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May 26, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
May 26, 2006, Friday, Hour #2
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All right, are we ready to take the uh the measure of the effect of high gasoline prices uh on the country this uh this weekend and Memorial Day weekend?
As I can tell you right now, folks, the effect of high gas prices on the country of Memorial Day weekend is absolutely zero zip zero nada.
Friday it is, we roll on.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
And when we go to the phones, the program is all yours, 800 282-2882.
Meaning you can bring up whatever you want to bring up, folks.
Uh it's a golden opportunity.
It's a huge career risk that I take.
Turning over the uh essentially turning over the program to rank amateurs uh when we go to the phones.
And that's not a put down, it's just a realistic assessment.
I am a highway trained broadcast specialist.
I'm in charge, I'm in control, I'm a benevolent dictator.
Uh Monday through Thursday on Friday.
Uh become a wimp.
And whatever you want to talk about, feel free.
800-282-2882.
High gasoline prices are not stopping at least Washington area residents.
I'm hitting the road of Memorial Day.
This is from the uh Washington Times.
A gallon of regular gasoline may cost 86 cents more this year than last.
But tourism officials expect just as much traffic in some instances more as last year, as drivers flocked to area beaches to kick off the unofficial start of summer.
What do you mean, unofficial start?
Oh, June 21st.
I get it.
Uh, the fact is uh that most people are still choosing to travel, said a triple A and Mid-Atlantic spokesman Alon Anderson.
Gas prices are having an impact, causing them to change uh what they're doing, but it's not stopping many people from traveling.
In fact, high gas prices could actually boost bidness at local beaches, uh, state tourism officials uh point out.
Right now, uh guy named Kuhlman, uh here run director of tourism, marketing, and sales for Virginia Beach.
So I I've not heard uh anything from the hotels that would indicate uh business is soft this weekend.
So um, and guess what?
We're actually going to get rid of a tax.
This is unbelievable.
The Treasury Department said yesterday that it will no longer collect a three percent federal excise tax on long distance calls and would refund about fifteen billion dollars to taxpayers.
The tax was imposed in eighteen ninety-eight to help pay for the Spanish American War.
It was designed as a tax on wealthy Americans back when phone service was considered a luxury.
It's not often you get to kill a tax, particularly one that goes back so far in history, said the Treasury Secretary, John Snow, said it was uh conceding its battle to uphold the tax after five appeals courts declared it illegal because of changes in the way long distance calls are billed.
Phone companies and cell carriers must stop billing for the tax August 1st.
Individuals and businesses can file for refunds next year on their 2006 tax returns for excise taxes paid on long distance calls since March 1 of 2003.
Uh but of course now in in every such story as this, we have to be told of the drastic impact on the federal government.
And uh, well, uh elimination of the tax will cost the government uh forty-six billion dollars in refunds and in lost revenue and administrative expenses in the next five years.
Uh that should be offset by higher tax revenue from a strong economy.
They'll find a way to raise taxes.
How about how about yesterday, President Bush personally ordered the Justice Department sealing records, seized from the Capitol Hill office of Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana.
It was a six uh paragraph statement.
The uh president said he issued the order to give the Justice Department and angry lawmakers more time to work out an agreement on how to resolve the conflict.
The materials which have been described in court filings as two boxes of documents and copies of computer files will be held by the solicitor general Paul Clement, who is not involved in the in the investigation of Congressman William Jefferson, uh Democrat Louisiana.
Uh Also, there's this key little uh statement inside the statement that the President released.
Those who violate the law, including members of Congress, should and will be held to account.
This investigation will go forward and justice will be served.
Now, what that means is that uh uh we're just a cooling off period here of 45 days, and after 45 days, uh I think I think the objective here is is to um uh return these documents to Congressman William Jefferson, uh Democrat Louisiana in 45 days, and then force him to cooperate with subpoenas and request by law enforcement uh to uh turn over those documents.
We'll see.
There's a there's a variety of opinion on this.
What is the president doing?
What in the world is he doing?
And other people think this is really smart move because there was a giant clash coming.
Uh, this has not happened ever in the 200-plus year history of our of our country.
Uh yada yada yada.
