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June 19, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:21
June 19, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You know, I was thinking about the program we did yesterday and some of the uh issues I talked about behind the golden microphone here, and it occurred to me that the real problem that we face in this country with almost every foreign policy decision we face is that you've got a lot of people who simply want to believe certain things.
They can't accept some realities.
They can't process it.
Now all of us avoid certain thoughts.
Psychologists have written about how some people don't like to think about death.
They're terrified of it.
Other people don't like to think about other things in their lives.
We dodge those thoughts.
Many people are worried about saving enough for retirement.
They don't think they've saved enough, so they just don't think about it.
They put it out of their minds.
It's a natural human tendency.
What has happened a lot in American politics is that we have great desires to believe that certain things are true, even if there's no evidence that they're true.
For example, the majority, I think of Americans and almost all of the elitists have wanted to believe that if you just gave the Palestinians a homeland, they'd live in peace.
They want peace the same as the Israelis.
That's all they want.
They want a homeland.
They want self-governance and they'll live in peace.
Everybody wanted to believe that.
They wanted to believe that because they wanted to believe that the Palestinian people themselves are peaceful people.
They wanted to believe that there was just this grievance over not having control of their so-called homeland, and that that's all it would take, and everything would all of a sudden be better.
By the same token, a lot of people want to believe that you can somehow reason with terrorists, that the attack on 9-11 is because of certain grievances that young Muslim males have, and if only we could figure out a way to satisfy those grievances.
There was even a Republican candidate for president who shot his mouth off at one of the debates saying, we need to understand why they hate us so much, why they are so angry.
There's again a desire to believe that the terrorists are as humane as the rest of us, they just have certain things that bother them that anger them.
Instead of trying to believe the unbelievable, we just need to face reality.
Unfortunately, those of us who are a little bit more pessimistic about the nature of certain people are always proven correct.
It's unfortunate because the results are never pretty.
We are seeing right now in the Middle East, in particular in Palestine.
Is Palestine now officially a place or not?
The pa the the manufacturers of the globes don't know what to do.
It still all says Israel.
I'll tell you this, though.
If Israel was running Palestine, if Israel was running all of Israel, I don't think you would have had as much trouble as they've been having the last few days.
Face it.
Here's the incredible ironic reality.
Palestine is more violent now under Palestinian rule than it was when the Israelis were ruling it.
Just true.
There was always violence in the Palestinian territories when there was Israeli governance, but we've now we're now looking at open civil war.
So obviously giving the Palestinians control of Palestine wasn't enough to satisfy them, wasn't enough to end the violence.
And now they're fighting with one another.
In the middle of all of this, today's development president Bush met in the Oval Office with the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Almert.
They have made a joint decision to try to back the Abbas government.
There's really two governments in Palestine.
There's the government of Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah Party, which is kind of the successor to the Palestine Authority, and then there's Hamas, the terror organization.
The Abbas government won the initial round of elections, but the parliamentary elections last year were won by Hamas.
Hamas controls a majority of the parliament.
We've decided to dump a lot of aid, and so have the Israelis on the government of Aba of Abbas, which is somehow deemed to be more reasonable because it has said that Israel has a right to exist.
That's apparently the standard of reasonability with the Palestinians.
Israel does have a reason to exist.
If you're willing to go that far, then you're deemed to be, I guess, reasonable.
Hamas doesn't think Israel has a right to exist, and I guess that's one of the reasons that they're fighting.
So Hamas has Gaza, Fatah still has most of the rest of the disputed Palestinian territories, and we've decided with aid to back Fatah.
I guess I'm okay with that decision.
But it's not like this is a no-brainer.
Is it in the interest of the United States and the interest of Israel to dump even more millions on any Palestinian government, knowing that that money is eventually going to go into efforts to achieve what most Palestinians want, which is to attack Israel.
You can make the case, and I'm not making it.
You can make the case, though, that the best solution here is to simply let these two sides fight it out.
I'm not advocating that because it's obviously very violent, and the situation there is very dangerous for a lot of people who have nothing to do with the fighting.
