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Feb. 5, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:24
February 5, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #3
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All right, we're back.
We got another hour to go, the fastest three hours in media.
Hosted by me, El Rushbow, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Happy to have you with us, ladies and gentlemen.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882, the email address El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
Now I have angered even my staff with my dissertation on hope.
I'm going to give you this in more detail.
I firmly believe this, what I'm about to say about hope versus other things.
But first, let me tell you what's going on in West Virginia.
The first round of caucus voting is if they're having their convention there, and the winner has to get 50%.
The first round, nobody got 50%.
After the first round of caucus voting, Ron Paul is out.
Mitt Romney finished first, Huckabee second, and McCain third, but you need 50% to win there.
So the second round of voting is occurring now.
If Romney wins in West Virginia, the drive-by media will ignore it.
They will snore.
If he loses West Virginia, they will say he is finished.
Romney's won Michigan, Nevada, Wyoming, and Maine, and they ignored the Maine victory recently as well.
Now, I'm not trying to irritate people with this hope business, but I do think, and I'm, by the way, I printed out a lot of emails today.
I thought what I would do, because we had that caller from Mississippi yesterday who was great.
He went on and on.
He was just totally against McCain, explained why, said he loved me and loved the program.
He's going to stick here no matter what happens and so forth.
And I got a lot of emails from people.
I like hearing people like that rush because I feel like I'm not alone.
So I went through this morning between when I, when I, when I left the computer at home, which I guess was about 11.30 when I cashed it in last night because I was tired after the Super Bowl party on Sunday night.
So I cashed it in about 11.30.
And I got in here this morning, about 3,000 emails had collected in the El Rushbo at EIBnet.com email address.
So I just went through a couple of them and I got a stack here of anti-McCain emails from people.
And in the stack, I also printed out a couple.
I wish you'd shut up.
Why don't you get on board?
Don't you realize you're hurting the party?
I've got a mixture of these things in here.
And I have to remind myself, yes, we are into our 20th year of broadcast service to America here on the EIB network.
And over those 20 years, we've had a core audience, but some come and go.
And there are new arrivals each and every day.
And you know what I always say?
It takes a while, steady listening, to understand the context of this program.
But one of the things that I've always said to you, folks in the audience, is that we have like a familial kind of bond, a connection.
And all of these media attacks on me have not been able to break that bond because the media did not create that bond.
You and I did that together.
I mean, you're not here listening to the program because the media has sung my praises over the years and created your curiosity.
You were here because you listened to the program and you like it and you get whatever you get from it.
So consequently, if the media tries to drive a wedge to us between us, they can't because they didn't create the bond that exists.
Nevertheless, I feel it incumbent upon me to forever engage, constantly engage in having you understand who I am as a person, as a man, so that you will have some contextual understanding for the opinions and positions that I take.
And Mr. Snirdley has been on me for the last couple weeks on the whole concept of hope.
And every time he brings hope up, I ridicule it.
And he just bows his head in there.
And it usually brings it up in the context of, you know, talking about the Obama campaign, which is filled with nothing but hope.
I mean, Obama's, just like McCain, is getting away with hiding the substance of what he believes, all this flowery talk of hope and the Camelot and JFK and so forth.
And I realize it's empty.
The discussion of hope from a political leader is pure poppycock.
It's empty.
It's transparent.
There's nothing there.
It is totally devoid of substance.
And every time I say this, snurdily cringes.
I wish you wouldn't say that.
People have to have hope and hope, hope.
Let me try this.
Feel free to disagree, as always.
I say this so that you will understand.
I'm not putting people down with this.
I love people.
I want the best for people.
I want people to understand the potential that is theirs.
I want people to understand the opportunity this country provides.
I don't want people sitting around wishing for things.
I want people motivated and desirous to do things because that's how you realize success.
That's how you realize your potential.
And that's how you learn you've got more potential than you even knew was trying somebody.
If you sit around hoping for it all day, it might sustain you for a while.
