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Aug. 29, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:30
August 29, 2007, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 podcast.
That's right, two days in a row of me, two days in a row.
That is my record.
I've never been asked to do three days in a row.
I've done two several times.
I've never gotten to that three.
Does that has anybody done three in a row?
No one has done three in a row.
I don't know if that's my goal or not.
I think two days is probably more than most of you can take of me.
There are three stories in the news today that are completely unbelievable, but at the same time not surprising.
You know how Rush always says you can't make this stuff up?
It's gotten to that point.
The best hoaxes are the ones that seem outrageous but also seem like they could be true.
You know, when somebody makes something up and the internet has become a major place to circulate this stuff, you start a story that isn't true, but has enough believability in it that people bite on it.
It's getting harder and harder to do that because now the truth is working that way.
There are three stories today that after you hear them, even though you shake your, I can't believe that.
In the end you have to acknowledge, yeah, I guess.
I believe that.
The first one is this.
Leona Helmsley's will is out and she's leaving twelve million dollars to her dog.
Now, I've always wanted to give Leona Helmsley the benefit of the doubt because the media hates her.
If the media hates somebody, I gotta think that probably not all bad.
There must be something good there.
Yeah, we keep seeing all these stories that Leona Helmsley was the meanest woman alive.
She was this terrible tyrant running the hotels, that she's a selfish.
She died several days ago.
Her will is out.
She's leaving 12 million dollars to her dog.
It gets better, her grandchildren get nothing.
She leaves 12 million though to the dog.
You can imagine what the headline on the front page of the New York Post reads.
It's two words.
The first one is rich, you can guess the second one.
So that's the first story.
Leona Helmsley really is leaving 12 million to her dog.
The second one.
Brittany Spears was driving around Beverly Hills yesterday and she ran out of gas.
Do we need to send her back to drivers Ed?
Every possible problem that can occur with driving has occurred to her.
She's driving this little Mercedes.
She has a couple of her bubble-headed friends with her, I think guys, and she runs out of gas.
Some Beverly Hills cops are nearby, which isn't surprising.
I've been to Beverly Hills.
There are cops everywhere there.
And there's a photo of these cops pushing her car over to the side of the road or to a gas station or something.
Her car runs out of what more can possibly happen to this woman.
And here's the third story.
This one deals with something that we talked about here on Rush's program yesterday.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal broke a major story about some very weird political contributions to the presidential and senatorial campaign funds of Hillary Clinton.
They were made by the Paw family of Daily City, California.
All six members of the family maxed out in their legal contributions to Hillary.
In and of itself, that doesn't seem all that weird, but as the story pointed out yesterday, this family lives in a very, very small bungalow, right underneath the flight approach to San Francisco International Airport.
The house is to say the house is modest would be exaggerating the word modest.
It appears to be something of a shag.
It turns out that the Paw family's contributions were timed to match those of a man named Norman Shu, who is a major flight player in democratic politics and fundraising, and has been a major fundraiser for Hillary.
Every time Norman Shue gave money, suspiciously all these members of the Paw family would give money.
Shu at one time claimed the house that the Paw family was living in in Daily City as his own address.
They weren't able to establish any other connection other than one of the children in the Paw family works for a company owned by this guy, Norman Shu.
The implication certainly is that it's plausible here that the Paw family, which appears to have very, very limited resources, yet was giving tens of thousands of dollars to Hillary, that somehow the money was not coming from the Paw family.
There are strict limits as to how much money you can give to a candidate for president.
I think it's 2300 for the primary and 2300 for the general, but I'm not sure of the exact number.
But there are limits on it.
One way obviously of getting around it, not legally, would be to have a lot of different people give donations, but have somebody else reimburse them.
And there's certainly the appearance that that may have been going on with this family that lives in this Ramshackle home near the San Francisco airport, but is connected to a major Hillary fundraiser.
That was the story that we discussed at some length here on Russia's program yesterday.
Today, and this is the third of the unbelievable but in the end not surprising stories.
It turns out that this guy Norman Shue, the major fundraiser for Hillary, is a fugitive from the state of California.
He's a convicted felon.
And California hasn't been able to find him for 15 years.
For the last three years, he's been hanging around Hillary Clinton giving money right and left, living on the East Coast, but the state of California didn't know where he was.
In 1991, this is all, by the way, in today's Los Angeles Times, you can find it, I'm sure, uh, on their website.
