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Jan. 8, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:12
January 8, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #2
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I'll tell you guys, I'll tell you, Kit, Mike, I know why she's crying.
I mean, think about it.
She loses this election, she goes back home to Bill.
I mean, I'd be crying too, I guess.
It could be worse for the country, though.
I mean, if she wins, then you got Bill Clinton back in the White House with time on his hands.
It could be kind of sticky if you get my drift.
Welcome back.
Second hour of the Rush Limbaugh program underway.
Hayatop, the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan in the Attila the Huncher behind the golden EIB.
Mike, greetings, conversationalists across the fruited plain.
I have the privilege once again to sit in for El Rushbo.
He will be back tomorrow to analyze the New Hampshire results, by the way.
In the meantime, RushLimbaugh.com is up and running, of course, and so is the big show at 1-800-282-2882.
Now, I want to continue with the economics for just a second, then get into Barack's voting record, because Barack is really running a masterful campaign.
It is more of a polished Jesse Jackson.
You know, it's not the cadence with a, you know, I believe in hope, not dope.
The communité, and we need an education, not in costleration, all that.
It's much more polished than that, but it is still the same thing.
He talks for an hour and says absolutely nothing.
It's remarkable.
I mean, it's the slickest marketing campaign I've ever seen.
And it belies, his voting record belies this transcendent message of hope.
I want to get into that, but first on the economics.
The Democrats are now saying, gosh, we're teetering on a recession.
So here's what we're going to do.
We're going to adopt a stimulus package.
Now, you see, when your economic philosophy is bankrupt, when you have to admit that the old demand side, prime the pump, Keynesian spending juggernaut simply doesn't work.
Remember, if government spending could drive an economy, the former Soviet Union would have been an economic juggernaut.
Instead, all of the former countries of Eastern Europe are cutting their income tax rates across the board.
Look at the miracle of Ireland.
Massive tax cuts have elicited more revenue.
It works.
And I tell you why traditional or classical or neoclassical economics, now today called supply side, works.
It restores two fundamental aspects to a growing economy.
One is incentive and two is capital.
And you know what?
Government spending combined with high levels of taxation crowd out both.
They crowd out capital and they crowd out incentive.
And you can't get economic growth.
You can't get, let me just tell you about capital, how important capital is.
Businesses cannot grow without somebody willing to invest in them, whether it's lending them money or better yet, giving them capital in the marketplace.
It can't happen.
And when the business has profits, they return that capital in the form profits are to capital what salaries are to labor.
You get all this talk, all this nonsense populist talk about, well, if we could just cut the profits, all the prices would be lower.
Would that it were true?
The fact of the matter is, why don't you say if we just cut everybody's salary in the UAW, the cost of a car would be lower.
It would be less expense for a company.
Well, profits are an expense.
In fact, there's no such thing as profit in the real world.
There's only cost of doing business.
And what I mean by that is, if you invest in a company, whether it's pick your favorite company, and the liberal Democrats gain even more power, and they go down this left-wing socialist path, and they tax companies to the extent that says they raise capital gains, they double the capital gains tax.
If you repeal the Bush tax cuts, you're going to triple the dividends tax.
You're going to double the capital gains tax.
If they do that, you're investing in a company and you get nothing in return.
You get nothing.
The capital gains tax will dwarf what you get.
The business will pay more taxes.
They'll have to cut dividends.
You'll get, how many people would do that?
A profit is the return on your investment.
Now, how many of you would invest then in a company if there were no chance of return?
And what would happen to that industry without any new capital coming in?
It would stagnate, it would shrink.
So would the economy.
That's the importance of profits and capital to an economy.
Now, the Democrats are proposing in the stimulus package that was in the L.A. Times today.
It's been all over.
They want to not restore capital and incentive.
They want rebates for the poor.
They want to expand tax credits for only low-income individuals.
Get this.
They even want to increase unemployment benefits as a way of priming the pump.
We're going to increase spending.
Now, what happens when you do that?
There's something in the first rule of economics called opportunity cost.
If you spend $1 billion on a wasteful mass transit system in your hometown, that's $1 billion that's not going to be spent in venture capital, not going to be spent on roads, not going to be spent on giving you your money back and spending in the place of your choice, whether it's saving or consumption.
So the opportunity cost in all of this, the spending pumping, is going to dwarf capital.
