All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 31, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:54
December 31, 2007, Monday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, wouldn't you know it?
Wouldn't you absolutely know it, friends?
I gave my wife, the lovely Lee, an unlimited budget for our Christmas shopping season.
For the Christmas shopping season this year, I gave the lovely Lee an unlimited budget, and by God, she exceeded it.
Now, that's just my luck this Christmas.
Are you wrapping up the old Christmas shopping season finally?
Have you survived?
Hi, everybody.
Welcome once again to the Rush Limbaugh program.
I am Jason Lewis, Minnesota's Mr. Wright, sitting in for the big guy today on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network behind the Golden EIB Mike in the Attila the Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It is New Year's Eve, otherwise known as Ted Kennedy's favorite night of the year, but I'm not going to get into that.
We're going to reach out today.
We're going to reach out.
Oh, to hell with that.
We'll get into that a little later on the program.
Got global warming news.
What else do we have today?
We've got some voter ID news I definitely want to get into.
Obviously, the elections three days away in Iowa, the Iowa caucuses.
We'll talk about that, Pakistan.
Just a ton of stuff to get to today on the Rush Limbaugh program.
The number is always 1-800-282-2882.
Did you hear about this?
I don't know if you, Kit, and Mike, have heard about this.
It's kind of interesting.
As we prepare to ring in the new year, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the January population for 2008 will reach 303 million people.
Over 300 million people.
That's up, what, 2.8 million from New Year's Day 2007.
Now, this is what I find odd, guys.
The nation is expected to register one birth every eight seconds.
So, according to the Census Bureau, somewhere in America, there's a mother giving birth every eight seconds.
I don't know about you guys, but I say we find her and stop her.
That's my take on the whole census thing.
I don't know.
Okay, I was three days away, as you all know by now, and Romney is making a bit of a comeback.
If you believe three polls that came out over the weekend, Huckabee on Meet the Press, or as Rush calls it, what, Meet the Depressed?
Meet the Depressed yesterday, talked about the biblical charge to help the environment.
That was the Republican frontrunner.
Anyway, Huckabee's surge in Iowa may have come to a halt, or at least showing signs of retreat, according to these three new polls.
Romney coming back, holding on to a lead, as I understand it, according to the Mason-Dixon poll in Iowa, found Mr. Romney with 27%, Huckabee with 23%.
In fact, some Romney aides, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal today, say that he's more concerned about John McCain in New Hampshire than Huckabee in Iowa.
So, this really is a crunch time, especially on the GOP side, because let's be honest, that's what we care about.
On the Democrat side, this is a very, very strange thing on the Democrat side.
You got to give Barack Obama credit for having this facade of a mild temperament.
I have the judgment to be president.
Then you've got, you know, Hillary screaming.
What did she say the other day?
Kit gave me the story that she said, look, I am Mother Teresa.
Well, she characterized herself as this deft uninter.
Hello?
Are you sure your husband didn't inhale?
A uniner?
The Clintons?
Travelgate?
Whitewater?
The Rose law firm billing records?
$100,000 on cattle futures?
1,100 FBI files, going after your enemies?
A uniner?
She said she's a caring peacemaker who teamed up with the Republicans to care for soldiers.
Later, Anade said, I'm from the IRS and I'm here to help you.
This is just bizarre Clinton-esque stuff that, you know, you're going to believe me or your own eyes sort of thing.
So she's out there, and you got John Edwards, who apparently is doing pretty well, according to the polls.
John, you know, has there ever been a greater poster child for the trial bar in your entire life?
This guy is just enamored with seeing himself in the paper on the news.
He is the populist that lives in a mansion in North Carolina.
All of a sudden, he's switching his positions because he's going to go to the left of everybody, which I don't know what's possible in the Democrat Party.
Really, a paucity of real choice in the Democrat Party.
Barack's doing well, not because he said anything.
He's actually, to be perfectly honest, more liberal than Hillary on a number of issues, but because he comes off as this, I've got the temperament and the judgment, and I'm the uniter.
So now Hillary says she's the uniter.
Go figure.
Anyway, on the Republican side, let me see if I can handicap this for everybody, at least my take on it.
