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June 15, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:15
June 15, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #1
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And greetings to you, thrill seekers, conversationalists, and music lovers all across the fruited plane.
It's the award-winning Rush Limbaugh program, and we are here, bright-eyed and bushytailed at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, the nation's leading radio talk show, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
A thrill to be with you, as always, an honor.
And a delight.
The telephone number, if you'd like to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
President Bush, a big fundraiser last night, finally took the gloves off.
Oh, by the way, the Ditto Cam is on.
Be on for all three hours.
Finally took the gloves off.
I'm going to be honest, folks.
I always am.
I mean, it gets laborious around here carrying the water for the Republican Party or this administration.
You know, I mean, on a daily basis.
I mean, you can sit around all day long and try to appease people and get along with them.
But you watch your presidency, you know, whittle away by these never-ending attacks and so forth.
Finally, the president shows up last night and unloads.
And it was about time.
And let's just hope that this is the beginning of something.
The mainstream media more interested with the porn star that showed up at the Republican meeting last night than what the president had to say.
But that's okay.
We have three soundbites of what the president had to say.
Did you not know there was a porn star there?
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
I don't get it either.
We had a porn star in the White House for eight years running the country.
And so we have a porn star that shows up at the Republican Party fundraiser.
I would think this would make us even more diverse.
I would think that the secular left would be impressed with this.
Well, nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, we'll get to the Bush soundbites here in just a second.
As you know, yesterday, grab the Club Gitmo commercial, a mic, if you can have it, that we put together yesterday.
As soon as the broadcast engineer finds it in our large stack of things there, I'll play it for you because there's already been reaction to it from Capitol Hill.
And we, ladies and gentlemen, if you have not been to rushlimbaugh.com, you need to go and look at the brochure that we have published for Club Gitmo.
It's right there at the top.
You cannot miss it.
Did you see it, Mr. Snerdley?
Go take a look at this thing.
I got a funny letter today.
I got a funny email today.
One of the pictures is of a sailboat, you know, under the caption overlooking the bay.
And there's a picture of a sailboat.
You click on each picture and you either get an enlargement or another picture.
Well, when you click on the sailboat picture, what you get is a picture of a pot-bellied old guy with his swim trunks halfway down his butt on top of the mast.
So I get this email today.
Rush, there's something wrong with your Club Gitmo picture because there's a picture of a guy on a sailboat mast when I click on the sailboat.
So I wrote him back.
I said, no, it's the correct picture.
That's Senator Kennedy.
It is Senator Kennedy on the sailboat overlooking the bay or on the bay, being overlooked by the vacationers at Gitmo.
All right, here is the commercial.
By the way, folks, we're up and running on this.
We're already in the process of adding Club Gitmo t-shirts to the EIB store.
We're going to have at least one t-shirt with one slogan, maybe two.
I'll find out later today and pass it on to you as soon as I know.
We're also working on pots.
It depends on prices because we don't want to charge an arm and a leg for this stuff.
But we want to be able to offer Club Gitmo bathrobes and Club Gitmo soap.
And so we're seeing if we can find moderately priced suppliers on the wholesale level to stock these items in the EIB store.
Well, I think, folks, there's already been a response to it this morning in Washington at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Gitmo prison camp.
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont had this to say.
This idea of changing, changing the focus, producing props of chicken dinners and such, seeming to argue this is more a club med than a prison.
Let's get real.
These people have been locked up for three years, no end in sight, and no process to lead us out of there.
Guantanamo Bay is causing immeasurable damage to our reputation as a defender of democracy and a beacon of human rights around the world.
Again, I'm forced to say no.
Senator Leahy, it is you and your pals of the Democratic Party that are causing immeasurable damage to our reputation as a country.
And you are making us appear to be a weak paper tiger to our enemies.
This is no different than trying to appease Adolf Hitler, if you ask me.
It is exactly the same thing that's going on here.
So we also have a couple of other stories about this.
First off, I mean, this is just, this is idiotic.
