Rush Limbaugh: Fix the GOP ... no third Party

Yes We Can Reestablish Conservatism

Rush Limbaugh, who has had plenty of criticism of the Republican Party over the years, has not wavered on his opinion that there be no third Party. He reiterated on Tuesday's radio program that conservatives need to reestablish themselves in the Republican Party and not break away to a third Party:

I'm detecting a trend here and it's time to let you in on what's going on. First, "The two parties, they're no different." That means we need to go third party. "There's no difference between the parties." Look, for one thing: The Republican Party, for all its faults, has always wanted to win when we deployed the military. Come on, folks! You gotta get real about this. The Republican Party, as bad as it is, is not the Democrat Party. We do have statists in our party. We do not have socialists and Marxists in our party that have any kind of power whatsoever. And none would ever get elected in our party. Now, snap out of this. Get real. Snap out of it! It's time to face this and fix it, not abandon it -- and a third party is giving up on things. With a third party, you're just creating another room to go in and shout. You're just creating a room to go vent, but you're not gonna get anything done with a third party.

Rush later added to his third Party thoughts:

As for our side, the focus must be to take back the Republican Party. That's the way you win. You can draw attention to yourself by denouncing both parties at the same time, and you can think that you're relating to a whole lot of people or being disabused and forgotten about, but you do a grave disservice in doing so because you're never going to win anything. You're going to guarantee Democrat victory in perpetuity. We need a strong conservative movement that takes back the Republican Party and then we have a strong Republican Party. It's hard work but it is happening.

There is a conservative ascendancy here. Why in the world waste what is happening here with this new conservative ascendance and weaken it and split it up by forming a third party? So far, not a single Republican is going to vote for government-run health care. If the parties were the same the vote would be unanimous, would it not? If the parties were the same, all the Republicans would be on board for this, in the House and the Senate, and they're not. I think one Republican in the House voted for government-run health care.

When cap and trade came up, eight Republicans voted for it. The rest voted against it. In the Senate, all but a couple of Republicans voted against the stimulus bill. If the parties were the same, sweeping majorities, health care would already be the law of the land if the Republican Party was the same as the Democrat Party. There wouldn't have been any tea parties. We wouldn't be having to mess around with all these various bills and CBO scores. ... The parties are not the same. We need more of this, and you don't get more of this by insisting that there's no difference between the parties.

Now, I'm the first to tell you, and I'm the first to agree that the Republican Party has screwed up and it needs to continue to find its legs, and with our help, it will have no choice but to become a traditional conservative party. We don't have Marxists in our party. We don't have Maoists leading the charge in our party. Those people have found a home in Obama's party and government but not in the Republican Party.

The problem is that there are people trying to confuse the issue. They're saying, "Well, the Republicans spent too much and they did this and they gave us new entitlements, they spend just like the Democrats, they all spend, they all spend the same." I get that. I fought them on those things. I was deeply upset and opposed to a lot of this spending. I had emissaries from the White House sent down here to try to get my mind right on these things. But they are not, as a matter of ideology, the Republicans are not seeking the destruction of capitalism and the private sector. They are not trying to hollow out the military. They are not undermining our intelligence services and so forth.
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There's no difference between the two parties. The Republican Party right now has lost its way. This conservative ascendancy can help it find its way. The Democrat Party has found its way, and it's the radical left way, and that's who they are now, and they have to be stopped. And they will not be stopped if a third party ends up being the result of this little internecine war in the Republican Party. They will be in power, the Democrats will be in perpetuity if a third party emerges out of our party.
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Look, the truth is, folks, that most of us know that the two parties are not the same. We're hearing a lot from the same people, or thinking that surrounded the Ross Perot effort or the Reform Party effort, more generally. It seems that some people are trying to tap into this group and then claim it represents most conservatives, Libertarians, Republicans, when in fact it doesn't. Now, we always had populist movements in this country on the left and the right. But we are not populists, we're constitutionalists, we are conservatives. And when a majority of us are in control of the Republican Party, the Republican Party wins. But it's not gonna win if there's a third party.

Hear, hear, Rush!

In 1992 conservatives broke away when Ross Perot ran as a third party candidate resulting in a split of the vote between Republican George H.W. Bush, Independent Perot, and Democrat Bill Clinton ... and Clinton won with less than 50% of the vote. I don't think conservatives want to see that scenario repeated in 2012.