It's going to be less money for loaning out, and the economy cannot run if you don't have capital.
And that's why if you reduce taxes, and especially, quite frankly, on investment and on savings, you get a growing economy because you've got more incentive and you've got more capital.
But that is the antithesis of a priming the pump spending package.
What they want to do is raise taxes on the rich, lower them for people who will spend the money.
All you're doing then is replacing investment spending with consumption.
And you couple that consumption spending, you couple that with an easy monetary policy, which we've had, unfortunately.
You couple that with high levels of taxation, and you've cooked up a recipe for stagflation.
And friends, we've got it right now.
The old Jimmy Carter era, where you've got both a stagnant economy and high levels of inflation interest rates.
It wasn't supposed to happen under the old Phillips curve model.
You know, the old Keynesian model, the Democrat model, the demand side model said, well, you can cure unemployment by inflation, and you can cure inflation by clamping down on the money supply and having higher unemployment.
We got both with Jimmy Carter.
You get both with stagflation, and we are perilously close to that if we don't make certain the Bush tax cuts are not extended and go further in reducing taxes and then encourage people to save more.
You know, everybody talks about the trade deficit, and everybody's worried about the trade deficit.
You know what the trade deficit is?
It is the flip side to the fact that Americans don't save.
We buy more than we produce.
I wouldn't say produce, but we actually buy more and our trading partners do not buy as much.
Therefore, they're sitting on dollars.
Those dollars come back in the form of capital to America.
And as long as America is a good place to invest, we can go on indefinitely for that, like we did in the 19th century with trade deficits.
It should be noted we had a trade surplus during the Great Depression.
So I wouldn't get too hung up on that.
But if America doesn't become a good place to invest, then all of those dollars awash in the world because of expansive monetary policies and that sort of thing will actually be in surplus.
You'll see a further weakening of the dollar and you've got real economic problems.
So I just wanted to get that out because a stimulus package, government spending will never, will never, ever solve an economic crisis.
Only the private sector can solve an economic crisis through incentives to produce and incentives to accumulate capital.
It's the government spending that crowds out the private markets, whether it's taxed, whether it's borrowed, whether it's inflated.
If you borrow, everybody understands you're borrowing money from somebody who would save it in a private way, and you're letting the government redistribute it for immediate spending.
Well, taxes do the same thing, and they destroy incentive.
So the worst combination is high levels of government spending and high taxes.
You can still have a growing economy with tax cuts, even though we don't have a handle on spending yet because of the incentive effects can absorb some of the spending.
But the best remedy is always cuts in spending and cuts in taxation.
And nobody's talking about that, unfortunately.
Barack Obama certainly isn't.
He's much more liberal.
You know, what's interesting about Hillary Clinton and what could be this debacle in New Hampshire today, if the polls are right, is that in many ways, in many ways, she was trying to triangulate her way to the center in all the debates.
She wouldn't say she'd raise the Social Security payroll tax.
Barack got her on that in debate.
Why won't you raise it over $100,000?
We need to tax those nasty rich people who make $125,000 a year.
We're going to raise the wages subjected to payroll, to the payroll tax higher.
And she said, well, I don't know if that'd be too good for my New York constituents, let alone the rest of the country.
So she was, believe it or not, positioning herself, now, granted, I mean, to the center for Hillary Clinton is still to the left for the average American, but nevertheless.
And the same on some foreign policy issues.
And Barack and Edwards were clearly running to the pandering left.
Everybody knew it with Edwards.
I mean, Edwards is just, you know, every time you see John Edwards get off on this populist rant, I keep watching the TV, watching Edwards, and then I tell my, you know, I ask my wife, was that an ambulance I just heard?
Because somebody's chasing one here.
But Barack has been much more clever in all of this.
Barack has been, I'm talking about things that transcend mere political issues.
I'm talking about hope.
And it's working.
I mean, talk about slick corporate advertising.
They don't hold a candle to Barack Obama.
Problem with Barack Obama is his ratings, when you take a look at his votes in the Senate and his votes as an Illinois state legislator.
In fact, he's got 100% rating from the Americans for Left-Wing Democratic Action, for NARAL, for the National Organization for Women, for the NAACP, and the National Education Association.
He told in 2004 in his Senate bid, the Windy City Times, targeted to Chicago's gay community, I oppose DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.
