Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Silly season time, ladies and gentlemen.
Silly season time.
How many houses does McCain own?
Answer, I'll have to get back to you.
And the Democrats try to make big hay out of this, as though they've never tried this kind of class envy stuff before.
Greetings and welcome, ladies and gentlemen.
A thrill and a delight to have you here for three hours of broadcast excellence, hosted by me, El Rushbow, serving humanity simply by being here.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbow at eibnet.com, the first half of this year, 2008, the coolest for at least five years, according to the World Meteorological Organization, the WMO.
The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years, although temperatures remain above the historical average.
The point is, it ain't getting any warmer out there.
The Farmers Almanac is out with their forecast for the winter.
They say it's going to be catastrophic.
It's going to be so rotten.
It's going to be so horrible out there this winter.
It's going to be terrible.
Also, a positive thing has happened since yesterday.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is backing off the lunacy that he suggested yesterday, putting windmills on city bridges and rooftops after newspapers mocked the idea with photo illustrations of turbines on the Brooklyn Bridge in the Empire State Building.
Bloomberg said, yeah, yeah, there are aesthetic considerations.
And number two, I have absolutely no idea whether that makes any sense from a scientific, from a practical point of view.
Well, then why'd you say it in the first place?
If you have no idea whether it makes any sense from a scientific or practical point of view, you know what this thing is.
I'll tell you what this wind business is, folks.
And I'm not putting down wind.
You know, we all have wind.
There's all wind.
Wind's always out there.
I'm not putting it down.
But I'm telling you that the people in the wind business, this little conference out there that Bloomberg was at in Las Vegas, it's all about getting subsidies for this stuff.
It's all about getting federal subsidies to get this wind projects going.
Boone Pickens wants them and all that.
So you just follow the money on this stuff.
Forget the science.
Forget the big-heartedness.
Forget the so-called concern about the environment and pollution.
Always follow the money.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dingy Harry sat down with the editorial board of the Las Vegas Review Journal, said some very interesting things.
According to Molly Ball in that newspaper, Dingy Harry defended Lieberman on Wednesday after the former Democrat vice presidential nominee accepted a speaking slot at the Republican convention in Minnesota.
Dingy Harry said he has a close personal relationship with John McCain.
I don't fully understand why he does.
I told him last night, you know, Joe, I can't stand John McCain.
He said, I know you feel that way, Harry.
And Harry Reid said that he would continue to resist calls from the Democrat Party's base to strip Lieberman, now an independent, of his Senate positions for his disloyalty.
Listen to this.
All my close votes, he's always with me, said Dingy Harry, whether it's the budget or energy issues, no matter what it is, he's always with us.
He just doesn't vote right on a rock.
Well, why would I want to throw away a good vote like that?
Now, this is Dingy Harry, who admits he hates McCain.
He hates McCain through and through.
What a bold statement, and nobody's reacting.
He honestly admits to hating McCain.
But I mentioned this primarily to put in context that the talk is still out there about Lieberman being the vice presidential pick.
And the McCain camp's still sampling people, getting their ideas on this.
I think he chilled out.
And it's, well, we may have killed it, but the RNC has put out a statement.
We shared that statement with you yesterday.
There will not be a pro-choice vice president to nominate.
But I'm telling you, there's some people not getting the message inside the McCain campaign, the rhinos in his campaign, and they're still putting it out there.
And I just, I think it's important to understand he's good on the war, and he's a nice guy.
He's got a great temperament.
Lieberman, there's nothing wrong with him as a human being, but as a politician, he ain't us.
And when you've got the Senate majority of their dingy Harry, who is well known as probably the most partisan guy in town, praising Lieberman on everything but one issue, then you have to say, what are we thinking about even putting Senator Lieberman on our ticket?
Yes, I know.
I did not turn on the TV last night, Mr. Sternly.
I read a couple of novels.
I got home yesterday.
I just, I needed a chill out from this stuff.
So I read a couple of novels.
And then I start checking the email now and then, talking about you again all over the place and Biden and all.
And I know, and a cookie sends me the audio soundbite roster.
