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March 13, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
March 13, 2006, Monday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right 98.5% of the time.
I am the award-winning thrill-packed Rush Limbaugh.
This is the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and we are thrilled and delighted to have you with us.
You would like to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, the email address, rush at EIBnet.com.
Once again, a quick reminder, we have added a new way of distributing our audio and video podcasts each day.
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So it's up and running and it's just the first of many technological improvements.
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It's probably the preferred way of doing this.
If you take these downloaded podcasts every day and try to move them into iTunes manually, this is just a way to do it automatically.
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And we've just worked out a way that you can download the podcasts each day automatically and get them right into iTunes, and then they're done.
And it happens in the background.
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When it's over, you just check every afternoon at 4.30, 5 o'clock, and likely the downloads will be there.
If you are using 24-7 software and you want to switch to iTunes, you have to uninstall the 24-7 software, Mac or Windows.
I don't know about uninstalling things in Windows.
I don't know about installing things.
Yes, I do.
I know it's complicated as it can be.
It makes no sense to me.
In Mac, it's easy.
And uninstalling, you just have to drag two folders out of folders, put them in the trash into the trash, and the uninstall is complete.
There's not an automatic uninstall button for our 24-7 software.
That's probably going to be the most time-consuming aspect of this: trashing all the 24-7 software folders.
There are two of them that you'll have to find.
Also, I got this email during the break here at the top of the hour.
Dear Rush, don't you think that you are insulting all of your wife listeners by referring to them as slave masters or whatever?
Don't you think that your negative generalization of all married females is immature, condescending, and simplistic?
Do you think it's funny?
It would seem to me an intelligent man with your level of savvy sophistication and world experience would have the ability to interact successfully enough with women that he would not have to protect himself by claiming they're all a bunch of slave drivers.
You have to get over this.
It's beneath you and the women who are in the audience.
Fondly but honestly, Martha.
You know, Martha has a point.
I have to say, people are just tuning into this program.
Dawn, let me be honest with me.
You don't have to say anything, just nod or shake your head.
When you heard me read her email, were you saying yes that she's got a point?
I know, Dawn was.
No, Mr. Snerdley, we have to be honest here.
Martha has a point for people that don't understand stereotypical humor.
And because I'm sort of trapped here in my own previous statements about comedy, for it to be funny, there has to be a grain of truth.
And therein, Martha, I hate to tell you, they're in, I know it may upset, it may upset the married women in the audience, but there's another segment out there.
But just to show you, I mean, I sent Brian an email last night.
Brian is soon to fall prey to this trap.
Just kidding.
I'm just kidding.
It's a great institution.
In fact, I've got a story in the stack of stuff here that married women, there is no gender gap.
Women in the last three to the last five elections have voted majority Republican, but the trick is married women.
Married women vote Republican, single women vote Democrats.
A way to go, Brian.
I sent him a note last night because, you know, it's gift time.
And I said, Brian, what is the name of your future slave master?
And he wrote back with the information, no editorial comment whatsoever.
Because Brian knows, Martha, we love stereotypical humor.
I just like stereotypical humor.
Let me give you a stereotypical joke that we tell amongst ourselves.
And even Dawn laughs when she can see the fish.
I guess the fact if you're not watching a ditto cam and you can't see me smile, you know that there's nothing but admiration and appreciation and love behind all these jokes and behind these comments.
It is a cheap way they got to laugh.
I will admit that.
And I will admit, people who don't understand it, it does sound rather harsh and vile.
But just an example of a joke.
You know how your wife has died?
The sex is the same, but the dishes get even higher.
The stack of dishes gets even higher in sync.
Now, even Dawn laughed at that.
Dawn, yes, you did when I first told it.
Yes, you didn't.
She's become one of the guys here.
Now, I didn't make up that joke.
These jokes get passed around all over the place.
But I ought to be more sensitive about this because I am trying to attract all three sexes to the program.
I'm trying to attract all religions, all ages, all races, all ethnic groups.
And it probably does unnecessarily insult those who don't understand the harmless vein in which I mean it.
For you golfers, I had a chance to play Augusta yesterday.
I flew up there.
It was, I think they had a record high.
Washington today is going to be 88.
It was warmer in Augusta, Georgia yesterday than it's been here in months.
The humidity was up.
