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Feb. 1, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:26
February 1, 2008, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 podcast.
You know, you know, I'm watching, I'm watching the Democratic debate last night from uh Los Angeles, and I'm watching these two candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and they are focused on their audience.
They are focused out there in TV land.
They're focused everywhere to their main core, and they're talking about people who who don't have jobs, who don't know what it's like to have a real job, to get up in the morning and go to work.
And that was just the Hollywood writers in the crowd.
I mean, the rest of us were waiting for everything else.
Hi, everybody, Jason Lewis here.
Great to be behind the golden EIB Mike once again in the Gatilla the Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It's getting crazy out there.
We'll talk about it all day.
You know, Schwarzenegger yesterday, and talk about a flashback, a bad trip flashback.
Schwarzenegger endorses John McCain at a California solar power plant.
I hope somebody remembered to bring the lava lamps.
You got Arnold Sw endorsing McCain at a solar power plant, and they're wondering why conservatives have some angst here.
I mean, this is great.
This is just what the this is just what we need.
Arnold doing for the GOP, what Bill McC Bill Clinton has done for marriage.
I mean, come on here.
Sooner or later, people are going to realize the voters want a choice, not an echo.
And therein lies the conundrum for conservatives in this election as Russia's been talking about, as you've been talking about, everybody had been talking about, and we'll talk about it today.
Although Russia's gone for the day, he'll be back on Monday, gang.
You can always check out Rushlimbaugh.com as well.
He's gone for today, but it is the end of the week.
It is the last day of the week, and that can only mean one thing.
I mean, each and every Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
That's right, your chance to talk about what you want to talk about at 1800-282-2882.
I'll try to kick things off, but open line Friday means you get to decide the topics.
You rank amateurs with uh well with another rank amateur.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for rush today.
1-800-282-2882.
All right, quickly the uh the debate last night.
Note to John McCain.
Memo to John McCain.
This is what a timetable looks like.
Remember in John McCain in the Republican debate was talking about timetables and all of that with uh Mitt Romney.
Hillary Clinton last night said we need to get out of the war, or Bush should end the war because he started the war.
Now, regardless of how you feel about the war in Iraq, that is a very, very odd policy, if you ask me.
Somebody talking about, well, Bush should end what he started.
So now we're going to determine when victory comes, depending on the length of a presidential term.
Uh that's a confidence booster.
Hillary went on to say that she would have diverted all the resources or wouldn't have diverted the resources from Afghanistan.
And of course, Barack Obama was talking about a date certain for withdrawal.
Uh Mr. McCain, with all due respect, that is a timetable.
Mitt Romney never said anything of the sort.
Not even close.
That's a timetable, if you want to get into that.
Hillary was uh you know, I thought the Hollywood crowd was definitely in Hillary's favor last night, but uh she does have a problem with her vote for the war amongst her anti-war left core of the Democrat Party, certainly in full force out there.
Did you see Rob Reiner?
Okay, my apologies.
Sometimes we have to look at him.
But did you see him when he was rolling his eyes when Barack Obama actually said something that made sense?
He said, Look, I'm not for censorship, but Hollywood needs to exercise some self-restraint when it comes to sex and violence.
I mean, that made sense.
I mean, even a blind squirrel can find an acorn once in a while, I guess.
But nevertheless, he said that, and Rob Reiner was rolling his eyes.
He gave this Oh, brother.
I cannot I cannot believe I'm being lectured again.
Don't you know we people in Hollywood are above that.
We are artists.
I mean, it was really quite remarkable how far out of touch these people are.
I thought the Hollywood crowd was rooting for Hillary.
I mean, it was kind of close, but I thought uh when Push came to shove, they were rooting for Hillary, but she's got this problem with the war.
And uh I think uh the the uh the anchor Wolf.
Wasn't that a bad movie once?
Everybody's favorite nightmare.
Your anchor man is a wolf.
He was trying to pin her down on her war Vote and uh said, look, were you naive when you voted for the oh no, no, no, nice try, Wolf, all of that.