Even Bill Clinton signed DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows people to define marriage in a traditional way in every state and doesn't allow the full faith in credit clause, at least until the court gets a hold of it, to supersede that.
So you can't import gay marriages from other particular states.
But the Defense of Marriage Act, he opposed that.
When he was in the Illinois State House, he voted to prohibit partial birth abortion unless necessary to save the life of the mother.
That was the bill that was up.
He voted against that, I should say.
So he voted in favor of partial birth abortion.
He voted in favor of state funding of abortion.
He voted no to require prisoners to pay court costs for their frivolous lawsuits.
He voted no to give no offer of good time for sex offenders.
On the tax issue here, I mean, or the business issue, he voted for every minimum wage hike.
And folks, you know as well as I do what the minimum wage should be.
Zero.
If the government could solve poverty with a minimum wage, let's make it $100 an hour.
We could solve third world poverty by waving a wand and say, hey, you folks in Africa or in any part of the world that's suffering, just pass a minimum wage law.
Everybody gets richer.
No, it causes unemployment, especially for the lower skilled trying to get up on the economic ladder.
He wanted to restore the Illinois estate tax.
I could go right down the list.
The guy is to the, he's right there with Edwards and Ted Kennedy and all of the lefties, and yet that's not been out there yet.
And it will be fascinating to see what happens to Barack Obama's perception amongst the populace once his voting record is displayed and revealed, and it needs to be.
18 now after the hour.
Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Well, let's see.
Global warming has hit New Hampshire.
So, how many stories in the mainstream media are we going to get with that?
I mean, they voted in New Hampshire in the wake of extremely warm temperatures, further evidence that Al Gore actually stumbled upon a truth, proving once again that a blind squirrel can find an acorn once in a while.
Every time it's been colder than normal since late 2007, December, clearly colder than normal.
In fact, the whole year of 2007, by some accounts, very, very cold.
Some climatologists are now saying that we may have reached the warming peak in 98.
We have been constant since then to drift downward, which is why the global warming kooks want to get their economic worldwide regulations in soon before they've got egg on their face.
But you just wait, friends.
It can be cold as all get out, and nobody will talk about does this contravene global warming?
But as soon as it warms up, I'm Brian Williams and global warming, the story tonight's.
I'm Charlie Gibson.
Let's talk about global warming.
What else have we talked about?
No, that's it.
All right, let's talk about it some more then.
You just mark my words.
Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh.
Rush will be back tomorrow on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network to the phones we go in beautiful Gillette, Wyoming.
Will, you're on EIB.
Jason, it's an absolute pleasure to speak with you, and this lesson in economics is amazing.
I wish I could sit down over coffee and discuss all this.
I have an idea of what I think I've got a handle on this, and I want you to tell me you can either confirm or correct me on this.
But the stimulus packet the Democrats are kicking out and the Federal Reserve has been doing in the last several months, kicking $30 billion into the market, makes savings not an attractive offer when inflation is going up.
And I've done some looking.
In 1964, a quarter, face value, 25 cents, cost the government $23 to make, and that's the amount of silver that was in it.
Today, it would cost them $2.82 to make that same quarter.
So if I saved a quarter in 64, I'm losing money big time because I need 12 quarters to buy a gallon of gas now.
Well, no, one quarter would buy a game.
That's right.
It's self-evident.
Remember the late 70s when you had inflation rates at 13%, for heaven's sakes?
Nobody in their right mind would do anything other than spend because you'd want to get the item before the next price increase.
Exactly.
So you get this inflationary spiral, and that's why the Fed is in this conundrum right now.
Normally, if the economy is slowing because of these quote-unquote Wall Street credit problems, which are the problem for Wall Street, not you and I, but watch, we'll bail them out.
Nevertheless, if it's slowing, you would want to ease monetary policy if you're a monetarist and you'd want to cut the federal funds rate.
You'd want to expand a little bit.
But now with gold at $830 an ounce, with inflation signs everywhere, I mean, everywhere.
And you've got ethanol driving up the price of things on the cost-push side when it comes to food.
They can't expand and have any credibility in the market.
So what are they going to do?
Am I wrong to make the correlation that every time we try to stimulate something, we in the long term actually weaken it?
Of course, you're right.
The worst thing to do is a stimulus package on the monetary side and the fiscal side.
What you want is a sound dollar and low tax rates.
