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Jan. 23, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:17
January 23, 2008, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Yeah, I know.
I'm just looking here at the audio soundbite roster.
I'm thinking.
Well, we don't have any McCain sound bites here today.
Looks like I will have to voice some McCain sentiments.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh here behind a golden EIB microphone, the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, your highly trained broadcast specialist leading the way.
Cowering to no one in the corner or anywhere else.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, and the email address is L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Before moving on to the Republican side of the ledger here, I've I got some emails here at the top of the hour, and uh during it's been happening during the breaks during the whole program.
Rush, why why why are you so certain of Mrs. Clinton would never choose Obama, even if she does hate him, as you said, as her vice presidential nominee.
Okay.
Let me let me explain it this way.
The thinking uh on the part of people who think that'd be a great ticket is that, wow, look at this first black vice presidential, first woman.
Why they got it all covered out there.
Well.
And all of this is rooted in the notion that uh everybody always every time you get down to a uh presidential race, everybody gets focused on the female vote.
Everybody always does.
If you look, if you look at the election returns from most of the presidential races, you'll find that it really is whoever gets a majority of the male vote that wins the presidency.
There are some exceptions to it, but it's generally a fairly good rule to follow.
It's just not talked about much because it doesn't fit the drive-by template of things.
Now, let's let's let's speak hypothetically for just a second.
Let's say that Senator McCain is the nominee of the Republican Party.
Uh and I don't care who his vice presidential nominee is, let's say he picks Perot.
Pick any, I don't know, pick put anybody on there with him as vice presidental nod.
So you have McCain and whoever against Hillary and Obama.
The reason this will never happen is because what do men do then?
Particularly the Reagan Democrat white men, what do they do then?
Hillary and Obama or McCain and whoever.
Remember the Clinton Southern strategy is to lose South Carolina to a huge black turnout for Obama and then to run around to the rest of the states and whisper, of course he won.
Look at all the blacks there.
Which is supposed to galvanize the whites in the rest of these states.
That's I'm telling you, there's a race war going on.
The Clintons are practicing this racial division in their own party like they are experts at it, and they have been ever since they were in Arkansas.
Let's take another look at it.
I've had actually, you will not believe me on this, but I have had some black conservative friends of mine who are conservative before they are black in their minds, tell me that if it's Obama on the T, if Obama gets a nomination, uh regardless who his V is.
If Obama gets a nomination, and McCain gets a Republican nomination, these black conservatives who are conservative first are telling me they're gonna vote Obama.
And when he told me that, I said, I do not believe you.
And you know what they said?
Well, believe it, brother.
Because either way the country's gonna get destroyed, and I just soon the black liberal be credited with it.
And I say, whoa!
Whoa, back off.
Well, I guess I was told it why.
By the same token, if you have Hillary at the top of the ticket in McCain on the Republican side, and you got Obama's the VEP, I'm telling you that that's why it's never gonna happen.
Because despite all this talk of the Democrat Party about wanting the women's vote and so forth, uh their strategy in uh South Carolina indicates that they know that they're gonna need a large white vote.
And they're also gonna need the black vote come November after they've done their best to make them mad and divide them during the primaries, as they're in the process here of destroying Obama.
Now let's move on to the Republican side.
Uh in in getting started, not this is not really about a candidate.
Uh Many of you people have heard me speak glowingly and uh and favorably, and I will continue to do so, by the way.
This is just a blip here of Jim Garrity at the National Review Online.
Now, Jim got started in a blog at National Review Online in 2004 with uh his blog was called a carry spot.
Uh and it was uh TKS, and it was uh chronicling the comings and goings of the haughty uh John Kerry who served in Vietnam.
And it was fabulous.
Garrett's written a couple books, we recommended them here, so I'll be Garrett's been on the show.
But he's got he's got a post here today.
He hit the name of his blog now is the campaign campaign roll.
Hang on, the campaign spot.
Um I'll get the name of it here in just a minute.
Uh and this is what he writes about McCain.
How skeptical on climate change can the Republican Party be in 2008?
One of the arguments being deployed against McCain is that he's unrepresentative of the party on climate change and global warming.