The fact of the matter is Mrs. Clinton has a problem.
She supported the war.
October 10, 2002, she addresses the Senate on the use of force, the use of force resolution.
Quote, the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt about Saddam's chemical weapons, his uh deceiving UN weapon inspector.
She goes on, quote, as a result, President Clinton with the British and others ordered an intensive four-day air assault, Operation Desert Fox.
Saddam has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, close quote.
December 15th, 2003, Hillary Clinton on the war when we captured when we captured Saddam Hussein.
Yesterday was a good day.
I was thrilled that Saddam Hussein had finally been captured.
We owe a great debt of gratitude to our troops, to the president, to our intelligence services, and all who had a hand in apprehending Saddam.
She adds, I was the one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein.
I believe that was the right vote, close quote.
Now try to reconcile that, Hillary, with Rob Reiner and Pierce Brosden and every other lunatic lefty out in Hollywood.
That's that's just not going to well, it might wash in the Democrat Party, but it's certainly not going to wash when it comes to perhaps I don't know, people who think logically.
Anyway, that was part of the debate what else was going on at the end, there was the uh the dream ticket line.
Wouldn't it be a dream ticket?
It'd be a dream ticket if it were Hillary and Barack, uh the president or vice president.
I mean, this this is categorical representation, folks.
It's the idea that you should vote for us because we've got a black and a woman, or a woman and a black, depending on who's the nominee.
Well, you know, if you out there, if you quota love and uh quota lovers out there believe that that Hillary and Or Barack should get your vote because they are a black and a woman, then I suppose you won't be upset if some people don't vote for them because they are a black and a woman.
There is no difference.
It is the mirror image of both sides of a rather, shall we say, oh, I don't know, race centric view or gender centric view.
Vote for me because I'm a woman, vote for me because I'm a black.
Well, I wouldn't vote for anybody because they happen to share my ethnicity.
I wouldn't vote for a woman because she's a woman, a black because he's a black, Hispanic, or white, doesn't matter.
For the same reason I wouldn't vote against them because they are that.
And yet that is totally lost on this on this sort of ethnic worship.
I don't know what they're gonna do with their cabinet.
They're going to have to shrink the cabinet if one of them gets elected because I don't know if there are enough ethnicities out there to fill the rainbow coalition that will be the cabinet room.
This is the sort of preoccupation with this sort of uh gender and race and ethnicity that really drives people away from the Democrat Party.
This is we're supposed to be a meritocracy.
We're supposed to be colorblind.
Would that it were true?
The Democrats are anything but, anything but colorblind.
Oh, and this line from the debate last night, and this actually dovetails into some disturbing comments that John McCain has been making as well.
She was asked about, look, neither one of you, you guys have been in public life all your life, your career politicians, your career bureaucrats, your career activists.
What do you know about running an economy running running a business such as uh Mr. Romney has successfully done, to the uh chagrin of uh apparently Mr. McCain?
And and she said, Well, Hillary says, Well, the federal government is not a business.
We don't run it for a profit.
Now, that's the moment where I threw up in my mouth a little bit, and that's oh, I think.
And then the other night, th the night before, John McCain was belittling Mitt Romney for what?
For what?
A successful businessman?
Allocate allocating resources, saving jobs by making corporations a bit more efficient so they can s they can succeed in perpetuity.
And what does McCain do?
He takes a shot at him for, well, you've been out in the business world, but I suppose you've laid off a few people.
Hello?
I was I was I was running my squadron for patriotism, not profit.
Now I'm getting a little sick and tired of this notion that profits are bad.
And this really betrays the thought or the notion that the people, the choices we have or may have in the fall, Have not a clue about business, about economics, about what it takes to make a country go.
Where, my friends, would government be without profitable business?
I mean, compare that to the federal government now, and the Bush budget is going to be three trillion dollars.
Three trillion dollars.
You know, uh all this tax cutting apparently has drained the federal government of resources.
The budget's gonna be three trillion, and that's the Bush budget.
Federal revenues have gone up seven seven hundred and eighty-five billion in the last four years after the tax cuts.
