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May 19, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:10
May 19, 2008, Monday, Hour #2
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 Podcast.
For advanced conservative studies, greetings conversationalists all across the fruited plain.
Doing my best to impersonate the great one, talent on loan from Rush and all of that.
I am Jason Lewis, Minnesota's real anchor man right here on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Good to have you back for the second hour.
Rushlumbaugh.com, by the way, always up and running.
Mark Davison tomorrow.
I will uh I should say rush back in on Wednesday, but in the meantime, I will be entertaining your calls at 1800, 282-2882, before we get to the phones, read an interesting article on the demographics of the declining American newspaper.
I mean, I never thought the printed word would would fade so quickly.
I mean, they are at the least more abundant if not dead right now when you talk about American newspapers.
And there are some some technological changes, i.e., the internet having an impact, but I also think it's their inability to uh understand the changes in the American tastes and the politics of it all.
But I just got a kick out of this.
I thought I would uh relay it to you.
If you're wondering uh what newspapers try to target market certain individuals or what individuals let's try this.
The Wall Street Journal, one of my favorites, uh, is read by people who run the country.
Let's be honest about that.
People that aren't going for the light fluffy stuff.
These are the people running the country.
The Wall Street Journal read by people who run the country.
On the other hand, the Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country, but are very good at crossword puzzles.
USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country, but don't really understand the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.
The New York Post, for instance, is read by people who don't care who is running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
I understand that.
The Miami Herald, it's read by people who are running another country but need baseball scores.
Fair enough.
And finally, my hometown paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something to wrap it in.
So there you go.
If you're looking at newspaper demographics on this hard to shed any crocodile tears for our friends in the uh printed media, isn't it?
Because they have been so uh so antagonistic towards all things conservatives.
For the for the most part, anyway.
There are a few conservative newspapers, but not many.
1-800-282-2882.
I've been talking about foreign policy and the San Francisco Democrats want to expand this into uh into uh not only the campaign uh generally, but what's wrong with the Republican Party.
Russia's been hitting this a lot, the rebranding that's going on.
And the Democrats have their problems.
I mean, the Democrats have their own problems.
Nancy Pelosi is worried about Democrat conservatives, believe it or not.
This article out of the Times today uh said there's an ideological divide in the Democratic ranks.
So while everybody's talking about the Republican declining fortunes, uh Nancy Pelosi says she's got to do something to rein in those those blue dog Democrats.
That's kind of interesting.
I didn't know there were any left, but think about this.
She I mean, I think they they talk about folks like Travis Childers, a pro-gun, pro-life, anti-tax Democrat from Northern Mississippi.
They have to reconcile with Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, pro-choice, pro-gun control, liberal from San Francisco.
So I I'm trying to get this straight.
If the Democrats have a problem reigning in their lot because conservatism is popular there.
Wouldn't that be a signal for Republicans to re-embrace Reaganism?
Wouldn't that be a signal that says, you know, conservatism still is popular.
We're still a center right country.
Would that it were true?
You would never know it.
To wit.
San Francisco Chronicle last week, a interview with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once said the GOP was dying at the box office because they weren't let's be blunt about this.
They weren't liberal enough.
And now Schwarzenegger has found a chorus of agreement.
So says the SF Chronicle.
Uh they're looking to rebrand the GOP on issues like global warming.
Now, this is fascinating because everybody is using global warming.
Uh you've got Michael Gerson of the Washington Post, former speechwriter for the president, uh evangelical global warming type.
David Brooks from the New York Times thinks we ought to be more like like uh European conservatives, if that isn't a contradictor contradiction.
And everybody talks about, well, it's just the environment you have to uh warm up to, pardon the pun.
We've got to be pro-green.
Now, it's much, much more than that, but that's what they always said.
You know, Jason, I'm I'm believing Reagan, and I believe in uh low taxes and small government, but we've got to do something about the environment.
All the polls say people want that.
Don't you believe it?
This was always a facade cover for moving the GOP, the heart and soul of the GOP, to the Rockefeller Center.
And Jay Rockefeller this time, I'm afraid.
Get what Schwarzenegger says, and get what the National Governors Association often says privately, more on that in a moment.
He says we've got to counter the current GOP brand of being too right wing, too conservative on issues like global warming and spending and immigration.
It's not just about global warming, the environment.