I still maintain that there is a uh uh uh disconnect like I've never seen the idea that that anybody in Washington cannot figure out or doesn't uh doesn't understand that a member of Congress is asking for the right to cover up alleged criminal activity, or to hide it under the guise of the Constitution.
That's just that is not that is not Supreme Courts have not have not held that.
Uh this is if they went rummaging through his office for legislative materials and things that were not related to the investigation.
You couldn't do that.
That that would be a big no-no.
But uh this was very specific, and the Justice Department, apparently FBI have just they have run this investigation uh as as close to the vest as they can because of the very concerns that people have about separation of powers.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Denny Hastert uh today put Congress constitutional tussle with the Justice Department in the past that he's gonna work with the Justice Department now to set up guidelines for the FBI to review materials it seized from Congressman William Jefferson's office.
Hastert's move came after President Bush ordered that documents be sealed for 45 days, calling a timeout in a fight between the legislative and executive branches over constitutional prerogatives.
Bush's spokesman uh meanwhile branded as false, false false, and he charges that the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, had tried to intimidate Hastert.
So I told you this yesterday.
Uh one of the one of the theories that was going around was that uh uh the Justice Department had leaked this uh story to uh uh Brian Ross of ABC that they were investigating Hastert in the Abramoff thing.
And then the Justice Department said, no, no, no, no, no.
It went on the record.
Deputy Attorney General said, no, no, no, no, he's not under investigation.
ABC stuck by their story, and uh now we know that what they were sticking by was nothing new.
Uh it was already pre-known.
They were just sticking with their story for the sake of it, and then it then it came out.
I even speculated on this program being as instinctively correct and accurate as I always am that there might have been somebody in the Justice Department who leaked this to Brian Ross because they were fed up with the way Hastert was uh reacting over this Congressman William Jefferson business.
And uh so now and that apparently is what happened.
And uh Hastert said, All right, well, we'll forget it.
Well uh we'll uh we'll we'll move on.
Uh no, we'll work with the Justice Department uh on all this now.
And then of course we had the President and Tony Blair.
Did you watch this thing last night at 7.30?
I I watched it.
It was um I don't know, it was maybe it was because it was 7.30, and you're used to seeing these things either in the daytime or after nine o'clock, but it seemed a little surreal.
There was something uh different about it to me, and I I couldn't put my finger on just in my perception of uh of what it was.
Both these guys seemed entirely different personalities than uh than they normally are.
In fact, get this.
Uh the unidentified reporter asked uh Bush and Blair, you spoke about missteps and mistakes in Iraq.
Could I ask both of you which missteps and mistakes of your own you most regret?
Saying bring it on.
Kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people.
Uh I learned some lessons about uh expressing myself maybe in a more sophisticated manner.
You know, wanted dead or alive.
That kind of talk.
I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted.
And uh so I learned from that.
Well, I mean, this is a milestone.
The drive-by media has been trying to get Bush to admit a mistake for five years.
And he also further said that the perhaps the biggest mis well, here, uh President added this after after he said that.
I think the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq, is Abu Garab.
We've been paying for that for a long period of time.
And it's uh unlike Iraq, however, under Saddam, the people uh who committed those acts were brought to justice.
They've been given a fair trial and tried and convicted.
Sound a little bit more subdued than usual.
Uh I I think, you know.
I don't think so, Sturdley.
I don't think this is a sign of the president being beaten down.
I don't think that's what it is.
I actually think that that this was a this is a prelude to announcing troop reductions.
They didn't actually do that, this press conference, but that's coming, and that's a sign that we are winning.
Uh I I I don't that's it.
I didn't get the get the impression that Bush is beaten down at all here.
Uh just the opposite.
Um if he's willing to admit these mistakes and so forth.
Now the drive-by media's been asking for all orgasms in the White House last night as in the East Room uh this was happening.
Now uh it is said in Washington that if you admit your mistakes, that it makes you a bigger person and uh it garnish you more respect.
We uh will wait and see.
We also have some sound bites of this uh being discussed on Chris Matthews' show last night.
It's hard to follow.
This went all over the place.
But we'll uh share that with you and get to your phone calls as open line Friday continues in just a second.