We've collected 152 uh uh percent more capital gains revenues after the tax cuts.
Now you don't cut taxes to grow government revenues.
Don't get me wrong.
Milton Friedman was right.
If you cut taxes and government revenue goes up, you haven't cut them enough.
But the point is the government's not starved.
And if you're so worried about profits, Mr. McCain or or Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama, if you're so worried about profits, then why aren't you worried about the the government or why are you worried about the government deficit?
I mean, the government's running a deficit.
That should be a good thing because apparently that's what you want corporations to do, run deficits.
Friends, let me just tell you, real quickly, we better disabuse ourselves of this notion that profits are bad because they are the engine of economic growth.
They are what makes us go.
In fact, the greater the profit, the better.
They allocate resources most efficiently.
They send signals to the marketplace, and in the final analysis, there is no such thing as a profit anyway.
A profit is the cost of capital the same way wages are the cost of labor.
Would you invest in a business that doesn't have a profit?
The Democrats get in office or some liberal rhino, they get in office and they say, no more profits.
We're gonna have a windfall profits tax.
Where's their investment money gonna come from?
Would you invest so they don't get any investment money?
What does that do for jobs and growth?
What we want is companies with no profit.
This is insanity.
Profits are good, and it is it is heartbreaking to see, quite frankly, what may be the standard bearer belittle and ridicule the profit motive.
It is what makes the economy go.
This this nonsense about if we just cut profits, we could lower prices.
Well, if we just cut salaries, we could lower prices.
You're not gonna be able to attract capital if you don't get earnings.
That is the return on people who invest in a company.
It is not a profit, it is a cost of raising capital.
Get over it.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush Limbaugh, the contact line once again 1800 282 2882.
Back after this on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
And we are back on the Rush Limbaugh program.
This is what?
A couple of days before the big Super Bowl.
Maybe we'll get into that a little later.
In the meantime, it is openline Friday with me, Jason Lewis, sitting in for the big guy.
He will be back on Monday.
You can always check out Rushlimbaugh.com in the meantime.
1 800 282 2882.
Your thoughts on the Republican race, obviously, in the Democrat debate last night.
Let's get to the phones in Topeka, Kansas.
John, you are first up today on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Hey, Jason, thank you for taking my call.
John Cooney here.
Um I haven't called in a quite a long time, and the this economy is scaring the heck out of me.
And I don't see the Republicans addressing it, including Mitt Romney, including Huckabee, including McCain, and I don't see the Democrats addressing it, and I think it's the trade issue, the NAFTA gap, and now Bush wants to extend it even farther all the way down to Argentina and possibly to Europe.
Our corporations are leaving the country, our wages are spiraling down, and I can give you uh stats right here in Topeka, Kansas, along with Goodyear plants and things like that.
But my point is I don't see anybody really fixing the problem.
It's not the subprime.
It's our trade and our jobs leaving the country, India's not a good thing.
No, it's not.
It's not that.
It is the government.
It is government spending of which the stimulus package doesn't uh fix, it actually adds to it.
And I'll be honest with you, it's not trade.
Uh there is I I happen to be an immigration hawk.
I think we what we've done is we we happen to subsidize in a great way uh illegal immigration through the welfare state, through the benefits.
But I happen to be a quote unquote classical liberal when it comes to trade.
You know, you're living in Topeka, John.
Do you trade with uh Texas?
Does Kansas trade with Texas?
Do you trade with Mississippi?
Uh do you trade with Florida when you drink your orange juice?
Well, you're losing jobs in Kansas, John.
I have no problem trading with even trading with other countries one on one.
What we don't need are these giant agreements that are for the whole South America where they're not.
Well, that's a s that's a different question.
That's a sovereignty issue, and I don't like, you know, multilateral trade that much either.
I think bilateral trade or just open open to a free trade with no tariffs at all would be the way to go.
But you're that's not what you said.
You said you did you thought the trade was losing jobs, and the history is simply not on your side there.
Right now, let me say this, Jason.
