It's just been a bear of an illness and uh take took a little longer to shake it than he envisioned.
So I'm always grateful to be with you, but I hope to be joining you in the Rush Limbaugh audience tomorrow.
For now, though, haha, you are mine.
I will shape you according to my will.
No, actually I'm just going to throw out a few things that we can do.
One has been very nicely responded to my just general underlying uh topic uh uh thread here of the Bush legacy.
Uh we opened up with some of the big political news of the day.
Saxby Shamblis wins in Georgia.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
And so the uh the Democrat 60 uh uh 60 Democrats in the Senate simply will not be happening, even if Norm Colm uh even if uh Al Franken manages to steal an election from Norm Coleman.
Um we've talked about various other things in the news and others are yet to come.
Uh Jeb Bush, for example.
We need to talk some Jeb.
What do you think?
I mean, how interested are you in Jeb returning to public life?
Um he is a Florida man, as you know, and he is thinking of uh heading into the U.S. Senate now that uh Mel Martinez has retired.
Um it's kind of funny.
I guess it's just a Bush thing.
I'm prepared to be okay with that in some ways, other ways might make me a little crazy.
Lord knows Bush 41 did, really respected him, really glad uh to to vote for him for president in 1988, and then he goes back on the no new taxes pledge.
Uh Jeb is a wonderful Florida governor, but uh there's something, and I'll I'll even say this about a governor I very much admire right here in Texas, Rick Perry, who may face Let me just let me just clue you in about this.
You want to see national and state politics collide in a fascinating way?
We're very proud to have two great senators here in Texas, John Cornan and K. Bailey Hutchison Kay may be coming out of that Senate seat to challenge Rick Perry in the Republican primary for governor.
You will hear the blood hit the walls in Maine and Montana if that happens.
Uh that also creates a fascinating um Senate vacancy that I am actually involved in a fundraising drive to get Sarah Palin's family moved to Texas so that she could get the Senate the Senate experience that I so desperately want her to have.
And if it's in my state, I'm glad to have her.
Um so we got all kinds of political news swirling around, but we're talking some Bush legacy too.
What will it be?
It's a very different question.
I mean, if I were to ask what does the country seem to think of him now.
Well, that's that's an easy and unpleasant question to address.
But what will the history books say?
I don't mean school history books, Lord knows they'll probably continue to trash him.
Uh I mean what will objective history, largely an oxymoron, uh, have to say uh about uh about George W. Bush ten years from now.
After a stable and secure Iraq has shown the way to the rest of the Middle East, that they don't need to live with this murderous lunatic wing of Islam that has run their shows since uh pretty well since the religion's birth, uh that they can actually have uh stability and security.
That the Muslims in that part of the world, just as so many American Muslims are trying to do, uh to get that that that faith can be steered into I'm just trying to get them into the 16th century, much less the 21st, and that uh and that they that you can be Muslim and just go to a mosque instead of a church like mine and and worship in a different way than I do,
and yet still stand for basic human decency and not feel that uh, you know, smiting infidels uh w with uh chest pack bombs is the way to go.
I mean, this is this is all doable.
It's all doable.
Uh and I've always believed that.
And President Bush has always believed that.
But uh anyway, so Bush is in public office have always been an adventure for conservatives, and that's a little bit of what we're talking about.
And uh, if you're just joining today's Rush Limbaugh show, uh my bottom line on this is any disagreements that I will have had with the Bush administration politically, and they are a few.
Uh pale in comparison to the eternal gratitude I have for his keeping my family safe with a visionary attempt uh to bring uh democracy to the Middle East.
All right, as we were closing the last hour, I mentioned the uh the coalition of top think tanks, and there's a dangerous uh forest in which to wander, uh a coalition of top think tanks has um put together a um a report.
Catherine Phillip has the uh byline in the Times Online out of the U.K. Iran, she writes, poses the greatest foreign policy challenge to Barack Obama, with Tehran on course to produce a nuclear bomb in the first year of an Obama administration.
Mr. Obama must keep his promises of direct talks with Tehran and engage the Middle East region as a whole if he is to halt a looming crisis that could be revisited on the U.S., said the experts.
Richard Haas is one of the authors, and uh he is quoted as saying, diplomacy is not guaranteed to work.