All right, the uh not much to report new on the uh siege of the Rayburn office building by Capitol Hill Police.
Uh saw earlier a uh woman taken out of the place on a stretcher to load it into an ambulance.
It turned out she's a staff member of Congressman Jack Kingston from Ohio.
She was just shaken up.
She was not shot.
She just heard about this whole ordeal whole story going on and freaked her out.
Uh so far, uh nothing new to report.
Big hubbub of activity, the whole whole uh Capitol shutdown here.
Uh uh well, I mean, the Senate still operating, but uh it's amazing.
It's just that this this one report has just paralyzed the place up there.
Uh the the Capitol Hill police have another press briefing in about eight uh minutes from now.
Here is Bill in Palm Beach Gordons, Florida, and it's great to have you.
I'm glad you waited too.
Welcome.
Hey, Russ, thank you very much.
This is this is a great honor to talk to you.
I can't believe I got through.
Thank you, sir.
Um Rush, I am as conservative a Republican as they come, and I uh I gotta disagree with you on this immigration issue.
Um do so at your own peril, uh Bill.
I I understand that.
I think I'm swimming upstream here this afternoon, but let me give it a shot.
Um we've got a large Central American population here in Palm Beach County, uh as I think you know.
And uh and I understand I'm sure many of them are are here illegally, but I don't see any evidence whatsoever that if these folks were were granted citizenship under under some kind of program in the future, that that we're importing future victims or or or for that matter, future Democrats.
Uh I I see just the opposite.
Uh these folks have already, as far as I'm concerned, proven themselves to be hard-working family religious people.
You're buying into all of it.
This is super citizens.
Absolutely right.
Um why we wouldn't welcome these folks after maybe paying a fine or or showing that they can speak English.
Um as American citizens is is behind me, frankly.
Uh well.
I think you fit the profile profile of the uh of a of the kind of person that the Mr. Snerdley was telling me about earlier in the program that what I was saying today was just going to be greeted by some people with total uh stunned disbelief because they're not hearing any of this in what's being reported.
You know, you can you can uh use anecdotal evidence here, uh, but uh you have to have heard some of the other anecdotal evidence from around the country uh on this program and elsewhere about the destruction and the damage that is taking place to cultures, to uh to communities and so forth.
You've heard about Proposition 187 and others like it in Arizona, uh where the safety net is being expanded.
I mean, I mean it it's you have you obviously have a big heart, Bill, and you're and you're you're looking at it in a localized circumstance, but what w what you're failing to miss is that uh we're dealing here with an out-of-control influx of people who are not here legally.
And we're doing nothing to stop it.
And make no mistake about it.
It is a workforce that is designed to be here to earn very little.
Uh that's one of the uh reasons people want them here.
There's a there's a number of different groups of people that are behind all this uh happening.
But you know, you've you have it you've kind of made my point in the sense that the that uh this isn't even about immigration.
Uh uh there are other concerns here, like we must be nice people.
Uh we don't see any really damage that's being done, but there's all kinds of it out there.
But the rule of law is the big thing, and there's no border security, and there's no attempt to shore it up, and there's no attempt to stop this.
When you have eleven or twelve or twenty million people here illegally, that fact alone should be enough to wake everybody up and say something's wrong with the system.
Now we've come up with a so-called fix that is simply going to expand that number.
And people who have stolen others' identity are going to be forgiven for it.
It's called amnesty.
And they're going to be paid social security benefits and so forth.
It's a deal that no American citizen can get.
They're not getting to pay all their back taxes.
Um it's it's it's absurd.
It frankly is absurd just in the in the sense of truth, justice, and the American way.
That's not what this is about.
You've got I think yourself convinced that it is the American way because we're being compassionate and we're being nice, and these are decent people.
You've fallen for the notion that these are super citizens doing things that uh spoiled rotten Americans uh will no longer do.
And that's that's just a a total mischaracterization of the facts, as can be borne out by statistics.
In the agriculture community, in the agriculture business, twenty-four percent of the employees are said to be, and this is from Pew research statistics, twenty-four percent of agriculture workers said to be illegal.
