Rush Limbaugh: Trump Must Relaunch Campaign Around Promise to ‘Preserve the American Way of Life’

Conservative radio host legend Rush Limbaugh said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump should relaunch his 2020 re-election campaign around a promise to preserve the American way of life from the war declared by the left.

Limbaugh, who is being treated for lung cancer, shared that he was concerned about the campaign after Saturday night’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which suffered from low attendance and a somewhat distracted message.

It was a sign, Limbaugh said, that the themes that won the 2016 campaign would not be as effective in 2020. Instead, he said, the fight had to be about the current conflict facing the country, which some have likened to a civil war over the country’s founding values.

He suggested that Trump re-launch his campaign. “All of the language should revolve around a singular promise: to preserve the American way of life,” he said.

Limbaugh referred to a recent column by Michael Goodwin in the New York Post, which in turn referred to an essay by Thomas Klingenstein, chairman of the Claremont Institute, in The American Mind.

Klingenstein wrote:

What is the American way of life that Republicans should want to preserve? It would not be difficult to reach a consensus on this question among Republicans. They want to preserve, and in some respects recover, what Americans thought was the right way of life until a generation or two ago.

…

Although we understood ourselves as individualistic, we believed that happiness (a worthy life) requires doing good in this world. And so volunteerism and sacrifice for the common good was highly valued and publicly honored. This meant more than voting and obeying the law: it meant serving in the military and participating in civic organizations, local government and political parties, and teaching one’s children what it meant to be a responsible citizen. For most people, happiness was found in family, church and community.

The American way of life, Klingenstein said, was opposed by the divisive nature of multiculturalism, and the false history of the New York Times‘ “1619 Project”:

According to the 1619 way of thinking, we are not one people but a collection of different peoples. This teaches race consciousness, not colorblindness. The 1619 version of history is backward-looking and teaches us that our top priority should be reparations. Its major contention—that capitalism is a form of slavery—is a brief for socialism. In a sentence, the 1619 Project teaches that America—its values, customs, and institutions—is evil.

He concludes: “A vote for a Democrat at any level must be seen as a vote for the multicultural project to destroy America. As Flannery wrote, ‘If Democrats want to repudiate the multicultural agenda, God bless them … but Republicans must compel them to do that or to get unelected.'”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.