Do you think?
But the other options, he says, military action or living with an Iranian weapon are sufficiently unattractive for it to warrant serious commitment.
Well, if there's one thing that I won't stand for for another stinking minute, it's the notion that the Bush administration somehow uh was allergic to diplomacy.
Why do you think North Korea is less of a threat than they were three years ago?
Uh that would be diplomacy.
Why do you think uh Libya learned its lesson?
That's tough action backed by diplomacy.
Diplomacy is an empty and even foolish exercise if it is the only arrow in your quiver.
So this notion that this has been some renegade cowboy presidency, bomb them first and ask questions later is a damnable slander.
And you may have heard um uh and and here's another thing that's painful for me, but it's Hollywood, so uh I face this all the time.
I really I I really like Ron Howard.
I mean, how do you not like Opie?
I mean, please.
You know, and from Apollo 13 to cocoon and various things he's done, uh just a great director and one would like to think a good guy.
So now he rolls out with uh with this this frost Nixon, frost slash Nixon, which was originally a play with a very valid historical uh premise, because you may recall, uh not long after uh his fall from Grace, uh Richard Nixon sat down for actual interviews with uh hello, good evening on David Frost.
And so David Frost is sitting down with Nixon and got him to open up about stuff I never thought I'd heard Nixon uh adhere Nixon admit to.
So the the subtext here and why Ron Howard uh made his movie is shou be the frost to George Bush's Nixon, if that even meant that I've even said that right.
You know what I mean?
That in the analogy here, Frost is to Nixon as who will be to Bush.
Who will be the courageous journalist to sit uh George W. Bush down for uh a litany of um mea culpas in which he admits to the depths of his depravity and misdeeds.
That premise is so offensive on its face that even against Hollywood standards it stands out.
And here's an opportunity for me just to give a big ol' a high five to Chris Wallace, who not only does a really nice job hosting Fox News Sunday, but uh at a screening of this piece of crap the other day, uh, stood up and said with respect,
I I kind of have to disagree with this narrative that we got another Nixon presidency going here, one where the depths of um uh of uh uh of misdeed and uh depravity.
I I need more nouns.
I need synonyms, and doggone it, I need synonyms.
Thanks, get criminality, uh outright satanic behavior.
That uh that that there is just no parallel there that what Nixon did was for pure craven political uh survival.
And that you don't have to agree with things that President Bush did, and you can blanch at the degree to which he tried to uh uh increase the power of the executive, but his motivation was always to keep the country safe.
Something that will be that will get you laughed out of a screening of this movie in Hollywood.
But in uh Washington, I guess, they had a bunch of folks talking about it afterwards, a little little panel of uh of people.
And Chris Wallace stood up and said the first thing that this does is it completely trivializes the um of the crimes of Richard Nixon.
And the other thing that it does is it completely uh uh perverts the notion of of how history should regard President Bush.
I mean, you could agree, disagree, or even grow angry at things President Bush has done uh along his path.
But uh but to suggest that they had that that Bush and Nixon had similarly criminal intent or similarly similarly self-serving intent, I mean that that's just baseless.
So um on Sunday morning when you're watching uh watching Chris Wallace, uh give him a little wave and a little thanks.
Then you might want to dial over to meet the press and see that new host.
As he take over right away.
You know, I'm okay with this, I guess.
Let's see how he does.
I mean, David it's David Gregory, by the way, who is 38 years old.
Boy, that premature gray.
That'll that'll give you some gravitas on it.
Wow, I thought I didn't think he was sixty or anything, but I thought he might have been of my generation.
I thought he might have been, you know, fifty, fifty-one.
Nope, thirty-eight years old, and a good guy, I've been around him a couple of times, you know, straight shooter, that's lovely.
But will he be?
Will David Gregory in taking the reins at Meet the Press?
And it's a tough please, that's a tough spot.
Who in the world can fill Russert's shoes?
But whoever does, it'll be incumbent on that person, and it'll now be David Gregory, um, to be the equal opportunity tormentor that uh that Tim Russert was.
I mean, I'm already getting emails.
Hey, Mark, you know, David Gregory's uh, you know, probably uh a pretty dyed-in-the-wool liberal member of the media.
