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Nov. 15, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
November 15, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #2
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You know how you say Jimmy Carter in French?
Jacques Chirac.
I'm not even making this up.
James in French is Jacques.
Chirac starts with a C and has six letters just like Carter.
Well, guess what old Jacques Chirac said yesterday?
He gave a speech, and he said that France is in a profound malaise.
The M word.
That's exactly what Carter said.
Remember when Carter went up to Camp David, came down from the hill and told all of us Americans that we were in a national malaise.
The result of that was Americans came to their senses, got rid of him and gave us the Reagan Revolution.
Well, Chirac, after the rioting in French suburbs, says that France is in a national rather a profound malaise, and he is ordering measures to reach out to the angry rioters.
He wants to reach out to them.
Boy, this'll work.
You ever wonder why the French never do win any wars?
I mean if Chirac was around 60 years ago, when the Germans were coming in, Jacques Chirac would have reached out to them.
He wants to reach out.
There is a profound misunderstanding of Islamist terrorism.
I'm not saying Islamic, Islamist.
That's the philosophy that says that a jihad is necessary, the ultimate religious war.
You don't reach out to it, and that's at the root of what's happening in France.
It either is an Islamist component to the rioting that is going on in France.
You think Al Qaeda isn't happy with what's going on in France?
France has never learned from its mistakes.
And there are a whole lot of people here in the United States who keep saying that we ought to emulate the French.
The French didn't want to go to war with Iraq.
Somehow the French are correct.
The French are never correct.
The French do not know how to deal with the problem that they have right now.
You want to find a nation that is wisening up here.
Take a look at Jordan.
Jordan is a country that most of whose residents were rather sympathetic to the Iraqi insurgents.
And it's a nation that doesn't exactly like Israel.
And while they have decent relations with the United States, a lot of Jordanians don't like us a lot.
They really weren't all that troubled by the terrorism that was going on in Iraq.
Not anymore.
Not now that they've been hit.
You do not ever deal with terrorists.
You don't deal with people who want to destroy you by reaching out to them.
But Jacques Chirac is doing that and says that his country is in a malaise.
Yeah, I guess France is in a malaise.
They've been in that same malaise for about 500 years, and I doubt that they're ever going to snap out of it.
The only way they ever get corrected from their malaises is when we come over and save them from the problems that they manage to get themselves into.
I was talking in the first hour of the program about the congressional meddling that's going on right now with not only the war in Iraq, but the way we are combating terror, McCain's resolution banning the use of torture, the Senate today voting 79 to 19 on a resolution that is essentially the Senate's plan for ending the war with Iraq.
Tony Blair is even saying that he believes that a British troop cup cut in Iraq is possible in 2006.
We're probably right about that.
And I think that there's a very strong likelihood that there will be a try uh a cut in American forces in Iraq also in 2006.
But I don't want the Senate making those determinations.
I don't think that that's their role.
What you have right now is a bunch of opportunistic members of Congress on the Democratic side who sense weakness on the part of President Bush, and I think it all goes back to this old notion Bush led us into war under false pretenses, and they're trying to take advantage of the president's weaknesses by doing exactly what President Bush is saying, which is they're trying to rewrite history.
And then you have Republicans who are trying not to be dragged down with the president.
Well, the president's Striking back again today.
Even as he's going to Asia, he doesn't want to let this drop that look, they were saying the same things I was saying.
The president is trotting out three quotes.
This one is from Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
Quote, there is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons.
Rockefeller said that in October of 2002.
Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, September of 2002.
Quote, Saddam, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community.
And I think that the president's approaching this in the right fashion.
That's what Harry Reid said.
He came right out and said, I think the president's doing the right thing.
Carl Levin.
Micromanaging Senator from Michigan.
Quote, the war, this is December 2001, 2001.
In an interview on a television station in Michigan, Carl Levin said, the war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam is in power.
I want to tell you something.
If we fought this war, and we got into Iraq, and we knocked out Saddam's military capabilities, but made a determination that there weren't that many weapons of mass destruction, that he had gotten rid of them.
But Saddam was still in power, and we had quit.
Well, we don't see any weapons here.
We've weakened Saddam considerably.
There's no point in pressing forward.
And we had left Saddam in power, albeit in that weakened position.
These same Democrats would be hammering the president for not finishing the job just as they hammered his father for not finishing the job in the in desert storm.
Whatever the president had done is going to be criticized by Democrats for political reasons.