Robert Tresansky argues this.
The biggest problem for Republicans with McCain's candidate is his stance on global warming.
Uh uh it's one of many.
It's not the biggest, it's just one of many, and they're equally big.
But I now continue.
McCain has been an active promoter of the global warming hysteria for which he has been lauded by radical environmentalists, and he is a co-sponsor of a leftist scheme for energy rationing.
The McCain Lieberman claim climate stewardship act would impose an arbitrary arbitrary cap on America's main sources of energy production to be enforced by a huge network of federal taxes and regulations.
Indeed, writes Mr. Garrity, it irked me greatly when on a recent conference call, McCain spoke as if there was no difference in drilling and war and drilling in the Grand Canyon.
Mr. Garrity now continues.
I don't buy into the global warming hype, but that doesn't mean I want Republican candidates fighting an uphill battle, trying to convince the public that it's all a hoax.
I like a lot what Jim Manzi says.
Get past the argument of whether it's happening, and get into the debate over what to do with it, and put GOP support for innovation up against Democrat carbon taxes, and throw in some mockery of prominent Democrats' blatant hypocrisy on the issue.
Rush Limbaugh is the king Leonidas of the conservative movement, but I'm struck by how regularly he jokes about the concept of global warming.
A lot of his radio talk show brethren are in the same boat, saying day after day, hey, cold weather today, so much for global warming.
The problem is they're only preaching skepticism to the converted.
The independents and the centrists and the soccer moms, and everybody whose vote is needed in the general is already convinced it's happening.
Whenever there's a big storm or unusual weather, they buy into it.
If you put the finest skeptical scientists and researchers in the competitive enterprise institute, the AEI, into a room with a couple hundred Americans, let them talk till they're blue in the face.
I'm not sure how much you would move the dials.
So the argument being advanced here by Mr. Garrity is don't argue whether it's true or not.
Accept the Democrat premise that it is true.
Accept the liberal premise that it is true and come up with better ideas.
This is like telling a defense lawyer that if you know that the jury thinks your client is guilty, just accept it and bargain for a lesser sentence.
That's not what good defense lawyers do.
They try to persuade the jury that they are wrong if they think somebody's guilty.
Persuasion is uh uh one of the things I consider my business to be here is persuasion in a lot of ways, not just your thoughts on things, not just your opinions, But if something is genuinely a hoax, and if it's a liberal sponsored hoax,
and if its purpose is to expand the role of government at the expense of liberty, what is happening to us that we say go ahead and accept the premise and come up with better ideas to fix the problem when some of us are saying that the problem is manufactured and false.
Uh this this just stunned me.
And this helped me to understand all about where Gardy comes down to McCain.
I don't know that, but this is just it's so foreign to the way we go about doing what I've always thought conservatives were about.
I mean, let's accept every Democrat premise that the people already accept.
Let's accept that Walmart is bad for America.
Let's accept that oil companies are bad for America, and let's try to convince people we've got a better way of punishing them.
What is this?
And this dovetails, this is one of the problems that I I personally have with Senator McCain.
And this is one of the problems I have with any candidate who tries to claim to be conservative but isn't.
There are some basic elementary truths, ladies and gentlemen, about energy in this country.
A friend of mine sent me an email a couple couple days ago.
So I'm working on a documentary about our security and dependence on foreign sources of energy.
And I've heard you say some things that go against the grain, the conventional wisdom.
Could you briefly fill me in on what your thoughts are?
So I sat down, I was going to try to tell you a couple sentences, and I kept going and going and going.
And I think after the break, I will share the thoughts I shared with this person doing the documentary.
Now I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to, because I can do this because I have a Mac, but it's on my home computer.
So when it breaks, I'm gonna have to fire up back to my Mac, the screen sharing, I have to go there.
I will be able to call up my home computer on this machine as though it were right here.
I will get it, because I meant to print it out here, but I forgot to last night, and then I will do all this during the break.
All these windows people looking at, what do you mean, back to my Mac screen sharing?
What's that?
Get used to it.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, half my brain, tied behind my back just to make it fair.