What kind of jobs are we creating?
We're taking good paying manufacturing jobs and we're replacing them with service oriented hotels and restaurant jobs, which are low wage jobs, as you well know.
Look, India's got a billion people, they can play this free trade game for thirty years.
China has got a billion people, they can play for thirty years, and Mexico, I don't know how many people they got, they're probably all here.
They can take a few.
All right, hold on.
Hey, take a breath.
Take a take a breath.
Uh facts are stubborn things, as John Adams once said.
So let me give you a couple.
Since the federal tax cuts of two thousand and three, the economy has added one point three trillion in real output.
It's growing more than three percent annually up until the last quarter.
Investors business daily says business spending way up, eight million new jobs, and real labor compensation was advancing three point nine percent again up until the last quarter.
Now, what's happened?
Well, what's happened is we've had a subprime crisis.
We have had a regulatory state, and we have on the horizon the specter of the largest tax increase in the history of the globe if the Bush tax cuts expire.
You add to that a very, very inscrutable and stimulative, overly so, monetary policy, and you are looking at stagflation right now because we've got too loose a money supply and we have all the impediments to growth with the threat of a huge tax increase.
That's what's slowing the economy down.
Let me disagree with you.
It took twenty years for us to see the full effects of NAFT and gas.
Ross Perone, I didn't really like the guy, was right.
Now we're starting to see the full culmination of NAFTA and gas WTO for starting to do that.
No, no, don't talk to me.
Don't talk to me about Ross Perot.
Talk to me about the facts.
If you measure the economic growth, John, if you measure the growth the same way we measured it in the Reagan era, in the Jimmy Carter era, in the Clinton era, in the Bush era, GDP, real labor compensation, median household income, all of those statistics are way up.
Now you can't flip-flop statistics to suit your theory.
You know that the national debt is skyrocketing personal debt is skyrocketed.
No, it's not, and that's another canard.
Local debt is skyrocketing, the trade deficit is skyrocketing it on all across the board we're sinking, and you guys are sitting there saying foreign trade is so great.
John, what was the national what was the national debt, the U.S. public debt coming out of World War II?
Oh, I don't know.
I mean, you're you're a historian, I'm not.
Try about a hundred and ten percent of GDP.
It's no it's about a third of that now.
Because of the fact that J Jason, because the corporations are making money doesn't mean the trickling down to the middle class.
The middle class is tur turning into the lower class.
There's only two classes.
I don't want to play the flat class warfare, but you guys have to do that.
You sound like Richard Gephardt on steroids.
You're like on a roller coaster going down and there's a cliff at the end of the roller coaster.
All right, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Let me tell you what I think's going on, because I don't think it's trade for the very reason that if you really want jobs, here's what we ought to do.
Why don't we demand, in fact, I don't want to give the Democrats any ideas?
Why don't we require that everybody in the country have shutters on their windows all day long?
We will mandate shades and shutters so the light cannot get into Topeka households, John, and think what that's going to do for jobs in the light bulb manufacturing industry.
And then here's what we're gonna do, my friend.
Then we're going to require, in the name of global warming, that you don't buy the cheap light bulbs anymore.
You buy the the uh CFLs or the fluorescent bulbs uh that cost four bucks that are gonna bankrupt homes, but it's gonna create more wealth in that industry, more jobs.
We can have all sorts of regulatory jobs created this way.
That that is what you're advocating, and that's why it doesn't work.
It never works.
And we can block out sunlight and we all consume more light bulbs that'll create more jobs in the light bulb industry.
I get my orange juice from Florida, I get my coffee from south of the border.
Uh I got you w why do you think raising prices on consumers is going to help the economy?
Now, when it comes to the trade deficit, the the the bottom line is as long as the United States is a good place to invest, and this is key, the trade deficit is immaterial.
And here's why.
The dollars come back.
We trade, we pay them in dollars.
So i if China is trying to manipulate and trying to have a a weaker currency than they otherwise would for trade advantage, and they accumulate dollars because of that, what do they do with the dollars?
