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Jan. 15, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:26
January 15, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Greetings to you music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists all across the fruited plain, the award-winning Thrill Pact, ever-exciting, increasingly popular Rush Limbaugh program here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Telephone number, if you'd like to join us, 800-282-2882.
And the email address is a relatively new one, L. Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
We have not established contact with Newt Gingrich.
We gave him a number to call, and we're calling him now to see if we can locate him.
While we're trying that, let me add one thing.
We've been talking about the uncivil war in the Democrat Party that's going on with Uncle Bill foot soldiers out there doing their best to destroy Obama.
Here is why Democrats are scared about Obama.
We had a caller from Missouri wanted to know why we have.
Okay, we got Newt.
Let me just make this point.
We'll get to Newt here in just a second.
If Obama succeeds, number one, power will no longer be the official black leaderships to grant.
They will have had nothing to do with Obama seeking and winning the White House.
So power is not theirs to grant.
But in the longer term, the quotas, quota think and so forth, that all good blacks are interchangeable would also be blown sky high.
But it would also prove the country's not racist, even though I don't think it needs to be proven, but it would prove that.
And that means no more need for racial justice.
It'd do a real damage to the race industry of the Reverend Jackson and Reverend Sharpton in this country.
All right, Newt Gingrich, nice to have you with us on the program.
I'm sorry we had the problem establishing contact with you.
No, it's great to be with you.
How are you doing?
I'm fine and dandy.
We need to straighten this out because from what you've said since Sunday, I don't think we're that far apart on things.
But when I heard you say the Reagan era is over, and then you confirmed that again today on Fox this morning, I had a reaction to that that I wanted to explain to you because I don't think the Reagan era is anything other than conservatism.
And I don't think conservatism is over.
I don't think it's finished.
Well, now, look, we're old friends and we've been in a lot of good fights on the same side for a long time.
If you mean by Reaganism conservatism as a philosophy, it's not only not over, it is timeless, it is enduring, and it is the core organizational principles for a successful country.
So I couldn't agree with you more.
But why has it been abandoned then?
Why is it not to be found in our campaign except with maybe one candidate?
I think a couple of reasons.
And this is part of what I was trying to get at.
I mean, I don't know how you feel with this, but I think people who try to use Reagan as a mantra rather than as a mentor make a huge mistake.
When somebody stands there and prattles on and says, oh, I'm really for Reagan.
I really love Reagan.
You say, fine.
So what would you do about our energy policy?
And I tend to agree with you.
There are sound, free market, incentive-based entrepreneurial models that will fix almost everything that's wrong in this country today.
But I don't hear these guys out there saying that.
And I think we need in 2008 the same kind of commitment to solving problems.
And this is the one place where maybe you and I do have a slight disagreement here, but I just find it very intriguing because Reagan back in 1966, when he was first running for governor, made the case that it is the job of elected officials to think through, or candidates for election, to think through how to solve problems.
Reagan said he gave a speech on the creative society.
He said, public officials are elected primarily for one purpose, to solve public problems.
Now, that's what I was trying to get at.
We need a 2008 agenda that is as bold for us as Reagan was in 1975 at CPAC.
We need a willingness to be either for a flat tax as an optional approach or something like the fair tax.
We need a willingness to say, if you're really serious about getting energy independence, how fast can we start building nuclear power in a big way?
We need a willingness to break out of the bureaucracy, whether it's the education bureaucracy that's failing in Detroit or, frankly, the Department of Education bureaucracy that's failing in Washington.
And I think there are a number of steps we can take that suddenly become a 21st century conservatism with 21st century solutions.
And that's why I wrote real change.
I mean, I wanted to put an entire book full of ideas that allow people to look and realize that we have, from Social Security personal savings accounts to abolishing the capital gains tax to an entire array of changes, including taking on the problems of places like Detroit, which I think are symbols of how government destroys the future for its own citizens.
Well, precisely.
But in the litany that you just went through, the one thing that was missing to me and the one thing that the thing that I most took from Ronald Reagan was that he understood that it's the people who make this country work, not politicians, not elected officials.
They get in the way.
