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Dec. 29, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:29
December 29, 2008, Monday, Hour #3
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Well, things heating up for the GOP.
You know, when you have uh suffer a couple of defeats, 2006, 2008, and the party is having trouble, then the knives come out.
Oh, by the way, welcome back, everybody.
Third hour now up and running on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Glad you could join us as we get back to work post-Christmas blues kicking in.
But fear not, El Rushbow is here.
Well, he will be a week from today.
I'm here today and tomorrow.
Mark Stein on Friday.
Walter Williams, New Year's Eve, and of course the best of Rush on Thursday.
Apparently, the uh the candidate or a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee in Tennessee is distributed this song that Rush made famous, Barack the Magic Negro, a parody that really spokes fun of liberals.
Remember who brought this up initially?
Is Barack Black enough?
People making ridiculous statements about race from the left.
And it was it was those folks that the classic and very, very popular Rush parody, or to be fair, uh Mr. Shanklin's parody, Paul Shanklin, Barack the Magic Negro.
That's how it came into being.
Now, obviously the left-wing media and everybody else tried to raise it against Rush.
It fell flat because everybody understands parody when they see it.
And hypersensitivity, it really isn't even hypersensitivity.
It was people trying to be politically correct, trying to make a political point by disallowing parody, which is pretty scary stuff when you think about it.
Regardless, this guy apparently sent the parody in an email, I believe, distributed the song to potential supporters this week, Barack the Magic Negro, uh as he is running for chairman of the Republican National Committee.
And lo and behold, there is outrage once again.
Uh, this is racist.
You can't parody black uh Barack's blackness.
That's off limits.
This is so inappropriate that it should disqualify any Republican National Committee candidate who would use it, said one.
I am shocked and appalled, said another.
Oh, by the way, those were Republicans.
Yes, that's right.
Uh former Speaker Newt Gingrich said in an email message that uh this particular candidate, the guy's name is Chip Saltzman from Tennessee.
Uh what he was doing distributing this song was so inappropriate that he should be effectively disqualified.
Mike Duncan, current chairman of the Republican National Committee seeking re-election.
I am shocked and appalled, he said.
Well, surprise, surprise, you're shocked and appalled your opponent wants to run against you.
I think it's Grover Norquist for uh Americans for Tax Reform, says we should have a series of debates between all the candidates who want to be the next head of the Republican Party, because this party is imploding.
And quite frankly, it's imploding, partly due, or I should say, this particular reaction is a manifestation of why the party is imploding.
This gets rather convoluted, and we can all say, well, the Republican Party now offers uh the the the voters not a choice but an echo.
They're Democrat lights and all of that.
And all of that is true.
They've lost their way on certainly fiscal issues.
The Bush bailout is literally going to provide armor or protection for Barack Obama, no matter how much he spends.
He can say Bush started it.
So we have thrown in the towel on a number of key fiscal issues, a number of regulatory issues, especially when it comes to the environment, where you've got Republicans like Mike Huckabee and the Republican Governors Association and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Christ and a whole host of people tripping over themselves to prove how green they can be.
Never understanding that no matter how green they become, the Sierra Club will never endorse them.
They don't understand that their enemies are out to get them.
They keep trying to curry favor with their enemies, whether it's the New York Times or the Washington Post or NBC or the Sierra Club.
It doesn't matter.
These people don't like you.
You're a Republican.
Get over it and start standing up for your own cause.
But wait a minute.
If we do that, if we look at the polls, we can't move the polls.
We've got to follow the polls.
And if we do that, we will not win.
And I think that's what's driving this pseudo controversy about Barack the Magic Negro song that Rush made so famous and done in in expert way or uh done expertly by Paul Shanklin.
And that is they're more concerned about winning than anything else.
The other candidates.
They're more concerned about currying favor with the intelligentsia than they are about anything else.
And folks, you do not measure the success.
Let me be clear about this.
You do not measure the success of a political party by how many victories it has.