Yeah, I know.
You know, okay.
Russert was no conservative.
Are you kidding?
Please.
I mean, look at that resume.
You know, uh Tip O'Neill, you know, uh uh uh Mario Cuomo, come on.
But he found a way to exercise the intellectual honesty and the pardon this term, fairness, to really give it to the Clintons when they deserved it, give it to Al Gore when he deserved it, give it to John Kerry when he deserved it.
Has he seemed to take particular relish in going after conservatives?
Yeah, he did.
But you know what?
I'll I'll c against the backdrop of of the dominant media culture, I will I'll take that.
If you actually are, you know, putting uh uh liberal guests on the hot seat from time to time, and Russert did.
Will David Gregory?
I would suggest that he'd better.
And until I have reason not to be, I'm confident that he will.
So good luck to David as he as he undertakes a role no one wanted.
Well, first of all, everyone wanted it.
People were stumbling over each other to be Russert's successor.
But by this I mean no one relishes the notion of I mean, whether it's um some morning DJ in your town or some beloved personality or even a beloved president, uh following up an act like that is gonna be hard.
And uh so good luck to Mr. Gregory.
And only advice I would offer is um, you know, uh offer yourself up as someone willing to be tough on both sides.
If you do that, you will endear yourself to both sides.
All right, uh some more Bush legacy talk.
There's one thing I want to do when we come back.
Um the last call of the last hour, uh Salt Lake City.
Uh don't want to go out on a huge limb there and suggest, wow, must have been a Mormon guy, although the odds are pretty good.
The reason I bring this up is uh Jonah Goldberg has a magnificent observation about what is being done or what was done in California.
It was an ad campaign run by opponents of Proposition Eight, which even in this, you know, all Democrat all the time year won in California.
And by the way, you know why Prop 8 won in California, Obama voters.
If you were confused by that, consider the following that of all those black folk who rushed to the polls in California to vote for uh for Barack Obama, a large percentage of them with equal pride voted for Prop Eight.
Black America is more socially conservative than even it realizes.
And it was absolutely the black vote that put Prop 8 over the top.
But I don't but it's funny.
Uh radical gay activists uh aren't blistering the black community.
No, no, can't do that.
But boy are they savaging the Mormon community.
And Jonah, I've got just the first couple of paragraphs of a Jonah Goldberg column that is the stuff of genius, which he is often capable of cranking at.
So we have that, more of your calls, an occasional thought or two of mine.
Mark Davis in for Rush today.
He really ought to be back tomorrow.
Let's cross our fingers as we take this brief pause on the EIB network.
It is the Wednesday Rush Limbaugh Show.
Only one thing missing, that would be Rush Limbaugh.
Apparently not missing much longer, though.
Back tomorrow is the expectation, and let's just all cross our fingers and click our heels and do whatever we need to do to send a big get well wish to Rush, who's just had a just a bare of a little um upper respiratory thing these last few days.
Should be back tomorrow.
I'm Mark Davis in Texas filling in.
Let me show you what I uh what I promised I would share.
Uh Proposition Eight passes in California.
Uh anti-prop eight, often radical gay activists are how do I fra Let me be really, really fair here.
You know there are gay people in America who do not believe that they have the right to have their marriages viewed as the legal equal of heterosexual marriages.
You do know that exist.
There are gay folks who are absolutely married.
They went to a church, found a clergyman, uh, you know, got a champagne fountain and had people bring gifts and honeymoon, bum-bum-boom, they're married.
They know their marriages are not the legal equal of a heterosexual marriage in their states, and they're good with that.
Now, I don't know how many people I've just described, but they do exist and uh may well I praise them for their clarity.
Um other gay folks may feel strongly about this.
It is relatively few who get it's along the same lines of most gays really don't like the San Francisco gay pride parade with the you know mm nipple clips and heaven knows what other rigamroll and you know crotchless this and horrible that, and I'll stop talking about it now.
Thank you very much.
Uh the average gay folks just bang their heads against the wall at that, because that's not them.
All they want to do is just get through life and uh, you know, and and and not be pillaried and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It's very very much so.
Now here's so here's my tortured way of getting into this.
So when I describe this example of horrific cruelty on the part of uh radical gay activists, I want them and you to know that I I do not view this as as typical.