Senator McCain, who wants to be president, says there's no doubt that the U.S. has an image problem because of allegations of abuse and torture at Gitmo.
He says that the key is to try the individuals held at Gitmo for any crime that they're accused of, rather than keeping them at the prison in perpetuity.
The military prison will be needed for years to come.
Rumsfeld said yesterday.
There's no alternative location to hold and interrogate the suspected terrorists held there.
He said, I don't know any place where we have infrastructure that's appropriate for that sizable group of people.
McCain said there's no doubt the U.S. has an image problem because of allegations of abuse.
However, he added the key to this is to move the judicial process forward so that these individuals will be brought to trial for any crime that they are accused of rather than residing in the Guantanamo facility in perpetuity.
So bring them to try.
They should be brought to U.S. courts and tried with U.S. lawyers, ACLU lawyers, and so forth.
It's just idiotic.
And to add to it, Senator Specter says he's going to hold hearings on Gitmo prisoners' rights.
As lawmakers of both parties continue to question whether the government should close the U.S. military detention center at Gitmo, Arlen Specter, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, has called hearings today to clarify the legal rights of those prisoners.
Legal scholars have argued for months over whether detainees at the Gitmo base should receive the protections afforded to prisoners of war or be classified as enemy combatants, as the Bush administration has argued, which drastically limits their rights.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Gitmo prisoners can challenge their detainment in U.S. courts.
So McCain wants trials and Specter wants hearings for these people at Guantanamo Bay.
So you can see the odds as they stack up against reason here.
Got to take a break.
We'll be back and continue the Rush Limbaugh program and the EIB network back after this.
Rich Galen in his Mullings weblog today says we have to be the dumbest superpower in the history of the planet.
The latest example of liberal intellectual rigor mortis is this business about closing down the prison at Gitmo because of allegations of abuse.
Oh, by the way, I was just told that we're having some problems with the website and the Dittocam speed problems, probably bandwidth problems.
We don't know what they are.
We're tracking them down.
We're working on them.
Be cool.
Be patient.
We are aware of it.
Mullings continues.
Senator Biden, who wants to ride the Gitmo train all the way to the White House, is the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He said on ABC's Sunday show, I think we should just end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners.
In this case, I agree with Senator Biden.
We should shut down the prison at Gitmo.
Then we should move the terrorists to the Delaware Correction Center near beautiful downtown Smyrna, Delaware, 15 miles from the capital of Delaware.
According to the state of Delaware's webpage, aptly titled Death Row Fact Sheet, there are 15 inmates who were on death row at the Delaware Correctional Center.
We could put the Gitmo guys in with them and see who's left standing after lunch, which is served on insulated dishware made of polypropylene in the inmate's cell and is eaten with a plastic utensil called a spork.
I got to tell you, I don't think forcing inmates to use a utensil called a spork is going to pass muster with the ACLU.
One of those unintentional ironies, the death row fact sheet lists first executed inmate John Turk, October 19, 1662.
Delaware's slogan, celebrating the fact that it was the first state to adopt the Constitution is included in the logo at the top of the page, it's good being first.
So, nevertheless, the point here is we could really put these guys in a rotten place for us to be told that these people are being abused and then to listen to how prisoners at the Delaware Correctional Center are being treated and how their meals are served is a pretty good contrast.
Senator McCain, yesterday, press conference on Capitol Hill.
He was joined by Bill Frist.
An unidentified reporter says, one of the challenging issues the U.N. ambassador will have to deal with is the U.S. image around the world.
Can I get both of you to comment on whether you think Gitmo should be shut down?
Here's McCain.
There's no doubt that there's a problem there that exists as far as America's image is concerned.
But I believe that the issue is more related to disposition of the prisoners than Guantanamo Bay itself.
I was there two years ago in 2003.
Senator Graham and Senator Cantwell and I were there.
And on our return, we wrote a letter to Rumsfeld saying, try them or release them.