But I think you could credibly argue that the United States and Israel should just stay out of this and let the Palestinians fight among themselves as to who their leaders are going to be, because it's pretty clear elections aren't going to work with them.
In the meantime, the surge is continuing.
There is good news and bad news.
There was another deadly attack by the terrorists, you know, the people that the media keep calling insurgents.
There's was another deadly attack by them, but in the meantime, the American forces, and it's estimated that about 20,000 of them are engaged in major fighting in two or three suburbs of Baghdad in areas where Al Qaeda operatives are believed to be holed up.
In fact, that is where they're hold up.
I don't know that you're ever going to get the American public to turn around with regard to opinions on the war.
But I think a lot of people are more comfortable with the notion that we're actually taking the fight to the bad guys rather than the past policy, which seemed to be that of being a police force over there.
I don't know if this is going to work.
But it at least makes some sense to say that the best way to start to stabilize Iraq is to inflict some real hurt on the bad guys, get them on the defensive.
If they're running, it's harder for them to attack.
Unfortunately, the barometer that you're seeing from Democrats as to whether or not the surge is working well is the violence continuing.
Anybody can commit violence without regard to how weakened they are.
The real question is, do they pose any serious threat to topple the government?
If that's your goal, I think that the surge strategy makes some sense.
Also in the news today, rather dramatic news, I think important, watershed development.
The latest Rasmussen poll, and there's a lot of polls.
There are a lot of polls.
Zogby's still in business.
USA Today is hooked up with Gallup.
Zillion polls.
Harris Interactive has polls.
The campaigns all conduct their own polls.
There are numerous other private polling firms.
Rasmussen is pretty well respected, though.
The latest Rasmussen poll nationally of likely Republican voters has Fred Thomson now in first place.
It's the first poll, first national poll, that's shown him in the lead among Republican candidates.
It's weird because he still hasn't declared his candidacy.
This is the longest buildup to a presidential campaign that I think I've ever seen.
Anyway, Fred's now in the lead.
He's got a one percentage point lead over Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney is third, and McCain is.
We're going to get to a point where McCain's not even fourth.
I mean, he's still ahead of Huckabee and all of the others out there.
But there's going to be a time.
One of these polls that one of the also rans is actually going to pass McCain, and he's going to fall out of fourth place.
I want to focus, though, on Fred Thompson.
I think those of us who are conservative need to start asking ourselves, is this the guy?
Is this the guy we want?
Is he the right person to be the Republican nominee for president?
There are a lot of people who support the other candidates who say no, he's not.
That this Fred Thompson thing is just a bubble.
That Fred Thompson is not somebody who's going to win the nomination, and he's not somebody who should win the nomination.
And they've put out their knocks on him.
On the other hand, it's undeniable that this has touched the nerve.
For a guy to go from not being in the race to now leading one major poll in only a few months without having raised any money or run any ads anywhere is rather extraordinary.
I can give you my opinion, and again, I'm the guest host.
I'm not speaking for Rush.
I can't speak for Roger Hedgecock.
I can't speak for anybody else who sits in this chair.
I can only speak for me.
From my perspective, he's the guy.
I feel very good about Fred Thompson.
I like him.
I think he's the right person.
This is not to say that as the political campaign develops, things can't change.
But we pretty much know now who the field of Republican candidates are.
There are a handful of also Rans who a lot of people like, but haven't shown any real support at all.
And then there is the former big three, now the big four.
There's Fred, there's Mayor Giuliani, Governor Mitt Romney, and John McCain.
Of that group, the person who represents most of what I believe is Fred Thompson.
Furthermore, he strikes me as the kind of guy who isn't ashamed or embarrassed of the conservative message, and he's the kind of guy who can win.
I like him, and I'm very comfortable with him.
And the question I want to throw to Russia's audience is, what do you think?
Do you think Fred Thompson's the guy?
Or not.
If you like him, what do you like about him?
If you don't, what are your hang ups?
And while this question may seem to a lot of us is very premature, it's only Jonah the year before.
The fact of the matter is this is when people are choosing up sides.
The endorsements are coming up, people are giving money in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and the other key states, the organizations are in place.
People are choosing up sides right now.
