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Jan. 8, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:14
January 8, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #3
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It is great to be back in the Attila the Hun chair behind the golden EIB mic once again for El Rushbo, who will return tomorrow to analyze New Hampshire.
Speaking of New Hampshire, during the break, kid informs me, Fox News is reporting that Clinton has a staff shake-up in the works, Hillary Clinton, that is.
You know, this really is two presidents in one.
I mean, you're going to get Bill Clinton, obviously, if Hillary makes it back to the White House, and he's going to have inordinate power.
I mean, who's she going to listen to?
Her husband, who was a president, or the Secretary of State.
I wonder if how many people have thought that through.
In addition to all of the things, all of the addendums, if you will, that come with Bill Clinton back in the White House with time on his hands, as I said earlier, a real danger.
Hide the interns.
But you're going to get two presidents.
You're going to get a co-presidency.
And I'm just wondering if people aren't thinking, do I really want that?
Do I really want to go back to the Clinton White House?
But a staff shake-up in the works, according to Fox News, get this.
James Carvel, Paul Begalia may be back in the Clinton camp.
Oh, good.
Some more politics of envy, class warfare, economic populism.
That's just what the country needs.
The most productive citizens are the least appreciated.
You know, I know some of you, I know that rubs some of you the wrong way.
I know some people think, Jason, the problem is the Republican Party can't just be for the rich and the country club.
Let me just tell you, do you want to get rich?
Do you want to gain in wealth?
Why would you begrudge that on anybody who's done it?
And in a perfectly free market, which we ought to all strive for, there is only one way to acquire wealth, to first produce something that society values.
Now, I always love that notion, the wealthy ought to give back.
Well, what do you think they've been doing?
Do you think we're better or worse off with a vaccine that somebody got rich producing?
Better or worse off with the latest software program that somebody got rich writing?
We better or worse off with a great piece of music that somebody wrote and then became very wealthy over.
I would rather have the music, the vaccine, the computer, the software program, and let them have their money.
Now, we can always deny them that, and then we don't get what they produce because nobody will work perpetually for the benefit of the collective.
This is rational man theory, and it's one of the first rules of economics, and this is why socialism always fails.
The dirty little secret, friends, is that we care more about ourselves and our family, our immediate family, and to a lesser degree, our community than we do for total strangers.
And we should not be told or lectured by the Democrat left and by the big government types that we are put on earth to perpetually work for total strangers.
You need to support your family, and you need to support five other families.
In fact, I'll go as far as to say we fought a great war with over a half a million American deaths revolving around the right of an individual to keep the fruits of his or her labor.
Did we not?
I think we did.
1-800-282-2882, that's the contact line here for the Russia Limbaugh program.
Global warming up in New Hampshire today as well.
Oh, yeah, very, very warm up there.
But 2007 did not turn out to be that warm.
In fact, according to Oleg, and I'm going to butcher his name, I know, Oleg Soraktin, a fellow at the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and a senior scientist at Moscow's Institute of Oceanography, oceanography.
He says, quote, the latest data say that the earth is past the peak of its warmer period and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, perhaps by 2012.
Stock up on the fur coats and felt boots, says Oleg.
And if you take a look at what's happened in 2007, I mean, the number of worldwide cold events, you've got a situation where in 2007, the global temperature was essentially the same as in 2006 and 2005 and 2004 and every year back to 2001.
Since 1998, a number of scientists and climatologists have said that we may be actually cooling off or at the very least staying the same.
We may be for a decade now, we may have stopped global warming.
I think this explains, by the way, the urgency in all the talk about tipping points.
We've got to do something now globally.
I really do use this particular issue as a litmus test.
I really do because I think it presents some of the greatest danger to American sovereignty and freedom.
You're talking about a worldwide governance of your use of energy.
Let me give you an example of what's in store, my friends.
Higher prices across the board for coal, for gasoline, for oil, for everything.
But above and beyond that is micromanaging.
California, Title 24 of their code in California, their legal code, calls for energy-efficient standards.
It's 236 pages of state-mandated standards for building energy efficiency.
Not long ago, the American Thinker website pointed out that Title 24 also includes what is called a programmable communicating thermostat, a PCT.
