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Jan. 8, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:09
January 8, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
I just want to say, this is personal to me.
This politics, the country, it's personal.
Talk amongst yourselves.
Hi, everybody, and good Tuesday afternoon to you.
It is, or I should say, Tuesday morning, wherever you might be.
It is New Hampshire Day, New Hampshire primary day.
The first votes are in from Dicksville Notch.
We'll get all of that.
Hart's location, Dicksville Notch location in as well.
I am Jason Lewis coming from the great state of Minnesota, the land of 10,000 liberals, and that's just the legislature.
Hey, what is this?
The Hollywood strikers or the Hollywood writers have gone on strike, as you know, and now they say they've got their first show casualty.
Have you heard about this?
NBC apparently may not be broadcasting the Golden Globe show as planned for January 13th.
Instead of a broadcast, it's going to be a stripped-down press conference aired by NBC News.
Now, I understand both viewers are really upset over this.
I had a great day yesterday until I heard this.
The Golden Globe's not on TV?
Well, there you go.
Talk about ruining a good day.
Does anybody care about this stuff?
It's quite, it's like Naomi Campbell going down to Venezuela.
You heard about this as well.
She goes down to visit who else?
Hugo Chavez.
Get this.
The new contributing editor for the men's lifestyle magazine in the UK, GQ, interviewing President Hugo Chavez, describes him as a rebel angel who is unafraid to speak his mind but poses absolutely no threat to democracy.
You know, later in the magazine, Naomi writes that Fidel Castro is in perfect health as well.
So you might want to pick that up if you haven't seen it.
Talk about odd.
The contact line here is always for the Rush Limbaugh program, 1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882.
Of course, rushlimbaugh.com.
You can check that out.
Rush will be back tomorrow.
I am Jason Lewis sitting in today, however, as we go through the New Hampshire primary.
And as Hillary Clinton said yesterday, it's not easy.
An emotional Hillary said.
Now, look, lots of presidential candidates have cried in the past.
Lots of presidential candidates have had their eyes well up.
Lots of presidents have done this.
I remember Reagan at Normandy in 84, I think.
I can't remember exactly the date, but he was talking about the boys who climbed the cliffs, and he broke up.
George W. Bush has broken up.
Ed Muskie broke up at the primary in New Hampshire, and it cost him, I think that was what, in 72, I believe.
So that's not the issue over Hillary's newfound affinity for tears.
But an overly mawkish Hillary Clinton yesterday just strikes a lot of people as contrived.
It looked as though, okay, were they genuine?
Now, I'm not going to make up your mind for it.
You saw the videotape.
You've heard of all the audio.
You can make up your own mind.
But does it come off as more of a campaign strategy as opposed to a genuine moment where somebody got a bit verklempt and just couldn't take it anymore?
It's a rough road on the campaign.
The cynic, you know, would quote Groucho Marx.
Sincerity.
If you can fake that, you've got it made.
But I'm not going to be cynical there.
This could be very, very difficult, a difficult day for Hillary, as most of the polls show Obama in the lead.
And meanwhile, in the Republican camp, you've got McCain and Obama, McCain and Huckabee, McCain and everybody else fighting for the center, which, as we all know, if you've ever listened to Rush, the center, the independence, is a euphemism for what?
Liberals, Democrats.
I mean, by definition, they're liberal.
Otherwise, they would be conservatives in the Republican Party.
So somebody that's an independent is a liberal who just doesn't like the Democrat Party anymore, or a liberal who doesn't want to get pegged as a Democrat anymore.
And you go take a look at all of your independent governors, all of your independent candidates.
Maybe Joe Lieberman would be the exception, although he's liberal on a number of social and fiscal issues.
But the bottom line is that's what's going on.
And it really smacks of this move, frankly, in both parties towards this kind of Teddy Roosevelt populism.
It's a fall populism almost.
I mean, I'm watching the debates on Saturday.
And we're watching ABC and the Fox News debate.
And I'm watching the debates, and I see the candidates go after the pharmaceutical companies as evil, demanding that we import price controls by allowing drugs to come into this country from countries where there are price controls.
That's importing price controls.
The candidates going after big pharma, big tobacco, big oil, big insurance.
I'm watching candidates refuse to talk seriously, except for Fred Thompson, about Social Security and getting a handle on that.
So here we are watching the debate Saturday.
They're going after big pharma and all the big bad business.
