Eager to be back with you here behind the Golden EIB microphone.
I am Rush Limbaugh, your host for life.
It is Friday.
You know what that means.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
And the telephone number is 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program today, no restrictions for the most part.
Monday through Thursday, this is only a program about things I care about, but on Friday, it doesn't matter.
I'll talk to you about it even if I don't care about it.
And I'll even try to act interested if I don't care about it.
No, we don't take every call that comes in.
I mean, this is one of the most tightly screened programs in all of major media.
We don't take, it doesn't mean that every call gets on.
I mean, you have to be able to articulate.
You have to have some kind of passion or you have to have an interesting question.
Look at, folks, I mean, don't misunderstand this Open Line Friday.
I am a benevolent dictator.
There is no freedom of speech here, and there's no First Amendment except for me.
You don't have the right to be heard on this program.
Actually, nobody in the country has the right to be heard.
You have the right to speak, but nobody has to listen to you.
800282, me either.
You have to earn that.
800282-2882.
Let me read a little story here to you from Pierre, South Dakota.
A statehouse scandal in which a lawmaker is accused of fondling a page has transfixed South Dakota, with many people following the case on TV and the web as if it were a Hollywood reality show.
Senator Dan Sutton, 36, is accused of groping the young man last year while the two shared a motel room at the start of the UTE's week-long stint in the legislature.
Young man was 18 at the time.
Starting on the third paragraph, the South Dakota Attorney General and other law enforcement agents investigated the allegations and made no arrests.
A Senate committee, though, accused Senator Dan Sutton, 36, of sexual misconduct and planned to wrap up investigative hearings yesterday.
Fourth paragraph, Austin Weiss, now 19, testified that Sutton, a longtime personal and family friend, touched his genitals through his shorts as the two slept in a king-size bed last February.
Paragraph 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Yeah, he laid his hand on my stomach for 30 seconds.
I was just shaking.
He moved his hand down, said Weiss, now a college student.
Said he jumped out of bed, pretended to have a cell phone call, and fled the room.
Paragraph 6.
While it is the AP policy not to identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault, Weiss's name was used in the public hearing, which was carried live on the internet, has been circulated by other media in the state, so we at AP are piling on.
Paragraph 7.
Senator Dan Sutton, 36, has denied fondling the young man, but acknowledged he might have shifted in the bed and inadvertently touched him.
Paragraph 8.
I didn't do what Austin's claiming that I did, Sutton testified.
I loved Austin like a son, a son that I never had.
Paragraph 9.
The nine members of the panel will make a recommendation next week to the full Senate, which will decide what, if any, action to take.
Lawmakers could censure, discipline, or expel Senator Dan Sutton, 3036.
Paragraph 10.
Are you missing something in this story so far?
Are you curious here about something?
It hasn't yet been mentioned?
Paragraph 10.
Nearly every TV station in the state has covered the hearings.
And South Dakota Public Broadcasting has offered live audio on its website.
State's largest newspaper, the Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, posted frequent online updates from the hearing room.
Sioux Falls TV station Kilo has run live video from the hearings on his website.
The news director said 750 viewers can log on at any one time.
People have complained the link is maxed out.
Paragraph 12, it's a soap opera.
There's no question about that.
Paragraph 13, still a key element here is missing in the story as we get now to paragraph 12.
David J. Law of radio station Quat in Watertown said that his call-in show Thursday drew many comments on the Sutton hearings, and callers seem to know a lot of details indicating they are listening live or reading news accounts, he said.
Paragraph 13.
In a state with a population of only 750,000, the story is a tangled web involving people with political, business, and family connections that stretch back for decades.
The Sutton and Weiss families have been friends for years.
Paragraph 13 asked why the young man might have made up the allegations.
Senator Dan Sutton, 36, suggested they might be tied to the page's father, Dennis Weiss, who unsuccessfully sought the Democrat nomination for governor last year.
Paragraph 14, Sutton, also a Democrat, comma, said that the elder Weiss might have wanted to make sure he did not enter the race.
14 paragraphs to get to the party identification of the guy accused of fondling the page.
14.
Who's the author, Chet Brokaw of the Associated Press?
You know, we hear the drive-by media continually complaining about the economy.
In fact, ladies and gentlemen, David Border of the AP reports that ABC News is airing a special tonight on struggling families in Camden, New Jersey, because many Americans see more images of what poverty looks like overseas than in their own country, said Diane Sawyer today or yesterday.