Okay, and we were talking earlier about the oil company, big oil companies, everybody's bagging on them.
And that's just, I think who's going to invest in a business that's not going to make money?
But don't we subsidize them?
That's the problem I have.
Subsidizing ethanol, that's the biggest joke I can think of.
We do not subsidize oil.
Indeed, we tax the bejeebers out of oil.
We subsidize alternative.
Let me tell you about the cap and trade system, the mother of all subsidies, and why so many quote-unquote utility executives are on board with global warming.
They know that a cap and trade system is going to be a subsidy to the alternative fuel business that they're already in.
Right.
A cap and trade system says we're going to lower the overall level of carbon dioxide, and then you're going to buy these credits.
Well, if you're already producing windmills and solar panels, you're going to have lots of credits.
And if you're an oil company or somebody else or another energy company not doing this, you're going to have to buy those credits from the alternative energy producers.
That's a subsidy.
And it's a subsidy to inefficient energy.
If you know all this economic stuff and you're obviously out there talking to people, and I've kind of got a handle on it, and I'm just some schmo out here in Wyoming.
Why don't we hear more candidates talking about it other than Ron Paul, who gets laughed off the stage every time he talks about sound monetary policy?
We're going to hear about it after it happens.
Well, because we can't afford it anymore.
Look, this is, you know, I don't know how to explain it the best way, Will, but government spending is addictive.
Government spending, when you get more people in the wagon than are pulling the wagon, how do you think the majority are going to vote?
Literally, I mean, look around you.
Everybody in the United States of America, nearly, is getting some sort of government largesse.
Everybody.
I mean, schools, the prime driver of your property taxes, got to do it for the kids.
Student loans and higher education, got to do it for the kids.
Farm subsidies, a $300 billion farm subsidy bill when commodities, commodity prices are an all-time high.
Why don't we call that what it is?
Corporate welfare.
Archer Daniels Midland is laughing all the way to the bank.
So they're getting subsidies.
We can go right down the list.
Government programs, small business administration, export-import bank.
Nearly everybody in one form or another is, I'm not going to say on the dole, but indirectly getting this.
That makes it very, very difficult to cut.
That makes it very, very difficult to talk about things that really matter.
I hate to say this, but we're in danger of becoming a free lunch society where people look at government not as the organ of freedom, not as the government is a monopoly on force, the only institution in society that has a monopoly on force, not Exxon, not Microsoft, government.
And they use that force in limited ways to preserve liberty.
Now we look at government as a way to get something and take away in the process the liberty of others by demanding a free lunch.
If we continue to go down this road, we're going to have a sad future.
And I hope we can catch it in time, and people like you can certainly help.
I'm Jason Lewis back with more.
1-800-282-2882.
I am Jason Lewis in for The Big Guy Today, Rush Gone.
He'll be back tomorrow to analyze the New Hampshire results.
They are voting in the granite states.
And that's the topic of the next caller, Clint in Fort Mills, South Carolina.
Hey, how are you, Clint?
Jason, we miss you down here in the Charlotte area.
We had a radio station that let you go, and we've been all the worse since you've been gone.
We miss you much.
Thank you much, sir.
That's very nice.
All right.
I'm one of the guys who pretty much have a visceral hatred for the tax system that we have, the federal income tax.
And as a result, you know, I supported Jack Kemp back in 88.
And then, of course, in 96, I was a real big supporter of Steve Forbes and really Phil Graham because they supported the flat tax.
And I wish Phil Graham had gotten the nod over Bob Dole back there.
Dole was an old man that just didn't inspire people.
An old man that didn't.
Don't sugarcoat it, Wayne.
Give it to us straight.
Well, but the point is since that time, we've had two Proposals now regarding the flat tax.
We now got a little adjustment there called the fair tax.
The difference between the flat tax is it still dependent upon citizens to file taxes versus the fair taxes, a consumption tax that depends more on being pulled, the money being pulled from the companies.
And I really love the fair tax because it takes the people away from having to file taxes and all that.
And thank goodness for people like Neil Borts and so on.
Well, look, look, here's, I mean, we talked about this last time I filled it.
I don't want to get bogged down in all of this.
It's always better to tax consumption.
It's always better to tax consumption than work, savings, or investment.