And while we keep debating whether or not Bush must let us into war, Bush misled us into war, the only real question that needs to be answered is are we better off for having gone into that war?
Do you really want Saddam back?
Because we could put him back, he's still there.
We can let him out of jail.
We can get together what's left of the bath party, we can prop Saddam right back up.
His sons are dead, so other people are going to have to be involved in leading the torture.
We can go back to killing his people.
He can go back to being a brutal regime.
He can go back to being a nation with terror camps.
We can do all that if you prefer to have Saddam back, or are we better off that Saddam is gone?
What this is all about is not allowing the president to have credit for what I think is turning out to be a military victory.
Every day that goes by, that Iraqi government gets a little bit stronger.
All the things that we were told would never happen, they'll never get along.
The Sunnis and the Shiites will never get along.
The Kurds are going to rise up.
That government will never be able to work together.
You'll never have any kind of military that will ever function.
They'll never pass a constitution.
The only thing they know is dictatorship.
How can they self-govern it won't happen?
Well, it's all happening.
They passed the constitution with what, 79% of the vote?
There appears to be very little dissension from any legitimate element in Iraq.
All you have are terrorists.
Terrorists who we are fighting.
So yeah, I think we made the right decision.
Did we go in primarily to disarm Saddam?
Maybe so.
I don't really know that it matters all that much.
What matters is whether or not the policy has worked.
The next decision is, how do we extricate ourselves from a nation that will need assistance for a long time?
You know what?
We got a plan.
I know what the plan is because the president keeps saying it.
He says it over and over and over again.
We're going to strengthen the Iraqi government until it can stand on its own.
We will leave when that government is able To defend itself and when that democracy is safe and intact for the long term.
That's our plan.
That's our plan.
So why'd they pass a resolution today in the Senate?
John Warner said, well, we don't want to have a date.
The Democrats are suggesting a date, but we do need to state that this is our intention, that this is our purpose.
They didn't need to do that at all.
Has Social Security been fixed?
Medicare been fixed?
Go back to that.
As for passing resolutions that say or laws that state that we're not ever going to engage in the use of torture ever.
We don't need their input.
We don't need their input.
I trust the military and I trust the president to make proper determinations on in techniques of interrogation that are in the best interest of this country and represent our own values.
For all their hand wringing over the use of torture.
They certainly don't seem to be very happy that the number one torturer in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein, is no longer in power.
There are tens of thousands of mass graves we've discovered in that country.
Anecdotal evidence of torture of thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
The torture in Iraq has stopped.
Torture isn't going on.
Torture in Iraq has stopped.
We stopped it, and now we need Senator McCain and the other members of the Senate to pass a resolution say, Well, we can't engage in torture.
We don't engage in torture.
The guy who did engage in torture has been defeated, and he's been defeated by us.
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San Antonio, Texas, Ed on a cell phone.
Ed, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Yes, uh, I had two examples where torture could really backfire.
One is uh really where the line gets drawn on torture.
If it's okay for us to torture Ford detainees, why isn't it okay for the IRS to torture taxpayers?
That that's the first example.
The second example is I can think of it.
You're presuming, Ed that they don't.
Yeah, right.
Well, they don't do it in earnest.
Well, the answer question is simple.
The line is drawn wherever we have to draw the line.
I don't know where that line is.
We don't torture anyone.
I am just suggesting that we do not put in federal law something that's going to tie our hands in the future because we don't know what the future is going to hold.
But you know what?
When you hear about dirty bombs and germ warfare, it's pretty doggone scary.
And I don't think that this is an area for congressional intervention.
It's all I'm saying about that.
As for your worries about the IRS, they've uh they wrote the book on torture.
It's called the Internal Revenue Service Tax Code.
Thanks, Ed to Jason on a cell phone in La Crosse, Wisconsin, another city that I used to live in.
We're touring my past today.
What's that?
We're touring my past today.
We had a call from Springfield, now lacrosse.
Yeah, you were uh you commented earlier on oh, thanks for taking my call, by the way.
Sure.
Um you were commenting before about how the French never learned from their history.
And I see what's happening now is our chance to show that we have learned from our history.
You look at how World War I and World War II happened, World War I, we defeated the Germans and we basically just pulled out right away.
And that left um a lot of embittered people with no infrastructure and no government, a lot of dictator to step in, rile up all that bitterness, and create World War II.
It's the same thing right now, and it seems to me that's the only thing that I get across to people when they start saying we should pull out now is mentioned that you want to create another World War II.