You measure the success of a party or a movement on how much it changes the country.
And you look back when it comes to fiscal policy, ever since the Gipper left, and you can say, gosh, it's getting more and more difficult to see the change or the difference between Republicans in power and Democrats in power when it comes to issues like the environment, education, spending.
But that's because they want to win.
And they've adopted this sort of triangulation on steroids approach to things.
We've got to look at the polls, and whenever the polls say, if the people are environmentalists, we'll become environmentalists.
If the people want more government monopoly education, we'll give them more bell grants, student loans, more funding for K through twelve, we'll adopt Ted Kennedy's education bill.
We'll do it all.
And we have.
And the party just suffered the two worst back-to-back defeats, 06 and 08 in recent memory.
It doesn't work.
It's not only is it bad policy, it's bad politics.
You know, especially so considering this.
If in fact I mean, if you believe as I believe, that we are dangerously close to getting the majority of Americans on a government program.
Think about all the government programs, small business association, ethanol subsidies, farm subsidies, export subsidies, welfare, health care subsidies, educational subsidies, bailouts.
You can't walk down the street without without running into somebody who doesn't have an interest in a government check.
That is by design.
Remember the S CHIP program?
This was the Hillary Clinton, literally national health care program, nationalization of one-seventh of the economy program that started out just for children who were indigent in poverty.
And then earlier this year we had a great debate.
Well, we want to expand this program.
We've got to expand it to people making eighty-three thousand dollars a year in New York.
They could get subsidized health care.
Even though we didn't have all of the poor people covered.
Why would the Democrats be so interested in expanding SCHIP before all the poor were covered, thereby diverting money to the middle class that could be used for the poor?
Because their goal is not to alleviate poverty.
Socialism creates poverty.
Their goal is to get everybody on a program.
And you only do that by expanding the middle class.
That's why they love all of the things we've been talking about today.
Nationalizing Detroit, nationalizing the financial sector, getting more mass transit subsidies out there, trying to get you on those buses and trains, more education money.
You want it, you got it, says most governors.
What is the plan here?
The plan is to get over 50% of the people, 51% of the people addicted to a government program.
Then you've got them for life.
Then you can threaten, you can demagogue anybody that comes along and says, you know, we really ought to adopt more of a freedom approach, that government is that has a monopoly on force, and therefore that force should be limited only to repel illegitimate force.
You know, that's fundamentally the purpose of government, to prevent force and fraud.
That's what the framers had in mind.
I mean, the the great debates when they were deciding whether to have a bill of rights when you had Hamilton Madison and Jay arguing with the anti Federalists.
Hamilton Madison and Jay, the poster children for social democrats today, were actually saying, Well, we really don't need a bill of rights.
If you read it, I think it's Federalist 84, I can't remember exactly, but you read Hamilton on the issue, he said, you don't need a bill of rights because if it isn't in the Constitution, the government can't do it.
So why would you have a bill of rights saying the government can't censor when in fact in the body of the Constitution, there's nowhere where it says they can?
Why would you want to take away from the government power of which they don't already have?
That was the concept known as enumerated powers.
You and I spoke about this the last time I was on the program that if it's not in the Constitution, the government can't do it.
They did that for a reason.
They knew that government had the power of force.
Against your will, they can make you do things.
Therefore that force had to be limited.
Otherwise, government will do the things to you that its very existence was supposed to prevent others from doing to you.
But we've lost that.
Everybody's on a government program.
There are no limits to government.
It's unlimited.
And once you get everybody on, then everybody wants a check, and I'm going to come along, Jason Lewis for president, and he's going to say Rush Limbaugh for president, we got to cut government.
Oh no, you don't.
Not going to cut my government.
I get a check.
That's why they want to expand SCHIP.
That's why they w they don't want to they don't want to reform Social Security.
Doesn't matter that the programs don't work, they get people addicted to them.
Now here's the problem for the GOP.