And the two or three people who are serious candidates, I think are pretty much going to be known by Labor Day or at the very latest, early November.
And this thing's going to be boiled down to just three or four of them by the time we get to the end of the year.
So I want to throw it out.
And our phone number is 1-800-282-2882.
What do you think of Fred Thompson and is he the right guy?
My name is Mark Gelling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limboh.
I'm Mark Gulling.
I'm sitting in for Rush.
This is Rush's golfing vacation week, and I'm here.
Roger's going to be here tomorrow and Thursday, and Tom Sullivan will be here on Friday.
We're talking right now about Fred Thompson.
I think it's timely.
One poll now shows him actually leading in preference among national Republicans.
Let's go to the telephones in Beloit, Wisconsin.
Jeff, you're on EIB.
Hey, Mark, glad to talk to you.
How are you?
I'm great, thank you.
Hey, I was just um I was a Romney fan until uh Fred kind of tossed his hat in the ring.
Um I'm glad he's running.
I think his uh character is uh Reagan-esque stature.
I think he's gonna do well with the media and uh with the American public.
I think we're looking American public looking for somebody that uh no bars hold can uh go out there and deliver the message.
Well, you mentioned the Reagan comparison.
Part of the problem is I think Republicans are forever looking uh for Reagan, and there was only one Reagan.
And in fact, we're we're viewing Reagan now almost more uh idealistically than we did at the time that Reagan actually was Reagan.
But if you're talking about the qualities that Reagan brought to the table, Ronald Reagan had the ability to articulate a conservative message in a way that a lot of Americans found attractive, and we haven't had a lot of conservatives since then who've been able to do it.
I'm a strong fan of President Bush on a lot of issues.
Clearly he's mishandled a number of things.
But one of his great weaknesses is he's never really developed the ability to sell a message.
I think Fred Thompson has that.
The other thing that strikes me about him is that very much like Reagan, he's not embarrassed to be a conservative.
It's never this wringing your hands explaining defensiveness that you get from everybody else.
He's willing to take positions that the major media doesn't like.
He's willing to take positions that are out of touch with the elitists, and he explains them and presents them in a way that I think most people are able to understand.
Is it because he has training as an actor?
I don't know.
But he's very, very good at taking a conservative message and laying it out there for people in a way that I think they find find it agreeable.
Certainly he has that ability more so than McCain.
I know that's the case because John McCain's never been able to persuade me of anything.
Exactly.
I think even if if he doesn't have a message, then it's not going to do him any good.
And I he doesn't have any ulterior motives.
He wants to bring a message, he wants to bring an idea, and if the Republicans want to get behind him, great.
He has it's no loss for him.
He just I think he honestly believes we need somebody to take make a stand, and if American public want to stand behind him, great.
If not, he he's gonna enjoy himself in Tennessee.
Yeah, I I agree with you.
I do you get every sense in reading all the articles, and since I'm a fan of his, I've read all the articles.
There's even a book written by uh talk show hosts from Nashville, very, very good, that lays out Thompson's beliefs.
I don't see any backpedaling away from anything.
I'm gonna give you an example of why I like him.
He has come out strongly for a pardon of Lewis Scooter Libby.
That is a very dangerous position to take.
You're asking that the president of the United States pardon a man that a jury found to be a criminal.
But it's what Fred Thompson believes.
He thinks that the prosecution of Libby by Fitzgerald was wrong.
He thinks that Libya is being made to be a scapegoat.
He thinks that this is a loyal American who served his country who is being beaten up upon as a as a result of a witch hunt.
Whether you agree with him or not, we actually have a Republican running for president who's willing to come out and say that.
You throw that question to any one of the other major Republicans running, and they're gonna duck and bob and weave and talk about the appeal of the process and all of those things.
They are afraid of their shadow because they know they will get criticism for that position.
Well, Fred Thompson was willing to say that.
And that's what I want to see in a conservative.
I want to see somebody out there who isn't ashamed to believe in the things that I believe in.
We've got this inferiority complex right now, thanks to the 2006 elections.
The conservative ideas aren't gonna sell.
That's nonsense.