I think the key to this is to move the judicial process forward so that these individuals will be tried, brought to trial for any crime that they're accused of rather than residing in Guantanamo facility in perpetuity.
Now, who was it that got all this started?
You remember who got all this started, Mr. Snerdley?
It was the New York Times.
It was Thomas Friedman, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times.
Thomas Friedman and the New York Times got all this started.
Closed Gitmo.
Just shut it down, Mr. President.
And that gave everybody up on Capitol Hill the cover.
They didn't have to be first, in other words.
They didn't have to be first.
I have no idea somebody shuffled the idea on to Friedman.
Tom, write this and we'll make you look like you know what you're doing and leading us here.
Well, I'm not naive to know how these things work.
You can't tell me that a bunch of guys on Capitol Hill are sitting around playing marbles and playing chess and all of a sudden read a New York Times piece, say, you know, that's a good idea.
That's not how this happens.
There are people trying to shut Bush down.
There are people trying to shut the White House down is what's going on here.
There are people who are trying to get the president of the United States to face some kind of tribunal and they want him tried, impeachment or otherwise.
So, you know, you have a little conversation back and forth with some journalists, go maybe to Tom Friedman.
Say, Tom, you know, what do you think about Gitmo being shut down?
And you make the case to Friedman.
Friedman says, yeah, yeah, it makes sense to me.
Tom, you write that, we'll provide you cover.
Man, he writes it.
Everybody else says, ah, somebody's come up with a good idea here.
Nobody on Capitol Hill probably wanted to have the, you know, the, had the guts to want to be first to suggest this.
So when it shows up in the New York Times, oh, there's our cover.
Same thing with David Broder in the Washington Post when it came to this deal on ending the judicial filibuster of the Democrats regarding the president's judicial nominees.
I think the same process takes place there.
I don't believe this stuff originates on the editorial pages of these papers.
And I mean this is no insult to these writers.
Don't misunderstand.
I just know there's a symbiotic relationship between Democrats and the press, the mainstream press, the Washington Press Corps.
I know this to be true.
You'd have to be an idiot to deny it.
Now, my point in brazing all this is, get this.
Friedman's column today suggests that we double the boots on the ground in Iraq, that Iraq is still winnable despite all that's happening.
We've got too much of an investment there, but we need to do this right.
We need to double the troops on the ground.
We need more boots on the ground, more troops on the ground because the Iraqi forces are training is not going fast enough.
Now, have you heard this before?
When did you hear that before, Mr. Sterling?
I want to know.
When did you first hear we need to double or massively increase the number of troops on the ground?
It was, it was, well, it was before John Kerry.
Kerry certainly picked up the refrain.
It was about 2004 sometime, less than a year after we were in there and during the campaign year.
It might have been Kerry, but sometime, I think it preceded Kerry saying, I think Kerry was one of the amen chorus members on this.
But we can do some research and find out when it was first stated.
But apparently, whoever said it didn't carry enough weight.
But it was the, it was Biden.
Well, I know it was a Democrat that said it.
It was the Democrats.
We needed, and we need to double the troops.
And a lot of people, double the troops.
You guys don't even want us to be there.
Remember this?
I never forget this whole process.
You know, the Democrats didn't want us to go there in the first place.
And they were talking about the unnecessary loss of life and the unnecessary loss of national treasure and all this.
And then all of a sudden, one day, some of them comes up.
You know, we need to double the troops.
We're not doing this right.
Roosevelt doesn't know what he's doing.
He didn't plan for the aftermath.
He didn't plan for the peace.
We need to double the troops on the ground.
I know Kerry did say it.
So now here it is brought back as an original idea once again by Mr. Friedman on the op-ed page of the New York Times, ladies and gentlemen.
I don't know if it was Wesley Clark.
I don't remember who it was.
I just, it was a chorus.
Somebody, I don't know who said it first, but I guess it really doesn't matter.
But it was a chorus then after that.
My only point is that everybody's under the impression the New York Times got this closed get-mo movement going.