And the thing about Reaganism that's inspiring to me is that he went and told people, look at this, you can do.
We are America.
Shining City on the Hill.
And all he motivated.
He was inspirational.
He didn't say, I'm going to do that.
He had three legs to his stool.
He's going to beat the communists in the Cold War.
He's going to cut taxes and rebuild the military.
He kept it very simple, and he delivered on all three things.
But he led a movement, Newt.
Every speech he made, he was telling people what conservatism is.
We don't have that anymore.
We've got people running away from it.
And when you say that the era of Reagan is over, people are going to get, I mean, the Democrats never say the era of FDR is over, that the Great Society is over.
They never say that the era of the war on poverty is over.
We never hear about the Churchill era being over.
What replaced Reaganism if it's over?
Nothing has.
That's right.
I think that the challenge is, Rush, and maybe you and I just disagree.
I think the challenge is for our generation to come up with a platform that is as bold, a set of solutions that are as bold as Reagan was in 1979, 1980.
And, you know, Reagan didn't go around and say, here's what Eisenhower would have done.
He didn't go around and say, here's what Goldwater would have done.
He went around and he said, look, here are the core unchanging principles.
Freedom works.
Bureaucracy strangles.
Lower taxes give you more freedom and give you more choices.
You're better at creating jobs than government is.
And he walked through a series of things like this, and then he turned those into very specific, very practical programs.
And maybe part of what I was trying to suggest on Sunday is, and again, this is why I wrote Real Change, and this is why I've spent the last few months trying to build American solutions as a real movement.
I don't sense, and I don't mean this as an attack on these guys.
They're all hardworking.
They all mean well.
But I don't sense any of these candidates out there right now have a firm and clear grip in the way that Reagan did in 79, 80.
I mean, you knew by then, because he had matured since the 1964 speech.
He'd had 16 years to think this through.
And he really had a program, and working with Ed Fulner at Heritage and others, he really developed a momentum that significantly moved America back towards a more conservative society and away from where Johnson and Carter and the welfare state had tried to take us.
No question about it.
And by the way, when I say Reaganism and we need to go back to it, I'm not talking about reliving the 80s.
I'm talking about applying the existing core principles of conservatism because they work every time they tried to the existing problems that we have today.
You said on Stephanopoulos' show on Sunday, I'm going to have to paraphrase because I don't have the transcript in front of me, but you said something, if you were a candidate, I think you were speaking as a candidate, I need to find a way to see to it you don't need as much home heating oil.
That sounds like the way liberals talk to people, telling government's going to, I'm going to find a way so you don't need so much home heating oil.
And my reaction to that was, where's the concept of growth?
You know, conservation is all well and good, but it's not going to grow us anything, and it's not going to expand the economy.
Plus all this environmental stuff related to climate change is a bit of a hoax, and everybody's jumping on board this bandwagon.
Senator McCain is making it a central part of his campaign.
And all these guys seem to want to use the offices of big government to make people think that they don't have to do anything for themselves.
They have to sit around and just wait for these problems to be solved and things are going to be hunky-dory.
Well, let me stick with the one you just mentioned because it's an important one.
Well, we suggest we have a section called the Platform of the American People.
And these are all ideas, by the way, that have a majority Democrat, majority Republican, and majority of Independent support.
We say flatly, entrepreneurs are more likely to solve America's energy and environmental problems than bureaucrats.
If we use technology, innovation, and incentives, we do not need to raise taxes to clean up our environment.
We talk about the notion, for example, and I don't know if you'd agree or not, but we support giving tax credits to companies that cut carbon emissions as an incentive to cut pollution.
We then go on to say that we ought to build more nuclear power plants.
We go on to talk about the idea of developing more oil refineries in the United States.
And we also say that we ought to look seriously at drilling for oil offshore and lay out the notion that it's a little bit irrational for us to be relying on Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran and Russia while blocking ourselves from even knowing whether or not offshore we have enough oil and natural gas not to need to rely on these guys.
I mean, I think if you look at the platform of the American people in here, I'll bet you agree with 95% of it.