I'll quote from the story for the last 15 years, California authorities have been trying to figure out what happened to a businessman named Norman Shue who pleaded no contest to grand theft, agreed to serve up to three years in prison, and then seemed to vanish.
He is a fugitive.
Ronald Spitano, who handled the case for the state attorney general, said in an interview.
Do you know where he is?
Well, where he's been has been raising a lot of money for Hillary Clinton.
So as it turns out, the guy who is the link to this family that appears to have not much money that is giving all this money to Hillary Clinton, not only is a felon in the state of California, he's a fugitive from justice, is wanted to come back to the state for sentencing and could end up serving three years.
What is it with the Clintons?
And dubious contributors.
This goes on again and again and again.
I mean, I said yesterday this smells of John Wong and Charlie Tree and Johnny Chan all over again.
Well, it does.
She's got this guy, Shu, raising money for, and he is, they've got this term, they call them Hillraisers.
The big fundraisers for Hillary, the people who go put the arm on other Democrats and raise money for Hillary, they're dubbed Hillraisers.
He's one of the top hillraisers.
He's a felon.
Now, just yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Hillary's flak, Howard Wolfson, whenever Hillary doesn't want to answer a question about something which is ninety-five percent of the good questions that are thrown to her, they trot out this guy, Howard Wolfson.
He said yesterday, quote, Norman Shue is a longtime and generous supporter of the Democratic Party and its candidates, including Senator Clinton.
During Mr. Shue's many years of active participation in the political process, there has been no question about his integrity or his commitment to playing by the rules.
He's been convicted of grand theft.
We have absolutely no reason to call his contributions into question or to return them.
This is beautiful, the LA Times adding today, Wolfson did not immediately respond Tuesday night to questions about Shu's legal problems.
Maybe we're going to have to retract that statement about there not being any questions about the integrity of Norman Shue.
The story goes on to say, though he is a fugitive, Shue has hardly kept a low profile.
The website Camera Arts or Camera Arts.com, which sells photographs taken at political events, features Shu at several fundraisers he hosted at Manhattan's Elegant St. Regis Hotel, including a June 2005 luncheon for Representative Doris Matsui, Democrat of Sacramento.
Shue lives in New York City.
Efforts to contact him were unsuccessful.
His lawyer said Shu chose to respond through his lawyer.
What's the deal on this?
If I would have, when I discussed this story yesterday, talking about this Norman Shu character and his alliance to this family that lives near the runway of the San Francisco airport that somehow managing to find tens of thousands of dollars for Hillary, if I would have said, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if this guy's another felon.
You know how the filling the Clintons tend to hang around with Asian Americans of dubious backgrounds, he's probably a felon.
I would have been oh, come on, there you guys go again.
Not to keep quoting Rush, but you can't make this stuff up.
This story, by the way, is going to have legs.
It's not going to go away.
There's always this fear that many people have that is ever going to stick to the Clintons.
Doesn't matter what it is, the rape allegations of Juanita Broadwick lying under oath, selling secrets and technology to the Chinese that nothing sticks to the Clintons, this is different.
The difference now is that Hillary is an active candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and there are other Democrats out there that want that nomination.
It's one thing for stuff to be brought up by Rush Limbaugh, by a bunch of right-wing bloggers, and maybe even some in the media.
When questions about these contributions and about Hillary's relationship with Norman Shue are raised by other Democrats, I think they're going to get a little more attention.
And we don't know how far this story is now going to go.
Nobody had ever heard of the Paw family of Daily City or Norman Shue prior to yesterday.
The Wall Street Journal has this fascinating report on how every time these poor people from Daily City are giving money, so is Norman Shue giving money.
Only a day later we learn that Norman Shue, the guy who's connected to the poor family from Daily City, California, is a fugitive from the state of California.
He is a felon who bugged out of the state after his conviction.
It's only Wednesday.
Who knows where this story is going to be?
By Friday.
So let's take a vote.
Brittany Spears running out of gas.
Leona Helmsley leaving 12 million dollars to her dog.
One of Hillary's top fundraisers being a felon wanted in the state of California, which is the most surprising of those stories.
The fact of the matter is that while they're all unbelievable, in the end, there isn't a dog on thing surprising about any of them.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Now, I know what all you liberals out there listening are thinking right now.
Yeah, bring up Hillary, bring up this fundraiser we never heard of.
You just don't want to talk about Larry Craig.
Let's talk about your pervert.
That's what you're all thinking.
Well, I am going to talk about the Larry Craig story.