This is the way to do it because if we pull out now, no infrastructure, no leadership, a bunch of embittered people who feel abandoned.
You're right.
You have the potential if we leave early of anarchy.
We do know that the government that is in place there has widespread support among the Iraqi people.
But it's a government that has no experience in being a democracy and being accountable to the people.
This is a nation that's been ruled by either kings or dictators forever.
They're coming out of a very, very brutal regime in which no one had any rights.
It's not like you've built up an infrastructure of governmental officials who've moved up like we have.
These are all people that are rather new at it.
The worst thing that we can do is go through the agony really of having to fight this war and lose the soldiers that we lost only to bail out too soon and end up not having accomplished you know much of anything because the government of Iraq falls again into bad hands.
You're exactly right about that.
You know, we're still in Western Europe.
I don't see anybody demanding that we get out of there.
Having said that, I don't want us to have two hundred thousand troops in Iraq forever.
I think that number can be reduced.
But I don't want us to tie ourselves to a timeline because a bunch of senators are concerned about the 2006 re-election campaigns and want to distance themselves from President Bush, and because a bunch of Democrats are trying to pretend that this war has been a failure when it has not been.
And I really think that what's motivating all these resolutions, and all this good is what's the plan?
When are we going to get out?
Is just an opportunity to take a free shot at President Bush because he's weakened right now.
It doesn't have anything to do with proper strategy.
Do you really want the members of the United States Senate to get together and come up with a war plan?
Can you imagine what a mess it is it would be?
Look at what they produce when they get together on a budget with all the pork that they throw in.
By the time they'd be done with this, we may as well pull out of Iraq because the commanders in the field would be so confused as to what the director directives are that they're getting that they wouldn't be able to fight.
Thank you, Jason.
Bozeman Montana, Kelly.
Kelly, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark.
You know, I'm in violent agreement that we can't do anything that restricts techniques for getting intelligence.
And some of those most valuable techniques might be psychological rather than physical.
And what I'm talking about, Mark, is you know, the Quran, the hadith and the other scriptural canons that are followed by Islamists, contain many multiple exhortations to be had rape, uh, you know, and genuine generally do in Jews and Christians.
Uh, and it's also very specific in those scriptures that there are things that can prevent those Islamists from going to heaven.
Yeah, the British in centuries past use a very interesting technique where they'd stand a prisoner up next to a coffin filled with pig entrants, or they claim that there was menstrual blood.
Well, they got information pretty damn quick.
Well, yeah, and I I'm not advocating any of these things.
What I am saying is that this isn't pretty.
When you look at what we are dealing with here, this is not I mean, we're acting as though these uh this is Vietnam all over again, Senator McCain's war, and you're dealing with individual Viet Cong soldiers or soldiers of the Army of North Vietnam, soldiers just like him fighting for a cause that they believed in.
That is not what we are facing with terrorists.
We're talking here not about prisoners of war.
You're not even talking about soldiers.
You are talking about foreign detainees who are engaged in an active war of terror aimed at killing huge numbers of innocent citizens.
That's what we are dealing with.
We should never torture as payback.
That was the problem at Abu Ghraib.
You had a bunch of soldiers who were acting on their own as rogue individuals doing things that they should not have done.
I don't think it rose to the level of torture, but it certainly rose to the level of military crimes that they've been punished.
We don't want to do it for that purpose.
I just don't want us to have a bunch of senators deciding in 2005 in Washington, D.C. what we're going to do in 2007 or 2009 or 2011 if we have in our hands some very bad people who may have knowledge that if we got it, we could save lives.
That's the concern that I have.
You know, Mark, there it's apples and oranges when when you consider what uh McCain went through, you know, his frame of reference was completely different from that of the Islamists.
There was nothing that uh that he would stand to lose other than loss of patriotism by giving any information that might have been useful.
The The kinds of torture that we can potentially engage in, and as you pointed out, we can't anticipate really those those particular techniques, but they're completely different for a completely different kind of people.
And uh like you, I I just I think McCain is off the reservation.
Well, and he's got you know, his resolution had 90 votes of support.
The resolution that they passed today to come up with a plan to uh have us figure out how we're gonna get out of Iraq passed with 79 votes.
The point that I'm establishing here, and I hope I haven't belabored it, is that the Senate should not be making these decisions.
The Senate made the decision to have us enter the war on Iraq.
The Senate has given the president the power to fight this war.
What we don't need is micromanagement from the Senate now that we are in the middle of that war.
