Let's live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
And it's been a doozy so far.
And we have an hour to go.
Open Line Friday.
We go to the phones.
The program is all yours.
You can pretend to be your own host.
Look at me as the guest.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
And the email address, a new email address, El Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
A couple stories here on Barack Obama.
I still have a fairly large audio soundbite roster.
We're up at number five, by the way, Mike, on the audio soundbites.
The story today, political memo, Adam Nagurney at the New York Times.
I'm sorry, this is from yesterday.
And it's this prior to the debate last night.
Clinton-AIDS split on how to take over Obama.
They should have done what I have done.
I have hired Mr. Snerdley, given him an additional post, official Obama criticizer here at the EIB networks.
The Clintons could have gone out and incorporated who? John Lewis, Charlie Wrangell, to criticize Obama and let Mrs. Clinton go ahead and promote herself in these debates.
Anyway, there's an interesting quote here.
And really, Clinton-AIDS split on how to take on Obama.
We've been talking about this all week.
Everybody's trying to find a reason why her campaign's tanking, and they're looking everywhere but at her.
And she is the problem.
The candidate is always the problem.
And the quote in this story about why so many voters are leaving Hillary for Obama, polls suggest that Democrats now view Mr. Obama as more electable than Mr. Clinton or Mrs. Clinton.
There you go.
I mean, that's it in a nutshell.
This is what's making these committed Hillary people, these women, both the smart ones and dumb ones, and whoever else that's leaving her go to the magical mystery tour of Barack Obama.
And frankly, I think it's the odd thing is it's the same reason that we have Senator McCain on our side.
It's the same reason the Democrats nominated John Kerry, the haughty John Kerry who served in Vietnam in 2004.
Electability.
I think we can win with this guy.
You know, the I'll tell you something.
The endless 24-7 drive-by media coverage of this election has hypnotized gobs and oodles of voters into thinking that there's nothing negative to report on McCain or Obama because nothing negative has been reported.
Well, until today, yesterday, they reported something negative on McCain.
But they've got everybody convinced that these two candidates are clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, and there's nothing to criticize about them, and therefore they're both electable.
You tell you what the Democrats have better hope here, because it looks like Obama's going to get their nomination.
They better hope.
Hope.
They better hope that there's nothing negative worth knowing about Obama between now and November because he is basically still an unknown quantity.
Now, leave it to the UK Times.
Times of London warning, Obama is dangerous.
This is by Gerard Baker.
The senator and his wife, as this week has shown, are classic European-style left-wingers.
Now, I mentioned earlier in the program talking about Obama that went through a whole list of sound bites to demonstrate to you that there's nothing new here about Obama.
Everything's being recycled.
It's all been said before.
It's either been said by Denzel Washington as Malcolm X in a Spike Lee movie.
It's been said by Duval Patrick.
It's been said by Bill Clinton.
It's been said by Hillary Clinton.
It's been said by Steve Israel.
It's been said by a number of people.
Nothing is new whatsoever, except this.
There is a new idea in the Democrat Party, and that is America's finished.
America's over.
There is no such thing as American exceptionalism.
Now, this is something that has always been an undertow of the Democrat Party.
It's always one of those rip currents.
When you find yourself in it, just go with it.
You know, you try to get out of it.
You're going to drown.
But now they're openly making it their theme.
Obama and his wife are basically out saying, America's over.
They're doing okay, and they did okay, but nobody's going to after this.
It's a mess.
We need new this and new that while they're offering old, old, old.
That's what makes this Gerard Baker piece in the Times of London so interesting.
And he talks about Mrs. Obama and the point that first time in her life, she'd have been proud to be an American.
It was instructive for two reasons.
First, it reinforced the growing sense of unease that even some Obama supporters have felt about the increasingly messianic nature of the candidate's campaign.
There's always been a second coming quality about Mr. Obama's rhetoric, the claim that his electoral successes in places like Nebraska and Wisconsin might transcend all that America's achieved in its history can only add to that worry.
Secondly, and more importantly, I suspect it reveals much about what the Obama family really thinks about the kind of nation America is.
Mrs. Obama is surely not alone in thinking not very much about what America has been or done in the last 25 years.