They come back and they if they buy a plant or they invest or they buy a T Bill.
You know, the riskiest thing a company can do, a foreign company, is to buy a piece of property in a foreign country.
You know why?
We could expropriate it if we went to war with them.
So why do we care that Toyota hires people vis-a-vis somebody else?
The money comes back.
Now here's the danger, however.
I will concede this.
If we go down this road of stagflation and tax increases and a loose monetary policy, and the United States is no longer a good place to invest, you're going to get a crash of the dollar that some people say is happening already.
That's the danger in the economy going forward.
It has very little to do with trade and much more domestic policy initiatives or the lack thereof.
So remember that the next time you get into one of these debates, because uh let's not go down that protectionist route.
It just simply doesn't work.
John, thanks for the call.
I do appreciate it.
1 800 282 2882, more coming right up after this.
You know, then again, we did run a trade surplus during the Great Depression, so uh you we got that going for us.
Welcome back, everybody.
Russia's out today.
I am Jason Lewis, Minnesota's real anchor man with talent on loan from Rush on this uh open line Friday.
You know, John does bring up a fair point.
There is economic angst out there, and it is precisely due to the problems of government.
And this is something, of course, nobody is talking about, sadly, not much in either party, and that it and it has to be explored because that's what causes the problems.
There there is no free market problem.
Markets correct, they adjust.
If you take a look at some of the things that are squeezing families, and it has very little to do with trade, John.
It has everything to do with government policy from health care to the so-called energy crisis to food inflation to college tuition to the subprime mortgage crisis.
I will tell you flat out that every single crises has been a direct result of ill-advised government policy.
You can pick your favorite, and here's what's happened.
A lot of Republicans are running around saying, gosh, we cut taxes, we did this, and that's true.
As I mentioned earlier, the economy has actually been doing quite well up until recently.
And without those tax cuts, if we would have had no increase in the reward on labor, we've we would not increase the reward on labor with those tax cuts of 2001 and accelerated in 2003.
We would have never had any economic growth coming out of this.
And I think that's pretty standard economic policy these days.
But but the bottom line here is it's not enough right now when the government creates a housing bubble.
The government created this malinvestment in housing.
We had a federal funds rate of one percent for over a year, I believe.
We had the Congress telling the lenders, you don't use red line, you lend to people with bad credit risk.
You had government guarantees of mortgages indirectly with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and now.
FHA is gonna guarantee mortgages to $700,000, which means interest rates are lower than they otherwise would have been, because don't worry if you foreclose the government, the taxpayer, like the SNL crisis will bail you out.
We had all of these ridiculous incentives to to invest to overstimulate the housing market.
And then you add Wall Street onto that with these bets on housing with the credit default swaps and the collateralized debt obligations, which were merely kind of hyped up options on the housing market, and sooner or later it collapses under its own weight.
And the worst thing we can do, I mean the worst thing we can do is not to let it correct.
The worst thing we can do is to overstimulate the economy with this stupid stimulus package, which is nothing more than this old old antiquated Keynesian stimulus, we're gonna increase demand, we're gonna have the federal funds rate cut again, and we're gonna keep the bubble going.
And the next correction is gonna be that much more difficult.
That is not the result of a market run amuck.
That's a result of direct government policy, ill-advised.
Health care crisis.
Well, let's see, you throw on 1,900 mandates by state governments that drive up the cost of insurance.
You have a third-party payer system because of the ridiculous tax code that says corporations can deduct health care costs, but families can't.
You have the tort problem with everybody being sued right out of business from North Carolina to Florida if you're a obstetrician.
That's a government policy that created those problems.
Energy.
Oh gosh, three dollars a gallon.
I got my tax cut, but my energy costs cost more than the tax cut or offset it more.
That's what's making people worried.
Well, guess who created the energy crisis?
This is a Jimmy Carter mandated energy crisis Thanks to Al Gore and now the Republican wannabes that want to go down this ridiculous environmental road.
Let me see.
Let me get this straight.
No drilling in Anwar, no drilling offshore.