We've got it here.
We've got all this stuff.
In fact, let's get started with that.
Let's start.
Here is Tim Kaine.
This guy is as big an empty suit as Obama.
I watched Obama this morning.
He had a little town meeting there at some place in Virginia with Tim Kaine, who's the governor, the eyebrow is what we call him here, a nickname.
And, you know, for a moment, I got a little worried because Barry sounded like he got it.
He started off talking about how he loves America.
And he started off talking about how great America is.
And he started talking about how great Americans are.
And then he was talking about all the hundreds of thousands he's met and all the hundred thousand he's shaken hands with and all the hundred thousand babies he's kissed and hugged and so forth.
Uh-oh, somebody got to him.
He's got to start saying great things about the.
Then it didn't take 30 seconds and here it came.
We are just in a world of hurt.
There is so much pain and suffering out there and we need to go back to the 90s.
We need to bring back Clintonomics and all it just and and it just blew every bit of attempted upbeat, positive uh message that he was.
It was on online.
They just can't help themselves.
They just.
I know what happened.
He's going through this riff talking about how great the country is.
It just didn't feel right to him.
He was kind of giving it a try, it just didn't feel right.
If it's not sound, i'm going to come off as a phony on this and so um, uh off.
Do you know what I found out?
They've been putting teleprompters at town meetings.
This guy is so bad off the prompter, he's even worse than we knew.
They've got prompters at town meetings with bullet points that scroll on the screens and sometimes the prompters have malfunctioned, sometimes they've locked and hey, he's lost.
He's literally lost, without some words in front of him to remind him, and that, I think, is large part of the uh which, of course, the left is being telling us is nothing more than nuance.
Anyway, this guy, this guy Kane I really, I folks, I watched, I watched this thing with Obama and I thought, I thought they let the cast of One flew over to cuckoo's nest outside.
Here's Kane.
This morning on CNN, John Roberts says there's a tremendous amount of discontent with the Bush administration.
You know, even though Obama is still slightly ahead, McCain seems to be doing very well in the poll.
So I mean, are you surprised at that, given the track record of the Bush administration, of people's discontent with it?
What is?
What does Senator Obama need to?
To kind of do, to kind of reclaim the mojo here?
Understand that senator Mccain was asked yesterday this question, how many houses do you own?
And he couldn't answer that question.
He couldn't count high enough apparently, to even know how many houses he owned.
We've got Americans who are struggling with foreclosures skyrocketing in Virginia and elsewhere, gas prices, jobs slowing down the deficit at a record level.
We've got to have somebody who can change the direction of this economy.
Yeah, and you guys are certainly not the ones to do it.
All you've done is raised this.
You know the Washington POST portrays both this guy and Mark Warner as these moderate uh, kind of guys.
They're the full-fledged, full liberal tax increasers, which is what?
What's what Tim Cain's done there?
But this business about Mccain not knowing how many houses he got, folks which it turns out that Obama already knows Obama did an ad.
He's got seven houses are worth 13 million dollars.
That wouldn't even pay for one of John Kerry's houses.
And the second thing I have to point out to you is that I don't care how many houses Mccain got or has.
He and his wife did not get a sweetheart deal from a fraud embezzler like Tony Rezco to buy their houses, but the Messiah did.
The Messiah got all kinds of sweetheart deals with Resco and who knows who else.
Mccain knows how many houses he has.
He just can't sit there and say he's wondering.
You know whose names they're in as he gets this question.
He knows is a prenup his wife's name.
I'll have to get the staff back to you because I don't know.
I just say I don't know, I don't care about that.
The question isn't how many homes Mccain has, but how many homes does Mccain have where he got a sweetheart deal involving Tony Rezco and his buddies?
I mean, if Obama wants to talk homes, let's talk homes.
He got a special deal in Hyde Park.
He got a special deal on a prime piece of land adjacent to his home.
His preacher Jeremiah Right.
10 million dollar property for what?
Nothing let's, let's.
Let's.
Talk homes.
Maybe Obama's butt-kissing sidekick, the eyebrow.
Tim Cain can add his one cent worth.