I probably would, but the thing about dependence on foreign oil, there are a lot of myths about that.
Our number one importer, we import most from Canada.
Number two is Mexico.
We're not totally dependent on Venezuela or the Saudis.
There's so many myths about this.
The carbon mess.
Newt, this country's being sold down the river on a hoax on this carbon dioxide.
You and I exhale it.
There's no way we can cut that back.
It's not a pollutant.
This is a mechanism whereby liberals want to grow government and have people with less freedom.
And I don't hear freedom inspiration being talked about in this campaign.
That's what Reaganism is to me.
And it's not being discussed.
We have too many Republicans running away from it as though they're afraid of it.
He won two landslides.
It led you to capturing the House of Representatives in a huge landslide.
And everybody wants to abandon it and apply it, apply policy today based on the liberals setting the table.
So we're reacting to what liberals want to do.
If they say we got an energy problem, okay, we have to admit that and come up with a better plan.
Instead of telling the American people, look, oil is the engine of freedom.
It is and always will be.
We're not running out of it.
Get used to it.
The price of gas has gone up $2.80 in 40 years.
Stop complaining.
Instead, we want to respond to all these complaints, and we want to, because the liberals do, we're trying to outliberal liberals.
We got candidates thinking they can win the presidency by picking off a couple liberals in New Hampshire, a couple liberals in Pennsylvania, California.
That's not the way Reagan did this.
You go to the country and you tell the American people they're the ones that make it work.
You tell them how great they can be, that they're better than they even know they are.
None of this is in our campaign right now, and it's frustrating as hell.
Well, listen, I agree with you.
It's frustrating, and I think we ought to be much more aggressive in taking them on directly.
And one of the places I take them on directly is what government has done to destroy Detroit and to cripple Michigan.
I mean, you're having a primary today in a state which is having an artificial recession caused by the state legislature and the governor raising taxes and driving business out of state.
And destroying the auto industry.
Newt, there are a couple people in this campaign.
If they win, California is just an example of what this whole country is going to end up being.
I think that's exactly right.
And part of what I'm worried about, and I'm very clear about this in real change, is I am very worried about the degree to which, if you look at Sacramento and you look at Albany, you have cities where the governors preside, but the interest groups govern.
And the truth is, Arnold Schwarzenegger lost his effort to try to change California when the unions beat him in the series of initiatives.
And as a result, he has since basically compromised with the people who beat him.
Got to take a quick break.
Can you hang on for a couple more minutes?
If not, no big deal.
No, no, but listen, I'd be glad to come back sometime, and I'd love to keep talking with you, okay?
Okay.
Thanks.
Does that mean you're going or staying?
No, I've got to run on that.
But I'll give you a call back.
All right.
Thanks for the time.
We'll be back and continue here, folks, right after this.
Hi, welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network.
Thanks to Newt Gingrich for joining us today.
Look, folks, and I want to tell all the rest of you out there that are just getting in on this, the reason that we don't cite Eisenhower.
You know, you don't hear us talking, we need to go back to the Ike era.
And we never say we need to go back to the Nixon era.
And we never say we need to go back to the Ford era.
We don't cite those three because they were not consistent.
They were not principled conservatives in the way Reagan was.
The mistake that people are making, I think, they think that people like me are worshiping a cult of personality with Ronald Reagan, when in fact, those of us who view Reagan the way I do stress conservative principles and the success that comes with it.
I mean, it's fine and dandy to come up with scores of proposals and to have policy this and policy that for dealing with various issues.
But that only scratches the surface.
A list of policies to take to the American people without a core principled underpinning to justify those policies and to explain why they will work is senseless.
To get into a policy contest with the Democrats, okay, here's their health care plan.
Well, here's ours.
And we end up reacting to what theirs is.
We think we've got to come up with a health care plan because they are saying we need health care, universal coverage.
Rather than argue the merits of their proposal, we make the mistake of running around and coming up with an alternative.
It has a little conservatism in it, but it really is nothing more than an attempt to stay in the game with the rules and the terms defined by the Democrats and the liberals.
And frankly, this is what the campaign has been, and it's frustrating as all get out to me.
