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Dec. 28, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:22
December 28, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #2
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We've uh been talking about the fallout from the spying story, and I've raised the question that the Democrats do not want asked, and that is can their party be trusted on national security issues.
In today's Washington Times story by Donald Lambro, there are some Democrats who think that they're way overplaying their hand with regard to the uh National Security Agency spying story.
Michael O'Hanlon, who is with the Brookings Brookings Institution, he advises Democrats and defense issues.
Quote, I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you've gone too far if you leave that impression.
I don't believe that's true.
I get nervous when I see the Democrats playing the civil liberties issue out too far.
They had better be careful about the politics of it.
Yeah.
One of the positive ramifications of this is you are having a debate on how far the government is going to be willing to go to protect us from the terror threat.
And I really think the American people get this, and I think that this issue is going to be very bad for the Democratic Party if they continue to play it out.
Now they read the polls as well as everybody, as well as anybody, and when they see the survey, Rasmussen's got a survey out.
Over 60% of the American people think it's perfectly fine to conduct this kind of surveillance, including 51% of Democrats.
How do you run for President of the United States saying that you're going to pursue information from the enemy only if a federal judge says you can do it?
I don't think that's a winning political issue.
I think it's a big loser for them.
As long as they're going to make the threat to our civil liberties be perceived as as grave a problem as a group of individuals who want to slaughter Americans just on the pure politics.
Never mind the right and wrong, because I believe President Bush can win the right and wrong argument.
But on the pol just purely on the political aspect of the issue.
This is a total loser for the left, and it's a total loser for the Democrats, and I think that they are at great risk if they keep trying to play this card.
Let's go to the telephones 1-800-282-288-2 as the telephone number to Smith Creek, Michigan.
Alan, Alan, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Hey, Mark.
You're on, Alan.
Um my question was, do you think the New York Times should be held responsible for actually passing the information of the secret program to the enemy?
Well, at the very least, the New York Times took classified information from a source and ran with it.
We've got very, very recent precedent.
It's only a few months old.
If you've got classified information and you get it from a source within the government, it is certainly within the prerogative of the government to find out who asked you that.
Special prosecutor Fitzgerald asked Judith Miller of the New York Times that very question.
She wouldn't answer it and she'd be and she was put in jail.
I don't I have not seen any call from anyone in the media to try to get to the bottom of this source because I suspect that they don't want to know the answer.
And talking about the politics of this, if this leak came from a Democratic member of either the Senate or the House Intelligence Committees, you tell me that that doesn't create an even bigger political problem for them.
I don't know where the leak came from.
It may have come from the State Department.
It may have even come from the CIA.
There are a lot of agencies out there that are jealous of the NSA.
May have come from anywhere, or it may have come from a Democratic member of Congress or the Senate that was briefed on this program because they were briefed.
The intelligence committees were briefed on this.
But I'd love to know who that source is, because it was a violation of the law to give that information to the New York Times.
Yet this fascination that we had with who told Bob Novak what and who told Judy Miller what with regard to Valerie Plains seems to be completely absent when it comes to who cooled the New York Times about the National Security Administration's program of following up on information that came from Al-Qaeda operatives Overseas.
But shouldn't we hold the media outlet itself responsible for printing something that maybe they shouldn't have?
Uh are you asking whether or not we should throw the entire staff of the New York Times in jail?
Well, I'd be set I like I said, I'd be satisfied.
I'd be satisfied with one week a hard time for Maureen Dowd.
That would make my year.
Thanks, Alan, to Jacksonville and Ron.
Ron, it's your turn on EIB.
Mark, uh a pleasure talking to you and an honor.
I uh wanted to mention uh real quick uh there are a lot of us that are so sick and tired of the left and the Democrats trying to stop this great man, President Bush, from trying to protect their hides at every turn.
Um but recently Rush brought up the actual FISA law, and he mentioned two provisions where a president could do exactly what this president is doing without a court order.
I'm not seeing that being reported in any uh media outlet, even the fair and balanced one, and uh uh and it was uh I know one of the provisions was during a time of war, I forget the other one, but but there were two, and nobody's bringing up in the media at least the actual Pfizer law uh that uh that I can remember as a FISA law which way back all the way to their hero Jimmy Carter.
Right, which is why when President Clinton decided to wiretap without a court order, he did it in the case of Alder James, who was the CIA's operative who was giving information to the Russians, why no one objected to it then.
The FISA law is not one that is an absolute that says you must go through this process in every instance.
