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Sept. 2, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:15
September 2, 2005, Friday, Hour #2
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Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It is open line Friday at 1800-282-2882, as this nation and world are convulsed by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the seeming inability of the uh superpower America to take care of its own New York Times today,
Paul Krugman article, a can't do government, a can't do government, points out that before 9-11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America.
One, a terrorist attack on New York, which did happen.
Two, a major earthquake in San Francisco, which is not if but when.
And three, a hurricane.
A hurricane, now I sound like I'm coming from New Orleans.
A hurricane striking New Orleans.
In fact, the Houston Chronicle back in December 2001 said the New Orleans uh hurricane scenario may be the deadliest of all.
And uh even then FEMA was talking about a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.
So why did we look so unprepared?
In October 2004, the National Geographic laid out the entire scenario.
They based it on these FEMA uh projections of likely catastrophic events.
This was identified as the m as the potentially deadliest event of anything that could happen to us.
Now it's happened.
to us to the United States were we ready clearly we the government state federal local were not particularly local look I was a mayor this is a very important point I feel emotionally connected to this the mayor has the responsibility for the city first is the president city is the governor city It's the mayor's city.
And Rudy Giuliani understood that after 9-11, and all you saw was Rudy Giuliani going here, there, and everywhere, making things happen, uh becoming the voice of what was happening, getting things done.
Uh this mayor, uh uh I'm sad to say, uh simply whining.
Why isn't somebody solving my problem?
And I think whining just doesn't have a survival value attached to it.
This is not the first time, ladies and gentlemen, I'm into history.
In 1927, a great Mississippi flood rumbled down the United States and broke over New Orleans.
There's an account of this uh uh called the rising tide.
This was a very tough uh moment for New Orleans from which, according to this account, it has never recovered.
It is the reason why a lot of the oil industry is in Houston, of course the Galveston disaster, six to twelve thousand people died in that one, a hurricane uh at Galveston in 1900 or whenever it was, uh a hundred years ago or more, uh made uh Houston the uh the port uh that uh all industry turned to, but after 1927, New Orleans lost ground as well.
In fact, it lost ground in a very revealing way.
And I want you uh uh who are listening and more tuned to this history to refine it for me or tell me where I'm wrong.
But it seems to me that following this uh 1920s natural disaster, the response was in the nineteen thirties, a populist anger.
Huey Long and others coming along to create what we knew uh and what we've known since then about the politics of Louisiana, very much a populist, very much a socialist, if you will, welfare state, uh take care of the poor, we're gonna take care of everybody approach to politics, which tinged uh far too often, not always, but far too often by uh corruption.
Uh and uh that's kind of the way it's been known.
Uh the big easy has been known since then.
Now, look, um, you can face disasters in a couple of different ways.
And one of the ways that Americans have faced disaster is to clear the decks and allow private enterprise and and private people to do the maximum that can be done.
I remember after the Northridge earthquake, not anywhere near the scale of this Katrina catastrophe, but the last thing that happened earthquake wise in California.
Governor Pete Wilson at the time was told that the I 10, which was shattered, it was uh as the I 10 is down in uh in Louisiana, was the major east-west artery in LA, uh without which LA was coming to a halt.
And um he said, well uh we you know because they told him well it will take two years to do the uh environmental impact report and then we'll have to get of course federal funding and we'll have to do this and this and this and maybe in eight or ten years we'll have I ten back in place.
Pete Wilson said we're cutting I mean declaring an emergency, we're cutting through all of that nonsense.
We're applying the state money we'll get the federal money later.
He got a contractor who, if memory serves, was given an incentive and and and more profit if he got it done by a certain date certain so that he didn't make more money by just dragging it out with change orders like they do now on all public projects.
He was given he was given a he was given a deadline and I can't remember the name of the uh contractor off the top of my head maybe a caller can help us uh a deadline he he met the deadline I think it was actually early on the deadline qualified for the uh uh multimillion dollar bonus which absolutely nobody had any problem giving to him and I-10 was open within months.
Now I haven't seen that kind of leadership yet.
A cumbersome, slow moving, backside protecting bureaucracy integrated from top to bottom has uh begun to move.