I mean, you can't find one shred of conservatism in the amnesty bill, for example.
There wasn't one conservative point philosophy in that at all.
It was pure 100% liberalism.
The Democrats were engaging in an amnesty bill to destroy the Republican Party.
And Republicans, for some blind reason, were going along with it.
A laundry list of policies, folks, without a fundamental theme is just that, a long list of policies.
Reagan wasn't a policy wonk.
He was an idea guy.
Policies and ideas are two different things.
Policies emanate from government.
Ideas are what you take to people.
And they hear and process the ideas, and then things happen.
When the American people make things happen, capitalism, the American people engaging in commerce, that's the single greatest agent of change in this country, not what happens in Washington.
Well, they can change things, but it's not great.
Nobody's out there saying we should continue to fight the Cold War and the Soviets, but we do have another war, and we can't even get everybody to admit that we've got a war against militant jihadists of the Islamo-fascist stripe.
The era, the Reagan era, is not over because conservatism is not over.
I mean, if the Reagan coalition is dead, what replaced it?
Somebody tell me that nothing has replaced it, and that's why so many people are scratching their heads, why so many people are a little nervous because there isn't any real leadership out there that causes people, inspires people to get behind it and go, rah-rah, make certain things happen.
That's what's missing.
Reaganism is leadership.
Reaganism is conservatism.
It's not a personality cult.
Vincent in Rhode Island, great to have you on the program, sir.
Thank you for calling.
Rush, this is a tremendous honor.
I've been a fan for years, a big conservative raised in this liberal state here.
I just wanted to comment that I think what Newton kind of means that I don't think Reaganism is dead as much as it needs to evolve, maybe to encompass some of today's issues that weren't around back in the day.
You know, some of the things we're going through today.
Wrong, wrong.
They're always around.
Oh, they're always around.
The biggest enemy, the biggest enemy we face in this country is liberalism.
Oh, conservatism is the answer to it.
The second biggest enemy we face is ignorance.
It's the most expensive thing we pay for in this country.
Conservatism fixes ignorance.
We have different events happening, but we don't have to adapt conservatism.
Do you hear the liberals talking about, well, you know, the era of liberalism is over.
We got to adapt.
They talk about maybe appealing to the values of voters after they lose an election, but they don't change anything.
And we never hear them talking about it.
Nobody ever suggests that they do.
We're always being told, abandon this Reagan stuff, Rush.
It's old hat.
It's not old hat.
It's freedom.
And back to the phones, people, as I say, have been patiently waiting here.
This is Stephanie, Columbus, Georgia.
Hi, Stephanie.
Welcome.
Hi, Rush.
How are you?
Fine.
Thank you.
Good.
I want to tell you, I just was in the car and I was listening to your conversation with Nate, and it got me so cranked up.
I think that's what, but I think that's what people need to hear.
Everybody's too middle right now.
I agree that we're trying to appease liberals and just kind of step over to the edge a little bit to let's appease everybody.
And that's the wrong direction.
And what you said, I feel like is exactly it sounded presidential.
It's what people need to hear.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's dead on.
I appreciate that.
You're very kind, and I appreciate that very favorable review.
Hey, let me ask you one thing if it's okay.
Sure.
I don't know a whole lot.
I mean, I follow this campaign.
I follow politics with my son for several years now, but I don't know really a whole lot.
I'm totally against Hillary.
I don't really want a woman president anyway.
Maybe Condi Rice is someone I would consider, but I don't know a whole lot about this Obama guy.
Do you know?
What do you know about this?
I mean, not to.
I know all I need to know about Obama.
Obama would wreck the country.
He's a liberal.
You know, this stuff wrecked.
I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy.
And I'm sure that he's well-intentioned.
And I'm sure that he believes what he believes, and he's just wrong.
There's not a dime's worth of difference policy-wise between him or Hillary or Edwards.
They're all liberals.
We know what liberals are going to do.
They're going to raise taxes.
They're going to take away your freedom.
They're going to put thermostats in your house and control them from the utility company.
They're going to tell you what kind of car you can and can't drive.
They're going to tell you what food you can and can't eat.
