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Jan. 23, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
January 23, 2006, Monday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by the host on this program, as always, make more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying because we are rooted in a deep pursuit of the truth here, folks, and we find it and we utter it, and it causes some people to raise eyebrows, other people to go nuts.
Great to have you.
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So if you are a subscriber, you can tune in and watch the program unfold before your very eyes.
The telephone number 800 282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
I I guess I'm I miss this.
I haven't seen Nightline in I don't know how long.
But apparently Nightline did a recent show with uh they had who is this comedian?
Well, I can't I can't find a name in the story here, real quickly.
Uh uh Kathy Kathy Griffin, that's comedian Kathy Griffin, who, you know, I'm not I'm not into pop culture.
I never heard of her.
But have you have you heard of her HR?
You have I don't know who she is.
Doesn't matter.
I mean, I wouldn't I'm not surprised, but the whole point of the nightline show apparently was to paint conservatives, including me as too cowardly to help the USO.
And this story is posted at uh at newsbusters.org in a December 23rd USA Today front page story, USO cheers troops, but Iraq gigs tough to book.
Safety concerns, disagreement with the war keeping many celebrities and volunteering reporters Martin Kasendorff and Stephen uh Camaro related how actor comedian Robin Williams, who like others have been an outspoken critic of Bush's management of the war, Wayne Newton, a Republican who backs Bush, say some stars have turned down the USO because they thought such performances would amount to endorsing the war.
But on a Friday evening nightline story, Terry Moran, through his use of soundbites from two left wingers, portrayed cowardly conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, who isn't a stage performer, as the problem facing the USO in trying to get stars to go to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Moran asserted, do we have sound bites of this?
Number 20.
We do.
I thought I saw this in the list.
Um we have a little sound bite.
This is grab number 24.
This is from the program Friday nights when it was on Nightline.
Comedian Kathy Griffin has done one USO tour to Kuwait and Afghanistan and signed up for another soon to the Middle East.
A self-described D-list celebrity and opponent of the war, she too loves performing for the troops, and she wonders why some vocal war supporters have stayed home.
I think Rush Limbaugh said go over.
You know, put your money where your mouth is.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Now is isn't this interesting.
Rush Limbaugh should put his money where his mouth is and you know, go over.
All right.
As you people who listen to this program regularly know, about a year ago in February, I went to Afghanistan and did not just one tour, I went to four or five different bases, spoke to all kinds of troops, and I also did other things as well.
Had chock full days.
My website is full to this day.
You can go to my website and read the transcripts of the reports that I filed from filed.
I called in reporters, file stuff, and I'm not a report.
I went over there, and I did a troop visit, and I called in every day, or most of the days, and uh gave a summary of what happened, what I had seen and what I said and what I did over there.
I have asked the USO and the Defense Department numbers of times to go to Iraq in Afghanistan, and finally one of my requests was answered by the U.S. uh department uh the uh well, the agency for international development, which is part of the State Department.
It's run by he just resigned from this uh position, Andrew Natsios, uh, but went over to with a with a whole bunch of Mary Madeline was with me for crying for the whole week.
It's where I it's where I introduced myself to the show 24 on the plane right over.
I how many times have we talked about on this program?
And you know that I have made requests.
Uh I have uh I'm not gonna mention any names because I don't want I'm not the purpose here is not to get anybody in trouble.
I called and it's not Rumsfeld, but I called the defense department.
I called the Secretary of Defense's office.
Uh it About September, two years in a row, saying, if you need somebody to go over at Christmas time, I'll go.
And both times I heard, oh, you're one of the most requested people we get to come over.
And I never heard back.
Now, the USO, I mean, I I've uh I don't I don't know that I've officially requested the USO, but they've never invited me either.
Now I remember this story in December.
This story in USA Today was all about the fact that the USO is out there whining because they can't get enough celebrities to go precisely because too many of these celebrities feel that going over would show their support for the war.
See, but they still say they support the troops, but they can't do that.
Because it would say because you don't support what the troops do.
So now it's morphed into the reason, according to this D list comedian on Nightline and Nightline Friday.
The real reason is that uh all these conservative stage performers are too cowardly to go over there.