They're refusing to handle Social Security in a grown-up way.
And that's the Republican debate.
You know we got problems now.
These guys are going portside quicker than Ted Kennedy and spring break.
I mean, this is just a little odd here.
And I want to try to set the record straight before we get into the calls because it does strike me as a little bit of, well, not a little bit.
It strikes me as pure pandering.
This whole notion of the little guy getting the shaft.
You want to know what economic populism is?
You want to know what this whole move towards, we're going to help the little guy.
We're not going to help the big business guy.
We're not going to help the rich.
We're going to help the little guy.
It's the oldest tool in politics, except for hiding behind children.
You know, when they need more money, they hold up a kid for health care, for education.
There's another crisis.
You've got to have a kid.
Well, the second oldest profession, well, wait a minute.
I guess it would be the third then.
I won't mention the first, would be this notion of, I'm going to help the little guy.
I'm John Edwards.
And as soon as I get done repainting my mansion, I'm going to get out there and help the little guy.
Let me tell you what economic populism is.
It's two wolves and a lamb discussing what to have for dinner.
That's what it is.
It's mob rule.
Why is it that we pride ourselves on individual rights when we talk about unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment?
We respect our house, our private property.
That's individual rights.
That's the epitome of individual rights.
The Bill of Rights, we're all about individual rights, not collective rights, whether it's the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, or the right not to incriminate yourself in the fifth.
It's all about individual rights.
Even under the right to privacy, the ubiquitous right to privacy.
And then when we get over to the economic arena, individual rights be damned.
If somebody's got more money, well, let's hire a politician to take it from them and give it to somebody else.
You know, you do something in the political arena that you can never do on the street.
It would be called theft then.
But if you do it in the political arena with the majority, how many times have you heard the ACLU rant and rave about the evils of the majority?
We got to respect the rights of the minority, except when it comes to economics.
I don't care if so-and-so is the last billionaire on earth.
300 million people do not have a right to take his estate and divvy it up.
That is what the country was founded upon.
I'm reminded of the founder of the Republican Party, abolitionist Representative Justin Morrill, Republican of Vermont, back in the 1860s.
And he talked about economics under our Constitution.
He said, quote, the very theory of our institutions is entire equality.
We make no distinction between the rich and the poor man.
Now get this.
He said, the man of modest means is just as good as the man with more means, but our theory of government does not admit that he is better.
The man of modest means is just as good as anybody else, but under our theory of government, equal justice for rich and poor alike, it does not admit that he is better.
And yet, and yet, it's sad to see some in the GOP take a cue from Edwards and Obama and Hillary on this economic populism argument.
And here's what's really frustrating about it.
Since when, my friends, since when has the big guy or big business got off easy?
I'm a little confused here.
Have you noticed the number of lawsuits going after deep pockets and big business when you got dry cleaners in Washington, D.C., you know, being sued for millions by a greedy trial lawyer?
What is John Edwards' income compared to the average wage earner?
You talk, you talk about, well, the CEO makes 100 times, 1,000 times what the average wage earner earns.
What is old John's income has a ratio of the average wage earner?
We've got a trial lawyer running in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate who made $556 million on one case.
How does that compare?
If you divide the average worker's salary, why doesn't anybody ever talk about that?
But you get to the corporate arena, and far from getting off easy, we are bashing the oil companies.
We're regulating tobacco right out of its use.
We're going after the health insurance industry is the most regulated in the world with individual state mandates now amounting to 1,000.
You want to know why insurance is not affordable?
Take a look at your individual state mandates.
When anybody comes into your state to write a traditional indemnity insurance policy, they have to cover acupuncture.
They have to cover substance abuse.
They have to cover the removal of port wine stain.
They've got to cover so many things that you price insurance out of the market.
How is that helping the insurance company?
Doesn't sound like they're getting off easy there.
Oil can't drill offshore.
By the way, Exxon Mobile, ExxonMobil, Texaco and Chevron in 2005, according to the Security and Exchange Commission documents, paid $44 billion in taxes.
In taxes.
The ethanol industry gets subsidies.
They're the little guy.
Big oil is the bad guy.
Doesn't sound like they're getting off easy.
You go back to 1977 and we've paid collectively $1.34 trillion in gasoline sales taxes.
That dwarfs the oil industry's profits.
Doesn't sound like they're getting off easy.