Now, granted, I think, personally, my own view is I think environmentalism is probably the most dangerous uh enemy of liberty today.
You want to know why?
There's no opposition.
You can talk about terrorism, you can talk about taxes, you can talk about regulation in more cases than not, there is an opposing force.
Somebody will stand up.
Most Americans don't like taxes.
Most businesses will try to fight some regulation unless it benefits them, and that happens all too often.
But when it comes to the environment these days, we have thrown in the proverbial towel on everything on the ridiculous 2007 energy bill that was passed that has, I say, directly given us these high food prices at the grocery store.
The idea that you can substitute inefficient, expensive wind and solar and biomass for the most efficient fuel ever known, oil or oil-derived products, is absolute economic suicide.
And it's not a coincidence we now have four dollar a gallon gasoline.
Now the weak dollar and the Federal Reserve's ridiculous policy of artificially low interest rates adds to that.
No question about that.
But the bottom line here is we have created an energy crisis at the behest of the Sierra Club.
And it used to be someone would stand athwart history to quote Bill Buckley, the late great Bill Buckley, and yell, stop.
Nobody is willing to do it.
The environmental movement is the most dangerous today because there is no effective political opposition.
They're all green now.
And that's just the starting point.
Schwarzenegger in this interview says, quote, the Republican idea is a great idea, but we can't go and get stuck with just the right wing.
Let's let the party come all the way to the center, let those people be heard as much as the right, let it be the big tent we've talked about.
Let's invade and let's cross over that political center.
Cross over the political center.
So if your goal is to prop up Republicanism, if your goal is to save a party and not a country, then maybe you could be cynical and say, let's look at the polls.
Let's do a Dick Morris on crack, triangulation on steroids.
And whatever the polls say, let us not lead.
Leaders change the polls.
Leaders educate.
Followers and party hacks follow the polls.
And if you want to be cynical, you could do that.
You could follow the polls.
You can give the public what however diluted the public's become, because if you let the Sierra Club educate people on global warming, and we have, they're going to believe in global warming, even though articles in nature of all places now say global warming has been put on hold for a decade.
There is no hurricane activity due to global warming, and we may have already plateaued since 1998.
But no matter the media, the Democrats, and the Rhinos, Republicans in name only, have educated the public on global warming.
So they're going to believe it.
And if they believe it, you get into this vicious cycle.
If they believe it, I'll compound it by following their beliefs, and I'll adopt any policy that the polls show.
It's exactly what Clinton does.
The whole triangulation thing was the way to beat your opponent is to be your opponent.
Well, if all you want to do is save the party, I guess you can go down that road.
Some of us actually think this stuff means something.
Some of us actually believe the country, the best way to serve your party is to serve your country first.
And that means educating people.
You know, leadership is not taking the kindergarten class to the playground.
Leadership is getting kids to do their homework.
Today we take the kindergarten class to an inconvenient truth, but nevertheless, you get my drift.
And so we have this crisis right now.
We have this rebranding of the party as Rush talks about all the time.
This goes back to last fall, when Republican governors of the National Governors Association, a small group, Governor Sonny Purdue, Charlie Christ, Schwarzenegger, Pollenty of Minnesota, who may be the VP nominee if you believe some folks, the Governor Pelenty of Minnesota, who's big on global warming, who signed a renewable energy law in Minnesota, who said Jimmy Carter had it right on the environment, we should have listened.
Well, these small group of governors have been spearheading the effort on new policy positions on conservation, energy education, more attuned with public concerns, says the politico back in September of 2007.
So all we're doing is following.
There's no leadership.
Zip zero nada.
And you'd like to take advantage of the Democrats' weakness on national defense, their weakness on global warming, their weakness on social security.
Barack Obama says already, I'm going to raise taxes on Social Security.
That on top of the Bush tax cuts expiring, so that's going to be a massive marginal rate increase on everybody, especially the lowest brackets, if you let the entire thing expire, you're gonna you're going to triple, triple the uh the dividends tax.
Capital gains tax is gonna double.
That ought to be good for the economy.
We ought to be able to take advantage of those things.
Except when President Bush offered a very, very doable Social Security reform plan, it was the Republican liberals in Congress who let it drop dead, who ran away from that.
In fact, I've got some headlines for you.
Headline from uh the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.
Republicans abandoned Bush, vote to increase food stamps, stop diverting oil to special reserve.