Every new home and every change to existing homes, central heating and air conditioning, would be required to be fitted with a PCT that would be non-removable.
It would have an FM receiver that would allow the power authorities, the utilities, to increase your air conditioning temperature set point or decrease your heater temperature set point to any value they choose.
So in order to save energy, if it gets too hot, they're going to turn up your temperature.
Save energy, if it gets too cold, they're going to turn down the heat.
This is what global warming means, command and control.
This is why the left loves it.
If government can control your energy use, they can control your life.
And that's why it's so dangerous.
Not to mention the sovereignty aspect.
Why do you think so many liberals love this?
Why do you think every single answer to the quote-unquote global warming crisis is exactly the same answer that liberals have been giving us for 50 years long before the crisis?
In my adult life, in my lifetime period, liberals have been for higher taxes on energy, higher gasoline taxes, energy conservation.
Now, they didn't say that the way you had to do it over global warming.
They just liked that idea.
Now, along comes Al Gore and the great fiction known as an inconvenient truth, Earth in the Balance, pick your favorite fiction book.
And all of a sudden, they've got the mother of all crises.
They've got the mother of all excuses.
Let me tell you what, and this ought to scare the bejeebers out of just about everybody.
The former Deputy Secretary of State for President Bill Clinton, who I'm certain would have an influence in the Hillary Clinton White House, is a guy by the name of Strobe Talbot.
Strobe Talbot is now with the Brookings Institution, and he is a believer in world government.
Now, I know people throw that out, and then you get pegged as a conspiracy theorist, CFR, Trilateral Commission, Illuminati.
And a lot of that is overwrought.
There's not a conspiracy.
There's a consensus.
They're out in the open on this.
But a lot of it has some grain of truth to it.
For instance, he's got a new book advocating global government called The Great Experiment.
In the book, Strobe Talbot, this guy had the levers of power in the United States government in the Department of State.
He says he's a citizen of the world, quoting Socrates.
And he says, quote, it's my fervent, his prediction or proclamation that, quote, within 100 years, nationhood, as we know it, will be obsolete.
All states will recognize a single global authority, close quote.
Former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot.
Now, friends, the beauty of federalism in the American Republican model, small R, is that it allows people to vote with their feet.
When all else fails, all the separation of powers, all the checks and balances, trial by jury, even the Second Amendment, which is the ultimate check, the rights of the citizen to defend themselves and to protect their liberties, when all else fails, that might be the ultimate check.
But when all of the other constitutional checks on limited government, the most important one, the true theory of the Constitution, to quote TJ, Thomas Jefferson, to those who know him, was the idea of dual sovereignty, that the federal government would add small enumerated powers and states would have much wider latitude to govern the internal order between citizens of the same state, federalism.
So they would experiment on the most vexing social issues of the day or economic issues even.
But they would experiment on penalties for murder, on regulating all sorts of things, on the police powers.
They would experiment, and the state that got it right would serve as a model.
These were laboratories of democracy, as Justice Brandeis once said.
And the beauty of this is if you don't like what's going on in, say, Minnesota, where I live, you don't like the idea that the personal income tax rate is almost 8%, the corporate rate is 9.8%, you get up and leave, and capital is mobile, it leaves.
That serves as a warning to the power elite.
You better reward the efforts for work or you're going to lose.
And right now, Minnesota is growing a little slower than the national economy, which is a real anomaly for this state.
But I think that Minnesota's tax code, to give you an example, that mobility is caught up with that.
Capital mobility, labor mobility.
But it doesn't matter whether it's abortion or medicinal marijuana or assisted suicide.
These issues belong to state law.
And that's the way they were before Griswold versus Connecticut, before Roe v. Wade.
They were relegated to the states to figure out in their state legislatures.
And that's exactly where they belong now.
Roe v. Wade is one of the worst constitutional decisions ever created because it created something out of whole cloth.
The idea that there ought to be some sort of overriding federal authority, in this particular case, the Supreme Court, that could go in and not decide if the equal application of the law is taking place, but decide whether they like laws or not.
So they go and they strike down laws like the Lawrence case in Texas, and they could go right down the list, abortion, of course.
And all of a sudden, you've got a one-size-fits-all governance.
And you know what happens?