In fact, it is a trope of the left wing of the Democrat Party that America has been a pretty wretched sort of place.
There is a cast, C-A-S-T-E, of left-wing Americans who wish essentially and in all honesty that their country was more like France.
They wish it had much higher levels of taxation and government intervention, that it had much higher levels of welfare, that it didn't have such a militaristic approach to foreign policy, above all, that its national goals were dictated not by the half-wits who inhabit Godforsaken places like Kansas and Mississippi, but by the councils of the United Nations.
Though Mr. Obama's done a good job, as all recent serious Democrats have done, of him emphasizing his belief in American virtues, his record in his program suggests he is firmly in line with this wing of his party.
And this, I think, not his inexperience in public office, is the principal threat to Obama's campaign.
His increasingly desperate opponent, Hillary, keeps hammering away that his message is all talk and no substance.
And she was joined this week by McCain in that.
But if you listen to Obama's speeches, it's not the lack of substance, but the quality of it that ought to worry Americans.
His victory speech after his last primary win in Wisconsin was a case in point.
As we pointed out, it was very specific, particularly on economics, and it was frightening.
So this is Gerard Baker, essentially the same point with different words.
There is a new idea in the Democrat Party that has now become prominent.
And the new idea in the Democrat Party is that America is a wretched place.
It's horrible and it needs to change.
That there's nothing exceptional about this country, and that the way it needs to change, we need to rid itself of so much capitalism.
We need bigger government, more protective government, more interventionist government.
We need higher taxes.
That's the change that they are talking about, which is no change at all.
This is what liberals have always thought and what they have always wanted.
The real change.
Now, I'm not even trying to be facetious in the least.
Real change will be found in conservatism.
After all, who is it that wants to keep Social Security as it is so it will bankrupt or so it will force us to even higher taxes and bigger government?
Democrats.
Who is it that wants to reform it?
Have it make sense.
Give it some new life so that it's not going to be the punitive stranglehold on the American worker that it's bound to become.
Conservatives want this.
Conservatives want all kinds of reforms in the things that are choking this country's growth and expansion.
That's the real change.
That's where it's really located.
This is why those of us who are conservative have been retching at the notion that we have to become more like Democrats in order to win elections, that we have to go ahead and acknowledge failed ideas and dumb policies in order to get the votes of people to believe in them, rather than, you know, tell these people, I know you like this idea of this ethanol business, but it ain't working and it's causing more damage and it's causing more harm and it's raising prices on everything and it's not the answer.
Well, it is for us, Mr. Limbaugh.
It's helping us tremendously here.
Well, yeah, I know, but that's the problem.
It's not helping everybody else.
It's causing a problem.
And of course, this leads to people, the Republicans have a death wish.
They're forgetting where their votes come from and they're willing to throw their voters overboard.
No, it's about the country.
Conservatism is about America and about each individual citizen.
It's not about a political party triumphing.
It's not about a political party pulling political strings in order to get a vote of this group and a vote from that group with this policy and that policy.
That's what liberal Democrats do.
They're the party that's made up of all these different constituency groups that have to be mollified and kept happy, from the unions to the feminists to the civil rights coalitions.
That's where the Republican Party is headed.
Get a few votes here, few votes there, mollify the conservatives over there, tell them what they want to hear, blah, blah, blah.
But get those votes so that the country club blueblooders can end up back in power.
That's the way of Washington.
Conservatism is not the way of Washington.
Washington is the way of the Republican Party and the Democrat Party and all who inhabit there, and it's incestuous.
I don't care if it's a think tank, if it's the media, if it's all the bureaucracies that are housed there, Washington is its own little enclave, and you end up there too long, it'll poison you, and you'll become part of it.
And what it does and what happens in Washington will take precedence over all else.
Conservatism wants to de-emphasize all that.
Conservatism wants to reform all of that.
Conservatism hopes to get Washington out of people's way.
But many in our own party believe that Washington and its bigness is great if they are in charge of it.
And Washington and its bigness, no matter who's running it, it's never great.
Washington being streamlined by people who are running it has a much better chance.
Anyway, a timeout here.
We'll be back and continue.
Your phone calls coming up soon, too, as we wrap up the week on Open Line Friday.