Now I this is an interesting question to me, just as a in a purely professional sense.
I have the most listened to radio talk show in history, and I'm the most listened to radio talk show in America, and at any given time, we have 20 to 24 million people listening during a week.
We hit about 10 million people a show, and any one time they're between four and a half and five million people listening to this program.
I have a website.
The Afghanistan trip that I took was made a huge deal of on this program and on my website.
Now, how is it that a program like Nightline, in preparation for this broadcast, cannot find out who has and has not been to places like Afghanistan and Iraq?
How is it that they is it my responsibility, not knowing that they've got a show coming up?
Is it my responsibility after I get back to send out a press release to all of the news networks so that they know what I have just done?
Maybe so, because they obviously don't listen to this program.
And I've known that for a long time, because as often as I get misquoted here, or as often as some other places uh websites will take me out of context, the mainstream press will eat it all up and report it as it though it actually happened.
What are we supposed to do?
It's made me think, how does how do network news people learn anything they know?
And I myself have said on this program that the fastest way to get a story anywhere is to send out a fax or a press release to some reporter because that's how most of them find out what's going on.
And they have their sources and they have their little enclaves in which they live.
We've told about this, told you about the story about how this fake group in Chicago successfully redefined the food groups before the AMA proved that they were a bogus outfit, and all they did was create some nice little logo, put it on a fax, and send the facts out in a very official-looking way.
And uh networks bought it and and trumpeted the thing.
So uh here's do I care that nightline?
I mean, I would I the last thing that I want to do when I come back from a place like Afghanistan is put out a press release and saying, hey, guess what I did?
Because I know how it's gonna be interpreted.
You don't come back, uh the brag is the wrong word, but didn't go over there for the publicity of it.
I didn't go over there for all of the reasons that a lot of other people do these kinds of things.
I went over there because I actually wanted to go send a message to the troops.
Last year, year before, we're constantly in the midst of this partisan political battle in this country.
The troops are being uh ridiculed and impugned, and that really intensified this year.
I wanted to go over there and and uh and tell them just for me, and knowing that what I would say to them represents the same views you have, uh our views and our appreciation and love and support for what they're doing.
They're all volunteers, and they're doing what they're doing to protect the country, to uh protect their families.
They're doing it out of a commitment.
And I didn't think it was worth them being impugned.
So am I supposed to come back and then issue a press and say, hey, guess what I just did?
Guess where I just got back from?
I'm available for interviews.
No, I'm not gonna do that because I wasn't gonna do interviews about it.
I've got my radio program to get the message out.
But not doing it has resulted in a nightline broadcast that is just it's absurd.
And this is the this is the vaunted ABC news machine.
Now my program is on several ABC radio stations.
In San Francisco, in New York, in Dallas, in Washington.
So I I saw this story.
Somebody actually sent me this last night, and I've gotten a couple more copies of it emailed it uh to me today by people who who saw it.
And it just cements uh and confirms my impression.
These people are living in a bubble, and they haven't the slightest clue.
This Terry Moran guy thought, whatever, he was making a big point by finding this D-list celebrity to go on and talk about how these conservatives are a bunch of cowards.
Now, one of the Brent Baker wrote the story at Newsbusters.
And one of the points that he makes, uh, well, the USO doesn't invite media people.
I mean, the U.S.O. invites, you know, stage performers or film performers or musicians or whatever.
If the USO were going to invite people that did not perform on stage, then why not invite Terry Moran?
Why couldn't we also say Terry Moran's never gone over there to address the troops?
Why could, or or anybody else on night, they go over there maybe to report, but they haven't gone over there to address the troops.
Why not lump them in as they have lumped me in?
Of course, I do do a stage show now and then, as rarely as possible, but I do them.
Uh but it they don't, since it's the libs don't find what I do entertaining.
You know, to them, I am fingernails on a chalkboard.
My audience finds it entertaining, but they don't.
But the fact that they don't even know about it, the fact that they don't even know that this has happened, convinces me more than ever that they live in a bubble, and it's more reason than ever not to trust or believe what they report because there is a whole world in this country to which they are strangers.