Now there's this effort to double the troops on the ground.
And make no mistake, I think that the left would love to force the president to do this because that would be a tantamount admission things aren't working.
And it would also subject more troops to harm's way.
And that would open up the opportunity for the Democrats to bellyache and moan about that.
So I'm not sure if it's a trap or not.
And I don't think anybody in the White House would be fooled by it if it is.
But I find the way all this stuff makes its way into the marketplace of ideas, if you will, to be a little screwy, just a little suspicious.
Let me grab a phone call or two here.
want to start a new segment here, particularly the president last night at the fundraiser until we get back from the break at the bottom of the hour.
So David in Crofton, Maryland.
Hello, sir.
Hello, Mr. Limbaugh.
Yes.
It's a pleasure to speak with you, sir.
Thank you.
As you often say, you were born to host and I was born to listen to you.
Thank you, sir.
Hopefully, I'm one of those lucky callers that makes you look smart.
But I just wanted to comment on Senator Sessions today at the Guantanamo hearings that Senator Specter is holding.
Yeah, you know what?
I have to admit, I didn't get to see it because we don't have C-SPAN 3 here.
And it was on C-SPAN 3, so you are more informed than I. What's sessions say?
I have about a minute here.
If we could get to the point.
Basically, he was just talking about the fact that the whole tone of the session, of the hearings, is just ridiculous and that it's putting our military at risk around the world, inflaming the extremists in the Arab world and just really putting them all at risk.
And that the whole tone that somehow Guantanamo is the gulag, as Amnesty International said, the gulag of our day, is just absolutely absurd.
And I just really, really appreciated what he had to say because some of the Democrats were really making some of those.
He's exactly right.
He's exactly right.
And I must say that I made this point yesterday.
And if you don't believe it, you go to the website.
It's one of the lead quotes.
It's one of the lead quotes.
This is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
All this self-criticism, all this self-analysis here and beating ourselves up and talking about how mean and rotten we are is doing nothing but giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
And I guarantee Mullah Omar sent a guy out to say bin Laden's still alive and well.
If that's true, Mullah Omar bin Laden sitting over there in some cave in Pakistan somewhere laughing themselves silly over the likes of Patrick Leahy and Senator McCain and a whole bunch who are worried about this.
It's Mogadishu all over.
Yes, yes, yes, we are back.
Quick research.
It was Wesley Clark.
Ashley Wilkes.
Here's the quote.
However, Clark states in his newly published book, Winning Modern Wars, Iraq Terrorism and the American Empire, that his solution to bringing peace to Iraq would be to double the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to nearly 300,000 men.
This from the website, military.com, November 19th, 2003.
November 19, 2003.
This is less than six months after we went in there.
Wesley Clark says we need to double the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to nearly 300,000 men.
Now, keep in mind, Wesley Clark was running for president at this time, as were a whole bunch of other Democrats.
And the move was on to be all patriotic.
You know, we just went into war, and the Democrats don't want to be seen on the wrong side of that because the country's all raved up and ready to go and so forth.
The weapons of mass destruction is still a front page item.
And so the Democrats are trying to outdo Bush.
The Democrats are trying to say, well, we would even do it better.
Why we would even be more militaristic?
Why we would even be more hawkish?
Why we need to double the number of troops.
And that started the chorus because all the other Democratic candidates, except Dean, Dean probably didn't go along with this.
Who knows if he did?
My guess is he didn't.
But you know, Kerry did.
Kerry picked up on this.
It was a central part of his campaign.
And I remember talking about it because the Democrats were so opposed to this.
Remember, they were the friends with the French.
They were opposed to the United States.
The Democrats were, along with all of their allies, France and Germany and the others at the United Nations Security Council.
And so when the war finally starts, they do a 180 and start demanding more troops.
And I'm only making a point of this because that's Thomas Friedman's solution today on the op-ed pages of the New York Times.
And what Friedman suggests eventually becomes Democrat policy Is the point.
We'll keep our eyes on this.
