Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have here from the subterranean depths of the EIB Southern Command.
Broadcast excellence ahead for the next hour.
It's a thrill and a delight to have you with us.
Telephone number, if you'd like, join us 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
The Nation Magazine.
Oh, check some emails here during the break at the top of the hour.
And I knew this was going to happen.
And every time I delve into these personal stories, they get reactions and people have questions.
And I told this story about, you know, I've dated some liberal women.
And everybody, why do you do that?
They just can't, they can't fail.
What could you possibly have in common?
Fun of it.
I'm not, you know, who can explain it?
I don't know.
You're attracted to whoever you're attracted to, and you're not attracted anymore.
You move on.
It's just the way it is.
And then the question is, why don't you date conservative?
I have.
I do.
I mean, dated women don't care about it either.
The problem that I've had in social circumstances with conservative women, it always ends up a competition.
You know, go out one night after a program, have to talk about what I said, how I could have said it better, this would have been this or that.
Then we'll have dinner and conservative babe will offer an opinion.
I'll come in the next day and I'll discuss it.
I heard you and you didn't give me credit for it.
You steal everything you use.
I mean, it's a competition.
You never get away from it.
You never, ever, ever get away from it.
You have to get away from it, folks.
I mean, if the rest of my life were as intense as these three hours, these three hours would be dull.
You know, you just have to get away from it.
A well-rounded life is a well-rounded life.
Don't you live your conservatism?
I absolutely live my conservatism.
You know, I don't want to be the circus act every time I go out someplace.
One of the reasons I love my friends down here is because they couldn't care less what I do.
We go out and play golf.
Nobody says, oh, Rush, what do you think of the election coming up?
Listen to my show if you care about that.
I'm here to break 80.
That doesn't happen.
Hey, folks, I'm not complaining.
I'm not whining.
And I have hope that this is going to work out.
But you ask, I'm going to answer the questions.
The Nation Magazine, they've done a study here of website hits.
John McCain, they say, may be the presumptive Republican presidential nominee with a huge delegate lead and backing from both Bush Sr. and Jr., but his success has failed to produce any bounce online.
McCain's website traffic, which is crucial for raising money and harvesting contact information from new supporters, still lags far behind both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Here are recent figures from Alexa.com.
And it's a graphic and a chart that shows Hillary and Obama's web traffic from December to January to February.
And I guess Obama has the biggest bounce here.
McCain's flat from December to January to just flat.
I mean, the increase in hits on his website is practically nil.
I wouldn't expect any bump on online traffic for activity or activity for McCain.
He won the nomination on the backs of moderates and independents.
Moderates and independents don't spend any time online obsessing about politics, said Con Carroll, who is a blogger for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonpartisan think tank.
What a conservative nonpartisan.
Remember, I'm reading here from The Nation.
Carroll, who tracked the web politics for the Hotlines blogometer, contrasted McCain's web drought to Ron Paul, a libertarian longtail candidate who's raised tons of money online but never built large coalitions.
Now, this is fascinating to me in the sense that, you know, web hits, website hits are becoming a measure of strength in a lot of ways now in politics.
But Mr. Carroll's analysis here, I wouldn't expect any bump in online traffic or activity for McCain.
He won the nomination on the backs of moderates and independents, and they don't spend any time online obsessing about politics.
By definition, that has to be true.
Moderates and independents are people who don't have their own thoughts on things.
They don't have their own passionate beliefs and their minds made up.
They wait until a consensus forms and then join it.
And every time I say that, these moderates and independents just get mad as they can be.
But by definition, a moderate can't have an opinion.
An opinion is what makes you an extremist in our culture today.
So it may be of no concern that McCain's web hits are not spiking or bouncing, as they say here, because the people who are responsible for making those happen are not going to McCain's website because it's moderates and independents who are his primary backers or have been up till now.
There was a piece in the American Spectator yesterday, one of my favorite online websites.
Why are all of you people smiling and laughing?
Why?
Okay, well, I can't talk about that.
Most people can't see it.
Somebody sent me a Mao hat today, and I put it on here to break the top of the hour.
You people watching on the Ditto Cam can see it.
Sadly, the thing, it looks, it does.
It looks good.
It looks better on me than most caps do.
It's a green Army fatigue Mao cap with a red communist Chinese star, Shikom Star, right in front of it.
And they can't stop laughing at it because you never see me wear a hat.
I never wear hats, even on the golf course.
Well, I don't like to put a dent in my hair.
And I don't.
They bug me.
Wearing a hat is like tunnel vision.
Anyway, the piece in the American Spectator is by R. Andrew Newman, who is a freelance journalist in western Nebraska.