But how are they moving?
I'm watching these cable news uh sites and here's this endless line of military trucks with pallets of they're telling us food and other supplies pouring into New Orleans as the buses with the people are leaving.
Who's gonna eat the food?
The looters is this a a a me MREs for looters program?
Uh I'm not quite sure I understand the connection between the food flowing in and the uh hungry people bust out.
1-800-282-2882 Roger Hedgecock InfoRush here's Brian in Martinsburg.
Hi Brian How are you doing, Roger?
Good to talk to you.
Nice to hear from you.
I guess I just want to voice my opinion on on whether or not to rebuild.
I think a lot of people were thinking this and nobody wants to say it.
And that's that maybe we we shouldn't rebuild.
I mean it it seems to me like we're gonna we'll we'll probably end up doing it you know as a testimony to human triumph and our you know ability to overcome and stuff.
But but what about common sense?
I mean this is a this is an area that we wouldn't build a city on today in terms of the fact that it's so low below sea level when it's it's in a you know the path of of major storms and I just think that we need to to very soberingly consider whether or not we should rebuild.
Maybe that those billions of dollars could be used to help people relocate somewhere else as far as what to do with that land.
I mean any number of things I guess uh you could you could bulldoze it and put a state park in or or whatnot.
I know that sounds extreme but um I that's that's what I think.
I heard yesterday on my local show from a uh Brian from a businessman who had businesses here in San Diego and down in uh New Orleans and uh he said that uh basically he said uh you need New Orleans as a port, you need it for industrial purposes, you need it for uh oil and refinery pipes that go through there and and all that by the way the pipes today are reduced flow but they actually have uh no break major breaks in them which is good news.
But in any event his idea was to make it industrial but to move the people back up to high ground.
Now you go to Baton Rouge according to my information yesterday is about 69 feet plus from sea level but you got uh eight to twenty feet below sea level in in uh New Orleans uh on most of it, not all of it but on most of it.
So uh you know uh is it logical to go back in there, spend billions to put up the levies that may or may not hold the next time we get a uh hurricane five whenever that is well if the historic buildings are there maybe we need to restore them, maybe we need to help them, maybe we need to s you know there's some historic stuff there that I'd like to see preserved.
There's a statue of Andy Jackson, maybe we can drag that up to higher ground.
I you know in other words, what is the logical thing to do here?
I don't know.
Uh I'd like to pick up all the buildings on uh uh and and pick them all up and then build about ninety feet of dirt underneath them uh and maybe have a uh a big see this is what the Maya did, you know, down in the they put these big platforms up and build their cities on platforms down in the jungle, otherwise they were just overcome.
So maybe we could uh maybe we could do that.
But just building it back the way it is, where it's sinking every year by almost an inch every year.
So uh this problem isn't going to get better, it's gonna get much worse, even if we pour in money to make the levies better.
So is it logical to continue to allow New Orleans to sink?
Uh metaphorically as well as physically.
Here's Shirley and Yacobo, Washington.
Hi, Shirley, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Good.
Uh I have a comment about President Bush and then the point to which I called.
Um President Bush has called on a convicted, disbarred, impeached ex-president to help with this.
You know, we got him out of office because he was uh just humiliating.
I mean he's a detriment to the public, actually, I think, and now he's called on him to help with this.
And then for my next point.
Well, well, let's let me respond to that one first, Shirley.
Um obviously uh your point is well taken.
The uh model is the tsunami relief where it it looked very bipartisan and very much to uh George Bush's credit to have his dad and and Bill Clinton out there raising money to help the tsunami victims.
It will look the same now.
It will be a good thing for the two of them on a on a bipartisan basis to be collecting money, and the money will go to the three governors, uh Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, they're gonna have a governor's fund to distribute into these communities, and that's a good thing.
Uh it's not an endorsement uh of Clinton.
It is a way in which Bush can say, look, uh this isn't uh an a Republican problem, a Democrat problem.
It's an American problem, and Americans of goodwill are working together, and you people who are sniping at me and trying to make partisan advantage out of this are marginalizing yourself because here's your guy Clinton working with me.
And that's why he's doing it.
I think that's pretty obvious.
Well, that may be true.