This is still a country that is conservative on many issues.
It's still a country that until this la last year elected a majority of members of the United States Senate and the United States House and won the presidency for Republicans.
A conservative message can work.
You simply need somebody who's good at delivering it and believes it and isn't embarrassed by it.
And I think Thompson has all those things.
Thank you, Jeff.
Redondo Beach, California, Mike, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, Mark.
I actually think that Fred Thompson is the wrong candidate for the GOP.
I think in a year when the political wits are likely to be at our at our front again, it's gonna be a tough year.
We need a candidate who can bring in independent Democratic voters, and I just don't think Thompson is it.
I don't think he'll he has the ability to bring in blue states like Giuliani would.
Uh Giuliani puts New York State in play, which Will force Hillary or whoever the Democratic candidate is to waste resources there.
What you're saying, though, Mike, is that Republicans have to settle.
No, I think that's a good thing.
That we have to take somebody that we don't agree with on a lot of things because, you know, we can't win.
You said that the winds are going to be blowing our face, it's going to be a tough election.
We can't win.
We've got to take somebody that we don't really agree with.
I've never believed that.
It seems to me that when Republicans win, not just for the presidency, but for governorships, Senate, Congress seats across the country.
It's when you get somebody who actually believes in conservative values and has the ability to articulate them.
You don't have to run off to a middle that isn't where most of this party really is.
I don't think that we have to settle.
And Rudy Giuliani is a great guy, but the fact of the matter is he's not particularly conservative on a lot of issues.
I'm Mark Belling and I'm in for Rush Limbaugh.
1-800-282-2882 is the telephone number.
National Review Magazine has both a story and an editorial comment about the Fred Thompson candidacy.
The editorial comment is rather favorable.
They write, Fred Thompson got a step closer to entering the presidential primaries by forming an exploratory committee.
He has ardent fans.
The polls have him in the top tier of the race he has not even entered.
But there are off-the-record scoffers in the other Republican campaigns.
They say his first day in the race will be his best.
That his major strength is not having bored everyone by campaigning over the last year.
That is a mistake.
Thompson has the most consistently conservative record of any of the top candidates.
He is a serious man with well thought through positions, and he has a knack for presenting conservative philosophy as simple common sense.
His rivals would do well not to underestimate him.
I'm talking about him today because there's a new poll out that now shows him leading in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Let's go to Bowie Maryland and Jones.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Yeah, hi, how are you doing?
I'm great.
That's good.
Yeah, I'm I'm definitely uh a fan of uh Fred Thompson.
He's I think one of the things that won me over was his discussion with uh Chris Wallace.
What about two months ago?
It was kind of fun to watch because when he when Wallace asked the question.
Fred didn't talk all around.
I mean as you mentioned earlier, he didn't just keep talking around everything.
He just gave an answer.
Every interview I've seen of him, you're right.
Every interview that I've seen of him since he dangled this notion out about running for president, either in print or on television, he actually is willing to address the issues that are out there.
I don't think everybody's going to agree with him on everything, but he's willing to he's willing to lay out a position.
And I know from doing my own program in Milwaukee, talking to a lot of people, the thing that drives a lot of us crazy about Republican leaders is when they feel as though they've got to apologize for the things that they believe in or constantly be on the defensive.
And frankly, that is one of President Bush's weaknesses.
Whenever they throw something at him, it seems like he feels the need to back to backpedal away.
And I uh we're I think most of us are looking for someone who isn't embarrassed to be a Republican.
That's the thing that he is willing to, as you as you said, willing to be a Republican, sees conservatism as not something to run away from, and seems willing to say this is where I stand, and you should be standing here too.
The other candidates that are running, in my mind, all have flaws.
First of all, I love Rudy Giuliani.
He's a great guy.
Except he's a liberal.
Uh and he he he is a great guy, however, and when tested in a true crisis, showed that he is a real leader.
He's also outstanding on the issue of terrorism and American security.
However, he's out of step with the majority of his own party on gun control.
He's out of step with the majority of his own party on immigration, and he's certainly out of step with the majority of his own party on abortion.