Mark Belling's sitting in for Russia.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh today.
Uh, who's going to be here tomorrow?
Is it Roger?
Roger Hedgecock will be here tomorrow and Thursday and Dr. Walter Williams on Friday.
One of the things that I am not good at as a talk show host is segues.
You know, you should kind of move from one subject into something sort of flows into the next.
I'm just terrible at that.
Talking about the Senate and torture and the war and McCain and Lindsey Graham.
I'm now going to talk about Kenny Chesney.
Let me poll the delegation.
Do you even know who Kenny Chesney is?
Show of hands.
One, two, three, tepidly.
Uh, first of all, this is Yeah, he is married to Renee Zellweger.
In fact, they're busting up, I guess.
That's just amazing to begin with that a country star could marry Renee Zellware.
Who Lyle Lovett married Julia Roberts, remember?
Well, the Kenny Chesney thing is yeah, that last well, the Kenny Chesney Renee Zellweger thing gonna last either.
Continuing a tradition that I have on my Milwaukee radio program, I am going to announce who will win the entertainer of the year award at the Country Music Association, which is tonight, it will in fact be Kenny Chesney.
He will win, so you don't need to watch.
I'm never wrong about this.
I always nail it.
Uh the CMA awards are in New York tonight.
They've never done that before.
I believe they've always been in Nashville.
They're in New York.
I'm not sure that I agree with.
I've been thinking about this.
Are they making the right decision or not?
Now here's why they're doing it.
Country music is becoming the dominant music form in this country.
Its appeal is greater than ever.
Crossover stars are now mainstream figures in the American popular culture.
They want to take the next step and they're going to the one area where country has no foothold.
Do you know that there is not one country music station in New York City?
There's 300, there's 300 radio stations in New York or so, it seems.
Not a single one of them plays country music.
So anyway, the CMA is going to go to New York, and I think it's their attempt to say, look, this isn't just hick music anymore, this isn't Hillbilly music anymore.
We are music for all of America, and that's the statement that they're making.
NASCAR does the same thing.
NASCAR, which doesn't have much of a following in New York City, nonetheless has its annual award dinner every year in New York City, and I think that the CMA is doing the right thing.
The risk that they have is that in this kissing up to parts of the country where country still isn't part of the mainstream that they lose everything that they really have going for them.
And I don't know if they're going to be able to pull it off or not, but the uh CMA awards are tonight, and I think they're at Madison Square Garden, aren't they?
That just yeah, I think that didn't that seem wrong.
They're supposed to be at the Grand Ole Opry.
Although, do you know where the Grand Ole Opry was last night?
They were at Carnegie Hall.
I know this because I was walking past Carnegie Hall last night, and I see all these guys with cowboy hats.
This isn't right.
This is Carnegie Hall and they have cowboy hats on.
So look the marquee in the Grand O'Lope was having a show last night at Carnegie Hall.
I did not see Kenny Chesney.
I just saw a bunch of guys with uh cowboy hats all because they're outside the doors, all smoking the cigarettes that they aren't going to be able to smoke once they get inside.
Anyway, the CMA Awards is always a good show.
It's the uh one award show where you're pretty much safe from having to be lectured about the war and Bush is being you can't watch any award show without them giving speeches.
The CMA awards are usually pretty good for that.
On yesterday's program, I talked about how on Sunday's Meet the Press, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean refused to apologize for the unbelievable Racial slurs that are being directed at a candidate for the United States Senate in Maryland, Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele.
Michael Steele is black.
And he has been subject to shockingly vile racist attacks that aren't coming from the corners.
They're right out there.
There are rallies, there are ads, there are statements that are being issued in which the two most vulgar terms that you can imagine have been directed at him.
And there, and I'm not going to repeat them.
You know which ones they are.
They are the ones that suggest that you aren't really black unless you are a liberal Democrat.
Dean was asked about this on Meet the Press on Sunday, and he would not apologize for the statements.
Well, he apparently got a little bit of heat for that.
Yesterday Dean came out and disavows the use of this tactic.
Here's his quote.
I oppose any effort to make an issue of a candidate's ethnicity in a political campaign, including the Maryland Senate race.
Now that's a disavowal, but he will not go so far as to issue an apology.
What's striking about this story to me is that while these comments about Michael Steele have been repudiated by some black Democrats in Maryland, they've not been repudiated by all of them.
Congressman Benjamin Cardin is the Democratic frontrunner in that race for the United States Senate in Maryland, and he has refused to disavow the remarks that have suggested that Michael Steele is somehow not loyal to blacks by daring to think independently and run as a Republican and have values that could be described as conservative.
