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Feb. 6, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:15
February 6, 2008, Wednesday, Hour #2
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And greetings, folks.
Welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone, America's real anchor man, exceeding all audience expectations daily.
No mean feat is that.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbo at EIBNet.com.
I want to go back to the previous hour.
When I opened the program today, the official program observer and call screener, Bo Snerdley, was beside himself.
I had a shout at him to get in here and start answering the phones.
He was just slouched over and just droopy all over the place this morning.
And it got worse when I opened the program and suggested that I had been seeing that Huckabee might end up being the vice presidential choice of John McCain simply by virtue of the fact McCain did not win the votes in the South that he needs to win.
In fact, McCain did not get a majority Republicans in three crucial states.
I mean, not even close to getting a majority Republicans.
He got all these votes in these blue states in the East and the West that the Republicans are not going to win in a presidential race.
But Snerdley just revolted, looked repulsed as hell at the concept that Huckabee might is bad enough when McCain got in the nomination with Huckabee being on the ticket.
And look, I understand why you did that.
I mean, you're right.
I mean, the same contempt that you heard on the phone from Suzanne, you know, we might want to get that call ready.
I mean, no hurry on it, but roll that call off so we can play it as a reference.
Suzanne from Hagerstown, Maryland, just launched into why she's not going to vote for McCain.
And my email went nuts afterwards.
People I know, people I don't know, she is speaking my language.
That's the way I feel and so forth.
I think the same contempt that you heard from her aimed at McCain is felt toward Huckabee.
Maybe not quite as intense, but Huckabee is seen as facilitating the McCain candidacy.
And Suzanne made this point in her phone call, Snerdley.
She said the vote for Huckabee in the South was essentially the evangelicals throwing their vote away.
But they didn't think that.
I mean, they had substantive reasons, which we discussed.
But, you know, Huckabee's been practicing identity politics from the get-go.
I was the first to tag it as such.
And now everybody's picked up on that.
He wants us to look at evangelicals as blacks are looked at by the Democrats in terms of identity politics.
And he's pressed that.
Now, as far as you evangelicals are concerned, you know that your guy Huckabee is not going to be the nominee.
You know it isn't going to happen, and it's very unlikely he is going to end up on the ticket as vice president, running mate with McCain.
But I need to ask you evangelicals a question.
Who has said he will not vote for a constitutional amendment on abortion?
Who has said he would not vote for constitutional amendment on same-sex marriage?
Who has said that?
He's from Arizona.
His name is Senator John McCain.
And your vote for Huckabee is essentially a vote for John McCain.
And you can deny it all you want, but that's the case.
So what's happening here is that Huckabee is actually taking his own evangelicals for granted.
If Huckabee were really carrying their policies, he would be urging people.
Well, he would be attacking McCain, not Romney.
Because McCain has made it plain as day that he's not going to take the federal steps to secure the culture that the evangelicals demand of the Republican Party.
McCain's made it plain.
I don't know that the evangelicals know this.
I don't know that they're aware of it.
But if Huckabee were genuinely interested in the causes of his constituents, he would be attacking McCain, not Romney.
You know, other than Alabama, as I looked at things, other than Alabama, Romney and Huckabee have largely divided the evangelical vote.
And in that case, Huckabee should be aligning with Romney, not McCain, if these issues are critical to him.
But they're not.
And I can say that with relative certainty, because if they were important to him, he would be attacking the guy that's out there standing in the way of getting these things done.
And that is McCain.
Now, I was talking to my brother last night.
You know, there's all these instant messages and emails going back and forth with people analyzing things.
And it went through a bunch of ups and downs because the exit polls early on made it look like Obama was going to clean up and like Romney was coming on strong.
And then the actual vote counted.
And of course, the exit polls were again wrong.
And I just remember back in what was it, 2004, the early exit polls had John Kerry sweeping.
And of course, then the real vote came out, and all those koop fringe leftists said there has to be a conspiracy because the exit poll said that Kerry was going to win.
So the real vote had to be tampered with.
The Democrats have this history of presuming the exit polls are accurate and the real vote is tainted.
And yet, when the exit polls on the Democrat side came out and showed that Romney or that Obama was sweeping to, oh my God, frightening for Mrs. Clinton victory.