I I those are a lot of issues to overcome, and you're asking people to set aside their beliefs on three of the five or six biggest issues that are out there right now.
It's real hard for me to imagine that a lot of Republicans would see him as you know as their first choice.
If he was the Republican nominee, I would support him.
And I Like him, and he's a great leader, but I don't believe that for most of us, in the end, he's going to be their favorite choice.
I definitely hope not.
Thank you for the call.
Greenville, North Carolina.
Mike, it's your turn on Russia's show.
Hey, Mark, how's it going?
I'm great, thanks.
Hey, you're doing a great job filling in.
Uh, wanted to agree with most of what you said about Fred.
Uh, I'm excited.
He's the best thing I've seen yet out there, and I was telling you a screener.
I think he's uh he's got the right idea by delaying his entry because it just creates a lot of interest and uh it shows just uh a certain amount of uh, you know, I think instinct on his part of what it's gonna take to win this thing.
You gotta be a salesman.
I mean, let's not kid ourselves.
You have to sell yourself, you have to sell your ideas, and to do that you have to be a great communicator.
And uh, I think along the lines of what you were just saying about his interview with Chris Wallace, he really, when he sits down and does a one-on-one, he really he reminds me a lot of uh gosh, what's the guy's name?
Bennett.
He reminds me of Bill Bennett a lot because he does give a straightforward answer.
He doesn't dance all over the place, he's straightforward with you, and you either like him or you don't.
Well, I mean, you've got to give him this, and it's it's cynical the way he's done it, but he's pulled it off.
The longer he stays out of the race, the better off he is.
I mean, you've got these the other ten are at these debates, and you can't be in a 10-person debate without being diminished because you only become one tenth.
I mean, the night that he uh the night of the last Republican debate, I believe he went on one of the cable shows, it might have been Hannity and Combs, it was one of them, and he's on there for a half hour one on one, and the other poor guys have to do their ridiculous little, you get 15 seconds to try to explain away your position on the war in Iraq.
So the longer he stays out, the the better off he is.
But you hit the key point.
He figured that out.
He figured that out.
It was a very, very shrewd calculation that if he wants you, and I don't believe for a minute that it just occurred to Fred Thompson in March or whenever he went on that Chris Wallace thing with gee, maybe I want to be president.
I think he had this in mind for a long time, but he figured that sizing up the field and delaying an entry would be the best way for him to draw attention to his own particular campaign, and it's worked.
It certainly has worked.
And the fact that he's able to figure that out gives me a lot of confidence that he's the guy that would have what it takes to go on against whomever the Democratic nominee is.
Well, exactly, and not just political savvy, but when you get in situations after you're elected where you're dealing with the opposite party, you're dealing with matters of foreign affairs, you have to have some instinct.
You have to have a little bit of insight on what's the best way to make this work, because you know, we're not gonna shove our views down anybody's throat.
It takes somebody with some tact and it takes somebody with the ability to communicate that, but in a way where you plan to say something, and also sometimes you got to be able to handle stuff on the fly.
And I'm unfortunately our president now doesn't do very well on that, even though I think he's very sincere and very genuine.
He he fails when he has to handle things, you know, in press conferences and stuff.
And I think that makes Fred all the more appealing, and I'm really excited about the fact that he's a very good thing.
You're right about you're right about that with President Bush.
It's his weakness, and we all know that it's his weakness.
You're not gonna find everyone who has perfect strengths in all areas.
That is his weakness.
He has been weak in communicating his message in many instances.
Thank you for the call.
This whole business, though, about the Republican field as opposed to the Democratic field.
A lot of Republicans are unhappy with their field because they find flaws with all of these candidates.
However, the flip side of that is that every one of the major Republicans that is running is qualified to be president of the United States.
Whether you agree with McCain or not, or like him or not, and it's no secret, I'm not a big fan of John McCain.
He's been in the United States Senate for a long time, and he's taken on a lot of issues.
He is a capable person who is intelligent and informed and has been around the block a few times.
Mitt Romney was an extremely successful businessman.
He took over the Salt Lake City winter Olympics at a time that it was in absolute chaos.