But see, none of us can predict the outcomes in our lives.
And so many of us use hope as a bridge to the eventual outcome we hope for from event to event or circumstance to circumstance.
And in my understanding and my experience, I should say that my hoping for something never made it happen.
My desire for something did.
I think hope, let's look at liberals and all these people that are fooling themselves with all this flowery, hopeful talk of a brilliant utopian future from Mr. Obama.
That hope, as exhibited by liberal Democrats, is nothing more than an excuse for not trying.
You sit around and hope something happens, whatever it is.
You can apply this to anything.
See, folks, what I know from my own experiences is that I cannot predict the future.
And I don't sit around hoping for outcomes because what most people do in that circumstance is tell themselves negative stories.
It's just the way we're made.
That leads to all kinds of suffering, self-inflicted suffering.
Gosh, I hope I don't get fired next week.
Start thinking I'm going to get fired.
Or whatever it is, you generally end up thinking the negative.
People mistakenly place hope as the sentiment or the emotional state that will lead to the outcome that they, oh, gosh, I hope, I really so hope this happens.
But that's basically an excuse for not doing anything, for not trying.
And so what you're doing, you're setting yourself up to have to deal with whatever happens, probably negatively, because you're not allowing yourself to be part of the equation to get the result that you want.
Faith, to me, is a far better thing to have than hope.
Let me illustrate it in the political sense.
A lot of people are hoping that Senator McCain will beat Senator Clinton.
And that's the sole reason that they are supporting Senator McCain because for whatever they so dislike, are so afraid of Mrs. Clinton, and they think they hope that McCain can be the only one.
I have very little faith that he can.
I'm not hoping he loses.
I'm not hoping she loses.
I'm looking at the circumstances.
I don't have much faith that he can beat her for the reasons that we've been into.
Desire, on the other hand, is the equivalent of action in all of this.
Hope equals no action.
Faith is preferable to hope because faith at least has an optimistic aspect to it.
Your religious faith is optimistic.
It's eternal life.
It is all the things that you think your devotion and your worship will bring you.
That's optimism.
Hope is simply sitting around taking yourself out of the equation, subjecting yourself to circumstances that you can't control, admitting that you can't or don't want to have any influence on.
See, basically, excusing yourself for not trying.
And you're hoping.
You're hoping.
You heard the phrase hope against hope?
I mean, it has a, hope against hope.
It means it's not going to get you anywhere.
Desire, however, is what leads to action.
So if you want Mrs. Clinton to be beat, if you want her defeated, then that's going to lead you to a different thought process and action process and perhaps voting process than simply sitting around hoping so.
Because by hoping, you're placing the responsibility in somebody else's back pocket, in this case, Senator McCain's.
Now, that's where I have no faith that what you hope for is going to happen.
Another illustration.
And you've heard me say this.
In this country, you look at our population, you could say that maybe 10%, 15% of the people are pulling the cart and 85, 80% are riding in the cart.
The 15 to 20% pulling the cart haven't got time for hope.
They know where they're going.
They've got a specific objective.
They've got specific goals.
They've got specific purses, purposes, and places they want to end up.
The people being pulled in the cart are sitting there hoping they end up in a good place.
But they're not leading anybody there.
Now, don't misunderstand.
Hope is not invalid.
It's something we all experience.
It's an emotion that we all feel, and a lot of us invest in it.
I try not to hope too much because to me, it equals inaction.
I'm an action guy.
I believe things get done when I apply myself to them, not when I sit around and hope that they get done.
Sometimes I say to Mr. Snerdley, when he's getting on my case about my destroying hope, I will say to him, What's hope ever accomplished?
Did Bill Gates hope when he was in school that he find the secret to the MS-DOS system and getting on every freaking computer?
Or did he go do it?
Well, regardless whether you like Windows, take your pick.
The Wright brothers today hoped the damn thing would work.
They probably did.
But nevertheless, they had faith in their design.