There wasn't any, it was like a southern, steamy, hot day in July.
But the course was just in gorgeous shape.
Tiger Woods was there yesterday checking out.
They've changed six holes.
They made some changes on six holes.
And he was there checking it.
He shot a 70 on the course.
It's longer than ever.
They've made number 11 a 505-yard par four.
They've added trees down the right side, narrowing the chute, the driving chute.
But at places, as always, it was gorgeous as it could be.
For those of you familiar with the course, the number one T is now practically adjacent to the practice putting green.
They just moved it back as far as they can move it without moving the T to carry that sand trap, and they've deepened it.
It's absurd.
I ended up in it off the T.
I pardon the first hole, though.
But, I mean, you, I don't, it's so deep.
Once you're in it, nobody can see you in it.
You probably need a rope to hoist yourself out of it.
But it's a 331 carry to get over that sand.
And there's just a narrow landing place to the left of it, and it's rough in front of that trap.
So they're trying to make sure on these six holes that second shots are long irons and not wedges and nine irons because these guys have just gotten so long.
But it was a great day, and of course, looked like it was May.
I mean, it looked like it had been green all year long.
Quick timeout.
We will be back and continue right after this.
Okay, let's talk about the Republican Southern Leadership Conference straw poll that was Saturday in Memphis, Tennessee.
Here's the, what is this?
The L.A. Times version of this story.
Senator John McCain, the Maverick John McCain, who made his name as a Republican maverick, is going mainstream.
Six years after the Arizonan emerged as George W. Bush's nemesis, McCain is taking a different tack as he prepares for a possible second White House bid.
Even as he has picked high-profile fights with Bush over military interrogation tactics and with congressional colleagues over pork barrel spending, McCain has been quietly courting GOP power brokers and conservative leaders, emphasizing his loyalty to the president and burnishing his conservative credentials on the litmus test issues.
He recently met with the Reverend Falwell, leading evangelical conservative, whom he previously had denounced as intolerant.
To the delight of Republican partisans, he publicly lambasted Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a rising star among Democrats, over an ethics and lobbying overhaul.
Senator Lindsey Graham, who we affectionately refer to here as Vice President Lindsey Graham, said that he and Senator McCain have learned from our mistakes.
And if John does run it, it's clear he's trying to be the leader of the party, not the leader of a movement.
You're going to hear plenty of straight talk about the issues, but you're going to see a man who is sensitive to the idea that this party is multifaceted and that the social and economic conservative groups are the heart and soul of his party.
Okay.
Well, here's what happened at this thing.
The Republican Southern leadership conference has this little straw poll, and McCain knew going in that he would not win place or show, that he would not come in first, second, or third in this thing.
And so he sought to make sure that that happened by announcing a strategiery.
He asked his delegates to vote for George W. Bush in the straw poll for president in 2008.
He did this, he said, because he thought it was time that the president knew of the massive support that he has.
Now, this was a scheme.
It was a trick to cover up the fact that McCain was not going to win place or show.
As I will tell you right now, with Bush not on the ballot in 08, a percentage of these votes intended for McCain that end up as a write-in for George W. Bush is nothing more than an attempt to show McCain is not thinking of himself, but all of us are thinking of the party, and he's thinking of the president.
The president needs our support.
It came out, Howard Feynman has a piece that apparently last week McCain called President Bush and the word leaked out.
And so people said, what did you call President Bush about?
And McCain said, yeah, I called President Bush.
I just wanted a call offering my support during this ports deal.
Now, I thought when I heard this, this is going to be a little problematic because McCain wants to be an insider and an outsider at the same time.
And the question is, how do you do that?
How do you be an insider and an outsider at the same time?
How do you publicly express and ask for support for President Bush and at the same time make sure the mainstream press loves you?
Well, McCain apparently had run a calculation figuring that the press would figure out it was a trick and would admire him and praise him for his political craftiness.
But is this straight talk?
Is this straight talk?
Is McCain on the Straight Talk Express when he's doing something like this?
Anyway, he ended up in fourth place, I think.
Frist was the winner.
But the press is still writing about this as the frontrunner, John McCain, even though he finished fourth in this thing.
He gave the best speech.
He had the audience in the palm of his hand.
He's de-dazzled him.
He wowed him.
He all kinds of great, great things.