The United States of America now has a corporate tax rate of almost 40% when you include 39.3% federal rate, I should say 35% federal rate and about a 4.3% state rate according to the Cato Institute and Tax Foundation.
We've got the highest rate in the Western world.
Let me repeat that.
The highest rate in the Western world.
You've got countries, 11 nations behind the Iron Curtain with flat rate taxes of 25% or lower.
Germany, France, Ireland, slashing their corporate tax rates below America.
Doesn't sound like corporate America is getting off easy.
You want to know why they won't bring the profits back here?
They get taxed twice.
Once overseas, albeit at a smaller flat rate, and then they bring them back here, they repatriate the profits.
They get taxed again.
No wonder they're offshore.
Nobody's getting off easy.
And the top 1% of income earners in America, well, they pay 40% of the income, federal income tax burden, top 1%.
You're making $350,000 or more a year.
You lucky duckies out there.
You're getting, hit with the AMT and everything else.
You're paying 40% of the total burden.
By the way, that's as much as the bottom 95%.
The top 1% pay as much in federal income taxes.
These stats are from the IRS, that right-wing think tank, you know, as the bottom 95%.
Doesn't sound like they're getting off easy.
And finally, this from the Tax Foundation.
They did a study, Andrew Chamberlain, Gerald Prant, and Scott Hodge, who pays America's tax burden and who gets the most government spending.
The lowest earning one-fifth of households, the bottom quintile.
You know how much, by the way, they pay in federal income taxes, the lowest one-fifth.
Try nothing.
That's right.
Try nothing.
When you add in the earned income tax credit, you've got a situation where they pay zero or they actually get a check.
But yet, the bottom one-fifth of households, the little guy, receives $8.21 in government spending for each dollar they pay in taxes, while the highest earning households get 41 cents back for every dollar they pay in taxes, according to the tax foundation.
That's called a redistribution of wealth.
Tell me again where the big, fat, rich guy is getting off easy and the poor little guy is really stuck in the middle.
Now, those are facts that no political candidate wants to talk about because they're inconvenient.
We have these people pandering now because they know there are more little guys, middle-class guys, than there are rich guys.
There are more employees than there are employers.
So they're going to the most base instinct and going after the majority and to hell with minority rights in this case.
I don't think that's good for the health of the Republic.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to be behind the golden EIB mic once again in the Attila the Hun chair.
I am Jason Lewis.
Minnesota is Mr. Wright sitting in for the big guy.
Rush will be back tomorrow on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
One more thing before we get to the phones at 1-800-282-2882.
Hillary Clinton going after Obama, saying, Look, you're no Martin Luther King, or words to that effect.
I mean, Obama was saying, what's wrong with hope?
Dr. King had hope.
Clinton countered in an interview, I think it was yesterday, she said, well, you know, all that hope wouldn't have been worth spit if Lyndon Baines Johnson hadn't passed the Civil Rights Act.
Oh, yes, I think of the Civil Rights Act, and I think of those Southern Democrats getting on board.
Hello?
They were the ones who were filibustering.
I believe Al Gordon Sr. and a number of Southern Democrats filibustered.
You want to talk about inveterate racism in the United States of America.
I mean, take a look at the Agricultural Department during the era of the New Deal, not exactly kind to black farmers in the South.
You can go right through the Jim Crow era.
So I wouldn't, if I were Democrats, I wouldn't get too far out in front on that.
But here's the thing: Hillary counters Barack and says, The dream began to be realized because of President Lyndon Johnson.
It took a president to get it done.
Lyndon Johnson.
Let me think.
Lyndon Johnson starts out as a poor school teacher in Texas, goes to Washington, comes home fabulously wealthy.
Huh.
Lyndon Johnson, the Bobby Baker scandal.
Lyndon Johnson pressuring broadcasters to do what they wanted him to do.
Lyndon Johnson and, oh, yeah, illegal wars.
Can you say the Gulf of Tonkin resolution when the administration deliberately suggested we were fired upon in order to gin up support?
Is that the upright Lyndon Baines Johnson administration, which gave us every single great society program that has cost the American taxpayers $6.4 trillion since 1964 and has encouraged poverty, has subsidized poverty, has discouraged work and savings and investment, has created huge budget deficits, huge fiscal problems.
That Lyndon Johnson's boy, I tell you, Hillary, you need to come up with a new icon there.
To the phones we go, Jason in Chicago, you're first up today with another Jason on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Jason to Jason to Jason.