I admit it's a fine point, but it's rooted in the fact that hope to me equals inaction, and it's an admission that you don't know what future outcomes are because you can't possibly know what they are, and that getting involved in the circumstances and activities that lead to the conclusion make far more sense to getting a conclusion that you want than just sitting around hoping that you get what you want.
I hope this enables you to understand me a little better.
So I just checked the ABC News website.
They're already saying Limbos spends entire program trashing McCain.
I'm not trashing McCain.
I'm educating you people about Senator McCain.
Haven't talked about him yet, so to make ABC right, let's listen to this.
It's the EIB Network.
White comedian Paul Shanklin as John Fogarty.
Credence Clearwater Revival.
Well, guess what, folks?
In Los Angeles, the Board of Elections failed to deliver voting equipment to polling places all over town.
Now, the point man for Mrs. Clinton in California is the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villa Garosa, or Villa Ragosa.
It's Villa Ragosa, I think.
I get him confused.
But regardless, Antonio Villa Ragosa.
And now this is going to affect Republicans, too, but Obama was cleaning up out there.
And so all of a sudden, the voting machines not only not malfunction or not functioning, they're not even there.
Back to the phones.
This is Sean in Peoria, Illinois.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Russ.
Pleasure to talk with you.
Thank you for doing what you do.
Thank you, sir.
As a current member of the military, I am totally tired of McCain solely basing his campaign on being a prisoner of war.
And if you allow me to explain, is it nice to have a president with military experience?
It sure is.
Is it a requirement?
No.
McCain is, that's the only thing he's offering is that he has his experience as a prisoner of war.
But a president isn't just military.
President has to deal with a lot of stuff.
That's why I feel that the Secretary of Defense should definitely be military, preferably a combat veteran.
He's got the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to work with on military affairs.
We don't need the president deeply involved in military affairs.
Yeah, but you've got to have a civilian bridge between the Pentagon and between the military and the government.
That's why you don't have the war veterans, you know, they show up with a joint chiefs, but you're going to find too many secretaries of defense that will be decorated military heroes.
You're going to have veterans in there, I think.
But, you know, you raise a good point.
Why do you think McCain is focusing on his war hero status?
Not just for the story that it makes, but there are other reasons.
What do you think they are?
I think the only reason is because that's the only thing he has to offer to the Republican Party.
He's using it to conceal other aspects of his record.
Right, exactly.
And what I find interesting about this, well, at the same time, like you say, we're supposed to have a military guy.
Not necessary to have a military guy be president.
All of a sudden, we're told it's somebody who has experience in the private sector, a big success in the private sector.
So we can't have that in Washington.
No, we can't have that.
That's not a qualifier.
Just because you run a business, why that's not a qualifier?
It's 180 degrees out of phase.
Yeah, I just saw this.
Sean, thanks for the call.
They're projecting that Huckabee has come from nowhere to win in West Virginia.
Now, originally, he had 50% there, and it was Ron Paul was out after the first vote, and it was Romney, Huckabee, and I think Romney had 30%, Huckabee at 16, and McCain.
So, obviously, well, I can't say obviously, I don't know, but it seems like that the Huck forces got together with the McCain forces, and McCain forces sent his forces to the Huck forces, and that's how they defeated Romney and Westford.
Don't know that, but I wouldn't be surprised.
All right, we know a little bit more here about what happened in West Virginia, and folks, it underscores what many of us have been saying about collusion between the Huck forces and McCain forces.
After the first round of balloting in the West Virginia caucus, nobody got 50%, but Romney led with 41%.
Paul was out of it, so it was Romney, it was Huckabee, and then McCain in that order.
What has happened is that McCain forces have joined Huck forces, and that's how McCain or Huckabee has won West Virginia.
Now, McCain and Huck forces are denying that there was collusion, but who cares?
Doesn't matter what they say.
The fact, what this proves is that a vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain because the Huck forces, whether by request from McCain forces or whether on their own McCain forces decided to throw in with Huck forces in mass.