And he's doing everything he can, by the way, to pick up as many people who worked on Bush's campaigns, Mark McKinnon and media.
And he succeeded in doing that.
He's reaching out to as many Bush people as possible.
I thought maybe the press would have a little time scratching their heads over this move, but they didn't.
I think McCain's built up enough of a reservoir of love and adulation with the press that they'll cut him a lot of flack.
He's going to have to do a lot of unstraight talk before the media will consider him to be actually doing that, his media buddies.
So it was a slick maneuver, but everybody caught on to it at the outset as to what it was all about.
Now, I wasn't there, and I didn't watch this.
So all I have for you is anecdotal evidence.
The people who watched it told me that they were disappointed that nobody made a good speech.
And that there were a lot of hopes, say, in George Allen.
In fact, the surprise was Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney, who is Mormon, but he's still, he's a Northeastern mayor.
He's from Boston, a governor, and coming down to Memphis, the South, and scoring second in this thing to Bill Frist.
He's from Tennessee.
It's only natural he would win this there.
He would have the most delegates show up.
That apparently was something that surprised quite a few people.
We'll have more on this as the program unfolds.
There's some ancillary political issues that attach to it as well.
But let's go back to the phones.
Craig in Los Angeles, glad you called and welcome to the program.
Rush, I can't believe it.
My 13-year-old daughter wants your job, Ditto.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Have her keep working hard at it.
I'm not going to give it away to anybody.
She listen.
There's no time that McCain has already done.
It's too late for him.
There's no way that he will win the conservative vote.
Just like what Bob Dole did when he ran to the center.
I was a conservative.
I could not vote for John McCain because he would not represent the conservative movement.
Okay, I want I understand this is a conventional wisdom.
There is conventional wisdom that McCain cannot win the conservative base and he can't win the Republican primary.
And you don't know what McCain's doing.
We haven't talked about it much on this program.
You don't think he can?
Oh, I do too.
Because he's courting the conservative intelligentsia in Washington, and they love the guy.
I mean, they love having attention be showed to them.
And he knows that.
He's going to dinner with them, and they're writing positively about their experiences at dinner.
Now, I know the conservative intelligentsia is not the base, but it all depends on who the Democrat nominee is, how that race is shaping up.
It depends on a lot of things.
I think it's too soon to say anybody is going to or is not going to win something.
And I think it's way too broad a generalization to say that the base is not going to vote for McCain.
I understand why.
It's because of what happened in South Carolina and during the, not just South Carolina, Michigan as well, the primaries in 2004.
McCain went out of his way to insult Bob Jones University and Jerry Falwell and the Christian right.
He was on a campaign at that time to get Democrat voters to cross over in these primaries where both parties are holding primaries on the same day and vote for him.
And the base resented that as well.
They didn't want no stinking Democrat determining the Republican presidential nominee.
McCain's not going to pull that stunt this time or he's just doing just the opposite.
You're going to see McCain become the biggest friend George W. Bush has as these days go forward.
And I want to remind you to Republican pollster Ed Goaz, and this ought to be a warning to these Republicans in Congress who acted out last Thursday and Friday like spoiled little kids.
Ed Goaz of the Battleground Poll has data that says Republicans who abandoned Bush, Republicans up for re-election, who abandoned their president in this campaign season are going to pay for it.
That the best thing they can do is stick with him.
That that's what the base they don't want any, you don't need them to act like Democrats.
If they do that, they're going to lose.
McCain will not do that.
You watch.
Ha!
We are back executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
Rush Limbaugh talent on loan from God.
I like the take of our buddies at the redstate.org blog today.
I've got a piece posted entitled, Media Love Fest with McCain Continues Today.
You want to laugh today?
Let's examine how out of touch the media is.
And they talk about the straw poll performance.
He came in behind Frist Romney, George Allen, and President Bush.
He came in and he asked for people to vote for Bush, but not all of his people did.
So he couldn't even move all of his people to do what he wanted them to do.
And he ended up, if you count Bush in this, he ended up in fifth place.
But the RedState.org people sampled the media today and yesterday they talked about how he's still being portrayed as the frontrunner and they asked the question, in what world is McCain the frontrunner?
Maybe in courting the media and some of Bush's donors.