Thank you, Governor Charlie Christ.
But we want we want an independent energy policy.
We want to have energy independence, but we're not going to let us get our own resources to exploit our we're going to have a windfall profits tax on domestic oil.
Wall Street Journal article this week says the our domestic oil companies are cutting back on exploration.
And then you add on to that taxes defund ethanol and reformulated mandates all summer long and renewable mandates for wind and solar and all of the other more expensive forms of energy that don't work.
We're going to ban coal, we're going to get out of out from under the fossil fuels, no nukes, four dollar light bulbs.
And then we say, gosh, we got to do something about these oil company profits.
Hello?
Those are direct government policies.
It is a direct policy of raising energy costs to make the less efficient, more affordable renewable energy more doable.
That's not the marketplace.
That's not free trade.
That's government.
And with all the ethanol mandates, guess what we're doing?
We're taking corn, which should be used for food, and we're diverting that to inefficient energy.
So corn is now over $4 a bushel.
You can go out on the December futures market and sell it for $5 a bushel.
We got a farm bill of $286 billion, which will encourage more people to get into ethanol, which will drive up the cost of gasoline and food.
We got a 51 cent a gallon credit for this renewable ethanol blend.
In my home state, Minnesota, we've spent 300 million dollars subsidizing the profitability of ethanol plants.
So now we've got $3 a gallon milk, eggs are going up, meat.
Why?
For an inefficient fuel.
That's not in the marketplace.
That's not trade.
That's the government creating an inflationary spiral.
Did I mention college tuition?
You know, college tuition has gone up 35% from 01 to 06, according to the college board.
That's much, much faster than gasoline, which is roughly the same price, notwithstanding the high price today as I mentioned, as 1980.
So what do we do?
States and the federal government keeps pouring money into Pell Grants and do subsidized student loans, which drives up the cost of tuition, and tell instead of telling these universities, you know, here's a novel idea.
You might want to cut back on that queer studies program, your funding.
We create all of these problems, and the Republicans have been going along with this.
This is what I call the cost of living tax.
It's not a direct tax, it's a mandatory tax through regulation, primarily environmental, but the third-party payer systems and the health care in college, uh the tuition, the inflationary spiral because of the Fed and ethanol demands in food costs, the subprime crisis, the asset bubble that was developed by government policy.
Don't blame trade.
Don't blame don't blame markets, don't blame business.
Blame the people who are really responsible.
The people in Washington, D.C., who wouldn't know a PL statement if it hit them in the head, who have never had any experience in the private sector, who don't know that sometimes you have to cut jobs to grow jobs, who have been career bureaucrats collecting government checks all their life, thinking that their income is immune to the vicissitudes of the marketplace.
These are precisely the people that have caused the problem, and precisely the people that should not be in office.
There, that's my rant for the day.
David in Scottsdale, Arizona, you're on the EIB network high.
Hey, what's up?
Hey, uh it was interesting.
Uh I watching the debates on how some of these uh manufacturers in the oil industry like want their jobs to come back.
A lot of their jobs were taken up by a robot.
If they think they can replace a welding robot, good luck.
It's a double-edged sword of technology.
It happened in the internet.
Well, but that's right.
And the word processor.
It's a different economy.
Well, it's not different.
It's creative destruction.
It's not different at all, though, David.
It's creative destruction.
It has been true as long as the markets have been around.
The word processor put the typewriter out of business.
The automobile put the horse and buggy, the blacksmith out of business.
Does anybody want to go back?
No.
Right.
No.
I agree with you a hundred percent.
And uh, I always wanted to talk to Rush, but you're you'd be my second choice.
David, thank you very much.
I appreciate your time today in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Ted, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Thank you for your clarity.
Appreciate it.
Um, in Michigan, we're in a tailspin, and I'm just stunned by some of the brass in the Republican Party that aren't supporting Romney who's clearly following the Constitution seemingly closer.
And you know, they're getting down on the press is getting down for putting thirty-five million of his personal money into his campaign.
I think that's commendable.
They're tearing them up because they think that, oh, and they don't even analyze McCain.
