All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 1, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:07
February 1, 2008, Friday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
And we are back again on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Jason Lewis here.
You know, it is Open Line Friday where you get to decide what to talk about at 1-800-282-2882.
I like to throw out a few things in the monologue each hour, trying to get things going, as it were.
And we will do that this hour as well.
Rush will be back on Monday.
In the meantime, there's always rushlimbaugh.com.
Super Bowl on Sunday.
I got a little different take on this.
I got a little different take on this.
It's kind of an economist point of view, if you will.
And that is, especially if you don't live in Boston or New York, who are you going to vote for?
Who are you going to root for on Sunday in the Patriots versus the Giants?
That is true.
I mean, Kit reminds me that there is this stock market rule, the great stock market predictor, when the AFC wins, used to be the old AFL, when they win, the market tanks.
And when the NFL wins, the NFC now, the market goes up.
In fact, it's a pretty high indicator.
What is the actual figure here?
About 80%, yeah, 81% rate.
Dow Jones' industrial average for the year following 33 of the 41 bowls has been predicted by the winner, as we just mentioned, an astonishing 81% of the time.
So fire your financial planner and watch the game on Sunday.
That's pretty much what this means.
No, I've got a different angle on this, and that's got to go with the Patriots.
I don't want to traumatize you guys back in New York.
You've got to go with the Patriots here because it's a privately funded stadium.
How much more free market can you get?
Instead of going to the taxpayers, that little infrastructure here or there, they built the stadium themselves.
HR has this little thing about cheating.
No, that was never decided, really.
What are you saying, HR?
We need a Sarbanes-Oxley for the Football League, for the NFL?
We got to do something about transparency in the NFL.
No, that's where I'm going with the Patriots.
I'm getting a little tired of every time one of these owners and the players and the union wants a new stadium, the largest edifice, they say, well, if you don't build us a stadium, we're going to leave town.
It's a little bit like the folks in Europe saying, if you don't copy our gasoline prices at $5 an hour, you don't care about the $5 a gallon, you don't care about the rest of the world.
No, we don't need to copy socialism.
Just a thought, just one of my little peeves there.
So the big game on Sunday.
We can have some fun with that.
Also, you know, everybody's trying to do the Hispanic angle into this campaign.
Clearly, McCain is with his view on immigration.
In fact, for years and years, we've been told by the Bush 43 advisors that, oh, it's the fastest-growing subset of the country, fastest-growing group in the country, Hispanic Americans.
If we don't capture their vote, we're done.
And Hillary Clinton, of all people, is trying to paint Barack Obama as just a Jesse Jackson appealing to only a very small portion of the electorate.
Go ahead, take the black vote.
I'm going to get the Hispanic vote in California.
And it's not such a subtle message when you read between the lines.
There's a great piece that was in the autumn edition from the Manhattan Institute, City Journal, I believe, by Steve Malinga.
This goes back a couple of weeks, but he points out that this is vastly overrated, this inaccurate picture of the Hispanic voting public.
Dick Morris has been declaring this all the time.
But Dick Morris is a liberal, and so he's coming up with all of these rationalizations for the Republicans to move left.
I mean, this is the guy that went from Trent Lott to Bill Clinton to Trent Lott to Bill Clinton.
The Hispanic vote for Bush was far from decisive, so says Mr. Malinga of the Manhattan Institute.
It may be years before Hispanics play a real pivotal role in the national election.
They are a small portion of the voting public because so many of them are ineligible to vote.
Those who do qualify to vote often don't.
They represent about 14% of the U.S. population.
That was as of last week.
They actually constitute just 6%, not 12%, of the 2004 electorate.
We're actually going back to the 2004 election, to be accurate here.
So that's just 7.5 million voters out of 125 million.
According to the Census Bureau, only 34% of America's adult Hispanics registered to vote in 2004, and just 28% voted.
Just 28%.
Blacks, whom Hispanics have now surpassed, outnumbered Hispanic voters nearly two to one in 2004.
I just thought I'd throw that out because it does seem to be in contravention of the conventional wisdom that, oh, well, and it's been coming from both parties.
It's been coming from the Bush-McCain axis.
