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Dec. 28, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:43
December 28, 2006, Thursday, Hour #2
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Time Text
All right, I'm going to throw something at you.
Initial reaction, then think about it.
John McCain, yes or no.
The question is no longer premature.
It's time that this has to be discussed.
John McCain, yes or no.
Now I'm a believer in historical trends.
Until something doesn't happen, I presume it's going to keep happening.
One thing is clear about Republicans.
They tend to choose as their candidate for president, the guy who was winning all along.
If you go back over the last 70 years of American political history, the Republican nominee for president has almost always been the candidate that was ahead in the polls, or was the presumed favorite a full year earlier.
As much as some people don't want to confront it, we're now about a full year before.
The first voting in the 2008 presidential election.
The Iowa caucuses are in January of 2008.
We're almost at January of 2007.
In order for me to prove my point, let's rattle it through real quickly.
In 2000, President Bush, the current President Bush, then governor of Texas, was the leader in the polls all through 1999.
The 1996 Republican nominee Dole, he was the leader in the polls in 1995.
He was the presumed favorite, and he went on and won it.
The last time there was an open contest for the Republican nomination prior to that was 1988.
George Bush, the first Bush, was vice president of the United States.
There was opposition to Bush in the 88 primaries, but Bush was the favorite and he won.
1980, President Reagan, who ran in 76, was the presumed favorite.
He had a number of opponents, including, by the way, the first President Bush.
Reagan was the favorite through 1979, he won in 1980.
In 1976, President Ford, who we spoke of in the first hour of the program, he was challenged in the Republican primaries by Reagan in 76.
But Ford was the presumed frontrunner because he was the incumbent president and he won.
1968, Nixon, the presumed front runner, ultimately became the only serious candidate leading up to 1968, and he won.
1964 is the only exception that I can come up with.
There was a very brutal fight for the Republican nomination between Rockefeller and Goldwater.
Go back to 1960.
Nixon was the sitting vice president, was the presumed favorite, and he got the nomination.
The Democrats are completely different.
They find their candidates in the middle of nowhere.
They plunk Jimmy Carter out of Georgia, they plunk Clinton out of Arkansas, George McGovern was an unheard of senator from South Dakota.
They'll grab their candidates anywhere, but Republicans tend to choose the guy who is either next in line or the presumptive favorite.
Why is that?
I'm not sure.
Part of me thinks Republicans don't like a lot of conflict.
I don't know.
But we're at the point in which we've got to decide who the Republican candidate for president is going to be.
Now there's a list out there, and a lot of people aren't real impressed with the list, but the most controversial guy on it is McCain.
I guess you'd have to make him the favorite at this point.
He seems to lead most of the polls, and there is this sense that it's his turn.
Just as in 1976, Reagan challenged Ford, didn't win, but they gave it to him in 1980, and just as in 1996, which was Bob Dole's third run, it was kind of his turn.
McCain ran in 2000, didn't get it, been hanging around out there lurking, and there he is.
Yet a lot of conservatives and a lot of Republicans are very uneasy with John McCain, to put it mildly and to be more strong about it.
A lot of Republicans don't like him.
My own qualms about him.
I just don't know that I can trust him.
Now, McCain is making major overtures to the right.
He is not sweet talking the media the way he has for most of his career.
He's actually talking a harder line on Iraq than most in the Bush administration are speaking.
He went down and he's meeting with some of the religious conservatives that he insulted eight years ago.
So he's making moves to appeal to the conservative base of the Republican Party.
Now I have the opportunity sitting in on the most important conservative forum in America, Russia's program today, and I want to throw it out there.
Yes or no to John McCain.
Do you like him or not?
What are your feelings about him?
Are you ambivalent?
I'll give you the telephone number here.
It's 1-800-282-282.
Yes or no to McCain.
The fact of the matter is that he might be the Republican candidate for president in 2008.
And it's going to be rank and file Republicans right now that are probably going to be the ones to decide whether or not it will be him.