Um I think that the uh mayor blaming President Bush is absolutely ridiculous.
The blame goes to him and the governor for not evacuating those people out of there.
If there's people in the projects that had no TV, no radio, they should have had buses in there days before getting them out, and we wouldn't be looking at this mess right now.
Well, there isn't any question about that.
Of course, you can't uh, you know, on these things you you cry wolf a hundred times and then the hundredth time it becomes uh true uh and the worst happens.
Uh they've had a lot of a lot of hurricanes.
In fact, I went back and looked at this is interesting, Shirley.
I went back and looked at this.
Um, let me take the break and I'll come back.
Shirley, I appreciate the call because uh I was I was reading I shouldn't do this.
RFK Jr., Robert Kennedy Jr. in his uh essay about why uh hurricanes are increasing and they're increasing in ferocity and they're increasing because George Bush didn't sign the Kyoto uh treaty.
And and I had to go and find out, is there is this just floating on the miasma, the water of mindless liberalism, or is there an anchor to some kind of fact or common sense?
And I actually found one, but I don't think RFK is going to want to hear it, but he he and others and all of you will hear it after we return.
I'm Roger Hedgecock in for rush, taking your calls on Open Line Friday at 1 800-282-2882 after this.
That's a late great uh Louis Armstrong, of course.
Little Mac the knife.
New Orleans music all day today on Open Line Friday.
I'm uh exercising my prerogative as the uh fill-in host to salute New Orleans and the uh great music that has come out of that town.
Some real stink has come out of the uh Huffington Post.com in the form of a essay by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And uh I I don't know.
Uh but and again, I I'm tempted to marginalize this in the same way I did the whole discussion of race by just saying it's so far out of the mainstream it doesn't even deserve comment by reasonable people.
Because after saying it's a Hilly Barber's fault that there was uh Hurricane Katrina because he wrote a memo that convinced George Bush not to sign the Kyoto Accords.
And uh he says, okay, I'll delve into it just to this extent.
Quote, the science is clear.
This month, a study published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked to the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human induced global warming.
Now, this was peer-reviewed in The Rolling Stone in an enlarged essay that uh Mr. Kennedy put in there, uh, in which they uh clapped uh unanimously for these sentiments.
The only problem with them is they are not true.
Let me read the sentence again.
He doesn't quote the renowned MIT climatologists, so I have no idea who that is, but the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes.
Let me refer you, and thanks to James Glassman at Techcentral Station.com, Tech Central Station.com.
James Glassman's uh editorial in response.
He says giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new, and they are not increasing.
If you go to the website, he writes of the National Hurricane Center, check out a table there that lists hurricanes by category.
You know, they come in three, four, and five, with five being the worst, and then listed also by decades.
The peak, the peak for major hurricanes, that is categories three, four, and five, came in the decades of the nineteen thirties, forties, and fifties when such storms averaged nine per decade.
That's almost one a year.
See how bright I am.
I catch on to this stuff right away.
Almost nine.
Almost nine I was laughing at myself before I even said that.
Almost nine uh uh a decade, almost one a year in the 30s, forties, and fifties.
Now get this, and here's the point.
Um in the 60s, there were six such big storms.
In the 70s, four.
In the eighties, five, in the nineties, five, and for two thousand one, two thousand four, there have been three.
Categories four and five storms, also more prevalent in the past than they are now, category five storms.
There's only been three since the eighteen fifties, um, before this one, which got down to four before it hit land, by the way.
So the idea of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that there is a link between the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes and human-induced global warming is wrong on the first count.
Destructive hurricanes are not increasing.
They come in waves, like a lot of other things in nature.
They'll be more at some times and less at the other times, and we're not quite sure why yet.
We're also this human-induced global warming thing.
Uh, I don't have the ego necessary, and obviously Robert Kennedy does, necessary to believe that the actions of human beings, the mere ant scratchings on the surface of this vast planet, could have anything to do with changing the great natural ebb and flow of uh natural forces, as Rush said earlier in the week.
How is it you could possibly think you started Hurricane Katrina when you could do nothing to stop it?
Are you implying that if we really knew what we were doing, if FEMA was really on their game, they could have stopped this hurricane short of land.