And then the real votes counted, and it's just the opposite.
They end up pretty much tied in the delegate count last.
That's pretty close in terms of delegates available yesterday.
There's no anger.
In fact, I think all this notion, I've been watching television, and of course, the next series of primaries, the big ones on March the 4th, and these next series of primaries, by the way, on the Democrat side, Obama is going to get most of them.
He's positioned well in a lot of these, might win Ohio.
He's going to do great in Washington, D.C. He's going to do good, might even do well in Texas.
And so this next wave is going to be interesting.
And the drive-bys have been predicting that it's going to be a slugfest.
It hasn't been a slugfest.
These people are in a mutual admiration, love society.
They're not going to destroy one another in this process.
It's going to be civil.
It's going to be familial.
It's all this desire, you know, for a crash, car crash type thing.
It just isn't going to happen.
But anyway, I was going to say is going back and forth with my brother, and I made a point to my brother last night.
I said, you know, beyond the fact that this is a Republican primary, and of course, Republicans are opposing Republicans, I sense something just in my gut.
I sense that what's actually happening out here is that I'm going to struggle to explain this correctly, but I think even among our candidates That are running, there is a greater interest in running against certain elements of their own party than there is running against Democrats.
Now, I understand it's primary, and McCain has to run against Romney, and Romney versus McCain, and Huckabee has to run against Romney as well.
But it goes deeper than that.
It's just something that I have sensed.
There is a greater desire on the part of members of our party to destroy certain elements of our party than there is a unified party desire to defeat Democrats.
And this is also turning people off because the element of the Republican Party that seems to be under assault is the conservative base.
Seems like that's what's out for destruction this year amongst the Republican Party.
It goes right along with my theory.
McCain can thumb his nose.
He can stick his thumb in the eyes of conservatives, not pay a price for it within his own party.
In fact, he's lauded as some sort of maverick who is able to cross the aisle and get things done with Democrats.
He's far more eager to work with Democrats against the interests of Republicans, particularly conservatives.
And not only does he not pay a price for it, he's lauded for it.
He gets credit for it.
This infuriates Republicans who want some payback and who want to get in the game at the same time to protect themselves, protect the conservative base and that particular identity of the Republican Party.
And then you couple it with, I think, one of the, she didn't say so, but I'm going to presume that getting back to Suzanne from Hagerstown, Maryland.
There's a lot of frustration in the Republican Party over this.
We've had the White House for eight years.
We've had a majority in the House of Representatives for most of those eight years.
And what is there to show for it?
And so conservatives are saying, what the hell did it all mean?
What the hell was the point?
We got all these people elected and they ran around and they stopped being Republicans.
And at the same time, they stopped being Republicans, they got credit for it.
The media loved them.
Moderate Republicans loved them.
They see Schwarzenegger campaigning as a rock rib conservative in California running his out-of-control budget.
Now, look, he has taken as sharp a turn left as any politician I have seen ever in my life.
He's now endorsed McCain.
Tom Broke on a soundbite we played last hour said, I don't think Limbaugh is correct calling Schwarzenegger and Giuliani liberal.
They're not exactly going to be groomsmen at a Jane Fonda wedding.
Mr. Brokaw, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be invited to every Kennedy family party that there is.
Who's the Jane Fonda defines liberalism these days anyway?
Quick timeout, folks.
We'll be back.
Lots of soundbites left.
Your phone calls as well as the EIB network rolls on unabated.
How long is it, Mike?
How long is that call?
That went for what?
454.
All right, keep that.
So we're going to replay the Suzanne call at some point down the road here.
Suzanne from Higgins just lit a fire among everybody.
McCain had a press conference today standing in front of the Straight Talk Express bus.
He was heading out there.
He was standing next to Joel Lieberman.
Who else is it?
Lindsey Graham.
And here's the AP version.
Boosted by his big night, John McCain asked his loudest conservative critics Wednesday to calm down and support his candidacy as Barack Obama and Hillary girded for more rounds of their struggle.
McCain was referring primarily to radio talk show hosts and other pundits of the right when he appealed for unity now that he has a leg up in the nomination race.