But when you get to the levels that we're talking about with a national retail tax, you're going to have dislocations in the economy, i.e., if you're going to buy an automobile or anything else, or if the government's going to buy purchases, they will have to now pay a retail tax that they otherwise wouldn't have under a current system.
But if you're going to do that and the sales tax is 23 to 30 percent, I think it's 30.
The proponents say it's tax inclusive, 23.
We're not going to get into that again.
But you are going to have some black markets.
You're going to have people saying, I'm going to barter this.
I'm going to get out from under this.
And that's why I believe in the Fair Tax Act in section, I want to say 404, there was something called in the bill the Sales Tax Bureau.
Now, what do you think they were going to do?
Or what do you think some institution in the Treasury is going to do?
It's going to make certain nobody's cheating.
It's going to make certain businesses are collecting.
And so the idea that we're going to eliminate some sort of overseeing authority by the federal government whose voracious appetite for your money overnight, I think, is a little bit misguided.
Believe it or not, I follow you, but I'd really support that Bureau over the Internal Revenue Service going after everybody.
But without going into any further than that, you mentioned in the last hour the tax foundation, and they both accept and understand that both the fair and the flat tax are consumptive taxes with their own separate ways, but they would know that it would eliminate estate taxes and capital gains.
Right.
And estate, by the way, the estate tax is nothing more than a tax on savings.
I mean, what's the point to save if they're going to tax you a death?
It really is.
But having said that, right now what we're going on politically, I wish we have here in South Carolina Mark Sanford, who I wish he had actually gotten into the race.
He had proposed a flat tax down here in South Carolina.
And by the way, I got to let you go.
Look, when Governor Sanford did that, guess which party fought him?
I mean, I can remember that, and Sanford is a good governor, Clint.
You're right about that.
We need serious tax reform.
And I'm glad we're having a healthy debate within the conservative circles on fair tax versus flat tax.
But currently, the thing we've got to take from all of this debate is the worst system of taxation, I mean absolute worst, is what the liberals call a progressive income tax, which shoves people into higher brackets because they work harder, because they make more, because they produce more.
You know, when the GIPR, when Reagan indexed the tax code for inflation so that there wasn't bracket creep, you could make, you know, $30,000 one year back in the late 70s, and then you might make $35,000 the next, but inflation was going up so high that you had no greater purchasing power, and yet you were shoved into a higher bracket.
Reagan eliminated that by adjusting the tax code for inflation.
We need to go further and adjust the tax code for work.
And by that I mean, why on earth, just because you work harder and make more, should you be shoved into a higher, disproportionately higher tax bracket?
That should be an anathema to all freedom-loving people.
And by the way, governments love it because they know they can get more revenue without having to ever vote for a tax increase.
It really is neo-Marxism, and it is something this country should have considered.
You know, when we passed the 16th Amendment, we were told, oh, only the rich will pay.
It is the politics of envy.
It is counterproductive.
It harms people trying to climb the economic ladder.
And by the way, it does hurt the economy.
You're shoved into a higher bracket.
There's less incentive to work.
Clint, good to hear your voice again.
Let's go to Wayne in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
You're next on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hi.
You were talking about addictive spending in the federal government.
It's just a reflection of our entire society.
I mean, drive down any street in any neighborhood in the United States, count 10 houses.
Seven of them are living paycheck to paycheck.
Remarkable.
They're overextended, paying for too big of a house, too many SUVs, too many bills on credit cards.
And the federal government has been doing this since the 60s when they took the Social Security system, which was supposed to be a savings account, and said, we're going to borrow all this money and fund the CIA and the Vietnam War and welfare and everything else.
And now there is no bank account.
Oh, yes.
No, no.
In the filing cabinet in Virginia, there are special treasury obligation IOUs that in 2017, when the trust fund takes in less than it spits out, than it pays out, we're going to go to that filing cabinet.
We're going to grab those IOUs and go to the Treasury and say, we want our money for Social Security.
In which case, how are we going to get it?
You're right.
Right.
Because we scrapped the gold system back in the 70s, and our money is based on how much we work.
It's basically you borrow or work, and the money's worth more.
The economy goes down.
Our money is crap.
This is why big government entitlement programs are so deleterious, Wayne.
You've hit on something culturally, philosophically that's really important.
When you have an entitlement state, literally, it seeps out into the ether, and it becomes part of our everyday lexicon.
Well, I see this guy down the street.