Rush Limbaugh, your highly trained broadcast specialist showing how it is done for one and all.
And as usual, half my brain tied behind my back.
Just to make it fair to San Mateo, California.
This is Eric.
It's great to have you here, sir.
By the way, Eric, do you know who's from San Mateo, California?
No, I don't.
And do you know who?
And he graduated from Unipero-Sarah High Schruel.
Could be Barry Bonds.
Well, yes, but it's not Barry Bonds I'm referring to.
Actually, Tom Brady graduated there, too.
But Bill Keller.
The editor of the New York Times is from San Mateo.
I don't mean went in Unipero-Sarah High School.
Perhaps he took steroids.
Perhaps he needs them.
Hey, I've got an interesting perspective.
I want your thoughts on this.
My first vote was for Reagan, and I've been a lifelong conservative, but in looking at this crop to vote for, I certainly have a very difficult time voting for McCain.
And I don't see that any one of them would ever be able to pull the troops out, just because I don't think that the Democrats would ever have the cojones to do it because they don't want to hang that millstone around their own neck.
That's exactly my theory, too.
And they've all said this in debates at one time or another.
They have all said they could not pledge to have the troops out of there by 2013 when the first term was over.
While I think that's true, I don't think that they would pull out.
And they're certainly not going to saddle themselves with defeat.
The situation in Iraq is such that if somebody wanted to claim victory right now, they couldn't pull them out.
No.
But beyond that, did you hear this Whopper Obama told last night in the debate?
Which was that?
Grab the sound.
What was the soundbite on this, Mike?
I want you to listen to this with me because I'm going to have to consult the audio soundbite roster here.
Number 12.
Grab audio soundbite number 12.
I want you to listen to this with me, Eric.
Are you ready up there?
All right, here it goes.
I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon, supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon, ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.
And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition.
They didn't have enough Humvees.
They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander-in-chief.
Now, that's a consequence of bad judgment.
And the question is on the critical issues that we face right now, who's going to show the judgment to lead?
Did you hear that?
Well, I certainly didn't know that George Bush was personally handing out ammunition.
Do you even believe that?
He was not asked for one bit of evidence to support it.
He was not asked to name the Army captain.
No.
Now, the problem with Obama when it comes to foreign policy goes way beyond Iraq.
And that is this guy can't wait to work his messianic magic on the thugs and dictators of the world from Akhamadinezad to Basher Assad to Putin to whoever's running the CHICOMs when Obama would get there.
What's dangerous is Obama thinks his own country is the problem in the world, not these guys.
And he thinks that the power of his personality and his messianic second coming aura will be able to convince these guys that we mean them no harm, that we're really, it's naive, it's childlike, it's junior high conflict resolution, and he wants to bring it to the oval orifice.
Well, my take on him is that, you know, he talks a good game when he's by himself, and he's been, you know, a leader from the point of view of one of many who's never had to make an individual decision, you know, and never had to be individually responsible.
So these guys always talk a big game when they're hiding in a group, but when they're the leader, you know, the free world, all of a sudden everybody's looking at you and your decisions are for real.
And I think that he's highly pliable, both by his party but also by the American people when it comes to having to do what's needed to be done by the president regarding it.
Very risky, very risky theory.
You don't know that.
You're just guessing.
Well, you know, I am.
I mean, if we can't take people at their word, if we can't judge them on what I went through this in 1992 with Clinton, people were making up what they thought Clinton would do, despite the fact that Clinton couldn't tell the truth to save his life during the campaign, despite the fact he was lying about the economy, lying about pretty much everything.
People wanted to look past that because they wanted him to be what they wanted him to be and they thought he would be once he got to Washington.
But are you saying that any one of these three candidates somehow doesn't fall under that same umbrella?
Ugh.
Well, yeah, I think Mrs. Clinton is probably a known quantity, and that suggests we don't vote for her.
Yeah.
Very much a known quantity.
Senator McCain, sadly, is also a known quantity, especially the last eight years.
Now, the years prior to that, Senator McCain behaved in a totally different way, ideologically and politically.
But after he lost the presidential primary in 2000, I mean, you go look, Ann Coulter did this.
You know, they boast about his 82% American Conservative Union rating, but it's in the low 60s or high 50s in the last eight years.
