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Jan. 4, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:31
January 4, 2008, Friday, Hour #2
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Hey, views expressed by the host on this program make more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying, uh views expressed by the host documented to be almost always right, 98.8% of the time.
The views expressed by the host on this program also rooted in a daily relentless, unstoppable pursuit of the truth.
It's Friday, live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
And here's a telephone number, 800 28282.
The email address is new.
It's L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
And if um if you want to be on the program today, whatever you wish to discuss, feel free.
We go to the phones, the program is yours.
We're gonna get to the audio sound bites.
We had a couple sound bites here of Obama and his acceptance speech and uh and the Breck girl as a uh as a contrast.
Uh let me I I want to try this one more time, ladies and gentlemen, uh, because I still feel like I'm I'm I'm playing around the edges here when it when it comes to this populism versus conservatism thing.
And during the break it finally hit me uh how to how to explain to you and express to you what I really what I really think versus populism versus conservatism.
In the context of all this economic insecurity and angst that apparently uh is uh is out there.
I I will tell you it bothers me that there is that much, uh, but it is what it is.
See, here's the thing.
You uh uh a number of people have called me over the years, as you have uh probably heard that Russia people of this country are a bunch of idiots.
I mean, you uh you're giving them too much credit.
You've heard these calls when it comes to who wins elections, how many people vote liberal uh democrat and so forth, and my rejoinder has always been I've got great faith in the American people.
And I do.
And that's really what I figured out here over the break what's bothering me.
Uh and I use I use my own life uh as a sort of a guide, and I use the stories of people I know who have come from nothing and led by their ambition and their desire, which is 80% of achievement, by the way, all other things being equal, how badly you want it, what you're willing to do to get it.
Uh that's the determining factor.
And what I know is is that everybody.
There are some exceptions, of course, because there are some self-starters, but everybody has more potential than they even know.
Everybody has more ability than they know.
Everybody can be better than they are.
In any number of ways.
It's true of all of us.
But most people, as I said, are not self-starters, so we need mentors, teachers, people to inspire us.
And a lot of people are looking for that.
A lot of people looking for leadership.
We haven't had a whole lot of leadership when it comes to our movement.
We've had a lot of people, uh Peggy Noonan said it well today, uh, about Governor Huckabee.
He's not really leading a movement, he's riding a wave.
Uh people want leadership, and they respond to it when they get it.
And unfortunately, sometimes they think leadership is leadership when it isn't, when it's populism.
But all of this angst, I mean, let me join the angst crowd for just a second.
All this angst is based on the fact that I have such a an out-of-this world notion of the potential of this country and the people who live in it.
I know that it's the people who make this country work.
It is and by the way, Obama stole one of my lines in his speech last night.
Ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things.
That's what makes this country work.
That's what makes it great, makes it great.
Politicians don't, lobbyists don't.
People in Washington that are elected, they they're not the definition of great.
Government programs are not great.
Let's say that you're in angst over uh college education for your kids.
Tuition.
Well, um Yeah, it's a big problem.
There's no question.
It's exorbitantly high.
Who's in charge of it?
A bunch of libs.
Who runs higher education?
A bunch of libs.
Who are the people always running around decrying what big oil's doing to you and Walmart's doing to you?
And they want to punish these people.
They want to punish the engine of freedom.
They want to punish the capitalist system.
When it comes to college education, you are being raped, and your kids are being sent off to a bunch of places that are just nothing more than indoctrination centers, yet you want to get them in there.
You got to take out student loans.
It's exorbitant.
What is the president going to do about this?
President can't wave a magic wand and demand his liberal administrators at universities' lower tuition.
Change the college loan rules and so forth, maybe.
Any number of other economic circumstances.
David Brooks, New York Times, who takes a swipe at me today, but that's not my point, says that the biggest problem facing America today, the biggest source of economic angst is divorce, that divorce causes more economic hardship on people than practically any other thing.