What happens if they don't get it right?
What happens, you know, a lot of people, and the Huckabees talked about this, I want a human life amendment.
I want an amendment to the Constitution.
I think the 14th Amendment bans abortion nationwide.
We're not going to go back to the pre-Roe v. Wade era where states could decide.
And frankly, that's what I advocate, even though I'm pro-life and I'd fight in my state, but I'm a constitutionalist first, and that's the model the framers left us.
But once you start advocating this big government judicial activism, what makes you think you're going to be in control all the time?
And once you've adopted the principle that the federal government will decide on smoking bans or assisted suicide or anything else, what's going to happen when the liberals get in control?
Then you're going to have a one-size-fits-all, and you're not going to like the outcome.
The only way to keep freedom alive is to limit the jurisdiction of governments.
That's why federalism is important in America, and that's why people like Strobe Talbot are a clear and present danger when we start talking about nationhood being obsolete and recognizing a single global authority.
Now, granted, Shirty McLean and Dennis Kucinich might take a trip to Mars to get out from under this, but the rest of us are stuck right here on Earth.
Jason Lewis, in for Rush Limbaugh, you're on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Third hour now up and running on the Rush Limbaugh program.
As I mentioned earlier, Rush, of course, back tomorrow for all the analysis out of New Hampshire and going forward.
1-800-282-2882.
Let's go to Portland, Maine.
Bill, you're on the EIB with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
I'm calling to support Mitt Rodney.
And the reason I support him is that if you watch the debate Sunday night, you saw him walk away with it.
He caused How Could Be the Waffle on the Task Question.
He's the one Republican.
He has business and government experience.
He's run several businesses and governed Massachusetts.
And he has honesty, character, and courage.
He has no baggage.
So why isn't he winning?
Huh?
Why isn't he winning?
Because the media is throwing more mud at him than I can imagine.
Yeah, there have been some flip-flops.
Nothing wrong.
Even Fox News, Chris Wallace, did a rotten job interviewing him Sunday night.
Well, look, Romney's problem is trying to reconcile what he said with how he governs.
I think his governing record in Massachusetts was great.
Yeah, was pretty good.
Although, you know, I was really disappointed in his response to the Social Security question.
What is this nonsense about, well, we'll cut back benefits for the upper income?
Isn't Social Security supposed to be a contract?
I've got enough of an economist to be able to answer that one intelligently.
But what I'm saying is, of all of them, Mitt is the man who I would most like, A, like to have a beer with, even though he doesn't drink beer, I'd have to have a ginger ale with him or whatever.
But anyway, I mean, beyond that shallow stuff, he's the man with the courage, the honor, and the experience.
He governed Massachusetts.
He also brought the Olympics home to Salt Lake City.
You bring up something that illustrates the difference between the Republican candidates and the Democrat candidates.
I mean, just think about this.
If this were a Democrat talk show, except those don't work.
I forgot about that.
But if it were.
But if it were, I mean, somebody was doing what you're doing.
Instead of saying, I'd like to have a beer with Mitt, oh, he doesn't drink.
I'd like to have a ginger ale with Mitt, they could say, you know, this guy, this guy, Barack, is the only candidate I'd like to sit down and smoke a joint with.
You know what I'm saying?
I mean, well, I don't want to go.
I'm not going to diss other candidates.
I'm here to talk about Mitt.
Well, that's what primaries are for, is dissing other candidates.
I mean, and also something else I want to get on the air, and I'm hoping this is carrying in New Hampshire.
They keep saying that Mitt runs attack ads.
It's not an attack ad.
He's answering the attacks that were thrown at him.
What do you think he's going to do?
What do you want your next president to do?
I want him to have the business skills that he's going to be able to do.
Oh, come on.
Those are marketing platitudes.
I want something specific.
What do you expect out of the president that makes you support Mitt Romney?
What do you expect him to do?
He's going to guarantee him my personal freedom and keep those thermostats you just talked about, which scare the Jesus out of me.
Well, I got, you know, this, I do think global warming is the litmus test, and you've got almost every candidate, I mean, saying, admitting, yes, global warming's real, and they raised their hand dutifully.
That's not a good omen.
The problem, and I've said this before when I filled in for Rush, but the elephants in the Republican living room are the environment and education.
