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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 measure of the effect of high gasoline prices on the country this weekend, 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 live 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.
It's a golden opportunity.
It's a huge career risk that I take.
Turning over the essentially turning over the program to rank amateurs when we go to the phones.
And that's not a put-down.
It's just a realistic assessment.
I am a highly trained broadcast specialist.
I'm in charge.
I'm in control.
I'm a benevolent dictator.
Monday through Thursday.
On Friday, 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 from hitting the road on Memorial Day.
This is from the 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 got it.
The fact is that most people are still choosing to travel, said a AAA mid-Atlantic spokesman, Lon Anderson.
Gas prices are having an impact, causing them to change 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, state tourism officials point out.
Right now, a guy named Kuhlman here, Director of Tourism, Marketing and Sales for Virginia Beach.
I've not heard anything from the hotels that would indicate business is soft this weekend.
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 3% federal excise tax on long-distance calls and would refund about $15 billion to taxpayers.
The tax was imposed in 1898 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.
It said it was conceding its battle to uphold a 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.
But of course, now, in every such story as this, we have to be told of the drastic impact on the federal government.
And, well, elimination of the tax will cost the government $46 billion in refunds and in lost revenue and administrative expenses in the next five years.
That should be offset by higher tax revenue from a strong economy.
They'll find a way to raise taxes.
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-paragraph statement.
The 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 investigation of Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana.
Also, there's this key little 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 it's a cooling off period here of 45 days.
And after 45 days, I think the objective here is to return these documents to Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, in 45 days, and then force him to cooperate with subpoenas and request by law enforcement to turn over those documents.
We'll see.
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 a really smart move because there was a giant clash coming.
This has not happened ever in the 200-plus year history of our country.
Yada, yada, yada.
I still maintain that there is a disconnect like I've never seen, the idea that anybody in Washington cannot figure out or 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 held that.
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 would be a big no-no.
But this was very specific, and the Justice Department, apparently FBI, have just, they have run this investigation 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 today put Congress constitutional tussle with the Justice Department in the past, said he's going to 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, meanwhile, branded as false, false, false, any charges that the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, had tried to intimidate Hastert.
So I told you this yesterday.
One of the theories that was going around was that the Justice Department had leaked this story to Brian Ross of ABC that they were investigating Hastert in the Abramoff thing.
And then the Justice Department said, no, I went on the record.
Deputy Attorney General said, no, no, no, no, he's not under investigation.
ABC stuck by their story.
And now we know that what they were sticking by was nothing new.
It was already pre-known.
They were just sticking with their story for the sake of it.
And 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 reacting over this Congressman William Jefferson business.
And so now, and that apparently is what happened.
And Hastert said, all right, well, we'll forget it.
Well, we'll move on.
We'll work with the Justice Department 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 watched it.
It was, I don't know, maybe it was because it was 7:30 and you're used to seeing these things either in the daytime or after 9 o'clock, but it seemed a little surreal.
There was something different about it to me.
I couldn't put my finger on just in my perception of what it was.
Both these guys seemed entirely different personalities than they normally are.
In fact, get this.
The unidentified reporter asked 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.
I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a more sophisticated manner.
Cool.
You know, wanted dead or alive.
That kind of talk.
I think in certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted.
And 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 perhaps the biggest miswell here.
President added this 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 Gharim.
We've been paying for that for a long period of time.
And it's unlike Iraq, however, under Saddam, the people who committed those acts were brought to justice.
They've been given a fair trial and tried and convicted.
Does this sound different to you?
Sound a little bit more subdued than usual?
I think, you know, I don't think so, sturdily.
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 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.
That's it.
I didn't get the impression that Bush is beaten down at all here.
Just the opposite.
If he's willing to admit these mistakes and so forth, now the drive-by media has been asking for, oh, orgasms in the White House last night as in the East Room.
This was happening.
Now, it is said in Washington that if you admit your mistakes, it makes you a bigger person and it garners you more respect.
We will wait and see.
We also have some soundbites of this being discussed on Chris Matthews' show last night.
It's hard to follow.
This went all over the place.
But we'll share that with you and get to your phone calls as Open Line Friday continues in just a second.
All right.
Not much to report new on the siege of the Rayburn office building by Capitol Hill Police.
Saw earlier a woman taken out of the place on a stretcher, loaded 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 it freaked her out.
So far, nothing new to report.
Big hubbub of activity, a whole Capitol shutdown here.
Well, I mean, the Senate's still operating, but it's amazing.
It's just this one report has just paralyzed the place up there.
The Capitol Hill Police have another press briefing in about eight 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, Rush.
Thank you very much.
This is a great honor to talk to you.
I can't believe I got through.
Thank you, sir.
Rush, I am as conservative a Republican as they come, and I've got to disagree with you on this immigration issue.