We will be back.
Stay with us.
And we're back, L Rushboat serving humanity as America's anchor man, half my brand tied behind my back.
Just to make it fair, story from yesterday, I guess, yeah, the Philadelphia Inquirer by Steve Goldstein.
GOP likely has won on Alito, but the cost is further polarization.
The Republicans have won the latest judicial battle, but the war over the divisive issues that dominated his hearings is only intensified according to legal experts.
Blah, blah, blah.
So, yeah, Bush getting what he wanted, but the country is more divided.
Look, folks, it's real simple here.
President Bush will have two justices confirmed who happen to be white guys.
Having avoided a filibuster on both these conservatives, and by the way, the Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Alito is tomorrow.
It'll be party line 10 to 8, so come out of committee, go to the full floor of the Senate.
That's supposed to that vote on Friday, but the the the lib wacko activists are demanding a filibuster.
Robert Novak's latest piece is that a filibuster unlikely but still possible, depending on just how many marionette strings these activists are tugging.
I w uh there is one, I won't be surprised.
But there probably will not be.
So after successfully getting confirmed, two white guys.
Bush will be able to cripple the Democrats by lining up a conservative black, uh male or female or Hispanic to fill a third opening.
And that that's just that's that's gonna hem them in even more.
Oh, that the libs are gonna they're gonna go absolute nuts.
And in this story is a is a quote from Chuck Schumer.
Chuck Schumer, he contends that only vigorous opposition has led Bush to refrain from selecting even more conservative judicial nominees.
Alito is an example, Schumer said.
Legal observers think Alito's not as conservative, some candidates Bush was considering.
And so this is a message to the Libs.
Hey, yeah, we lost it, but this guy's not as bad as it could have been.
Yeah.
I know they tried to try to portray him as a typical conservative in their view.
He's an extremist, a racist, a sex it, a bigot, a homophobe, uh uh, a misogynist, whatever else they tried to lay on him.
He's corrupt.
Uh they they came out with the everything but the pubic hair on a can of coke.
Folks, they can't they they they gave it a they gave it a shot.
Now here's this piece.
I mentioned this earlier in the program.
Deborah Howell.
Washington Post.
Nothing in my 50-year career prepared me, she begins, for the thousands of flaming emails I got last week over my last column.
Emails so abusive and many so obscene that part of the post's website was shut down.
That column praised the Post for breaking the story on lobbyist Jack Abramov's dealings, for which he's pleaded guilty to several felony counts.
The column clearly pointed out that Abramov is a Republican and dealt mainly with Republicans, most prominently former House Majority Leader Tom Delay.
I wrote that he gave campaign money to both parties and their members of Congress.
He didn't.
I should have said he directed his client Indian tribes to make contributions to members of Congress from both parties.
Big difference.
But my mistake, she says, set off a fire storm.
I heard that I was lying.
Democrats never got a penny of Abramov's tainted money, that I was trying to say it was a bipartisan scandal, as some Republicans claim.
I didn't say that.
It's not a bipartisan scandal.
It is a Republican scandal.
That's why the Republicans are scurrying around trying to enact lobbying reforms.
But there's no doubt about the campaign contributions that were directed to lawmakers of both parties.
Records show that Abramov's Indian clients contributed money to 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats between 99 and 2004.
And the Post also has copies of lists sent to the tribes by Abramov with his personal directions on which members were to receive what amounts.
And then she goes into detail about these hateful emails that she got.
And she simply can't believe it.
She's never seen anything like it.
Is it the relative anonymity of the internet that emboldens emailers to conduct a public stoning?
Is this the increasing political polarization of our country?
I don't know, but what I do know is that I have a tough hide, and a few curse words which I use frequently are not going to hurt me.
But it is profoundly distressing if political discourse is sunk to a level where abusive name calling and the crudest of sexual language or the norm, where facts have no place in an argument.
This unbounded unreasoning rage is not going to help this newspaper, this country, or this democracy.
I didn't ask Washington Post.com to shut down an area reserved for comments about me as it did on Thursday, and I know the decision is being greeted with great disdain.
This is a woman who's clueless.