And so the combination of McCain forces and Huck forces overwhelm Romney, who had 41%.
So a vote for Huckabee is a vote for Romney.
Now, I'm not, you know, folks, Super Tuesday, McCain.
Now, folks, look, it's Eastern time about 2:34 on Tuesday afternoon of Super Tuesday.
If anybody thinks that I'm trying to influence votes today, you have another thing coming.
That's not the purpose.
I know everybody in the drive-bys thinks so.
I just, I'm telling you what I believe, which is what I have done each and every day behind this golden EIB microphone, and what they don't understand.
I am having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have with all of this.
I know a lot of my people, friends of mine, taking this really personally and they're down in the dumps over it and so forth, but you have to know what you can control or what you can't control, and you certainly can't take the things you can't control personally.
And if you reach out and try to take control of too much, it's going to be a disappointment as well.
Then we're back into hope.
I don't want to go back there.
Harry, Mary, I'm sorry, Mary Pacifica, California.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
I'm calling.
First of all, I hope you don't take offense when I say this, but I listened to your program yesterday for the very first time in my life.
I have been outside of the world of talk radio virtually all my life, but I called in because I want to just testify on your behalf and the behalf of talk radio.
And why would I be offended by this?
Well, whatever.
If you're not great, I am not.
But you know something?
It's another thing.
I hate to get all philosophical here, Mary, but I don't allow people to offend me anyway, so don't worry about it.
I don't get offended.
I don't.
Okay, good.
Good.
Attack, you know, Talk radio and your show in particular, I know, has been under attack.
I want to just testify that I am a conservative.
I am basically agreeing with most of what you're saying, not everything you say.
Right on, right on.
But I am agreeing without having heard you before.
And so what I'm saying is that there's a whole section of people out there whose voice needs to be heard.
And it's heard through people like you.
I heard Mary Matlin say over the weekend, you don't speak for people, you let people speak.
You represent your show represents a section of people who otherwise are not getting heard.
My concern today with this election and with the political climate in this country is that we are heading towards a one-party system.
We've got people who are Republican in name only.
We've got two candidates now, Huckabee and McCain, who have the same mindset as the Democrats, but they're on the Republican ticket.
And they're taking us down to a one-party system.
I think that's the most dangerous in the world.
That is more dangerous than just the Democratic Party, is to only have one party.
Is that what you thought would offend me?
What's that?
Is what you just said, is that what you thought would offend me?
No, I thought you might be offended that I never heard you before.
Oh, no.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
I don't have hope that everybody in the world listens to me.
I have faith that it'll happen someday, but I don't start hoping that.
No.
What you just said is you've said this so well.
We're headed to a one-party system.
This is excavating.
This is exactly what bothers all of us.
We've got a liberal Republican in McCain.
We've got a liberal Republican in Huckabee.
And we, of course, got liberal Democrats over there on the Democrat side.
And our Liberal Republicans want to reach out more to the Liberal Democrats than they do the conservatives in their own party.
And they're using this whole idea that to be all-inclusive and to bring people together and to cross the aisle and all of this, which sounds so warming.
And it's so, but it's dangerous.
Well, except when you look who's crossing the aisle.
It's our side crossing the aisle.
The other side's not moving.
Right.
And they don't just reach across the aisle.
They go over there and sit there.
That's right.
I do want to take issue with something you said yesterday.
You said that there was no...
I knew it was too good to be true.
Well...
Well, you said that you basically there was no difference between Hillary and Obama.
And I have to take issue with that.
Hillary Clinton, I don't agree with her agenda.
I don't agree with her views or her policies, but I do believe that they are what she says they are.
I don't believe that she's got a hidden agenda.
With Barack Obama, he's a real wildcard, and that really scares me.
We don't know what this man's going to do, and I'm very, very suspicious with this big swoon and all of this clamoring over somebody who basically has nothing there.
That scares me more than Hillary Clinton.