All right, it has been advanced in conservative quarters that the argument over man-made global warming is lost, that the majority country accepts that it's happening, and therefore we conservatives should abandon the efforts to um argue the premise and persuade people that they're being lied to and that they're being hoaxed.
And so then what we ought to do is accept the premise because they do, and then come up with better solutions.
Here's a problem with that uh on this issue and a whole lot of others, but specifically to this issue, what of all of the tenets of the hoax of man-made global warming, what is the number one culprit?
No, no, no, no.
What's the number one culprit before you get to business, before you get to America, what's the number one culprit in man-made global warming?
Fossil fuels, oil, specifically oil, and then resulting from that the carbon footprint.
And then, of course, after that, then who uses more than anybody else us?
So the United States is third or fourth on the primary problem.
But in order to blame the U.S., you have to first find something else to blame.
In this case, it's oil.
Fossil fuels.
If you doubt me, and don't doubt me on this, but if you do, ask yourself a question.
Why is everybody running around with these maybe well-intentioned, but utterly misguided efforts to replace oil with what are the equivalent of a rubber bands, hybrid cars, uh windmills, biofuels.
It is time for a little dose of reality.
The fuel of the engine of economic growth and freedom worldwide is oil, OIL, and it will remain so for as far into the future as you can imagine.
Brazil, huge oil field found off Brazil, Mexico ditto.
The Chicoms are drilling off the coast of Cuba with the Cubans.
We can't.
But Russ, there's a security problem.
We can't depend on so much foreign oil.
Okay.
There is a little security issue here.
But I think even that is being hyped.
I had a story last week.
I never got to this, and I can't find it.
I've looked on both computers.
And I cannot find it.
It was the five myths about foreign oil dependence or something like that.
And it was excellent.
Do you know how much oil of the oil we import?
How much do we get from the Middle East?
33%.
The vast majority of our imported oil comes from friends.
Comes from Canada, comes from Mexico.
Now I think all of government is hyping the security issue because energy companies want it hyped because energy companies think that there's money in going green.
Because, as Mr. Garrity points out, so many Americans have bought into it.
So they manufacture a product, a car, whatever, and it's energies.
Wow, this company cares.
I love this company.
I'm going to buy this product.
Whoopy do.
And of course, what MIG Time contributors want, they usually get from their lobbyists and elected officials in Washington.
Despite the pipe dreams, ours is a world that runs on oil.
It always will.
And there Limbaugh, the coal plant, the coal plant are polluting the sky, they're destroying the country, they're destroying the world.
We're going to eliminate coal.
Fine.
There's one way to eliminate coal, nuclear power plant.
We can't go nuclear, Mr. Limbaugh, did you see the China thindrum?
Right.
We're not going to go nuclear because of a Jane Fonda movie.
So the reality is we're stuck with coal and we're stuck with this dependence for one reason.
The very people demanding that we go independent are denying our right and ability to do it.
The environmentalist wackos and the Democrat Party.
Not only do we import 65% of our oil.
Do you know that we import 13% of our refined gasoline now?
13% of all gasoline is imported because we don't have the refining capacity to handle it ourselves.
Security anybody?
No new refineries in 30 years.
We can't drill in the Gulf.
The Chicoms and the Cubans can.
The Mexicans can, the Brazilians can, but we can't.
We can't drill in a truly desolate moonscape place like Anwar because of the environmentalists.
So our security issues, folks, are self-imposed.
But our security issues do not result from our use of too much energy.
We are a growth people.
We are a growth economy.
The American people expect it, otherwise they wouldn't panic over recessions.
They expect us to grow.
They expect this economy to continue to provide higher wages, better products, and more opportunity.
The world demands this.
The world demands that we lead economically.
Look at the stock markets this week around the world.
When we were closed, they tanked.
It wasn't until our Federal Reserve got in the gear with some fixes here on the interest rates and everything got stabilized.
We are the economic stable stability of the entire world.
We need more energy, not less.
And sorry, folks, biofuels, windmills, hybrid cars, new light bulbs, a drop in the ocean.
Those are all conservation-oriented, which is fine, but that doesn't create growth.