They're going to take away liberty under the guise of protecting you and making you safe and secure.
I don't care where he went to school.
I don't care who his parents are.
I don't care any of that stuff.
It doesn't matter to me.
He is what he is.
He's a liberal.
He's a big government liberal.
He doesn't trust the individual to make the right decisions in life to enjoy it.
He believes that the problem, the central problem in America is inequality, like all liberals believe.
And their solution to inequality is not raise people up, but go punish the achievers.
Screw that.
Achievement needs to be motivated, inspired, and rewarded, not punished.
That's all I need to know about Obama.
John in Pinehurst, North Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Man, Russ, I never thought I'd be picking a fight with a guy that I've listened to since I left the Army active duty in 1989, but sometimes, boy, you confuse me like you've never confused me before.
Well, let me see if I can straighten it out.
Well, I've listened to you for that long.
I remember once I talked to you, how many calls do you get from Pinehurst, North Carolina?
I mentioned to you that you and Bush were on the green that day on Pinehurst number one.
I know that you were there.
Remember that day?
Well, I played well that day.
So did he.
There you go.
And I invited the lasagna.
The wife makes a lasagna.
She's Italian, but you never showed up.
What the heck, Morpher me.
Well, I had to skate out of there.
I had to get back after golf.
There you go.
Look, the auto industry was not.
I own an automotive recruiting company.
For 13 years, I've worked this industry.
The government did not destroy the auto company like you said a few minutes ago.
The auto industry was destroyed by exactly what Dick Lutz said.
He's the product czar at General Motors.
He's the guy that's really in charge of styling for all the vehicles, and I believe he's former president or head of Chrysler Corporation.
But Lutz said in the 80s, 4GM and Chrysler, Chrysler made junk.
And I mean, they made junk.
I'm not denying that.
I'm not.
Look at, well, I've talked about this.
Especially General Motors.
They had Chevrolet, they had Cadillac, and every model in these brands looked alike.
They just did different pricing, a little different trim.
They were making cars that nobody wanted.
But they're coming back.
But one more thing.
Go back to 30 years ago when CAFE standards were initiated.
If General Motors, in fact, where I think, I'm not calling you a hypocrite, but darn it, you really are missing it from a Republican.
And I don't want to be called a seminar caller by you because for 20 years I lived by the Republican Party, and today you could hold a gun to my head, and I'm not voting for a Republican.
I've never in my life voted for a Democrat, and I don't want to begin.
But the Republicans.
I understand that.
And I also know Bob Lutz, who you're talking about about General Motors.
I met him last May.
I met with him.
I've known him a long time, and I talked about these problems.
And believe me, he has a different story than you do about this.
But that's this.
A lot of people aren't going to vote Republican this time around, and I understand why, but that's not why you called.
But here's, well, that's kind of it, and here's the last thing.
When a man of your wealth, yes, your wealth, no matter what happens, you can afford it.
What about guys like me out there?
I've had years where I've made big six-figure and years that I haven't.
And all in all, me and my wealth are fully financially stable.
But do you know how expensive life is and how much it costs to pay for health care?
And why?
I damn well do because I do pay for it myself.
Let me tell you something about your wealth.
No, no, no.
Let me tell you something against about this wealth business.
I've been broke twice in my life.
When I was 31 years old, I was making $17,000 a year.
I have been fired, I forgot how many times, seven times.
So I've been there.
This constant refrain that I'm out of touch is just bogus.
That's another thing that really bugs me, this movement within the Republican Party to claim that the middle class is in great suffering and pain.
I understand.
If you own a house and your value of your equity in your house is plummeting that you're worried.
And I understand that totally.
What you need to hear is the truth of why it happened so that you can make plans in the future.
These are cycles and everybody and every country and every society goes through them.
And ours are not nearly as bad as people around the rest of the world are.
I know healthcare is expensive.
That's why I'm focused not on making it more expensive, but making it cheaper.
And how you do that?
You do it with conservatism.
I'm by no means out of touch on this.
If the healthcare industry were priced, like every other industry is, on the patient's ability to pay, then we'd fix the problem.