You do so at your own peril, Bill.
I understand that.
I think I'm swimming upstream here this afternoon, but let me give it a shot.
We've got a large Central American population here in Palm Beach County, as I think you know.
And I understand, I'm sure many of them are here illegally, but I don't see any evidence whatsoever that if these folks were granted citizenship under some kind of program in the future, that we're importing future victims or for that matter, future Democrats.
I see just the opposite.
These folks have already, as far as I'm concerned, proven themselves to be hardworking, family, religious people.
You're part of the community.
You're by all of it.
Super citizens, absolutely right.
Why we wouldn't welcome these folks after maybe paying a fine or showing that they can speak English as American citizens is beyond me, frankly.
Well, I think you fit the profile of the kind of person that Mr. Snurderly 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 stunned disbelief because they're not hearing any of this and what's being reported.
You know, you can use anecdotal evidence here, but you have to have heard some of the other anecdotal evidence from around the country on this program and elsewhere about the destruction and the damage that is taking place to cultures, to communities and so forth.
You've heard about Proposition 187 and others like it in Arizona, where the safety net is being expanded.
You obviously have a big heart, Bill, and you're looking at it in a localized circumstance.
But what you're failing to miss is that 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.
That's one of the reasons people want them here.
There's a number of different groups of people that are behind all this happening.
But you've kind of made my point in the sense that this isn't even about immigration.
There are other concerns here.
Like we must be nice people.
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 11 or 12 or 20 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.
It's absurd.
It frankly is absurd just in the sense of truth, justice, and the American way.
That's not what this is about.
You've got, I think you're self-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 spoiled, rotten Americans will no longer do.
And that's just a total mischaracterization of the facts, as can be borne out by statistics.
In the agriculture community, in the agriculture business, 24% of the employees are said to be, and this is from Pew Research Statistics, 24% of agriculture workers said to be illegal.
Yet we're told the American people won't do these jobs, yet 76% 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% of them work in the agriculture business?
It's a disconnect.
Doesn't work.
Doesn't fly.
All this has been pitched to us in a number of very seductive ways.
But I appreciate the call.
Cindy in 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 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.
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 senators, our congressmen, everybody that goes to Washington.
They take a different view when they get inside from the view they had before they went.
Well, now, 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's just he's gone to work for the administration.
His job, a lot of people thought that because it was a report, Tony was going to be able to go in there and participate in policy setting and all that.
And that presumes that Bush is a sponge with no ideas of his own, sitting around collecting ideas and then 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 going to espouse them.
They're not going to get in there to try to talk him out of them.
So Tony wanted the gig, 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.
No, I don't.
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.
Obviously, the president has been 100% 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 second.
Tickling those 88s back having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
El Rushbull, 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 his taking the press secretary job at the White House.
And I will believe that.
I've never had a chance to listen to Tony other than when he guest hosted on this program.
So that's why I asked the caller 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 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 to lawyers for the defendant, 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, her phone records, or appointment calendars to lawyers for Libby.
This is the third time Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.
How many times?
I've been glossing over this.
It's amazing how many times they get Cheney's name into a story 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 going to happen.
They asked for this, and 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-bys get onto this, believe me, folks, this is not going to 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 news with Chris in San Mateo, California.
You're next in Open Line Friday.
Hi.
6 TB Hot Dittos, Rush.
Thank you, sir.
I heard two additional clips from Harry Reid's press conference.
One, he was praising the 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 got what they wanted?
That's what he said.
That's absurd.
He said, neither side got what they wanted.
Severe moderates in here.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to crack up on you here, but that's just I'm telling you what this is.
You people are going to have to listen to me.
There are two things at once going on here.
Moderates in the Republican Party are trying to 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, maybe immigration reform in the sense we're going to expand it.
We're importing poverty from around the world.
We're creating new dependents.
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.
And 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 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 beautiful Senate amnesty horizon.
And he took direct aim at the House conservatives.
And they're going to get blamed if this thing doesn't come out of conference pretty much looking like the Senate bill.
They're going to get blamed.
Conservatives are going to be held up as the opponents, the guys that are stopping progress, blah, blah, blah.
You conservatives in the House are going to 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 it being run by evangelicals and the Jerry Falwells and the James Dobsons, I guarantee you.
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.
And so you bring in a bunch of people that are going to become a new permanent poverty class, going to need welfare benefits, social benefits of some kind.
That means that taxes are going to have to go up.
Wealth transfers are going to have to be made.
It's an attempt here to just bloat the government one more time and to create more and more Democrat voters.
They're actively out there recruiting amongst these people.
So for Harry Reid to say nobody got what they wanted, you got to take the opposite.
You just assume the opposite.
They're slapping themselves on the back yesterday.
Where is this?
It's a press conference and we're trying to find audio.