And it really is, it really is tough for Republicans right now because these polls, the polls are so fluid because nobody is certain of any particular choice on the GOP side.
And let me just stick my neck out a little bit here on EIB today because we are so close.
But let me just say that I do believe that if you take a look at the race here, you've got three categories in the Republican side.
You've got a couple of solid candidates who would be, frankly, the status quo, say, to the Bush administration, but move it to the right a little bit, which it desperately needs.
And those guys are Thompson and Romney, a Duncan Hunter to a lesser degree, because let's be blunt about this.
He doesn't stand much of a chance.
But you've got Fred Thompson, who actually believes in federalism and talks about federalism and refuses to knee-jerk, raise his hand anytime somebody mentions global warming, hallelujah.
And Romney, who, yes, has changed a couple of positions, but if you look at the way he governed in Massachusetts, it was fairly conservative.
At least National Review thinks so.
They endorsed him.
And everybody, as Peggy Noonan said the other day, ought to have the right to change their mind once.
It's when you go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
That's when people get nervous.
But enough about Mike Bloomberg.
And then you've got, so Thompson and Romney, in my view, are kind of the status quo right of center, frankly, conservative.
And they would push the current administration or the administration's policies to the right, which is desperately needed because the reason the Republicans lost in 06 is because of you had to put the word compassion in front of conservative.
And that meant it was a code word, a euphemism for we're going to govern like lukewarm Democrats.
And by God, the majority in Congress did.
And the president should have been vetoing a 50% increase in spending from the year 2000.
So these guys would be refreshing.
And then you've got McCain, Huckabee, and Rudy Giuliani.
This would be status quo, but to the left.
There's no doubt in my mind that if one of these fellows gets the nomination and is elected, it will move the Republican Party more, of course, euphemistic euphemistically, they say, to the center.
But it would be moved to the left.
Let's be blunt about this.
They're all global warming advocates.
They believe it's real.
They raised their hand at that famous Des Moines debate when the moderator was trying to pin down everybody.
Do you believe global warming is caused by a man?
Up went the hands except for Thompson.
And John McCain, as you know, has come out with some very, very interesting comments over the years, not to mention McCain Feingold against the Bush tax cuts.
Now, he does have some credibility on certainly defense, obviously, given his heroic war record, and some spending issues, which is good.
But Huckabee is clearly angling towards the center or left of center.
Yesterday, as I said on Meet the Press, you know, he was defending his comments about the economy would collapse without illegal immigration.
He was defending the fact that, yes, I raised taxes.
I raised them for education.
Well, good.
He's got the National Education Association endorsement wrapped up then.
Not exactly a Republican stalwart.
And, of course, the biblical duty to get a handle on global warming.
And Rudy, well, Rudy's just Rudy.
And we all know that Rudy doesn't pretend to be a conservative on a number of issues, and he's not.
So it seems to me, oh, by the way, there is one more candidate that raised over $8 million in the fourth quarter.
The candidate that we dare not speak his name, Ron Paul.
A guy is raising money.
I happen to believe that the reason that Paul is actually raising money is because so many Republicans are not disillusioned, but concerned about the direction of their party, i.e. it's becoming a Democrat-like party.
And so they're looking for somebody, whether they agree with him or not, who at least believes in what he says.
They're looking at authenticity.
You know, the old political line from Groucho Mark, sincerity, if you can fake that, you got it made.
They're looking for authenticity.
That, frankly, is what's happening with Barack to a degree on the left.
They're looking for it, and they're finding it in Paul, even though I don't happen to agree with a number of things he says, there is sincerity there.
And so he's the real agent, the change agent candidate.
So you've got Huckabee, McCain, Rudy.
They're going to move the party slightly to the left.
You've got Thompson and Romney, I think we'll move it to the right.
And more so, frankly, with Thompson than Romney.
And then you've got the real change guy, Paul, whether you like the change or not.
That's what he's running on.
And that's really where we stand, vis-a-vis the Iowa caucuses coming up on Thursday, which is going to be monumental for the GOP.
This election is going to be monumental for the GOP.
Because either the party is going to go back to its Reaganite roots or it's going to go the way of the Whigs.
If this party follows, I mean, take a look.
You want to know why people are confused or that they're changing the poll numbers so often right now?