It's been coming certainly from the Democrat side.
They're trying to get as many minority groups in the country as they possibly can, not because they care about minorities and not because we've got this idea that we ought to welcome people in who want to be hardworking as long as they assimilate and become citizens.
They just want to demonize the majority and think they're going to get the minority vote that way, which is kind of a pandering way to do it, if you ask me.
So those that are on the dock at this hour, 1-800-282-2882.
You know, and let me just see if I can't explain this in layman's terms as well.
I've been talking today about one of the reasons conservatives are having such a hard time with Senator McCain.
And for lack of a better description, it's because he's not the whole package.
The war is not enough.
The war may be enough to Fox News, but it's not enough for conservatives.
As I said earlier, we respect the brave men and women who go fight.
We want to prosecute the war on terror to preserve freedom in America, not the Department of Housing and Urban Development, not the Department of Education.
You know, conservatives are ready for radical change.
This has been building up for a long time.
We're tired of playing the lesser of two evils.
The Democrats are going to raise government spending 10% a year.
Oh, well, we're Republicans.
We'll only raise it 9% a year.
And that's supposed to get our vote.
They want radical change.
And I mean bold change.
I mean I'm talking about running like Reagan did to abolish the Department of Education, reduce the cabinet by three or four positions, seriously cutting government, not merely slowing its rate of growth.
Now, I don't know that that's going to happen in my lifetime, but that is where conservatives are.
They have been holding their tongue and holding their nose when they vote and biting their tongue for too long.
And this is kind of like the last straw.
And it all revolves around the role of government in a free society.
And free is the operative there.
You're hearing these platitudes from both parties.
You know, I mentioned the Republican Governors Association is trying to rebrand the GOP in a more moderate, let's be honest, a Democrat image, especially on issues like the environment, big government education.
You know, I mean, it's government, I hate to break this to you, and I know there are good teachers out there, but the single largest monopoly dwarfing any private sector company is K through 12 education in the United States of America.
It's a command and control, government-sanctioned monopoly top to bottom.
There is no choice.
There is no freedom.
And yet people defend it.
People say, wasn't that wonderful?
The ACLU, which says we don't want government influence, we don't want the government to prosecute people, are more than tickled with government educating people from nursery to grave.
So this all revolves around the role of government in a free society, and conservatives are saying we want less government at home.
We want to fight our enemies abroad to preserve freedom at home, not to preserve global warming regulations, not to preserve the welfare state and an increase in food stamps in the stimulus package.
That's not what conservatives believe.
Conservatives believe government has a limited role.
It is there to enlarge freedom, to protect property, not redistribute it.
And once it moves outside those roles, it is illegitimate.
And that's why all taxes should be de facto user fees.
Now, I'm talking theoretically here in a kind of a Lockean liberalism, if you will.
But the bottom line is that's what many conservatives, it's what I believe, that government fees should be used to fund public goods which benefit everybody.
National defense, courts of justice, police at the local level.
Even if you don't use those, you derive a benefit from them.
But when government takes money from a taxpayer to whom it belongs and merely transfers that to someone whom it doesn't belong, the government is at war with the common law.
If I have a right to education, a right to health care, a right to subsidies, a right to food stamps, why do I have to bother with government?
I don't have to bother with government to exercise my rights.
I'm going to come up to you on the street, club you over the head, take your money, and you say why, and I'll say I have a right to it.
You can't prosecute me for exercising my right.
Well, no one would condone that.
That's robbery, right?
Well, why is it not robbery when we hire a politician to do it?
You know, the debate is not about the size of government.
It's about whether government is legitimate or illegitimate.
When government uses the tax code to transfer wealth and not protect the population and grow the economy indirectly, government is outside its enumerated powers.
It's outside its boundaries.
And think of it this way.
Think of your favorite scholars, your favorite thinkers.
Let me see if I can put this in some imagery for you.
Let's say you're in this Lockean state of nature.
You're back in 17th century Europe, 17th century England, wherever you want to be.
Now, don't set a time to it because I'm going to throw in some names that cross boundaries.
And the guys in a totally absolute state of nature, there's no organized society.