I want to talk about the specific incident involving him and this notion that somehow this scars the entire Republican Party.
That somehow, as a conservative, I'm supposed to be ashamed of myself because of something Larry Craig Craig did.
This needs to be taken on, and it's not any topic at all that I'm afraid of discussing.
First of all, the allegation against Larry Craig, and by the way, what's the deal with the media in Minneapolis St. Paul that this guy had pleaded guilty to this orderly conduct three months ago, and we're only finding out about this now.
Apparently, Larry Craig, who is a senator from Idaho and a Republican, was in a restroom in the Minneapolis airport.
The restroom is notorious for gay sex hookups.
The cops have been running sting operations there.
And according to the allegations, Larry Craig made some gestures or signals with his feet from the stall that implied that he was looking to hook up with the man in the next door stall who happened to be a cop.
Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, held a news conference on Monday and said, Well, I wish I hadn't pledged guilty.
I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't do anything at that airport, and no I'm not gay.
Now I don't know if Larry Craig is gay or not.
What we do know is that there apparently have been rumors for some time that he is.
He's denying it.
I also don't know what to make of the situation in the bathroom in Minneapolis.
It doesn't seem like the strongest case in the world, on the other hand, until this week I didn't know there were signals that you made from the restroom stall to indicate to somebody else that you're interested.
How'd you like to be a guy who's fidgety and nervous and just move it around in there?
Oh, you want to no, no, no.
Was he acting inappropriately?
Well, probably.
Why else would he have pleaded guilty to this?
It was only to disorderly conduct, it wasn't to soliciting sex, but you didn't do something and you're an elected United States Senator, I would think that you'd be fighting it then rather than holding news conferences now.
So I suspect he probably was involved in inappropriate behavior there.
Whether or not he's been doing other inappropriate things, I don't know.
This is the first I've heard of this, and frankly, Larry Craig isn't exactly the most prominent member of the United States Senate.
It's not like he's making news every day.
But the story is out there.
For better or for worse.
Page one, today's New York Times, a scandal-scarred GOP asks, what next?
Just when Republicans thought things could not get any worse.
Senator Larry Craig of Idaho confirmed that he had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct after an undercover police officer accused him of soliciting sex in June in a Minneapolis airport restroom.
On Tuesday, Mr. Craig 62 held a news conference to defend himself, calling the guilty plea a mistake and declaring I am not gay, even as the Senate Republican leadership asked for an ethics committee review.
It was a bizarre spectacle and only the latest, and a string of accusations of sexual foibles and financial misdeeds that have landed Republicans in the political equivalent of purgatory, the realm of late-night comic television.
Forget Mark Foley of Florida who quit the House last year after exchanging sexually explicit email messages with underage male pages, or Jack Abramov, the lobbyist whose dealings with the old Republican Congress landed him in prison.
They are old news, replaced by a fresh crop of scandal-plagued Republicans.
Men like Senator David Vitura of Louisiana, whose phone number turned up on the list of the so-called DC Madam, or Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Representative Rick Renzi of Arizona, both caught up in FBI corruption investigations.
All right, so there we go.
Every bad guy who's a Republican in the last four years, we're going to throw all this together, and somehow this means the Republican Party is reeling.
Well, how come it doesn't work the other way?
Why is the Democratic Party not reeling because of a Congressman William Jefferson?
How much money was it that they found on a hundred thousand dollars?
Was that the dollar figure?
Why aren't they reeling over that?
Why were they not forced to reel when the Barney Frank allegations came out?
I could go on and on, so I think I will.
How about the behavior of former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney?
Why did that not reflect badly on the Democratic Party?
John Ford, king man of the Denick Democratic Party in the state of Tennessee, long time member of the state legislature there, member of the famous Ford family pleading guilty to receiving bribes yesterday.
Fifty-five grand worth.
Why does that not reflect on the Democratic Party?
And how about Clinton?
You could take every one of these Republicans, put all their allegations together on the same list, and that list wouldn't be longer than the laundry list of Bill Clinton's misdeeds.
Well, why doesn't Bill Clinton reflect on the entire Democratic Party?
They don't even think that it's fair that it would reflect on his wife.
Yet every time you have a problem involving a Republican, supposedly the entire party has got to be on the defensive and has to be ashamed and it's such a terrible reflection of Republicanism, but it never seems to work the other way.
There are a lot of reasons for that, including the fact that Republicans never beat up on Democrats when an individual Democrat does something wrong because they don't think it's fair to do so.
Well, the other side isn't playing fairly.