When Michael Bloomberg, Michael, I'm going to ban trans fat, ban smoking on private property Bloomberg, is actually running as an independent.
There's talk now in New York City, talk around the country that Bloomberg is assessing this team, all left of center, all liberals.
They may have a token Republican like Hegel on it, but he's a liberal.
The fact of the matter is, if Bloomberg is the third independent choice, we got problems because that's no choice at all.
That's just another liberal Democrat.
In fact, Bloomberg's been going back and forth between the parties to suit his particular goals.
So people are actually in a state of flux.
And what they're looking for is authenticity and in the Republican case, conservatism.
Who is the conservative candidate?
Because they realize the ascendancy of the Republican Party came about with its most conservative president, Ronald Reagan.
Its debacle came about when the majority in Congress decided they are going to earmark, they are going to hand out the goodies, they are going to govern like, well, Democrats.
So that's the future of the party.
And if people don't get the conservative they want, people are going to check out.
And if they check out, of course, you know what that leaves us with?
Mother Teresa.
I'm sorry, Hillary Clinton.
1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882.
I'm Jason Lewis in for the big guy today, a Rush Limbaugh on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Don't go away.
We'll be back with your calls on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
We are back on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I am Jason Lewis, Minnesota's Mr. Wright, with the honor and the privilege for filling in for the big guy once again.
He will be back on Wednesday, Wednesday, to guide us into 2008, the Iowa caucuses.
What have we got here?
We've got a pretty busy schedule coming up.
We've got the Iowa caucuses, and then, of course, Wyoming.
All right, let's skip Wyoming.
No, I don't want anything against Wyoming, but it's not getting much attention on January 5th.
January 8th, New Hampshire, January 15th, Michigan, on to South Carolina and Florida at the end of the month, the 19th and the 29th, respectively.
And then, of course, here, there, and everywhere, February 5th, the big day, the national primary.
22 states, 22 states will have their primaries that day.
So it's going to, you know, it's really strange.
We've got a situation where, on the one hand, the primaries and the caucuses start way too early, but they finish too early.
Wouldn't it be much better to start these things later so we're not inundated with all this stuff and then actually drag them out through the convention.
Better yet, set aside more delegates to be determined at the convention so that the conventions have meaning once again.
As you know, for a number of years now, since we did away with the smoke-filled rooms, the nominees are known by the time you get to the convention.
It's a coronation.
And nobody wants to watch that for four nights.
However, remember the excitement around 1976 when Reagan almost knocked off Ford?
And think of a Ronald Reagan elected in 1976.
That would have been something to see.
Regardless, if you had a situation where the caucuses in the primary started later, they stretched out through the summer into the conventions, and then there were delegates left to the convention like the old days.
I'm not talking about the kingmakers making them.
You would have a substantial number of delegates dedicated.
But if you had a situation where the conventions meant something, I think you could start the process later and have it have more meaning, more interest.
But that's just my personal preference.
Before we get to the phones at 1-800-282-2882, I got to throw in some comments on Pakistan.
As you know, the growing fury, as it were, in Pakistan is deepening since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
And this really is a crossroads, I do believe.
I mean, now you've got the nightmare scenario in many ways.
We're worried about Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
The surge is actually working quite well there because we decided to get serious.
And now you've got worried about a nuclear Iran.
Guess what?
We've got a very, very powerful and restive extremist group in Pakistan in a country that has, what, 100 nukes, roughly?
We've given them $10 billion in aid.
They are 95, 96, 97% Muslim, mostly Sunnis.
And yet we may have bin Laden at the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we're helpless.
Everybody, let's be blunt about this.
Everybody knows Musharraf is done.
He is done.
And Bhutto, who was approaching, fast approaching, being an ally of the United States, the critics say, you know, she was one of ours, and that may have led to the assassination.
She's tragically removed from the scene.
May have been the best hope.
Hard to say.
But now what do we do?
Now you've got the nightmare scenario that everybody's worried about with Iran.
So what do you do?
And what can we learn from our past policy with Pakistan?
We had Musharraf, who's supposedly, quote-unquote, our guy, $10 billion in aid later.
What do we have?
We've got a cauldron of extremist extremism.
We may have bin Laden in that country.