I'm just wondering what you think about not just press bias.
But what about the bias that's going on within the Republican Party when you've got a clear person who is clearly above and beyond and following the ideals of the party compared to McCain.
I mean, I'm just I'm kind of stupid.
Well, let's be blunt about this, and I it's it's been so wonderful to listen to Rush the last few uh days and weeks, who has really hit it out of the park on this issue.
And I'll take it a step further, perhaps, but uh I'll I'll be blunt.
There's a coup going on in the GOP right now.
The coup uh is being led by, frankly, the people a lot not not the president, but the people he brought in, like uh Washington Post columnist former speechwriter Michael Gerson and his applied Christianity, which says we need to be compassionate with other people's money, of course.
Uh you've got David From talking about if the Republicans don't get serious about global warming, they're gonna lose.
He's a former speechwriter for the president.
You have all of these compassionate conservative crowds, these big government conservatives who, along with a uh the coup d'etat going on by these Republican governors, you want us to know where this place is starting or where this coup is starting.
You take a look at Sonny Purdue of of Georgia, Charlie Christ, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tim Paleny of Minnesota, and the National Governors Association, actually the Republican Governors Association, have have come out and said they are, for all practical means and purposes, going to rebrand the Republican Party in the image of well, Al Gore.
And that is what's happening right now, and conservatives are frustrated because for all my entire adult life, I have had to hold my nose, except for one presidency, and I think we know which one that was, thank you, Gipper, and vote for Richard Nixon or Gerald Ford or Bush 41.
And when when we all knew, we all knew that these were not the conservatives all across the board that we wanted.
But we held our nose and we did it.
You know what?
The game is up in many ways.
It's incredible, Jason, because Michigan's in a tailspin, and it's because of Grant Holm and some of her liberal thinking, and we have a clear choice, you know, to try and pull things around, and there's an approved way to do it through, you know, less less regulation and government intervention and how would you do it?
I mean, how would you do it?
Uh we've got to elect somebody who sees it clearly, and I think Romney is so clearly heads and shoulder above McCain that he can start a start some of the movement that needs to go that direction and to waken the people in those regards.
And I just wish that the press wasn't so demanding and so just tearing them up so much when it comes to the case.
Well, this is the anti this is the anti-business bias in the press.
They have no idea what it means to to look at a balance sheet and realize you can't be all things to all people.
Businesses have to make priorities.
Government is loath to make priorities because when they need something, they raise your taxes.
And the problem what you know it becomes this spiraling uh downward effect because the larger government gets, you know, deficits do not crowd out the private economy.
Government budgets do, whether they're financed by borrowing or taxing or inflating.
Look at the size of government.
Uh it's not the deficit, that's a tiny portion financed by borrowing.
It is the entire budget, mostly financed by taxes, that is doing the damage to the economy and to Michigan, especially with that very, very radical governor you have uh in that great state.
I'm Jason Lewis, gotta take a pause.
We'll be back with more calls right here on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Talents on loan from Rush.
I am Jason Lewis, in for Rush on this uh open line Friday.
The King will be back on Monday, so hang in there, gang.
1800-282-2882.
You know, you go back to the politico, September 25th, 2007.
GOP governors fight DC PALs over agenda.
Republican governors are trying to wrest control of the party's rebranding campaign away from Washington.
The project is the brainchild of Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue and the Republican Governors Association.
They gathered uh shortly after there, must have been of October in Atlanta to develop new policy positions on energy, the conserv conservation, health care, education that that are more attuned with public concerns.
You know, George Will had the best line on leadership.
Leadership is not getting twelve Boy Scouts to go to Pizza Hut.
Leadership is getting them to stay home and do homework.
We have no leadership right now.
We look at the polls.
It is Dick Morris triangulation on steroids.
We look at the polls and we adjust our principles to the polls.
That's not what leaders do.
That's not what educators do.
That's not what great statesmen do.
Unfortunately, that's what the Republican leadership is doing right now, especially with the Republican Governors Association.