The commander in chief still has authority under the Constitution of the United States to conduct the foreign policy and the military operations of the country.
Furthermore, President Bush was armed with the uh 2001 resolution from Congress, which essentially was a declaration of war against Al Qaeda.
It said by taking any means necessary to fight this war.
So on the legality issue, I think the president is fine, and I don't believe that there's going to be any sanction of him, but you don't even have to get into that.
All you have to do is ask the question politically, whether or not you want a commander in chief who is going to take steps necessary to protect us, or whether or not you have a commander in chief who feels as though he has to get marching orders from a bunch of federal judges before taking action to protect the American people.
I know who's going to win that argument.
And I think you can see who's winning it already.
As biased as this coverage has been, you still see in the first polls that are out right now, overwhelming support for the president.
I just think that the story is going to go nowhere for the Democratic Party, but the longer it stays alive, the stronger it's going to help President Bush.
We now know this.
The American people now know that this president is willing to take punches, political punches, and hard punches in return for protecting the American people.
I think if anything it's going to help him, Bush is not going to suffer at all from this story, and it's going to backfire on those who are choosing to attack him.
If I could just make one final point, it just seems like the agenda of the elect of the left and then the Democrats, many of the Democrats, is uh did Bush break the law.
I mean, this is hap this stuff has been going on ever since the election of 2000, and they are trying to create some type of impeachable offense.
I even heard something on uh one of the networks the other day that Barbara Boxer had to do.
Yeah, she wants to know what the grounds.
I hope she brings that.
I hope she brings that forward.
They're trying to say I want them to try to pr try to impeach the president for doing something that seventy percent of the American people approve of.
Let him try to bring that out and then let them c claim that they are the party that can be trusted on issues of national security.
I'd love to see them, and I don't think that I think they're gonna drop this thing like a rock.
They're gonna drop it like a rock because the American people are not with them on it.
Thank you for the call.
Let's go to New Mexico and Dave.
Dave, it's your turn on Russia's program.
Good morning.
Hi there.
Finally, after 19 years.
Uh I think the only uh Democrats are you suggesting you were waiting on hold for 19 years, or you've been waiting to call the show for 19 years.
Nineteen years to call this show.
Uh, but the only Democrat that I would trust with national security would be Leverman.
That being said, the rest of the Democratic Party, those rhinos in in Congress and the ACLU, I refer to them as the Manchurian candidates.
I have not in my lifetime, and I have an ID card that I carry for the last fifty years as a serviceman have heard a Democrat ever come out with a solution.
He always comes out with a problem, but never with the solution.
I can't see why our uh intelligence agency couldn't uh hear every phone call that they had that they needed to.
No one no one disagrees with that other than these squeaky voices from the left.
And I really think what the New York Times had this story, they thought they had something here, and the Democrats in Congress jumped on it as quickly as they did.
It's also revealing that the same sorry group of moderate Republicans, so determined to appease the national media, also jumped on this.
You had Chuck Hagel from Nebraska, he was one of those saying that we need to have hearings on this.
They're gonna read those poll numbers and they're going to change their minds about that.
Because this is very, very reasonable.
You would presume that if Al Qaeda was talking to people in the United States, the government would be following up on that.
And I think people were sh would be shocked if they found out that they weren't doing that.
That point that I made thank you for the call, Dave.
The point that I made earlier about the uh rejections or modifications of requests made to the FISA court is quite telling.
179 times that the administration, and this would primarily be the National Security Agency, it might have been the CIA, but the number of times the administration went to that FISA court and they modified the request 179 times.
You can't run a war like that.
You can't fight the enemy.
If every time you get some information before you can act on it, you've got to go before a panel of judges who may say no, you can't do that.
There isn't a war we've ever fought that could have been won that way.
Could we have won World War II if we had to go to a bunch of federal judges and request information before we did anything?
No, you couldn't.
We can't look at this as a civil liberties issue that deals with the rights of Americans.
It has to be looked at.
What do you do when you are fighting a war and you've got the enemy in your own country?
That is not sensationalizing.
That enemy was in our country before 9-11.
They hijacked those planes, they hit and they killed thousands of Americans.
There are people that Al Qa Al Qaeda is communicating with and they are here.
These are enemy operatives or potential enemy operatives right here in our own country, and the only way you can find out if they are the real enemy or not is to follow up on the information and listen in.
And I think the president is going to win this argument.
I think that to the extent that the Democrats try to make it and criticize him and condemn him and talk about impeachment and threaten hearings, it will only ratify the presumption that a lot of us have that the Democrats are too weak to defend the United States of America.