That's the strategic reserve.
The farm bill, $300 billion, when commodity prices are an all-time high, farm incomes at an all-time high.
Who gets the farm bill passed?
Republicans in the upper Midwest, led by Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, who has never seen a farm program, he wouldn't double or triple, including ethanol subsidies, which are driving commodity prices through the roof.
How do you run against big spending?
How do you run against uh government interfering in the marketplace when you're doing that?
Another headline Republicans desert Bush on Medicaid spending cuts.
Uh Mike Hugaby on the uh state Hillary care, the state children's health insurance program.
I wouldn't have vetoed it.
You gotta get in there and you gotta help people on health care.
I could go right down the list.
You know it as well as I do.
There is a battle right now for the heart and soul of the GOP, and that might mean taking a few losses.
But I will tell you this.
And here's the problem.
Fundamentally, the problem is big government has been kind to some of these career politicians.
They are not seeing the pain you are in mortgage payments, in inflation, in grocery bills, in gasoline.
They're not seeing that pain.
If big if government gets a little bigger, I'm still gonna be a United States Senator.
I'm still gonna be the head of the party, I'm still gonna be a Republican consultant.
They're immune.
We have broken down into two classes in America.
The political class, consultants, media, liberal Democrats, liberal independents, and liberal Republicans, and the rest of us the working class.
There's a massive disconnect going on right now, and the Republicans don't get it.
They want to join or exacerbate that political class by moving to the center.
And they can't figure out why their base is so demoralized.
I can.
1-800-282-2882, more calls coming right up on the Rush Limbaugh program.
All right, let me see if I can break this down for you just a little a little better here before we get to the calls of this segment and the rest of the day.
Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh today, greetings conversationalists across the fruited plane, glad to be here.
Uh here's the way I look at it, and then you can disagree with you if you want, but I think politics is more important than winning or losing.
You you wouldn't have had and this does this reminiscent after what happened with Goldwater.
Uh we went to a principled conservative in 1964, who proved to be right on a number of issues, and then the party uh apparatchek got nervous and went back to the middle with Nixon and Ford and everybody else until we got Carter and had this horrible uh economic downturn and the weakness in in vacillation and foreign policy, and then Reagan saves the party.
The Republican Party was at its apex when it had this most conservative leader.
That's not a coincidence.
There are two forces in the modern era, I do believe.
One left, one right, obviously.
And maybe it's 30 percent, maybe it's 35 percent, maybe it's 40 percent on each side.
And what they do is the the commies, the people that hate freedom, the people that want to tax and spend and regulate, that really don't think capitalism is a good idea, they favor equality over liberty in equality of outcome, I'm talking about.
Those people are always gonna be with us.
They were with us in the progressive era, certainly with us in the New Deal, with us with the Great Society, versus in 20th century lingo Reaganism.
Classical liberalism before liberals destroyed the word meant that government's goal is to increase liberty, is to embellish liberty, is to protect property, not redistribute it.
And we battle for everybody else.
Get the 35 or 40 percent who believe on one side, the commies versus the conservatives.
And we battle for everybody else to convince the nation that this is the road to take for prosperity for freedom.
And it's an education, it's eternal vigilance, as Jefferson said, is the price of liberty.
You don't quit, you don't follow the polls.
You must be eternally vigilant, you must be eternally educating people.
You must stand for something.
The problem today is, and we've seen it in these stories I just gave you.
The GOP has fundamentally abandoned the cause.
Now there's a there are a number of good conservatives, don't get me wrong.
The Republican Study Committee in Congress, I know a few of those people.
They're good conservatives, and what they need to do is start being bold and breaking with their brethren, breaking with their brothers and sisters, breaking with the past in the GOP.
Frankly, I don't know why we keep looking at the same GOP characters over and over again.
They're the ones that have given us this.
But the problem today is fundamentally the GOP leadership.
And it started with the Bush speechwriters of Michael Gerson, the idea that you've got a guy writing speeches for the president that has total disdain for Reaganism.
You think I'm making that up.
I am not.
You read his speech, or I shouldn't say read his speeches, but read the columns he's written in the Washington Post.
Read what he uh wrote in Newsweek not long ago.
Maybe I'll get it out for you again.
He talks about the the Republican right being having too much of preference for markets, too much of a priority for individualism, and we need to moderate, especially on the environment and energy and education.