Cookie saw it.
Cookie watched it, but couldn't get any audio of it.
And hardly anybody covered it.
It was a love fest.
McCain and Hagel and Graham and Martinez and Specter were thanking Kennedy and Reed and Durbin.
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 11 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.
Yeah, out there living in the shadows without the protection of any of our laws, millions of whom are being mistreated and not given, not receiving their God-given rights.
Well, now that, frankly, absurd.
He went on to say, to those 11 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.
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 this was at a press conference this morning.
He was talking about the upcoming conference with the Senate on their 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 tape.
Now, right there, this is a hardliner.
Right there, this 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 going to say something to you.
It's going to stymie a lot of you.
Because as a conservative, one of the clichés would automatically attach to me or you as a conservative is that we are pro-business.
We're out here fuming that Ken Lay was convicted.
You know, these clichés that we are just pro-business, a 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.
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 objective of any business is to keep costs down as much as practicable.
And you know what it's like trying to get a raise.
Every trick in the book will be tried 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, 11 million illegals or what have you, or now 20 million, whatever the number.
I'm telling you that there's a part of this that's simply oriented toward making sure that the Chamber of Commerce, big business contributors and so forth, and Republicans who themselves are big businessmen in their private lives, have an access to this kind of labor at these wages.
For others, it is about holding on to their maids and the chefs, the cooks, the landscapers, and what have you.
For others, and you've heard him 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 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 bill provides so much for Harry Reid to say they didn't get what they got more in this bill than that's why they are so happy.
That's why they're so insistent that the House not change much of this.
Play the rest of Sensenbrenner now.
And if the Senate gets off the dime of pushing for amnesty, even though they call it something different, 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, 20 years from now, we're going to 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.
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.
Sensenbrenner's exactly right.
But as you have heard, if you were listening, the 370-mile fence and the 500-mile 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 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 370 or what have you.
Because there's really not a desire to stop the inflow of immigrants, legal or illegal, into the country.
This is a bill that expands immigration, legal, illegal.
You could say it reforms it in that way, but not in the way that everybody's all wild about.
One thing here, folks, you got to 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 reelection.
I think it was Ben Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, yeah, and Sheets, Sheets Bird, 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 Senate came up with enough cover 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 or five, depending on who they are.
But they have protection.
And by that time, it is thought that you will have forgotten all about this.
And that's the way these things work.
Dave in Champaign, Illinois, welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us.
The thrill of a lifetime, Rosh.
Thank you, sir.
I've been listening since I was 18 years old in 1991, and it's the 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 are 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?
12 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.
12 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.
On the Harriet Myers thing, that was practically conservative-wide.
I mean, we had even these elites inside the beltway, these elite conservatives were appalled at that.
And they think they led the way on that.
They didn't let them get away with it if they want.
But this is my point.
This is my point.
The people that know they're going to face the wrath of the voters did the right thing.
They voted against this.
The people that are not up for reelection said they had the freedom to say, screw you.
And there were enough of them not up to cover the passage of the bill.
This bill is not the White House and a judicial nomination.
This is, you know, when Harriet Myers came along, that was a different set of circumstances in terms of raising objections.
Here you've got the whole Senate.
You've got 100 people, and you've got, believe me, you've got some people leading this who are untouchable.
Kennedy is untouchable.
McCain delights in this position that he's told.
McCain delights in irritating people.
It enhances his maverick status.
Do the rest of the Republicans on Capitol Hill think that two and four and six years from now we're just going to forget this?
I mean, I'm still excited about campaign finance.
Yes, they absolutely do.
That's what happens here.
This is standard operating procedure.
This is exactly what they think.
They think by the time Presidential Race comes around, it's not going to matter.
What they don't get, what they don't understand, well, they don't.
They don't understand that on something like this that's this simple, I'll tell you the House of Representatives is going to be hearing from you people.
In the next couple weeks, I don't know how soon they're going to try to get this.
Well, the recess is all next week, the Memorial Day recess.
But they come back on June 6th.
I guarantee you, members of the House, conservative members of the House, are going to be hearing from people on this like they haven't heard from people in a decade.
This is going to dwarf Harriet Myers.
They're going to dwarf the Dubai Ports deal.
Mark my words.
And what will happen here, because everybody in the House is up every two years, so they don't have the luxury of coming up with people who can vote one way and be insulated from it, particularly on the Republican side of this.
So, you know, November is not enough time for this to have been forgotten.
This is the kind of thing that'll cement votes and cement people's frame of mind on this.
And so this is why I've been, folks, the past three weeks, what I said was there is no elected conservative leadership in Washington.
Plenty of conservatives, there's no elected conservative leadership.
Nobody leading a movement there.
And the closest we've got to it is some people in the House.
And that's why we cannot afford to lose it.
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