The Republican primary elections and caucuses are often just coronations.
Whoever has the lead in advance tends to go on and win.
Let's start they love this.
Let's start in New Hampshire, which is the second state that gets to weigh in on any of this.
Al, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Good afternoon, Mark.
Hi.
As far as McCain, I I yes, I am against him, but if it came if it came between McCain and Hillary, I would be for McCain.
Well, I think that almost everyone would be.
The question is, do you want John McCain to be the Republican candidate for president or not?
Do you like him or not?
You know, I don't know where he stands.
I mean, he he sees he tends to vote with the Democrats on practically every issue that I keep my eyes on.
Um, we lost him.
Let's go to Elberk.
That was about to become really interesting, I think.
Let's go to Albuquerque and Jim.
Jim, it's your turn on EIB.
Merry Christmas, Mark.
Nice thanks for taking my call.
Great.
Nice to have you.
Uh I I also say no to McCain, and I think he's a political calculator.
I think he he puts his finger up in the air and and he's very he's a very smart and uh a very smart politician, but he's but he's not.
He's disingenuous.
And um, as I was telling the call screener, I think he sold his own party down the down the river.
I I really do blame him partially for what happened to the Senate.
Uh he tends to go against his own party when it when it does when it uh when it's advantageous to him.
And he's a very strong, well, he did he created the impression that he really enjoyed tweaking, if not outright undercutting, President Bush.
But he seemed bitter about not winning the nomination in 2000, and he tended to play to the cameras and play to the New York Times and the Washington Post on a lot of issues.
He had qualms, for example, about the tax cut.
He was one of the gang of seven that well the seven Republicans, seven Democrats that undercut the uh strong strategy with regard to the federal judges.
He's never really been there, and he's made comments about those of us who are true conservatives that have been rather disparaging.
He's done he's done all of those things.
Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is I think there's going to be a point at which Republicans are going to either have to reconcile themselves to him and say, yeah, he's the guy or not.
Now, the Republican Party made a grave mistake ten years ago.
It nominated Dole simply because it seemed like it was Dole's turn.
He's a good guy, he's a war hero, he's been the Republican leader in the Senate, he was candidate for vice president, he ran for president, it was his turn.
Dole was a terrible candidate.
Bill Clinton was leading this country badly.
You needed an alternative vision, you needed somebody who was going to carry a message with some passion, and you needed someone who could present himself as a credible leader for the future.
And Bob Doole got up there, and most voters looked upon him as a voice from the past rather than a voice for the future.
But once Dole's candidacy got momentum, nobody wanted to stand up and say, stop, wait a minute, let's not let this happen.
I remember doing my own program in Milwaukee, and I didn't want Doel to be the Republican nominee.
And I was bashing Duel and don't do this.
And I had caller after caller after caller saying, Mark, shut up about this.
Okay, Dole's not perfect, but he's going to be the guy.
The more you beat him up, the more you're doing the work of the Democrats.
You're just setting him up to be knocked off by Clinton.
And my response was Clinton's going to knock him off.
You can't put up the wrong guy.
It's imperative that if McCain's not the right guy, that he be stopped and he stopped be stopped now.
The Democrats are not unwilling to have these kinds of fights.
The candidates that they presume are not acceptable, they'll beat up and knock off.
And I think conservatives have to decide if John McCain is the right candidate for president.
The stakes in 2008 are going to be high for a couple of reasons.
First of all, you don't want to lose that election.
But secondly, even if you win, we have had for too long.
Republicans who have not governed in a conservative fashion.
Look at the Republican Congress over the last ten years and the high hopes we had for it and what it ended up being.
A bunch of guys that were earmarking legislation and bringing pork back home and getting too close to special interests.
With regard to the candidate for president, I don't want to make a mistake.
And if McCain's not the guy, we need to say that.
If he is the guy, we need to persuade ourselves as to why he is the right person to be the candidate for president.
Now, the reason why I think McCain may well win is there isn't a presumptive front runner out there other than him.