And then it also causes a disruption of families.
And he says this is something that Huckabee knows.
As a Huckabee appealing to the morality and the culture and values, keep families together, will somehow resonate with people and uh they'll understand that this is a a way to fix the culture.
Well I I hate to tell you, Peggy Newton makes this point too in a column today.
There's nothing the government can do about changing the culture.
There really isn't a whole lot the government can do about changing the culture.
Uh take a look at whatever cultural rot you see and ask yourself, you know, take it if you want to say what's happening in movies, what's happening in music, what's happening on television, what's happening in the pop culture.
I mean, look at this latest incident with Britney Spears and her daughter or a kid, their sister getting pregnant.
Brittany Spears carted it out of her house in a s on a stretcher, holding her own kids hostage, boozing it up.
What can the government do to fix the coverage that we all get of this?
What can the government do?
What can any elected official do?
Um they can, you know, stop subsidizing various kinds of things.
Uh uh, they can stop subsidizing dependents, but that isn't going to happen with anybody.
I mean, especially when you hear people talking about what the government can do to fix people's lives, you think they're gonna try to make them less dependent?
That's that's not what entrenches politicians to power.
So what I'm what I'm looking at what I'm getting at here is that I I would I would just hope that here in 2008 that a majority of Americans would be motivated to rely on themselves to try to take advantage of the freedom that being an American is.
You look all around and you see robust signs of prosperity, you see success, you see people accomplishing great things, either in their neighborhood or in the city or town where you live, or you read about it happening in other parts of the country.
Uh and for some reason it doesn't click that maybe you could do the same thing.
And then I just wish that it would.
Because so many people are so capable of so much more than they know.
And when that is the case, because this is the United States of America with unparalleled freedom and prosperity, for people to then throw up their hands in frustration and say, you know, I really can't do it.
It's not up to me.
I'm gonna let Obama do that for me.
Or I'm gonna let Edwards, I'm gonna let Huckabee, I'm gonna let I'm gonna let Fred Thompson do it for me.
I don't know, whoever the candidate is.
Uh you're giving up and you're allowing yourself to become a victim.
And you're not gonna get what you want.
You may be satisfied when the people that you're mad at have things happen to them that hurts them, and so you feel like you're getting even, but it doesn't really help you out all that much.
I mean, if people who earn more money than you do get a tax increase, fine, you may feel better.
Yeah, we'll get even with those people.
But how does it help you?
And your own bottom line.
It doesn't.
Anyway, um a brief timeout.
We'll continue here with uh The continuing analysis of what happened in Iowa last night on all sides and your phone calls on open line Friday.
Folks, one more thing.
I want you to understand.
I say this stuff precisely because I love you and I love this country, and I know what's possible here.
And I know so many people do not have the uh the thought that they can do it themselves, and that I just can't tell you how it hurts.
It and it depresses me, and it makes me want to go back to basics here and explain to you what conservatism really is, why it wins, how it wins, how it works, which is, I guess what I'm doing here is essentially going back to uh to basics.
Uh politicians talk about wanting the best for everybody.
Well, so do I. I just have a different recipe of how that happens.
And I just don't think it happens through them.
We'll be back.
Open line Friday, L. Rushbo.
Here's some exit poll data.
Mike Huckabee.
As I mentioned previously, took 14% of the uh uh non-evangelical vote.
Uh that means he came in fourth in uh in Iowa in the cauc eye among non-evangelicals.
This is according to the NBC Republican exit poll.
The other polls come out pretty much the same.
It turns out that the primary voting block for Mike Huckabee was female born-again Christian Republicans living in non-urban rural areas with a population before 10,000 uh uh uh uh below 10,000 people.
So the uh the vast majority of the principal voting block was female born-again Christians who live in rural areas, small towns less than 10,000 people population.
Now, there aren't a whole lot of those kinds of towns uh in uh in the country.
There are few.
