, Barry Goldwater, 1964.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Nile Gardiner, the UK Telegraph: ‘This week’s striking Gallup poll on political ideology is further confirmation that the United States is in essence a conservative nation, which has ironically become even more conservative under Barack Obama. According to Gallup, 40 percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36 percent as moderate and 20 percent as liberal. This is the first time conservatives have outnumbered moderates in America since 2004. These are staggering figures when you consider that the Left currently dominates the Executive Branch of the US Government, both Houses of the United States Congress, the federal bureaucracy, huge swathes of local government in many big cities, academia, the public school system, and most of the establishment broadcast and print media in America. The figures show there is a huge disconnect between the American public and those who wield much of the political power in the country. Most significantly, Gallup’s 16 surveys of 5,000 adults conducted across 2009 have definitively shown that conservatism is on the rise despite the election in 2008 of the most liberal president in American history. The biggest factor pushing up conservative support has been a shift among independent voters, 35 percent of whom now describe themselves as conservative, compared to 29 percent in 2008.’

Now, note that these independents, 35% who now describe themselves as conservative, do not describe themselves as moderates, do not describe themselves as middle-of-the-roaders. Independents are moving conservative. ‘The Gallup survey also reveals a distinctly rightward shift in public attitudes since the Obama administration took office, with a growing backlash against the US government’s support for big government solutions to the country’s economic woes, as well as a marked rise in public support for socially conservative views. Here are several clear-cut examples of rising support for traditionally conservative positions on some of the biggest policy issues of the day, as outlined by Gallup.’ And all of this could come from my show on any given day. ‘Perceptions that there is too much government regulation of business and industry jumped from 38% in September 2008 to 45% in September 2009. The percentage of Americans saying they would like to see labor unions have less influence in the country rose from 32% in August 2008 to a record-high 42% in August 2009.’ That’s a record high, by the way, that 42%.

‘Public support for keeping the laws governing the sale of firearms the same or making them less strict rose from 49% in October 2008 to 55% in October 2009, also a record high. The percentage of Americans favoring a decrease in immigration rose from 39% in June/July 2008 to 50% in July 2009. The propensity to want the government to ‘promote traditional values’ — as opposed to ‘not favor any particular set of values’ — rose from 48% in 2008 to 53% in 2009. The percentage of Americans who consider themselves ‘pro-life’ on abortion rose from 44% in May 2008 to 51% in May 2009. Americans’ belief that the global warming problem is ‘exaggerated’ in the news rose from 35% in March 2008 to 41% in March 2009,’ and it’s even higher now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: There is indeed a conservative ascendancy, and I’m going to be replaying these Ronald Reagan sound bites throughout the program. I just got an e-mail from somebody 49 years old who said he never heard them before, had never heard it. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Reagan is so much a part of who I am that I just make the mistaken assumption that every conservative also knows who Reagan is, or at least remembers enough of what Reagan said, but it never hurts to remind people who do know, and enlighten those who do not, and it will especially help blunt this silly notion that the era of Reagan is over. Now, it frosts me when people on our side say this. To say that the era of Reagan is over is to say that the era of our founding is over. These are pure inside-the-Beltway people who get caught up in the liberal dominated political and social culture of Washington, DC. They all want to be accepted and liked and thought of as special elite creatures and that means they have to agree with one another on certain things at all times.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to the conclusion here of the UK Telegraph story by Nile Gardiner: ‘Last November, liberal commentators wrote off conservatism in America as dead and buried. As the latest Gallup poll shows they were spectacularly wrong. It is no coincidence that the most watched news network, the top selling national newspaper, and the most listened to radio shows in the United States are now all conservative. The success of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, is a powerful symbol of a vigorous challenge to current liberal dominance of Washington. … The spirit of Ronald Reagan is alive and well in America, exemplified by strong public backing for the principles of limited government, free enterprise, individual responsibility and a strong defense. The White House should sit up and take note: it is liberalism, and not conservatism, that is in decline in the United States.’ This whole piece was based on in-depth Gallup poll numbers. This is not Mr. Gardiner’s opinion piece; it’s an analysis piece of the Gallup poll numbers.

From PoliticsDaily.com, headline: ‘For First Time Under Obama, Majority Says U.S. Is on Wrong Track.’ So very slowly Americans are coming out of the spell of Obama. ‘While the stock market has picked up and the country appears to be pulling out of the recession, a majority of Americans – for the first time in the Obama presidency – says the U.S. is headed down the wrong track, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted Oct. 22-25. Fifty-two percent say the country is on the wrong track. … President Obama’s job approval rating stands at 51 percent, the same number it had been during the previous two months.’ And I think, folks, if the truth be known, they are doing everything they can in these polls to keep that number at 50% or above. ‘Cause I, frankly, don’t think he’s anywhere near 50% in real job approval in the minds of most Americans. You’re always going to have 25, 30% of the population with their heads in the sand who are clueless and just simply buy what they see in the mainstream State-Controlled Media.