And this piece that he has written cuts to the chase about where the Republican Party is today.
And let me read some excerpts from it to you.
A movement conservative, or if movement conservatives once and for all could bring ideological purity to the Republican Party, they would no longer have to go nose to nose with Democrats for control of the White House and Congress.
No, instead, a movement conservative-dominated Republican Party would find itself in a different battle, clawing with Greens and libertarians for two or three percentage points of the vote.
Right off the bat here, in the American Spectator, we got a piece that says that movement conservatives are no bigger in number than libertarians or the wacko environmentalists.
Now, I must stress I consider America a conservative nation, he writes, though small C conservative, that is, more instinctually conservative than ideologically so, and with a decidedly populist progressive twist.
Now, there is, of course, much overlap between movement conservatism and small C conservatism.
By movement conservatism, I refer to the dominant narrative ideas and events issuing forth from the constellation of talk radio hosts, columnists, think tanks that the mainstream media put under the heading of conservative.
While there is not space today to elaborate sufficiently upon those definitions and assertions, I want to draw attention to one point of policy and ideology that's become dogma for movement conservatives.
The government should not lend a hand to biofuel research and production.
That is what he says, a point of policy and ideology that's become dogma from movement conservatives.
Government should not lend a hand to biofuel research and production.
Turn on the big names of talk radio.
Flip through movement conservative blogs and websites.
Slide to the more libertarian one MCs like to quote when it comes to economics.
And this will be recited with as much resolve as the faithful affirming that Jesus Christ is very God from very God.
Ethanol ruins the environment, say movement conservatives, drives up gas prices, starves poor people everywhere.
Simply put, biofuels are not the sort of thing the government should be subsidizing.
There's much to debate here, including whether corn will or should remain for long the primary ethanol crop, but let us leave such matters for another day.
Let's talk straight politics.
Now, what he has just written here, by the way, folks, is true, and we have had recent stories on it when he says that ethanol ruins the environment.
It's causing more damage to the environment.
The whole process of producing it, consuming it, is taking more energy and causing a bigger Hargen footprint, if you care about that thing, that kind of thing, than the normal production of petroleum, refining, to gasoline, and so forth.
Drives up gas prices, does.
Starves poor people somewhere.
Well, it's starving, but food prices around the world were corn-related are rising through the roof.
Right about that.
And we movement conservatives, what the hell are we doing here?
We're getting involved in a global warming hoax.
And we're getting involved in all these kinds of things here that the government shouldn't be getting involved in.
It's costing more money.
It's raising prices.
It's taking a product intended for food, using it for something it's not good for, ethanol, biofuel, what have you.
And for that, we are to be savaged.
And do you know why?
Why do you think, Mr. Snardly, why are movement conservatives a problem here in the Republican Party?
Well, he says, as a small C conservative and registered Republican, I have a serious question.
Why do movement conservatives seem increasingly tone deaf as to where Republican votes come from and just who the folks are who actually pull the GOP lever?
It's not too difficult to find the location of biorefineries in the U.S. As of late January this year, there were 139 biorefineries in production, another 62 under construction.
They dot the mid-section of the country in some of the reddest of red state America, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, North Dakota, Iowa, and Indiana.
They're heavy in the land of Lincoln, where the party has fallen on hard times, as well as Minnesota, where the GOP has made inroads.
Movement conservatives are willing to take the votes of Middle of America, but when it comes to helping the mid-section of the country, that swath of America where small towns are drying up and blowing away, and the only thing taking root is the Walmart on the edge of town, they seem to simply quote from their catechism and look the other way.
I would hate to think movement conservatives shared JFK's assessment of the heartland.
After giving a speech on agricultural themes in South Dakota, then-candidate JFK told one of his speech writers, screw the farmers after November.
These biofuel plants boost sagging rural economies.
In Nebraska, which is my neck of the prairie, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, who has something bad to say about biofuels and ethanol plants.
Bottom line is this: movement conservatives, again, screwing up the Republican Party.
What we ought to realize is that a dumb policy and a failed experiment here to save the environment and to expand fuel efficiency, which doesn't work, is worth promoting, funding, and engaging in order to get the votes of people who want it.
And when we don't do that, we're being short-sighted Neanderthals who are forgetting our roots and forgetting where votes come from.
So, to synthesize it even further, I guess what we're supposed to do now is stop teaching, stop informing, and stop leading a movement.
We're just supposed to take the temperature of people wherever they live in the country and whatever they want, we are to be for.
Where does this stop?