There's no government.
There's nothing.
And there's John Locke.
And there's David Ricardo.
There's David Hume.
There's Montesquieu.
There's Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, TJ.
That's Thomas Jefferson, for those of you that don't know him.
All sitting around the campfire.
And they're saying, it's great.
We've got no government.
We've got no organized society.
We're absolutely free.
We can do anything we want.
Now we have to fend for ourselves, but we're totally free.
One of the guys raises the hand.
He says, I know.
Why don't we institute a government that has the power of force over us to tax and regulate us?
That'd be a good idea.
What?
No, that's not what they would do.
That's not why governments were organized.
Governments weren't organized to help people.
Let me be clear about this.
This is a radical proposition, I know, in these days.
Government is not about charity.
Government is about compassion, or it's not about compassion.
It is about justice.
Government has a monopoly on force to make certain you don't club your neighbor over the head.
That's justice.
Those guys sitting around the campfire could help one another without government.
You can help your charity without government.
No one would suggest when a totally free people would ever give government the power of force to enslave them.
Let's have a government so it can tax and regulate us.
We wouldn't do that.
So why would you have government?
To protect us, to protect property, to defend us, to make certain that we have the option to give or not to give to the charity of our choice, to the people of our choice.
That's the role of government in a free society.
And we're going to have to face that as the people.
We're going to have to get back to those, the founding fathers' precepts of government.
Now, government today doesn't resemble that at all.
And nobody's arguing for that fundamental principle.
Now, I don't think we'll get there in my lifetime because redistributing wealth is so popular in a country that is governed by more by mob rule and demagoguery than by principle.
But we better start fighting for it for the sake of our children.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
1-800-282-2882, Open Line Friday on the Rush Limbaugh program.
A talent on loan from Rush for me today.
Rush, we'll be back on Monday.
I'm Jason Lewis.
Great to have you on board as we get ready for Super Sunday.
Right now, back to the phones, however, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Michael, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi.
Hey, Jason, thanks for having me on.
I just sort of wanted to touch on, you know, we have all these social, quote-unquote, problems going on.
And, you know, we are the ones who are voting in the politicians.
And I think that one of the main reasons why we're voting in these politicians that, you know, are advocating for universal health care and all these ideas is really because throughout history, you know, we could put blame on the 60s or whatever.
You know, we've really been devalued.
You know, we as humans, you know, we have a purpose and we're basically, you know, we still have that purpose, but we've really lost direction, whether it be through loss of the teaching of God or just more of the teaching of, you know, looking at a president or something like that.
So with like healthcare, for example, you know, people are, you know, people are passing on their guilt, in a sense, in my opinion.
Because, you know, if you're really worried about poor people and whatnot, you know, there's plenty of charities out there.
You don't need to.
Help them.
Yeah.
If you're worried about the poor, help them.
I mean, look, what's fascinating is, and it's always been part of the human condition, we have a unique ability to rationalize what we do, whether it's wrong or not.
I mean, that's what humans are.
Why do you think most businesses, I shouldn't say most businesses, why do you think big businesses really, really don't like free markets?
Because it's tough.
It's competitive.
So if they can get in bed with government, if they can have government mandate more expensive light bulbs and they can lobby government for that, why that's great.
They can put their competitors out of business.
And so it's the easy way out, and that's in our nature sometimes.
People are focusing on the downside of freedom is that you have the freedom to fall on your ass.
And people are focusing more on that than on the beauties of freedom and being in control.
And to quote Clarence Thomas had the best line on this.
The dirty little secret of freedom is you're on your own.
And if we become soft, and some people say we are, less self-reliant, we're not as individualistic as we used to be, nobody wants to be on their own.
And that's really the scariest proposition is what you bring up there, Michael.
The scariest proposition isn't, gee, we could fix these things if we just do this or do that.
The scariest proposition is people start to like this stuff.
I mean, look at the tax code.
We have so front-loaded the tax code that the majority will always vote for a tax increase because they don't pay much in taxes.
It is the very select few, the most productive, that pay the most in taxes.
So why not keep loading it on them?
Now, the good news, if it's good news at all, is that never works.