He's got more money than me.
He's got a snowmobile.
He's got a boat.
He's got this.
I should have that.
Why shouldn't I live like that?
And I'm entitled to it.
I'm going to get more money and go out and buy it.
I'm deeper in debt.
I'll die broke.
And let me tell you a dirty little secret.
Let me tell you, and this is not going to endear me to many people because I'm not pandering to people.
I'm not pandering to the majority.
I'm just trying to tell the truth.
But you know, as well as I do, when you take a look, we just got done with Christmas, and Christmas is a wonderful season.
I am continually amazed, and maybe I grew up with Ebernesi Scrooge as a father, but I am continually amazed at the spending for your kids at Christmas anymore.
And it's done by, not by the rich all the time, certainly they do it, but it's done in many cases by the lower and middle income folks who complain about the big guy.
Then they go out and say, nothing's too good for my kid, and they get 15 presents.
Now, it's a little bit picky you and I know, and it's a little bit of an anecdote, but boy, have I noticed that in my lifetime.
And you take a look at just that little microcosm of all of this, and you're right.
And then you add on Social Security, which the government says don't worry about savings for your retirement because your retirement's taken care of with Social Security, which of course it isn't, but it encourages the wrong sorts of behavior.
We've got to have free health care for everybody, so why do the responsible thing and buy health insurance?
And what you make certain you want to do is be broke by the time your kids are college age.
Because if you're broke, you get Pell Grants, you get Stafford loans, but if you've done the right thing, you've opened up a 529, you've saved.
Why, then I'm sorry we cut you off because, well, you behaved responsibly.
We just can't have that in higher education.
You see all the signals?
We tax savings and we let interest expense be deducted.
We have all of the wrong signals here.
And it results in this sort of, you know, entitlement mentality that I do agree is really, really and truly at the heart of our problems here.
We have a view that government is there to give us things.
We want them now.
We don't save enough in America.
There are no incentives to save in America.
And why should you behave responsibly?
Take a look at the mortgage crisis for crying out loud.
And this, I am heartened by the reaction to most Americans.
What we're talking about, the worst thing we could do, the worst thing we could do going forward is adopt a Democrat stimulus package, which is more government spending, bail out Wall Street and everybody who's in trouble by buying a house that was too big in a housing bubble, and have the Federal Reserve yet cut their federal funds rate even more and expand the monetary base.
Those are the worst things we can do, and there may very well be a likelihood we do all three.
The idea that when there was a speculative bubble in real estate and housing and people got greedy as they do in speculative bubbles, and there's nothing wrong with that, that's how markets correct.
And then Wall Street got a hold of these mortgages.
You know, somebody says, oh, the house went up 10% this year.
I'm going to buy a bigger house because 10% of $500,000 on an annual increase is greater than 10% of $300,000.
So they got in it and they wanted more money and they over-leveraged.
Those people need to downsize and get real.
And Wall Street took these, they repackaged these mortgages, sold them off as investments to generate Wall Street banking fees.
They even had exotic instruments on these mortgages that had nothing to do with the actual mortgage.
It was kind of like an options market.
You can have a stock and you can sell nearly unlimited options on one stock.
So they had these derivatives.
They had these exotic financial swaps on mortgages.
And they were expanding exponentially on Wall Street with just one mortgage.
And not to mention all of the ones they had access to.
And so they were betting.
And now, as bubbles do, it bursts.
The housing bubble bursts.
Prices go down and everybody's in trouble.
And what's the reaction?
Well, I don't care.
You got to bail us out to save the economy.
What they're really saying is bail me out.
And the answer ought to be clearly and firmly no.
We'll mark these things to market.
We'll get through this.
And then guess what?
Many of you won't do this again.
Jason Lewis in for Rush Lumbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, back with more calls after this.
Talent on loan from Rush today for me, Jason Lewis, the big guy, back tomorrow to analyze New Hampshire as the voting continues in the granite state.
It's going to be a fascinating year.
We can take your or take some of the calls on who you think is going to come out ahead.
I mean, you've got Michigan next week.
If McCain wins in New Hampshire today, he did well in Michigan last time around.
He could do well there.
Then you're going into South Carolina the week after that, where the evangelical base might redound to Mr. Huckabee, even though Fred Thompson has been running strong down there.
This is a very, very fascinating situation going into Super Tuesday.