President Bush last night ripped the Democratic Party as a pack of do-nothing obstructionists bent on derailing his agenda of reform, telling Democrat leaders in Congress that on issue after issue, they stand for nothing except obstruction, and that's not leadership.
It was an evening congressional gala at the Washington Convention Center.
$23 million was raised for House and Senate Republicans.
This amounted to the kickoff of the 2006 political campaign season.
The president drew standing O's from GOP Faithful as he hammered Democrats for offering no solutions to the nation's most pressing problems.
We have three sound bites on this.
And we'll start with number five, Mr. Broadcast Engineer.
And as I say, it's about time.
It really is about time we heard this.
This is, I mean, this is not politics.
This is the president reacting intellectually honestly to what the Democratic Party is doing.
I'm proud to be the head of a party that has a positive and hopeful and optimistic vision for every single person who lives in this country.
And I'm proud to be a head of a party that is driving the bait on all the key domestic and foreign policy issues.
Because of our achievements, the American people see us as the party of reform and optimism and results.
The party that is moving this nation forward.
All of us in Washington have a duty to the people who sent us here.
Political parties can take one of two approaches.
One approach is to lead, to focus on the people's business, to take on the tough problems.
And that is exactly what our party's doing.
Okay, so he starts on reciting the optimistic things and the positive things the Republican Party is doing.
And next, he starts in on the Democrats.
Simply do nothing to delay solutions, obstruct progress, refuse to take responsibility.
Members of the other party have worked with us to achieve important reforms on some issues.
Yet too often, their leadership prefers to block the ideas of others.
We hear no to making tax relief permanent.
We hear no to social security reform.
We hear no to confirming federal judges.
We hear no to a highly qualified UN ambassador.
We hear no to medical liability reform on issue after issue.
They stand for nothing except obstruction, and this is not leadership.
Yes, let's hear it.
About time.
Hubba, hubba, dooba-duba.
By the way, folks, I don't know.
Mr. Snirdly, I know, watches the news every morning here.
Have you seen anything about this on the news?
Yeah, very little.
There has just been very little about this on the news.
What am I hearing in the background here?
This is essentially a big black hole.
Wait a second.
Whether it's federal or state, cannot say what you're doing.
Have I got something on back here?
Oh, okay.
We got something on the mix minus.
Never mind, folks.
I got something in my IFB.
I don't know if you can hear it or not.
But nevertheless, we haven't heard much about this at all in the mainstream.
And this, you would think that the media would be all over this because Bush is accusing the Democrats of being obstructed as of being mean.
And yet they're ignoring it.
Why?
Why is this not all over cable news today?
And it may not be on the news tonight.
The evening newscast tonight, we'll have to wait and see.
Well, I know why.
I know why.
They don't want to show that.
They don't want to have to run to the Democrats and ask, what do you think about this?
They don't want to have to run to the Democrats and say, okay, Senator Leahy, Senator Kennedy, what do you think about what the president said?
They don't, this is Bush.
This is Bush as the leader of the Republican Party, not just the President of the United States.
This is Bush as a leader of the Republican Party, and they don't want that side of him seen.
You got one more sound bite.
And in this one, Bush calls the Democrat approach the philosophy of the stop sign.
It is the philosophy of the stop sign, the agenda of the roadblock, and our country and our children deserve better.
Political parties that choose the path of obstruction will not gain the trust of the American people.
If leaders of the other party have innovative ideas, let's hear them.
But if they have no ideas or policies except obstruction, they should step aside and let others lead.
You hear how this crowd loves that?
You hear that, folks?
Crowd's eating this stuff up.
People have been wanting to hear this for months out of this White House.
Well, it's a new new tone.
I don't know if it's going to last, but it's a new new tone.
And it's about time.
I can't tell you, folks.
I mean, a lot of people.
Why doesn't Bush say this?
Why doesn't Bush say that?
So we'll see if this continues.
It did this morning.
He spoke at the annual Energy Efficiency Forum Industry.