Profoundly distressing if political discourse is sunk to a level where abusive name call had does she not hear does she not hear what people call President Bush every day?
Has she not?
Has she not heard it for five years?
Does she not know what happens on internet websites where comments are requested?
Does she not know what is said?
Somebody ought to send her a couple links to the Democrat Underground and the Daily Cause.
Cause or whatever, however, you still don't know how to pronounce that.
And I don't care.
Don't anybody tell me.
It doesn't matter.
It's KOS.
I don't care how to pronounce it.
I don't need 15 emails with 15 different pronunciations.
Doesn't matter.
Somebody send her the link.
And let her take a look at what's out there.
If she thinks she got it bad.
This is it.
These people are clueless from Nightline to the Washington Post to the New York Times.
They're absolutely clueless.
Here's what it says about she's oh, she's the ombudsman at the Washington Post.
Deborah Howell can be reasoned as the Ombudsman.
She's a native of San Antonio.
Became a reporter and editor first at her Hascruel newspaper, and then at the Daily Texan at the University of Texas.
She got a BJ in 62.
She was a reporter at the Austin American Statesman.
And I forget because I throw well, I don't forget it.
I threw away the rest of the Paco didn't it didn't have anything.
This is I can understand where she's coming from.
She did everything she could to be a good liberal.
She did everything she could.
She made sure that her column scoriated Republicans.
And it still won enough.
And so they fire.
She's a traitor.
They want to Lieberman her.
They want to just destroy this woman.
Now, my guess is that Deborah Howell in the future will be more obedient to these wackos the next time around, to avoid, even though she says she's got a tough, tough skin.
Nobody if if this affected her this way.
I mean, Deborah for crying out loud, you don't you really do not know what it's like to be a conservative in the media today.
You really don't know.
You think this is the first time you think is this is first time you've ever heard of something like this happening.
One of the one of the great lessons from this piece, though, folks, is that she's giving away how the Dims are playing the whole issue.
Abramov never gave them any money, the Indians did it.
And since the Indians are all good liberal multiculturalists, and he and the Democrats are that too, and plus the Democrats love Indians, what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with the Indians giving money?
They didn't take any Abramov money.
Watch how this one plays out, too.
It can be some surprises on this, I think.
Back, my friends in Umo, Oh Momento War 3.
And back to the phones we go now.
This is uh Judith in Clinton Township, Michigan.
Judith, thanks for waiting.
I appreciate your patience.
You're welcome.
I wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your show.
And not only is it entertaining, but it's also educational.
Thank you.
Um I did see this Kathy Griffin piece piece on um Nightline.
And you're right, she's enormously uninformed.
And so is Terry Moran.
He used to be the White House correspondent in Bush's first term, and since he's not doing that anymore, he's become very anti-Bush.
Um I wanted to also thank you.
That's not new.
Now wait just a second.
That's nothing new.
But I also wanted to thank you for your adaptive soldier program.
I did do that for some soldiers at Christmas time.
And um that really gave all of us like a really good feeling that we could do that.
You know, just go online and do those uh subscriptions.
So it was I thought that was great that you did that.
And why wouldn't they bring that up?
You know, I mean uh because they don't know about it.
And even if they did know about it, they wouldn't bring it up.
They they uh it it's I'm convinced they they just they're they're unaware and uninformed.
And one of the things that one of the things that leads them to that is they already think they know who conservatives are.
It's like it like the Alito hearings.
I told you last week, well, week before last.
I'm not convinced that they really didn't know the truth about Alito and that's that cap club that he was a member of in some of these cases.
I mean, you got Ted Kennedy as he's never never ruled in favor.
Uh minority plaintiff's career as a judge.
Well, a couple hours after it was over, four instances of just that happening were produced.
Now, I know Ted, he happy hour in the gym and all this sort of stuff, but he's got staff doing all these other things.
And I really wonder if the staff just looks at Alito, he's conservative.
He'd probably never well, he's never rule for plaintiffs.
Why is a racist?
He's a conservative.
So we'll just go out with it.
Now, some people disagree with me.
No, no, no, no.
They know it.
They just think they can get away with it.
Well, either way, it's idiotic.