Problem for the GOP is if your only goal is winning, and you don't care how you get there, and 51% of the people get a government check, you'll never advocate cutting it.
You'll simply have to go along.
You'll throw in the towel on that.
Well, we've thrown in the towel on fiscal restraint.
Hasn't worked, but that's that's the the new moderate Arnold Schwarzenegger Republican for you.
Throwing the towel on everything.
Move to the center, i.e.
left, and become yet another Democrat like there is a huge vacuum here for somebody in the GOP.
And there are a few great conservatives out there, Mike Pence and James Inhoff and others, uh Mark Sanford and Jim Dement.
They're all great, there's a number of great people out there, but the leadership and the bulk of the country club Republicans, quite frankly, don't get it.
And yet there's this great opportunity for somebody to say, look, this stimulus package, this government intervention isn't gonna work.
So I'm gonna get out front.
I'm gonna say we do need to cut government.
If you really want to be bold, we need to eliminate Fanny and Freddie.
We don't need to reform them.
We're actually going to subsidize them even more.
The Fed is now buying their securities.
We are doing the same thing that got us into this mess.
When the real response ought to be no bailout unless we dismantle Fanny and Freddie and get government out of the mortgage business, because that's what ran up the stimulus bubble in housing.
Or a stimulus bubble in housing, if you will.
That's called being bold.
Get the government out.
Now, you might lose an election.
You might not even regain the majority.
But when the thing collapses, when the House of Cards collapses, you will be there saying, I told you so.
If the Republicans go along with all of this, and Gingrich said the other day, well, you know, people don't want to hear anybody criticize Barack Obama.
They don't want to hear that partisan stuff.
Well, you don't have to criticize Obama, but how about criticizing government?
Be there so you can say I told you so.
If you go along with it, like Republicans went along with the spenders for the last ten years, they're not gonna vote vote for you when the collapse comes.
You will be part of the big spending problem.
I really do believe this is this is key.
And I don't think the the Republicans still get it.
It's allowed itself to be identified with government.
It has got to have a bold departure from government and quite frankly, its own past history.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Jason Lewis on the Rush Limbaugh program.
By the way, there's one more method to the liberal madness I ought to touch on before we get to the phone calls, and that is this.
The Democrats, and this gets to this endless mantra by the meet the press crowd yesterday and others saying, well, this was a failure of the marketplace.
We now have market failure, free markets don't work.
When as I've explained time and time again, Russia's explained time and time again that this was a failure of government intervention in the housing market, redirecting money that should have been going elsewhere into housing through Fannie and Freddie and mandates.
That is a failure of government misdirection, government misallocation.
And here is the method to the madness and the the something that Republicans need to understand.
Democrats love interference that doesn't work.
They allow enough interference by government in the marketplace in order to discredit the marketplace.
This is all a strategy, and it's very, very clever.
So they can say, see, the markets don't work.
Capitalism has failed.
We need bailouts, we need government activism, when capitalism hasn't been tried since the New Deal, quite frankly.
So don't fall for that.
And that's why I, you know, you you need to beseech Republicans to say find their roots, find their market roots.
And I don't care if it sounds libertarian on fiscal issues, we should be libertarian.
And go back to the now, even if it doesn't pay off tomorrow, even if you're not gonna win next year's election, uh, so what?
You're going to be there, the movement's going to be there, the party's going to be there when this whole government house of cards collapses.
If you go along with it like Schwarzenegger's doing, then you get tied in with big government and the Democrats, and the voters leave you too.
That's one of the reasons 2008 occurred.
1800-282-2882 on the Rush Limbaugh program in New Middletown, Ohio.
Sharon, thanks for waiting.
You're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi.
Hey, I just wanted to bring up um I I've gotten involved for the first time uh this national election um and uh it was very exciting.
However, what I what I did see and what many people commented on is that the National Republican Party is totally out of touch and has put the white flag up, and that the only way we're gonna take it back is from grassroots, and that's our own counties.