Sawyer's 10 p.m. report, Waiting on a World of Change, contrasts the lives of children in the small city, considered among the nation's most dangerous, with those in the nearby prosperous suburb Moorestown.
Been a long time since we've seen what poverty looks like in our own country, said Sawyer.
It has Democrats talk about it each and every day.
Soup line America.
Got to get the minimum wage up.
It's poverty out there.
Children are starving.
Ted Kennedy talks about the floor of the Senate every day.
Now, if there's poverty, ladies and gentlemen, must mean that there is a sector or two of the American economy not doing well.
And I think we actually are in a depression, not a recession, but a depression in at least one sector of the market and of the economy.
Listen to this.
U.S. media job cuts surged 88% in 2006 from the previous year, a downsizing trend expected to continue this year.
The media industry slashed 17,809 jobs last year, nearly two-fold increase from the 9,400 cuts in 2005.
The figure was the industry's largest annual job cut total since 43,420 media job cuts accompanied the collapse of the technology bubble in 2001.
Media companies like the New York Times and Time Inc. have already laid off 2,000 employees in 2007, and we're just barely into the first month here.
Wow, U.S. media jobs slashed 88%.
Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that they're ignoring the needs of their audience?
You think it might have anything to do with the fact that the drive-by media is the one business in America where you, the customer, are not only always wrong, you are a blithering idiot.
And every suggestion or complaint you make is met with, you just don't understand what we do.
So we get these job cuts at print institutions, newspapers, magazines, broadcast networks, and so forth, layoffs left and right.
Audiences are down.
Advertising is down.
They're always complaining and whining and moaning about it.
None of that's happening here.
We haven't had a down year yet since we started.
I'm talking about gross revenues.
Has not happened.
But it is happening in a lot of these other places.
These places do not connect with their audience.
They preach or condescend to them.
There's a whole bunch of factors.
Do you see this?
CNN had 100 executives go to the Bahamas.
The exclusive Atlantis resort, that is a cool place.
I've been over there.
100 people went down there last week or something, including the two head honchos, Jim Walton and John Klein, while layoffs are taking place at CNN, while the people at work there have been told to expect maybe cutbacks, certainly no raises, unless you're Anderson Cooper of the Paris Hilton of TV News.
He got $4 million a year.
I couldn't care less about this except for the fact that it's people like this that are always whining and moaning about CEOs everywhere else in the business who are lavishly treating themselves to trips and raises and so forth.
And here's a bunch of libs at CNN doing the same thing.
And they said, well, the reason for this is that we exceeded our budget last year.
We brought in more than we budgeted, and we're celebrating and we're rewarding those people.
But no pay raises for the serfs, no pay raises for the worker bees, now just a trip over there to Atlantis for 100 or so big-time executives.
So next time you hear anybody on CNN start ripping and moaning into other CEOs and pay and how they run their businesses, just remember.
CNN does it too.
Back in just a sec.
It's Open Line Friday, and we always try to get to more calls on Friday than we do during the rest of the week because of the inherent promise implied in Open Line Friday.
So we'll go to St. Louis next.
Steve, thank you for waiting.
You're on the program, sir.
It's an honor to talk to you, Rush.
Thank you.
I am furious, and I've been furious for quite some time.
Oh, third-time dittos, by the way.
This whole thing with the non-support of the war and everything that's going on over there in the political parties, I've got a question for you, and I know you can answer this, and I know it's going to make you look good.
How would you categorize the sports fans in this country?
It doesn't matter if they're football, baseball, basketball.
Are they on the conservative side mostly or liberal side, or is it kind of evenly split?
I would have absolutely no way of knowing.
Sports fans?
The fans, yeah.
I know you're connected with a lot of sports people up higher, but just how would you categorize the people?
I would sit down and watch.
Well, I have a you may be going somewhere here that I don't know, but remember now, I work for a baseball team in marketing, and it was the objective to get as many of these people out to the ballpark as possible as often as possible.
And we didn't look at them ideologically, and I didn't study them on that basis.
They were looked at in an entirely different way.
So I've never focused on whether the – see, what we knew was that sports, to the average fan, is an escape from all of the drudgery and the humdrum and the boredom and the disappointment of everyday life.
Sports was an escape for them to go fantasize and forget things for whatever length of time they're spending engaging in being a spectator.
And so that's why I've never attached an ideological label to sports fans.
Sports writers, sports media people are an entirely different thing where I would have to tell you it's 95% liberal, if not more.