Either way, it's it's absurd and stupid.
Uh and I think that I think that they just look at uh at conservative when they when they look at a conservative in wartime, they see a chicken hawk.
They see a big talker who's never gone to war, and so they have no credibility, shouldn't be allowed to talk about it, and obviously they're cowards.
That's the template.
That is the the uh the mindset.
And they they don't even think to question it because that's what they honestly believe in their hearts and souls.
And it it comes as a shock, or maybe it doesn't when they uh when they learn the truth.
But that doesn't change the way they they look at things.
So I I don't I'm really not sure how to read it, other than they are just clueless.
They're just absolutely clueless.
And if they're this clueless about one or two things, how clueless are they about a number of other things?
And the answer has to be quite clueless.
Here is Larry in Austin, Texas.
Larry, thanks for the program.
Nice to have you with us.
Megadinos from Austin, the winter home of the fiction writer Dan Rather.
I have a question about uh the Osama tape, and what I haven't heard is any challenge to the timing of the tape.
Uh they're treating it like it's brand new material, although he quotes he names Wolfowitz, and there's nothing on there that's newer than about a year old at the newest.
I was wondering who your thoughts were on that.
Um yeah, I I noticed that about it.
Uh the the well, nobody has you you say nobody's contradicted what they think the original date of the tape is.
I think it's a year old, don't they?
Something like that.
It's not, I know they don't think it was made yesterday.
Is that right?
What I've heard is I haven't heard a lot of contradiction actually in the media.
I've I haven't heard much about the timing of it at all, besides it's him.
Well, see, that's the the I'm you know, the date that's that's you you can come pretty close to it by as you say, looking at some of the names that he talks about, Wolfowitz, of course, is at the World Bank and has been for quite a while.
Uh but count me among the group that is not convinced Bin Laden is alive.
I mean, I'm I'm still not aware, I I'm still not convinced that he's alive.
And I don't why should we believe them when they say he is?
Uh the the the uh evidence to me is not sufficient to believe he's alive.
Then they go further and start talking about the date of the tape uh and so forth, uh the older it is, the more curious its release.
Why now you have to throw in its Al Jazeera?
So it's it is what it is.
And I understand people have to um have to deal with it because it's if it is real, then there's something to be gleaned from it and learned from it by our intelligence authorities, provided we can get a search warrant to listen to the tape.
Have to go to the FISA court to get a search warrant to listen to the tape.
Uh but I'm still I'm dubious about a lot of this bin Laden stuff, folks.
I must tell you.
I've said this all along.
Hudson, New Hampshire, and Bill, glad you called, sir.
You're next on the EIB network.
Welcome back, Rush.
Great tan.
That's a great tan.
Holy cow.
Thank you, sir.
I wanted to um to ask you about something.
Uh I'm retired military, and in the discussion of the quote unquote domestic spying, I I don't think it's ever been brought into proper context, even by the people from the administration.
And that is in in in the in the United States, okay, search warrant, but we fight a war on a battlefield.
And on on uh on September 11th, they brought the battlefield here.
This is the domestic battlefield.
The president's got to have the authority to fight the war on the battlefield.
And and search warrants on a battlefield just don't work.
That's an excellent point.
It's an excellent point.
But I think in the process you might, and I know you're trying to be fair, and you're trying to be uh uh considerate uh in all of this.
Even if you made that point to a liberal democrat, do you know how much it would how much impact it would have in changing his mind?
Zip zero not uh.
Because the very thing that irritates and aggravates them is that George Bush is the commander in chief.
And he is the problem.
He is the what we here he's what we have to deal with.
He's the one who's spying on Americans.
He's the one throwing away our precious civil liberties.
He is the one trampling all over the constitution, and as such, whether this is a domestic battlefield or not, uh he remains the problem.
As far as the American people are concerned, I th uh all I can go by is the public polling on this.
And if you look at the public polling on it, a clear majority of Americans is not on the Democrat side on this.
A clear majority is on the president's side in this.
They understand it.
They saw, they remember what happened on 9-11, and they know that it's the first, and it's really not even the first.
They're 93 uh attack on the World Trade Center uh in New York.