Officials from public and private sectors were there.
And here's a portion of the president's remark.
Summer's here.
Temperatures are rising.
And tempers will really rise if Congress doesn't pass an energy bill.
The American people know that an energy bill will not change the price of gas immediately.
But they're not going to tolerate inaction in Washington as they watch the underlying problems grow worse.
You know what's holding up the energy bill is the same old thing and war.
They just don't want the Democrats don't want to go along with anything that will create our own sources of oil.
OPEC announced today they're going to raise production, trying to halt the increase in the per-barrel price.
It didn't slow down the increase very much, if anything at all.
But there's something about this, and I've made this point on many prior occasions.
But over the course of my long and star-studded career as your host behind the Golden EIB microphone, whenever gasoline prices have gone up, at whatever stage they were, you always hear from the left, well, you know, it's about time.
Look at what they're paying over in Europe.
I mean, they're paying twice what we pay.
We're getting away with too much here.
We ought to be paying more.
We ought to be paying more for gasoline.
I've heard this 20 years.
Even when gasoline prices are not going up, some liberals, some environmentalists, wackos still, you know, get upset how little we're paying for gas.
Now, all of a sudden, the gasoline price is going up.
And who's leading the charge here to do something about it?
Very people who think that it ought to be going up.
Why?
Because they're not intellectually honest.
They're for anything that they think is going to hurt the president right now.
And if they think high gas prices will do it and harping on it, then of course they'll jump on the case.
It's just more evidence that you can't trust what comes out of their mouths is what they honestly and truly believe about things.
And that's why it'd be really dangerous to elect these people because you don't know, despite what they say.
Well, we do know what they believe.
That's the thing.
That's why we know that so much that comes out of their mouths is absolutely BS.
Now, the New York Times today did have a story, does have a story on the president's speech last night.
Their headline, Bush denounces Democrats as focusing on obstruction.
They didn't assign one of their top drawer reporters to it.
It's not a very long story.
They do quote him accurately in it, though.
I just, I haven't seen a whole lot of it out there.
And, you know, this is fire and brimstone stuff that's being ignored.
And I think understandably so.
A little political note here before we go to the break, the primary yesterday in Ohio, and it resulted, as many people thought, Pat DeWine, the son of Senator Mike DeWine, Ohio, lost his Republican primary last night.
He's a former frontrunner for the seat, and he's the son of Senator Mike DeWine.
He faded worse than Giacomo down the stretch.
This is Shannon Coffin at National Review Online.
He finished fourth with 12% of the vote.
He was a frontrunner at one time.
Then his dad goes and participates with the gang of 14 in this deal.
And the people of Ohio, I understand this because I'm a student of this stuff.
The people of Ohio are fed up with judicial activism long before DeWine makes the deal with the Democrats.
And they called us.
They told us that it was going to happen.
We had calls from Ohio, and we were told by voters in Ohio that this was a likely result, that the effect DeWine would primarily have would be causing his son to not do as well as thought and perhaps even lose and finishing in fourth place is losing.
Now, Shannon Coffin says there are often multiple factors at work here, but it's hard to believe that Senator DeWine's opposition to filibuster reform, otherwise known as the McCain mutiny, didn't do his son in.
Conservatives turned on a dime against DeWine and they nominated Gene Schmidt.
So there's obviously been some fallout here and Senator DeWine is left now to face that.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue in mere moments.
Hey, we're back.
Great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network.
Gary in Springfield, Missouri.
Welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us, sir.
Thank you, Rush.
Listen, I just want to say I think you're being totally unfair to Thomas Friedman, suggesting that he's just a mouthpiece for the Democrats.
In fact, I've annoyed more than one Democratic liberal friend by emailing his columns for the last couple of years when he's defending Bush's war in Iraq.
Yep, Friedman has.
But these are two separate things.
I mean, he is, I'm not denying that Friedman has not been supportive on occasion.
On occasion, consistently.
No, there were times he wasn't.
He did a mea culpa after the thing started.