We don't know for certain.
Certainly there's a problem on the border.
It was a few months ago, maybe a year ago, where Musharraf, supposedly our guy, said no U.S. or foreign troops will ever come into Pakistan.
And it just got me to thinking about the fundamental paradox of the situation in the Middle East, no matter where we seem to go.
And that is we end up with these leaders who pay lip service to Both sides of the aisle.
On the one hand, they say, you know, give us your U.S. aid, support us, and we'll make certain we dampen down the Islamic extremism.
And then they turn around with a wink and a nod and say, no foreign troops, nobody on our soil.
And by the way, you know, in the tribal regions on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, we'll just look the other way as the Taliban moves freely back and forth.
Well, it seems to me we're being played off both ends here.
It seems to me it might be time for the United States to take a step back and say, look, we either need to go into these places and actually clean house, do what we have to do, and the surge represents part of that, or we need to wash our hands of it all.
Or look at Saudi Arabia and the Wahhabism there and the schools that teach this virulent anti-Western ideology.
And yet we're told, well, but the kingdom likes the United States.
They're friends with us.
No, I'm not suggesting they're behind anything, and I'm not suggesting Musharraf wasn't trying to do something.
I'm just saying they're in fear of their lives from extremism, but they're not doing enough to get a handle on it in many ways.
And so they tell us one thing, and then they allow some of these factions to go on, perhaps for fear, but who knows?
But all I'm saying is, you know, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
Was that a coincidence?
Can we go down this road much longer?
This is fascinating stuff because, you know, we're worried about Iran with nuclear weapons.
We've got to stop them.
Here we have Pakistan with 100 nukes right now on the verge of collapse.
And yet, by anybody's calculation, we can't prop up Musharraf.
It's not going to work.
Frankly, I think he's toast.
Yesterday, I believe it was the former party of Budo, or the party of Budo, said they would run in the next parliamentary election scheduled, I believe, for next week.
This is the Pakistan People's Party.
You've got Sharif, the former prime minister who was ousted in 1999.
His party said they will not run.
They're going to boycott.
This is a 60-year-old country that has never had stability.
And I'm not altogether certain that an outside country can bring it.
Now you've got the question of who killed Budo.
And people are saying, well, we need an investigation.
And should the United States or the U.N. lead in the investigation?
Now, Musharraf is saying, no, we don't need outside help for this.
And some of the opponents are saying, yes, we do.
There's actually talk in Washington right now of the FBI, the FBI, going in to conduct a parallel investigation or help with the investigation on who killed Benazir Bhutto.
Now, I'm not altogether certain, friends, that the FBI, the United States nationwide police force, for lack of a better description, should be in the business of running around other countries and investigating political assassinations.
So we've got an entire debacle on our hands right now.
And I'm at a loss just like anybody else.
I do think, though, it's time to take a step back and say, you know, we're either going to get serious about this stuff.
I'm not saying all or nothing, but I'm saying we need to move in that direction.
1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882.
I promise we'll get to the phone calls right after this short break on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I am Jason Lewis.
I'll accept you knew that.
Hi atop the EIB Tower in Midtown Manhattan.
This is the Rush Limbaugh program.
Glad to be with you on this New Year's Eve, 2007.
We are gearing up for a great 2008.
Right to the phones we go.
First up today on the Rush Limbaugh program in Waco, Texas.
Here's Jim.
You're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Jim.
How are you?
Hi, good morning, Jason.
Nice to speak with you.
Listen, this is going to take just a moment, so I'll get to it.
I'd like to suggest to my fellow Republicans that the reason why the polls are going so crazy is that everybody is thinking ideologically.
And every time each candidate opens their mouth, there's a whole new reassessment of formulas as to who best suits me and which issue is more important and which other issue.
And I'd like to suggest that to fix this problem, let's shift our thinking and look for the person with successful executive experience, a man who has been at the top of an enterprise and has made it work successfully.
And I would suggest that the Republicans have basically know this problem.
Ross Perot is not running.
Well, I know, but Romney has done it successfully in business, has done it in tax-free the Olympics, and has done it as a Republican governor of Lebanon.
Look, I think Mitt Romney's a fine guy, and I think he's getting a bum wrap on some of these flip-flops.