So I know Rush will be all over it all throughout 2008, as well he should.
Let's go to Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
You're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Jason.
Yeah.
One thing about these candidates that I'm noticing here at the Republican side, they're just arguing back and forth.
It was your previous call that got my attention, that they're not talking about issues the way that I want.
They're just talking about the negatives and the ass that they're running against each other.
Which candidates?
Democrat, Republican?
Well, especially the bickering between Romney and Huckabee and McCain.
It's just the three-way, they're just fighting, and they're really making our party look bad when it seems as though among the Democrats, there's not that same type of division and bickering going on, and we seem less unified.
I think the Republican Party is less unified.
You know, look, I'm speaking for Jason Lewis here.
The fact, in my view, and I think it represents a lot of lifelong Republicans, as I am, is that this is not a good slate to choose from, that people are ambivalent about all of these folks, and they don't looking for a Ronald Reagan-like figure.
Now, Reagan is a once-in-a-lifetime figure, but they're looking at least for a conservative that has a track record that they can believe.
I think, you know, Thompson comes pretty close, but he's not doing as well as he should.
You know, Ron Paul on the domestic side is certainly a conservative.
But if you take it in toto, I think there's some disillusionment there.
Well, one thing about that, on Thompson, the problem I have with Thompson big time is his support of McCain and McCain fine gold, which he sometimes is even called McCain-Feingold Thompson, which was the biggest intrusion in our rights as far as riot freedom of speech.
And then on Ron Paul's fine, but he's not going to, he doesn't have, he and Huckabee, they share the flat tax support, real strong supporters of that.
I do like Huckabee's for the fair tax.
Paul has said he just would eliminate the income tax and not replace it, which, you know, is a little bit utopian.
But the point on Thompson is he did support that, and he said it was a mistake.
He now says, look, he would simply have unlimited donations, but immediate disclosure, maybe on the internet or someplace like that, which is precisely the way to go, because if you believe in the First Amendment, you can't support McCain fine gold.
And it's given us George Soros and the 527s anyway.
But you're talking about exactly what I'm talking about.
Is there a candidate there that really excites you?
One that excites me is, and it was partly because of previous calls ago, is this fair tax and flat tax.
And I love Huckabee because he is federalism.
He believes.
What?
Thomas, Thomas, you've got to be kidding me.
He's the anti-federalist.
No, he believes that states should do the controlling of taxation more so within states.
Really, how does he feel about a ban on smoking nationwide?
He's in favor of a federal ban on smoking.
Well, I have no problem with banning smoking, but that's a different discussion.
Well, I've got no problem with taking your income.
Well, you may not.
I don't like smoking, but if they want to tax it to death, that'll be fine.
I think it's a horrible habit.
That's another point.
But that's not your decision.
And herein lies the problem in America right now, Thomas.
You think you can take away the liberty of another business or another individual and not jeopardize your own.
Today, they're going to go for big tobacco, and that was popular because everybody hates smoking.
Well, what are you going to say when they go for your favorite pastime?
When they start talking about banning trans fat or popcorn or alcohol or anything else, the principle will already have been violated.
You can't stand on principle because you were right there with the smoking bans.
And that is exactly what's wrong with America.
We've got this notion right now that, well, we can simply pick and choose which liberties to give to certain industries, to certain individuals, without ever realizing, gosh, if we don't stand up for everybody's right and smoking is a legal product, and I'm not suggesting you don't have the right to kick a smoker out of your house or out of your bar, but they also have the right to say, if you don't like smoking, don't come in.
If you start to say, well, yeah, but I don't like smoking, therefore we ought to ban that, how are you going to complain when somebody, the new health czar, gets in control in Washington and decides to say, you know, you know, Thomas, we're going to mandate that you exercise.
It's going to lower that government health care cost anyway.
That sort of thinking is precisely what is chipping away at our rights, not even slowly anymore.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for rush.
Don't go away.
You know, I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but that last caller is an example.
In fact, you know, Kit and I were talking about this during the break.
There doesn't seem to be much thinking going on in these primaries.
Don't people look at where they stand on an issue and then look at the candidates' record?
It seems to be a campaign of personalities.
Now, I'm certain Mike Huckabee's a great guy, but he's talking about federal initiatives for global warming.
That's hardly federalist.
He's talking about a federal ban on smoking.
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