Here's how I get into it.
Jonah Goldberg writes, it's about how the gay community is savaging Mormons for their opposition to Prop 8 when far more black folk in California oppose Prop eight than Mormons.
You won't find them looking for black businesses to boycott.
Uh the the anti-gay folks are running stuff to boycott Utah.
Oh, and there's tons of gay travel to Salt Lake City in Provo.
Uh et cetera, et cetera.
But here's how the here's how the column goes, and it's uh it's it's tremendous.
It's just the first couple of paragraphs.
Jonah Goldberg writes, and this is in the LA Times, which is was against Prop 8, so it's uh kind of a nervy on his part.
He writes, Did you catch the political ad in which two Jews ring the doorbell of a nice working class family?
They barge in and rifle through the wife's purse and then the man's wallet for any cash, cackling, they smash the daughter's piggy bank and pinch every penny.
We need it for the Wall Street bailout, they exclaim.
No?
Well, then maybe you saw the one with the two swarthy Muslims who knock on the door of a nice Jewish family and then blow themselves up.
No.
Well, then surely you saw the TV ad in which two smarmy Mormon missionaries knock on the door of an attractive lesbian couple.
Hi, we're from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, says the blonde one with a toothy smile.
We're here to take away your rights.
The Mormon zealots yank the couple's wedding rings from their fingers and then tear up their marriage license.
As the thugs leave, one says to the other, that was too easy.
His smirking comrade replies, yeah, what should we ban next?
And then the voiceover implores viewers, say no to church taking over your government.
Obviously, the first two ads are fictional because no one would dare run such anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim attacks.
The third ad ad, however, was real, broadcast throughout California on election day as part of the effort to rally opposition to Proposition 8, the initiative that successfully repealed the right to same-sex marriage in that state.
What was the reaction to that?
Widespread condemnation, scorn, rebuke, tepid criticism, and noop.
And um that's essentially it.
Just once again, evidence of the multiple, multiple standard.
All right.
Uh more Bush legacy calls right after uh this bottom of the hour pause, and um a couple of other things.
And it might be just about time for me to to to drag out that deliciously incendiary audio of a National Hockey League player who's in deep trouble.
Mark Davis in for rush.
This format's anthem, George Thurgood, and you talk too much.
Yeah.
Yeah, thanks, boys.
All righty, Mark Davis in for Rush Limbaugh, rush back tomorrow.
That is the plan.
Let's hope for a big burst of health that lets that happen.
Meanwhile, a big burst of calls before us.
Let's dive in and see what awaits.
UVA country, Charlottesville, Virginia, Brian is here.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh show, sir.
Mark Davis filling in.
Greetings.
Yeah, uh George Bush's legacy is Barack Obama.
Uh George Bush single-handedly, well, not single-handedly, but as a leader, decimated the conservative movement and made a man, a socialist like Barack Obama, made him palatable to America.
How did Bush he decimated the conservative?
Yeah, how did because uh obviously, I mean, you you look at the the landscape, obviously someone like Barack Obama was palatable to a majority of voters.
How exactly is that President Bush's fault?
Well, the the answer is because conservatives didn't turn out to vote because over the course of eight years, he's decimated the conservative movement.
But I mean, but how is how is it President Bush's fault that we failed to congeal behind a more Reagan-esque candidate?
Well, i at some point or another, at some point or another, the leader of the party has to accept responsibility.
And and and I, for one, and I I I come from that school of thought that he is responsible.
He is a leader of the party, and for his his willingness, his unwillingness to con at at some point in time to stand up for conservative principles, and you've you've, to your credit, have have uh addressed those litanies.
But you do that, you do that year in and year out and year in and year out, and you destroy a political movement when who and then that political movement then decides I'm not gonna show up for a primary at all.
And that's how you get John McCain.
Well, I I guess our our difference is in where we place the accountability.
Because if you uh uh wish to express disfavor uh because President Bush was not conservative enough for you, that's a point you can certainly make.
Um I think it's our fault.
I I think it's on us.
Uh what what is it that President Bush did that prevented us from developing a fervor for a more conservative nominee this time?
In fact, that fervor existed.
I think sixty percent of Republicans wanted somebody other than McCain.