Everybody ought to be allowed to flip-flop once.
It's when you go back and forth.
It's when people get nervous.
But this whole argument about experience, this isn't rocket science.
I hate to break it to people.
I mean, go look at the background of some of the members of Congress.
Now, the presidency is much more important, but you talk about the members of Congress.
This is the best job some of these guys are ever going to have.
As William Buckley said, I'd rather be governed by 20 random names out of the phone book than the Yale faculty.
The point here is that what's wrong with focusing on ideology?
The answer is to get a candidate who understands the Republican Party is nothing without a conservative base.
And we are tired of being fooled.
The conservative base is tired of Republicans who are going to redefine conservatism, as Rush says.
The idea that we have to comport to their particular experience or ideology is precisely why the party is demoralized.
It's precisely why they lost in 06.
So I would, while I think Mitt Romney's a fine guy, if that's your candidate, I would disagree with your methodology vehemently.
Ideology is what gets people excited.
Ideology is why we get into politics.
If you want somebody with just experience, Bloomberg will do.
Michael Dukakis ran as a technocrat.
No, you align yourself with somebody who believes in the same sort of philosophy that you do.
And in the Republican, well, what should be the Republican ideology, it means legislative deference.
It means enumerated powers doctrine.
It means limited government, free minds, free markets, you name it.
It means national sovereignty.
It means a humble but strong foreign policy.
All of these things should be what the candidate is trying to achieve to get the votes, not the other way around.
Jim, thanks for checking in on New Year's Eve.
David in Norfolk, Virginia, you're next up on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hey, how are you doing, Jason?
Good afternoon.
Same to you.
Hey, I was just calling to agree with you completely about what you were saying about some, not all of the Ron Paul supporters, just because I'm one of them.
I'm going to vote for him just because I don't see any other candidate who is as genuine and as committed to a lot of ideals, not all the ideals of the Republican Party, but a lot of them that you were talking about.
There are some things, major things that I disagree with them, but I think it's a vote just to sort of shake things up in that direction.
Look, let's be honest, whether you agree with Paul or you don't, and I'm with you, I think certainly on domestic policy, he is probably more close to my view than any other candidate when it comes to saying if it isn't in the Constitution, guess what, gang?
The federal government can't do it.
I've got some serious problems on his neo-isolationism, if that's what you want to call it.
But the reason he is doing as well as he is, and people are poo-pooing him, and I understand that.
I don't think he's going to get the nomination either, but I do think he's going to surprise some people, especially in New Hampshire, where you've got independents who can cross over and vote.
In fact, you have total crossover in New Hampshire, as I recall.
The reason he's getting the intensity of support, the intensity of support, is just what you said.
Nobody has found their Reagan.
And I'm so tired of people saying, well, what do you need Reagan for?
He wasn't that great.
Or he wasn't.
Look, let's be blunt.
Nobody was as close to the governing philosophy of conservatism than Ronald Reagan in my lifetime.
And that should be the standard people are held up to.
And they can't find it in the rest of the candidates.
Now, I happen to think that Fred Thompson gets a bum rap in this regard.
I think Fred Thompson is pretty darn close to Reaganism.
He actually thinks about some issues, especially with regard to federalism.
He gave a great speech at the American Legislative Exchange Council back in July on the concept of states' rights, not as a pejorative, but as a safety valve for freedom, freedom from the majority, in fact.
Let me just digress on this for a moment.
Of all of the things you learned in Civics 101 about our checks and balances, which is the layman's terms for separation of powers, about our deliberative democracy, we don't have a national plebiscite over every issue.
We actually have people think about it so that the whims of the majority can cool down in the United States Senate and elsewhere.
We have a deliberative representative republic.
All of those things are important, obviously.
But nothing is more important.
Nothing is more important than federalism.
Nothing is more important than allowing states, allowing states to choose the laws under which they will live and allowing a safety valve that if you don't like the law of one state, you can flee.
You can vote with your feet.
Limiting the federal government, the idea that, yes, we've got the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment that says if the state passes a law, you must apply it equally, but it doesn't tell the states which laws to pass.
And that's where judicial activism has come in.
It is telling the states, in a perverted interpretation of the Constitution and the incorporation of the Bill of Rights, which laws to pass.
