Listen to Rush…
(...explain the historic shift we've witnessed with Bush's huge re-election)

So let me just ask you a question, folks: Are you feeling pretty good today? I'll bet most of you are. Well, what an afternoon and night and morning it has been. Senator Kerry has called President Bush to concede. Senator Kerry will announce his concession at one o'clock from Faneuil Hall in Boston, right in the middle of this program, ladies and gentlemen -- where that concession deserves to be. Greetings and welcome. It's the Rush Limbaugh program. It's the EIB Network. Our telephone number, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address is Rush@eibnet.com. Before we go any further, I want to thank Bill Clinton for once again helping to get out our vote, joining the Kerry campaign trail out there, particularly in Philadelphia, Florida, and Arkansas. We have, actually, a lot that we want to do. One thing about this Kerry phone call to Bush; I don't know if you heard this.

CNN reported earlier today that when Senator Kerry called the president to concede, he lectured him on the "divided country" and how Bush needs to unify us and so forth. The stuff that Bush continues to have to put up with. As I say, a lot to do today. It was a sweeping, sweeping victory, and I'll tell you, one of the focuses, or foci, that I want to eventually get into today. We're going to include a lot of your phone calls today because I know a lot of you want to share in all this. What is it that's with the Democratic Party? (program observer interruption) What? Yeah. I don't want to sit here and be an "I told you so," but I'm going to do a little bit of that. Throughout this year, and throughout maybe even the past two years, you all remember the moments that there has been shaky confidence.
You have called on and off worried about the power of the mainstream press. You've worried about the ability of the mainstream press to shape opinion out there, and throughout this period I tried to tell everybody that there's a historical shift taking place in this country, an historical shift not just ideologically between liberals and conservatives, but a historical shift taking place in the media -- and last night, all day yesterday, this whole campaign. We've now got the evidence of this. This was a huge, huge sweep. This is, for George Bush: the first president with 51% of the vote since his father in 1988. Bill Clinton never got 50% of the vote. Bush is the first to do so in 12 years. The most votes ever for a president, including Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush last night. John Kennedy's electoral popular vote majority, his win in 1960 was 112,000 votes -- less than Bush's margin in Ohio, ladies and gentlemen.

The Senate. There are five pickups in the Senate. We're going to go in there. What does that make it, 55 seats, Mr. Snerdley? Fifty-four? Fifty-five? It's a net four, I'm sorry. Well, 54-44. So net four. (Florida Democrat Senate Candidate) Betty Castor conceded today. Tom Daschle is out, although he hasn't announced yet. The Puffster is gone. Folks, look, I know you've heard, "Rush doesn't sound all that exhilarated." Wait a second. Now, let me explain this to you, folks. You're going to have to believe me on this. Let me tell you about my day yesterday. We're sitting here, and let me tell you about the first wave of exit polls. This has to be a major, major topic, because the same media that was in the tank for John Kerry throughout this year was involved in this consortium to do these exit polls. The first wave of exit polls had a sample, and I knew this on the radio yesterday. I didn't say any of this to you because I was suspicious.

The one thing I did say and you will remember, the one thing I said was, "I am suspicious of this, because I think that these exit polls are being used much the same way the pre-election polls were, and much the way the post-debate spin was in order to depress you and to suppress Republican vote." The first wave had a Kerry landslide, ladies and gentlemen. I don't have the numbers in front of me here. They had Kerry up by twenty in Pennsylvania. They had him up by a minimum of five in every battleground state and in some cases, higher than that, in these exit polls, the first wave -- and they got published in places! I didn't specifically mention the numbers, but it was at that point I was suspicious of this from the get-go because this didn't jibe with anything, and then I learned that the sample that they were using for the first wave of exit polls was weighted 60-40 female. Then I learned that the sample was predominantly coming from cities. No rural polling places and no suburbs.