Uh yet we're told the American people won't do these jobs, yet 76 percent of the people, obviously by simple addition, subtraction, simple math, have to be Americans.
Well, how do you get from Americans won't do this work to 76 percent of them work in the agriculture business?
It's a disconnect, doesn't work, doesn't fly.
Uh all this has been pitched to us on a in a in a number of uh very seductive ways.
But I appreciate the call.
Cindy and Fort Wayne, Indiana, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Hi.
I'm a first-time caller and a 24-7 member.
I have just a comment to make.
I listened to your interview yesterday with Tony Snow.
And I have been a Tony Snow fan for years.
I've I've paid to listen to him talk.
That wasn't the Tony Snow that I know.
He sounded to me like he was rolling over and lying with the dogs when he was defending the stand he was taking with Bush.
Well, it's his job now.
But that's the same.
That's what he that's what he signed up to do, and he understands that as well as anybody else does.
But that's what happens to all of our our senators, our our congressmen, everybody that goes to Washington, they take a different view when they get inside from the view they had before they went.
Uh well now, did you when you listen to Tony on the radio, let me ask you this.
Put yourself, let's assume Tony's not working for the White House, and the Tony that you're used to listening to on the radio were still on the radio, talking about immigration.
Would he have sounded different on the radio than what he sounded to you yesterday?
Yes.
He was more indignant and more.
But he was in Washington then.
It was it's just he's he's gone to work for the administration.
His job that a lot of people thought that uh because it was report Tony was gonna be able to go in there and and participate in uh policy setting and all that.
And that that presumes that Bush is a sponge with no ideas of his own, is sitting around collecting ideas and then you know coming up with a consensus.
That's not right.
George Bush, George Bush, he's a very decisive person.
He's a very opinionated guy.
He has his policy ideas, and the people that work for him are gonna espouse them.
They're not gonna get in there to try to talk him out of them.
So Tony wanted the gig and and this is what it is.
Do you think he asked Tony for his opinion?
I have no clue.
He might.
He might.
But he probably doesn't care.
Uh oh, I don't I I think he probably if he asks him for his opinion, he listens to it.
But then he alone, the president makes up his mind as to whether or not he wants to follow it, or whether he wants to give the opinion that he just heard any weight.
Uh obviously uh the the president has been one hundred percent percent consistent on this immigration issue since he took office.
He has been exactly who he is.
None of us are surprised by his position on this.
That's why I keep focusing on the Senate.
Back in a sec.
Ticlinose eighty-eight's back having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
El Rushball, the all-knowing, all caring, all sensing, all feeling, all concerned.
Maha Rushi.
I am told by official sources, by the way, that Tony Snow's immigration position pretty much paralleled President Bush's prior to uh his taking the uh press secretary job at the White House.
Uh and I I will believe that I didn't I've I've never had a chance to listen to Tony, uh, other than when he guest hosted on this program, so uh that's why I asked the caller uh what she thought her position was, but they're telling me that his position pretty much paralleled the president's before.
He took the job.
Federal judge just today.
This is Reggie Walton in the uh Libby case.
Federal judge just today ordered Time magazine to turn over documents for a White House aide, Scooter Libby, to use in his defense to perjury and other charges in the CIA leak case.
Reggie Walton also said the New York Times might have to turn over some information, but reduced the scope of documents.
The newspaper and other news organizations would have to provide a lawyers for the defendant, um, which again is scooter libby, citing a lack of relevancy.
Walton said that Judith Miller, a former Times reporter, doesn't have to provide two notebooks or phone records or appointment calendars to lawyers for Libby.
Um is vice.
This is the third time Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.
How many times I've been glossing over this.
Um it's amazing how many times they get Cheney's name into a story when uh when they've got information about Lewis Libby.
In granting in part and denying in part Libby's subpoenas for the media's records, the judge said that reporters don't have a right to refuse to provide notes, drafts, and articles or other information in a criminal case.
He said the First Amendment does not protect a news reporter or that reporter's news organization from producing documents in a criminal case.
Knew this was gonna happen.
They asked for this, and uh it's one of these things.
Be careful what you ask for.
So there'll be some spin on this as soon as this thing at the Capitol dies down, and the drive-by's get on to this.