You've got the leading candidate for the United States Senate in a state where one of his potential opponents has been has had thrown at him to vulgar racial slurs, and he will not, the Democratic frontrunner will not condemn this.
I mentioned on the program yesterday that I believe that we have turned a corner here.
And the overt hostility, the overt hostility toward black Republicans is going to get more blatant, and you are going to see the use of terminology that you never dreamed would have been used.
And if you think it's bad toward Michael Steele, watch what happens to Condi.
As Condoleeza Rice achieves one success after another, she's going to be spoken about as a potential candidate for president in 2008.
In fact, the latest poll of American Republicans has her running second.
It's one of these blind polls and blanket polls in which they just throw out all the names that are out there, and at this stage of the game, it's largely a name recognition thing.
Nonetheless, it's a rasmuson reports.com poll.
It shows that among Republicans, Rudy Giuliani is the choice of 26%, Republicans nationwide.
Condoleza Rice is right behind at 24 and McCain is in at 21.
Now, those polls don't mean much, and I think it's a stretch to believe that Giuliani or McCain could ever win the Republican nomination, and maybe even Condoleza Rice, because they may not have the support of social conservatives.
As Condi, however, gets talked about more and more in this vein.
I think that you are going to see people take the gloves off with regard to her.
Look what she's accomplished.
This deal in Gaza is a borderline miracle.
She went over there, and she's got she takes the Palestinians and puts them in one room.
The Israelis in another room, look, you're going to make a deal here.
It's not enough that the Israelis have gotten rid of the settlements in the West Bank.
It's not enough that we are going to allow the Palestinians to govern Gaza and the Palestinians are going to govern the West Bank.
No, we're going to take a step further.
You've got to be practical here.
The Palestinians have to have a way to enter.
The Israelis have a need to protect their security forces.
You're going to cut a deal on that.
She got the deal done.
Nobody's been able to get these deals done.
The Bush administration has been mocked by Democrats.
As long as President Bush has been in because the president shoots first and uses diplomacy later.
It's simply not true.
Look at the diplomatic advances that have occurred under President Bush's presidency.
I never thought I would say these words, but it is possible.
The Israelis and the Palestinians are going to coexist.
I still don't think it's likely.
I never thought it could possibly happen, but look how close they are.
And look at what Condi was able to do.
Madeline Albright didn't get this done.
Bill Cohen didn't get it done.
Kissinger didn't get it done.
Condi got it done.
She is a remarkable woman.
Now, I'm a pro-lifer.
And her own position on abortion is vague at best.
There's some history that she may have made a uh a pro-choice or pro-abortion statement at some point in the past.
She doesn't ever talk about it.
And I'll admit you it would give me great pause if she ran for president if she was not pro-life, but I really want to support her.
I think that she is absolutely uh absolutely great.
If she does run, she would be that rare case of an unmarried candidate for president.
Who's the last person we had run for president that wasn't married?
Can you even think of anybody?
I can't.
You'll find that you're going to look into that.
The staff is looking into seeing who the uh didn't Dolly Madison have to serve as first lady for one of the presidents because that president didn't have a uh didn't have a spouse.
I think I'm right about that.
I just don't know how exactly right I am.
You know, she uh I'll volunteer.
I could James Buchanan, the only unmarried president.
What about a candidate?
I can't remember any candidate that sought it in contemporary past.
I could be like the stand-in, like what do they call these guys in New York that walk these social walkers that escort the socialites?
She'd be she'd be great conversation.
You know she follows the NFL draft.
She knows more about professional football than just about any woman alive.
I offering my services up there.
This is a great accomplishment.
What she pulled off in Gaza and almost unprecedented, but do not look for her to get any credit.
Instead, look for the same kind of comments that Harry Belifani was willing to make about Colin Powell, that they're coming out in the open and making about Michael Steele, and watch them direct them toward her.
Their way of covering for the fact, and it is a fact, that black Americans of tremendous capability now have an opportunity in the Republican Party to be given tremendous responsibility and do great things.
Whereas they are continue to be locked out from responsibility by the Democratic Party, even though the vast majority of American blacks are Democrats.
This bothers Democrats, they have no answer for it, so they have to somehow try to delegitimize people like Colin Powell or Michael Steele or Condoleza Rice.
My name is Mark Gelling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Leblanc.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush on EIB.