Okay, it's fine and dandy if we go out and survey the farms in red state central parts of the country, Midwest, find out they like biofuels, and they like the process involved in creating them.
So, we support it.
But in California, they like no Marine Corps recruitment center in Berkeley, but we want those votes too.
No, Mr. Lumbo, those are not Republican votes.
Yeah, well, we'd kind of like to tell the people of Berkeley where to go as well rather than try to go get their votes.
You can go to any part of the country.
And if this is what this really sums up my whole problem with this whole primary season, this is what the Republican Party has come to: pandering, not leading anything, simply engaging in a bunch of big government subsidized programs and policies, benefiting this group here and that group there in order to get their vote.
How is that any different to what the Democrats have always done and the liberals?
Okay, folks, we are going to take the plunge again.
We are going back to the phones.
800-282-2882, Cornelia in Santa Barbara, California.
I'm glad you waited.
Nice to have you on the program.
Well, it's wonderful to be with you.
Rush, you have my greatest admiration.
Every time I've listened to you, I've wanted to call in and express my appreciation for you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
I was listening to the man who spoke about hope, and I could agree with his feelings.
But I also think that Obama is assuming that the American people have lost hope.
Since when?
The United States has always been the last hope of mankind.
With our ideals of freedom, our desire for liberty for all mankind, which is expressed in our Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and countless other leadership statements that have been made by people like our great President Reagan.
Are we sending a message to the world that we're in such despair that our nation That our way of life is under such pressure that we're failing, and we need someone like Obama to give us hope.
Bingo.
Well, I think that's been the theme of the Democrat Party for a long time, but intensely for the last eight years since President Bush was inaugurated.
There's no question that the Democrats have continually tried in a number of ways to depress the spirit of the American people, as have their compatriots in the media.
The economy is going the hell in a handbasket.
We're soup line America.
People are losing their homes.
Nobody has health care.
I mean, every day is a litany.
A barrage of propaganda against our country.
Exactly.
And that we're losing the war and that we're hopeless.
And so he's picked this.
Well, it's worse than that.
It's a trick word, trick word hope.
The word despair would be almost a better word that they're trying to pursue in the Democratic Party.
But you know, it exists.
This is the real problem.
I mean, it exists within way too many people, too many people's hearts in this country, and that's what Obama's playing on.
You're asking, is Obama assuming we've lost?
No, he is pretty confident that the people he's speaking to don't have any.
They don't have any faith.
They don't have any hope.
And they don't have any desire.
I mean, they don't have any action-oriented desire.
These people are genuinely lost.
I know who these people are.
Their lives are meaningless.
They have not amounted to much in their own minds.
And so they do things to make themselves think that they matter.
And one of those things is go to an Obama rally.
Another thing is go to a protest march, drive a hybrid, wear a ribbon, things like this that accomplish nothing, but it makes them feel as though they matter, that they have relevance.
And he's capitalizing on that.
And it's the result of the liberals in this country and the Democrat Party sponsoring that attitude and promoting it for decades, Cornelia.
You know, Rush, once I looked up the word despair in a particular dictionary, doesn't it not appear this definition in other dictionaries?
It was a loss of hope in the mercies of God.
Well, and a country is really in trouble if they feel that way.
Amen.
You're talking about people that God, no, no, no, that's not right.
You're guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, despair, tumult, chaos, hopelessness, and even the good times here behind the golden EIB microphone.
Barack Obama was on, what was it, Today Show Today with Matt Wauer, who said to Obama, you seem to have started to listen to the critics who started talking about these speeches, the inspiration and the hope.
And I said, but where's the, you know, you've given me the whipped cream, give me the mashed potatoes.
Is that a fair assessment?
There's no doubt that we want to strike a balance where we explain to people that it's important for us to get people engaged and motivated and involved, but not just for abstract feel-good stuff, rather to deliver on health care for all people or deliver on college affordability or create good jobs.
And so hopefully, the longer I stay in this campaign, the better I get.
Yeah.
I've been working on an Obama speech, ladies and gentlemen.
You know, I'm a great impressionist.
Well, certain voices, I try to do my best in that regard.
And I thought I'd try my hand at an Obama speech.
Would you like to hear this?
The first draft of an Obama speech.
Just remember, my friends, the ballot is stronger than the bullet.
And the sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Remember, you cannot ignore politics no matter how much you'd like to.
To put the world right in order, we have to first put the nation in order.
To put the nation in order, we have to first put the family in order.
To put the family in order, we have to first cultivate our personal life.
We must first set our hearts right.
We must have hope.
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics don't know what religion is.
Politics, perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil people.
I've always said, and you've heard me say it over and over again: in politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you.
Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow.
And politics is the bow of idealism.
Remember this: politicians are the same all over.
They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
And anyone who wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with that office.
Here we are the way politics ought to be in America: the politics of happiness, the politics of purpose, the politics of joy, the politics of hope.
In our brief national history, we have shot four of our presidents.
We've worried five of them to death.
We've impeached one.
We've hounded another out of office.
When all else fails, we hold an election.
We assassinate their character.
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party or men, wherever, whatever, in religion, in philosophy, politics, or anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself.
Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
If I couldn't go to heaven with a party, I wouldn't go there at all.
And if they didn't have cigars there, I wouldn't bother either.
A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce of a tragedy, or perhaps both.
Politics, my friends, is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.
We don't have a money problem in America.
We got values and priorities problems.
Washington and washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, the hopeful and the hopeless, means to side with the hopeful, the hopeless, the powerful, and not to be neutral.
People who don't vote have no line of credit, my friends, with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against our interests.
The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
And none of this can happen without hope and change.
You feel faint.
You feel faint out there.
Are you inspired?
Were you elevated?
You feel befuddled?
This was a Obama speech.
Hell, I'm only halfway through it.
I stopped because I thought I'd made the point.
Politics would be a hell of a good business if it weren't for the damn people in it.
Aaron in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
It's an honor to talk to you.
Thank you.
First-time caller and a True Rush baby.
I've been listening to you since 89 with my mom.
So quick shout out to my husband, Brian, who also listens to you every day.
My point is, in history, when you take history courses, they talk about the law of history and how it will repeat itself if we don't change it, if we don't take measures to change it.
And I was thinking about the historical fact that black men had the right to vote before women did.
They had political rights before we could.
So if Hillary doesn't steal this election, the nomination, it would pretty much be like history repeating itself.
A black man would receive something political before a woman.
Yeah, I had never really thought of that.
But it is history repeating itself.
How do you feel about women being granted the right to vote?
You know, I think that we fought for something that we wanted and we got it.
I'm not a feminist, but I do appreciate the fact that I can vote, and I do vote every time I get the chance to.
Yeah, well, that's great.
So we have I really hadn't thought about this.
Black men had the right to vote before women did.
You know, we have a black president before a female president.
So what we get is, again, we're going to get abused women.
Oh, my.
The heart of America.
Ugh.
I've been cracking up on you, listening on the phone for like the last two hours.
I've just been laughing.
I know we've been off the reservation for most of this program today.
What did you think of my Obama speech?
Well, I great delivery, but what was the point?
You said you made your point.
What was the point was it said nothing.
Okay, then I didn't miss the point.
I thought I missed the point.
If you were asking, what did he say?
Then it was a great Obama speech.
I applaud you.
Well, I applaud you, too, because that is an interesting historical perspective.
That black men had the right to vote before women did in this country.
Joel in Houston, Texas, you're next in the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, it's an honor.
First-time caller.
Thank you.
Never been here before.
Hey, I had a quick comment and then sort of an out-of-the-ballpark question.
Yeah.
The comment listening past few callers or last hour's callers is some of them seem to be confusing the words hope and believe or belief.
I think they're confusing hope and faith.
And faith, which is kind of just sitting here listening to it, it was like, well, come on, guys, get it.
But okay, so my out-of-left field question is, Castro seems to be on the way out.
Okay.
Is he dead?
Who knows?
But this the last thing they would want us to know is he's dead.
Okay.
Until they can manage some little changes there.
I don't really know, but my guess is that he's dead and has been for a while.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, my question is, then, is what is the likelihood that Cuba could be the 51st state?
Now, this is weird, but I'll left field.
But the logic being that the existing people in power there would want the subsidies, okay?
They'd want the electoral votes.
They'd want the Senate seats and the House seats, and with a Democratic administration and Congress, both Senate and House, they might be able to get that, because according to the Constitution, all that really needs to happen is that Congress agrees and the 51st state agrees that they're a new state.
Well, there's going to be a lot more involved than just that.
Here's what my guess.
Whether Castro's dead or not, his brother Raul is now running the place.
And the story on Raul is that he has initiated so-called democrat reforms on economic matters.
He's loosening the grip of the communist economic system on the country.
And that the best guessers in our government are looking south and they are thinking that what Raul Castro's objective will be will be to create a mini China in which China has, of course, opened itself economically to the world, does business with the whole world, imports and exports.
Many nations around the world are now building things, automobiles, toys, you name it, computers are being built in China to the benefit of the Chikom economy.
And the Chikoms nevertheless have done their best to maintain societal and behavioral control over the population.