They wanted the next Reagan.
I remember saying for a year, I'm getting greedy.
I want somebody who'll be George W. Bush on the war and and and and and Ronald Reagan on everything else.
And what the problem was is that we had our wishes atomized out across a Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Rudy, uh, Mike Huckabee, you know, and so sixty percent of the party, maybe more, wanted exactly what you wanted us to want.
That's not Bush's fault.
And you made my case.
And my case is that as the leader of the party, if not on me, he is the leader of the party.
So your question was what is his legacy?
Not what is conservative.
What is his legacy?
Right.
And his legacy is the defimation of conservatives to the point that he undercut them to the point that they didn't come out to vote across the board.
Also look at the midterm elections as an indication of that as well.
So that is his legacy.
So when you start criticizing in the future, uh Barack Obama, when he does all these whatever he's going to do, you just you just you just look I guess your George Bush will be southeast of you.
You just you just look southeast and say, Thanks, George.
Actually about actually about ten miles east, and no, I won't.
I will step into my front yard, do a complete 360-degree pirouette, and thank the entire country.
Because in no way do I blame President Bush for sapping the will of conservatives.
If anything, the playing field was striped perfectly for us.
And we in fact tried to play it right.
The Bush administration had created the hunger that you wanted to exist.
It did exist.
We, you, me, I don't mean individually, collectively, we failed to coalesce behind a sufficiently conservative nominee.
It is not this none of that is President Bush's fault.
In a way, since it took Carter to give us Reagan, took Clinton to give us Newt.
I I think history was prepared to give the unsatisfying Bush presidency, unsatisfying to conservatives, credit for creating a spark of hunger for that next Reagan.
I mean, I just think you got that completely backwards.
Look, the president of the United States, whether it's Barack Obama is the leader of the Democratic Party.
Right.
George Bush was the leader of the Republican Party.
Right.
And in that, and in that vein, and in that vein, as the leader of that party, he decimated it to the point that you now see the political results of his leadership.
Here's the problem.
Here's the problem.
And that is his legacy.
I think you have a lot of company.
I believe you may.
You're not alone here.
In fact, you may win this argument if we went to the Internet poll.
I don't view conservatives as being that witless and mindless and so easily beatable into submission.
I saw a conservative America that rose up and was so ready in the post-Bush era to do anything to prevent an Obama or Hillary presidency.
And the problem was a mathematical one.
There were too many folks to earn our conservative trust.
McCain was was never high on a list of of the conservative base of the party.
He won by the pure dumb luck of the numbers.
And uh rather than you know, blame uh i it it's well, let me Brian, let me thank you.
I love you.
We could go 20 minutes.
Here's the bottom line here.
Uh rather than blame an insufficiently conservative president for sapping us of our will, if indeed we our will was sapped, I blame us for not having the fire in the belly to do what's necessary to bring about a more conservative presidency.
It's on us, not on him.
What a and I love you, Brian, but what a gutless thing to do.
It's Bush's fault.
It's a lot easier to say that.
A lot easier to say that than it is to look in the mirror.
And even if you look in the mirror, don't do so with such disdain or blame the Republican Party by what m uh by a 6040 margin.
I'm gonna pretty s well stick with that.
Wanted a more conservative nominee than John McCain.
Wanted the kind of nominee that Brian was talking about.
So the the the conservatism was not extinguished by the Bush presidency.
Conservatism stood ready to get behind someone more conservative than McCain, more conservative than President Bush.
And there we all were, 60% of us.
But some of us liked Romney.
Some of us liked Rudy.
Some of us liked Fred Thompson for the 10 minutes that he ran.
Some of us liked Mike Huckabee.
And I don't know how to solve that, because here comes 2012, and if you thought this candidate field was crowded, huh, huh, huh.
You know, I don't know how to solve that.
Just spot an early winner, an early and an early favorite, and just say, listen, I'm I like my guy, but we got to get behind this guy and uh and uh and and boost him to the finish line.
Now I boy.
I'll I'll say a lot of things that I love about the president.
I'll say a lot of things that I don't love about the president.
Hi his fault that uh conservatism was somehow stifled, no.
No, no.
And that'll never be true of any president.