Believe me, folks, this is not gonna sit well with the drive-bys.
They'll be calling this a Nazi-like judiciary acting on orders from the White House in an attempt to destroy the last vestige of free speech in the United States.
Repression of the media threatens to obstruct news coverage of who knows what this dastardly president has in mind, perhaps even a military takeover of our once free nation.
Who knows the hysteria that they will greet this new is with Chris in San Mateo, California.
You're next in open line Friday.
Hi.
Sixty be hot dittoes, Rush.
Thank you, sir.
Um, I heard two additional clips from Harry Reid's uh press conference.
One, he was praising the bipartisan bipartisanship, saying this is how the Senate should be run.
Yes.
Then later, he said, and nobody got what they wanted.
And I thought that he was saying that.
Nobody nobody got what they wanted.
That's what he said.
That's absurd.
He said neither side got what they wanted.
Uh severe moderates in the I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm I'm sorry to crack up on you here, but that's just I'm telling you what this is.
If you people are gonna have to listen to me.
There are two things at once going on here.
Moderates in the Republican Party are trying to uh uh take out conservatives as the dominant wing of the Republican Party, and they're using this so-called immigration bill to do it.
The second thing that's happening here is it's not about immigration, in my humble opinion.
After reading this bill, there is no way this is about immigration control.
If it may be immigration reform in the sense we're going to expand it, we're importing poverty from around the world, we're creating new dependence, we're going to expand the safety welfare net.
This is all about expanding government.
This is about moderates and liberals attempting to take it back.
Uh and and that's what that's what drives some of us so nuts here because there seem to be so many people tone deaf in the Republican Party, because if this thing manifests itself uh as it if it doesn't change in the House conference, and that, you know, the Harry Reid clip that we have and that we played,
he says there are dark clouds forming on the horizon, the uh the beautiful Senate amnesty horizon, and he took direct aim at the House conservatives, and they're gonna get blamed if this thing doesn't come out of uh conference pretty much looking like the Senate bill.
They're gonna get blamed.
Conservatives are gonna be held up as the opponents, the guys that are stopping progress, blah, blah.
So you you conservatives in the House are gonna have to understand you are the targets here.
You are the ones that are being targeted.
All of conservatism in the Republican Party is being the blue blood country club moderates in the Republican Party want the party back.
They're sick and tired of being run by the Christian right, they're sick and tired of being run by evangelicals and the Jerry Falwells and the James Dobsons, I guarantee you.
Uh and and plus the liberals, you know, would be content for the Republican Party to be destroyed.
Moderate Republicans have no concept that the party is being targeted, because they're too caught up in their superiority over everybody because they're moderates.
Uh and and so you you bring in a bunch of people that are going to become uh a new permanent poverty class, gonna need welfare benefits, social benefits of some kind.
Uh that means that taxes are going to have to go up, wealth transfers are going to have to be made.
Uh it's it's an attempt here to just bloat the government one more time, and to create more and more Democrat voters are act actively out there recruiting amongst uh amongst these people.
So for Harry Reid to say nobody got what they wanted, you gotta take the opposite.
You just assume the opposite.
They got it.
They're slapping themselves on the back yesterday.
Where where is this?
Is a press conference um, and we're trying to find audio.
A cookie saw it.
Cookie watched it, but couldn't get any audio of it.
Um hardly anybody covered it.
Um uh it was a love fest.
McCain and Hegel and Graham and Martinez and Spectre were thanking Kennedy and Reed and Durban.
They're congratulating each other over what a great thing they'd done.
McCain said at this press conference the most important message probably is to those eleven million people who are out there living in the shadows without the protection of any of our laws of our society, without any protection.
My gosh, they can engage in identity theft and get away with it.
They don't need protection from the law because they're not bound by the law.
They're here illegally.
Folks.
Anyway, Kathleen informs me she didn't see it.
She read a transcript of this press conference and wrote this summary for me.
Uh yeah, the uh out there living in the shadows without the protection of any of our laws, millions of whom are being mistreated and and not given, not receiving their uh their God-given rights.
Well, now that frankly, uh absurd.