There is a big deal being made about the 1985 job application filled out by Samuel Alito, who at the time was a lawyer in the Reagan administration.
As you know, they're on a wild search for a paper trail on Alito in an attempt to come up with something to use to try to block his nomination to the Supreme Court.
In the job application, which he filled out in 1985 and understand that he was a lawyer in the Reagan administration and was applying for a better job.
He indicated that he is a conservative.
He indicated that he is proud, contributing to cases, including those that argued that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed, and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.
All right, it's out there now.
It's out there.
You have something on paper in which Sam Alito said he doesn't believe that the Constitution protects a right to an abortion.
So that'll be part of the ads now that they're going to use on him.
First of all, he said it twenty years ago.
He said it twenty years ago.
When Ruth Ginsburg was confirmed in 1994, it was precisely twenty years after she had authored a paper that had views that are far more inflammatory than that, yet that was not used against her.
Ruth Ginsburg at the time had a history of being a major player in the American Civil Liberties Union.
She was confirmed.
So they're going to go back and they're going to find what Sam Alito said on a job application 20 years ago in which he obviously was kissing up to whomever his superiors were in the Reagan administration, trying to prove his true colors as a conservative.
The larger point, though, is that Alito is right.
The Constitution does not protect a woman's right to have an abortion.
It's not in there.
And I know this brings up this entire debate about whether or not Roe versus Wade should be overturned, whether or not Roe versus Wade will be overturned.
I don't know which way Alita was going to rule on that, but I do know that that ruling was flawed.
Alito doesn't believe the Constitution speaks on the issue of whether or not a woman has a right to an abortion.
That's not a fringe view.
That is what most conservative constitutional scholars believe.
They don't believe the Constitution's language gives a guaranteed right to have an abortion.
Are we simply going to say that anyone who has that view of the Constitution now can't be on the Supreme Court ever?
Why not reverse it?
It's as ludicrous as saying that any justice who does believe that the Constitution's language does provide the right to have an abortion should not be on either.
What they are attempting to do is make conservative legal philosophy totally off limits.
Whether he believed it then, whether he believes it now, it not only is within the mainstream, it's a defensible position.
But there's a key here.
Samuel Alito has been on the federal appellate court for better than 10 years, 1990.
He has ruled in the past on abortion cases.
And he hasn't always ruled in a way that pro-lifers may necessarily agree with.
You know why?
Because he's applying the law.
Without regard to what his personal position on abortion is, and I think it's pretty fair to say that he is pro-life, his mother said he's pro-life, without regard to what his personal position is, there is no indication that he has used, he has taken his position as a federal appeals judge for better than a decade and tried to impose that position on any case in which he has ruled.
He has instead taken a look at the law and determined whether or not the law, how the law applies in the case that was in front of him.
Which is precisely what we want justices of the United States Supreme Court to do.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
Mark Belling sitting in for rush to the telephone's Columbus, Ohio, Mark, you're on EIB.
Yeah, Mark, I enjoyed listening to you when we lived in Wisconsin.
Thank you.
My uh question is why do you believe the Democratic Party continues to garner so much support from the African American community when they clearly do not promote African Americans within their own party, the positions of leadership.
Well, I think that the answer is simply that most American blacks are liberal and support the positions of the Democratic Party.
I don't think that there's another that there's an explanation that's really beyond that.
What has surprised me is that more blacks have not objected to the fact that there really is a ceiling in terms of how far African Americans can rise within the Democratic Party.
They talk about the glass ceiling with regard to women in corporate America.
Find the black candidates for the United States Senate that are Democrats.
They just aren't there.
Look at the Clinton administration.
Well, President Clinton did indeed have blacks in his administration and in his cabinet.
They tended to be the positions at the end of the cabinet.
Education, HUD, positions like that.
Then look at President Bush, where you see not one but both secretaries of state, African American.
This has been going on for some time.
I think that the Republican Party is the party that is open to this.
And the response from black Democrats, rather than demanding that their own party be more open to blacks, has been to condemn and ostracize black Republicans by suggesting That they are disloyal by suggesting that they don't think the right way and to throw around these terms and slurs that are being applied to Michael Steele in Maryland.
That's been the response, but I have been surprised that there hasn't been a greater objection from black leadership in this country, including black elected officials, to the fact that the Democratic Party has essentially reserved almost all of its top positions, be a candidate for president, candidate for the United States Senate, governors, to whites, whereas the Republicans have shown far greater willingness to give positions like this to qualified black candidates.
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