I think he said, I think they've made their case against me pretty eloquently, adding wryly, if that's the right word.
He asserted that the pundit's conservative hero, Ronald Reagan, and his hero, by the way, Ronald Reagan, reached across the aisle to Democrats just like he wants to do as president.
Now, this is what nobody seems to get.
When did the measure of conservatism, when did the measure of success, when did the measure of progress, when did it become reaching out to Democrats?
Mr. McCain, Ronaldos Magnus did reach out to Democrats to defeat them.
Ronald Reagan created what's known as the Reagan Democrats, Southern Democrats, who joined the Republican Party as conservative voters.
They may have stayed Democrats, but they were voting for conservatism.
We are reaching out and asking liberals to come join us as liberals.
And somehow this is a great masterstroke.
If this were a war, we have eventually, what we're saying, enemy, come on in and come be who you are when you get here.
If the Republican Party and the Democrat Party were two nations, Senator McCain is saying, I'm going to have no border on my nation, the Republican Party.
And if those people in that enemy party want to come in, infiltrate our party, that's great.
I'm going to show that I'm the guy that can get it done.
I'm going to be the guy to not protect the borders.
Why is it so hard?
I'm serious.
This one escapes me.
Why is it so hard to understand that what we want is to defeat those people?
We view those people as threats to the American way of life as we've always known it.
We view liberals as a threat to the founding of this country.
We view them as a threat to the future.
We view them as a threat to the traditions and institutions that have defined this country's greatness.
We view them as people who need to be defeated, not worked with.
Working with them, history has shown, ends up being a one-way street.
They get what they want.
The neutering of conservatism, the neutering of the Republican Party.
They get their judges nominated.
And of course, when that happens, those people are not ever standing for elections, so they're immune forever to the will of the people.
We see liberals as trying to co-opt culture, education, and government in ways that it can never be gotten rid of because they want people in positions that are appointed and, of course, for which there are no elections.
And somehow we now define maturity and greatness, Electability, success, as I can reach out to Democrats.
I'm the only one who can do it.
I can reach out there, I can bring them in, as they currently exist.
So you reach out, you tell the people that want to destroy your party, you tell the people that want to destroy conservatism, come on in and do it.
And it's worse than that.
After you invite these liberal Democrats, after you cross the aisle and you ask them to come into your party, you help them do what their intention is, all the while getting praised for reaching across the aisle.
Bipartisanship.
There is no such thing as bipartisanship anymore.
Bipartisanship has come to mean one thing: the Democrats get what they want.
And we're fed up.
And we're certainly not happy and thrilled to hear that that is a resume enhancement for electability.
He said it, I can reach across the aisle.
I can work with the Democrats.
Yeah, we know that.
And what did you ever get for it?
What's the Republican Party get for all of your working with the Democrats versus what do they get?
They're going to get their global warming deal.
They're going to get massive tax increases and incursions on liberty dealing with this hoax.
What do they get with McCain Feingold?
They get the premise that government can shut people up at a certain time.
What do they get with Kennedy and McCain Kennedy?
They get amnesty, a never-ending flood of potential new Democrat voters.
What do we get when we reach across the aisle?
What do we get when we bring Democrats in?
Lest we forget, certain Republicans worked with Democrats to get Bill Clinton off the hook during impeachment.
We'll always remember that.
Those brilliant House managers were sold down the river, thrown under the bus, and thrown overboard.
All because Republicans in the Senate didn't want to deal with the problem attached with it.
So once again, we show that we can work with the Democrats, we can reach across the aisle, and we can show the spirit of cooperation.
While what really happens is that we lose a little bit of our identity and soul founded within this party each time it happens.
Now they're telling us to get over Reagan.
There was only one Reagan.
You guys got to get over Reagan.
We got people on our side.
That's true.
That's true.
We got to move on.
It's 2008.
Well, let's get beyond Vietnam, too, can we?
I have another question.
Before I get back to your phone calls, one more point in the question.
When is the last time, and I know you people pay attention, when is the last time that you heard Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama talk about reaching across the aisle to work with us?
No, seriously.
I mean, stop laughing.
I'm being serious.
Did they ever say this?