If we don't have some courage and stand up to the Sierra Club and stand up to the National Education Association, you will never, ever get a handle on government regulation and government spending.
Never.
And I'm talking more about an education at the state and local level.
You know, a lot of people are saying, they heard me in the monologue.
They said, well, Jason, I understand that the federal government isn't taxing the middle class, but why do my taxes keep going up?
Take a look at your local governments.
Take a look at your state government, where most states, other than nine, I believe, 14 have either a flat tax or no income tax.
The rest of you are getting soaked by an income tax.
Most of them progressive.
I love that word.
What a euphemism.
It's a total ripoff.
You're getting soaked on your property taxes.
You're getting, and you've got to help the kids, don't you?
I was, speaking of having a beer, I was in downtown Minneapolis the other night, ordered up a pale ale.
Said, by the way, bartender, tell me what the sales tax is around here.
Because you've got a statewide sales tax of 6.5% where I live, but then you've got all these special taxing districts.
He says about 12%, 13%.
Wasn't quite sure.
So you've got the middle class not being hurt by the federal government.
Most of them aren't paying any federal income tax, especially if you've got kids.
They're getting killed by their local and state governments.
A mass transit boondoggle here, more education spending here, a welfare program here.
I mean, that's where you need to focus.
And if we don't get a handle on standing up to these special interest groups, we're never going to get a handle on that.
And yet I see in too many cases, global warming, yep, man-made.
Man-made, absolutely.
Education.
Hey, I want to be the education president.
I remember a guy by the name of Ronald Reagan going after the environmentalists in a press conference saying they wouldn't be happy until the White House looks like a bird's nest.
I remember him running in 1980 on abolishing the Department of Education and running on tuition tax credits, i.e. real school choice.
Now that, my friends, is leadership.
And if he didn't think the polls were with him, he said, we've just got to change the viewpoint of the American people by educating them.
That's leadership.
In Medina, Ohio, Kevin, you're next up on.
And we got about 30 seconds, so be brief, Kevin.
I called was because you were talking about Reagan's track record.
And, you know, I don't really know Huckabee's track record that well, but I know Reagan was a Democrat before, so I'm not sure what his track record was before.
And I think maybe, you know, he evolved once he got into the office more, you know, to where we normally call it Reaganism.
Well, look, I got to go, but it's one thing to go from being a former Democrat and maybe even left of center to being a conservative.
It's quite another thing going from a conservative to a liberal.
There's the problem.
You know, one other thing we ought to talk about before the day is done, Jason Lewis here in for Rush Limbaugh.
Go to RushLimbaugh.com for all the latest.
Rush Back Tomorrow, as I said, is this a big Supreme Court case that the court's ready to hear tomorrow, and that's the Indiana Voter ID case.
Now, this is such a no-brainer.
The GOP ought to be all over this thing.
The idea that it is somehow an impediment to voting to require proof of citizenship, proof that you're voting in the right precinct, a photo ID.
A number of states have done this.
Indiana is the one that the case is being litigated in the Supreme Court.
By the way, the suit trying to challenge the voter ID requirement in Indiana was brought by the ACLU, the NAACP, and the Democrat Party of Indiana in two separate cases.
So starting tomorrow, the justices will hear on this law passed in 2005 by the Republicans in Indiana, to their credit, requiring voters to have a government-issued photo ID.
Voters without an ID can cast a provisional ballot, but not in the wrong precinct, of course.
We went through that with the HAVA laws or HAVA law, but they can cast a provisional ballot, but they must prove their identity within 10 days.
Now, what is amazing about this particular case is you've got liberals and Democrats in Congress, in fact, led by a Minnesota representative, the first Muslim in the House in Congress, Representative Keith Ellison, who say this is equivalent to a poll tax, somehow an impediment to voting.
Hello?
It violates the spirit of the Voting Rights Act.
No, it doesn't.
It's not discriminatory.
They cite this disparate impact analysis nonsense, which was never a part of the Civil Rights Act, never a part of the Equal Protection Clause.
It came to be a part of it, sadly.
But they say it's going to affect people who can't get a $15 government ID because, you know, it's just too much money.