He was of the, I can remember, I think we'll have to look it up.
I might be confusing him with somebody else.
I have to offer this as a caveat, but I distinctly remember him being one of the people that didn't think this was worth it and wasn't going to make it.
But he's also written pieces that were supportive of the effort, particularly after the elections in January.
And I noticed a distinct turnaround.
But that's, look, I'm not here to be critical of Friedman.
I'm just, I notice a pattern, that's all.
And I'm simply telling you how I interpret the pattern.
I could be wrong.
And why is Tom Friedman, by the way, untouchable?
You know, that's like me saying, I think people, it's rather unfair of people being critical of me out there.
It's part of the game.
You know, it's the league we're all in here.
But there's a pattern out here.
The New York Times editorial op-ed page suggests we get out of Gitmo.
Bam.
What are we talking about?
We're talking about getting out of Getmo.
I never heard anybody else talk about it till it came up.
And then David Broder talks about there needs to be a deal to stop the triggering of the nuclear up.
Bamble, what do we end up talking about?
What do we end up getting?
And I'm just suggesting to you that I don't think that journalists are the only people that have these ideas, and then they write them down, and a bunch of politicians in Washington who are otherwise occupied all of a sudden see, go, ooh, good idea.
I know there's collaboration between politicians and journalists, both sides, both parties.
Don't be naive and suggest that that doesn't happen.
We know it does.
But with a newspaper story going first, what it provides everybody else cover.
One of the things we know about Washington is nobody wants to be first to do something in case it backfires.
There's no fallback position if it backfires.
But if some journalists suggest it and it doesn't go anywhere, so what?
Journalist writes another column the next day.
No big deal.
And now all of a sudden double the troops as it's though it's a new idea when it's not.
In fact, I actually think, and we have to look this up, I think the guy who might have mentioned doubling troops first was the ex-Secretary of Defense, or the not Secretary of Defense, but he was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, John Shaley Kashvili.
He might have been the first to suggest it.
And Wesley Clark, I think Joe Biden, a bunch of people dumped on it.
Biden and McCain tried to claim it as their original idea when it all happened.
But all of a sudden, now it's back.
And all I'm saying is, let's see now what happens if this becomes the new clamor in Washington to fix what's wrong with Iraq.
Because you have to understand, there's a foundation for this claim.
The foundation for this suggestion we need to double the troops is we are losing.
We're not gaining ground.
We are in terrible trouble.
And of course, that's a template that is right out of the mainstream press, that Iraq's going horribly.
We're not accomplishing anything.
We're losing lives.
There weren't any weapons of mass destruction.
We got to get out of there.
Bamo, here comes the idea.
Let's double the troops.
Let's just see.
We'll be patient here, see how long it takes, if it happens at all, for this to become part of the daily rhetoric inside of Beltway.
Thanks for the call out there, Gare.
Back in just a second, folks.
Okay, back to the phones.
Quickly, Boston and James, welcome, sir.
Nice to have you with us on the EIB network.
Yeah, Rush, if anybody looks at what happened to DeWine and DeWine's son in Ohio, let that be a lesson to anybody that thinks McCain has any chance whatsoever of getting the Republican nomination.
I mean, he's dead in the water.
Look what happened to DeWine and the son.
Yeah, interesting, too.
Let me read to you here a brief from the Cincinnati Inquirer today.
One thing was clear from Tuesday's primary.
Whether they voted for Schmidt or McEwen or Tom Brinkman Jr., the party's most fervently conservative voters dominated the Republican primary, and they're clearly sunk DeWine's candidacy.
They did.
The one point about McCain that you all have to understand, though, he doesn't care about the conservative base.
He wrote that off in the primary of 2000, and he's not trying for the Republican conservative base.
So he doesn't see anything that he's done here is dooming himself because he's going to go about this without appealing and in his mind, without winning the majority of votes from the Republican conservative base.
We must take our top of the hour break, my friends.
We will do so because we must.
We will be right back.
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