I love it.
It sounds like a bad, sounds like a bad horror movie.
There's another side to Jason that we represent aside, don't we?
That's right.
That's the golden fleece side.
That's right.
And I'm a Greek at that, too.
But let me, you know, I want to preface what I was going to say by agreeing with you on Johnson.
It's funny.
I was watching JFK last night and call it crazy timing.
But, of course, you forgot to throw in how he was sworn in, just kind of waiting, hovering in the wings, and how he took office after the assassination.
We don't want to forget about that also.
What are you suggesting, Jace?
Oh, I think the Gulf of Tonkin comment you made suggests enough.
I mean, it is amazing how the mainstream media talks about, well, we got into war on a lie and all of the other canards they throw out without ever bringing up their hero, Lyndon Johnson, a much more clear-cut case of an administration clearly lying to the American people, and everybody knows it.
And why is that?
Why wasn't Lyndon Johnson impeached?
Yeah, interesting.
So times changed, right?
I wanted to get to that point.
I'm going to have to go head to head with you on a comment you made about the oil companies because it's kind of hit a nerve.
And I just want to know your thoughts here, but I got to throw this out there.
I did a little research.
When the market was hot and I was trading a lot right up to 2000, I noticed, and I'm sure maybe a few other people noticed, a slew of oil mergers that failed to catch the SEC's eye as they were hunting down the tech companies and other companies.
Royal Deutsche Ho, BP Amico, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips.
I mean, that's just a few.
That's unprecedented.
ExxonMobil.
ExxonMobil, you mean?
Mexico Chevron, ExxonMobil.
Yeah.
So a lot of these are foreign domestic, like BP Amico, Royal Deutsch Shell, for example.
Now, we need to take a look at this because, yes, we need to do a backtrack.
Because when you mention the $44 billion in taxes, that may sound, you have a resounding impact on our thinking.
But if we look at the profits yielded and the fact that you've just stated a false premise.
When you look at the profits, here's a news flash for you.
Profits are good.
They send market signals.
They reward investors.
They are the salaries.
They are the salaries to capital.
You can't have profits without investors, and you've got to pay the investors.
The more profits, the better.
That's not even my argument.
I'm just throwing that in there because you mentioned taxes.
Well, if there's a lot of money, there are going to be a lot of taxes.
Oh, well, get to your point.
Get to your point.
The point is this.
Why wasn't that viewed?
Where are the investigations?
And that looked like a pragmatic step.
The oil companies took two hats in the Middle East.
They're taking the natural gas out of there right now.
They have subsidiaries.
What on earth is doing that?
Have you ever heard in Economics 101 of economies of scale?
That's what happens when you're in a global market.
You don't want to duplicate services and you get a few mergers.
Why aren't you concerned about the single largest monopoly the world has ever known?
It's called public education.
From K, quite frankly, through 16, in most cases, where it's publicly run.
$536 billion a year we spend on this government sanctioned monopoly.
The oil companies are competing all over the world.
There is no corner on the market.
You know, if corporate America gets their way, there would be no EPA.
There would be no minimum wage law.
There would be no corporate income tax.
There would be no double taxation of dividends.
Where do we get off on this sort of Michael Moore Oliver Stone on steroids conspiracy nonsense anyway?
The vast majority of Americans who produce something work for a corporation.
Now, I'll be the first to say we've gone down the road of subsidizing corporate America, export-import banks, Archer Daniels-Midland, a farm subsidy, ethanol subsidies.
You can go right down the list where you've got eminent domain where local governments will take somebody's property for another corporation.
Those have to be handled.
Those have to be, quite frankly, ceased.
But I am non-plussed as to why people are so anti-business in America and how this sort of populism that ignores the income tax rates.
You know, the previous caller, Jay, said, well, look, they paid $44 billion, these three big oil companies, but that's nothing compared to their profits.
No, actually, as a percent of their profits, I told you earlier we have the highest corporate tax rate in the Western world at 35%.
Add in state corporate.
You know what the corporate tax rate in the state of Minnesota is?
Are you sitting down?
Wonder why our economy is moving slower than the national average now in Minnesota?
9.8%.
I'm not making that up.
Boy, it sounds like corporate Minnesota sure controls the statehouse in the North Star state, doesn't it?
Why, they got off with a 9.8%.
So you add that to the 35% corporate rate at the federal level.
You're looking at 45%, which dwarfs every other industrialized country.