I imagine I should give out the telephone number here.
It's 1-800-282-2882.
But I have more to say about this.
If Larry Craig was a Democratic member of the United States Senate, who was charged with doing inappropriate things in a men's restroom at an airport, How would this story be played?
I'll tell you right now how it would be played.
All the angles, every spin out there would be the following.
Isn't it a shame that we are such an intolerant society?
The gay politicians have to stay in the closet, that they can't openly pursue their interests, and they have and they are reduced to having to do it in restrooms in airports in another state.
That's how they'd spin it.
That we are a society that doesn't tolerate homosexuality and therefore, gay men frustrated who want to be in politics, have to engage in this kind of behavior in a surreptitious fashion.
Isn't that terrible?
Aren't we a bunch of intolerant bigots?
Secondly, for all the Democrats who claim that they're bothered by this, we're gonna jump all over the Larry Craig story.
You're not bothered by it.
The people who are bothered by this are Republicans.
Because when Democrats get caught engaging in this kind of behavior, Democrats never get rid of them.
Name the last Democrat involved in wrongdoing who was thrown out by other Democrats.
They never throw out their bad guys.
William Jefferson won re nomination in his congressional district down in Louisiana.
Barney Frank's been re-elected for decades ever since we learned out that his roommate was running a house of prosecution out of Barney Frank's own apartment.
Jerry Studs, the Congressman from Massachusetts, who had an inappropriate relationship with a male page who was underage was re-elected for years by his Democratic constituents.
James Traffick out of Ohio, who I believe is still in prison, was re-elected even after being criminally charged by his Democratic constituents in Ohio.
And then there's of course Clinton, who lied under oath right underneath our noses, and Democrats to this day continue to defend him.
Democrats never get rid of their scoundrels.
On the other hand, you find a Republican scoundrel, the Republicans run him out.
Mark Foley, who is being blamed for the 2006 Republican electoral defeat, Congressman from Florida.
Republicans turned on him and wanted him out.
There isn't a Republican that I know that defended Jack Abramoff.
Republicans themselves finally had enough of the leadership of Congress under Tom DeLay.
And in Idaho, I bet Larry Craig's in big political trouble among his own Republicans.
You think there's a Republican in America right now saying, oh, Larry Craig's still a good guy.
I think he ought to continue to be in the Senate.
Hardly any of them say that.
And then I'll use the obvious example.
Kennedy.
Landslide Teddy.
Can you imagine if a Republican ended up with a young woman other than his wife after a night of drinking and drove off a bridge and left her for dead and called the cops ten hours later.
There not only is there no chance that that person would survive because the media would crucify them, no Republican would want any part of that kind of an individual.
So this is supposed to be some sort of reflection on Republicanism.
Every time you see a guy do something bad.
But it's Republicans who actually are bothered by this and try to hold their public officials to some degree of standard.
For you Democrats out there who are gonna laugh and chuckle about Larry Craig.
How come you didn't laugh and chuckle about Barney Frank?
Why didn't you laugh and chuckle about Jerry Studs?
Why don't you laugh and chuckle about any of your guys?
When it's your people, it's either personal conduct or it doesn't matter, or it's irrelevant, or it's those prudish Republicans trying to impose their morality on the rest of us.
On the other hand, if a Republican has a booger out of place in his nose, why that's a scandal and it reflects terribly on every single conservative in America.
Am I not right about this?
It's not just a double standard.
The people who jump on the entire party and say that this is a reflection of the party or a reflection of the ideology are a bunch of phonies.
What needs to happen is the next time a Democrat is involved in some sort of wrongdoing, let's rip the whole party and say this is reflective of the lack of standards that they have.
William Jefferson caught with his bribes, John Ford caught with his bribes.
Say it means the entire Democratic Party is crooked.
Since the argument on Larry Craig is going to be, well, this proves the Republicans are a bunch of hypocrites.
Blue noses who talk one way and behave a different way.
Let's just claim the entire Democratic Party is open to be bribed.
Thank you.
Give them some of their own medicine.
Why that wouldn't be fair.
You can't say because one Congressman took money that that means all Democrats are corrupt.
Well then why are you willing to say that because Mark Foley engaged in inappropriate behavior with a page that somehow this reflects on all Republicans?
When it was the Republicans themselves who ran Mark Foley out.
And if anything happens politically to Larry Craig, it's going to be Republicans who take care of them because the state of Idaho is like all Republican.
All right, I'll shut up.