It's going to dilute folks or dilute their ability or disenfranchise folks because they can't vote because they can't afford the $15 to get the ID in Indiana or a $20 license or whatever.
Really?
Well, maybe we ought to give them free rides, too, because they've got to drive and that's going to cost gas.
Maybe we ought to make certain they can get out of their workplace on the right time and pay them for their time spent voting.
I mean, this is absolute insanity.
Now, the Seventh Court of Appeals over in Chicago upheld this.
They said, look, most people who don't have a photo ID might be low on the economic ladder, but that is not saying that we're not going to let people vote who aren't black or Hispanic or female or whatever.
So it's not a case of discrimination.
It's a case of making certain that your vote isn't diluted.
And trust me, friends, as soon as ACORN gets up and running again for this election, this outrageous welfare rights group that is in every community in the country, it seems.
It is a died-in-the-wool left-wing group, and they've been caught on voter fraud in a number of states registering people illegally and those sorts of things or similar things.
I can guarantee you, I can guarantee you that there will be voter fraud, not to mention security issues with regard to all of this.
This is kind of an unspoken issue, and I don't know why the Republicans don't talk about it more, but it's a big case.
You've got Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana that have sensibly passed voto ID or voter ID photo requirements.
I mean, give me an example before we get to the calls.
In Minnesota, for instance, believe it or not, if you have a driver's license, you can vote.
But you can also register to vote and vote, same day registration and all of that, with a utility bill.
The utility bill with your name and address on it.
You can vote literally with the oath of another registered voter in your precinct.
They call it vouching.
You're telling me that voter fraud hasn't occurred?
It's endemic in Dade County, in Cook County, all over.
There are a number of investigations going on.
So I think it would behoove the GOP at every level to simply go to the American people, go to their constituents and say, look, I'm in favor of making certain that the right people are voting.
And I mean right, I mean by legally voting.
And I don't want your vote to be diluted through voter fraud.
Therefore, I think we ought to have a reasonable requirement of a photo ID or a voter ID when you go to vote.
And a number of states have done this.
A number of courts have upheld it.
Now it's in the Supreme Court starting tomorrow, and this is going to be huge.
This is going to be huge.
Back to the phones we go.
In the meantime, in Fort Lauderdale, here's Josh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Jason.
My name's Josh Darville.
I'm in the auto-Fort Lauriero, Florida.
And I'm trying to get a little bit more knowledge, I guess, and understand something that Rush Limbaugh has been saying lately, where he says a lot of people are turning away from conservative, and he's associating that with Mike Huxby, who's a Christian.
I'm a Christian, and I'm also a conservative.
I've been listening to Rush Limbaugh for years.
So I'm trying to understand when the majority of Americans identify themselves as Christians, you know, what's wrong with wanting a Christian leader and someone that would be a Christian leader when they have, you know, good advisors advising them.
And when you have a candidate like Mike Huckabee, who came down to Florida, he did the value voters debate, which had a lot of religious leaders asking questions from Faith to Action, Phil Schlasley, yet a lot of people from the 22,000-person church down here at Calvary Chapel.
They asked questions.
Rush Limbaugh didn't show up.
He didn't acknowledge that.
Let us take your question in phases.
For instance, the last great president.
Hold on, hold on.
The last great president who proclaimed his born-again faith was whom?
Well, Ronald Reagan.
Well, Ronald Reagan did not wear his religion on his sleeve, and he took some flack for not being a regular churchgoer, but he was certainly a Christian.
He was certainly a Christian, but he was the president first, and he would say so.
But the last overtly born-again, the guy that used religion to run was Jimmy Carter.
Now, he was certainly a good Christian.
Do you like the way he governed?
I'm 28, so I must admit that I am not as well versed in all the past history of what presidents said what and did what.
I'm talking about the current.
Oh, come on.
That's a cop-out.
That's a cop-out.
I mean, there are a number of liberal Christians, liberal denominations.
In fact, most mainline churches, I'm sad to say, have been infiltrated by the global warming left, and I call them the religious left.
Now, the question is, are you electing the pastor-in-chief or are you electing a commander-in-chief?
Well, by doing that, my question is that I just have a problem with you're abandoning conservatism by going with basically I like Mike Huckabee because he's a very important person.