And that's the direction we have to head in.
But if we're going to keep this notion that everybody's entitled to have whatever they want medically paid for by their neighbors, then we are finished.
We are finished as a country.
We are finished as a society.
You can talk about my wealth, but let me tell you something, sir.
I don't depend on anybody else for anything.
And it was one of my objectives when I grew up.
I didn't want to be obligated.
I didn't want to be dependent.
I didn't want to owe anybody.
I don't buy into insurance plans because it's a hassle.
Now, I know a lot of people don't have that freedom.
I used to not have that freedom either, but I do now because I worked for it.
And if I can do it, a lot more people can do it than think they can.
And that's conservatism again.
People are much better than they know.
They have much more potential than they know.
But when you've got a Democrat Party and a movement telling them they suck, telling them that they can't get anywhere because the deck's stacked against them and the people stacking the deck are Republicans and so forth, then you are diminishing the country.
You're diminishing the future and you're destroying people's lives.
And that's what today's liberalism and Democrat Party is doing.
You want to fix health care?
You make it like buying a hotel room.
We got all kinds of choices.
You can go to a Motel 6.
You can go to a Rich Carlton.
Depends on how much you want to pay.
Why is health care any different?
Healthcare is different because the government's been involved in it for so long.
They're trying to make people dependent on government and the people in government for power, for power.
And wait till they start doing that with other businesses too, with energy and everything else.
We're faced with real, real challenges here.
And the debate over health care is not how we Republicans can best make sure everybody gets insured, because that's just accepting the Democrat proposal and their position.
Our target ought to be how do we make this reasonable?
How do we reduce costs?
And there are countless proposals out there.
Same thing with public schools.
Most people despise them.
Most people, particularly in urban neighborhoods, would love to get their kids out of these rotten schools.
And every time they have a chance to send them to a private school, they jump at it.
Who stands in the way?
The Democrat Party, the teachers' unions, who are interested in maintaining substandard schools with substandard education so they will have jobs.
I'm not the problem, sir.
I'm not the one standing in anybody's way.
I'm trying to tell people how to get out of the rut.
I'm trying to show them that they can.
I'm trying to demonstrate that it's possible.
And it's possible if you understand certain conservative principles that are indeed rooted in freedom, self-reliance, and achievement.
Not whining, not moaning, and not complaining.
Because you can whine, moan, and complain all you want.
And then what are you going to do after that?
Wait for somebody to come in and tell them, tell you that they're sorry?
And offer you some solution to it.
The solution of the healthcare mess is just out there, same as the solution of public schools, vouchers.
People are spending tax, property, tax money through the nose to prop up a worthless education system.
Let them take the money that's being taken from them, give them control over how to spend it on their own kids' education, and you watch how it changes.
Ditto healthcare.
The solutions to the problems that ail this country are found in capitalism and the free market, the true agent of change, not from Washington with people devising policies rooted in nothing fundamental.
Policies that are simply designed to make people think Washington cares and Washington's doing something.
Well, how many years have you heard politicians run for office, whining and moaning and telling you they hear you on the mess that is healthcare?
The Clintons in the 90s.
We had 37 million uninsured.
We're going to fix this.
Today it's 47 million uninsured.
They tell us a lot of that people are choosing to be uninsured because they're young and they want to spend their money on other things.
But that's not good enough for Democrats.
They're going to be mandating coverage for everybody if they get their way.
But Helma, has the problem been solved?
Or is it getting worse?
The healthcare problem in this country is getting worse while people are voting for people who are making it worse because they hear these people saying, I'm going to fix it.
Well, the people in charge of fixing it have no interest in it getting fixed.
Because if it gets fixed, you don't need them.
You can rely on yourself.
This healthcare debate is one of the most infuriating things I witness every day because I got so sick and tired of people buying hook line and sinker a lie.
I'm going to get everybody covered.
I'm going to make sure everybody has health insurance in this country.
We're going to make sure it's not just the rich.
It doesn't happen, does it?
When you have government telling private industry how to operate, this is exactly what you get.
And it's going to happen in energy.