To Colorado Springs, Colorado, Barbara, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Good morning or good afternoon, wherever you are.
I appreciate you subbing for Rush.
That's great.
Thank you.
Um your comments are absolutely what I was just thinking, that we are to be uh tolerant, and uh that Barney Frank has been in Congress for years and years and years, and we're to turn a blind eye to his uh sexual behaviors, and all of a sudden when it's on the other side of the aisle, that uh this is the biggest scandal, as you said, a booger in somebody's nose just because they're Republicans.
Well, let's let's compare, and I'm not going to defend Larry Craig, but let's compare the allegation against him to what we know Bill Clinton did.
Okay, Larry Larry Craig is accused of making a foot gesture in a restroom.
Bill Clinton had a long-term sexual relationship with someone who worked with him, and he did it in the Oval Office for crying out loud.
Which of the two is more inappropriate behavior?
There isn't a company in America that allows the CEO to run around and have flings with interns.
Yet that's what Bill Clinton did.
Bill Clinton was suggested to have put the move on a woman who worked with him on the same day that her husband committed suicide.
When Ada Broadwick says Bill Clinton raped her.
You can go on and on and on with that kind of behavior, but somehow that's personal, and that's something that doesn't have anything to do with anything, and we shouldn't be passing judgment on this.
But here's a Republican who may or may not be gay, who didn't even get involved in a sexual act, but may have made some sort of indication of a desire of that in a bathroom, and that's supposed to be the scandal of the century and a reflection on the entire party.
You talk about double standards and hypocrisy.
Well, what needs to happen is people on my side have to stop standing for it and start turning this thing around and suggest that every time a Democrat is involved in inappropriate behavior, that it means that every single Democrat and every sim Single liberal, therefore is a sleaze bag.
And let them let them then defend that and put them on the defensive for once.
You've done a good job.
We really appreciate your time in filling in for rush.
Thank you, Barbara.
I appreciate that.
To McKay, Idaho and Garrett, Garrett, it's your turn on EIB.
How you doing?
I'm great.
Good.
Uh, I just want to say that uh you've been making some great points this morning, and Larry Craig's actions, I'm a young registered voter, and we are a conservative state, and his actions don't reflect the Republican Party, and most definitely uh don't reflect Idaho.
Well, and the difference is, now you're a Republican, and you're from Idaho, right?
Yes, sir.
The difference is is that when you've got a guy like Larry Craig who is involved in something like this, presuming that he did do it, and of course he's denying anything inappropriate, you're not going to stand up and defend him.
We're not going to get this knee-jerk defense that we got from virtually every Democrat in America when we learned about Bill Clinton's behavior.
That's the difference here is that Republicans tend to hold their people to some standard.
Democrats don't have any standard at all, but if a Republican is involved in a misdeed, they fly out of the woodwork and they say, see, this is a sign that the whole party's corrupt.
This Republicans have gotta wonder what's next.
Why the Republicans are going to be devastated by this.
And there's an impact to all of this.
You end up getting the impression out there that the entire Republican Party is a bunch of sleazebags because they keep hammering Mark Foley, Mark Foley, Mark Foley, Mark Foley, Mark Foley.
Well, I think you need to start asking questions about Democratic misdeeds.
It's complete nonsense to say that anything that Mark Foley did in a restroom in Minneapolis is anything to do with the Republican Party or conservatives or anything else.
It has something entirely to do with himself and his behavior and nothing beyond that.
Yes, sir.
And you know, we do have standards in the Republican Party, and I know Larry Craig hasn't said if he's going to run again or not, but you know, we will uh prove those standards in the next election.
You know, I mean, we do have standards like you said, and uh we're not gonna stand by for this kind of stuff.
That's my point.
I think Larry Craig is dead politically.
And the reason he's dead politically is his own political party in his own state, Idaho, not to mention Republicans nationally who will pressure Republican senators, will take care of this problem on their own, yet you can't name a case involving a Democratic politician involved in behavior like this where any Democrat has been bothered at all, or where there's even been a political consequence associated with it.
Thank you for the call.
Now, I don't want to belabor that point, but it's true.
Who's the last prominent national Democrat?
Particularly liberal.
If there's a conservative one in there, well, maybe they'll throw that one over the side.
Who's the last prominent National Democrat to be involved in some sort of inappropriate behavior who was criticized by Democrats?
It doesn't happen.
Now, if it's one of those Democrats they don't like, like somehow Lieberman or one of the Democrats from the South, maybe.