Sooner or later, you have a collapse and you rediscover freedom and free markets.
But we've been talking about these things all day, and people are just rationalizing their instincts.
This false altruism that government is there to hand out goodies.
That was never the role of government.
Representative Davey Crockett, of all people, had a great line or actually a great speech about the role of charity in society and how government can't really be that charitable because it's not their money to give.
There's nothing compassionate, nothing under the sun, nothing compassionate, nothing virtuous about being caring with other people's money.
Nothing.
And as Thomas Jefferson once said, the natural inclination in society, the natural inclination is for government to grow and liberty to yield, which is why you need an ideologue running for president if you want to stop government.
Because the weight, the weight of the government, the weight of society, the weight of the media pressure, the natural inclination is to move leftward once you get in office, which is why it's very dangerous to get a moderate in office to begin with, because there's only one way he's going to go.
In East Village, New York City, Joe, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi.
Hey, Jason, how's it going?
It's going very well, sir.
I'm good, too.
My decision is that we should all invest our money into going to the moon as our new America and put Locke into action.
Well, then we'd have to have a space program funded by NASA to get this.
That's true.
Okay, well, this guy, Richard Bronson, or whatever, he wants to send us to the moon.
Let's do it private corporation-wise.
Good for free markets, sort of encourage everyone.
Hey, we're going to a new space race.
But this is the first time not as a country, but as sort of the ideals of America, private sort of no taxes, none of that stuff.
Who's going to be president, John Galt?
Sounds like something out of Atlas shrugged.
Well, no, on the moon, though, probably Ron Paul would be president.
I do not want to work with anybody in NASA who works with James Hansen.
I don't even know who that is.
James Hansen is the global warming guru of NASA, who, by the way, got caught exaggerating to the scientific or the scientific American.
He said, well, we have to exaggerate global warming years ago to get people's attention.
But this is the guy all the global warming kooks rely on, James Hansen of NASA, whose next government grant depends upon his dire predictions of the Earth.
But, you know, look, I know how frustrating it is at times, but there is no escape valve.
There is no escape.
We're going to have to fight the fight, just like our predecessors fought the fought.
I mean, fought the fight.
We're going to have to face this.
And, you know, it's rough right now, but I still say it's cathartic.
I still say that at least now we're starting to recognize a problem.
And you can't solve a problem until you recognize the problem.
And we're looking in the mirror.
We're looking at ourselves.
If you happen to be a Republican, say, you're looking within the party and you're saying, is this really the party of Goldwater and Reagan?
And a lot of people are starting to wonder.
So, you know, once you discover the problem, you can now take measures to rectify the problem.
And I think, frankly, that's a step in the right direction.
I adopt the EIB Tower in Midtown Manhattan behind the golden EIB Mike.
My pleasure once again to sit in for the big guy, Rush Limbaugh.
He'll be back on Monday.
So hang tight, everybody.
Super Bowl on Sunday.
Big weekend coming our way.
1-800-282-2882 is the contact line.
In the meantime, to Knoxville, Tennessee.
And Candace, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi, Jason.
Rush Baby here.
I have a couple points for you.
You had some callers call in and ask where the media is on McCain with the whole get-mo waterboarding, the amnesty bill, and all this kind of stuff.
And I believe that the media is purposely ignoring this.
They're ignoring it now because they want McCain to get the nomination because they will pulverize him once he becomes a nominee up against Obama or Clinton, whoever it may be.
One of Russia's lines has always been, a liberal is always a liberal first.
The media will absolutely turn their back on McCain right now.
As soon as he gets the nomination, they will turn his back on him.
And it'll be a good idea.
Wait a minute now.
There's a contradiction in your logic here.
Do you think McCain is a conservative or a liberal?
No, I think McCain is absolutely a liberal.
Look at his voting record.
All right, then why would the media?
Then why would the media turn their back on him?
Because Just like what Rush says, a liberal is always a liberal first, which means the media may love him right now, but once he gets the nomination and he goes against Hillary or he goes against Obama, they will absolutely turn their back on him.
They absolutely will.
They do not want a conservative in there in the mix.