One flew over to cuckoo's nest this morning.
Outside here is Barack Obama.
Uh the, he was his Chester, Virginia.
They they hadn't given him the house line yet still stuck on the saddleback five million dollar Line.
Some of you saw the saddleback form with Rick Warren.
He was asked, well, who do you consider rich?
And he thought about it for saying, I don't know.
Maybe if you make $5 million, $5 million, then you're rich.
Which means, I guess, if you're only making $3 million a year, then you're middle class.
I guess that's what he meant.
This is weak.
You know, folks, all partisanship aside here, this second day in a row, this guy just recaptured a mojo.
They got a long, this guy's near bottoming out.
This is, it is becoming more and more apparent to me that if it's not written down and if he hasn't studied it beforehand, he's just wandering aimlessly in vain search of coherent syllables strung together to equal a meaningful thought.
Some of you saw a saddleback farm.
Rick Warren, yeah, yeah, five men, get three million.
That's your middle class.
How many men?
How many men?
Obama, he was joking, and he said so later, and he predicted exactly what you just did.
I expect that comment committee disturbed.
And Obama has just run with it, but it's so ineffective.
They should have given him the house line.
They should have given him the line they gave Tim Kaine.
Let's go back to Monday night.
Bill Hemmer hosting a special 2008 presidential character and conduct documentary here on Obama.
And they played this bite from March 14, 2008, Chicago Sun-Times interview with Obama about his land deal with Tony Rezco.
My view was: I either paid the appraisal price or one-sixth of what Tony had paid for the land, whichever was higher.
So I paid one-sixth of the price, which was approximately $104,000.
At that point, it was clearer that he was going to have some significant legal problems.
I think there's no doubt that this was a mistake.
I said it was a boneheaded move.
You know, but there's just so many of them.
There's so many boneheaded people he hangs around with.
So many boneheaded things that his people have said that he has to say he never heard them say over 20 years.
At any rate, we're a little long here.
Oh, one thing.
There's a new feature at the Zogby website, an audio feature called the Zogby Minute.
It's not Zogby himself, but I took a listen to it this morning.
And one of the things that Zogby says in his poll is he does not think this is going to be a Democrat sweep.
This year is not going to be this big sweep, everybody thinks.
That for the first time, and this is interesting if this is accurate, for the first time, not only is all opinion of Congress negative, I mean 9%, for the first time, people are saying they don't even like their own congressman.
And normally, in opinion polls and approval polls of Congress, people love their own guy, but hate everybody else.
Now they're saying they hate their guy too, according to Zogby.
And this goes against that long-held trend that we hate the institution, but we like our person in it.
And by the way, their panic, I told you yesterday, panic has set in, and it really has Leon Panetta's out there.
I don't like the way this is going.
He's got to get tougher out there.
Where's the Joe Klein, Time magazine?
Where's the passion, Obama?
Can't you say something that makes it feel like you care about it?
You know, when your campaign has to be taken over by Joe Klein at Time Magazine, it ain't a good sign.
I predict to you, ladies and gentlemen, this whole business of Obama's campaign focusing on McCain's houses, this is going to come back, going to boomerang them like they don't know.
See, this is where they get into trouble.
They just instinctively follow their own class envy narrative.
Do not remember how they got creamed last year with the haughty John Kerry and his wife's five homes and his wife's corporate jet and so forth.
So here comes a media question.
By the way, I don't, did the media ever ask John Kerry, the haughty John Kerry who served in Vietnam?
Did they ever ask him how many houses he had?
No.
They did ask McCain.
I don't know.
Pre-nap and I said, I don't know.
So the question's asked, McCain doesn't know the answer.
And the instinctive reaction from all the lids is, aha, ha ha, guy, big, rich Republican, seven houses, ha ha, out of touch.
You can't relate to the blue coat.
They just fall.
So they run all this stuff.
They've even got an ad running on this now.
The problem is, if they want to bring up houses, if they want to bring up homes, then we are going to be happy to remind everybody all over again about Mr. Tony Resco.
And we're going to have graphics and we're going to have pictures.