But among the grassroots, let's just point out again, McCain came in fifth behind even Romney.
McCain may very well pull it off given the Republican propensity to crown a nominee in advance of primaries based on the person's time having come.
But calling McCain the frontrunner right now is silly.
It's just silly.
You don't think it's you?
I know the straw poll means absolutely, well, it doesn't mean absolutely nothing, but it's an indication of things today.
It doesn't give us an indication of what's going to happen.
It tells us what is now at that straw poll.
Those were Republican delegates and they were voting.
And Mitt Romney did come in second.
It was expected Frist would come in first.
The real thing to watch, though, is McCain, because McCain is building his campaign.
As Howard Feynman's piece says, the strategy is to build out the campaign with members of Bush's camp and to basically recreate the Bush campaign organization, thereby getting the best people and the people with the most recent experience at having succeeded.
Now, let me comment a little bit more in detail about Ed Goaz and Celinda Lake.
They have the battleground poll.
We cite that poll frequently on this program, bipartisan poll.
She's a Democrat, he's a Republican.
They combine their results and they come up with pretty accurate trends, analysis, and forecast.
And Goaz made the point last week, I think it was early last week, that the Republican, it was before the port snort fiasco, Republicans who think that they have to run away from George W. Bush, who are running for reelection this year in the House and Senate.
They do that.
They're only going to be hurting themselves.
They're going to be joining sides with Democrats.
We don't need Republicans sounding like Democrats.
We don't need Republicans talking about Bush like the Democrats are.
He made the point that Republicans who stick with the president have the best odds of being re-elected.
He can help them fundraise.
And particularly, it's Republicans.
I need Republicans to vote for him.
It's silly to focus on crossover Democrats and this mythical independent swing voter sect.
Just go get the Republicans to vote for you.
That's all you need.
Not all you need, but well over 80%, 90% of the battle is done.
And that's, you know, with McCain, as Feynman reveals, making this phone call to Bush.
Oh, and there's something else.
There's a lot, well, some buzz in the Republican Party about Haley Barber after the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.
I like this guy, people are saying, I wonder if he has a future in presidential or vice presidential politics.
And Haley Barber took himself out of it.
But at this straw poll down in Memphis, the McCain people were recruiting him.
And I think they succeeded.
And if they did, I'm not sure.
If they did, if Haley Barber is going to become a McCainite, then that's going to carry a lot of weight in the so-called South.
I don't think they'll think Haley Barber sold out.
I think maybe they'll think Haley Barber.
What does Haley know?
Do they respect him?
And then Feynman reveals this phone call.
What was the Bush call about?
According to McCain, he simply wanted to offer friendship during the furore over the ports deal.
Even though President Bush remains popular with most hardcore Republicans, his overall poll numbers are about as low as you can go, flirting with territory once occupied by Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon.
As McCain explained it, you get no credit for standing with a popular ally.
The test of friendship is to be at his side when he's down.
So the call was meant as a personal pick-me-up.
I wanted to tell him that I was with him and supported him, and the polls weren't a test of whether he was doing the right thing, which I think he is.
This is on the port deal, all of which would be fine even touching, were there not also a series of political and tactical moves, writes Howard Feynman.
So that phrase by Feynman, all of which would be fine, even touching, were there not also a series of political and tactical moves.
Wait a minute.
Does a straight talker get involved with political and tactical moves?
Well, in truth, yes, because in truth, there's no such thing as a straight talker.
The media has dubbed McCain this.
So since they have defined straight talker as McCain, whatever McCain says is straight talk.
But they're starting to go, wait a minute, this whole business of asking his delegates to vote for Bush, why, that's a little curious.
And some people were saying, well, this is all well and good.
You ask for people to support Bush on something that's meaningless.
Where was your support for Bush on permanent tax cuts?
Where's your support for Bush on the issues?
You've been out there running against Bush trying to please the media a number of times.
Where is your real support for him?
It's one thing to ask your delegates to vote for him in something that has zilch substance to it.
He voted for tax cuts this budget cycle, but he has yet to vote for making him permanent.
He ran against these tax cuts.
This is what I'm saying.
McCain has taken to Goa's model.
McCain is going to move closer and closer to Bush.
I will tell you this.
If McCain comes out and supports permanent tax, that's going to be a tough one for him because the media hates tax cuts, permanent, temporary, any.