Well, my take on it is that, you know, you can call them a known quantity, but I think that the known quantity for all of them is that they're driven by their egos, not by principle.
Well, but at that, everybody.
Okay, in these three guys' cases, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's bad, too.
It is.
This is a bad thing.
That's bad, too.
That's bad, too.
I mean, you've got, you've got, yeah, one guy says it's my turn.
Two of them say it's my turn.
And the other one's saying, God's anointed me.
Well, let me ask you this.
And this is the strange question.
10 seconds.
Okay.
Is it worth it to have Barack Obama be president in order to get the civil rights issue off the table once and forever?
That's a great question because it won't get the civil rights issue off the table.
I had some black voters tell me that earlier this week.
Don't think you're going to be so lucky, Rush.
Our last caller asked a really good question.
If Obama gets elected president, wouldn't it be good to just get this done, Rush, so that we could end the civil rights squabbles that we're having?
It wouldn't do that.
Folks, it wouldn't do that.
It might even exacerbate them.
Let me explain how.
It takes somebody like me who can read the stitches on the fastball.
Let us fast forward to January of 2009.
Obama has been inaugurated president, and he proposes his first bit of legislation.
And let's say that it's, I don't know, some civil rights-oriented thing, and a bunch of people start howling.
Do you know that the race industry can't wait for this?
I don't care what any criticism of Obama, the first black president, is going to be met with charges of racism by the likes of the Reverend Jackson and Sharpton.
It will make their race business all that much more prominent.
It will operate on the premise that half of this country is seething, can't believe this has happened, and they're going to fix this somehow.
Cannot believe there's a black man in the White House and a black woman in the residence.
And that'll be the theme that the race business operates on.
It'll be full of presumptuousness and projection, but it'll propel it.
We aren't going to get rid of the civil rights squabbles in this country in our lifetime, folks.
I don't care if Obama is elected president.
It isn't going to happen until the Democrat Party, and this isn't going to happen either, until the Democrat Party decides to tell Jackson and Sharpton, you're out, until the Democrat Party doesn't need 90% of the black vote in order to win the presidency, we're always going to have a civil rights movement, and we're always going to have the Democrat Party pandering.
Well, that'll be the first week, Snurdley.
Yes.
He's talking about, remember when General Dinkins was elected mayor for life in New York City?
This is actually, was it actually when he won the mayoralty or was his primaries?
Yeah, I'll never forget this.
The New York, all the tabloids.
In New York, I was there.
Dinkins wins.
And the morning after the election, the newspapers were filled with stories such as the birds are chirping louder today.
The panhandlers are nicer.
The sun seems brighter.
I'm not kidding.
This and more was in the papers.
And then General Dinkins started being criticized.
And it exactly what I said will happen with Obama started happening with General Dinkins.
In history, it'll repeat itself.
So as long as the Democrat Party thrives on the civil rights movement, which is made up of much more than just African-American issues, by the way, then there will always be civil rights problems.
They manufacture them.
They invent them.
Don't you understand?
The Democrat Party exists to keep people mad.
The Democrat Party exists to keep this country in chaos.
That's the only way the Democrats think that they can profit is from chaos.
Don't forget it, folks.
A happy country is the worst thing could happen for the Democrats.
What's good for America is bad for them.
What's bad for America is good for them.
Look at how they're running.
They're running on a platform, a stool that's got one leg.
America sucks.
America has failed.
America is over.
America is not exceptional.
America is the problem.
There's always been the Blame America first faction in the Democrat Party.
It has now gotten close to securing the party's nomination for the presidency of the United States.
Who's next on this program?
Taylor in Naperville, Illinois.
Hi, Taylor.
Hi.
I was just calling it out.
It was quite a while ago.
And then, hold on.
It took me a while to get a hold of you.
But I was calling about the caller who called a while ago about the political spectrum thing.
Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, and he was saying how it was a line, and then you were saying, no, it's a circle.
Well, I remember I was in college a while ago, and I took a poli side class, and I've learned so much more since then, but they were teaching back then that it wasn't a line, that it was the political circle.
And that's what I was taught in college.
But since then, I think I've learned a lot more, and I've, you know, being out in the real world, having a job and stuff, I don't think it's a circle anymore.