If conservatives fail to show up at the polls, if conservatives fail to do what we know is necessary to bring about change that really means something, it please, we're the party of accountability.
It's never somebody else's fault, some presidency we were less than enamored with.
It's our fault.
Let's be the grown-ups here.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Davis filling in for Rush.
Uh let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see.
Uh, we're in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Tavell, hi, Mark Davis in for Rush Limbaugh.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
How are you doing, Mark?
Good.
Um I just called David Cross.
first I want to say to you, thank you.
I listen to the EIB network all the time, and most of the time I listen to it just for objectiveness, because I am a African American Democrat.
However, I voted for Mark Schauders and for Mitch Daniels in the state of Indiana.
Wow.
And the reason and the reason I say that is because I voted for Barack Obama, but I didn't vote for Barack Obama because Barack Obama was black.
I'm not going to ever sit down and lure myself into vote for a man just because he's black.
Now I appreciate my country coming to a point where they can vote for a black man, but I'm hoping that they voted for him for the reason I did.
When I sat and listened to him, and I looked in his eyes and I look felt went deep into my heart, I believed him.
And had I felt the same way about McCain, I'd have done the same thing.
I felt that way about Mitch Daniels.
I mean, the man has proven what he can do, and he I believe he'll still continue to do that.
Nevertheless, I'm not going to bash George Bush because George Bush was our president, and I'm for this country.
George Bush was a president for this country, so I'm for George Bush.
Now, the gentleman who just spoke about Bush killing conservativeness, conservatives is not dead, trust me.
I communicate with my peers and uh people around me that are Republican and a conservative, and we go back and forth all the time.
So conservativeness is not dead.
I believe what you said is true, and the fact that the candidate that you all needed you didn't have.
You know, as far as running for the Republican Party.
Tavelle, I want to thank you for uh I got a question for you in a minute, but I want to thank you for a couple of things.
Uh well, first, and for those unfamiliar, the reference to Mitch Daniels is the fine Republican governor of uh of the great state of Indiana.
I also want to thank you for for the civility because you have a uh uh uh a maturity and restraint that a lot of uh your not just fellow black folks but fellow Democrats do not have.
Bush must be the devil, he must be the Antichrist.
I've always asked, why is it never enough?
Why can you just not say I disagree with him?
I think he's mistaken.
No, Bush must be some functionally retarded spawn of Satan in order to satisfy the political uh uh hatred of of many who share your politics.
So I thank you for not buying into that.
And the question I have, because a lot of a lot of Obama voters say it, and so I'm just gonna put it under the magnifying glass.
You heard the things that Senator Obama said, they resonated with you, and you voted for him.
What are the things that you look for him to do that you eagerly anticipate?
Well, one of the things that he said that I eagerly anticipate and I hope takes place, one is to not allow Iran uh Osama bin Laden and those those tyrants over there to continue to prosper.
He said, Do you really think about it?
All right, well, there's one.
Do you really think that President Obama will do a better job controlling terror than John McCain would have?
Well, one of the things that kind of made me feel that John McCain won't do as much as he said is because in one of the debates, John McCain said to me, uh not well to me and to America.
I understand.
He called you.
That's okay.
I know how to get Osama bin Laden.
Don't worry about bin Laden.
That is no problem.
And I'm thinking bin Laden's been a problem forever, and you've been in the Senate forever, and all of a sudden today, you have uh solution to getting a man that we should have got taken care of a long time ago.
All right, what's give me a give me another issue?
What would be another issue where you you eagerly anticipate the Obama solution that you think would have been better than the McCain solution?
Well, I believe that one of the things that Obama said that really touched my heart was a vision of bringing America together.
And I think that is important simply because our country is ridiculed and laughed at by other countries because even though we're a great nation, they look at us and say, look, these people can't do anything as a whole.
How are they gonna lead our world if they can't leave their country?
But do you know why America the main reason America is hated?
For for state for Go ahead, I'm sorry.
I'm not saying I won't say that I will, no.
Okay.
For standing up to terror.
The the war we are fighting, which you seem to have some tolerance for.
The desire to uh to to curb uh a dictator in Iran, which you certainly seem to want done.
The world hates us from Munich to Paris to Cairo, because we are we are actually going after the world's tyrants and terrorists, and they're they demonize us, they demonize us, they call us imperialists, they call us invaders.