Well, that might add a little more to the question then.
The reason why I'm asking is if, say it's, you know, the football playoff, Super Bowl, say the one team is down by 20 points at halftime, and the staff on that football team says, you know, we just can't win this.
Let's start pulling our guys out.
We've got too many injuries.
Let's just pull out.
How do you think the fans would feel?
Oh, the fans would get livid.
Get pointed at the team for the fans.
Yeah, but the correct analogy is that the coach gets a call from the owner or somebody in the owner's general manager.
The coaching staff probably with the generals, they wouldn't want to pull out.
And the quarterback, who's the field general, wouldn't want to pull out.
But the owner, maybe his staff, the general manager up there, thinking, my gosh, you're going to lose.
The whole team won't have a season next year.
It's silly.
Why should I get my team involved in a civil war down there?
Yeah, fans would be livid and okay, I see where you're going now.
Yes.
So then the other question is, how would the players feel on the team if all of a sudden they started being called off the field and they were outnumbered by the other team?
Well, you don't want me to answer that.
So now you correlate that to the war in Iraq.
Pardon me.
Not the war in Iraq.
Iraq.
The war on terrorism.
I understand it.
I understand it.
I totally.
That's why you've got to go back to this is an escape.
This is not looked at as life and death.
Whatever, the Super Bowl, the biggest sports event in the country, it's not viewed as having any relevance to national security, nor does its continuation in some cowards' minds put us at greater risk, which a lot of people in this country think that the more we go at war and try to defend ourselves, we're only going to make these people angrier, and we're just a greater risk.
Plus, most sports fans do not think their team needs to be taught a lesson like so many liberal Americans think their country needs to be taught a lesson.
Every sports fan whose team wins loves it, and they want them to keep stomping the enemy, the opposition, and they don't want to give any quarter, and they don't like any of this backing down and give them a chance to get back in the game.
They want complete, utter domination.
So my question is, there must not be very many liberal sports fans.
How can they relate?
Sorry, I'm kind of nervous, but I'm furious over this fact that if you've got a room full of liberals watching the Super Bowl and they're all rooting for one team and all of a sudden the coach starts pulling people out or the head office starts pulling people out because they're losing anyway, they might as well just go home.
How do you think they would react?
They would be furious.
I don't think they'd even get to that point.
They'd still be counting up how many black coaches are in the game versus black players and be all upset about the black referees or the guys that are carrying the yard line, yardsticks, black.
How come there are any more blacks in media, sports media?
Do you know how many blacks there are in sports media?
It's tiny.
The percentage of black sports reporters and TVP is tiny compared to the full population of sports media.
So they'd be worried counting all this stuff.
They'd be worried if, you know, is one team at a disadvantage and maybe the game's not fair from the get-go.
But look, I get your point, and it's an excellent point.
But I don't think you can, you can.
See, this is the great conflict.
I think there are plenty of liberals who watch their sports teams.
The real question is, are there any liberal sports fans?
Because it's so violent.
It's so brutal.
But to the extent that there are, I still think these liberal sports fans love it when their teams win.
They love it when their teams crush.
They love it when their teams dominate.
So, but that's because, no, they don't feel guilty when they're team.
That's the point.
Liberals, the sports media might feel guilty if a team wins based on something.
But the fans, see, the analogy is somewhat flawed, even though I really appreciate the thought process that you're engaging in out there, Steve, because the whole thing is an escape from reality.
And liberals will not see a football game or a basketball game the way they see war.
They just won't.
Plus, they don't have college professors telling them that sports sucks.
You know, and what's the sports equivalent to Vietnam?
There isn't one.
You know, just the political aspects of this.
I mean, liberals are probably more upset when I talk about sports than when they watch it.
Well, I have one other thing.
All right.
I have you on the radio whenever I work.
I'm an independent carpenter, and when I go into somebody's home to work, I play my radio.
And it's amazing to see the responses of a lot of people where they just look at me and how could you listen to that?
And I says, I love this, and you ought to listen to it too.
So I don't turn it off.
I'm doing the best I can.
I appreciate it.
But how many people want to listen along with you?
Oh, no, they just walk through the room and go on.
No, but it's playing.
Right, but how many people are glad is what I'm getting at?
Oh, there are a number of them.
I would say it's probably about 50-50.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
So these, so what do they do, the ones that can't believe you're listening to this show?
What do they do when you tell them that they should?
They just give it the same response that most of them do when they hear you, you know, talking about, oh, you know, fat ass things, or they talk about just ranting and raving things and not making any sense.