My name is Mark Elling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Bellings sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Who's here tomorrow?
Roger Hedgecock will be in tomorrow.
I'm glad I talked about the uh issue of the uh national security age uh agency and the uh wiretapping here in the United States.
Good for my image.
Prove my talk show host manhood here.
I'm macho enough to be able to do the do the job.
It was threatened after yesterday's program.
For those of you who didn't hear it, I did 45 minutes on the Rush Limbaugh program on returning Christmas presents.
Forty-five minutes on returning Christmas presents.
And I know that a whole lot of folks in the audience were concerned that I was a little too squishy to be able to do this show.
Well, I'm right back.
I'm back.
The real right winger is back.
The take on these callers who are suggesting that I'm trampling over civil liberties.
That guy from Ohio, he was pretty good.
He had my feet to the fire.
I'm back.
The meantime, I've got the executive producer of that is your title, isn't it?
What are you?
Executive producer, chief of staff.
The chief of staff of the whole operation, HR, who I think deeply resented me bringing up the Christmas gift returning thing because he's one of these guys that returns gifts.
So what do I he comes in today and he wants me to talk about the fact that he's that meatloaf is on restaurant menus.
There's only so far I'm going to go.
I did if I did the meatloaf thing one day after the Christmas gift returning thing.
My career would take me straight to Air America.
I don't want to fill in for Frank and I want to keep filling in for Rush.
I do want to talk about Maureen Dowd, though.
She's got another one of those columns in today's paper.
Does anybody in our audience read Maureen Dowd?
No.
Only when they need to laugh.
She's the she is uh probably the most typical member of the mainstream media that there is, columnist for the New York Times, schmarmy female who can't get a guy.
In fact, she just written a book that deals with the fact that she can't get a guy.
I have a theory, and I've been reading her stuff forever because it does make me laugh.
It's unintentional, but does make me laugh.
My own theory is that she's secretly in love with Rumsfeld and Cheney and just embittered that they haven't returned her affections.
That's my theory, because she's obsessed with them.
Well, she's got another one today, and she's attacking Cheney, suggesting that Cheney is very concerned with his own privacy, but doesn't care about the privacy of ordinary Americans.
That's why he's willing to defend all of this wiretapping that's going on.
Uh she writes, defending warrantless wiretapping last week.
The vice president spoke of his distaste for the erosion of presidential authority in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam.
Checks, balances, warrants, civil liberties, they're also 20th century.
Historians must now regard the light transitional tenure of Gerald Ford as the Petri dish of this darkly transformational presidency.
Consider this when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by President Ford, pushed a plan to have the government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce their dependence on oil in Saudi Arabia.
Guess who helped scotch it?
Dick Cheney.
Then and now the man is a menace.
Okay, she's obsessed with Cheney, but it does reveal an attitude.
Does reveal an attitude that I think most on the left and almost everyone in the mainstream media holds, and that is that they do not understand that 9-11 was a truly transformational event.
This isn't the 20th century anymore.
Things have fundamentally changed.
Our entire way of life has been altered.
For the first time, we now face the threat of massive killings of Americans here in our own country.
That requires a different approach on almost every public policy issue.
And I think that many in the media do not grasp what most Americans grasp, and that is that this has changed everything.
That we are in a different era.
The choices that in the past we never had to make are now being confronted.
Fortunately, our country is being run by grown-ups.
I believe President Bush, and you could see it from immediately after the 9-11 attack, in which he said fighting the war on terror was going to define his presidency.
To Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Rice, Vice President Cheney.
Those people understand what we are dealing with.
They know full well that we are now confronted with the very, very real threat that tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans could be slaughtered, that we are dealing with an organization that is truly demonic, that hates our way of life, that believes that it can advance its cause by killing huge number of Americans.
They understand this, and they are willing to make very, very difficult choices.
This isn't a simple political decision anymore.
When you're faced with, Mr. President, we have information that Al Qaeda is communicating with Americans in and then whatever the case may be.
This isn't like deciding who's going to get how much money in the pork barrel transportation budget.
This Is life and death stuff.
This is very, very important.
It's not vague, it's real.
It's not a drill.
It's not like worrying about whether or not the Russians were going to launch the nukes at us because we knew that was very, very unlikely.
This is real stuff.
Americans know that it's real.
We are dealing with real threats, and we are facing very, very tough questions.
I believe we have in place in our country leaders who are up to making those decisions.