In fact, last night, Hillary, in her speech, went on and on and on about us.
She was attacking Bush.
She was attacking the Republicans.
And Obama hasn't gotten to that point yet because he's still out there flying around on vapid airlines with all his flowery lingo.
I don't hear them talking about reaching across the aisle to work with us.
Now, here's the rub with me about McCain's popularity.
John McCain is always allowed to have it both ways.
He is instrumental in obstructing what conservative measures we do want to implement.
And as a result of obstructing those measures, he gets lauded for it by the drive-by media.
And then after that, after McCain stands in the way of conservatism moving forward and being lauded for it, Republicans get blamed for getting nothing done.
McCain gets credit for being a maverick, as if that's evidence of his great character, because he'll always follow his conscience rather than a party line, blah, But he's always a maverick in furtherance of principles that we find abhorrent and principles that liberals love.
He's getting credit on both sides, never paying a price, and Republicans get the blame for it among voters.
I'm sick and tired.
We've had the White House.
We've had a Congress for eight years, six years.
What do we got to show for it?
McCain.
Do you follow me here, folks?
While he's out there obstructing conservatism, thumbing his nose at us, he's being lauded and praised.
Big Maverick gets credit for that.
And then Republicans get blamed for nothing getting done.
By the way, not to mention, it really takes no courage for Senator McCain to stray from the party line because he gets nothing but adulation from it.
From the drive-by business.
Maverick courage?
They love him.
Sabotage his own party.
They love him.
But now as the primaries are making clear, he's paying no price for any of these betrayals.
And I think that probably spells out and explains the root of the rage that lies beneath these primary votes that the Republican Party has no idea is occurring.
Let's go back to the phone.
Jim in Roseburg, Oregon, I'm glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Rush, mega former Massachusetts resident, Reagan, Democrat, Rush Republican.
Well, thank you, sir.
Yeah, I've been listening to you for 20 years.
You're great.
Listen, I can't move on to my next thing without responding to Margaret or whatever her name was.
And I just want to tell her.
That was Suzanne.
Suzanne, I love her, but get over yourself.
I mean, come on.
What are we going to do?
We're going to vote for Hillary.
Yeah, okay, right.
I'm with you there.
You know, she just has to get over herself.
What do you say about that?
Well, I think she's probably tried to get over herself and a lot of other people for eight years, and she's finally fed up with being told to get over herself.
Well, Rush, and she's probably fed up with being told, look, Suzanne, this is the best it's going to be.
Here's your excrement sandwich.
Eat it.
Yeah, no, I understand that.
And I appreciate what she's saying, but we can't vote for Hillary.
All right.
Well, I'm going to move on to the other thing.
Did she say she was going to vote for Hillary?
She wasn't going to vote.
Yeah, no, I think she basically implied that she was going to vote for Hillary.
And please, I mean, the problem is, Rush, we were not going to be able to do that.
I think she said, we're going to replay the call, but I think she said she wasn't going to put.
That's okay.
Oh, yeah.
I take it back.
She did say if it looked like McCain's going to win, she would vote for Hillary.
Yeah, the problem is we just were not given a conservative choice, let's face it, and move on.
No question.
Move on to where?
I'm sorry?
Move on where?
We didn't get a conservative.
Well, right.
We don't have a great place to move on to.
We really don't.
But what the heck is our choice now?
Well, I suspect that what's going to happen, remember, this is just February.
Yeah.
You get down to October, November, and I believe me, I go back to what I said before these primaries even started.
I'd be out of the golf course.
All these people.
What are we going to do to defeat Hillary?
There was so much fear of Hillary.
What are we going to do?
And I would say she puts her pants on one leg at a time like every other guy.
Don't be furried.
Don't be worried.
Don't be frightened.
And I think if she gets nomination, that's no longer a lock.
She gets the nomination.
She redefines negative turnout.
Right.
She is going to, she just polarizes people.
I think by the time she's going to gin up enough anti-Hillary turnout out there to perhaps be a boon to whoever the Republican nominee is.
Absolutely.
Now, if Obama is the nominee, we are doomed, and you should get ready and prepared for it now.
I agree.
And I'm going to tell you something else that's going to happen.