And we're going to have pictures of Obama's house.
And then that little strip of land right next to his house that he got for below market value from Mrs. Resco or Mr. Resco.
The guy is a felon.
If we want to talk about houses, we could talk about here's old old Obama over there trying to make himself out to be some guy like Clarence Thomas who came up from nothing, just gets back from a week on the beaches up in Hawaii, out in Hawaii.
Oh, yeah.
And let's not forget, you want to talk houses?
How about the sweetheart deal some countrywide that Chris Dodd got while a member of the committee that oversees the kind of business countrywide does?
Oh, this is fabulous.
If these people want to bring this stuff up, go right ahead.
And Obama, they finally got the line to him out there.
Somehow managed to get it on the teleprompter at his deal today in Chester, Virginia.
Here's what he said.
Somebody asked John McCain, how many houses do you have?
And he said, I'm not sure.
I'll have to check with my staff.
True quote, I'm not sure.
I'll have to check with my staff.
So they asked his staff, and he said, at least four.
At least four.
Now think about that.
I guess if you think that being rich means you got to make $5 million, and if you don't know how many houses you have, then it's not surprising that you might think the economy was fundamentally strong.
Now, this.
Does this not sound like somebody either coaching him to get passionate, so now he's starting to yell, which does not equal passion.
This sounds desperate.
Hey, Obama, you think I should admit how many houses I've got?
Let me count.
I have to count them up.
I can't tell you right off the top of my head.
Let's see.
One, two, three, four, five.
I lost track.
One.
This is in New York.
One.
And then two, three, four, seven.
I, too, ladies and gentlemen, Sterdley, you have three houses, Sterley.
You got three houses?
Sterling has three houses.
All right.
So, so I'm sure McCain knew it's just the pre-nup, folks.
He's got a pre-nup with his wife.
He doesn't know whose names these things are in.
And he was probably being a little bit too technical.
Here's the ad.
This is the ad that the Obama campaign put together today in response to this question about how many houses does McCain have?
Maybe you're struggling just to pay the mortgage on your home.
But recently, John McCain said the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
They are.
Hmm.
Then again, that same day, when asked how many houses he owns, McCain lost track.
He couldn't remember.
Well, it's seven.
Seven houses.
And here's one house America can't afford to let John McCain move into.
There's the picture of the White House.
This is, you know, it's natural for these people to go for this, but it's a mistake.
It's going to boomerang on them.
And it's not something that says, you know, McCain's honor and his character are intact.
McCain's never made himself out to be something he's not, like John Kerry has or like Obama's trying to do.
The fraud and phoniness is always on the left in these kind of situations.
And they'll never figure that out.
Hi, welcome back.
Hey, here's another thing that we could do here, folks.
Obama wants to talk about numbers and houses.
Talk about how many babies have died because of Obama's support for infanticide.
They're trying to do anything they can to get away from that, and they're not going to be able to.
This is something, you know, this last thing, there's a bunch of things that have centered and appeared now in this campaign that the Democrats had no desire to show up.
And I tell you, they don't want the abortion debate.
They don't want it back.
And especially with the candidate they've got.
Now, the McCain people have issued a response to Obama and his henchman there at the eyebrow, Tim Cain, on this number of houses business.
McCain Camp says, does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii, bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon, really want to get into a debate about houses?
Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people cling to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who's in touch with regular Americans?
The reality is that Barack Obama's plans to raise taxes in opposition to producing more energy here at home as gas prices skyrocket show that he is completely out of touch with the concerns of average Americans.
This is true.
And that is the essential definition of elitism.
Jim Garrity, National Review Online at his blog called The Campaign Spot, telling you over the past couple days that it's obvious to me, in fact, all week, that there is Panic City setting in in the Democrat Party and the Obama campaign.
This is not how this was envisioned, even as little as two weeks ago, but certainly not two months ago.
They were just riding on the top of this wave of Messiah sort of belief about Obama, and it just is, it's all crumbled.
And McCain is ahead in some polls, tied in all of the others.
Barry's lead is gone.
They're all asking, where is Mojo and how's he going to get his mojo back?