‘The approval ratio for his handling of the economy has dipped from 51 in September to 47 percent in October. Forty-nine percent are very dissatisfied with the state of the economy and another 31 percent are somewhat dissatisfied. Seventeen percent are somewhat satisfied and only 2 percent are very satisfied.’ That would be George Soros. ‘Sixty-four percent don’t see the improvement in the stock market as real evidence the economy is improving. … Sixty-five percent disapprove of the job Congress is doing compared to 24 percent who approve with 11 percent undecided. On Afghanistan, Americans support a troop increase by 47 percent to 43 percent with 10 percent undecided. Last month, they opposed it by 51 percent to 44 percent with 5 percent undecided.’ But when you ask them specifically about increasing the number of troops, Americans oppose by 49 to 48 doing so.

Regardless, there is a shift. In Virginia, Republican Robert McDonnell has now opened a 13-point lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds, whose tie is never straight, his hair is not combed properly, according to Obama himself, with less than a week to go now in the race for Virginia governor. This is a Rasmussen Report taken last night just after Obama made a campaign appearance for Deeds in the state of Virginia.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Phillip in Atlanta, I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hi. Dittos from an unemployed real estate developer with no health insurance.

RUSH: By the way, I’m glad you mentioned that because I have a story here from Business Week that says being laid off can make you better.

CALLER: Ah. I haven’t experienced that yet.

RUSH: This is part and parcel of the State-Controlled Media trying to say, ‘Hey, the Obama economy sucks? No, it’s good for you to be laid off!’

CALLER: It’s good for weight loss.

RUSH: (laughing) Not necessarily. But I understand — (laughing)

CALLER: Well, I was joking with someone today, I have a broken tooth, I can’t go get it fixed, I said, ‘Hey, it’s a great weight loss program.’ So, you know, I guess Business Week was right.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: But I’ll get to my point for you, and very glad to get through to you, you’ve taken me through some dark times, all this unemployment, it’s good to be encouraged by you. A couple weeks ago I was quoting Ronald Reagan to my oldest son and it made me very sad, my 12-year-old was listening and said, ‘Who’s Ronald Reagan?’ And, you know, I didn’t know whether to cry or to beat her. I just shook my head. After explaining it to her, I wanted to tell you that by preface, I’m a huge Reagan fan. But is there an inherent danger as we hold him up as the standard-bearer all the time, and I do as well, when it comes election time I always hear McCain is no Reagan, Rudy is no Reagan, Romney was no Reagan, Bush was no Reagan, and everyone pales in comparison. Is there an inherent danger of always holding them up as the standard-bearer? I get depressed when I do the comparison myself.

RUSH: Well, I think you may have a point if we really narrow your area here of focus. If we are going to demand candidates that are Ronald Reagan, yeah, I mean nobody’s gonna measure up because there’s only one Ronald Reagan. The only person that would come close to it would be me, and I don’t want the pay cut.

CALLER: No.

RUSH: I’m just kidding about that, folks. (laughing) But in holding up Reagan we’re not holding up a man, we’re not holding up a cult personality figure. We’re holding up principles. We are reminding peopling of ideals. We are reminding me of what the founding of this country was. Ronald Reagan simply is the best Republican to ever articulate them in our lifetimes and right now conservatives in this country are beat down. They need inspiration. There is no political leadership that they can invest in right now, elected political leadership. There are a couple, three or four, but they’re members of the House, some of them are in the Senate, but nobody is seeking national office that comes close.

Maybe Palin would be the closest to it and you saw the reaction that she got during the primaries, but it’s important to understand that holding up Reagan, and we’re not holding him up as a standard-bearer saying, ‘You be like Reagan,’ we are holding Reagan up to teach the American people what this country is, because they’re not being taught what this country is. For the longest time they have been taught that this country is immoral and unjust and deserves to pay for the crimes it has committed around the world. So in holding up Ronald Reagan, we simply remind the Republican Party how it was that they marched to landslide victory, and we remind the American people what country they live in and why it’s the greatest on earth.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m checking the e-mail during the break, and I got a bunch of people, they may be seminar e-mailers but I don’t think all of them are, and there’s a general theme among some of the e-mails, ‘Rush, this Reagan stuff, the era of Reagan is over. I listened to those clips you played of Reagan, and Reagan, he’s talking about the Soviet Union, he’s talking about tyranny and communism around the world and the Soviet Union’s gone, Rush, and the one thing that Reagan was focused on, why, it’s old, we have to have a new set of policies and principles.’ Okay, I’m glad you sent me those notes, giving me an opportunity to explain to you why you’re wrong. Let’s go back and listen to audio sound bite number four, Ronaldus Magnus, October 27th, 1964, a televised campaign address for Barry Goldwater.