I hope your record on Mr. Huckabee is better than it was on Jimmy Carter.
With all due respect, Josh, do you know what Huckabee's record is in Arkansas?
On what?
I mean, there's many aspects.
Well, how about what was his view on, oh, I don't know, let's just say tax increases.
How many tax increases did he have?
Okay, so my question is that as a person, I guess my question is, what do you say to somebody that says, I'm a Christian first and then I'm a conservative, but I think the two do go hand in hand.
And what's really the bigger gamble?
A morally bankrupt person leading with spiritual advisors or a morally solid person leading a country with conservative advisors.
Well, you know, I'm not going to speak for Rush, but let me just hit you right between the eyes.
I would rather vote for an agnostic conservative who has a strong fidelity to the enumerated powers doctrine of the Constitution than I would a liberal Christian.
Because that is going to keep me free to practice my faith.
Without freedom, faith is meaningless.
I shouldn't say it's meaningless, but without freedom, it's certainly restricted.
You've got to have.
I can disagree with you on this point in that looking at organizations like Wall Builders that actually get into the founding fathers without faith, freedom is meaningless.
Josh, well, look, I would say try practicing your faith in a totalitarian regime.
Try that a couple times.
Then tell me that the freedom.
You can't have virtue without freedom, Josh.
If the government is choosing everything, you're not going to have any virtue, and you're not going to have, your spirituality is going to be crushed.
What I'm saying is, though, you seem to be thinking we're electing a pastor.
We're not.
We're electing a secular government leader.
Now, do I think that religion doesn't have a place in politics?
Of course not.
And I think we've gone way overboard on the left-wing side trying to drum out all religion.
But that doesn't mean that if you're a liberal, you can hold up the Bible and hide behind your Christian faith as a way to deflect criticism.
Mike Huckabee is on a number of issues the anti-Reagan.
And taxes on illegal immigration, well, except if Reagan passed that one bill in 86, so that I may accept that.
But on a number of issues, he has gone astray.
He thinks we have a biblical duty to mandate global warming reductions.
I could go right down the list.
I don't want to get into Huckabee bashing.
I'm just saying, and I agree with Rush: if you want to vote for him, great.
If you think it's more important that he has the same identity as you as a born-again Christian, fine.
But don't call him a conservative because his record betrays that.
Anyway, I got to move, but thanks for the call.
Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Back with more calls when we return.
You know, it is primary day in New Hampshire, and as a substitute host, it's not my place to speak for the big guy, and I'm not.
Rush, I'm certain, obviously, has taken on many of these issues and will as the days and weeks come on.
But look, there is a movement of the religious left in America.
If you go to any military installation, if you go to a welfare rights rally, you will see people of the quote-unquote cloth.
There's now an evangelical group promoting global warming solutions.
They feel that they have a biblical duty in some cases to redistribute wealth on the mantle of altruism.
It is there.
It's palpable.
And it's seeping into denominations all over.
And so just by saying, well, look, I'm a Christian, doesn't inoculate or immunize anybody from criticism, nor should it.
In fact, there's an entire new political philosophy revolving around this compassionate conservatism.
Former speechwriter for President Bush, Michael Gerson, wrote a book called Heroic Conservatism.
You know how he defines heroic conservatism?
More government, expanding the welfare state, exporting democracy.
He's an evangelical Christian, and Gerson says, quote, compassion, unquote, is the defining attribute of political heroism.
Now, when's the last time you've heard talk about government compassion?
Usually from the Democrat Party.
This is the new political philosophy that is threatening the Reagan coalition.
Gerson also wrote in Newsweek not long ago as a representative of this burgeoning big government conservatism, for lack of a better description, is that the rest of us are just anti-government types, and that's our problem, that we're anti-government types.
Now, wasn't Ronald Reagan arguing against government?
In fact, Gerson said in this Newsweek article not long ago that the combination of a disdain for government, a reflexive preference for markets, and an unbalanced emphasis on individual choice is the problem with, I guess, we conservatives.
So I get a little exasperated when I hear people like Josh hold up Huckabee's faith as so somehow that ought to inoculate him from criticism that when he was governor, he raised taxes $500 million.