Dwarfs it.
So where's corporate America getting their way here?
The big three oil companies that had so many credits and deductions removed that they actually paid a higher statutory rate than the federal rate in 2005.
That $44 billion represented 41%.
So in 2005, according to SEC documents, the big three oil companies paid 41% of their income in corporate taxes.
Does that sound like their lobbyists are doing a good job?
And by the way, when you talk about the little guy, let us not forget, everybody, that we don't live in a static economy.
There's not this one set of individuals who are little and another set of individuals who are big, rich, and smoke cigars in the back of the train.
There are, well, think of yourself.
You got out of college or you got out of high school.
You went to work.
You were in the lowest quintile.
You work and you work.
And by the time you're 55, you're in the second to highest or maybe the highest quintile.
Now, is that unfair?
Why, when they surveyed you when you were 23, you were in the low.
You were the little guy.
There's something wrong with that.
All of this income quintile analysis is so erroneous.
It is such a myth because it doesn't take into account age, marital status.
It doesn't even take into account work.
If you don't work, you're going to be in the lowest income quintile.
Is that a societal problem?
No, it's a problem for you.
But I digress.
The point here is the Treasury examined 96,700 income tax returns from 1996 to 2005 for Americans over the age of 25 late last year.
You know what they found when they tracked these tax filers over 10 years?
58% of the filers who were in the poorest income group, the bottom quintile, had moved into a higher income category by 2005 in less than a decade.
And over 5% made it all the way to the highest quintile, the richest.
People move up and down the economic ladder.
So there is no rich and poor in a static analysis.
We need to disabuse ourselves of this politics of envy class warfare.
That's what liberal Democrats do.
It shouldn't be what the party of free markets does.
Let me just say one more thing.
You cannot have a country that prides itself on equality under the law without the result being inequality when it comes to social status, when it comes to income.
If you are hell-bent on equalizing incomes, you must also then admit that you believe in unequal treatment under the law.
Now, I'm not talking about this being a violation of the 14th Amendment, the progressive income tax, but I'm certainly talking about it being in the spirit of a violation or violates the spirit of equal justice.
So let us forget this nonsense.
That's why a flat tax, and I know some of you like a fair tax, regardless, you're always going to have economic inequality in America because you have people with differing levels of talent, differing levels of initiative, differing levels of work.
And therefore, that's the way the world works.
That's what our revolution was about.
In 1765, they revolted against the Stamp Act.
That was an economic revolution.
The coercive and intolerable acts to enforce all those economic measures.
The Boston Tea Party.
America was a place where you could come to get rich.
That was the idea.
Why are we demonizing it today?
In Lafayette, Louisiana, Kevin, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
How are you doing, Jason Lewis?
Could not be better, sir.
Well, you know, I agree with what you're saying.
You know, this is just ridiculous.
This year, I've made more money than I've ever made since I've been working.
And I paid out more taxes.
Me and my wife were talking about it to do our taxes.
I can't work as much as I have.
I work in the gas industry, and this is just ridiculous.
People don't understand.
And let me tell you what else happened.
What else happened to you?
You lost some of your personal and child exemptions when you filed your income taxes.
You lost some of all of the deductions that other folks get.
It's called the PIP and PEP, the phased income phase outs, as they call them.
All those deductions that most people take, you lose them as you go up the income ladder.
So your rate is actually higher than 35%.
Right.
When you get to the top level.
So how is that?
Is that another sign of the rich getting off easy?
No.
I mean, to me, I got friends that make less money than I do, but it's just talking about how much they pay.
And I'm telling them, you have no idea how much you pay.
I think it's a lot.
According to the CBO, roughly the bottom 40% of federal income earners have no income tax liability.
It really takes me to no end.
But I tell you, we have got to change something.
Something has got to change because you can't keep having this like this.
Well, here's the dirty little.
Yeah, that's right.
I've got to let you go, but here's the dirty little secret.
And I know this sounds callous, and we're not supposed to sound that way in the context of a political race, especially as the GOP reaches out to Democrats.
There aren't a whole lot of poor folks who open factories.
There aren't a whole lot of poor folks who fund venture capital firms.
You'd better realize pretty quick that if you keep...
Anybody remember the luxury tax?
You know, the luxury tax in the early 1990s.
We're going to go after those people that have yachts and expensive cars and all of that.
You know what it did to the yacht industry?