REAGAN: We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immortality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, ‘Give up your dreams of freedom, because to save our own skins we’re willing to make a deal with your slave masters.’ Alexander Hamilton said, ‘A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one.’ Now, let’s set the record straight. There’s no argument over the choice between peace and war. But there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace, and you can have it in the next second. Surrender.

RUSH: Now, this is the sound bite that the people were reacting to in the email. ‘Reagan, that’s 45 years old, Rush, can’t talk about that.’ Let me present my view of this. Let’s go back not to 1964, but let’s go back to 1960. That election featured Richard Nixon, the incumbent vice president against John Kennedy. Do you remember how close that election was? Razor thin. It came down to the dead vote in Chicago and with some chicanery in West Virginia. And Nixon could have contested it but he decided for the good of the country he would concede the next day. Why was that election so close? Back in 1960, both candidates agreed on fundamental issues. Both candidates agreed that national security and keeping this country safe from foreign enemies was paramount. Both candidates agreed. When it came to domestic policy, don’t forget, John Kennedy predated Reagan in tax cuts. Hubert Humphrey, who was also a presidential contender in that era — and we’ve played the sound bites of this a long time ago on this radio show — Hubert Humphrey, talking about a civil rights bill said, ‘If it’s got quotas in it, I ain’t signing it.’ He was considered a liberal Democrat in those days. John Kennedy was considered a liberal Democrat in those days.

And we all remember his inauguration speech, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.’ The reason that election was so close was because there wasn’t much disagreement on the big things between the two candidates. Now, it is 49 years later and we have no more Soviet Union threat. We’ve got Russia rebuilding itself in the image of the KGB. We still have Castro and whatever he’s doing, Hugo Chavez on the march, the ChiComs still communist but opening the free market. They have all the money in the world. But more important, these two parties today do not even agree on national security. One of our political parties today advocates for the defeat of this country. We have now elected a president, we may not have a Soviet threat, but we have a communist threat. It was all about keeping communism out of this country. 1960, Reagan, Nixon, Kennedy, it was all about keeping communism out of this country. JFK didn’t want a communist country.

Now, we have an administration with members saying their favorite philosopher is Mao Tse-tung. Next we’re going to learn that somebody else in this administration admires Joseph Stalin. We have avowed Marxists, self-proclaimed communists in this administration. The left in this country have gone so far left from where it was in 1960. Reagan was exactly right. If you think that the era of Reagan is over simply because the external threat of communism in the Soviet Union was beat down, you have missed the whole point. Reagan was talking about tyranny, liberty, freedom. It’s always threatened. It always has to be fought for. It has to be earned. What’s happened now is we’re not fighting the Soviet Union. We’re fighting the Democrat Party. We’re fighting the American left. We are now fighting to save our own country from itself. We are fighting within our own country to preserve our freedom. Reagan was exactly right. This is why the era of Reagan will never be over because it is the era of our founding. It is the era of individual freedom, American exceptionalism. These are crucial times, and we are in an ascendancy here in winning this battle at least in the hearts and minds of the American people which I’ve always believed is where it starts.

So not only is the era of Reagan not over and not only is Reagan passe, Reagan is as relevant as ever, and it is more important than ever that people heed the warnings. And, by the way, I grew up hearing that same stuff from my father. You know, people that lived through the Great Depression, that fought in World War II, Korea, and all that, they remember Khrushchev coming over to the UN and banging his shoe on the desk, claiming that we’ll bury you, your grandchildren will be ours and so forth. They took it seriously, both parties. Now, something happened after the assassination of JFK. That is where I think the modern left really started gaining it’s ascendancy which is amazing because it was a leftist communist who assassinated JFK. But that gave birth to Lyndon Johnson, a massive leftist. It was always bubbling under the surface, you always had Hollywood leftists and communists, and we used to have a House Un-American Activities Committee. Do you know that? In the House of Representatives, we had a House Un-American Activities Committee.

Academia was left, but it really started marching full speed ahead in the sixties after the assassination of JFK, and it has not stopped. And the things that Ronald Reagan warned us about have happened. Well, they’re in the process of happening. In 2008 in our presidential election we had a Vietnam War veteran, John McCain, against an elitist five-minute career Senator of 150 days. That senator was running as a Democrat and had actively sought the defeat of the US military in Iraq and actively sought to undermine General Petraeus, who was the author of the surge that led to a turnaround in Iraq and a victory. And now that same man is dithering in Afghanistan while American soldiers, not Bush soldiers, and not Obama soldiers, American soldiers are dying at record numbers. The threat that people of this country who want to be free face is now within our own borders. That’s the stark reality.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The era of Reagan is the era of our founding. It is never over. Ronald Reagan is not being held up as somebody whom every candidate must be like. That’s not possible. People like me who love and appreciate Ronald Reagan have no cultlike appreciation for Reagan. This is not an attachment to a personality. It’s an attachment to leadership and ideals and principles, ideals and principles which will never die because freedom will never die. Therefore, the era of Reagan will never be over.