I'm saying, "This was so wrong." The pre-election polling, if you recall yesterday's program, all of the polls lined up. Well, we had to help Gallup get there with my analysis, but all the polls lined up as this turned out: 51-48. Gallup had it 49-49 but with my help analyzing the undecideds for them in a more correct way, Gallup also gets it right with my help with 51-48. All the major polls -- and Zogby yesterday afternoon about 4:30 or 5:00 puts on his website that Kerry's going to get 311 electoral votes to Bush's 213. This is before a single vote has been counted. The Kerry people were on TV, and you could see it: They were giddy; they were happy. The snarl was gone from Tad Devine's face. Lockhart could barely contain himself. They were just giddy. They were excited. They could barely contain the fact that they knew they had "won," all through four in the afternoon, five in the afternoon, six in the afternoon.
And I'm sitting watching all this and, like everybody else, I'm going through a roller coaster of emotions, and I'm thinking, "Well, this is..." and let me tell you why we all believed the exit polls. Go back to when you're a kid. Let's go back. My first election that I remember really is 1960, and from every election forward up until 2002, when Dan Rather called a state, it was a state. When Dan Rather or any of these networks --CBS, Cronkite -- when these used their polls to call these states, that was it, and they did it early, and the exit polls used to be pretty much right on the money. Those of us old enough have had sort of enough of a lifetime to develop a pattern of trust with these things. But this year has been unlike any year that I've been studying politics, have been interested in my life in the sense that the mainstream press is totally in the tank.

You know, Evan Thomas said that the mainstream press was going to get Kerry 15 points. I actually think now he was right. I think that the mainstream press did get Kerry 15 points, and were it not for the fact that they were in the tank for him -- offered no scrutiny of his policies, no criticism whatsoever -- this would not have been even as close as it was. But still, it's three points in the national popular vote -- 3.4 or 3.5 million votes -- an electoral majority now, and Kerry has conceded. And all of these exit polls had just the exact opposite and all the media believed it and you could see that they were trying to convey the attitude that Kerry won without using any of the numbers. Then as the returns began coming in last night -- and I wish I could share some of these notes with you. I'm e-mailing my friends and I'm talking about on the phone. I'm sitting there and I'm saying, "You know what's going to happen? We're going to get some returns tonight that are going to blow the holes all through these exit polls, and there are going to be some awful long faces and we're gonna be seeing them on TV tonight and we're going to be thinking about how they look in the Kerry campaign headquarters," and, lo and behold, my wish came true.

Here came the actual vote counts. Do you realize all across this country, people had decided this election was over before one vote had been counted, on the basis of what I am convinced were fraudulently collected and fraudulently reported exit polls? I don't believe this was an accident. They were too off, way off for this to have been an accident. I don't think this is a poll screw up. I think there was an attempt here using the first wave and then the second wave to try to affect the outcome of the election just as the press has been attempting to affect the outcome of the election.

Look, when we've got CBS doing what they did with their forged document story and all of the 60 Minutes episodes and all the attention they gave Bush enemies and critics; did not give one shred of attention, one bit of time to any of Kerry's critics, it's easy to make the leap that, "Well, why should it stop when the election starts? Why should it stop when the exit polling starts?" and this is going to be looked at. Jeff Greenfield on CNN. I was up till 5:30 this morning, folks, and I was sitting there and I was waiting for one of these states to be called. All it would take was New Mexico or Iowa for one of these states to be called, and no, they weren't going to call it. They had called all kinds of states much earlier that were much closer than it turns out New Mexico is or Iowa, but they still, they couldn't make this call because Kerry wouldn't concede, holding out all of this hope.
I finally, at 4:30 I said, "You know, I'm going to leave the library. I'm going to go up and watch this in bed," because I knew I had to go to sleep eventually. I didn't want to spend all night up because I didn't want to have no energy for this program today. But about five o'clock, I turned over to NBC for the first time, and for the first time all night I was getting mad. I was happy all night long. For the first time I was getting mad watching Brokaw make the case that Kerry had to go count all these votes in Ohio, all these provisional votes, given all they went through, given all the hard work, and I said, "Why don't we go count all the provisional votes in Michigan?" and, "Why don't we count all the provisional votes in Wisconsin?" Bush lost Wisconsin by far fewer votes than Kerry lost Ohio. You don't see anybody out there saying, "We ought to go count our provisional votes."

Kerry is doing this only because he lost. There was no evidence of fraud or chicanery or anything of the sort. I turn over to CNN and much the same sort of sorry lament was going on, "Oh, woe is Kerry, we understand." The stories are totally about how bad the Kerry people feel, blah, blah, blah, blah. "Bush might go to his party. Kerry's party has been canceled." But Jeff Greenfield weighed in on this exit poll. He knows what's up. He knows that there is going to be "hell to pay." That was his phrase: "There will be hell to pay for this," once the exultations of this victory wind down -- and there will be. Now, I'm not saying the media is going to lose its reputation over this because they didn't lose their reputation over calling Florida wrong back in 2000. But I do say that they are losing their dominant influence, folks. It no longer exists. Everything that I have said throughout this year, and everything I said yesterday about the exit polls and, "Don't believe them no matter what they say. Wait till the votes count. This is going to be okay."