Vice President Cheney normally would be, but he's not going to run.
Rudy Giuliani is out there, but he may be too liberal for the party.
The only major candidate who's fashioning himself as a conservative is Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts.
I don't know how strong he is.
It may well be McCain.
But if he's not the right guy for it, the time to say it is now, or the next thing you know, he's going to be leading the polls and cakewalking his way to the Republican nomination for president.
Thank you for the call.
We're having a referendum right here on Russia's program.
Up or down on John McCain.
Yes or no.
My own position, I'm just not sure.
I'm bothered by the guy.
My name is Mark Elling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Rush's on vacation this week, the holiday week.
Rush Limbaugh.com, though, operates 24-7 and it's available for you.
Dr. Walter Williams will be hosting the program tomorrow.
Right now we're discussing Senator McCain.
Now I'm not speaking for Rush.
I'm just the guest guest host.
But as a listener to Russia's program, I know he seems to have qualms about McCain.
To put it mildly, he seems to have doubts.
Rush may be the most the best known conservative in this country.
I mean, you're looking at the potential of the Republican nominee for president being someone that many in the base of that party at best have doubts about, and at worst, don't like at all.
To Phoenix, which is Senator McCain's home state norm, you're on EIB.
Hi, Mark.
Uh, thanks for taking my call.
Thank you.
Yes, I believe that uh Senator McCain would make an excellent president.
Why?
Well, first of all, um he's like the only one that is uh actually saying that we ought to send more troops to finish up what we've got in our while we started in Iraq.
He is the only one saying that.
You're right.
And I think we need to win in Iraq.
I don't think we need to pull out and have another Vietnam or even another.
Okay, that's that's one issue.
You agree with him on that issue.
Don't you have problems with everything else about John McCain?
His position on immigration, and I'm not a hardliner myself in immigration, but John McCain's position in immigration seems soft.
John McCain's the guy that gave us campaign finance reform, which has been a joke.
It's been nothing but a way to empower certain special interests to influence elections even more than they did before.
He's been somebody who has not been there in the great fights to cut taxes.
He's not been there with regard to supporting President Bush on the nominees for the Federal Judiciary who've been held in abeyance.
He hasn't been there on a lot of things.
And he's been somebody who seems to be condescending toward people like me and the beliefs that I have.
I admit McCain's changing right now.
But I don't know that I can trust that.
Let's take uh the issue of immigration, for example.
I mean, here in Arizona, we have an immigration problem, as everybody knows.
And um I don't think John's actually been all that soft on immigration.
Um I believe that we have uh some uh you know we have uh we have a problem.
It's it's obviously we have a problem with the Yeah, I want you to sell me on Senator McCain norm.
Sell me on him.
Sell you on help.
Well, I first of all let me say that as a senator and living in the state in in the state of Arizona, um I've seen his actions and I trust his judgment.
And uh what you know, I don't know how I can sell you on the somebody.
That's the question that's the question that I'm asking.
It does seem as though if you're talking about who you want to be president of the United States, that there has to be a reason to give the job to the guy other than that he's kind of hanging around and it's his turn.
And I think that's what McCain's appeal is.
He's been hanging around and it's sort of his turn.
Thank you for the call.
Cincinnati and Renee.
Renee, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Hi.
Um thank you for taking my call.
I have um one point to make is that we need to focus on the biggest issue current day, it which is war on terror.
And who's going to be the strongest candidate for us to continue the war on terror and not be soft?
Uh and maybe that's John McCain, I don't know.
But um if he's the only one saying that we need to put more troops in, we need to consider that being that the most important issue currently.
Well, he was certainly ahead of the curve on that.
I if you would have told me the day after the election, after this democratic romp, which I think was a repudiation of the war on Iraq, that you'd have members of both parties openly talking about sending more troops to Iraq, I would have thought that you were crazy yet.
President Bush may well indeed send more troops to Iraq.
Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, has sent signals that he might be okay with it.
I'm very surprised about that.
And McCain, you're right, has been ahead of the curve on it.