Uh uh and those people are the salt of the earth.
We make no mistake.
Homeschoolers and they're salt of the earth people.
But uh in the country at large, there are not a whole lot of them that fit that demographic.
Now, I'm sure the demographic will expand a little bit.
Um I don't think Hugaby's New Hampshire is not gonna be a big deal for him there because he's not gonna criticize McCain.
Uh he was on a tonight show earlier this week, and he was talking about his love and respect and honor for McCain being an American hero.
He's he's not gonna go after McCain.
Uh he'll have to, you know, put a leash on Ed Rollins, I think here.
Uh he'll continue to focus on Romney in New Hampshire.
Uh and but it's South Carolina, he's gonna target next.
And he could find some of that demographic in uh in South Carolina, much as he found in uh in uh in Iowa.
Uh let's listen to a couple things from Obama and then we'll get to your phone calls.
We have a couple of sound bites from his speech last night, uh, in which he very strategically waited until 11 o'clock for the local news to start.
They said our sights were set too high.
They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.
But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do.
You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days.
You have done what America can do in this new year.
Who says who says he's not down for the struggle?
I'll tell you what, that he had uh he and Huckabee both last night had really uplifting inspirational speeches.
Uh they they really did.
And and I I guarantee you the Clintons, you know, after that faux acceptance speech of hers, when she went out there and actually tried to make it sound like she won, if you watched it, it was sort of laughable.
But I guarantee you, when they got up to the hotel room, there had to be ashtrays and lamps being thrust all over that room uh at her campaign advisors for you know, whatever.
Uh in the meantime, the drive bys are now okay.
What is Hillary gonna do to Obama in New Hampshire?
What's gonna happen?
Try this headline from the political, Roger Simon, Obama targets Hillary in New Hampshire.
They're not sitting around waiting to see what the Clintons throw at them.
They're gonna go ahead and start their own move on offense.
Even before the warm glow of victory had worn off, the Barack Obama forces were already girding for a cold hard fight in New Hampshire.
Oh, yeah, we assume Hillary will go negative on us and run negative ads against us.
But if we win New Hampshire and South Carolina, it'll be hard for her to stop us from getting the nomination, said an Obama advisor.
The advisor said Edwards didn't get a bump out of coming in second in Iowa four years ago, and he's not going to get a bump coming out this time.
He's true.
He's right about that.
Obama pretty much owns this.
Second place finished two years in a row.
Not cool.
Uh not good.
This is this is I guarantee Clinton's.
What do we do now?
Because the traditional Clinton Inc.
stuff here is going to be very risky for them to try.
And they've already done, look what they've tried.
Bob Carey out there trying to say this guy's a Muslim in disguise, going to madrass, and then they send uh uh Howard Wolfson out there to say, oh, yeah, this is a schemer.
This guy's been plotting since kindergarten to be president.
He's been lying about his ambition.
Uh I have no doubt they're going to try to run negative ads, but it's going to have to be in policy, and it's going to have to be on experience or something like that, and Mrs. Clinton can't claim to have any herself.
She's up there saying, I've been fighting for 35 years.
She used the line again, Leslie.
I've been fighting for 35 years for America's children, America's women.
What how about the bimbos that Clinton got involved with, Mrs. Clinton?
Did you fight for them or did you try to destroy them?
Name the woman, name the child.
In the last 35 years that Mrs. Clinton has helped, who has come forward and said my life has been changed because of Mrs. Clinton.
Now now that I bring this up, there'll probably be a couple in New Hampshire.
They'll find a couple people that are 25 or 30, who'll say, yeah, when I was eight years old, Mrs. Clinton at Children's Defense Fund saved me from a predatory father.
Here's cut two from Obama.
The same message we had when we were up and when we were down.
The one that can save this country.
Brick by brick, block by block.
Callous hand by careless hand.
That together, ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
See?
Because we are not a collection of red states and blue states.
We are the United States of America.