My upbeat attitude yesterday, it proved out. It came to pass. We are amazingly victorious yesterday. You look at all the Senate seats. Wait till you hear the sweep. Wait till you hear what happened throughout the states, what happened throughout the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate. The Republican Party controls everything, including now Supreme Court nominations. The big question that the liberal Democrats face, and I will confess I tuned into a liberal talk show today on the way into work because I wanted to hear what they were talking about, because I wanted to see where their attitude is today because my guess was that they're not going to get it right. They're in an utter state of denial, an utter state of denial of reality.

They will not admit what really happened. They won't admit a good economy when it's right in front of them. In fact, they try to invent a bad one. They will not admit the reality of our jeopardy in the war on terror. They will not admit the reality of why and how they are going wrong. I'm gonna tell them today on the program, with compassion. They do not understand why the gay marriage amendments lost. They really don't. They don't understand, for example, I've always said to people in our pro-life movement, I said, "Look it. If you want to win this, you don't go up to pro-choicers, wag your finger in their face, point your finger at them and start calling them names, calling them a sinner, insulting them and telling them they're wrong. They're just going to rebel against you." Talking to a liberal on the phone last night, a friend, just distraught as hell. "I don't know my country anymore. The things I believe in..."

I said, "Well, let me tell you what it's been like being conservative for 40 years. We didn't get where we are overnight. It took 40 years of loyalty and dedication to our beliefs, loyalty and dedication to our core principles, and we finally figured out that to win we had to persuade people's hearts and persuade people's minds, not impose things on them. For example, you like gay marriage. You think gay marriage ought to be the law of the land. Fine. Fight for it, but change the minds of the American people in the process. You don't go get judges in Massachusetts telling the legislature that it has to pass a law legalizing marriage, and you don't have a mayor in San Francisco who violates the law and starts marrying people who under our law at present are not entitled to be without causing a backlash. You are hurting yourselves with your own procedure, with your own behavior."

The left doesn't understand this. They have this sense of entitlement to power and superiority. Whatever they want should happen now. They don't understand having to fight for thing things -- and you know why? Because they haven't had to fight for things. They've had the media. They've had willing accomplices that have never questioned them, have never forced them to debate, have never forced them in the arena of ideas to win there. The only way they can win is by forcing judges to write law against the will of the people -- law that the will of the people would never have written in Congress or any state legislature, and until they figure out the simple things -- Why they're losing; why they're heading in the wrong direction; why they are causing a backlash against their own beliefs and their own party -- until they do this, this slide that they're in is going to continue, my friends. As long as we on our side remain true to our core principles and our core beliefs, and remain optimistic and remain confident, we're going to continue to triumph here.

You take a look at the two presidential candidates. Just take a look at the two presidential campaigns. Let me ask you, which of the two had more dignity, which of the two had more class. What won in America yesterday? Dignity and class, steadfastness, ironclad policies, decisiveness. You know, Senator Kerry, we all called him flip-flopper, actually it's not what it is. Senator Kerry is not decisive. We're getting an idea how Senator Kerry would behave in a crisis today. How long has it taken him to concede? Do you realize if it were reversed, and Bush lost by 3-1/2 million votes, and there were something like 130,000 outstanding votes in Ohio and he was hiding in the White House and not saying anything for all this time, do you know what the left and the media and the Democrats in the media would be saying about him today? Here's Senator Kerry showing his decisiveness. He's finally made the decision.
There's a world of difference here, and until they realize... One of the things I heard on this radio show today: "We've got to really drill home the point that people don't have health care." This liberal said, "We've got to really drill home the point that corporate chieftains are obscenely rich and firing people with no health insurance, and there's no minimum wage!" Guys, wake up. Liberals, wake up. This is not working. This is the United States of America. Our prosperity has gone way beyond the way you look at it. People who made $50,000 a year voted for Bush, they don't understand that, either. How can these people vote for the rich? They want to be rich someday. They want to earn what they have. They don't want it given to them and mandated, they're gonna get it by the government, my good friends liberals. You don't understand where you are in your own country and you don't understand where your own country is or is going. Until you do, there are going to be many more days like yesterday in your future.