We need to give up.
We need to throw in the towel.
Well, here's the deal.
America, America knows something's wrong.
Americans are looking for change.
That's why Obama's running around just talking about change without giving any details until he's forced to.
Then everybody sees the real Obama.
But there's an angst in America.
And the yangst is from the conditions.
Now, people don't put two and two together and don't realize half the time that it's big government that's causing our energy crisis.
It's big government that's causing inflation and grocery prices.
It's big government and the ridiculous housing policies we had, where we subsidize housing with Freddie Ma uh Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack.
It was an effective subsidy.
We had artificially low rates.
We told lenders they couldn't red line, so we laid out the red carpet for anybody and everybody to get a house, and then we wonder why there's an asset bubble, and all of a sudden people can't afford it, the bubble breaks.
So now what does the Congress do?
It passes Barney Frank's housing bailout with 40 Republican votes.
It was the housing crisis, like the energy crisis, have nothing to do with free markets.
They're the antithesis of free markets.
It has everything to do with direct government policies that gave us this malinvestment.
And yet, with all this angst out there, because of big government, if you don't have a party that's willing to persuade other people that government is the problem, remember that from Ronald Reagan, not the solution, then you are defined as the problem.
You are defined with the problems of the day.
The Republicans have been in office longer in the last decade.
So if you're not willing to break from government, break from those problems, and break from the Bush speechwriters, break from McCain, break from the party leaders, the consultants, you're gonna get tagged with all the problems.
So the GOP has been defined as the party of the status quo.
They could break with that if they were willing to persuade people that you know what?
David Brooks is wrong, he's full of it.
Michael Gerson is full of it.
Unfortunately, John McCain and a few things are full of it.
Now, this might mean some immediate short-term losses, but for long-term gain.
I mean, look at all of the things we've gone AWOL on as a as a you know, fiscal conservative party or a conservative party, spending.
I just mentioned the farm bill, a $300 billion farm bill, at the behest of Republicans in the upper Midwest, along with their big spending liberal Democrats.
You know, you can have a million and a half dollars total income in a farm and still get a subsidy.
Subsidies for what?
For commodities that are sky high, for income at sky high.
That doesn't benefit farmers.
It makes them dependent, and it goes to big agribusiness anyway.
So the Republican problem is this.
They need to break from themselves.
They need new leadership.
But obviously they won't because a lot of them are fat and happy with the status quo.
So the Democrats take control.
I'm still a senator.
I'm still a consultant.
I'm still running the party.
That's the conundrum we find ourselves in.
And if you don't believe me, ask ask yourself when the last time you heard a Republican say government is not the solution, government is still the problem.
They're running away from that.
And it's never been more true.
And as always, having more fun than a human being should be allowed.
Minnesota is real anchor man trying to do a pale imitation of the great one.
L. Rushbow.
And boy, that interview with Jim Nance was fascinating on Friday.
I really enjoyed that.
I've always been a big fan of Jim Nance when he and Rush got together on Friday's program.
I thought that was absolutely great.
1-800-282-2882.
Let's go back to the phones.
Let's see who's up first here.
Let's try uh Lonnie in Chicago, thanks for waiting.
You're on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Jason, I'm calling to uh refer you and your listeners to George Washington's 1796 farewell address.
Yes.
In that address, which, you know, those guys spoke in much more flowery language than we do today, and they wrote even more so.
If you read uh the middle of this of George Washington, 1796 Farewell Address, he warns very explicitly about the danger of parties.
He says uh he says that parties uh that the alternate domination of one faction over another sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, is itself a frightful depotism.
It leads at length to more formal and permanent depotism.
Very explicitly explicitly about the danger of political parties and he predicts what kind of things they will bring down, and we're seeing it.
Was that not the farewell address where the last phrase was if you guys essentially obviously paraphrasing it because I don't think George Washington ever uttered you guys, but he said, if if you screw it up, the fault shall be entirely your own.
I believe that's how he ended that farewell address, and you you couldn't be more correct.
Madison warned about the the dangers of factions.
I believe that was in Federalist 10, to give a little historical perspective here.
I just got done reading Band of Brothers.
I was a little late on that one, but I just finished it here a couple of months back.