Another point that it'll bring up is if McCain gets the vote, the liberal will flam him, and the media will flam him.
And you know why?
That will cause conservatives to not turn out to vote.
That will cause a huge low turnout.
That's what even Rush is talking about because a lot of conservatives just won't vote.
Doesn't matter who his vice president is.
They just won't vote.
So we'll have all these people, and then the Democrats will be able to say, Hillary won by a land slide turnout.
McCain, look, the theory amongst the liberal Republicans who have this hegemony over the party as of now is that we don't need the conservatives, is that we will move leftward on energy.
We will move leftward on education.
We will move to the port side on immigration.
And anything we lose from conservatives will be more than made up from independents and some Democrats will get.
I mean, literally, that's the theory.
Jason, that's what the media is feeding us.
They want us to think that there are more liberal conservatives than there are real hardcore conservatives.
The media wants us to think that.
So we will put McCain in.
Well, I understand the media wants us to think that, but why do Messers Schwarzenegger?
Because it's not.
Candace, Candace.
Candace, take a breath.
I understand that.
Why do the Republican leaders in this party, from Mel Martinez to Lindsey Graham to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Tim Poleny to Sonny Perdue to Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida, why do they believe it?
They're the ones that want to rebrand the party.
It's the former Bushies like Michael Gerson and David Frum, speechwriters for the president, who are doing the rebranding.
Why do they believe it?
I know the media believe it.
They are the media's babies.
The media are only going to show the seven or eight or nine liberals that you just named that claim to be conservatives.
They're not going to show the other 40, 50 that are out there that can't get any airtime.
All right, Candace, I got to move.
I got to move, but next time, don't sugarcoat it.
Give it to me straight.
I like to see that passion.
Don't get me wrong.
I think, you know, look, look, the media will come down hard on McCain.
And some of the things you're not hearing about now, some past controversial quotes, John McCain said in the past, some maybe his health, some of those issues will come up.
You're quite right about that.
But the reason won't be because they want to beat up on a conservative.
The reason is when you're running against a liberal, being a me too liberal will never result in victory.
Voters won't even fall for that.
They want the real thing.
And this is the big fallacy of the Republican Party's move leftward.
If your goal in life is to get a government grant, you're going to vote Democrat.
If you've been collecting a government check from a government union for 30 years, you're going to go vote for the party of government.
And if you're a lifelong member of the Sierra Club, Earth First, Environmental Defense, or any other whacked out organization, you're not going to be voting Republican no matter how green they get because you're going to vote for the real thing.
So that particular aspect of your point, I think, is absolutely correct.
In Hershey, Pennsylvania, Alan, you're next up on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello, Jason.
Excellent job today in Rush's absence.
Thank you.
It's a pleasure to talk with you.
My true feeling is that the conservatives in the United States of America had better understand that it's dead.
The conservative movement from Ronald Reagan was Ronald Reagan.
And I think the relentless pounding by the media because conservatism did work has killed it.
Those people, and you just said, the MeToo Democrats, the MeToo Republican conservatives found that it was too difficult to be what Ronald Reagan had been.
And right now, we're all kind of running around in a circle.
I don't think, look, I don't think that is true of the rank and file, but as Rush says once in a while, it is true of the leadership.
Reagan brought out the conservative base.
The leadership we've got, whether it's governor or, frankly, presidents, if you're not leading, the cacophony surrounding their apparatus drowns out the conservative base.
That's right.
George H.W. Bush, when he was elected, I mean, there went the conservative movement.
I mean, what did he do?
You know, he had a tax increase.
You mean the kinder and gentler nation?
Yes.
There are code words here, kinder, gentler, compassionate, conservative, applied Christianity.
There are code words, and they're all euphemisms for big government.
And your point is dead on.
The point is simply this.
There are two ways to go.
When you've got, I keep coming back to the environment because I think that's the single best litmus test, whether someone's got the temerity and the courage to stand up to the monolithic liberal society we're in here, Alan.
So that's why I keep going back to global warming and the environment.
And there are two ways to go.
When you've got all of this noise about global warming and all of the media on that side, your kids, by the way, are being indoctrinated, not educated on global warming.