It's going to hit, it's already happening in a number of other industries too.
It's happening in the auto industry.
You bring the auto industry up.
I'll tell you what, Mr. Lutz told me, he can't make the cars he wants to make because these cafe standards are frustrating as hell.
And I said, well, why don't you fight?
Why don't you guys, why don't all you auto companies get together and fight this hoax?
He said, because we got to give the customers what they want.
I said, what do you mean?
Well, customers believe this stuff.
That's right.
The American people have bought hookline and sinker this hoax of man-made global warming.
Carbon dioxide, which we exhale, is a pollutant.
How stupid can anybody be to believe this?
The good Lord created us.
Are we pollutants?
We are just, that's what the Democrats and liberals and environmentalist wackos want you to believe.
The very fact of our existence pollutes the planet.
So we are sinning and we have to be made to pay.
And what's that?
Higher taxes, more liberals in power telling us how we must atone.
Well, screw that and screw them.
You want to revive the auto industry?
Let people who know how to make cars people want build them.
We'll be back in just a second.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution, Rush Limbaugh.
And back to the phones.
Greg in San Antonio, you're next.
Great to have you here.
What in the cornbread hell is wrong with Newt Gingrich?
Did I just hear him say cutting carbon emissions?
You heard him say that, yes.
I mean, I thought for years that this man was the anointed leader of the movement, and I got to wonder where the hell he's coming from.
Well, that, I think, is in the call.
That's what fired me up.
That's when the Blood started circulating off at.
Well, I'll tell you, look, I don't know how to.
I didn't have a chance to ask him.
That was the only thing I picked up on, and I heard it, and I said, Has he been listening?
Has someone been talking to him?
What in the world is going on, Rush?
I got to believe that.
No, I'll tell you what.
Look, here's what it is.
Well, this is a guess.
I'm going to tell you what.
It's the same thing, the same story I just told you about the auto industry.
American people are customers.
And the American people want cars that don't pollute.
And they want cars that get good mileage.
That's understandable.
But it's rooted in the fact that they've been sold and they have purchased a bill of goods on a climate change hoax to the point that they think the car they're buying is going to save the planet rather than being something they genuinely want.
Okay, you look at a guy like Newt or anybody like him.
He looks out, he surveys the American people, and wow, these people really buying this global warming stuff.
And they're voters.
And democracy happens.
You know, if a majority of people are made to believe that global warming is being caused by them, and you have politicians who want to get elected by them, then you respond to what those people think instead of, instead of telling them how wrong they are and trying to educate them.
And this is what Newt Gingrich did starting in the 1980s.
I haven't changed.
You know, I have remained rock ribs steady in my beliefs, principles, conservatism, and other things.
But politicians look out and they see people buying this stuff and they say, okay, well, I better come up with a carbon reduction proposal because this is what people care about.
Yeah, but here's no, I'm not saying I pander to people, but politicians do.
They'll say whatever they have to get elected.
And if a majority of people think that the sky is green, then the politician is going to tell them they're right somehow rather than educate them.
It's a really frustrating thing.
Now, you know, I can't compare myself to politician Mr. Snurdly because getting an audience and keeping it is different than getting votes.
The countryside is strewn with the carcasses of media people who thought they could get elected or anything.
I have no desire to get elected or anything.
I don't want to run.
I don't want to ask anybody for a dime.
If I were to campaign, but that's beside the point.
I'm just telling you, we go back to Reaganism.
Back to conservatism.
Conservatism doesn't bend in shape.
It remains rock steady and it tells people what is.
But they're just, I don't know, guts are in short supply on the American political scene these days.
Sad thing to note, but it seems to be true.
Now, the staff on the other side of the glass is standing and applauding.
Sad that the program has to come to a screeching halt, ladies and gentlemen.
Business commitments following the program necessitate that.
Plus, of course, the normal time schedule and the programming format.
It's been fun today.
We'll be back with analysis commentary of the Michigan Prime Minister.
It is Michigan, right?
Yeah.
Michigan tonight.
We'll keep our fingers crossed up there.
See what happens.
Have a great one, and see you soon, 21 hours.
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