But there's a history here with John McCain, and it's not one that I'm too happy with.
Are you?
No, personally, no.
Um I'm not a fan of his at all.
Um but I think we also need to be able to do that.
Well, if you're not, shouldn't you be trying to stop him from being the candidate of your party to be president?
Well, um this is I think something else we need to consider.
I think we need to look at who are the Democrats going to put on the ticket.
Who are their potentials?
Who do we need to have to counteract that and who who's going to bring in a lot of moderate votes?
And maybe John McCain is the man to bring in some moderate votes.
The last few years, you know, I've been hearing um, Renee, I've been hearing that song as long as I've been a conservative, that we need to appeal to the moderates.
You need somebody who's going to bring in moderate votes, and I've never seen any sign that it works.
When a Republican runs as a conservative and stands on true convictions and is unapologetic for them, that's when they tend to win.
Now you're right.
Maybe McCain does appeal to moderates, but he may be alienating a huge segment of the Republican base out there.
I mean, and you you're you yourself seem unsold on him.
If he's not the right guy, he shouldn't be the nominee to be president of the United States.
We should try to get the right guy.
I agree.
I agree with you that um and I what I like about President Bush is that he doesn't he's not apologetic about his conservative views.
And and I'm I'm with there.
I'm with him on that.
I'm very conservative.
Um and I don't think we need to go out of our way to appeal to moderates.
Uh, but I think that um McCain being moderate, truly being moderate.
I don't think he would be um necessarily faking it for the moderates.
And and I I I disagree with the fact as well that we need to we need to attract the moderates.
And I I I'm not sure.
Do you believe John McCain?
Do you believe John McCain would make good nominees to the Federal Judiciary and to the United States Supreme Court?
Not necessarily.
Well aren't you kind of arguing with yourself, Renee?
Sure.
Yeah, that and that's why I'm ra that and you're and I'm not criticizing you.
That is why I am raising this topic.
Because if he's not the right guy, the conservatives in this country, and I realize not everybody who listens to Russia's show is a conservative, but if he's not the right guy, the conservatives in America need to stand up and say he's not the right guy.
We want somebody else.
And I'm not at that point yet of saying that I want to stop John McCain, but I'm certainly not sold on him being the leader of the Republican Party and the candidate for president of the United States, because for the last six years of President Bush's presidency, I've seen a guy that was been saying things that I don't agree with.
I'm Mark Gilling sitting in for Rush.
Remember Chris Matthews' show?
Is anybody still is that still on the air, by the way, whatever hardcore or whatever it was?
Back when I used to watch it, there was a time that people actually watched that program.
He had McCain on all the time.
McCain was always on that show.
And it just seemed to me that that's when John McCain felt like he was in his element.
That he felt more comfortable talking to Chris Matthews than he'd feel talking to me.
Or I suppose for that matter, to Rush.
I just don't have the sense that he's one of, for lack of a better term, us.
On the other hand, Senator McCain is, as an earlier caller pointed out, very strong on the war on terror.
He has supported President Bush in Iraq, and in fact he said if we have any flaws, it's the Murana fighting the war aggressively enough.
He hasn't shown any wimpiness there.
And the war on terror is the major issue confronting this country.
He's certainly someone who has qualifications to run for president, and he has the look of someone who is presidential.
I'm not denying any of those things.
But he isn't somebody who has sold me that he's going to govern the country the way I would like the country to be governed.
I just have this terrible fear that even though McCain's making all these head fakes to the right right now, that the moment that he has the nomination cinched, he's going to scamper right back toward his friends in the media in the center and on the left, position himself as somebody who is,
you know, reasonable, not like those other kinds of Republicans, presume that the conservatives will all be there because they're not going to vote for the Democrats, and move in that direction that he's been in for most of the last ten years.
That's my concern about him.
I just question whether or not this move toward the right that we've seen from him is any more sincere than Hillary's move to the center.
To the telephones we go in Los Angeles.