In addition, in addition to all this emotion that Hillary's going to revive in people, all of this, I'm not going to vote for that woman.
I don't care what.
I'm not voting for that.
You know, she's going to redefine negative turnout.
You know she is polarizing.
I'm going to tell you what's going to happen.
It's already started.
I pointed this out.
Last week after one of the primaries, Anna Quinlan, Newsweek magazine, How Old Is Too Old, she laid the foundation for the drive-by's eventual turning on McCain as an old guy getting older.
And I want to predict to you that once he's got this sewn up, you are going to see the drive-by media start doing stories on his age.
And they're not going to be mean.
They are not going to be vicious.
They're going to be almost sorrowful.
But you're going to see who wasn't, somebody wrote about this, an American thinker today, too.
I can't remember the name.
I think I've got it here in the stack.
But take a look at some of the pictures from last night on television.
Here you had McCain.
You've got an aging senator here, an aging governor, gray-haired governor there.
You've got old people, gray-haired, blue-haired, bloody merry gang women, blue-hair in the hives and so forth.
You've got pearls and so forth.
They contrast that to the Obama crowd, and it's youthful, it's energetic.
It wasn't stoic.
I am telling you, if that doesn't work, they're going to go after this age business, and they'll do it very almost regretfully.
They'll do it regretfully.
We're going to get the worst pictures of McCain.
We're going to get him looking tired.
We're going to hear references to his forgetfulness.
And isn't it just a shame?
And if that doesn't work, then they're going to do stories on the fact he's nuts.
Who just mark my words?
Mark my words, and don't doubt me.
What was it you called about out there, Jim?
Listen, Rush, I just wanted to point out the ironies of the fact that the South is always being knocked as the region that will not vote for a black man.
Yet, what is the only region that did not, where Democrats did not vote for a black man?
Yeah, the elite, refined, sophisticated Northeast.
Exactly.
So your point, that's where the true racism resides.
Oh, exactly.
It's obvious, isn't it?
I don't think there's any question of it.
These are the same people who say, you know, bring these illegals in.
Hell yes.
Not on my land.
Not in my house.
Yep, you're right.
That's an excellent point.
Look, Jim, I got to run a quick, brief timeout here on the EIB network.
We will be right back.
Apropos of what I was just discussing.
This being enamored, Republicans being enamored, defining greatness by reaching across the aisle and working with Democrats.
That's what Reagan did.
Hey, Shark!
I was here.
That's not what he did.
He reached across the aisle to bring them to us as conservatives.
Sorry for yelling.
David Brooks, the new Azaur with Jim Lara.
No, no, listen to this.
Had this to say.
He got a theory.
I have a theory about why they don't like McCain, and I think it's your attitude toward the other side.
Limbo's whole mentality is they are the enemy.
We are going to attack them, attack them, attack them.
And McCain may disagree, but he doesn't necessarily hate them.
And I think a similar sort of theory goes on on the Democratic side.
Some people think you can never deal with Republicans.
They don't have to deal with Republicans, David.
McCain's dealing with them and giving away the house.
He's giving away the store.
We don't hate them.
We want to defeat them.
This is politics.
It's not personalities.
We don't like their ideas.
For criminally sake, what is so difficult to understand about this?
Maybe these people, there's not that big a difference in the ideas that we have.
We just need to work around the edges, smooth them out, come up with brilliant compromises to move the country forward.
Of course, I think it's probably true because these people on our side, the conservative punditry, they love big government.
They apparently believe in a big, active government doing their agenda and so forth.
We don't hate them.
They are the enemy.
They are to be defeated politically.
He just evolved that theory.
And of course, the theory is only applied.
Now, we're the weird ones.
Giving away the store right underneath their noses.
They don't even see it, probably don't even care.
Beaver Creek, Ohio.
Ed, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Rush, thanks for having me in Mega Dittos.
You bet, sir.
The last week or so, we've heard everything about why we should look at other options and not McCain.
Here, it looks like it doesn't, I should say it doesn't look like people are listening.
He's got a three-to-one ratio on delegates.
Now, let's just assume he is our representative.
Are we going to turn around and the day after he's our rep, turn around and say, okay, now we like him.