Zapped it with the magic ray that we know they have, but they've been keeping from us because it's blacks who live along that coast.
I mean, that's as silly as this is getting.
Here's Vernon in Kansas.
Vernon, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Roger.
Yes, sir.
Um I'm a first-time caller, I'm a little bit nervous, but I would like to suggest something here that uh I don't want to take away anything from uh from the battle that's going on uh to correct things there after the hurricane, but I think there's a second battle going on, and I I would say it's a battle at the pump, the gasoline pump.
You bet number one uh in all the polling data.
In fact, I've got a polster coming on later in the program with some latest data on this, but you're absolutely right.
The number one domestic priority now is whoa, what about these gas prices?
Well, I'm suggesting that uh we have one weapon to fight it, and that weapon is conservation.
Use less.
And uh I feel like somebody needs to be leading us in this nationally, because in the long term, uh economically speaking, I think it's gonna have a great effect that we won't appreciate.
No, you're right.
I don't think we need so much leadership, Vernon.
What we need is people, and and and know what we don't even have to tell people.
Do you think you actually have to tell people that if you're gonna pay three, four, five, six dollars it hit in uh Alabama yesterday a gallon, uh, that you're gonna lose uh you're gonna use less of it.
Of course you are.
Uh as the price goes up, there's going to be less use.
At some point in time, there's going to be a supply of gasoline that the oil company is going to need to sell, uh, including uh Hugo Chavez's oil company, by the way.
Venezuela owns an oil company in the United States called Sitco.
And uh he was denouncing Bush on the same day as ambassador was asking for the petroleum reserve to release hundreds of millions of gallons of oil to sit go.
You gotta love these people.
Back with more after this.
A little Zydeco music there out of New Orleans.
Buckwheat Zydeco.
Hey, good looking.
Yeah, you.
I love this music.
Makes me happy every time I hear it.
A little sad today, though.
Reminds us of uh this great city.
It's still a question of whether it's dying or not.
The flames downtown appear to be gaining.
There is no water pressure.
I saw dozens and dozens of firefighting trucks moving in on the cable news networks this morning.
But uh there's no water pressure.
Where are the helicopters that can drop some water on this thing?
Stop the fire before it uh takes out the whole city.
Hope somebody's working on that one.
Uh once again, we have a giant convoy.
It must be hundreds of trucks long, bringing in something, but at the same time another convoy of buses is moving the other way, pulling the last uh what is it, fifteen to twenty thousand uh people.
Oh, uh MSNBC is saying eleven thousand left now at the um oh that's the astro uh uh up to twenty thousand on this other one here s left at the uh superdome.
So in any event, this fire is raging.
This morning there were explosions down by the river and an industrial chemical area affected by a fire, which is also still not out.
And obviously in this era of instant news and uh helicopter um cameras, we now all know where the problems are, and sort of hoping that the people in charge do.
All right, here's Walt uh in Utah.
Walt, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, Roger, thanks for sitting in for the big guy.
You deserve a lot of dittoes too.
I appreciate that.
Hey, you know, I think the news media have really stepped in their own cacao here uh right after this happened and they got in there, they're reporting all kinds of chaos and shooting and and creating a real element of fear.
And then I'm watching this morning Katie Kirk and Matt Lauer all of a sudden backtracking, severely backtracking, and and they've got uh a guy on the ground saying, No, we haven't seen anything that uh regards to that.
We've been here for days.
No, that's not really happening.
And I think what's happened is they have realized that in their in their eagerness to uh yet again make George Bush look bad, that they were actually hurting the rescue effort by by building up these huge scenarios of how bad it was in there and scaring the rescuers from even going in.
You know, there may be some of that.
It wouldn't surprise me, obviously, uh because of the motivation factor, but what really surprises me is that FEMA and other uh emergency officials on the ground reacted the way they did uh oh there's a shot at a helicopter, let's shut everything down, which they did for some hours on the helicopters.
They also had about uh they had several hundred boaters that had come in with their boats, private citizens who wanted to go into the city and continue rescuing people.
In other words, here were citizens saying, Look, I uh I live downriver, my my boat's okay.