And I say, well, you haven't listened long enough.
Well, they haven't listened at all.
I mean, this program makes more sense in five seconds than anything else they could possibly listen to.
Listen to NPR in five seconds.
You know what you'll hear on NPR in five seconds?
I haven't heard a thing yet in five seconds.
Anyway, back in a moment.
It's Open Line Friday.
I am Rushlin Ball.
Talent on loan from God.
Steve did make a good point, Steve from St. Louis, with the question about sports fans.
Would liberal sports fans react to a sporting event the way they react to the war in Iraq or other cultural things?
And it sort of illustrates a point that I have Well, a thing I have believed for a long time, and that is there are a lot of people in this country who claim that they are moderates and liberals, but when it comes to the actual ways they live, they're probably conservative.
For example, I mean, you get your paycheck whenever you get it.
You're not going to get it go walking through the neighborhood saying, hi, you just got paid.
How much of this do you need?
But you will vote for people who do just that.
But you won't do it yourself.
You're trying to raise your kids to keep them out of trouble and so forth and so on.
But you end up supporting candidates whose social policies may end up destroying family life in certain ways by obviating the need for you as a father or what have you.
There's any number of ways that people who claim not to be conservatives actually live their lives that way.
This is Robin in Houston.
Welcome, sir, to the EIB network.
Thanks, Rush.
I appreciate you taking my call.
You bet.
Hey, Rush, you are America's force multiplier of freedom, and we appreciate your service to our country.
Hey, Rush, this recent authorization by President Bush to capture and kill Iranians, I think that actually shows another sign of weakness in the way we conduct warfare.
A sign of weakness.
Right, because there have been reports since August of 2005 that the Iranians have been shipping in IEDs, and now we're just taking care of this business 18 months later, or at least making it public.
And I think if speed is the essence of warfare, and if it takes us this long to respond to the enemy, how in the world are we going to win this war?
Well, the fact is we have responded to it.
The president's changed generals, changed the command structure and so forth, because what wasn't working wasn't working.
And the thing here is, you know, when you're committed to victory and the strategy isn't working, you don't quit.
You revise the strategy.
And that's what's happened here.
Now, there's one thing with you, though, that I will agree on.
And that is, I can understand changing strategy, but do we have to broadcast it all over the world?
Okay, tell the Iranians, we're coming for you, chumps.
We've authorized ourselves to take you out.
And by the way, we're going to go over there.
We're going to clean out the insurgents.
We're going to do this with 20,000 four more troops.
We didn't do World War II this way.
And we didn't even do Vietnam this way.
Well, we did it on a couple occasions, but we never announced in public what our military maneuvers were going to be.
But that's different.
I mean, this is conducting war today.
Future leaders are going to have to take into account 24-7 media and an opposition, hostile media, when they put together war plans.
But I don't think this means we're not serious.
I think it just means that some people prior to this had a different strategy they thought would work, and it's been decided the strategy's failed and hasn't worked.
So we change it.
We're there.
You know, I don't understand the attraction of the retreat or cut-and-run options.
We're the United States of America.
What is this headlong desire in Rush people have to admit we can't do it?
What is this desire that so many Americans seem to have that we should quit?
You know, I guess you have to be concerned where this came from in order to try to figure out how to reverse it.
But to me, instinctively, it makes no sense.
Quitting in something like this?
Bev in Longmont, Colorado.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Oh, thank you.
This being Open Line Friday, I just wanted to call and thank you so much for introducing me to the Vince Flynn Mitch Rapp book series.
Are they not great books?
He is just amazing.
And the fact that he predicted who the terrorists would be, he talked about Saddam and his WMDs even before 9-11.
They're wonderful.
And I want to thank you.
Well, you're more than welcome.
Have you read the latest one, the most recent one?
No, I just heard about them recently, so I'm still on number three, but I have two more waiting.
Okay, let me ask you this because I've lost track.
Is Mitch married in volume three, the third and third one?
No, they're still working it out.
He is wanting to be engaged to the gal, and they've had a big fight, and he's come back.
She's in Italy.
That's as far as I am in the world.
Well, this is the TV reporter.
Yes.
The info.
The info babe.
Yeah, the info babe.
Well, do you have some surprises coming?
I'm looking forward to it.
Each and every book has surprises in it.
And I'm just so appreciative that you talked them up so much.
This is kind of one of the types of books I read a lot, and they have just been absolutely terrific.