And in this moment in this election, we are ready to believe again.
Thank you, Iowa.
Oh, yeah, wasn't that cool?
Wasn't that amazing?
Wasn't that uplifting?
Wasn't that just totally wrong?
What was this an appeal for?
Red State America, blue state through the United States.
Yes, that means the code word there is bipartisanship.
We have to stop the partisan rancor.
We need to put the country back together.
We need to unify.
In fact, David Borin, who used to be a Senator Democrat from Oklahoma, who I think is now the president of Oklahoma University, is putting together a seminar somewhere down there.
It's either this weekend or something.
I don't know what it's coming up, but it's very soon about ending this divisive bipartisanship that is happening in this country that's tearing this country apart.
We have, and guess who his guests are?
They're all a bunch of libs.
Jim Leach from Iowa, people like David Gurgen.
You know, all these people that are, they're just a bunch of disaffected libs who are upset they don't have a monopoly anymore.
Folks, when you hear anybody, and this gets back to basic conservatism 101.
When you hear anybody, I don't care if it's a Republican or a Democrat start talking about ending bipartisanship.
Red flags ought to go up left and right.
Partisanship is ideal.
Partisanship is crucial.
Partisanship is based in ideals and principles, and people who hold those principles dear and are loyal to them and will not compromise them.
Partisanship founded the country.
Partisanship propels the country.
What we do not need is an end to partisanship.
If we finally come up with this notion of bipartisanship across the board and the country's unified, one of two things is actually going to have happened.
One side is going to have lost.
And so the question is who wins?
The question is victory, not bipartisanship.
I would love the bipartisanship of liberalism as a twenty percent uh body of thought in this country.
I could live with that kind of bipartisan.
The idea is to defeat them.
Liberalism poses threats and dangers to this country and your economic security and your economic future.
Liberals are to be defeated, not to be gotten along with.
It's the nature of American politics.
Okay, back to the phones.
People have patiently been waiting.
This is Pat Bellville, Pennsylvania.
Great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Uh hello, Rush.
Uh while I was on hold, one of your parodies made the statement, don't be part of the problem, be part of the solution.
And I think you're being part of the problem today.
In your first segment, you're really upset with Republicans and conservatives because they're backing the wrong candidates, but you consistently do not back a candidate in the primaries.
And you won't even put forth what candidate you think is the most conservative.
You've yet you have yet to do that.
Yes, that's all true.
Well, then you're being part of the problem that you're describing.
Why don't why don't you break it down which can which candidates you think are the most conservative?
And by doing that, your listening audience would maybe then start backing the candidate that maybe would be more conservative.
Well, that's that, but that's not that that's see, that's not why I would do it.
I think you are um you may be voicing the attitudes of many people.
I I'm I'm my angst here is not so much that somebody people supporting the wrong candidate.
It is why.
It is these people that concern me, and I do not consider myself some pied piper that's out there leading a bunch of mind-numbed robots.
I I sit here, and maybe I'm pie in the sky on this, but I want people to come to the correct and right conclusions on their own without me having to tell them.
It's a sign of success, it's a sign of education, sign of information, it's a sign people are engaged.
Uh and it is if anything, sir, it is that I consider myself a failure in what I have set out to do here.
If I have to tell people what to do, then what good is all this?
I'm not that's not that's not how I view myself, telling people what to do.
What's more important?
Letting informing people and giving them more information and letting them make a more informed decision, or letting the country go in a direction that you don't like the country going in.
Okay, so you think in order to help people become more informed, I ought to go through the list of candidates and say, this is good, this is good, this is good, this is bad.
Uh move on.
Well, I don't think that at all.
I think you ought to say that I I like this about this candidate, I like this about this candidate, and just you could point out a few things that you like about Huckabee.
You could point out a few things you like about Thompson, you can point out a few things you like about McCain.
But as far as I'm concerned, when you've talked about Huckabee, you've talked about Romney, you've talked about uh McCain, and it's my opinion that none of them are conservative enough.