There were concerns that the Olympics would not come off, that the International Olympic Committee was going to have to take it away from Salt Lake City because it was so screwed up.
He stepped in at a late moment, turned that around, raised a lot of money, and those Olympics went off flawlessly.
He managed then to run as a Republican, one of the most liberal states in the Union, Massachusetts.
He's been successful in business, he's been successful in governance.
He's a very qualified guy.
And then you've got Giuliani.
Maybe the greatest federal prosecutor in American history took over a basket case of a city, New York, and came in with a very, very open mind.
We don't have to do things the way we've done them in the past.
We don't have to accept that there's going to be crime.
We don't have to accept that businesses are going to keep moving their corporate headquarters out of the city.
We don't have to accept that there's going to be no quality of life in New York.
He did all of those things, and then he managed a major crisis, including the rebuilding of a portion of his city.
Those are qualified people.
Take a look at the Democratic field.
Hillary Clinton's primary qualification for anything she's accomplished has simply been that she married the right guy.
Would she have been elected a senator from New York, somebody who had lived in the state for about a week and a half?
Had she not been Bill Clinton's wife?
No.
And since serving in the United States Senate, what's the big issue that Hillary Clinton has taken under her wing and done something on?
What's her big issue?
No one can even think of anything.
Barack Obama.
Come on.
He was a state senator in Illinois.
And not even a particularly influential one.
He got to the United States Senate and he's been there what?
Are we working yet on three years?
Have we gotten to three?
No.
On Obama.
John Edwards is probably their most qualified guy, and he doesn't have a lot of experience.
So I think if you're going to talk about which key which party has the most experienced and qualified candidates, it is the Republican Party.
They're dealing here from a position of strength.
As for which Republican in particular looks the best, I'm not going to hide my biases.
It is a bias.
I like Fred Thompson a lot because I like the way he sells his message, and I don't feel as though he's ashamed of being a conservative.
A real telling moment for me was, and it was calculated.
It was clearly calculated.
Was his comeback to Michael Moore.
Michael Moore, the idiot documentarian is doing this thing that's going to come out in a couple of weeks on health care in America.
And he went down to Cuba, and is apparently going to portray the Cuban health care system as the absolute best that you're going to find in the world.
Fred Thompson took a shot at him for going down there because it violated the United States travel embargo to Cuba.
And Michael Moore shot back that Fred Thompson was a hypocrite and a phony because he smokes Cuban cigars, as he had said once in an interview.
99% of American Republicans would have hemmed and hawed and backed off over the years.
Oh, Michael Moore got me.
I'm on the defensive.
We've seen this again and again and again in which you have to apologize and clarify, well, yes, I probably shouldn't be smoking the cigars.
Instead, Fred Thompson hauls over a camera crew, sticks a cigar in his mouth, and gives a retort to Michael Moore that draws attention to the fact that right down there in Cuba, a fellow documentarian was locked up by Castro's government and put in a mental institution, and Fred goes and slaps that thing on the internet with a cigar, holding the cigar in his hand.
It's the kind of thing Rush would have done.
It's the kind of thing that I think appeals to people.
You don't have to be ashamed to think the way most of us think.
Lord knows the lefties aren't ashamed of thinking the way they think, and they've got a lot more to be embarrassed about than most conservatives.
My name is Mark Gelling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
We're sizing up the guy who has just taken over the lead in the Republican race for president, according to one poll, and it is only one poll, it's Rasmussen.
We're talking about Fred Thompson to Fairfield, Ohio, and Adam.
Adam, it's your turn on EIB.
How are you doing, Mark?
I'm great, thank you.
Hey, I don't think nobody knows enough about Fred Thompson yet.
Uh he flip flops on abortion, no matter 1994, no matter who he speaks to.
He filled uh filled out a questionnaire for like a liberal liberal organization said he was pro choice.
He filled out a questionnaire for a pro-life uh group and said he was pro-life.
He he voted to acquit Clinton in the Senate.
He said he always speaks you know his mind and everything like that.
He can't it was an easy choice.
Clinton committed the crime, he perjured himself, and he didn't have the backbone to vote for him to be dismissed in the Senate.