But if he comes out and supports permanent tax cuts, well, he'll get away with it immediately.
Well, we understand what he's doing.
He's running for the Republican nomination.
We know what he has to do.
He'll be back to us once he wins that.
But if he were to do that, if he were to come out and support permanent tax cuts, and of course this will never happen, but he's got an opportunity to denounce Feingold and this censure movement.
Now, it's a real risk denouncing Feingold because one half of the campaign finance reform bill, their chief sponsor, was Feingold.
And so, you know, you watch him.
I will bet you that he makes a series of public moves that will make it appear as though he's moving closer and closer to Bush.
He wants his campaign team.
If he comes out for permanent tax cuts, just consider him permanent until I win tax cuts.
Remember, anybody can change legislation every year.
There's no such thing as permanent anything in Washington except Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
And now Medicare Part B, the prescription drugs.
That's about all that's permanent.
Other than that, you can change everything else.
Now, there's a piece today.
Where's this from?
It's Lloyd Grove in the New York Daily News gossip column.
Is John McCain a lesbian?
Is how the piece opens.
Maybe we'll learn the answer from Edward Klein, who insinuated as much about Hillary Clinton in his 2005 biography, largely a clip job of hit pieces, reviewers said.
And apparently this Kleinfell is apparently hard at work on a poison pen book about McCain.
According to Crane's New York business, Klein claims that he'll chronicle the Republican presidential frontrunners' sexual infidelity, chronic gambling, and anger management in a book that's coming out.
So we shall see.
As Feingold ends, well, if he, yeah, well, could appeal to Democrats if there's any truth to any of that, particularly the anger manager.
You got anger.
I mean, the true test for the lunatic fringe Democrat base is how angry can their candidates be?
Angrier, the better.
Now, here is how Feingold ends his McCain piece today.
It's on MSNBC's website.
Still, McCain's procedures here expose the risks of their embrace the president strategy.
If they're such good buddies, McCain and the president, and if McCain's the natural follow-on to George Bush, shouldn't the senator have been the toast of more people in the Peabody Lobby Hotel, meaning the delegates, down in Memphis?
It's a tough hand to play.
A weary McCain strategist said, is there a playbook for how to run as an insider, an outsider, an establishment, and an anti-establishment guy?
If you find it, let me know.
So, you know, I don't know if this is Feynman deciding to get off the Straight Talk Express or not, but I knew this was going to happen.
I've been asking you, let's say McCain gets the nomination and Hillary is a nominee.
What are they going to do?
Well, you know flat out well what they're going to do.
Bye-bye, McCain.
And now as McCain is publicly gravitating to the president, what are they going to have a tougher time calling him a maverick and a straight talker and all that?
Because they're going to assume he's going to be an insider and an outsider, establishment, anti-establishment at the same time.
And that's only because in their minds he's been anti-establishment.
McCain is pro-McCain.
You know, whatever, that's the way to define it.
And they have been willing accomplices in promoting that because he was the most credible and the loudest Republican opposing Bush.
Who they despise.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Rush Limbo and the Limbo Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Let's listen to some audio on this whole straw poll business.
We, first off, here, we have a montage of various political bigwigs and media people.
You got Chris Matthews chucked out of the hotline, Charlie Cook, Feynman, CNN's John Roberts, Chris Wallace from Fox, John Dickerson from Slate, and George Will.
And they're all talking about Senator McCain's status for president.
And all this took place over the weekend, primarily on Sunday after the straw poll vote in Memphis Saturday night.
Still McCain is the frontrunner coming out of this.
McCain's still the frontrunner.
He's still the frontrunner for the nomination.
McCain is the putative frontrunner.
John McCain is the presumed frontrunner.
Frontrunner, John McCain.
John McCain is the real frontrunner.
The stars are aligned right now for Senator McCain.
Well, that's probably the most accurate statement.
He didn't fall into the trap of echoing everybody else, the putative, the presumed, the frontrunner.
Stars may be lining up.
But it's way too soon here.
Like our buddies at Red State said, anybody thinks he's the frontrunner right now, especially after coming in fifth in this thing, is jumping the gun.
And it's once again, it's conventional wisdom.
It's conventional wisdom tsunami.
Everybody's getting aboard.