I think it's gone back to the political line.
And you'll never end up in the same spot if you go far right and far left.
Far right and far left.
Well, I can see what you mean based on current circumstances.
Well, yeah, well, no, and because I remember I was always taught ever since I was first introduced into World War II in the history class that the Nazis were right-wing.
But it wasn't until recently, I don't think they were right-wing.
They were left-wing because it was the National Socialistic Party.
And they were right.
But, you know, here's the thing about these labels.
Is the only thing that convinced you that the Nazis were not right-wing was the fact they had socialists and workers in the name of their party?
No, no.
I mean, that wasn't the only thing.
It was, I mean, because it was more of, when I look at it, I look at it as, you know, right-wing versus left-wing.
It's big government versus small government, because everyone says if you go far enough right and you go far enough left, you end up in the exact same spot, which is a dictatorship.
But if you use that line of thinking, then where do the anarchists work in into the political spectrum?
There's no room for them.
I know it's a situation.
Where do the anarchists in your diagram fit?
I would say they are extremely far to the right.
Because I look at it as more of a right and left is.
Wait a minute.
Let me ask you a question about this.
How old are you?
Do you mind if I ask?
I'm 23.
23.
Yeah, I've been listening to you since I was, I want to say like six or eight years.
I remember when you were on TV way back.
That's great.
No, I appreciate that.
Define anarchist for me as you mean it here.
Well, I would say anarchist is in no form of government.
No rules.
Yeah, I would say libertarians.
Well, no.
I'm just kidding.
I couldn't help it.
I'm just kidding.
Don't get mad at me, libertarians.
You're already mad at me enough because I don't support your boy.
But of course, anarchy is a temporary thing.
It never survives.
Anarchy is the result of protest.
It's the result of dissent.
And it's usually the result of what?
The breakdown of society.
No, it's the result of too much totalitarian control.
And if the anarchists have the ability to do something about it, such as if they're armed or something, then they'll just say, screw this to hell with you guys.
And they'll go live their lives and they will do whatever they can to stop the totalitarians from impacting their lives no matter what they have to do.
But there's in no population of people, in no group of people, can you, if you want to have a civilized group, society, population, will anarchists be a viable political entity that are as competitive for people's thoughts and minds as are, say, conservatives and liberals.
Oh, no, and I agree.
I just, I think that if you go far enough.
So where they are, but the point is where they are in the spectrum really doesn't matter because you're always going to have liberals.
You're always going to have conservatives.
Sadly, we're always going to have communists.
Sadly, we're always going to have socialists.
We're always going to have totalitarians.
But anarchists, they want to change to something.
They want to change the status quo, but they don't want to live that way.
Yeah, no, they're anarchists.
I agree.
I don't think, because everyone says if you go far enough right, I don't think you really can go if you go far enough right, I don't think you're going to end up in the central government.
Okay, so if I understand you, the circle theory, rather than a straight line theory to diagram ideological locations, doesn't work because for it to work, both liberals and conservatives have to end up meeting somewhere in the circle, which is dictatorship.
And for people who believe, as we do, in less government and smaller government, your theory is it's impossible to get from that to dictatorship.
Exactly.
Interesting theory.
I'm sitting here.
The little gray cells, the neurons are flashing rapidly here.
I'm trying to think how a small government regime, if you will, could be taken to an extreme.
And yeah, you might be the only way this could happen would be if some mad general decided he didn't like where things were going and ran a coup.
But see, I think even them, for him to, you know, come to the point where it's totalitarian, I mean, he would have to, you know, initiate big to where he is now the head of the state.
And it goes back to, you know, him taking the rights away from the government.
Yeah, but no, say what I'm thinking, even in a small government regime, again, people who oppose it, like Bush, Bush is being undermined and sabotaged by Clinton holdovers and career Democrats and liberals who have done their best for eight years to sabotage foreign policy, military policy, and a number of things.
And even in, and I'm not saying Bush is a small, small, small, small government guy.
We're talking theoretically here.
If we had one of those guys in there, I mean, even Reagan was opposed internally by a lot of people who are trying to undermine him.
And a lot of people in government believe in it.