He raised taxes for education, of course, tobacco taxes, a sales tax increase.
The Cato Institute, the Club for Growth, gave him failing grades.
I could go, I mean, he thinks there's a biblical duty to solve global warming.
He released more criminals than the combined total of every border state to Arkansas, over a thousand clemencies.
He opposed measures to deny state benefits to illegals or require proof of citizenship to vote and supported that now infamous bill that offered illegal immigrants in-state tuition.
Now, if you want to vote, you know, vote for this, that's fine.
But as Rush would say, don't sit there and redefine conservatism and tell me you're voting on the right side of the political spectrum.
This is the battle within the GOP in this election right now, fighting for the soul of the party.
Will it be a Goldwater-Reagan party going forward?
Or are we drifting ever so far portside to the point where we are a Democrat light party?
Number one, I don't think that's good policy.
Number two, it's horrible politics because it doesn't work.
Voters will vote for the real thing every time if somebody wants to mimic the Democrat Party.
If your biggest concern is, I want more government, you're not going to vote for the guy that says, well, I don't want quite as much government as the Democrats, but I'll go three-quarters of the way.
You'll vote for the real thing.
So, Josh, study up.
That's all I can tell you.
Let's go to Jackie in Connecticut.
Thanks for waiting, Jackie.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hi.
Thank you for taking my call.
The fellow that called from Maine before and went, spoke so glowingly about Mitt Romney and all he did for Massachusetts made me realize that I really don't feel that my fellow Republicans understand or appreciate what Rudy Giuliani did in New York City.
Because if you want to talk about a change and accomplishment, he is the only one that actually made a massive difference in what he governs.
And I don't understand why Republicans can't get behind him because he's the only one that accomplished anything.
Well, let me give you an example.
What do you think Josh from Florida thinks about Rudy Giuliani?
Well, I guess if he's a Huckabee man, he doesn't like him for whatever his reasons are.
I don't know what his reasons are, but...
You know, I think the problem, I think the personality issue may be a bigger issue.
Some personal foibles may be a bigger issue for Rudy.
He did go to court to the Supreme Court to fight the line item veto.
He did court.
Because he said that was his responsibility too, with the people of New York City.
Your responsibility is to bring back all the larges you can from Washington.
His responsibility was to bring back what was owed to the people of New York City.
He wouldn't be doing his duty for the people that elected him if he didn't do that.
Well, maybe that's the same.
That's why the rules handed to you.
And if the rules handed to you say this is what you deserve and you're not getting it, and your tax-paying citizens you govern know that they're owed that, you have to make sure they get that.
That doesn't even necessarily mean that you agree.
What happens if every particular official elected to any office thinks the people ought to, by God, get what they deserve?
Isn't that why we're in the mess we're in, Jackie?
Everybody thinks they've got something coming to them?
And we've got two senators running for president, and people don't seem to look at them and say, you're part of the problem.
You're the reason we're in this mess.
How do you view Rudy's position on Second Amendment issues?
Second Amendment issues, I think that he had to take those issues from where he governed, which was a city that was out of control.
At the point when he took over, the drive-by shootings were killing children just walking down the street.
And I think that he had a very different outlook because he had to try and get away from the people.
And why didn't he campaign in Iowa?
Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, take a breath for crying out loud.
You ought to be running, not Rudy.
Why didn't he run in Iowa and New Hampshire more vigorously then?
Because he knows the people there have a very bigoted outlook about the Northeast, about people from New York City, and perhaps even about people with vowels on the end of their names.
So he figured he'd just bypass that.
Here we go.
We can't get out from under.
Jackie, thanks.
But we are drifting ever so steadily into identity politics here.
I want an Italian.
I want a Christian.
I want an Hispanic.
I don't know.
I'm just looking for an American president.
Jackie, thanks for checking in.
Let's take a quick pause and come back with more right after this on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Let us just disabuse ourselves of this identity politics.
I mean, the Democrats do that.
They have this categorical representation.
You can only vote for me because of this and this and this.
Let's talk about issues.
That's the conservative way in all of this.
So Rush will be back tomorrow to do just that and to tell you about the New Hampshire primary results.
Then it's on to Michigan, South Carolina in a very, very interesting year for all things political right here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I'm Jason.
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