All these insiders are, all these inside the beltway types and drive-by media types.
And they just, you know what it is?
They just are too paranoid that they're not going to agree with everybody else in their crowd.
And so they all want to end up saying the same thing because that keeps them membership in the clique.
Hey, God, let's see.
One, two, we got two little bites from McCain.
Here's his gambit at the straw poll, snuggling up to President Bush and giving himself the excuse for finishing fourth or fifth, depending on how you want to tabulate it.
For the next three years, with our country at war, he's our president and the only one who needs our support today.
So you see what he was doing here?
He's out there not asking just his delegates.
He wanted all the delegates to vote for Bush because he didn't want to show that he came in fourth or third, whatever he was going to come in.
He didn't win place or show.
Now, there's one thing.
Look, I can't, I cannot help but observe this.
We've all seen what McCain's up to here at this straw poll.
The question is: is it straight talk or is it cynical?
Do we also realize how stupid he thinks the GOP rank and file is?
I mean, I think there's some weakness on display here without knowing the ultimate outcome, and nobody should be surprised that the media don't run the Republican Party, and he has spent years campaigning for the media support.
I've tried to, in a very gracious and thoughtful, compassionate, and caring way on this very program, I have tried to warn Senator McCain all of these years.
If you make the media your base, you are alienating Republicans.
They despise the base, the media, as much as they despise the Democrats because they're no different.
They're the same people.
And when you go cozying up to these people, it's not helping you.
And the media does not elect Republicans.
They don't have anything to do.
The media doesn't run the Republican Party.
You know, and he spent five years off and on undermining President Bush.
How about this?
How about when this is one thing I'll never forget?
You might have your own example.
But when John Kerry asked him to be his vice presidential running mate and McCain didn't immediately say no, even though there was no way he was going to do it, but he still flirted with the idea.
Start talking about what a great guy John Kerry is.
This is just, you don't have to run out and dump on the guy who asked you to be vice president.
Understand the trick that Kerry was trying to play and acknowledge to your own party that you understand it and you're not going to fall for it and that you're not moved by it.
But he went and act, oh, I'm so impressed.
I'm so touched, Senator Kerry would be thinking of me in this light.
I mean, gag me with a spoon.
It was time for my index finger down my throat.
And I would assume most people too.
Now, Friday night on Chris Matthews' show, McCain appeared with Chris Matthews, and Matthews said, This southern leadership issue, I mean, you endorsed Bush for write-in tomorrow at your own expense.
Come on, Chris.
I mean, even you are better than that, your own expense.
This was a own expense.
He's trying to cover up what was going to be a poor showing.
This is what McCain said.
Let me be serious a minute about him.
He's having trouble right now.
We Republicans all know that.
That's when you need to stand by him.
He doesn't need us when his numbers are at 65.
He needs us now.
And that's my only message.
Is your hope that he'll win here tomorrow?
I hope so.
What's the laughter about?
I hope so.
That's my only message: Bush needs our support right now.
There are ways of going about doing this if he wants to, but he's going to create a bunch of cynicism in people's minds about his motives and behavior doing it this way.
One of the things about Haley Barber, I left something out when the McCain people are trying to get Haley Barber, and it's a dual-pronged purpose.
They're trying to get Haley Barber as an official endorser, maybe on the short list, long list for Veep.
Who knows?
But there's two reasons for that.
One is to get Barber to sort of quell some of the unrest for McCain that there is in the South.
And the second thing would be to take Barber out of the running because they consider him a threat.
You know, Barber said he's not interested, but he could change his mind any day.
And they think Barber's a threat.
So you get Barber on your team to get him out of the running.
So there's any number of things that are at work here that are not straight talk.
Back in just a moment.
Here's Charlie Cook from this weekend on the Republicans straw poll.
I think that party regulars in general and Republican party regulars in particular don't like mavericks.
They don't like independents.
They like team players.
But I also think that reform doesn't sell with party regulars.
And I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat.
Why not, Charlie?
They're ideologues.
They don't want reform.
They love politics.
Yeah, well, don't sound so mad about it.
It's exactly right.
Republicans want conservatives.
That's how you win.
You win with conservatism.
You want to call them ideologues, go, well, we want to win.
We don't want to just have people say clever things and make the other side mad.
We want to win, and we know how it happens.
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