Ron, Ron, it's your turn on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Yeah, Mark.
My concern is the same thing as yours.
I don't trust a man.
I'm an African American conservative in a baby boomer, and he is just so disingenuous.
And I believe he will do exactly what you said.
Get the nomination, get in the White House, and then go back to who he really is.
Have you had the impression over the last ten years that he has been somebody who cares about the same issues that you care about?
Absolutely not.
I I've I I agree with you.
Absolutely not.
And one, say the past ten years, but is more prominent now is illegal immigration or domestic concerns.
Well, he was he certainly wasn't a cheerleader for the tax cuts.
In fact, he threatened to vote against them.
With regard to the immigration issue, that's going to be one that I don't think any Republican is going to have.
The Republican Party is being torn in five different ways on the immigration issue.
That's one that there are going to be people who disagree with whomever the nominee uh ends up being.
But you're right, McCain's stance on immigration is probably to the left of a lot of a lot of people in the Republican base.
On the issues that you're going to look at as you move forward, I'm fine with him on terror.
I'm worried about him with regard to taxes, and I shudder to think what kinds of nominees he's going to put on the Federal Judiciary.
we've been talking, of course, about President Ford.
The biggest mistake Jerry Ford ever made as president was his one Supreme Court nominee when he gave us John Paul Stevens.
To this day, the most liberal member of the court.
I have no idea what John McCain's going to do with federal uh judicial appointments.
My fear is is that he's going to try to get along with the media, try to get along with the Democrats, and come up with nominees that could easily be confirmed by a Democratic Senate.
These are concerns that I have about him, and Senator McCain hasn't said anything to ease any of those concerns.
And I have those same concerns because he hasn't responded or hasn't said anything.
He's planted close to the vest.
That is my opinion, and I think that's what a lot of conservatives are beginning to see.
So what happens if he wins the nomination?
You're gonna have a Republican candidate for president that a lot of Republicans don't like.
Absolutely.
And it's such a weird year.
Because there isn't an otherwise obvious Republican choice out there.
Normally you look to who the strongest Republican governor is.
That's usually been the formula to win the nomination to be president.
Who's the strongest you know all the strongest Republican governor is?
Well, I don't know that you're right.
I think it's probably Jeb Bush, but we can't keep putting Bushes up.
I mean, a Bush has been the Republican candidate for president every year since 1988, 88, 92.
Of course, you had Dole in ninety-six, but then George W. in 2000 and 2004.
The public isn't going to accept Republicans only nominating Bushes.
But Jeb Bush has done a great job in Florida.
He's very popular in a swing state.
He's governed from the right, he's got a presidential look to him, but he's probably not somebody who could run this time around.
He's somebody who's going to have to run in the future.
As for Mitt Romney, yeah, maybe he's presenting himself as the conservative alternative to Giuliani and McCain, but a lot of people have doubts about him.
Thank you for the call, Ron.
I mean, I do think it's McCain's nomination to lose.
But I also sense, and you can hear it from callers here, that a lot of people who normally would vote for a Republican candidate for president don't have much good to say about John McCain.
Hinsdale, Illinois, Joanne, Joanne, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark, how are you?
Thanks for taking my call.
Thank you.
Um my big major thing about John McCain is he's one of a hundred senators.
Uh, what do they ever run in their whole lives except being one person in the Senate?
So how can they run the United States and uh be a leader of the free world?
I don't think it can happen.
I think you need to have somebody who's been a past governor or somebody with more experience than John McCain.
I absolutely and again.
Well, and America people agree with you because we don't elect senators president.
The only one I I believe I'm correct in this, in that the only senator elected in the last century, the twentieth century to be president was John Kennedy.
Now some went from the Senate to the vice presidency and then came to the presidency, but to be elected directly from the United States Senate, and with the next stop being president, I think Kennedy was the only one in an entire century.
So I mean the American public doesn't like to vote for senators.