So Garrity writes about this today.
Over the past few weeks, I've heard from folks who work in the other media and in GOP circles that Team Obama was variously frustrated, scared, angry, panicking, et cetera.
Didn't put a whole lot of stock in it.
There wasn't a lot of outward signs of panic that I could see.
But in the past few days, we have seen three separate signs of panic.
First, in Virginia, a moment ago, Obama deployed a variation of his comments in San Francisco.
Now, you want to win, he said, and saying it doesn't make it so.
It'd be nice to think that after eight years of economic disaster, after eight years of bungled foreign policy, of being engaged in a war that should never have been authorized, should never have been waged, that cost us a trillion dollars and thousands of lives, that people would say, let's toss the bums out.
Just toss the bums out.
We're starting from scratch.
We're starting over.
This isn't working.
So I understand why a lot of folks are saying this should just happen.
Why are we having to run all these TV commercials?
Why do we have to raise all this money?
Just read the papers.
These are the knuckleheads who've been in charge.
Throw them out.
But American politics aren't that simple, he said.
I detect with that comment, he's getting tired of having a campaign.
This whole notion of having a campaign, he thinks, is beneath him now.
Which is exactly the way the Clintons portrayed themselves when they rode into town in 1992 and 1993.
They wanted people to bend down, not look at him.
Bend down, you know, bow, but don't dare cast your eyes on the king and queen who had come to rescue America from all the horrors of the Bush administration.
On radio just a minute ago, Obama said it'd be great if the country said, let's throw the bums out and I didn't have to campaign.
So he's getting bummed out out there, folks, that he's having to do all of this minutia in order to get to his kingdom.
He really been out of shape about it.
The wheels are continuing to come off.
Let's go back to the audio sound bites.
Day two.
Rush Limbaugh threatening McCain, according to the drive-by media.
Here is Seattle's Fox TV affiliate, the correspondent there, Sabrina Fang.
Rush Limbaugh has threatened McCain, saying that if he puts an abortion rights running mate on his ticket, the GOP base will revolt.
A McCain official says that the presidential candidate is pro-life, has always been pro-life.
His administration would be pro-life, and his vice president would have to respect that thought.
Okay, so I'm threatening McCain now, according to the drive-by.
I'm not threatening anybody.
I'm just predicting what will happen because I know what will happen if the wrong choice is made.
I'm not going to have to do anything to cause it.
McCain, well, nothing I could do.
We don't do campaigns other than Operation Chaos.
The drive-bys all the way in China, covering the Olympics, are hoping McCain disses me this morning on CNBC's Squawk Box.
While reporting live from Beijing, correspondent Carl Quintanilla said this.
And it'll be interesting too to see: does he go with the pro-choice VP pick and sort of diss what Rush has been saying on the air, Rush Limbaugh?
How much pressure does he give to Limbaugh, and how much is he willing to be seen as a maverick if he goes against that?
There's a lot of good narrative shaping up.
Good narrative shape.
There's no news here, but there's a really good narrative shaping up.
They're even talking about it at the Olympics.
Ladies and gentlemen, CNBC's financial reporters dragged into this story from Beijing, reporting on the story, by the way, from Beijing.
That's one hell of a remote to talk about McCain's vice presidential choice.
And of course, he could burnish his maverick credentials even further by dissing me.
Drive-bys are so hoping.
The drive-bys are so hoping that McCain does something that will allow them to say, see, he just flipped off Rush Limbaugh.
This is the McCain that we knew and loved.
Good morning, America, today.
Here is Ron Claiborne and his report.
Anti-abortion Republicans are in an uproar over reports that McCain is considering picking Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman or former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.
Both abortion rights supporters.
McCain is anti-abortion.
He's going to hurt himself by putting a liberal or a liberal Republican on this tick, particularly pro-choice.
A pro-abortion rights running mate could help McCain with moderate, independent, and female voters, but the risks are enormous.
A top McCain supporter asked some Christian conservatives in Michigan recently whether they would rather McCain ran with a pro-abortion rights running mate and win or run with an anti-abortion running mate and lose.