What's happening here, and this is why we cannot accept the premise of left on this hoax.
People of the Madeline Albright persuasion want us to lose superpower status because as liberals they think our superpower status provides instability in the world.
They think we are the problem.
They think that we are hated because we're too big and powerful.
It's all related to this white guilt, this prosperous stuff.
They hated the Soviets tanking.
Two superpowers with stabilization to them.
Now they think we're hated and despised, we might be by fellow traveler dictators and commie SOBs, but the oppressed people of the world would give anything to live here, and when they get here, they expect the American dream as a possibility for them.
And energy is key to it.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I cannot accept the premise of global warming based in a hoax and based on false promises as well.
And yet propose better solutions.
The one solution, the primary solution, the hoaxers are proposing is to eliminate oil and fossil fuels.
Well, it's not possible.
It isn't going to happen.
And if it did, your life and mine would cease to exist as we know it.
We simply cannot grow.
We simply cannot live.
We simply cannot exist.
We simply cannot advance as we have been.
Do you wonder why?
Folks, do you go back and look at the 20th century?
You look at the 20th century compared to all the previous centuries of mankind.
It's not comparable.
The advance, the inventions, the techno, phone airplane, the jet engine, space travel, computers, what all of the I I mean, the list is so long I couldn't list them even if I could remember them all.
You'll go back to the 19th century and look at the progress, the 18th diddly squat.
What do you think one of the key elements was?
Discovery of oil might have anything to do with it, ladies and gentlemen.
The invention of the automobile might have anything to do with it.
And now they want us to go back to horse and buggy days with horse manure in the streets, you're worried about a loss of dirt with a horse manure in the streets, it's all gonna be dirt.
You can plant your craps right in the middle of the street, yip, yep, yep, yep, yahoo.
That's why I can't accept the premise, plus it's a lie.
I don't care.
The point is if people are being lied to and led down a primrose path on a hoax, they have to be told if you're responsible and you want to lead them.
And you add to this what I just said about these people who think that we in the United States are the problem.
We have too much energy, we steal too much of the world's energy, and we we oppress people around the world, and that's instability.
Our power makes the Chinese want to have nukes, and makes the Iranians want to have nukes, makes Russian want to put themselves back to.
We just we need we need to reduce our power, Mr. Limbaugh.
We really do.
We're causing the biggest threat in the faith of the history of the earth.
The oppressed people of the world want to get here.
The people who live here want an improved quality of life every year.
You know how I know this?
I know this because I see it.
And I, ladies and gentlemen, am immersed in reality.
I don't search for the deeper meaning of reality.
Reality's enough for me.
You start searching for the deeper meaning of reality, and you're gonna end up such a head case that you're not gonna be able to deal in reality at all because you're gonna think reality isn't reality, and everything's something underneath it that makes it real, and you're gonna be trying to find all this is a bunch of poppycock.
I hear parents worry that their kids' lives won't be better than theirs.
That's all I need to hear to know what people's expectations and demands are as Americans.
And adherence to the global warming hoax is not gonna provide that.
We need growth.
Economic, political, energetic, all of these things to provide the opportunity that America has always provided as growth, is led and must continue to be led by energy production and creation.
And not until we find something better than oil at what it does, should we get rid of it?
Would we would you get rid of your current Lexus or your Cadillac for a 1930s packard?
Would you get rid of it for a Model T as your primary car?
I'm not talking about collectors.
You know what I'm talking about.
Don't start playing games with me in there.
The free flow of oil, not ethanol.
The free flow of oil, not windmills, the free flow of oil, not solar panels.
The free flow of oil at market prices is the fuel of the engine of freedom and democracy.
The next time you're at a sporting event, and there's a flyby of military jets at about 500 feet above where you're sitting.
When you hear that roar go by, and you look up and you see what's producing that roar.
Understand that oil is producing that roar, refined as kerosene, Jet A, American ingenuity than inventing the jet plane and all that, but understand that the noise you hear in that flyby is the sound of your freedom.
And when I hear people come along who want to accept the notion that the hoax may be a hoax, but we gotta come up with a better way of fixing the hoax.