One of the reasons for that, in addition to, as you said, they've never really run anything, is they have these long, long, long voting records that oppos opposition candidates can exploit and say that you voted for this, you voted for that, you voted for the other thing.
Uh President Bush was able to do that with regard to John Kerry.
Senators tend not to win.
And I think the highest priority of Republican voters has to be to support a candidate who's going to win.
And I don't know if McCain can win.
He's got a background that isn't the profile of the sort of person that does win.
Absolutely.
Thank you for the call.
Let's go to Greensboro, North Carolina.
Ted, Ted, it's your turn with Mark Belling.
Hi, how are you?
I'm great, thank you.
Listen, about uh McCain.
Uh this guy scares me.
He uh puts me very much in mind of a friend of mine who uh the first of all is no questioning the guy's bravery, but as a prisoner of war, I think something changed as it did to a friend of mine.
He uh he was the most patriotic guy in the world, Loved everybody, loved the presidency.
War ended, he came home, and this guy was totally different.
He had a man on for everybody.
Anything that he wanted, he thought he should have gotten.
Well, okay, but let's talk a little bit more about McCain.
That background that he has is the reason he became a major political figure.
And when John McCain ran in Arizona, he ran as someone who was a POW.
I mean, it's how he came to fame initially.
It's it's part of his very essence.
It's part of his life story, and it was a defining moment for him.
And I don't think anyone is going to begrudge him that.
My problem with John McCain is I'm not sure what kind of president he's going to be, and I kind of have a fear that he isn't going to be one that I'm going to support on a lot of things.
We have way too many Republicans in this country who aren't really conservatives.
Back in my own state of Wisconsin, we've come up with a name for them.
We call them rhinos, Republicans in name only.
They run as Republicans, but they don't govern as conservatives.
They become afraid of taking positions that they fear would make themselves unpopular.
Many believe that President Bush hasn't been true to conservative beliefs, that he has spent money like crazy, that he hasn't tried to control the federal budget, that he's way, way too cozy with the environmentalists who are selling us on this global warming nonsense.
What I will say about Bush is that he is a man who is true to his own convictions.
I don't know what McCain's convictions are because his finger constantly seems to be up in the wind.
On the other hand, he's probably more a conservative than Giuliani.
He's somebody who has credibility on foreign policy, and he does seem to be strong in the war on terror.
I'm not saying that I think John McCain should not be the Republican nominee.
What I am saying is the same thing that a lot of you are saying, which is he hasn't sold me, and I got a lot of concerns about him.
And I'm thinking maybe he's somebody that we need to stop rather than support.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
My name is Mark Belling.
I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
The telephone number at EIB is 1-800-282-2882.
Let's conduct a little bit of an experiment here.
Let's put ourselves in the brain of John McCain.
If John McCain was president of the United States and had a Supreme Court vacancy to fill, do you think he'd choose someone like Antonine Scalia?
Or John Roberts or Samuel Alito?
Or would he be likier to choose somebody like Sandra Day O'Connor or Anthony Kennedy?
Or worse, would he choose someone like David Souter?
I'm just nagged by questions like that.
Because I don't think, based on what I've seen of McCain and the things that he said and the attitudes that he possessed, that he would ever give us a scalia.
I would think the best we could hope for would be a Kennedy or an O'Connor, and yeah, I have a concern that he could make the mistake of the first president Bush and give us a suitor.
Now let me ask you another question.
Senator McCain becomes the president of the United States.
Inherits an American economy in 2009.
Does Senator McCain strike you as someone who would try to cut taxes to further stimulate the American economy?
Or does he strike you as one of these guys constantly wringing his hands about the federal budget deficit and the ability to pay for this social program or the other?
And would raise taxes.
I fear that at heart, he's a tax raiser and not a tax cutter.
On the issues that I care about, my fear is that John McCain is not where I am, where most conservatives are.
It almost makes you wonder if he had a chance to do it all over again when he entered politics in Arizona.
Does he now regret that he declared himself as a Republican?
Since he's been in the United States Senate, he's done more work with Democrats than Republicans.