I'm uh I'm coming in, uh I wanna I want to help out.
And they were prevented from going into New Orleans because oh, it's unsafe, you'll get shot at.
And then uh Fox went in there with their boat and they come across some guys and and and they said, uh, is there any shooting?
I will know.
Uh would you like to get some water?
No, I got some water and uh, you know, all that sort of thing.
So uh you know, was it overblown and generalized?
Sure.
Are there individual instances though of uh looting and mayhem and shooting and rapes and robberies?
Of course.
Uh a lot of people escaped out of the I mean the prison the prisons were underwater too, as well as all the other buildings, And there were escapes out of the local jail and prison that were unaccounted for, and uh those nasty people are out there somewhere.
Walmart lost all of its uh guns out of the local Walmart.
By the way, Walmart's made a contribution in a couple of different ways.
They gave a million bucks, and I gave they gave more than that uh uh the million bucks was at the beginning of the week, and then of course they gave up their inventory in the Walmart.
Uh how much are they up to now in Walmart?
Fifteen.
And uh 15 million.
And the uh the interesting thing is that uh the Walmart was followed, the National Chamber of Commerce saying that corporate donations to assist New Orleans could it exceed a hundred million dollars, and uh a lot of corporations coming back in there with their own private assistance, but again, stopped by government officials because oh, there might be some shooting.
Oh, in other words, the terrorists took over for the last 48 hours.
Oh, if we get shot at, we've got to retreat.
We can't go back in there.
We can't help, we can't save, we can't you can't go in there.
This is what's kind of griping me today.
Why not?
And where were the Louisiana National Guardsmen to uh from day one?
No, they weren't in Iraq.
They were they were there.
Stan in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Stan, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, Roger, uh good to be on here.
Uh I guess my call sort of connects to the fellow that called that you just spoke to.
But first of all, I'm noticing a difference in the coverage between what's happening in uh New Orleans and what's happening in Mississippi.
There doesn't seem to be the chaos of the people screaming and saying help us help us.
And is that A because the people are behaving differently?
B, because for some reason the aid is getting there more efficiently, or C, is the media deliberately exaggerating this for the reasons that you've uh elucidated earlier.
They're trying to get Bush.
I mean, what is the difference?
And it's graphic.
Yes, there's destruction, yes, there's people dead, yes, there's people I know who may be dead in Mississippi, but you're not seeing this this uh why me whining attitude, and I'm wondering what's the difference.
Well, it's a good point.
I think it might be a combination of the three.
First of all, you don't have standing water in Mississippi and Alabama.
There isn't this underwater thing that is uh causing so much chaos in uh in New Orleans uh of access in uh and and so the evacuation was easier uh in uh I mean yeah relatively easier.
It was never uh easy uh in uh Alabama and uh Mississippi.
You had uh more rural towns, even though you had Biloxi and uh and um what's the name of a couple of other of those towns there, but you had uh smaller towns, New Orleans obviously a big city with a big city population, and a big city population of frankly criminals.
Uh, you know, the smaller towns didn't have uh the hardcore gang members and others that uh that uh the mayor of uh New Orleans is talking about, the thugs, as the mayor put it, that took over the streets of uh New Orleans.
So it may have been a combination of those things, and then of course, because New Orleans is the big city, that's where the big easy and all that stuff, that's where all the media attention does go because that's where the media, you know, was in in big cities.
The media the media is a blue state media.
They don't cover uh rural towns and small towns where red state folks live.
Uh they they cover they cover blue state uh populations, and they don't cover red state populations.
So your point is well taken.
We had some looting uh around in and around Biloxi that was reported on the first day, but I haven't heard it since.
Uh you had uh you didn't have the local officials whining that it was uh uh Bush's fault.
Uh you had uh lots more cooperation, lots more uh uh National Guard, uh State Guard out on the on the deal.
So I, you know, again, that's a very good point.
What is it about New Orleans that's been different from the rest of the Gulf Coast?
Well, there's a lot of differences, and uh and I don't know, maybe some people down in that area or know that area can help us out in explaining that as well.
It's interesting to retreat to the BBC, for example.
Let's look at how they're viewing this thing.