He went on to say, to those eleven million, we will provide you with a path to citizenship so you can come out of the shadows, educate yourselves and feed your families, and become very profitable and very important members of our society.
Um pretty much sums it up.
So the Capitol Hill police are doing a press conference now, no reports of injuries, just one panic attack, no arrests have been made, no suspects are in mind.
I want you to hear James Sensenbrenner.
He is one of the hardliners in the House.
And uh, this was at a press conference this morning.
He was talking about the upcoming conference with the Senate on their uh so-called immigration bill.
What we need to do is to figure out a way short of amnesty to deal with the labor needs of the American economy.
Stop the take.
Now, right there, this is a hardliner.
Right there, this is this is pretty much tells you what's going on.
We have to figure out a way to deal with the labor needs of the American economy.
My friends, now I'm gonna say something to you, it's gonna it's gonna stymie a lot of you.
Because as a conservative, uh one of the cliches would automatically attach to me or you as a conservative is that we are pro-business.
Uh we're out here fuming that Ken Leigh was convicted.
You know, they they they these cliches that we are just pro-business and business get away with doing anything they want.
I'm telling you, one of the strongest groups supporting this so-called immigration bill is the Chamber of Commerce.
Uh to many people in the Republican Party, this is not about their maids, and it's not about their lawns being manicured, and it's not about landscaping, it's not about the it's about big business.
It's about big business, and everybody that has any experience at all, the the the objective of any business is to keep costs down as as much as practicable.
Uh and you know what it's like trying to get a raise.
Uh every trick in the book will be tried uh on you to say you don't deserve it, or that if you don't like the job, we can find somebody else to do it for you.
Hello, eleven million illegals, um or what have you, uh, or now 20 million, however whatever the number.
I'm telling you that the there that there's a there's a uh uh a part of this that's uh simply oriented toward making sure that uh the Chamber of Commerce, big business contributors and so forth, and Republicans who themselves are big businessmen in in their in their private lives, um have an access to this kind of labor uh at this at these wages.
For others, it is about holding on to their maids and uh the chefs, the cooks, uh the landscapers or what have you.
For others, and you've heard them call here, they're all for peace people coming in as long as they pay Social Security because they've been told Social Security is going bankrupt.
Well, fine, get a new wave of workers in here to contribute, and I don't have to worry about my social security.
There's also the desire by the uh political class in Washington not to touch it.
You saw what happened to President Bush when he tried to.
They don't want to reform Social Security.
This is this bill provides so much for Harry Reed to say they didn't get what they they got more in this bill, then that's why they are so happy.
That that's why they're so insistent that the House not change much of this.
Uh play the rest of Senson Brenner now.
And if the Senate gets off uh the dime uh pushing for amnesty, even though they call it something different, uh then I think there's room for negotiation.
The bottom line should be something that works.
And if we make the mistake of Simpson Mazzoli all over again, twenty years from now, we're gonna have a problem that's even worse.
And what that means is that you've got to do things in the proper order.
The first things that need to be done are border security and enforcement of employer sanctions.
Now everybody's out there saying that there were no employer sanctions in Simpson Mazzoli.
There are.
There were.
They are the law of the land.
They are not enforced.
Border security, Senson Brenner's exactly right.
Um, but as you have heard, if you were listening, the 370-mile fence and the 500-mile uh vehicle barricade.
Senator Dodd inserted a little amendment supported by Senator Specter that said the Mexican authorities have to be consulted, and that any effect on the Mexican side of the border as a result of the fence uh has to be taken into account.
I really wouldn't look for a fence to be built anytime soon, ladies and gentlemen, two miles or three hundred and seventy or what have you.
There's because there's really not a desire to stop the inflow of um immigrants, legal or illegal, into the country.
This is a this is a bill that expands immigration, legal, illegal.
You could say it reforms it in that way, but not in the way that um uh everybody's all wild about.
One thing here, folks, now you gotta you gotta take a look here at what's happening.
If some of you people doubt me out there, and I'm telling you, don't doubt me.
There were four Democrats that voted against the immigration bill, and three of them are up for re-election.
I think it was um Ben Nelson, uh Debbie Stabenow.