Russia, I thought you were going to be talking about Republicans.
I am.
Senator McCain is one of these people that believes in global.
I'm telling you what, some of the things that are in his in his global warming plan, caps on carbon.
This he has compared and war to the Grand Canyon, and war is a moonscape.
Every day people go to the Grand Canyon.
Nobody goes to Ann War.
I mean, they wouldn't play an NFL championship game at Anwar.
They would at Green Bay, but they wouldn't at An War, even if they had a field up there.
By the way, I found that story, Five Myths About Energy Independence.
It's from the Washington Post on January 23rd.
It's an op-ed piece.
It's by a guy named uh Robert Bryce.
Uh and he is uh fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, author of the forthcoming Gusher of Lies, The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence.
Here are the five myths that he tackles.
Energy independence will reduce or eliminate terrorism.
False.
A big push for alternative fuels will break our oil addiction.
False.
Give you an illustration.
The new energy bill requires the country produce 36 billion gallons of biofuels by the year 2022.
That sounds like a lot.
The United States uses more than 320 billion gasolines of uh gallons of oil per year, of which nearly 200 billion gallons are imported.
And they think 36 billion gallons of biofuels measured against 320 billion gallons of oil by the year 2022 is going to make a bit of difference.
It won't.
So what's the better idea than biofuels?
If that's the best idea that's out there.
And by the way, what's that doing to agriculture prices and the top soil and so forth?
The myth number three: energy independence will let America choke off the flow of money to nasty countries.
False.
Myth four, energy independence will mean reform in the Muslim world.
False.
Number five, energy independence will mean a more secure U.S. energy supply.
False.
Think back to 2005, after hurricanes ravaged a Gulf Coast, chewing up refineries as they went.
Several southeastern U.S. cities were hit with gasoline shortages.
Thankfully they were short-lived.
The reason imported gasoline from refineries in Venezuela, the Netherlands, and elsewhere.
Global economy.
Think global.
If you think that getting rid of fossil fuels is the way to save the planet.
It is, Wimboy.
It is.
Fossil fuels are destroying, they're polluting, and killing people.
Yeah.
Well, go back.
Where was it, Oklahoma when they lost power for a week?
Sub-zero temperature, sub-freezing temperature.
Ask them how they liked having no oil.
Ask them how they liked having no coal to power their it was the same effect as if there were no coal.
The power plants were producing power, but nobody could get it because the lines were down.
But that's what people wish to do.
Speaking of uh of Senator McCain, I want to go back, ladies and gentlemen, I want to reprise one of our parodies from the 2000 presidential primaries.
Senator McCain, uh, Governor George W. Bush campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination.
Uh, and we, a white comedian Paul Shanklin, created this.
A new California poll uh taken from uh or just after Fred Thompson's withdrawal from the Republican primary uh shows Mitt Romney is leading big over McCain in California when it comes to which candidate best represents the Republican Party.
It's a new California poll.
Romney leads McCain in California when it comes to which candidate best represents Republican Party.
This is after Fred Thompson uh pulled out.
Uh Romney also held a substantial lead in regard to which candidate best represents what the Republican Party stands for.
32% for Romney, 20% for McCain, 13% for Huckabee, uh, 10% for Giuliani.
This is after Fred Thompson pulls out.
Uh Romney getting tough in Boca Raton, Florida yesterday, became animated during a brief interview with the Palm Beach Post.
He was asked about a press release to McCain's campaign Monday that criticized job growth in Massachusetts under Romney's watch.
Romney said, What's his record, by the way?
What's McCain's record of job growth?
What's he done?
I think you have to have a record before you can criticize somebody else's.
Romney needs to continue to be able to nail that.
You know, this kind of thing uh the poor Obama needs to be doing, but this doesn't have it in him.
Uh so Romney's out there questioning McCain's record on job growth.
I think Fad Cochrane let me check this.
Yep, Fad Cochrane of Mississippi has just endorsed uh uh Romney.
Norman Schwartzkoff has endorsed McCain.
Now, Schwartzkopf lives here in Florida, and McCain is campaigning in Florida.