Uh but I I don't think there's any amount of logic, truth, or fact that is going to um persuade the Democrats to change their their thoughts to change what they're saying about this.
They're they're too deeply tied, as we keep saying to these left-wing fanatics who are contributing the money and issuing the marching orders, and the Democrats have to regurgitate what these people want said.
It it's it's laugh let to me it's laughable.
What and I hear this a lot.
You know what?
We're not getting our message out.
The Democrats, we had a call today, Democrats are just too cowardly.
Harry Reid apologized.
Why should he apologize?
You know, we what when when Reed come out and shut came out and shut down the Senate?
A pure stunt that accomplished nothing.
Remember how happy these wackos on the left were.
Now that was gut.
It's about time our side stood up.
Now we sit around, we look at this.
It's about time they stood up.
These people have been demonizing.
These people have been monsters.
They have been over the top with their language for five years.
And it's it's a it's a disconnect because I I I laugh when these people think that their side is a bunch of wimps and a bunch of cowards.
What they are is ineffective and stupid.
But the idea that they're not stringent enough in their speech, that they're not that they're not saying enough tough things is absurd.
I have a couple of sound bites here.
This is from Meet the Press yesterday.
Tim Russert had uh James Carville and uh Mary Madeline and uh guess the forehead was on there too.
Was the forehead on there?
And uh this is what this is what the forehead said.
The forehead basically said that the Democrats need a spine.
It's the same old thing.
It's that their problem is not liberalism.
Uh it's it's that they need a spine.
This is from the forehead.
The Democrats blew it.
Let's face it, they blew it.
And it's not that people think that we're too liberal.
It's that they think we're too weak because we don't stand up and say clearly and plainly what we stand for.
And that's really the thesis of the book.
It's that our problem is not ideological, it is anatomical.
We need a spine.
And a party that allows someone who has won five major medals, who three times has shed blood for our country and won the bronze star and the silver star to be positioned as weak and waffling and weird is it's it's a sin.
It's awful.
And Democrats have got to learn from that if we're ever going to take it back.
Man, I the only person that positioned John Kerry the way he did was John Kerry.
Now these guys think the Swift boat vets came along.
The Swiftboat vets just had the truth.
They had people actually were with them.
Why don't you rehash all this?
But see, this is this is where they don't get it.
And this is what is always comforting to me.
They don't think that their ideology is the problem.
They don't think that their ideas are the problem, even though they can't win with them.
Not even Bill Clinton could win with it.
Bill Clinton had to triangulate and come across as a moderate centrist.
Hillary was out there covering the bases on the far left.
But Clinton, the vote getter, he couldn't go out and be pure liberal as he is now.
Clinton, if Clinton would have been saying the kind of things during his campaign that he has said about Iraq and President Bush as an ex-president overseas, he wouldn't have stood a prayer of being elected.
These guys are just dead wrong when they think that their their problem is that they don't have a spine.
I mean, that is relevant in some of their cases.
Uh, but it's not their problem.
The as I say, huge disconnect.
Here's Carville.
Uh Carville said this about the Democrats.
Prescription for Democrats always is, are we too liberal of whether we adjust ourselves on the ideological scale?
As Powell said, we believe the problem is anatomical, not ideological.
There's no reason that if you're for an increase in the minimum wage that you have to be for gun control.
I mean, that that's a typical ideological approach.
And that's the kind of stuff that we argue against.
I think we argue very, very hard.
And I just keep pounding the table on this energy independence thing.
I mean, Tom Friedman, another show right, is absolutely right about that.
I don't know why the Democrats don't take it up.
What did he just say?
What in the world did he just say the Democrats stand for?
What Tom Friedman stands for?
Why don't Democrats listen to Tom Friedman?
Uh are we too liberal or where do we adjust ourselves on the ideological adjust ourselves on the ideological scale?
How do we reach into our core and adjust it?
You don't.
You don't adjust your core.
We believe the problem's anatomical, not ideological.
There's no reason if you're for an increase in the minimum wage that you have to be for gun control.
It is ideological.
It is totally ideological.
If you can't come out and say what you really I want to raise your taxes.