So to me, maybe it's Fred Thompson that you're that you like.
I've never heard you say anything about some of the other candidates.
I've always heard negative negative commentary about the Republican nominees, but I've heard of the candidates, but I've never heard any positive comments about their con any conservatism amongst these candidates.
All right.
Well, I will take your suggestion under advisement.
You don't want me to say what I don't like about any candidates, only what I do like.
No, no, you're taking that out of context.
No, I'm I'm asking for clarification.
That's not what I said.
I just said what you have been doing.
I didn't say that.
No, but you suggested you suggested before you did that, Riff.
You suggested that I go through the list and say what I like, and and I said, okay, I like this, I like this, I like that.
Don't like that.
You said, No, don't do the don't like, so you usually need to tell us what you like about all the candidates.
How about a how about a little uh fairness towards some of the more conservative candidates?
Fairness towards some of them.
All right, well, I will I will take this under advisement.
Uh we'll I will say this.
Um I agree with you that people need to stand on their own two feet.
And that I realized that when I was sitting in a bar one night, and a friend of mine was badmouthing Tom Ridge.
He's out of work.
My friend was out of work, he's badmouthing Governor Tom Rich.
And I I said to him, I said, Well, why is it his fault?
I said, Who's responsible for you?
And he says, Well, I am.
I said, Well, how did Tom Rich lose your job?
He said, Well, he didn't, but he's the governor, and he's he should be getting me a job.
And I went on to tell him that it's his responsibility for his life.
You know what?
From that day on, I think he he's realized that.
And I think more people want to just stand up and take responsibility decisions they make in their life.
Well, amen.
We're on we're on the same page, bro.
Oh, I agree with that.
All right then.
Well, we end up with common ground here.
We end up with bipartisanship here on the call that starting a contentious manner.
Uh but as far as your buddy getting mad at Ridge, it's a natural human uh tendency to want to blame everybody else first for whatever problems that people have in life.
I mean, that's not everybody does.
Everybody does it until you get hold of yourself, until you accept reality, until you say, okay, it is what it is, until you realize you can blame whoever you want, but if if if you're right that they screwed you, they're not gonna then help you.
So continuing to blame them gonna get you anywhere.
And we all get screwed left and right in work, and this is happens.
Thanks for the call out there, Pat.
Appreciate it.
Birmingham, Alabama.
This is Kathy.
Nice to have you on open line Friday.
Hello.
Hi, Russ.
I'm a first-time caller and listening for the past 17 years.
Thank you.
Um, and hi to my dad who's in the upper peninsula in freezing snowy temperatures.
But I had a uh an opinion of her Hillary's um I don't know what you call her speech.
Her moving on to New Hanser speech, maybe.
That uh from a female point of view, I I feel like she was on the verge of either screeching in a screen rant or tears.
Uh you mean her acceptance speech, her victory speech last night.
Is that what it was?
Well, that's what she tried to make it look like, yeah.
She tried to make it like Yeah, absolutely.
It was her victory speech.
I I feel like she was very holding back.
Uh well, look at the Clintons are very slick.
The the objective of the Hillary speech last night was to try to convince anybody watching that she had won.
Now I kid you not.
If you didn't see it, uh you think that okay, she loses by nine points.
You think Russia couldn't possibly be right.
How can 19 and a half years?
How can any of you ever disagree with me about anything anymore?
It's that's another thing that stuns me.
But for another time, that is, she tried to claim victory.
She star everything was we.
We Democrats did it tonight.
We Democrats realize we want a Democrat in the White House.
We Democrats realize how great it was to have a Democrat in the White House.
We Democrats are gonna move on to New Hampshire.
We this she congratulated Obama.
She congratulated the Brett girl, and it was only toward the end that she started using the personal pronoun I and talked about moving on to New Hampshire and uh and this sort of stuff.