With Hillary, you get what you got.
I mean, what she is is what she is.
But Barack Obama is a wildcard.
And there's something really wrong there.
But I am just been out campaigning.
Let me just tell you this because I'm running up at the end of it on time.
Mark McKinnon, who ran all the media, was in charge of all the media for George W. Bush in 2000, 2004, has joined the McCain campaign.
And Mark McKinnon has said, and it's in Howard Kurtz's piece today, has vowed they will never run a critical or attack ad on Obama.
The McCain camp won't.
Uh-huh.
That's what it says in the Kurtz.
Here we get it.
I'm going to find a Kurtz piece.
I'm going to read this.
Wait a minute.
It's not in the Kurtz piece.
I saw this somewhere.
Somebody analyzed it.
Oh, it's at Newsbusters.
Let me find that during the break.
But I think McKinnon has said, I'm going to double-check this, but if McCain is the nominee of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, that they will not run ads critical of Obama.
It's too risky.
Right.
Because he's running on this basis that he scares me when he talks about bringing all these countries at the table or going off to Iran to have tea.
I mean, that's nuts.
It's absolutely nuts.
I know, because it's all predicated on the fact that we are the problem in the world.
And if we just go out and assure these people we're not, yeah, we're going to look, this is not the time to spend up with Democrats.
We've got plenty of time to deal with them.
We'll get to them down the road.
But I guess if I can find this thing in McKinnon, I know I saw it at Newsbusters today.
If two, it means that the McCain camp is totally willing to slander and slime Romney.
But they will not, what they're saying, will not do any critical ads of Obama.
Anyway, I know they're consistent.
That's exactly right.
They're reaching out to the left all these years and criticizing and trashing Republicans.
They're very, very consistent.
Vince in Atlanta, well, Gabby, you're here before we have to go to break.
Hello, sir.
Hi, Rush.
How are you today?
Hey, fine.
Thank you.
Outstanding.
I just wanted to say, unfortunately, I sort of feel like we're in this position, well, because of you.
I know this sounds a little funny, but given the fact that you reach 20 million people on a regular basis, you're sitting on the fence for at least the last month and a half has given us Huckabee, even people voting for Giuliani down in Florida.
And because, well, let me put it this way.
If you'd have taken up the Vanguard and been for Mitt for the last month, we might not have been in this quagmire that I think we find ourselves.
Perhaps.
But, you know, I've got this no endorsement policy.
It's based on a respect for the intelligence of the audience.
But I also need to point this out.
You know, this is something that we forget, even though it's not that long ago.
One of the problems, folks, that we have all had here, and let's admit it, is that there's just from the get-go, the entire roster of Republican candidates was flawed in one way or the other.
And it was difficult for conservatives of any kind to get full bore behind anybody.
I understand.
You think we created a vacuum.
And this is one of the criticisms that the pseudo-conservatives on our side and the pseudo-conservative punditry are suggesting to those of us who have problems with McCain.
Well, it's your fault if you just unified here behind Romney, sooner web, all right, why?
Once again, it relies on the fact that the audience is a bunch of mind-numbed robots sitting out there taking marching orders.
And I reject that because nobody's leading anybody here.
You just simply have your views validated by somebody who's like you, which is me.
So I guess, you know, don't lose hope out there.
Vince.
I'm just kidding.
I appreciate your comment.
Sadly, there's a grain of substance to it.
Anyway, I've got to take a break because of time constraints.
We will be back.
My memory was correct on Mark McKinnon, who's now running media for McCain, did the same thing for Bush, 2000, 2004.
Something you might like to know about Mark McKinnon, and I've met him once.
Don't know him that well, but he worked for Ann Richards, worked for Ma Richards.
Mark McKinnon is a Democrat.
And in 2000, by the way, the Bush campaign, he opposed doing any media on tax cuts, saying people don't care about tax cuts.
So this is a guy that's instrumental in the McCain campaign.
And in the Howard Kurtz piece today, the Washington Post regarding me is this passage.