Many of them told him they would rather he lose.
I tell you, Even when they hear this, they still don't get it.
And they don't understand what this is about.
This is not about just abortion.
This is about consistency.
This is about McCain letting people know that he says something, he means it.
If he picks somebody pro-choice, then everything he said out there with Rick Warren is thrown out the window.
And there's another thing about this, too, and I keep pounding this point.
The drive-bys keep hoping that McCain, they hope, they keep hoping McCain will pick one of these, one of them, you know, a pro-choice Democrat as a vice president, because they know it's going to kill his candidacy.
They know it'll ensure defeat.
Besides that, McCain's already accomplished the task of going across the aisle and attracting moderates and independents and disaffected, unhappy Democrats.
We don't need two people on the ticket to do that.
The top of the ticket guy, McCain, has nailed that down.
If what McCain has done is not enough to attract moderates and independents, then it can't be done.
Not with two of them on the ticket.
The bottom of this ticket, as far as McCain camp has got to know, is to get that conservative base staying with it.
The bottom of this ticket, the number two, is all about keeping the conservative base aligned on election day with the McCain campaign.
Now, here is, this is Chris Matthews.
This is Drive-Bys on Me, Day Two.
This is last night on Hardball.
And this little exchange took place.
Rush Limbaugh rang the conservative four-alarm firebell on worry that John McCain might pick a for VP, Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman, people that don't really support or do support abortion rights.
Listen to Rush Limbaugh warning about this.
If he picks a pro-choice running mate, it's not going to be pretty.
If the McCain camp does that, they will have effectively destroyed the Republican Party and pushed the conservative movement into the bleachers.
The bleachers.
Anyway, when's the last time you sat in the chief seats, Rush?
It's been a long time, Chris, and I don't damn well want to go back to him.
That's what this is all about.
Want to listen to this audio soundbite again here from Ron Claiborne of ABC's Good Morning America this morning.
Now, what's happening here, too?
The two things are going on.
The drive-bys are trying to goad McCain.
That's why this is day two of Limbaugh versus McCain.
And the drive-bys are essentially challenging McCain.
You're not going to let Limbaugh determine your pick for you.
You got more guts than that, don't you?
You're the member.
You're not going to respond to this guy.
That's what they're trying to create.
And then they're trying to cement the notion in people's minds that McCain will lose if the nominee is a pro-lifer.
Listen to this Claiborne clown again.
Anti-abortion Republicans are in an uproar over reports that McCain is considering picking Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman or former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, both abortion rights supporters.
McCain is anti-abortion.
He's going to hurt himself by putting a liberal or a liberal Republican on this ticket, particularly pro-choice.
A pro-abortion rights running mate could help McCain with moderate, independent, and female voters, but the risks are enormous.
A top McCain supporter asked some Christian conservatives in Michigan recently whether they would rather McCain ran with a pro-abortion rights running mate and win or run with an anti-abortion running mate and lose.
Many of them told him they would rather he lose.
Yeah, hey, Ron, you know, you need to go back and look at some recent electoral history.
Ron Clayburn, here's an assignment for you, buddy.
Go out and find for me the last pro-life Republican presidential candidate who lost.
Go find for me a pro-life Republican presidential candidate with a pro-choice vice presidential candidate who won.
You can't find it, buddy.
You might want to say that George H.W. Bush back in the early Reagan days might have gone both ways on this.
Doesn't matter.
Reagan was such a dominant force at the top of the ticket.
There was no question of the base not being unified.
No question that Reagan defined the party.
That's not the case now.
McCain does not define the party.
That's why this pick is so important.
But you see, this is classic.
Okay, so you want to pick a pro-choice guy and win?
Or do you want to pick a pro-life or lose?
Well, pro-life Republicans will lose.
Ron, you keep this up, Ron, and you are going to be qualified to work at MSNBC.
Here is Charles as we start on the phones.
Charles in Las Vegas.
Nice to have you with us, sir.
Hello.
Mega Dittos, Rush.
Thanks.
I've been listening to you since 1990, and I'm your self-loathing gay person from Las Vegas who's a conservative and hates himself because he's gay.