There was interesting to look at the people standing behind Mrs. Clinton.
They were all relics of the nineties.
You had Bill Clinton on her left, And he was not acknowledged.
She did not thank him.
She did not reference him.
Standing next to him was Chelsea.
But the camera never put her in the close-up.
Only when they showed a wide shot of the stage did you see Chelsea standing there.
But in a close-up, it was Madeline Albright moving from left to right here on the screen, Madeline Albright.
And I'm I'm sorry, folks, but you you're looking all these relics in the 90s and Clinton's talking about change and it ain't gonna fly.
And then you had uh a bunch of union people back there, and then you had Mrs. Clinton and Bill.
And and Bill is is is is standing with his that that little grin that he gets in his face, and he's applauding and so forth and nodding his head up and down.
And I listened to some of the drive-by's last night, and oh, they can see the wheels turning in the side that fertile brain of Bill Clinton.
You can just see the strategy coming together even now, as his wife is up there making her speech and so forth.
They just they've got this notion that there's magic inside Clinton Inc.
and that it was in the process of being formed in the mind of Bill Clinton last night while Hillary is up there.
Grab audio sum by 16.
This is Andrea Mitchell, and this is about an hour, maybe an hour and a half before Mrs. Clinton went out and tried to claim victory.
This room was until about five or six minutes ago, completely empty.
This is a manufactured police celebration.
It really felt more like a funeral as people started strolling in from upstairs where they had obviously been gathered.
This is unlike anything that I'd ever seen.
A completely empty, dirge-like uh event.
And clearly now they've got to go on to New Hampshire.
It was a funeral.
It was dirge-like, it was empty.
It was a manufactured celebration.
And there was some noise when Mrs. Clinton tried to uh give an acceptance speech, but when you got to Obama and when you got to Huckabee, you could see genuine enthusiasm, genuine emotion, genuine energy.
Uh in the Clinton room, it was uh it was it was contrived.
Uh it this was devastating.
I don't care what people say.
This was the worst night of her life last night.
Perhaps uh second only to some nights in the second term.
But this is the first time the Clintons have been shellacked in an election, folks, since 1988.
This first time they have not won an election.
Quick timeout, back after this.
And back to the phones we go to Riverton, uh, Utah.
Rich, you're on open line Friday, the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello, sir.
Hello, Rush.
Um, I I contend that the Huckabee victory yesterday was not about populism, but it was about identity politics alone.
And I think the the the one stat that that stands out for me is in the entrance poll, the stat that says um the candidates' religious beliefs matter.
For those that mark Yeah, yeah, yes, I saw that, but I tell I I have been inundated today with email from people claiming to be uh either Huckabee voters in Iowa or Huckabee supporters, and they are citing much more than um I should have mentioned this.
They're citing much more than just uh uh the identity politics that Governor Huckabee practiced.
I mean, I'm here I'm uh but look at I'm talking to stuff this morning before he even started talking about it.
I'm getting loads of email from people.
I'm really hurting.
Rush, it is bad out here.
I heard you on Fox saying it's not that bad, and you just don't know.
We are really hurting our Governor Huckabee understands.
And they weren't they weren't talking about I have faith in conservatives that that as this election rolls forward, the primaries roll forward.
Um he came in sixth out of those that say religious beliefs matter not at all.
I don't think I I I think that is a small minority, and that conservatives are still strong and believe in small government, and we have those conservative beliefs that are out there.
He just was able to capture this evangelical this evangelical local there.
That's good, because by the time I'm through with all this and we get to November, you're gonna be absolutely right.
I hope so.
I hope so.
Sit tight.
You know, hang loose, sleep loose, whatever it takes, don't sweat it.
Um Governor Huckabee Uh has a lot of they're saying a lot of momentum coming out of uh Iowa, right?
He's gonna lose New Hampshire.
McCain's gonna win McCain or Romney gonna win New Hampshire.