He's been in a panhandle, but he's here because the Florida primary is next Tuesday.
Now, McCain has been here and he's been he's been talking to the Cubans down in Miami.
But hey Castro, Castro's a slees bag, and don't worry about me, and don't worry about Castro.
Castro's getting up dead, whether I have anything to say about it or not.
But if I have a chance to say something about it, he's gone.
He got me.
So he's down there.
But here's what here's here's what I would like.
I'm I'm a Florida I'm a Florida registered Republican.
I'm gonna vote in a primary.
All right.
I say this to you as an average American citizen, not as a political commentator, and not as an advocate for anybody.
I'm gonna say this to you.
We got our primary here next Tuesday.
And it's a primary where independence can't vote on our primary, and no Democrats can vote on our primary.
It's only Republicans.
And just as I would say to Rudy Giuliani, Rudy, we've heard 9-11.
Time for some other things.
I would say to Senator McCain, Senator McCain, we know about your POW heroism.
We know about your stuff on the surge.
We know of your allegiance to the war in Iraq with President Bush.
We know all that.
I want to hear you talk about your immigration record, Senator McCain.
Uh I want to hear you talk about your record on free speech.
Meaningful campaign finance reform.
I'd like to hear what you think we should do with the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
I think people of Florida need to hear this.
Uh I want to hear from Senator McCain as a Republican primary voter his uh man-made global warming thoughts, his record, and what he intends to do to fix man-made global warming.
And I want to hear from Senator McCain on his opposition to tax cuts.
I want to hear the domestic side.
And I would hope that he would speak loudly and openly and honestly about his domestic record, not spin it.
Certainly not deny it.
Um, but give Republican voters in Florida some straight talk on the record.
Uh you can surround himself with the Schwarzkopf and the generals and so forth and the POW stuff, which we all admire and respect.
But you know you owe it to the electorate to start talking honestly and openly about your complete public record rather than cherry picking what you want to say to different audiences in different places.
Uh talk about how proud you are of your service in the Senate.
Um, leading the gang of 14.
Uh campaign finance reform.
Uh voting against two major tax cuts.
Both tax cuts that helped millions of businesses and employees spurred economic growth.
Uh I would like to hear of your proud alliance with Ted Kennedy, John Edwards, uh Senator Lieberman on global warming, and others.
And I'm a Republican primary voter.
And I would like to hear some straight talk on those issues.
Will I?
Don't count on it.
As a voter, I can only ask.
Well, I can only mention what it is that I would like to hear.
Let me grab a quick phone call.
This is South Bend, Indiana.
Chuck.
Welcome, sir to the EIB network.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yes, yes.
Hey, I can't get enough of the show.
I've got two goals in life.
Make everyone agree with you, and I convert at least one liberal per week.
I would say admirable, sir.
Thank you.
And I want to be your permanent replacement host, as I've mentioned to you once before.
Um calling regarding uh the prediction for Hillary's V. Yeah, yeah.
We've got about 45 seconds.
Okay.
Um I'm thinking Evan Bay.
Why do you think Evan Bay?
Because I said so earlier.
Oh, I didn't hear you say so.
Oh, yeah.
I think it's I gotta pick a moderate zip.
Maybe I didn't say it on the air.
I've been not today.
I think I said it earlier.
Yeah, I think I've heard you say it before.
She's gonna pick a you know, a moderate white guy can be portrayed as a conservative and has a zipper on his lip.
Yep.
And he I've seen him lurking behind and her giving speeches.
He just kind of smiling quietly behind her, but he seems to be behind her often.
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.
Make make no mistake.
They're not they're not gonna have the first female candidate for president backed up by a vice president that is not a guy.
White guy.
Learn it, love it, live it.
I mean, that's I'm not the one injecting race into this campaign into this party.
That's the Clinton's folks.
They have started it.
All right, that's it.
Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence.
Over in the can, soon to be uh ferried by armored courier to a secret warehouse, housing artifacts for the future limbaugh broadcast museum.
I gotta go, folks, to work on that casino application for the uh Ilkonservo tribe.
Be back tomorrow.
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