And to have those decisions challenged by a bunch of ankle biters is truly appalling.
I'm Mark Belling.
I'm Mark Gulling in for Rush.
Well, obviously I've been very opinionated so far on the program.
So I'm going to move now to something in which I really don't know what I think.
By the way, any demand yet for the meatloaf topic, calls coming in in droves demanding that we get to your meatloaf subject.
That hasn't happened yet.
All right, we'll keep waiting for the demand for the uh meatloaf topic that HR's pushing me on.
I want to talk about something in which I really don't know which way to go on.
I have a tremendous distaste for Republicans who act like Democrats.
In fact, I get angrier at so-called moderate Republicans who seem to constantly side with liberals and Democrats than I do with liberals and Democrats because most of those Republicans were elected espousing very, very different beliefs.
You've got a handful of them in the uh United States Senate who are constantly moving over to join the Democrats on any number of issues, and we know who that crowd is.
The Hegel crowd, the Susan Collins crowd, the Lincoln Chafee crowd.
So I don't have a lot of respect for them.
They bother me, they anger me.
But I don't know what to do about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I really don't know how we should be evaluating these latest decisions that he's made that have angered a lot of conservatives in the state of California.
For those of you who haven't been following closely, Schwarzenegger has named as his new chief of staff a prominent California Democrat.
Her name is Susan Kennedy.
She's been a 25-year activist in the Democratic Party.
The presumption is that Schwarzenegger is now going to move aggressively toward the political center or move leftward in an attempt to save his governorship.
That he would not have reached out and hired Susan Kennedy unless he was going to try to moderate his positions.
Part of me wants to cut Schwarzenegger a fair amount of slack here because the situation he's dealing with is rather unique.
The other part of me says that you've got a state like California that is just a basket case of social and economic problems.
The illegal immigration problem has created a tremendous burden on the social service infrastructure in the state.
Years of one-party rule, democratic legislature and governor have created a tax climate and a regulatory climate that is totally obnoxious to business.
Workers' compensation rates, business tax rates have driven businesses out of California for years.
It's a very, very difficult situation that he's faced with because California has a host of problems.
Part of me says this is what this is a tremendous opportunity.
Come in and try to solve those things by espousing conservative policies, deal with the problem in education, in public education by aggressively going after school choice, make a major bid for a radical reduction in business tax rates, to try to jumpstart the economy, reject these arguments, that you need to have this huge social service infrastructure in place to deal with the illegal immigrants.
Essentially come forward with a bunch of conservative plans and pursue them and make California a real laboratory for dealing with a lot of these problems.
On the other hand, I realize that he can espouse all that stuff, and it's not Going to get anywhere in that state.
California has overwhelming Democratic majorities in its state House and its state Senate.
The state itself is liberal.
We've lost California.
That used to be a sling state.
But you've seen the results of the last several elections.
Clinton won by two landslides in California.
President Bush lost both times.
Gore beat him easily.
Kerry beat him easily.
The public in California has moved to the left.
So as much as I want Schwarzenegger to be a conservative and to press a conservative agenda, he'd be whistling in the wind if he did it because that state's legislature is not going to approve it, and therefore nothing's going to get done.
So it begs the question, is Schwarzenegger a sellout?
And I don't know the answer.
I don't know the answer.
Do you think he is?
And I guess I'm especially interested in what callers from California would have to say about that.
Is Schwarzenegger a sellout?
Or is he somebody who realizes that he does have to be re-elected?
And that if he's not re-elected, there's no point in pursuing anything.
Is he somebody who is dealing with a very, very difficult situation and has to accept the political reality that he has a Democratic state legislature and a public that may not be ready for a bunch of conservative solutions?
Schwarzenegger supported four ballot propositions that were on the ballot last month in California.
He was opposed by the Democratic leadership of the state and by the public employee unions.
Schwarzenegger lost on all four issues.
He's got to deal with that reality.
If he's moving to the left and therefore landing firmly in the center, is he selling out or is he coming up with a practical response to the situation that he's in?
And like I say, I truly don't know the answer, and I don't know what my position on that is.
I don't know if I want to look upon Schwarzenegger as the California equivalent of an Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, in other words, someone who may be called a Republican but really isn't, or if I want to look upon him as a pragmatist who's understanding the realities of his situation and trying to approach problems by realizing that he's going to have to work with the other political party.
So I'm going to throw it out to the audience and try to get some feedback here.
Is Arnold Schwarzenegger a sellout or not?