Thompson doesn't think that's a good idea.
And he's actually spoken about that.
Now, he's not as flashy as the rest of the guys, so he's not getting all the attention, although I heard he's making a bit of a surge in Iowa as of late, too.
But your overall point is excellent, and that is there is a vacuum.
And that's why these poll numbers are changing so often.
In Roseville, California, Rich, you're on with Jason Lewis on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
How are you?
I think it's really interesting.
If we listen to these guys long enough, we can get a clear sense of where they stand philosophically.
I actually taped the Meet the Press interview with Mike Huckabee yesterday.
Yes.
And I watched it and I was astounded.
And I pulled a quote from it and wrote it down.
And here's the question.
Let me guess.
The quote about how the Republican Party needs to be more activist on the environment, poverty, hunger sounded.
I knew it.
Yeah.
Yeah, he basically says that my Christian faith drives my views about everything from the environment to poverty to disease and hunger.
And the Republicans have been greatly lacking in those areas, and our nation has been greatly lacking in those areas.
And, you know, let's see, we've spent $6.5 trillion on the welfare state since 1964.
We've got more bailouts than you can shake a stick at.
Everybody is on the dole these days, whether your child's going to college or whether you want somebody to build a baseball stadium for you.
What are you talking about?
We don't have enough money out there to alleviate these needs.
We've got way too much.
We've been inducing the moral hazard to the point that everybody is on some particular government program or not.
And that's why government grows without limits.
Yeah, I think he, you know, it's part of the hand-wringing crowd.
I apologize because I'm an American, and it's something that could have come out of John Edwards' mouth.
And I just think that he's a very slick guy, and he's, quite frankly, seems like a good guy.
But I think his philosophy is way left of center with regard to the role of the federal government.
I'm not here to pick candidates, but I will say this.
I do have some serious problems with this effort to reinvent the Republican Party in the model of what some in the evangelical movement are suggesting.
And as I mentioned the other day when I was filling in here, Michael Gerson, the speechwriter for President Bush, former speechwriter for President Bush, who's also an evangelical Christian, is leading the charge to make compassion the defining attribute of the Republican Party.
He says the Republicans must adopt more activist government if they want to be the majority party.
Well, that's great if you want to be the majority party.
If you want to be the majority party, give people a free lunch.
Great.
Go ahead and do it.
That's not why conservatives are in the political arena.
They're not interested in majoritarianism at any cost.
They're interested in fidelity to the Constitution, small government, a originalist view of the Constitution.
And if that means you lose a couple of elections, well, so be it.
You've got these people that are so obsessed with winning that they are willing to sacrifice political principle for political expediency.
You want to know, folks, why there is some concern within the GOP.
I think it's a little bit overblown, and I probably tend to be guilty of that myself.
But why there's certainly some concern is because of that very reason.
They don't see these candidates, they see such a desire for victory at any cost.
And that's really great things can be done from the minority.
I mean, Newt Gingrich came out of the minority.
The Republican Revolution came out of the minority.
Ronald Reagan lost in 1968.
He lost in 1976, finally to win.
But he would rather lose a political race than lose his political soul.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I am Jason Lewis filling in for Rush Limbaugh today.
He'll be back on Wednesday to guide us into the 2008 elections.
I personally can hardly wait.
New email address for Rush, LRushbo at EIBNet.com, 1-800-282-2882.
Let's go to Edna in Lakewood, Washington.
You're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Edna.
Good morning, and Happy New Year.
Thank you.
Thank you for taking my call.
My pleasure.
I'm calling to state that I am going to vote for Mr. Huckabee, and I don't think he's getting a fair rap in the media.
But he is pro-life.
He is pro-traditional marriage, and he is pro-Israel.
And he is that way because of conviction.
A person will die for a conviction, not a preference.
And I think he would be the best candidate.
And as far as they're saying that he's soft on crime, he is the only one who has executed people and given them the death penalty for crimes.
Well, God bless him for that.
I beg your pardon.
Look, here is the problem, with all due respect.
Here's the problem I have with your analysis.
And that is that the Republican Party is pro-life.
The Republican Party is pro-traditional marriage.
The Republican Party has an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East.