It got so bad in Rhode Island that Representative Patrick Kennedy helped to repeal the luxury tax, just going after the rich.
It is tautological, my friends, that if you take away the incentive for those with money to invest, you take away the incentive to create jobs, to create capital.
And that's the road we're going down.
I don't know why anybody thinks discouraging investment in capital and income earning by guys like Kevin is going to help the economy if we're teetering on a recession.
It will drive it into a recession.
Pamela in Toledo, thanks for waiting.
You're up next on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi.
Hey, Jason, how are you?
I'm very well.
Oh, wait, I'm not supposed to.
Anyway, I want to talk about Hillary Clinton for a second.
Her blubbering on TV yesterday annoyed me to no end.
And here's why.
She managed in those few minutes to undo about 30 years of feminism.
Now, maybe I'm overstating it, but one of the worst things that we've had to overcome as women is stereotypes about how we behave when we're in power.
And her crying, because it's a little tough in a primary, what's she going to do when she comes up against Putin and he decides that he wants to play hardball with her?
She's going to start crying and calling for Bill to come and help her?
It's an interesting point.
The idea that the Helen Reddy crowd, you know, we're just as good as a man and a woman can be president.
And then all of a sudden, when the going gets tough.
The question for me is if it were genuine.
If it were genuine, lots of men cry.
Lots of leaders cry.
Now, it did hurt Ed Muskie.
It destroyed his candidacy.
But nevertheless, I've seen Bush's eyes well up, seen Luther Reagan, lots of the heroes of the right have shed a tear.
And I think it's kind of endearing at times if it is genuine.
However, if it's contrived, as some suspect, then what does that say about Hillary's view of women?
That, okay, now I'm going to pull out the tears, and that is a direct attack on feminism.
Well, you know, Jason, I don't think it matters whether it was real or whether it was contrived.
The point is, I think when you're in that job, you learn to control yourself and you put your emotions aside.
You mean like her husband?
Well, who's a woman in that relationship?
I don't know.
If you were married to Bill, you'd be crying too.
Pamela, thanks for the call.
I do appreciate your thoughts on that.
Let's squeeze in Lawrence real quick before a break.
St. Pete, Florida.
Lawrence, you're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hello, Mr. Wright.
Hello, sir.
You started earlier setting the record straight.
I'd like you to help me set the record straight about John Edwards.
I lived in Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina when you were there, and we referred to John Edwards as Senator WHO, if you will recall.
There was a reason he didn't run for re-election, wasn't there?
That is correct.
He proposed very little, if any, bills.
He had the worst absentee problem in the Senate, in the history.
He didn't win his own state in the last election.
And the thing that really galls me is that I saw him on his last speech that he doesn't take any money from PACs.
What in the world are trial lawyers?
What is the American Trial Lawyers Association or the Association of Trial Lawyers of America?
They had to change their name because they had such a bad rep. Look, it is the epitome, the epitome of shameless hypocrisy for a guy that is, you know, literally has that much money.
Let's compare the average working stiff's wages like we do to CEOs.
Let's compare it to John Edwards.
And then he's talking about, you know, the downtrodden and all of this.
It really is a joke.
And once again, if you take a look at America's penchant for suing for fun and profit, why doesn't big corporate America get tour reform passed if they get their way with everything?
If everything's about corporations and business, why don't we have limits on punitive damages?
Why don't we have the English rule law or the English rule, as it's called, where the loser would pay?
Why don't we eliminate junk science or have some reasonable sanity about discovery rules that can drag corporate America in the courtroom or in discovery for hours, hours, days, months, years and drain them?
Why isn't corporate America getting their way?
It's an absolute canard.
Great call.
I'm glad you did.
I'm Jason Lewis right here in for the great one, Rush Limbaugh, back right after this.
Talents on loan from Rush.
Jason Lewis back at the helm at EIB.
Rush gone for today, but we'll be back tomorrow for the analysis of the New Hampshire primary.
Dicksville Notch voted, what, late last night, midnight, I guess, or early this morning.
Dicksville Notch, Obama gets seven.
Edwards two, Bill Richardson won.
I didn't know he had relatives up there.
On the Republican side, McCain got four votes.
Romney two, Giuliani won.
So 17 votes in at Dicksville Notch.
Hart's location, the other early voting precincts, Obama nine, Hillary three, John Edwards one, which he threatens to sue over.
I'm just kidding.