Mark McKinnon, top McCain advisor, called the criticism from Limbaugh and the other hosts frustrating, saying, our question is, isn't it better to get behind a Republican you may disagree with from time to time than to work for an outcome that puts a Democrat in the White House with whom you will disagree all the time?
Okay, so we're going to disagree all the time with Obama or Hillary.
In the latest edition of Newsweek, reporter Richard Wolf reports that inside the McCain campaign, McKinnon was making pledges not to make any ads disparaging Barack Obama.
And as the newsbusters gang points out, and here he is lecturing me about not being critical of Senator McCain, the article ends this way.
Even if Republicans don't convert in more significant numbers, the friendly outreach may blunt the ferocity of Republican attacks.
One senior aide to McCain has already said he's reluctant to attack Obama.
Last year, McCain's admin, Mark McKinnon, wrote an internal memo promising not to tape ads against Obama if he becomes a nominee.
That's your party outreach.
But we'll slime Mitt Romney all over the place.
Slander Romney and so forth.
Well, anyway, Charles of Lenexa, Kansas, outside Can't City.
Hello.
That's what Rush.
It's absolutely wonderful to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
Long time supporter, listener, my Rush the Maverick.
Yes, I appreciate that.
I just have a maybe a call to theory or what have you, but the media, obviously, we've been talking about it all day.
They support McCain, or at least they're not against him.
I just have this feeling that after, if he becomes the nominee for the Republican Party, that after that, that they'll kind of turn on him and try to utilize the conservatives in the Republican Party to and his past record as voting record to get their Democratic nominee in.
Really?
You think the drive-by media will turn against McCain after he's a nominee?
I would see it as a very good possibility.
Stories about his temperament, stories about his age.
Can he hold up?
Things like that, you mean?
Could be.
You're really on to something there.
The other thing, I think they really look at this as an opportunity to have kind of a safety net because if they don't accomplish what they want, at least they're getting McCain, which to at least us might as well put it the other Obama or British.
I think I'm getting right on the money.
McCain's insurance policy, if their lib doesn't win, our lib will.
They get an open borders lib in there.
Somebody is not going to really cut taxes.
That's, well, you're very perceptive, Charles.
I'm glad you called.
Who do we have next?
Fisherville, Kentucky.
This is Leah.
Hi, Leah.
Hi, Rush.
Hey.
Hi, this is so awesome.
Mega Dittos.
Thank you very much.
I'm very excited to talk to you.
Listen, I voted my very first presidential election, the 1980 presidential election, walked into the voting booth, cast my vote for Ronald Reagan, and that was, you know, there was a sense of pride there.
It was awesome to be able to do that and then to watch over the next four and then eight years to see what he accomplished.
I've got an 18-year-old son who's going to be voting in this election.
I don't know what to say to him.
I don't know how to, you know, I don't know what to, not that I'm going to tell him what to do, but I don't know how to advise him.
I don't know what direction to help him.
And I need your help on that.
This is assuming that McCain's the nominee.
True.
If it's, you know, my thought, if it's McCain, I don't know.
I have the thought that I just won't even vote this time, and I never thought I'd say that.
You know, I'm the, you know, if you don't vote, don't complain.
You know, this is pure anecdotal, but I'm getting lots of emails.
I mean, over the course of weeks, lots of emails, some people saying that.
I don't know how much faith to put in that, how much stock to put in the fact that people won't vote on it.
But I'll just tell you, there's far more apathy or anger out there than the Republican establishment knows.
Look at the one question I ask myself: if, down the road you think that the election of Obama, Hillary, or McCain is going to result in very bad things happening to the country, who would you rather get the blame for it?
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue.
That's it, folks.
Fastest three hours in media are gone.
We have a 21-hour break.
We have the Super Tuesday results tonight.
It's going to be late for some of the Western states.
See you back tomorrow to tell you what it all means and to hear what you think it all means.
And we can hope together.
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