Is he someone who is the California equivalent of the next Reagan?
Or is he one more Republican who when push comes to shove, is going to move to the left to appease the power structure in the mainstream media and who doesn't have the stomach for a fight.
I'm open to being persuaded on this.
The telephone number is 1-800-282-2882-8888.
Is Arnie a sellout or not?
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Gulling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has hired as his chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, a 25-year Democratic activist.
She was a member of Democratic Governor Gray Davis's cabinet.
A lot of Republicans in California are very, very distressed about this.
Mike Spence, president of the California Republican Assembly, a conservative organization, quoted in the New York Times, said the Kennedy appointment had prompted a flurry of email messages from thousands of disenchanted members.
We were betrayed, Spence said.
We were loyal during the special election, loyal when he was criticized, and he turns around and puts a liberal partisan Democrat in charge.
Some conservative Republicans have indicated they may not support Schwarzenegger for re-election in the Republican primary next June.
Is Schwarzenegger a sellout?
I'm not sure.
San Francisco and Andy, Andy, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark, thanks for taking the call.
I'm not uh ready to give up on Schwarzenegger yet, um, being a Republican.
I was a little disappointed in that appointment that you mentioned, but I I personally think he's doing what he has to do now to try to get re-elected.
But my my feeling is the biggest mistake that he's made is something that Russ talks about a lot on the national level, kind of going with this new tone and not being willing to push back with the Democrats.
He let that entire special election basically get framed around issues that really had nothing to do with what was on the ballot.
And and I think he's getting a lot of bad advice on how he has to make peace with people instead of going over the legislature and talking directly to the people of California.
Okay, but all of the things that you mentioned, here's the problem that I have, and I understand he's got to get re-elected.
All of the things that you mention can't just be put off to bad advice.
In the end, if he truly is a conservative, and he truly is someone that you and I can admire, and if he truly is the new face of Republicanism, why hasn't he stuck with that message?
Why does he feel the need to reign in?
Why does he feel the need to move to the center rather than stay on message?
I part of me believes that California isn't a lost cause.
That a conservative message, if it's espoused by someone like Schwarzenegger, who has a lot of political capital, can still work out there.
The problem has been that the Republican Party out there has been in shambles, that things have gone badly, badly wrong, and there hasn't been anybody who's been espousing those values.
No, I agree with that, and I and you're definitely correct when you say the party in California is a shambles.
But I I think when I look back to the recall election when Arnold was basically espousing conservative messages and talking directly to the people, he the the support for him was huge.
But during this last special election, he stopped doing that.
He went for for months and months and months, letting the unions and the teachers' unions and the the uh nurses unions just beat up on him and they turned it into a referendum on him mistreating these employees rather than trying to state out uh to straighten out these unions that basically run our state.
Why would he hire Susan Kennedy other than to send a message that he's not really going to be a Republican, he's just another moderate who calls himself a Republican?
What would be the point of reaching out to a prominent Democrat and naming her as chief of staff?
Well, I I think again, I think it for personally I think it comes back to re-election.
I think he was so beat up after that special election rejection that I think he's feeling he has to do that to have any chance of of having another term.
Thank you for the call.
To uh Del Rand, New Jersey, Ed.
Ed, you're on EIB.
Boy, oh boy, Mark, it's really nice to have you here.
You're doing a great job voting for Rush.
Let's stick with the rush limbaugh conservative ideology of be a conservative, stand up for the conservative values, and teach that lesson because it win lose your draw, you know you've done the right thing.
Basically, I mean, look, I like Arnold Schwarzenegger, he did the right thing with the Tukey Williams, you know, clemency thing and all.
But the thing is he's not doing the right thing by putting a wolf in the hen house.
Well, there's an old saying, and you hear the uh the beltway crowd talk about it all the time.
I think it goes something like uh personnel is policy, that who you hire and who you name to key positions determine what the policy of your administration is going to be.
I do think that aside from the symbolism, if you choose someone like Susan Kennedy, it's a signal that you're going to be moving in a more moderate direction.
Now, how do you respond to the last caller who said, Look, I'm out here in California, he was calling from San Francisco that Schwarzenegger needs to be re-elected.
That there's a general election coming up in November.
It's still a predominantly democratic state, and if he doesn't move to the middle, he's done.
How would you respond to him?
Well, because I admit, I admit it's a hard argument for me to be able to give a response to, although, as you say, Schwarzenegger is not doing what Rush would advise him to do.
He's not responding to this crisis he's facing by presenting a conservative message or pursuing a conservative agenda.