Yeah, but you can't stop reading them once you start.
They're lickety-split.
And Mitch.
Exactly.
Mitch Rapp, you know, is a composite character.
But Vince, Vince, everybody asks, Vince, who do you know?
Who do you know in a CIA to come up with some of these things?
And he, you know, buttons down and so forth.
But I've met him two or three times, and he's been a consultant for the TV show 24.
Oh, really?
I know.
Yeah.
In fact, that's where I met him.
First time was out the 24 set.
And by the way, Bev, he's a hunk.
I can tell that from the pictures in the book.
He's one of these sculpted Steve Canyon kind of military guys.
I'm a little old, but I can still admire.
But I do thank you.
And if you have come up with any more authors like this, please let us know.
I'll do that.
Well, I've got to miss some now, but I don't want to take away from Vince's glory moment here on the program.
There's another you might have been.
Try David Balducci or Baldacci.
David Baldacci, right?
Legal thrillers and so forth.
And they do involve government scandals sometimes.
They're a good series of books, too.
Good.
I'll drop that name down and give it a try.
Do that.
Thank you so much.
Okay, Bev.
And I'll tell Vince that you don't care about him being a hunk, that it's his words that matter to you.
He will appreciate that.
Bob in Cherry Valley, Illinois, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
I've listened for the last 15 or 16 years, and this is the second time I've called.
Well, I'm glad to have you back, sir.
I grew up reading Lincoln Steppens and the Muck Breakers, and I love satire, and I think you carry on in that tradition beautifully.
Thank you, sir.
Greatly.
I had two comments on previous calls.
One, the immediate one about the sports thing.
The true politically correct liberal position on the Super Bowl is that the game ended in a tie and was equal on all sides.
Yeah, but see, they do that in kids' sports.
They do that in Pop Warner football and little league if teams are not evenly matched.
But when it comes to professional sports, liberals are fans just like everybody else is.
I know.
They don't.
And we can sit here and have fun about how liberalism would impact, say, pro football if liberals were actually in charge of it.
But the point is that they're nowhere near that.
Now, when they start making the case that women should be allowed to play on pro football teams, just as they should be allowed to be in the military.
See, hold your thought here because you made me realize something here.
The liberals did indeed bandy about banging the drums for women in combat.
Now, anybody with it just isn't right, whether they can do it or not.
That's not what a cultured civilized society does to its women.
They just don't do it.
But yet they did.
But yet we've not heard anything.
They have in college.
Women should be allowed to play skick in college football, but they haven't said a thing about women playing pro football.
Now, why is that?
Because they know it would be impossible.
They know the average human being wouldn't last more than two plays.
The average woman wouldn't even, it would be, they don't even suggest it, yet they do for the military.
So what does it tell you they think of the military?
It's nothing but a little social playground for experimentation.
And by the way, since they're liberals, they would love to weaken it, and they would love to tear it apart and cause all kinds of controversy and strife.
And they do it under the guise of women's rights.
I'm sure there are some eminently qualified women in the military.
I'm not talking about their ability to do it.
I'm talking about the institution and what it says about a cultured, civilized society, that it will round up babes, send them off to basic training, and send them off to the foxholes, and so forth.
It can be done, but it's not recommended.
Well, Rush, I'm a retired military.
I'm an 06, and I served during the Vietnam War all the way on up through the First Gulf War.
And I think our society, in effect, really devalues women and has continued to do so, and that's why they are not regarded highly, and it's okay for them to go into the military and die.
But I had another question.
A previous call, a long time ago, with a lady who was talking about the politicization of the war, politicization of the war.
And we know a lot of the Democrats are doing that.
But I think her point was that during the Vietnam War, it was politicized because of the rules of engagement that were handcuffing the troops.
We could have won that war except for the rules of engagement.
What are the rules of engagement now?
We could end that war in a month if the rules of engagement were such things as shoot when fired upon, no matter what the occasion.
If someone's unauthorized carrying a weapon, have them surrender yourself.
Well, yes, you're exactly right.
And that comes from what I think is a two-pronged mission that conflicts with itself, and that is don't destroy the infrastructure and don't make enemies out of the Iraqi civilization, a population, citizens.
Well, what did Truman consider?
He saved millions of lives with a lot of innocent victims who were being killed in Iraq.
I know in the history of war, you've defined victory by how many innocent civilians in the country at which you're with war Q kill.
Well, all these innocent people are being killed in car bombs right now.