And the Republican side, McCain, six, Huckabee five, Ron Paul, four, Mitt Romney one.
This is going to be fascinating, but look, it's palpable, this pandering to, quote unquote, the center.
And now the Democrats in Congress say we need a stimulus package.
Wait till you hear what they plan for that.
More of the same, which will drive the economy into stagflation.
We'll talk a little bit about that next hour and some other topics.
But right now in Cambus, Washington, Doug, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Minnesota's Mr. Wright, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hello, Jason.
Pleasure to speak with you from a former Minnesotan.
Oh, well, you escaped.
Yeah, I did.
No, actually, I love Minnesota.
I'm thinking about going back.
I actually first met you back in 2000 when George W. was campaigning right before the election when we thought we might actually take Minnesota.
Oh, really?
How intriguing.
Yes.
Hey, the comment I wanted to make has to do with what you said earlier about the panel at the debate the other night actually sounding like liberals.
They don't sound like conservatives.
The only true person that sounded like a true conservative was Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney.
And quite frankly, Mitt Romney, I don't trust him because of where he came from, his stands in Massachusetts.
But what really stood out to me was the comment by Mike Huckabee, you know, using the praises of Time magazine and the New York Times and gloating about it.
I mean, here's an extremely liberal journalist praising him as being one of the top five governors.
And he's saying this at a Republican debate trying to get the Republican nomination.
It just makes no sense to me.
When Rush talks about this new conservatism, wow, that was a case in point right there.
This is a time for choosing.
This election is not just about the president.
It's about the future of the Republican Party as we know it.
It will either be the party of a choice, not an echo, or it will go the way of the Whigs.
Because I don't know what these liberals, whether they're secular liberals or the new evangelical left, I don't know what they're thinking.
And without the conservative base, they will never win another election, period.
If somebody, you know, this is so silly.
If somebody wants economic populism, Doug, if somebody wants to soak it to the rich, if somebody wants a more pacifist foreign policy, if somebody wants, you know, more economic regulation, by God, we're going to solve global warming.
We're going to have bans on smoking, and we're going to get the endorsement of the National Education Association.
They're not going to vote Republican.
They're going to vote Democrat.
So moving in that direction only feeds the beast and encourages people to go all the way.
That's why the Republican Party reached its ascendancy with the most conservative president in my lifetime, Ronald Reagan.
And I was very disappointed in Mitt Romney's response to when Thompson correctly said, look, we are going to have to adjust the benefit scale to consumer prices, not wages, if we're ever going to get a handle on Social Security.
Everybody knows that.
Romney said, oh, no, no, no, not me.
Maybe we'll do that for the Uber rich.
What he was really talking about is something called progressive indexing, which would turn Social Security into a welfare, redistributive welfare program, where the more you make in your lifetime working hard, why, the less you would get from Social Security.
And the less you make, the more we, now that the Social Security contract, as it were, is such today that it's, as we talked about earlier, it treats rich and poor alike.
It's a contract.
You put in so much, you get back so much.
Fact of the matter is, the wealthy have to live much, much longer to get back everything they put in.
Because as the wages subjected to Social Security taxes go up and up and up, they're in the, what, 92,000, 93,000.
And the Democrats want to raise that to 100, 125,000.
Medicare has no limit.
So you can make $10 million and still pay Medicare taxes of almost 3%.
That's all that money that funds the system.
You're not going to get that back if you're wealthy unless you live to be 94.
However, if you're the little guy, you get that back long before you die in most cases.
Now, I'm speaking in general terms here.
Another example of the little guy not getting the shaft.
But Thompson was right, and Romney kind of chickened out on that.
And that was disappointing because he said some pretty good things in defending business in America in the past.
But you're right.
There is this, you know, we're listening to our enemies.
The GOP is listening to the enemy saying, Oh, everybody knows you got to drift leftward.
I don't know that.
Reagan didn't know it.
And we won.
I got to take a short pause.
We'll be back with more, so don't go away.
Okay, coming up next hour, more of your calls at 1-800-282-2882.
Also, want to get into Obama's real voting record, this ridiculous stimulus package that some are talking about, which will exacerbate the threat of stagflation we've had with the expansive monetary policy and too high of a tax level.
We'll get into all of that and maybe even the voter ID Supreme Court case.
Think of it, friends.
You got to show your ID when you vote.
Why, why, what's next?
Lower tax rates?
All of that coming up next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
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