Maybe they go after that person.
But if it's one of their own, if it's one of their own true believers, if it's one of their lefties, every way they evaluate the story is different.
Now I understand.
They'll say, well, yeah, but you're the party of morality and family values and all that.
There's a hypocrisy element here.
Why?
There would only be hypocrisy if Republicans would rally behind Larry Craig and say there was nothing wrong with that behavior.
Craig himself may or may not be a hypocrite.
We do know he pleaded guilty to the disorderly conduct.
He personally may or may not be a hypocrite.
But it would seem to me that if you're going to make a judgment about the entire party or about all conservatives, the way they evaluate this sort of thing is what's more important.
And I don't think you're going to find a prominent American Republican or conservative standing up and saying that Larry Craig didn't do anything wrong.
Yet if this was an in-the-closet Democratic member of Congress, and they're out there, The reaction from Democrats would be entirely different.
I could go into how the story in New Jersey involving the former governor was handled and the reactions to all of that.
But when it comes to personal behavior or even scandal involving outright political corruption.
It's Republicans that are bothered by it and will police their own, and Democrats who will defend their people without regard to how bad the behavior is.
Clinton being proof of that.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
My name is Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
We're discussing the Larry Craig story, something that conservatives are supposed to be embarrassed by.
Yeah, what are you going to say about that?
How are you going to defend him?
You presume that we're going to try to defend him because that's what you do when your people are involved in trouble.
Let's imagine that this was not a Republican congressman, but it was a Democratic Congresswoman in a women's restroom, making some sort of approach to a woman.
You know how that story would be reacted to.
They're persecuting this woman.
It's her personal life.
Who cares?
Take the exact same story make a guy.
Democrat.
Public restroom.
Looks like entrapment to me.
Why it's terrible that we live in a society where this poor guy is forced to behave in this fashion.
Because it's Larry Craig.
Why, every Republican and every conservative ought to be ashamed.
What a pathetic political movement and what a pathetic political party you're part of.
To uh to Miami, Bob, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, Mark.
How are you?
I'm great, thank you.
First of all, I want to say, thank God, Capitol G O D, that you, Rush, and other conservatives are on the air.
You are the watchman's on the wall, sounding the alarm.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Sleeping and apathetic people.
And we'd be lost without you.
Well, I don't think I'll I don't think everybody's apathetic.
If they were, Rush wouldn't have the audience that he has.
There are a lot of people who do care about this stuff, but I'll tell you something.
They are frustrated that double standards like this exist, and they're frustrated with Republican political leaders who don't stand up and say stuff like this and who don't fight back.
I do realize that there is a big problem here, and that's the media.
The way the media puts this in certain contexts, depending on who it is that's doing it, well, that's real, real important.
As I said, New York Times page one today.
Why, another blow for the battered down Republican Party.
They never suggested that William Jefferson's being caught accepting bribes was a major blow for the Democratic Party.
You had a congressman from Florida named Elsie Hastings.
He was impeached from his federal judgeship, turned around and later was elected to Congress by Democrats in the state of Florida.
Nobody suggested that that was some sort of plague on the Democratic Party.
It it never is played that way.
And the only way you're going to change that is by giving them some of their own medicine, and when their people are involved in behavior, let's go lump it in with the entire party.
Just reverse the situation on them.
Well, what I originally called for was I've been around a long time since before World War II.
All right.
I have seen these re these uh political parties deteriorate to the point where they are no longer what they originally were.
You take like the Democratic Party.
That died years ago.
Right.
Well, how does that tie into what we're talking about with Craig?
Well, it doesn't tie in with Craig too much, but it does let me vent my spleen here for a while.
Well, I can't let you vent your spleen too long because I'm up against the break.
I understand the point that you make, though, and that is that there's frustration whenever you see political figures involved in wrongdoing.
The point that I make is that you can't lump everyone who has a certain ideology in with somebody who happens to act badly.
However, that's what's always done when the guy acting badly happens to be a Republican.
My name is Mark Belling in for Rush.
Mark Belling sitting in for rush.
You know, I was thinking about it.
There is one Democrat that Democrats turned on.
Torricelli, the former senator from New Jersey, involved in scandal.
He was forced off the ballot.
They told him to drop out of the race, and he did.
But he was getting killed in the polls.
The only time the Democrats will turn on one of their own is if he's going to lose, because saving the power is more important to them than anything else.
So long as they're politically viable, though, like Teddy Kennedy, they can do whatever they want.
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