Uh and their latest out of BBC News is uh headline, Questions Grow Over Rescue Chaos Subhead in New Orleans, state officials have described the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a national disgrace.
Well, the disgrace is of course the collapse of local government, uh, but uh they don't know that there.
Uh Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco says she has asked for a quote, Berlin drop, unquote, of food and water.
Now, I'm sorry.
The Berlin drop, for those of you who have uh you know, graduated recently from public school or younger uh 1947, uh the Soviets encircled uh West Berlin and uh said uh the convoys for food and so forth cannot get through.
Uh we're gonna starve you out.
This island of the Western world here in eastern Europe, eastern uh Germany, uh West Berlin uh is uh surrounded and uh give up.
And Harry Truman uh got uh I don't know, 150 or 200 uh C 47s and two engine planes and uh drove the food and water and so forth and flew over and landed at Templehof Airport and uh and the food and water got distributed.
So nothing was dropped in the first place, uh, Ms. Blanco.
There was not a drop.
If you tried to drop pallets of food and water into the water uh the around uh New Orleans, it would simply be in the water deteriorating.
Uh what in the hell good would that be?
Excuse me.
And uh moreover, we now have a convoy based on the demands of Ms. Blanco.
There's a convoy now visible on the screen of any of the uh cable networks of uh National Guard trucks laden with food, medical supplies, uh goodness knows what else, water, uh roaring into going through the watered streets.
I mean, they're the these trucks are high enough so they're just going through the watered streets like we hoped we have would have seen on Monday or Tuesday.
They're doing it today.
And the uh people that they're meaning to get the food and water and supplies to are leaving uh through a parallel street, leaving town on the buses that it were also promised.
So now we have the supplies coming in for a population that's leaving.
Not quite sure I understand how that's gonna work, but let's have that Berlin drop.
Let's drop the governor uh right over uh New Orleans and let her take care of the situation she didn't take care of in the first place.
By the way, the levy reconstruction, which is the responsibility of the Federal Government, the Corps of Engineers, levee repairs are taking place.
The water uh levels have uh of course stabilized.
Uh and uh the levee repairs are taking place and there will probably be some pump out beginning, they say, in a couple of weeks, but we still have that problem.
All right.
We're gonna take uh a break.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
What is all this mean for the president on the political level?
Back with more from our polster, Kellyanne Conway.
Uh after uh after the Kellyanne Conroy after this.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush Limbaugh, a little traditional Dixieland there.
I've lost my heart in Dixieland by the original Dixieland jazz band as we uh well mourn for what is happening on this whole Gulf Coast area and particularly to the great city of uh New Orleans.
Now I wanted in this segment to get uh quickly to uh Kellyanne Conway, and I apologize for uh bumbling the name here because Kellyanne's an important person.
In fact, I love this award, Kellyanne that you got.
One of the hundred w Washington women of genius.
Now I'm convinced there are a hundred women who are genius in Washington, but not men.
I don't think I could ever say there was a hundred men that were geniuses in Washington.
Oh no.
You know, women outnumber Washington women outnumber men in Washington, apparently, and so uh we had a larger pool to select from.
There you go.
You were the 2004 Washington Post crystal ball winner for most accurately predicting the elections there as a fellow recovering uh attorney, uh welcome you to the program.
I appreciate your time.
Let me ask you about the uh Kellyanne, let me ask you about the uh implications of all of this week for George Bush.
Do you have any data that uh would uh would give us any indication of what his leadership or lack thereof has done to his polling numbers?
Let me say from the beginning that uh I always refer to the unbearable lightness of approval ratings, and I said that when the president's approval ratings were about eighty-five to eighty-seven percent quickly after nine-eleven.
I say it now when they're at about 42 to 45 percent, in some polls even lower, because approval is not a very deep measurement.
I married the one man in this world to whom I was deeply committed with whom I was deeply in love, not the twenty of whom I had approved.
So asking people do you approve or disapprove, and then extrapolating from that, oh, people are upset about the war, or he should mate with Cindy Shane, or they don't like Sean Roberts, he has horns on his head, or in this case, they think that he's doing a bad job In terms of leadership on the devastation of Katrina, then we're confusing causation with coincidence.