It's not a coincidence that you have Schwarzenegger, Charlie Christ, Sonny Perdue, Tim Paleny, all on the McCain bandwagon.
That's not a coincidence, folks.
You add that to the compassionate conservative rhetoric that came in with the Bush 43 administration with people like Gerson and from et al.
And you have this perfect storm where the conservatives have been marginalized.
The big government conservatism is in.
You know, uh somebody asked uh uh Sonny Purdue, the leader of this of this coup, if you will, about you know what are they doing?
You do uh John Boehner wants to wants to fight with the Democrats to debate and win the debate.
Quote, people don't want fights.
They want people to solve problems with them.
Last summer, Governor Tim Pollenny of Minnesota seemed at a loss to explain how Republicans in Washington could still even be questioning the reality of global warming.
Quote, the false premise of some of the critics of global warming is that you'll wreck the economy.
And here's the sad part.
The RGA, the Republican Governors Association, is raising money hand over fist.
So you're left wondering, and this is going to get me in trouble probably, but you're left wondering, gosh, is the Republican Party a conservative party anymore?
Your thoughts at 1800-282-2882, back to the phones we go in Waynesville, Missouri.
Shannon, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
It's nice to talk to you.
Same to you, ma'am.
Um sorry, and the uh the ads are starting to roll for Hillary and Obama.
Um I haven't been watching much of the debates, mostly because I pretty much know what they're gonna say.
But one of the ads for Hillary said that um she's going to freeze foreclosures.
And I'm just wondering how she thinks thinks she can go about doing that, you know.
Well, it's a little bit it's a little bit like the minimum wage debate.
I mean, if all the government has to do is declare everybody should make fifty grand a year, we could end third world poverty tomorrow.
All of those despots across the globe and third world countries, just pass a minimum wage law.
The government can do it.
Well, it's the same with interest rates, don't you see, Shannon?
All you have to do is freeze interest rates and nothing will happen.
No law of unintended consequences.
You know what will happen, and I know what will happen.
You freeze interest rates and there will be no lending, no credit.
You know, the other thing that they're trying to do is to reform the bankruptcy laws so that you how your house, for all practical means and purposes, can't be foreclosed upon.
Now, I want to ask you something, Shannon.
What's your credit card interest rate?
Um I actually don't know.
It's probably like 18%, but we pay our credit card off every month.
Well, God bless you.
But there's a reason for that.
The reason is these people can't get their money from a lot of folks who don't pay the credit cards, and it's not protected.
They can't simply go in a bankruptcy proceeding and say, I want I'm a creditor, I get the first pick at this.
They got to get in line, and they have a very, very slow chance or unlikely chance of getting their money.
Well, they've got to make up for that, so they charge 18% interest rates.
If you do the same in the mortgage market, you're not gonna have six percent mortgages, you're gonna have twelve, thirteen percent mortgages.
So you've got all of these government interventions trying to solve a problem that that the market is solving.
Let the housing market correct, let Wall Street take their lumps, we will go back into equilibrium, the economy will recover if the government does nothing.
And that's the key.
And the stimulus package is an absolute joke.
I mean, they're going to give rebates, of course, to people who don't pay taxes, and the middle class, anybody making over seventy-five grand a year, well, you're out.
It looks as though the House bill is going to pass because they couldn't muster enough for a to stop the filibuster by Republicans on the Senate bill, which was worse.
But nevertheless, the House bill's a joke.
They're going to give rebates to people that don't pay taxes.
They're going to try to overhype the economy.
Now, where are they going to pay for these rebates?
Well, Shannon, they're going to pay them from you.
They're going to get them from you.
They're going to either borrow or they're going to tax someone to give somebody else a rebate.
How does that grow the economy?
How does that increase aggregate demand?
It doesn't.
I'm Jason Lewis, back with more right after this.
All right, coming up next hour, I do want to get to the l what I consider to be the new litmus test for liberals.
And folks, it is global warming.
It is the environment.
You know, the two big elephants in the GOP's living room right now, education and the environment, they are the drivers of big government.
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