And it's funny, when when Adams and and TJ, uh Thomas Jefferson, for those of us that know him, were arguing the worst thing they called each other, Lonnie, the greatest cut was a party man.
I mean, and towards their reconciliation when they had the famous line, I think it was from Adams, how he wanted to go back at the time of the founding to that band of brothers, hence the title, that was so important to the cause, uh, but their concerns when they were fighting right up until that prophetic demise, you know, fifty years to the day from the Declaration of Independence, and Adams says Thomas Jefferson lives on his deathbed and he does he actually didn't.
But anyway, you know the story.
Fascinating story by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
It is.
They they absolutely detested parties because they feared of a dual loyalty.
And that's exactly what we have now.
You know, there are people that that it's again, it goes back to being fat and happy with the status quo.
If you're a Republican Party bigwig or a Democrat Party big wig, what where's the incentive to change?
And that's a great point.
I found that Gerson quote in Newsweek here, this was um oh, this was a couple this was last year, I do believe.
Let me see if I can find the date on it.
Uh it was 07.
I think it was in January of 2007.
But he and David Brooks of the New York Times have been trying to, oh, shall we say, change the Republican Party for quite some time.
And he said uh Gerson, Michael Gerson's speechwriter and policy advisor to President Bush.
And I, you know, a lot of people, and Russia's been hard on McCain, I've been hard on McCain here locally in the Twin Cities, a lot of conservatives have.
I actually think McCain is a byproduct of the party's drift.
After all, the party nominated him.
I mean, the last two le left standing were John McGain and Mike Huckabee.
Mike Huckabee, the guy that that basically supported the Yes Chips expansion by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, the guy that supported rough amnesty, Mike Huckabee, the evangelical global warming type, that we have a biblical duty.
That might he and John McCain were the last two standing out of a field of Republicans.
There's something wrong here.
And I think it started a decade or so ago when the Republicans, you could even go back to the government shutdown in the mid-1990s and say the Republicans decided at that point we're not going to stand up to things.
It's just too costly.
But Gerson writes in Newsweek here last year.
It's reasonable to ask if the conservatives are conservative at all, the combination of disdain for government, quote, a reflexive preference for markets and an unbalanced emphasis on individual choice is usually called libertarianism, close quote.
Well, I got news for you, Michael.
On economic matters, the Republican, the Republican philosophy has been fundamentally libertarian.
The opposite of lazi fair, Michael, is big spending liberalism.
Is that what you're advocating?
Yes, that's what he's advocating.
That's what Brooks is advocating.
That's what the governors are advocating.
They're advocating throwing in the towel.
David and Syracuse, you're next up on the Rush Limbaugh program high.
Hey Jason, how are you?
I'm good, sir.
How are you?
Hey, great show.
Thank you.
Um I just wanted to say I agree completely that uh that the problem in the Republican Party is a lack of vision and a lack of being able to uh see where the country needs to go and explain why.
And I wanted to give an example with energy policy.
Mm-hmm.
Um to me it's it it seems very simple and it just needs to be explained to the Americans.
First, we have to assume that most Americans are not environmental radicals, but they're common sense people and they want the environment to be uh protected.
Um but they're not being told that the greatest uh threat to our environment from an energy point of view is coal-fired plants.
And if we replaced all of our coal-fired plants with nuclear plants, we could address issues that are important to Republicans and still have common ground with people that are that are frightened about global warming, although I'm not a believer in in global warming.
But I do know that that if we replace coal-fired plants with with nuclear powered plants, we would address the potential of global warming, and at the same time we would stop the destruction uh by the extraction of coal from from the ground, which which is Well, you you gotta you gotta be careful here in my view.
Uh I'm even less sympathetic to that than you are, it sounds like you're right about nuclear.
There's no question that it is the only generator of energy that is absolutely clean.
The only generator of energy that you can quantify or get your arms around its waste.
All the rest of it is is kind of diffuse, goes into the ether, uh ephemeral, that sort of thing.
But uh and the founder of Greenpeace now says he left that organization because of their opposition to nuclear, and he's in favor of nuclear.
So you're right.
Now in Minnesota, where I reside, we have statutorily a ban.
State law says no more nuclear power plants.
Last week, we just found that an administrative law judge is in the process of nixing a new clean coal power generating station that would serve Western Minnesota.
So you get right down to the nub of things, uh, my friend, they don't want they don't want coal.
They don't want nuclear.