Yeah, and uh and Sheets, Sheets Bird, uh voted against it, and they're all up for re-election.
A number of Republicans voted against this, and they are up for re-election.
So the the Senate came up with enough cover uh to allow those up for re-election to vote against it.
They had enough support for the bill to allow those who are up for re-election to vote against it, so they go back and not face the wrath of their voters.
The people that voted for it are not up this year, and they will be up in the next two or four years, uh, or five, depending on who they are, but they have they have uh protection.
And by that time it is thought that you will have forgotten all about this.
And that's that's that's the way these things um uh work.
Dave in Champaign, Illinois, welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us.
The thrill of a lifetime, Ross.
Thank you, sir.
I've been listening since I was eighteen years old in nineteen ninety-one, and it's first time to ever talk to you, and I'm just thrilled to death.
Well, it's great to have you with us.
I appreciate that.
That's very nice of you to say.
Hey, my question for you is this.
So right now, the Republicans on Capitol Hill and the President not really listening to the conservative base.
And you've noted that there's no real conservative voice in Washington that is taking the lead on this.
What happened in the last 12 months?
Twelve months ago, I'm thinking back, and we had the Harriet Myers nomination, and I thought, man, man, we you know, the conservative base has shown the president, the Republicans on Capitol Hill, who's running this party.
We were really flexing our muscle.
Twelve months later, they're not listening to us.
They're not listening to you on this.
They heard you on the Dubai Ports deal.
And they heard you on Harriet Myers.
Uh on the Harriet Myers thing, uh, that was practically conservative-wide.
I mean, we had even these elites inside the beltway, these elite conservatives were were appalled at that, but but uh you know, and they think they led the way on that.
They didn't but let them get away with it if they want.
But this this is my point.
This is my point.
The the the people that know they're gonna face the wrath of the voters did the right thing, voted against this.
The people that are not up for re-election said they had the freedom to say screw you, and there were enough of them not up to uh to cover the passage of the bill.
This bill is not the White House and a judicial nomination.
This is, you know, w when Harriet Myers came along, that was that was uh uh uh different different s set of circumstances in terms of of uh raising objections.
Here you've got the whole Senate.
You've got a hundred people, and you've got, believe me, you you you've got some people leading this who are untouchable.
Kennedy is untouchable.
McCain delights in this position that he stood.
McCain delights in irritating people.
It enhances his Maverick status.
Um do the rest of the Republicans on Capitol Hill think that two and four and six years from now we're just gonna forget this.
I mean, I'm still upset about campaign finance reform.
Yes, they absolutely do.
That's that's that's what happens here.
Uh that's this is standard operating procedure.
This is exactly what they think.
They think that the time presidential race comes around, it's not gonna matter.
What they don't get, what they don't understand well uh they don't.
They don't understand that on something like this that's that's this this simple, um uh uh next I tell you the House of Representatives is gonna is going to be hearing from you people.
With the next in the next uh couple weeks, I don't know how soon they're gonna try to get this well, the recess uh is all next week, uh the Memorial Day recess, but they come back on June 6th.
I I guarantee you uh members of the House, uh conservative members of the House are going to be hearing from people on this like they haven't heard from people in in a decade.
This is gonna dwarf Harriet Myers, they're gonna dwarf the Dubai Ports deal.
Uh mark my words.
And if if if what what'll happen here, because everybody in the House is up every two years.
You know, so they don't have the luxury of uh of of coming up with people who can uh uh vote one way and be insulated from it, uh, particularly on the Republican side of this.
So uh you know, November is not enough time for this to have been forgotten.
This is the kind of thing that'll cement votes Uh and cement people's frame of mind on this.
And so this is uh I it's why I've been, folks, uh the past three weeks.
Uh what I said was there is no elected conservative leadership in Washington.
Plenty of conservatives, but there's no elected conservative leadership.
Nobody leading a movement there.
Um and the closest we've got to it is is some people in the House, and that's why we cannot afford to lose it.
Uh back here in just a second.
Stay with us.
Still nothing new to report from the uh incident at the uh Rayburn office building, the next update from the Capitol Hill Police in about 45 minutes.
But our program will continue in much less time than that.
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