They've got to see the Al Gore movie, the fictionalized movie that he created and Hollywood loved.
You've got it everywhere.
And so if you're a politician, there are two ways to go.
You can look at this and say, wow, do I have a chore ahead of me?
I've got to re-educate people.
I've got to make this an issue.
I'm going to take some flack like the Gipper did.
Or you can say, well, maybe conservatism really is dead.
Maybe I'll adapt.
Maybe I'll look at another poll.
And maybe I'll just throw in the towel.
For Ronald Reagan, it was a time in life.
He was coming after Jimmy Carter, for God's sake.
I mean, it certainly opened the door for him.
And then he came in, and his greatness, unfortunately, has gone away, as you said.
Alan, thanks for checking in.
Let's squeeze in Kathy from, where is that?
Mathu in Massachusetts.
Mathu in Massachusetts.
What a town.
Don't tell me you're voting for the Patriots this weekend.
Oh, yeah, I am.
It's nice to finally get through to Russian, and I'm glad you're on.
I have to say, you've made me feel good today because watching the debates, I can't believe how stupid so many people are to believe a load of crap.
I mean, from both sides.
It's just amazing.
And guess what?
They all vote.
You know, it should be illegal for, you know, some people should have some kind of IQ test before they vote because I'm not that smart, but I can't believe what really it's it's it's it's a shame thing because my husband works really hard And he has to work four months for nothing because that's how much taxes they take out of him.
And for someone else to work to get that money free, basically.
So, you know, the government steals four months of my husband.
Don't you care?
Don't you care about people?
No, my husband, we give to the Razor's House.
We give to other organizations.
That's our right.
We can do that for ourselves.
We don't need a government.
You have a right.
Again, we've got to get out from under this false altruism.
You have a right to give.
You also have a right not to give.
It is not a sin to care about your family, yourself, your kids, your close family members more than other people.
The idea that you and I were put on earth to support the lives, irresponsible as they might be, of total strangers, is an anathema to logic.
It's crazy because I would think people had enough pride in themselves to try to lift themselves out of poverty.
And some people can do it, but they don't want to do it.
Why?
It's so easy.
The government can just keep drawing out our tax money.
It makes it easy for them to say, oh, great.
If I get in trouble, like with the, I mean, we pay our mortgage, and these people can go buy their huge houses, and my house is small, and then they can get, say, oh, great.
I can get out of that.
Just listen to what Hillary Clinton said last night.
She said, government shouldn't be run like a business or is not a business for profit.
It's there to help people.
So government, in the minds of liberals, is simply a mechanism to take money from one set of individuals so they can give it to another set of individuals, whether, by the way, they are worthy or not.
And that's why private charity is always better because it does have market discipline.
Even market discipline, free market discipline works with private charities.
If you have a private charity that is abusing its charge, guess what?
Donations dry up.
If you have government that collects receipts by force every April, it can abuse its charge all day long.
It can waste money all day long.
It can subsidize people whose behavior put them in their mind, not their condition.
And guess what?
There is no automatic correcting mechanism like market discipline.
And that's the dangers of government as a charitable clearinghouse.
But guess what?
That's what people want to hear these days.
Well, in many ways.
And that's certainly what liberal Democrats think government is there for.
Cut defense and increase redistribution of wealth.
And, you know, again, we don't need government to do that.
Contribute to Shriners Hospital.
It's a great outfit.
Contribute to your favorite charity.
Why do you need it?
Really, what they're saying is, we don't trust you to do the right thing.
So we, in the name of compassion and caring, are going to forcibly extract money from you to give to somebody else.
We're not going to give our own, though.
That's not compassion, and that's not virtue.
It is the antithesis of both.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh, back with more when we return.
That's right.
Welcome back to the Family Program.
I am Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh.
Rushlimbaugh.com online, of course.
Contact line in the meantime, 1-800-282-2882.
El Rushbow.
We'll be back on Monday.
Once again, thanks to everybody, Mike Kitt and the gang at EIB, and, of course, El Rushbow for this opportunity.
Let's go to Suzanne in Potomac, Maryland.
You're next on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi.
Hey, Jason.