Thanks, conservatives.
And well, welcome back.
Well, thank you.
I was listening to the show, and in the midst of it, I don't know if it was a local feed or the national feed, but there was an Help commercial.
And being an expert in this field of communications, I want to ask you, why do you think they would spend money to advertise during your show, knowing the target audience that you have?
Precisely because they know the kind of audience that we have.
Take you back to 2002.
Afton, I could share our own audience research with you, but we keep that close to the vest here and use it for our internal purposes only.
But it would amaze you.
But we don't have to release our own because Joe, what's his name?
Puff Dashel.
Remember that 2002 was so much like this?
It was not a presidential year, but the Democrats just convinced.
They were just convinced that everybody hated Bush and we were going to go to war and they were going to be for it.
We're going to take back the Congress.
We're going to take back the House of Representatives.
So they did a Wellstone Memorial and it blew up in their faces.
And after a couple days after the election, Puff Dashel did a press conference in which he expressed shock and amazement that his experts had told him that Democrats, lots of Democrats, actually listened to Rush Limbaugh.
He actually said this in his press conference.
And he made reference to the fact that some of these Democrats eventually changed their minds on things.
They also thought, just as you thought out there, Charles, that this program is preaching to the choir.
But it isn't.
I don't know.
I don't think Obama's buying any national.
You might be hearing a local buy.
But if he is, if he's buying the show in local markets, that's even a better indication that he knows who the audience is, that his people do.
Here's Carl calling from Tokyo, Japan.
Carl, it's nice to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Well, hello, Rush.
Thanks for taking the call.
You bet.
I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about McCain and his endorsement of Cap and Trade.
It really has me worried.
Yeah, it's absolutely insane.
It's stupid.
It's silly.
I don't know how I can vote for a guy who's going to put something in effect that's going to create a your autocracy.
Well, here's the way you look at it.
Here's the way you look at this.
With McCain, I think it's got less of a chance of happening.
Obama's fortune on this issue.
When it comes to climate change, as we stand now, McCain and Obama are not that much different.
So you almost throw that issue out because we're going to get that no matter who wins.
And you got to, you got to, I think, I think when you look at McCain's other positions that he's taken on energy recently versus Obama the Democrats, it's far more advantageous McCain's campaign is his position on this and it's a winning issue.
Okay, I understand that, but you're asking me to trust the guy who's sitting there telling me that he wants Lieberman as his VP, and he says he wants to have, and he tells me that he wants to have conservatives or strict constructionists on the Supreme Court.
And how am I going to trust him if he's going to have to question?
That's why this vice presidential pick is so important.
That's the message that we're trying to get through here.
If he does pick a pro-choice, and by the way, he has not said, now this is, I know this is a fine point, but McCain himself has not said he wants Lieberman in his people campaign want Lieberman.
He's not said one where, now, obviously, he's not going to come out and reject it, but it's other people that are planning this, trial balloon or what have you.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, but McCain, you know, I've been following this guy for years, you know, a gang of 14.
I've been following for a long time.
This man plays to the cameras.
I can't see, I mean, I can see him talking the talk right now, but is he going to walk the walk once he becomes, should he become the president?
That's my concern.
How can I believe this?
Sorry, I can't help you.
Well, that's my concern.
You are identifying a lot of people's concerns.
We're doing the best we can here.
You know, and I think some progress is being made in this vice presidential pick.
That would be utter disaster.
If he does it, don't forget there's Bob Barr lurking out there running on a libertarian ticket.
And if this pick goes the wrong way, that's going to get Bob Barr some additional percentage points and it's going to guarantee old Obama a win.
Sure.
That's utter disaster awaits.
Why should I vote for this guy?
I don't get it.
I don't know.
Okay, well, why should you vote for McCain?
Yes.
Very simple.
Two words.
The Messiah.
We don't want Barack Obama anywhere near the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C.
We want him getting more street agitator experience in the United States Senate, but we do not want Obama and the people running him in the White House.
Have you heard about the real, real people the Democrats are going to put on display at their convention?