They don't they don't want anything.
What they want is to level the playing field with a redistribution of wealth and call it environmentalism.
Because the people that are gonna take the biggest hit when we start rationing energy, and trust me, that's the next step, there's no other solution, will be the well-to-do.
So naturally, this would be a way to make those decadent pigs live like the rest of us.
And socialism has always run right through the center of the environmental movement.
And I would argue, though, that clean coal can be, can be a very, very potent form of energy.
I am not anti-coal, especially with the new technologies.
You know, you gotta you gotta remember that there's a cost benefit analysis here.
Um you know, how much what's the old line when it comes to medicine, the the poison is in the dose.
If you want to eliminate anything and everything that might be c be called a pollutant, for crying out loud, We're talking about carbon dioxide being called a pollutant, you will shut down the world engine.
You will shut down the economy.
And I'm not altogether certain that isn't their goal.
So you're going to have to have some means of producing energy, and the best way to get the right balance with maximum growth, standard of living, people not dying in their forties, is to have production and wealth.
That's why the poorest countries are the most polluted.
Only wealthy countries can start to clean things up.
That's a luxury.
And yet the environmental policies would keep people from expanding.
I mean, I've got an op-ed right in front of me here from the uh the chairman and president of XL Energy.
This is the uh a big uh utility up in the the the Northern Plains.
And he's talking about cap and trade.
And he says, look, energy price quote, energy prices would rise dramatically if a significant portion of the nation's coal-fired generating fleet were scrapped in favor of alternative fuels or alternative options.
According to a recent study by the Department of Energy's inner energy information administration, EIA, even modest carbon cap and trade legislation could increase a typical family's future electricity and gas bill by three hundred and sixty six dollars per year or more.
Now, this is what the environmentalists are doing.
And when we go along with the environmentalists, this is what we're doing.
The average citizen, the average voter doesn't put two and two together and say, oh gosh, the Sierra Club's doing this, environmental defense is doing this, the Democrats, they just look at their gas bill or their not their gas bill, but their um electricity bill.
It's gone up by four hundred, and they say, I'm mad at the people who have signed off on this.
Many of those are Republicans, and when we agree with the the liberal left on these issues, we get pegged with the fall.
And then you get voted out of office.
If you make a commitment to start educating people that this really isn't the way to go, that we are the Saudi Arabia of coal, that we could have all the energy we wanted at cheap prices, that we've got literally, literally, hundreds of billions of barrels of oil off the outer continental shelf, and obviously in Anwar, nineteen million acres where all we need is a two thousand acre footprint.
We could have abundant energy.
We were never going to get energy independence.
That's a canard, but w that's not necessarily a bad thing.
We could certainly we could certainly lower the world price dramatically with a change of policy.
But with the Energy Act of 2007, with what states are doing, we are exacerbating the problem, and then the voters are wondering, gee, who's been doing this?
Who's been doing this?
I think I'll vote them out.
And they did in 2006.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Back to the phones on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I am Jason Lewis filling in for L. Rushbow, Mark Davis in tomorrow, rush back on Wednesday.
Right now, Tommy in Bethesda, Maryland, you are in the epicenter of all things government.
Welcome to the EIB.
It's always a big letdown when Rush says he'll be away from the EIB until he says Jason Lewis will be filling in.
You are clearly the second best voice to hear on the radio.
That's very nice.
The check is on the way, sir.
Okay, and I was hoping you could update us on the norm Coleman race against the ex-Hollywood clowns.
And because you are the clearest voice on subsidies, Jason, I want to ask you uh why shouldn't we take action to stop subsidized news and subsidize information and subsidize entertainment so that we uh can turn the tables on this media slash Hollywood treasonous conglomerates so they become dependent on the willingness of we the people to buy their products Well look let me let me go back to the let me go back to the Coleman uh the Coleman race here and Franken.
I mean Al Franken is running on the John Edwards Two Americas campaign in Minnesota.
I don't know if you've heard about this.
Yeah.
Al Franken's Two Americas uh is simply this.
You pay the taxes, he doesn't.
It's a pretty good deal if you're on the other side.
You know, Franken apparently forgot to pay his workers' comp premiums in New York, but always votes to expand those or would vote to expand those.
He forgot to pay those in New York.
In California's corporation hasn't paid taxes for a while.