He voted I can't believe I remember when that came through.
I was like, Fred Thompson, you gotta be kidding me.
And then he was for McCain Feingold.
Well, you just you I will I will give you credit, Adam.
You just hit the three big knocks at him.
You hit every single one of them.
What is truly his record on abortion?
Now, the response that I give you on that is his rating from the uh uh the National Right to Life Committee during the time that he was in the Senate, I believe is near perfect.
His voting rec it I'm just telling you what the response is.
I believe that he's got a near-perfect voting record on uh pro-life issues.
With regard to where he stands on the issue, I think we can judge by where he's been in public life on that, and he's been consistently pro he been consistently pro-life.
With regard to McCain Feingold, I disagree with his vote on that.
Uh I believe he's beginning to acknowledge that McCain Feingold isn't working, and as for his vote in impeachment, I disagree with him on that.
But I can't find any one of the major candidates that's out there that I'm going to agree with on anything.
You hit three things that certainly bother me.
But every one of them I could turn on virtually every one of the other major candidates and find at least three or four of those flaws.
If you're bothered by the position on abortion, well, I don't know how you can back McRomney, who's a Johnny Cum lately there, and you certainly can't back Giuliani.
If you're bothered by McCain Feingold, well, McCain, if you're bothered by the vote with regard to impeachment, I think most of those Republicans would not have voted uh to convict Clinton.
I don't think McCa did McCain, I don't believe he did.
I'm sure he didn't.
Can I add one more thing?
Sure.
Um I'm just saying that I just think Thompson's a wolf in cheap clothing.
He's not a real conservative.
That we had a we've had a real conservative run since Reagan.
His name was Patrick Gabe Buchanan.
And you know when you have the real thing is because the media, the Republicans, and the Democrats will all attack him.
Look at the media acceptance of Thompson.
Look at the other Republican acceptance of Thompson.
Remember when Buchanan gave his 92 uh uh speech at the Republican National Convention?
Newt Gingrich said he said he thought the devil himself gave the speech.
Right there is when you knew you had a real conservative running for president.
And that's why one.
I think you're probably looking farther to the right than anybody else is willing to look right now.
With regard to Pat, he and a lot of people of his ilk, I think have really gone soft on the whole threat to the United States from terrorism, but it's a valid point of view that he offers.
I'm just saying that of the major candidates that are out there, I think Fred Thompson's the real thing.
And for me and the values that I have, he's right there with me on most issues, and I feel real comfortable with him.
I don't want to turn this into a Lubfest, even though it seems to be that way.
I'm just giving people an opportunity to share their own thoughts on the guy, and I'm telling you that I like him.
But all the things that you mentioned is Knox are legitimate ones and real ones.
But I'll tell you something.
You're gonna come up with a lot more of them.
On anybody else who shows up with more than five percent in the polls as a Republican candidate for president, you may be able to find the perfect candidate out there.
But I'm not sure that you'll be able to pull it off.
Thank you for the call.
I'm Mark Elling sitting in for Rushland Baugh.
I'm Mark Belling, today's guest host on EIB.
I want to correct myself, but I also get to correct the caller who is disagreeing with me.
Uh John McCain actually did uh vote to convict President Clinton during the impeachment uh procedures in the United States Senate, but so did Fred Thompson.
Uh Fred Thompson voted to convict in one of the charges he voted to acquit on one of the others, but he did vote uh to convict on the obstruction of justice charge.
So he did in fact vote to convict and therefore remove President Clinton uh from office, and as did Senator McCain, as I inaccurately had stated myself.
Is all of this premature is it too early to talk about?
I really don't think so.
History indicates that the Republican candidate who takes the lead, the preceding year almost always wins.
You can go back fifty years.
The only one that I find is an exception was Goldwater in 1964.
But it's always the guy that seems to have takeover by Labor Day of the preceding year that goes on to win.
So I really think it is a timely discussion.
Democrats, they tend to pick wild cards.
Their guy who's leading always seems to be knocked off.
The Republican candidate, though, is usually the one that a consensus develops around the preceding year, and I do kind of like Fred Thompson, as you may have picked up.
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