And the media has praised him for this, and a lot of moderates like him because he's bipartisan and we say we want bipartisanship.
Well, where has that gotten us?
He's worked with Teddy Kennedy.
He and Feingold combined to give us campaign finance reform, which has been an absolute and utter mess, but was politically something that got him in the limelight, popular with the media.
He hasn't sold me that he'd be the kind of president that I want us to have.
I'm looking for someone who has strong conservative viewpoints and wants to lead the country in a direction that I feel comfortable with.
The success of Reagan, and Reagan's presidency wasn't perfect, no one's is, but the success of Reagan was that he had strong ideas and pursued them.
The success of the current president Bush has been that he has acted on his strong ideals.
In some cases, it's resulted in political unpopularity.
But he is committed to the war on terror and he is committed to fighting it the way he believes.
With regard to the economy, President Bush clearly believed that the American tax burden was too high.
He clearly believed that you could invigorate the economy by giving more money back to the American people.
He tried to reform Social Security, was unable to do so, but spoke again and again and again about creating an ownership society in which more Americans had a greater stake in their lives.
I sense that he really believed it.
It's what I like about President Bush.
My fear is that an untethered McCain in there in the White House, the things that he does care about may well be things that I disagree with.
That's my concern.
And I have a sense that it's the concern of a whole lot of Republicans.
Yet he is the Republican front runner for president.
If he isn't, you tell me who is.
Perhaps Giuliani, I doubt it.
Every indication I've seen is that Giuliani is lagging behind in organization work in South Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa, the states that always decide the nomination.
Mitt Romney is actively working.
Maybe he's an alternative, but right now Julie rather rather McCain is the front runner, and the Republican frontrunner a year out almost always is the guy that goes on to win.
O'Cala, Florida, John, it's your turn on Russia's program.
Mark, I enjoy listening to you.
It makes me wish that I lived in Wisconsin so I could hear you more often.
There aren't many people in Florida, John, who wish they lived in Wisconsin, especially this time of the year.
This is true.
That's why we moved here.
Nonetheless, I want to ask you, where is it written that Republicans have to be conservatives?
It isn't written anywhere.
So why are the conservatives then defining what the Republican Party should be?
And conversely, why are the uh extreme liberals defining what the Democrat Party is?
My friends and people who I know of each party have a lot more in common than I think the leadership of either party does.
And that and that's the polarizing problem that we have.
Well, you're right about that.
On the other hand, if I am a conservative, and I am, it's it's silly for you to suggest that I shouldn't support someone who shares my beliefs and wouldn't try to govern the country in a conservative direction.
You are right.
McCain being a moderate might be very close to where a lot of people in the middle are.
But I'll admit to you, I'm not in the middle.
I'm on the right.
And I think politicians and elected officials who have pursued conservative policies have aided this country.
And history has generally proven us to be correct.
But there's you're right.
There's no law that says you have to be a conservative to be a Republican.
That's why we have people like McCain and others.
Whether or not we want them to be their our candidates for president, that's a separate question.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
Mark Bellingham for Rush, Ackworth of Georgia, Thomas, it's your turn.
Hey, Mark, uh, as you said, Stevens is the most liberal member of the Supreme Court.
McCain is probably only going to be able to replace Stevens if he wins election.
It's hard to imagine he's going to replace him with someone more liberal than Stevens.
So if you get behind McCain, you've staved off Hillary for four years, and your Supreme Court is at the very least no worse off than it is now, incredibly more conservative.
There is a presumption, though, in your comment that I'm not sure I buy.
How do you know he isn't going to give us another Stevens?
I mean, remember, John Paul Stevens himself was appointed by our Republican president.
Can you it's the closest thing we have to Stevens on the court right now might be suitor?
I don't know what John McCain would give me.
The fact that I have those doubts, though, is what gives me grave concern.
By the way, this worrying about Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, it's not going to be Hillary.
It might be Obama, it might be Edwards.
It's not going to be Hillary.
Put her out of your mind.
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