Maybe we need to save some lives by ending it in a month by changing the city.
I agree.
I totally agree.
And the American people do, too.
They want to win this.
They want to win it now and get out of there.
And they want to win it in the traditional ways that you win wars.
I couldn't agree with you more.
I have to run because of the constraints of time.
We're simply out of it.
We'll be back and continue when we have more.
Ha, how are you?
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh to EIB Network.
E-bailers saying, Vince, who?
I didn't understand the last name of the author you were just talking about when the caller said, Vince Flynn.
That's F-L-Y-N-N.
Vince Flynn.
What other author is their name, Vince, anyway, that's worth reading?
Ladies and gentlemen, I've occasionally get emails from people.
Rush, don't you care what they're saying about you on X?
Why, it's outrageous what they're saying about you.
And, yeah, I mean, sometimes I do, but most time I don't.
Happens too much to get worried about it and to be affected.
I did an NPR interview recently, aired yesterday.
And one of the questions, and I'm going to play my answer to this question, one of the questions that the reporter for NPR asked me was, well, what about the, you know, you use terms like feminazi, you throw these things around, don't you worry about it bothering people?
And this, this was my soundbite number 21, Mike.
This is the answer that I gave.
The fewest number of words you can use to convey a point, the more power the point has.
Now, I understand people are going to be offended, but I've had a policy all my life not to worry about offending people because it's going to happen.
It's a daily part of life.
I think way too many people are way too sensitive, walking around just waiting to be offended.
And I think a bunch of people claiming they're offended is really an attack on free speech.
It's the root cause of political correctness, which is nothing more than silencing things you don't want to hear when uttered by others.
So that offends me.
I will not sit here and put up.
I don't grant people that much power to offend me.
The things said about me or the things I like, I'm not going to waste time being offended by it.
Life's too short, and it's just words.
Plus, my life is fulfilling.
I'm not wallowing in misery, thinking everybody else thinks I'm a dork, because I know I'm a dork, which is the attitude so many people have.
They're just miserable and so they just come along and they get offended and they run around saying they're offended and they try to shut people up because they're offending them and it's just because they've got nothing else to fulfill their lives.
You know, they're basically empty and meaningless.
If you have a fulfilling life and you're occupied and doing what you like, these things are minor, especially when you know that it comes with the territory.
Here's who's up, Peter.
Peter in Royal Palm Beach, Florida.
Welcome, sir, to the EIB network.
Yes, sir.
It's a privilege to talk to you, sir.
Thank you, sir.
Your neighbor.
Anyway, I'm talking about the waning liberalism that you talk about from time to time.
Yes.
Just keep them around just so that we know what they stand for anyway.
But I'm a member of the Republican Party, and Mel Martinez being the chairman of the GOP.
I don't think he's a conservative.
And now I'm just seeing it.
Where's the waning?
Yeah, I can understand the question.
I think that liberalism still is waning.
I don't believe liberalism won last year's elections, but see, here's the thing: elections have consequences.
I still, I hearken back to the month of October when I was reading more and more blogs and listening to more and more callers tell me that, well, the Republicans need to learn a lesson.
It's kind of like the liberals announcing America needs to learn a lesson, so we might as well lose the war in Iraq.
Republicans were calling.
Conservatives are calling, they might as well lose.
I mean, they need to learn a lesson.
They haven't done what we wanted.
Well, they have consequences.
Now the election results are in, and it doesn't matter why the result, the perception of the result is that liberals won, and they are back in power in the House.
They don't have as much power in the Senate, but they are there.
But it doesn't, to me, mean that liberalism is gaining and is become more and more part of the fabric of American life.
It's a fabric of a significant portion of life, academia, entertainment, Hollywood, that kind of thing.
The big thing that happened out there is that conservatives stopped being conservatives.
And your example of who's now running the RNC is a great example, although he doesn't do day-to-day operations.
Somebody else does.
But all this is the result of one thing: the absence of elected conservative leadership in Washington.
I am telling you, Peter, that if there were that, then you would see conservatives in this country rallying in droves.
Ronald Reagan, two landslides.
I hate to keep talking about Reagan, but he was the last elected conservative president who was an actual conservative, not just conservative on certain things.
People react leadership.
And when it's not there, especially at high office elected levels, then people are going to navigate on their own.
They're going to freelance.
And you appear to have chaos out there.
But make no mistake about it.
Liberalism is not gaining, but it appears to have with the election results.
First weekend since August without a National Football League game.