He owes it in a number of states because he wasn't aware of something called the jock tax, which started when athletes were going from state to state.
It's it really is quite outrageous how they tax people.
But nevertheless, Franken hasn't been paying his taxes.
You add on to that the suspicions that I think even um left of center upper Midwest types have, and uh the polls, most of the polls show Coleman in the lead.
Now that's the good news.
The bad news is Coleman is the shadow of John McCain.
Uh Norm Coleman's a nice guy, I know Norm, um, and certainly better than Al Franken, but it's almost a textbook example here with what you're going to get.
As the Democrats move further and further to the left, Republican incumbents think they can just follow them over as long as they don't go past them.
And then when you complain about them, they say, Well, I'm still not as far as Franken.
Well, that's not much consolation.
I mean, Coleman's been out there advocating massive subsidies for ethanol, massive renewable energy subsidies, massive farm bill spending, anything that affects his constituency.
So that's that's the downside to that.
We are, as Rush says, redefining the Republican Party.
And you're redefining it into something that a lot of conservatives will no longer recognize.
Thanks for the call.
Let's go to uh Queens, New York.
And Fred, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Good day, Mr. Lewis.
Thank you for taking my call.
You have to say.
Uh McCain's not my dream vote either.
But this is uh a sobering court.
I'm sure you've heard it, and I like the uh comments on it.
But uh the Supreme Court justices are not immortal.
Two, maybe more are going to be uh uh presenting their mortality.
And uh can you endure the prospect of a Ginsburg suitor and Stevens being appointed?
That will change our country, our culture, not just for an election cycle, but for uh a generation.
It makes my hair stand up on the back of my neck, sir.
You and me, and it's a great point, Fred, because the the the only thing we have to protect us is process.
I mean, you think about this.
I mean, if we could appoint a benevolent dictator to to ensure our freedom, well, that'd be great.
The problem is the dictator is never the guy of our choice or the gal of our choice.
The the dictator uh doesn't have the same view of freedom that we do.
So we rely on process.
We've heard them all checks and balances, uh horizontal integration, vertical uh uh decentralization when it comes to federalism, when it comes to enumerated powers.
Uh the government can't do it unless it's in the Constitution, and that's what judges should be looking at.
Judges should give the benefit of the doubt to the legislative will of the people so that we can make the laws under which we live.
All of that is part of strict constructionism originalism.
And you couldn't be more right about the concern.
Here's the only problem I've got with that.
Why are you so assured that that President McCain is going to appoint the right judge?
Well remember the gang remember the gang of fourteen who led the charge on that to allow the Democrats to filibuster uh the good conservative judges.
But it still enabled us, as I understand it, to get rabbits and a Leto.
And this is a big plus for uh for me, certainly, and I hear that it won't just be the irrelevant Senate committee that will have a veto power or the Gang of 14 that will have veto power, but it will be Michael Moore and Coros and uh let's play this out.
Fred, let's play this out for a second.
Now, if you've got a filibuster proof Senate, um and we could if a few senators go by the wayside, uh, you've got the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I think it's Leahy, it was at one point, but the Senate Judiciary Committee is is there, and he says, Well, I'll tell you what, President McCain, we've got the majority here.
You barely squeaked into office.
You are not going to send up a judicial nominee that we will not support.
So don't even bother.
Now, as John McCain's inclination over time been to cut deals with Democrats, reach across the aisle, uh be bipartisan, or is his deal has been more of a I'm gonna stand up to these people and fight them in in the uh war of words in the in the nation's public discourse.
I mean, his his history has been to reach across the aisle.
What's gonna prevent President McCain from saying, you know what, I'm let's sit down, Mr. Leahy.
Let's sit down and give me coup give me a list of nominees that would fit your criteria.
So instead of a Robert or Alito or Scale or a Thomas, by the way, most of whom will not be retiring.
The good news is the retirees will be of the liberal uh activists bent.
Uh but but instead of that, we might get a suitor.
I'm just saying there's no guarantees.
Back after this on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Okay, another hour coming up on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
If you'd like to chime in, the number stays the same.
1800, 282, 2882.
I hate to dwell on the Republican problem.
And you are going to take some losses initially, but you gotta rediscover uh why you're in politics.
It's not just the best job you ever had, it's the best country you've ever lived in.
Let's try to preserve it with limited government.
That's the key.
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