Sure.
I mean, to make a comparison right here in New Jersey when uh Doug Forster run against Corsine during the primary, he talked like he was nothing but a conservative, and then as soon as he got to the general election, he moved his position to the center.
Well, and it didn't work for him.
No.
No, it didn't work with it.
I mean, they just love to get snookered by the liberals over and over again.
When I saw Schwarzenegger give the keynote address at the Republican I think it was the keynote, he gave that prime speech last year at the Republican convention.
It was an outstanding speech on conservative principles.
But when it comes to implementation, after he suffered a blow and the loss of those four ballot referendum questions in the election uh last month was a major blow.
His response seems to me to move backward to the left for pure political survival.
I can understand it partly.
On the other hand, it would be nice to see, as somebody who's not from California, to see him respond by saying, Look, a lot of what I say isn't going to be popular.
But we're in a mess right now, and we need to do these things, and the Democrats in your state legislature are obstructing me on this, and I'm going to continue to fight for what I believe in.
Instead, he seems to be trying to be more agreeable and pursue policy that's going to be acceptable to that legislature.
Why else would you hire a Democratic chief of staff?
Thank you for the call.
To uh Nugleris, Wisconsin, and Pat.
Pat, you're on uh EIB.
Good to talk to another voice from Wisconsin.
Great to hear from you.
Arnold has made a huge mistake.
And he needs to correct himself immediately.
He should have gone back to his conservative base.
I think an immigrant, frankly, can find a way to neutralize the immigration issue.
And if you do that in California, the simple fact is most Hispanics are socially conservative, you know, as a group.
So he could have locked up uh a nice, maybe a narrow conservative majority.
That's the strategic question he's facing.
Do you think he's a sellout?
Absolutely.
Well, I think he's a sellout if he doesn't correct himself immediately.
Let's give him a little credit.
He is a novice.
And so he gravitated towards where his support is, which of course is his wife, who is a Democrat.
Is a longtime liberal Democrat.
Okay.
So I think he's just going where he's finding support, and apparently he's not finding much outside of his wife.
Well, I th I think that what I my own belief is that he's evaluating it this way.
I tried to pursue fairly aggressive policy approaches, took them to the public in these referendums, and I lost.
The only place left for me to go is back to the middle.
That's what the public is telling me.
And I can empathize with that response because if he isn't re-elected next year, there's no point in having any conservative values or conservative beliefs because you're not able to pursue anything if you're not in office.
I think it's a real, real tough call, the situation that he's in.
I think a lot of Americans are very, very frustrated and disappointed that he is abandoning any notion of trying to be a visionary out there because of these losses in that referendum.
Now he was facing the public employee unions, which ran huge campaigns to defeat those initiatives.
They did beat him, and I'm not sure which way I would go were I him.
Thank you for the call.
Let's go to Vacaville, California.
Kathy, Kathy, you're on EIB.
I agree with the first caller about Schwarzenegger.
I also think that the Republican Party has really let him down.
He didn't get any support on a national level for these initiatives that he had on the ballot here in California.
He got blasted in every media source from billboards to to ads from all these unions, and there was no support.
Historically, the way Reagan would have dealt with this is not the way that Schwarzenegger is dealing with it now.
Reagan had the ability to stick to his guns and persuade people to come around to his point of view.
On the other hand, the California that Reagan had back in the 1970s is a different California from the one that's out there right now.
The state has turned dramatically to the left.
Thank you for the call.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
Enough of the meatloaf.
They're still pushing me to do the meatloaf topic.
Will you push the meatloaf topic on Rush?
No, you think I'm a soft.
You think you can bully me.
I've done this show a few times.
I'm not doing the meatloaf topic.
No one wants to hear about it.
By the way, I was mentioning the uh dilemma facing Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Alabama, which does not have the same problem for Republicans, it is not a liberal state.
It's a state that the Republicans now gained a majority in.
There is an internal battle within the Republican Party there.
The incumbent Republican governor, Bob Riley, is facing a challenge from within his own party in next year's election.
His opponent is Roy Moore.
He's the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who tried to get the Ten Commandments in the courthouse.
Supreme Court told him he had to keep it out.
Riley pursued a tax increase plan.
Moore is an identifiable conservative, and they're going to have a primary election for the heart and soul of that party.
So this debate as to which direction the Republican Party is going to go in is happening, and I think it is fairly healthy.
The situation that Schwarzenegger is facing, though, is a little different than the one that Riley has in Alabama.
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