I've got a theory about what's happened to the conservative movement, and I put the blame at the feet of George W. Bush, and then I put it at the feet of all the conservatives who gave him a pass the last seven years.
And I say that not on specific issues because he got a few things right, but in reality, he got the majority of things wrong.
And all of this gave him a pass.
And if Rush had been on the air four years ago, three years ago, Sean Hannity had been on the air like they've been on the last two, three weeks, three or four years ago, it wouldn't have happened.
Well, what happened on immigration is that it's not a problem.
His judicial approach.
Let's play this out.
His judicial appointments, pretty good.
He cut taxes.
Yeah, after Harriet Myers.
Hold on.
True, true.
But Rush was on him about Harriet Myers.
But you're missing the point.
It's not a specific issue.
We let the conservative movement slide.
Let me tell you where I agree, and here's where I disagree, all right?
I agree with you that the Bush administration and Peggy Noonan has been out front on this in the Wall Street Journal, deserve more criticism.
But I don't think it was just Bush.
Frankly, what Bush, you know, to the extent the spending went up, the amnesty bill, all of this couldn't have happened without a Republican Congress that was leading the way.
It was the entire party.
Now, I think the greatest, I guess, failing, if you will, on Bush 43 was the people he surrounded himself with.
Absolutely.
And those were very few of them were true blue Reaganite conservatives, unfortunately.
Who picked them?
True.
That's true.
But I think Bush's instincts on many things were right as well.
And some people, let me give you the other side of this.
There are, and I do think this is the predominant view of some of these big government conservatives and certainly some in the evangelical movement who are supporting liberals like Mike Huckabee.
The predominant view is, I don't care about anything except the war.
And if you're right on the war, you can have every egregious transaction under the sun.
I don't care.
Okay, that's my point.
We were specifically oriented to the issue of the day, and we lost track of the conservative movement.
That's my point.
It's a fair point.
It's a fair point.
But, you know, someone once said, a wise scholar said, war is the health of the state.
That is to say, when you feel threatened, when the country's threatened, people don't focus on those other things.
They are willing to give up some of these precious liberties, and some people say it's a big mistake, for security to combat an immediate threat.
But I do agree with you this far, and that is we forgot what we were fighting the war about, what it was we were trying to preserve.
And that has, frankly, been the theme of the program all day long.
It's not good enough, and this is where McCain can't figure out and where some Republicans can't.
This guy's great on the war.
Although on the domestic side, I don't think he's that great on the war.
But he's going to prosecute the war.
Bush prosecuted the war.
Why are Republicans upset?
Why are conservatives upset?
Because why are you fighting the war?
We're fighting the war to preserve liberty and freedom and markets and federalism and enumerated powers and the dual sovereignty that limits government jurisdiction and private property.
And almost every other initiative by the Republican Congress, which was spending the money, was an assault on our pocketbooks, was an assault on private property, especially through the environment and the education bills and all of the rest.
And the massive subsidy that is illegal immigration.
I mean, you know, if people want to come here and work, we ought to welcome them.
We ought to welcome them.
But it's very, very difficult to have open borders like we do with a welfare state and not have huge dislocations on the fiscal side for local and state governments.
And that's exactly what we're doing.
And as Milton Friedman said before he passed on, it amounts to a massive government subsidy for illegal immigrants or low-skilled labor, if you will.
So you add all those things together and we forgot what we were fighting about.
And I think that's probably a part of your point.
It's a fascinating point, and it's going to continue, I'm certain, in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush.
We'll be back to wrap it up right after this short pause.
You know, Suzanne has a legitimate point, and we need to come face to face with that.
Where has conservatism been these last seven years?
I mean, take a look.
I mean, Kit and I were talking during the break about the prescription drug benefit.
In 2005, the federal government, the federal government, paid 2%.
Now they pay 18%.
You cannot go down this road of continuing to grow government and remain a viable conservative party.
Those people are not going to vote for you.
So until we come face to face with the notion that we've got to go back to our roots, federalism and limited government and private property, and take on some of these behemoths like the environmental movement, it's going to be a long day.
I'm Jason Lewis.
▲
Export Selection