It's one of those two.
So you can you can say the momentum is what it is.
Uh Governor Huckabee's next target is South Carolina.
Keep a sharp eye.
Here's Julie in normal Illinois.
Nice to have you on open line Friday.
Hey, Rush.
Uh your first caller talked about you pointing out a few things you like about each candidate.
And I want to have a different spin on that before my question.
I would like for you to go through each candidate and their stance on each issue and explain if it's a populist, conservative, socialist stance to help people better understand.
Because I too, I don't know why uh people are going toward Huckabee.
Um I do.
You always do.
I I just I just got an email from my North Carolina mistress who was mad at me yesterday, but she's back in good graces today.
And uh she was uh she's saying, you know, I can I can't believe what I'm hearing from you.
You want people to sit around and come up with the right idea on their own.
Don't you understand that people only do what they're told?
This is her opinion.
She she's saying the drive-bys are telling people what to do every day.
They don't leave it the chance.
You're sitting there thinking you uh you want people to see it on their own and do the right thing on their own.
If you're if you think that's gonna work, you are missing the boat, says the North Carolina mistress.
You gotta tell people what you want him to do, and like you're the second call of this half hour.
Tell us about these people.
Well, the only reason I say that is because I began listening to you in the 2000 election, not knowing anything about conservative liberalism, nothing.
And you helped me make my decision this election.
I made it on my own.
I started to go toward Huckabee, and then because of his one liners, and then I started to look at what he believed in and his issues.
And I want to know why no one talks about Fred Thompson, including Fox News.
I I've just about had it.
You don't even hear his name mentioned.
Well, that's um I look it.
Why do you think let me ask you?
What what what do you think the reason is?
The only thing I can come up with is that he's not playing the media's game.
And he doesn't have one liners.
Huckabee puts out a one liner every day.
That sounds pretty cool, but it doesn't it doesn't mean much.
Well, there is there is that aspect uh if the media doesn't get what they want in thirty seconds, they're not gonna use it.
And uh Fred's not a soundbite guy.
No.
And even what you just said about thirty seconds on Fox News, they were talking about Fred Thompson's 17 minute video on his website.
That was fabulous.
He can actually talk about conservative principles.
Yep.
It's all that.
Yeah.
And their only comment on Fox News, Fred Barnes, was, well, if you can put it in thirty seconds.
I don't want a president who tells me what they're gonna do.
Well, but I look at the i again, I get this saying I use it in myself all the time.
It is what it is.
That there's certain things that, you know, running for president, politics a business, and the business of politics is heavily dependent on television.
And television is what it is.
And if you can't hone your message and look good in a 30-second sound bite, you're gonna be in a big disadvantage.
Because television does not marvel at wisdom.
Television does not marvel at great communication skills.
Television showbiz.
And Fred Thompson is showbiz.
Fred Thompson's in law and order.
Fred Thompson's been in a what uh hunt for Red October.
Fred Thompson.
Diehard.
He'd been a lot of well, he was in the hunt for Red October too.
One of those clancy movies.
I mean, he's been he's been in a lot of things.
Uh, you know, there's some people think he needs some political Viagra.
You know, just uh a little energy out there and so forth.
But you can lament this all day long, but it is what it is.
Uh television and it's it's it does not reward depth.
Uh it it does not it does not reward uh uh those kinds of things that uh you think we would elected Abraham Lincoln over or uh the some of the great presidents of our past prior to television.
Anyway, look, Jillie, I appreciate the phone call.
I gotta run a brief time out.
We'll be back and continue in just a second.
If the international comlinks uh work, ladies and gentlemen, uh our military Air Force buddy Taz uh from Iraq, who had the great story about throwing a French made air conditioner off the Baghdad airport control tower, wants to call in and talk to you about what's happening in Iraq and what he and his buddies in the Air Force are doing.
And uh, we gave him the phone number.
He should be with us as the next segment begins for a little while.
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