You know, Taylor, the thing is that all these bureaucrats who have gone to the Ivy League for one reason, and that's to be trained into taking over government and making it yours for life, you get some small government guy in there.
He's going to be opposed internally like you can't understand.
And if he succeeds too much.
Now, your theory is right, because the small government people will not be the ones to do it.
By definition, the small government people will not become dictators.
But there are people oriented toward massive government control throughout our government today who would revolt and do whatever they had to if they saw it slipping away from them.
It's an interesting, it really is an interesting concept.
But the okay, so let's stick with your straight line.
I got time for one more question here.
Stick to your straight line theory, which you think we have to revert to now.
You put the Nazis on the left.
Yes.
And I interrupted you when you said why, and you said it wasn't because of the way they titled themselves.
Oh, well, yeah, I was trying to look into, while I was on hold, do a little more research, because I know it was, I love the history channel.
I love watching documentaries and I love reading books.
Run by liberals.
The history channel?
Run by liberals.
If it's on TV, it's run by liberals.
Oh, well, I still think they do some good stuff.
I think they can be a little non-biased at certain times.
I admire your positive outlook.
I really do.
But no, well, and so, I mean, I try and watch a lot of documentaries and read books.
And I remember it was a lot of people.
Books are published by liberals.
No, no, what about your books?
You know what?
Taylor, hang on.
I got to take a break.
I'm going to tell you a short little story.
I just learned this this past Wednesday.
Don't go away, folks.
We'll be right back.
And we're back.
We got Taylor from Naperville, Illinois on the phone.
Last Wednesday, a couple days ago, Taylor, I met with a guy who I've known, but I'd never met him.
And he came down here and just met him for the first time, shot the bull and so forth.
And he told me something that a year or so ago, I'm not sure the time frame I recall it, but he said that he wanted to do a book on me that he thought the country needed, that the accurate portrayal of what this program has meant to media, what it's meant to the country, what its role has been, what its role is.
And he prepared a very long presentation.
He took it to every major publisher in New York, including publishers that do conservative books, and was turned down flat by every one of them.
Now, I know they're conservative books out there, and people publish them and so forth.
And I don't know that if I ever did want to write a book, I would be turned down.
But they were not interested in his focus, which was going to portray me in a light other than how they view me.
And they didn't want to be part of it.
The point is, they've got their images.
They've got their little narratives, templates of who people are.
And anything that might have credibilities come along and will blow that up, they're not going to be responsible for it getting out.
Taylor?
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I was listening.
Okay.
I know you're probably mesmerized.
That happens when people listen to me.
But you're watching a history channel.
It's great that you're watching this stuff because you're smart enough to figure out when they're fooling you.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
They did one where at the very end of it, it was all of a sudden Al Gore came on and started talking about global warming, and I was like, oh, they didn't do that.
Wait a minute.
What were you watching something on the Nazis?
Well, no, I think it was a while ago.
They did a whole day special on World War II where everything was on.
A special of World War II and then Gore comes on with a global warming novel.
No, no, That wasn't the same.
It was another day.
I was watching the History Channel.
I just thought it was a very good thing.
Oh, okay.
So completely unrelated.
You know, a lot of these outfits, arts and entertainment, biography, AE, Bravo, they're owned by conglomerates, networks, and so forth.
Look, if it's big media in America, the odds are it's liberal.
That's all I'm telling you.
Yeah, no, and I agree.
But, I mean, I try and stay away from like that.
And let me, did you, now, have you watched, I got 30 seconds, have you watched a history channel thing on the Nazis?
Yes, I've watched stuff.
Did they portray the Nazis as conservatives?
To a greater, I'd say more so than they did as liberals.
Right.
They will never portray the Nazis as liberals.
Oh, yeah.
No, they will never portray Hitler's government, the Third Reich, as what happens at the extreme of liberalism.
But it's not that much different to what the Soviets did.
The Soviets killed people for different reasons, but the Nazis did too.
Soviets killed them to keep them in, and Nazis killed them to get rid of them.
I got to run.
Be back right after this.
Don't go away.
Well, you guys on the phones today were excellent.
You were excellent.
Really, really good.
Can't wait till we do it again a week from today.
Meantime, have a wonderful weekend out there, folks.