So what some people are concerned with here, Edna, is that those are the only things you are looking at.
There's more to being a conservative, and there's certainly more to being a United States citizen than those things, although they are very paramount.
I mean, but I would argue that liberty is just as important as those things.
We don't protect life as part of the GOP platform so we can then enslave an individual to 70 years of working for the government until May 15th.
And Huckabee has some shortcomings on that.
When you take a look at his penchant for raising taxes in Arkansas, the Club for Growth gave him a bad grade, as did the Cato Institute.
Spending was up 65%.
He opposes freedom when it comes to school vouchers.
I could go right down the list.
He was the guy that wouldn't support President Bush's veto, thankfully, numerous vetoes, of the ridiculous S-CHIP program, which was going to hand out free or subsidized health care to adults making $83,000 in New York, and including illegal immigrants in some states.
He also, by the way, is for a federal ban on smoking.
I don't want the nanny state government to tell me what I can do in my private property.
So there are some other concerns about him other than those three issues.
No, excuse me.
I think some of those things that you've probably gotten from the news media too, and I don't think they've been fair with him.
For instance, Mr. Romney, talking about Mr. Huckabee raising taxes, he doesn't say that he raised fees, which is the same thing as a tax.
No, it's not.
And, well, it amounts to the same thing.
Ideally, no, Edna, the idea of a user fee is precisely how we should fund government.
Those who get the benefit of government ought to pay for it.
A broad-based tax is more apt to redistribute wealth, taking money from me or you to give to somebody else when we get nothing in return.
Now, I'm not in favor of this aggressive fee raising, and Romney needs to answer to that.
But in a perfect world, in a perfect world, ma'am, government would raise much more from user fees so that those that consume government pay for it.
Mr. Huckabee has tried to run a positive campaign, and he has been portrayed as something other than he is.
And I would like the news media to pay more attention to what he says and what his record is rather than just like they took out of context what Mr. Thompson said yesterday.
He said that he didn't want to run for president.
That's their quote.
And they took that totally out of context.
Yeah, I'm going to get to that because it actually was a very, very long overdue quote that lends me or leads me to believe that Thompson has the right mentality for all of this.
But look, I understand your concern.
All I'm saying is, and this is what some of the critics of the Huckabee campaign are saying, is that it's not good enough that the Republican Party or myself in this case adopt the positions of Huckabee, but we've got to adopt him.
It's not good enough that the party adopts the positions of some of these evangelical lefties out there, but we now have to nominate one or else we're somehow engaged in religious bigotry.
Just because you are strong on a couple of issues, near and dear to the social conservatives, doesn't mean that you can be forgiven for all the other transgressions that occurred under your watch.
And that's where this is going.
Anyway, Edna, thanks for the call.
Have a great day.
I'm Jason Lewis.
We'll be back with more calls right after this short pause on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
We'll get to the phone calls the next hour.
More calls, as I say, at 1-800-282-2882.
Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh, Rush Back on Wednesday.
Now, Edna talked about the comment by Fred Thompson, which I find fascinating and quite frankly refreshing.
The media did say that Fred Thompson not particularly interested in the White House run.
The natural reaction is, well, then why are you running?
That's not exactly what he said.
He said, quote, I like to say that I'm only consumed by very, very few things, and politics is not one of them.
The welfare of my country, my kids, and grandkids are one of them.
But if people really want in their president a super type A personality, someone who's gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night thinking about it for years, how they could achieve the presidency, then I'm not that guy.
Nowadays, it's all about fire in the belly.
And I'm not sure in the world we live in today, it's a terribly good thing that a president has too much fire in his belly.
I am not consumed by personal ambition.
I will not be devastated if I don't do it.
I'm not particularly interested in running for presidents, but I do approach it as something I need to do for my country.
That, I think, is very, very refreshing in that, you know, this whole view of who can win.
Remember how many times you've been told that by the pros?
You've got to support our guy because he can win.
Not what he's going to do, because he can win.
How about supporting somebody that isn't going to collapse if they don't get the presidency and who might be actually doing it because they think it's important?
They think they want to change the office, just not assume the office.
That might be something the country needs.
Whether it's going to be Fred Thompson or not is another thing.
▲
Export Selection