I want more government regulation over business.
I want you driving a smaller car that you don't like.
I want to make sure that you can't use your property the way you want to because the government's interest in it is primary.
We believe that somebody with a larger tax base should have no problem kicking you off your property and you being relocated to someplace else.
They're gonna it they white if their problem's not ideological, why are they trying to hide it?
Why are they trying to mask it?
We'll be back in just a second.
I would I would say to uh James Carville and the forehead that if you're if you really think your problem's anatomical, it's not a spine you need, it's some onions.
All right, now I've got a piece here by Dan Gerstein, who is the former communications director for Senator Lieberman.
And I think this ran at uh yeah, opinionjournal.com, the Wall Street Journal's free opinion website.
As I say, former communications director for Senator Lieberman, and and I'm I share this with you because this is a Democrat, and it just confirms what what I've been saying today and yesterday and last week and and for the longest time.
It's little wonder that an ambivalent country that is twice elected a pro-life president and accepted pro-life leadership in Congress didn't flip its lid over the case against Judge Alito on abortion.
Other words, it's not surprising to me that the people of this country didn't go ape over Alito and what they said he was going to do about abortion.
Why, the country's twice elected a pro-life president and accepted pro-life leadership in Congress.
And that's the heart of the problem with our party and its angry activist base.
It's not so much that we're living in a parallel universe, but that we have dueling conceptions of what's mainstream, especially on abortion and other values-based issues, and our side is losing.
We think that if we simply call somebody conservative, anti-choice and anti-civil rights, that's enough to scare people to our side.
But that tired dogma won't hunt in today's electorate, which is far more independent thinking and complex in its views on values than our side presumes.
That's not it.
It's because they're more informed, and it's because this dogma, this anti-choice, anti-civil rights been for 30 years.
And it doesn't play because it's not true.
It's like the seasoned citizens for all these years were told Republican X is going to take away your social security in your house.
It never happens.
The checks get bigger.
After so many, so many years of it, it just ignore it because it isn't true.
Same thing's happening here.
The public is far more informed in addition to independent thinking.
And that's why that stuff doesn't play.
So this point was driven home in incontrovertible analysis of the 2004 elections by Bill Galston and Elaine K. Mark.
They found that the American polity has undergone a great shaking out where conservatives now vote almost universally for Republicans and liberals for Democrats, Republicans.
Republicans have won the presidency twice in a row because they're doing a better job of pulling moderates and independents their way, in particular, married women and white Catholics who are uncomfortable with the Democrats on values issues.
Many Democrats just don't want to acknowledge that Bush is president and is going to pick conservative justices, let alone the two we got, John Roberts and Samuel Leto, are about as good as we can hope for.
This episode shows we don't have any leader in power who will tell our base that we're not going to become a majority party again by telling the majority they're out of the mainstream.
We do badly need leaders with courage, the courage that is to push our party to borrow a phrase to move on, to accept that we can't win with the same lame ideological arguments in post-9-11 America, that we must develop an alternative affirmative agenda that shows who's who uh maybe they'll listen to this guy.
Because they're not listening to me.
Because this is a they don't have any leader in power who will tell their base they're not gonna become a majority party again by telling the majority they're out of the mainstream.
You hear that, Senator Schumer.
You guys are not the mainstream, and you haven't been for the longest time, but you can't accept it because power is your birthright as Democrats.
It's it is your one entitlement, and you can't understand how it's not.
So you're just pretending you still are in power.
This is all an aberration.
Therefore, you concoct this dream scenario in which to live.
And this guy's saying, you guys better wake up and understand where we are, and they still that they won't, this because this is Lieberman's guy and don't want to stone him after they take care of Lieberman.
We will be back after this.
Well, folks, all I can tell you is it is great to be back.
I uh I had a great time last week out at Palm Springs with the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, and again, thanks to everybody that showed up out there.
It was just you made me feel so welcome and and uh and and and happy that I uh can't wait to do it again.
I'm glad to be back, though, here in the uh in the saddle of the EIB network behind the golden EIB microphone, and be back tomorrow, same time, and do it all over again, commenting on what happens between now and then.
See you, my friends.
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