So I I wear the hatred.
Bingo Obama, I hope they hate Obama seriously.
I hope they do too.
I hope that he makes them hate us so bad.
You know, I mean, well, that's a I I hope uh to Tanell, I got a scoot.
I that is a magnificent way of putting it, and I if if I can, I would have take that and run with it.
My wish for the Obama presidency is that he keeps America as hated in the world as we are now.
Because if he does, that means we are continuing to try to get up in the face of terror.
If if from not to pick on Germany and France or whatever, but it's just so easy.
If uh if so much of the world starts to feel really great about us and soon, I think it will be because we will have wimped out.
We will have given in and laid down to terror just as most of the world has done.
Tavelle, got to love you.
Thank you very much.
Great State of Indiana.
Mark Davis filling in for Rush.
Be right back.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show on this Wednesday.
I'm Mark Davis filling in.
If if you sense there was somewhere I was going there with with Tavell, and thank you so much for your kind words and your and and your call.
Um they there are things we all want and and they're lyrical and they're beautiful, and uh things l for example, things like uh I think we addressed the one about having the world love us.
The way to have the world love us is not to figure out whatever the world wants and do it, because that would be stop the war right now and just uh let terror win.
World would love us if we just did what they're doing in all of Europe and just saying, uh rollovers, we don't care.
Nothing we can do about it.
Oh, they will love us across Europe and uh the rest of the world if we do that.
I wear the world's scorn like a badge of honor, and you should too.
So please don't measure it accordingly.
Let's do something so that the world will love us.
I I mean, you know, pardon this, you can use this as a drop forever, but screw the world.
It's please.
Being loved by the world is just i it's not only is it not important, but having that be your guiding light, maybe suicidal.
And the other thing is this toxic notion of unity.
Now I'm truly the grinch.
Uh here but here's what I mean.
Uh unity, what is that?
Why do you want it?
Now listen, in some ways, please, after 9-11, we actually had it there for about 20 minutes.
And in what history will view, well, what with history views now, Bush screwed it up.
We were unified, and then he messed it up.
What?
What did he do?
He kept fighting the war.
It's those of you who grew tired of the war who messed up the unity.
It's those of you who went back to your default setting of hating Bush that messed up the unity.
In wartime, you want unity.
Any other time on any other thing, please.
It's impossible.
And it's not even a goal that you should want.
Taxes either need to be higher or lower.
Uh abortion is either right or wrong.
The death penalty is either right or wrong.
Uh you know, conservatives or liberals are either right or wrong.
Democrats or Republicans either deserve to win or lose.
Let both sides come to the table.
Let everyone come with their best argument.
Not common ground.
There's no such thing as common ground.
Hardly ever.
So let us bring our best, let the left bring its best, duke it out, let the winners win, let the losers lose, and we dust ourselves off to fight another day.
That is the way for a country to progress, not in some ridiculous Namby Pamby impossible search for unity.
There.
Merry Christmas to you too.
Be right back on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis filling in.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Mark Davis filling in.
Uh we've got some Bush legacy talk in progress.
We can continue that.
I'll have some hot fresh stuff next hour.
To finish up this hour, though, let's go to Atlanta, Texas.
Little question mark in the call screen thing, boys, we got an Atlanta in Texas.
We got a Detroit in Texas.
Bill, how are you doing, sir?
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I've got fine, Mark.
I I support George Bush and his the war on terror.
Uh the only problem I have is that the the Mexican border is wide open.
It seems that George is more intent to uh his security and prosperity agreement, I 69, I-35 Project, and NAFTA than he is to s to secure the borders of America.
Yeah.
From from Texas to Arizona to to Florida to California, people who believe in strong borders look at the governors and say, where is your fire?
Where is your fervor?
And Bill, let me let me thank you because I got a scoot here, but that's that's I mean, remember this entire election.
Remember uh not so long ago, it was supposed to be all about immigration.
Oh, immigration's gonna be huge this election.
Well, last time I checked, Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo were not the ticket.
And the fact may be that a majority of the country and even a ton of Republicans are just not as passionate about strong borders as you and I are.
Now that's something that I hope changes in the very near future.