And they've done it with low wages.
There's some breakout creation of real wealth happening in certain parts of China.
It is thought that this is what Raul Castro is going to do.
Now, he himself is 76.
Cuba watchers, exile community here in South Florida, they know this, but Raul has actually been running the military down there, and he's been in charge of enforcing all of these dictatorial treatments of prisoners, dissenters, and so forth.
He looks like this mild-mannered, wirely little guy.
He's just as vicious in private as Fidel was in public.
But he knows, I mean, the country is a cesspool.
I mean, economic, it's a cesspool, and he's 76.
And so I think we're a long way away from any discussion of Cuba becoming the 51st state.
We're not going to recognize Cuba.
We're not going to normalize relations with Cuba like we have China.
If Raul Castro thinks that we're going to start building tennis shoes or manufacturing tennis shoes and computers down in Cuba, if we relax some of the embargo restrictions, it ain't going to happen.
It's not going to happen until they junk the communist socialist system down there.
And, well, I guess that could change if Hillary or Obama wins.
Now, that's, but it depends on how much support they get from the exile community.
You know, it's a very, very powerful and influential population in this country, the Cuban exile community.
If it ever did become a state, if we ever normalized relations, folks, you do not know the first couple of things are going to happen.
The relatives of the exile community, the people that fled Cuba during the Revolution of 59, 60, those years, and even some of those who fled are still alive, they think it's still theirs.
Their land down there that Castro took and nationalized, it's theirs.
Their property is still there.
They're going to demand it.
They are going to.
This has just all been a temporary exile for them.
They're going to go back there and it's theirs, and they're going to expect U.S. support for that from the Commerce Department, from the State Department, in any number of ways.
If this embargo ended tomorrow, it's not going to be like anybody imagines it to be.
There aren't going to be airplanes and ships flying back and forth right up because the exile community is going to be demanding that they get down there first to be able to receive whatever we export and to be in charge of whatever Cuba exports back to us.
And you can't blame them, but it really is not much has changed here with Fidel gone, either dead or out of power.
But it will be interesting to see if Raul attempts to persuade us to go along with his reforms here.
Hey, let us be another China.
Because our official government policy is we don't even know you exist until you free people, get them out of those rotting jails of yours, start having elections, and disband your Communist Party.
We've not demanded that of any other communist nation to trade with them, but we're going to stick to it on Cuba as long as there are Republicans in the way there.
Jeez.
At least he had the presence of mind to know there's security cameras all over the place.
No, I can't tell you about this one.
John in Cattlespell, Montana.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Nice to have you here.
It's good to be here.
I count it a privilege to be able to talk with you.
It's the first time I've tried this, and I had hoped to be able to get through this.
No, see, hope paid off for you.
There you go.
As I've been waiting and listening to some of the other callers, I think we've mentioned that there is a distinction between hope and faith.
Yes.
But I also feel as though they share some things as well.
And it's important for us to note that it's really not the quantity or quality of our hope that matters.
It's the object of our hope.
The value of our hope is equal to the value of its object.
And so while Obama may be asking for us to have hope, we have to recognize that he's asking us to have hope in him to see how much value is there.
That's exactly.
You've nailed it.
This is part of my original diatribe on this whole thing.
Hope is an excuse for people not to do anything.
Hope is an excuse for not trying in this context.
These people are not feeling hopeful about themselves.
They are investing hope that Obama will make them feel better or that Obama will improve their lives.
That's why I keep referring to him as having a messianic appeal to people.
And it's frightening.
It's frightening how many people in this country are that empty.
It kind of reminds me of a high school basketball pep rally.
The high school basketball team hasn't won for years and years.
But the cheerleaders come out and they get everybody excited and they go out with tremendous hope.
But their hope's not reasonable.
They haven't won for years.
They've not proven that they can win.
Well, but the hope's also unreasonable because the cheerleaders aren't playing.
There you go.
No, no, no.
Hopefully.
So many people confuse hope with desire.
Desire is action-oriented.
Hope doesn't.
Hope you're sitting around hoping something will be different than it's been or what have you.
It's the same thing with the cheerleaders cheering when you're down 48 to nothing in the fourth quarter.
Yeah, right.
Well, excellent.
I just think that is a very important thing.
We need to be very careful not to get sidetracked, keep our attention on the truth of the matter.
We're doing our best here, sir.
That's been the motto of this program.
Based in reality and keep our focus on the truth of the matter.
Back in a sec.
That's it, folks.
Another excursion into broadcast excellence in the can, suitable for our best of replays down the road in many ways.
Look forward to seeing you again just 21 hours from now, as always.