To get answers on those specific questions, you must ask people about those specific questions.
And the data on uh the handling of Katrina is very early and very sketchy, and most of it has been web-based.
Um you've got a very you've got uh almost this schizophrenic uh mindset going on here, Roger, only because it is very part of human nature to want to b bind together and even uh occupy under one flag and support the president no matter who he is in a time of national crisis.
And I think Americans are starting to look at this as a time as a time of national crisis, no matter where they live.
But number two, the conflict lies in that we all want to rage against the machine.
People do want to point the finger.
There are people feeling desperate, and uh even though it is very easy, I think, and legitimate to blame local government, perhaps even the governor's response, certainly the mayor of New Orleans for looking the other way uh at the looters and and being unprepared.
People remember, they are very familiar to the residents there, and they're the ones closer to home.
So it's going to be difficult for people to train their ire on some of their leaders.
I think a week or two from now, you'll see the president's approval ratings st steadily go upward because of a combination of recognizing that at times of crisis in this country, he's been there.
He's he's also been asked to be the the healer in chief as well as the commander in chief.
The number one issue to Americans right now is still Iraq.
Gas prices have gone up in importance over the last four or five days.
That is a direct result from Katrina, but nobody fixes blame on Uncle Sam and Big Brother so much as Mother Nature.
Kellyanne Conway with us uh now.
Obviously, uh let me let me step back because a week ago the news was uh Cindy Sheehan and uh she had dominated the uh national uh media and the war in Iraq and the and the reaction against the war.
What was the net effect, do you think, of Cindy Sheehan on uh George Bush on the public support for the war?
Well, the the Washington Post ABC poll, I think asked that question best.
And I love quoting media polls when I can, when I can interpret them, look through the crosshabs and methodologies because then it gives you this other layer this layer of insulation because people say, Oh, you support the president or you support the Republicans.
I'm a conservative, my polls are not.
If my polls are no good, I wouldn't have been in business all these years.
So I love to support I love to quote the media polls when they show what this one does.
Eight in ten Americans say that Cindy Sheehan's protest has had absolutely no impact on their attitudes toward Iraq and the war.
Now that's significant, Roger, because if it's eighty percent by implication, it includes people who are against the war in Iraq and who support Cindy Sheehan.
But they're saying that she just hasn't moved their needle one way or the other.
Cindy Sheehan got the kind of tripartisan support that uh people in politics die for, but she just she got it in the wrong way.
She's got Democrats, independents, and Republicans all agreeing that her efforts have had absolutely no impact on their consideration of Iraq.
And that's a surprising outcome, it would think, given what the uh as you say, the tripartisan, given what the Democrats and the media were trying to do with Cindy, making her the uh beginning, as they put it down in Crawford, the beginning of the end of the war.
And I should tell you that the dates of that poll were August 25th to 28th, and of course Katrina hit the next day.
And uh so this was this was right up to when Cindy Sheehan was the lead story, I think, second only to Natalie Holloway and Aruba, frankly.
But um, this was a very large sample, nationwide survey, ABC Washington Post, and I should say in that same survey, they found that 53% said they support what she's doing, 42% oppose her actions.
Um 53%, she can run around and say I've got a majority of people supporting me.
Well, of course, Roger, I mean we all we all feel for her, uh we all believe that she's got the right to grieve however she wants.
But that does not mean that people believe that she has nicked the president's armor, that he in fact should sit down and have a face-to-face meeting with her, or I think more to the point of the 80% who say that she hasn't changed their opinions on the war, she really hasn't had a positive effect on uh the war's outcome uh for anyone.
All right, Kellyanne Conway, thanks so much for being here.
Kellyanne Conway, the polling company.
Some of that lady latest data, pretty interesting stuff.
We'll be back.
I'm Roger Hitchcock on the Rush Show after this.
The traditional funeral music of New Orleans.
Is it the death of New Orleans or the beginning of a rebirth?
It's certainly a turning point for the entire Gulf Coast.
We'll continue to talk about that here on the Rush program.
Kelly Ann Conway, I want to hold you over, talk a little bit about Judge Roberts.
I want to talk about uh other things coming up after this weekend.
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