I have never met Rush Limbaugh, and I am fairly certain he has no idea who I am.  I haven’t been a lifelong fan of his, either, but I remember exactly where I was when I first heard him on the radio. 

As a recovering liberal sometime in 2000 and new to the Bay Area, I was fuming about the anti-Israel press in connection with the Second Intifada.  One morning after playing taxi mom, I was surfing the radio stations when I heard this loud, booming male voice say something like “Folks.  Let me explain to you first the history of Israel and what is going on here.”  I didn't know who he was but I was captivated because this radio host got it right.  Was he a local San Fran guy?  Seriously, after a year living there, I knew that couldn’t be!  Why was no one else in the press explaining it like this?  NPR, which is almost required listening in the Bay Area, got it all wrong.  This chap was spot on! 

When the commercial came on, I darn near drove off the road when I heard it was the Rush Limbaugh show.  Even though by now I considered myself a Republican, I was still riddled with leftwing bromides so I thought he was a moron, a racist, a troglodyte, from a lost era.  But in minutes, he just laid out the entire history of Israel, clear as a bell.  It was easy to understand, it was organized.  There was no racism or anti-Semitism, or idiocy.  For the first time since we moved to Marin, I felt like I had a secret radio friend who understood me. 

As the years progressed and we tried to raise our children in the morally bankrupt s---hole that was the Bay Area, I found out that I wasn’t alone.  There was an entire country out there who thought the same way my husband and I did.  At Little League games and swim meets I started collecting conservatives and keeping their numbers and names handy.  I even submitted a classified ad to our very liberal synagogue, something like: “Politically conservative Jew seeks others.”  These Bay Area conservatives not only became my life friends, but morphed at one point into the San Francisco Tea Party.  Talk radio and at some point the internet, were integral to our survival in a neighborhood where mayoral races were between Progressives and Socialists.  (Kind of like the current Democrat primary.)  If you read the paper or watched TV news (and Fox was in its infancy at that time so it didn’t have the impact it does today),  you might not know that the world of talk radio was populated by millions of conservatives. 

When I moved back to New Jersey in late 2013 and started my own home practice for yoga, I needed “talk” in the background.  Music didn’t work for me—my teacher in California would talk us through an entire practice and I needed to hear that droning on as I went through my routine.  It became my habit, then, to do yoga while listening to Rush.  I loved the irony.  I also loved watching raw food-loving, Green Deal=proselytizing, Obama acolyte yogis' heads explode when I told them that.

I was doing yoga when Rush made the announcement about his diagnosis of lung cancer.  I knew something was wrong when he was out—first for the birthday, then a cold, then the flu, then it was a cold after all.  It just didn’t add up.  We don’t know much.  It’s advanced (stage 4) cancer and I believe he said he had a mass.  He knew, as we all know, when it comes to cancer, one is facing the battle of his life. 

Yet if anyone can beat this, Rush can.

He must. We need him. There is no one else on the planet like him.  No disrespect meant to the other conservative radio jockeys out there, but Rush is truly irreplaceable, one of a kind.  We need him to be around for our children and grandchildren, when they have that “aha” moment politically and need a friendly voice on the radio who can elaborate on our political history.  A like-minded voice out there on the airwaves who gets angry when we are angry and disgusted when we are disgusted.  A fellow traveler on a conservative journey who scoffs at the idiocy of the left when we scoff and is passionate about this country, its people, our history and values when we are so passionate.   

Rush breaks things down for us when they are a mess.  He understands the left and the weaknesses in our own party.  Rush isn’t always right, but he comes darn close most of the time, even with half his brain tied behind his back, as he says.  And he interjects humor and charity into all that he does.  The fact is, while he educates some and informs others, reminds many of this or that, and marshalls the facts on the topic du jour, he has been a beacon in the darkness and a constant reminder of the light, of all we share, of the goodness in our hearts and our love of G-d and country, despite the constant onslaught from the left coloring us as monsters. 

Rush has taken care of us, all of these years (and made obscene profits from it, bully for him!) and gotten us through some rough and very lonely political patches.  There is no question that his audience made him.  But Rush also empowered us in his audience.  Now we have his six. Rush may be on loan from G-d, but the payment isn’t due yet.

Our message to Rush: We will not let you lose this fight. 

This is the first time since President Reagan that this country has regained its footing.  Four more years of Trump will help but it will not be enough to get cocky or solidify a political stronghold.  It will not be enough to get through to the mushy, triggered, snowflake brains out there supporting communists in the Democrat Party, thinking tolerance is about educating five year olds about the LGBTQ spectrum but being fine throwing conservatives in gulags to be re-educated, or worse. 

Rush is a constant reminder on the radio to all who refuse to study history, that it is doomed to repeat itself if we ignore it.  For that, he simply must survive.   

His audience is devastated by the news, but will stand by him and pray for him.  To Rush we say: Oh, you have millions praying for you right now. Harness the love that people, who never met you but know you, have for you.  And every time it gets hard or painful or you think you can’t fight anymore, anytime any doctor gives you bad news, I want you to have one image in your mind:  The Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  That old bird is a tough SOB.  She’s kicked cancer in the hind quarters every time it reared its ugly face—cancers like pancreatic cancer that few survive and her own battle with lung cancer. 

I want Rush to see her in his mind’s eye.  Gain strength from her battles with this wretched disease and be reminded it is because of people like her, that Rush himself must continue to exist.   

Image credit: CNBC, via YouTube, screen shot