After we've heard everything from your show, Neil Bortz, Sean Hannity, saying all the negative, are we going to turn around and now say, hold on, we like him because he's our GOP rep?
That's their theory.
So how are we going to do it?
Well, that's the theory.
McCain is going to go to the Conservative Political Action Conference speech tomorrow.
He did not go in 2007.
He's going tomorrow.
This is a reach out, an attempt to unify conservatives.
McCain presumes that he's going to be able to answer those questions for you and everybody else.
The theory is that once the primaries are over, these are just typical primary intra-party battles that are common during primaries.
But once the primary is over, the party will come together and unify.
And that's just tradition talking, and he thinks, and everybody else thinks that that's what's going to happen.
I don't think they're ⁇ that's another reason why I don't think they're taking all this seriously.
It's kind of entertaining to them.
It's frustrating a little bit for McCain, and I'll tell you why, because you talk about three to one leading the delegates.
He's not getting the conservative base of this party voting for him.
And he's going to need that if he has any chance of winning.
They may want to wipe the conservative element out of the party, but they want it back every four years for the election.
So the day afterwards, are we going to see Sean Hannity and you supporting him also because he's the GOP representative?
The day after the Republican convention?
Yes, sir.
You could not possibly answer that question because that's way down the road.
Who knows what the future brings?
Yes, sir.
What is this?
Trick the host day?
Look, I have been at this for many, many moons and trying to trick the host into tripping up.
What do you mean I have to be responsible for what?
What are you talking about?
What do I have to be responsible for?
Oh, Is that what he's saying?
Is he telling me that I'm going to have to dump all of this and throw it aside?
I'm going to have to essentially, I'm going to have to stop being hysterical.
And I'm going to have to eat the excrement sandwich.
And the day after the nominating convention, I'm going to put all of that aside and come together and be uniform because I am going to have to be responsible.
Is that your point?
Is that what you're basically saying?
I don't like McCain.
I don't support McCain.
I do agree with what you've been saying.
And if he ends up being our representative, it is going to be hard to, the day afterwards, look at him and say, okay, now I like this guy because he's our representative.
I don't think you'll have to do that.
You can always say that your vote's against Hillary.
You can always say, look, I just, I again, good conscience, I just cannot permit that woman to get in charge of this country and health care.
I just can't.
I can't in good conscience.
If that's what it will take for you to go cast a vote, just look at it as an anti-Hillary vote rather than a pro-McCain vote.
He won't care.
Well, thanks for taking my call.
All right, you bet.
Brief time out here, folks.
We'll be back.
Continue in mere moments back before you know it.
Well, dingy Harry Reid hasn't been in the news much lately, but he said that the possibility of Senator McCain becoming president sends a cold chill down my spine, quote unquote.
Made his remarks yesterday outside the Senate chambers when a reporter asked him about McCain.
He pulled out his wallet, he removed a white piece of paper, and he said to the reporter, all I have to say about that is this.
I have it right here.
You can put it in your little recording device.
And he read aloud and quoted Senator Thad Cochran from an interview last Friday.
Reed said, the thought of him becoming president sends a cold chill down my spine.
It's erratic.
He's hot-headed.
He loses his temper, and he worries me.
The dingy Harry basically is siding with Thad Cochran.
Then he put the piece of paper back in his wallet and continued on answering reporters' questions.
Mr. Brooks says, Theory, we hate these other guys.
We hate the liberals, and we consider him the enemy.
Mr. Brooks, it's just real simple.
We would love for Mr. McCain to work with us the way he works with your buds on the left.
If not work with us, at least stop undermining us.
Just that simple.
Carl Bernstein, CNN's, super duper coverage, Lou Dobbs says to Carl Bernstein's Republican race in your judgment over.
McCain is going to get the nomination ultimately, but the question is, one, what is it worth?
What does it mean?
And all of these candidates are trying to satisfy Rush Limbaugh rather than the people of the country.
If they're doing that, if they're trying to satisfy me rather than the people of the country, I haven't gotten a message.
Guys, just jealous?
They are just, they can't stand it when McCain starts talking about reaching out to conservatives.
They just can't stand it because it makes them doubt that he really loves them?
X, that's not it.
It's something else.
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