And I'm in Mahony Calling Youngstown, Ohio.
And uh we it's just grassroots.
And and like you're saying, we're we're not gonna win right away.
But um putting up the white flag uh will never win.
So it's not a lot of people.
You will never you will never have it depends how you define success.
So the people who are in government, whether they're consultants, whether they're elected officeholders, whether they're the Republican National Committee, they are the political class.
They're addicted to government.
They frankly, many of them don't care about big government or small government, but they define success as a win at the ballot box.
I don't know and I know too I know a lot of people who have um they do not give to the National Republican Party, they give locally, period.
Right.
They don't they they're done with the National Uh Republican Party.
So, well, look at that's a great point, Sharon.
Thanks for calling.
There are two polls on this continuum.
One, and you hear this endlessly from the moderates.
Oh, come on, Jason, come on, Rush.
We can't do anything if we don't win.
So you got you can be purists, and I'm not advocating the purism of a talk show host.
We are so far away from that, it boggles the mind.
I'm advocating just a modicum of conservatism.
Uh but that's the one end.
The other end is well, so what if you do win if you're gonna go along with the big government crowd?
It does no good either.
My point, as I said earlier, is simply this, and Sharon's point is uh, you know, winning doesn't do you any good.
If you just define success as winning, but you're not going to do anything, uh you want to get people to drop out of politics, that'll do it.
The way you measure the success of a party is what's it done to change the country.
Jason and Little Rock, you're up next.
Hi.
You bring up a great point about uh being willing to lose an election, first of all, just let me say, because you know, without Barry Goldwater, you could say there would be no Ronald Reagan.
I think that's a fair point.
Without the Republicans taking a choice a chance there in the true conservative, uh it gave us a a chance to to have Ronald Reagan a few years later.
But also uh what I initially called for was um you know I think Republicans have have gotten too concerned with certain constituency in our Republican Party, such as the religious right, and in a lot of ways that's that's detracted from who we are as as a political party.
Give me an example.
Give me an example of that.
Well, I think uh I think when you become a party that bases everything that you do on a certain moral standard, I I think that is slippery slope for when people begin to go against those morals, as we've seen a Republican Party for people like the Democrats to to say, you know, look look at these, this is a horrible example of uh of what Republicanism is and and so on and so forth.
Uh that's my main concern.
If we could just get to the politics, just get to the policies that separates us from the other party and stick to those policies, I think we would be a whole lot better off.
Well, let me say, first of all, that I am sympathetic to uh the libertarian point of view on a number of issues.
Um one of my heroes, the late great Bill Buckley described himself as a libertarian journalist.
And I think on fiscal matters, on market matters, we ought to be quite frankly libertarians.
Uh and and they are in many ways the conscience of of conservatism.
Reagan in an interview with Reason Magazine said there was effectively no difference on a number of issues between libertarians and uh and conservatives.
Uh so I I'm sympathetic to that point, but I I'd be very, very careful about jettisoning absolutes.
The purpose of government in a free society is to uphold freedom because freedom is the highest morality.
And it is, in fact, immoral to take away somebody's life, their property, uh the the things they've acquired, their income, their estate.
That is immoral.
I think we ought to be phrasing on in an economic sense that tax cuts aren't just about macroeconomics.
They're about morality.
They're about whether we want to sentence a whole class of people to, quite frankly, uh involuntary servitude.
We fought a great war in the nineteenth century about that.
Uh it was for the black man.
We shouldn't enslave anybody else and call it liberalism and let them get away with it.
You know, the real danger, uh speaking of the last call about social conservatism, we gotta, you know, get away from this morality play.
Look, politics is all about morality.
Now, I happen to think the most important moral issue of the day is liberty.
That is that that is what government is about.
Our relationship with the government is one about the only condition proper to humans, freedom.
Our relationship to other people's privately, you can you can have all sorts of other particular um um oh issues of integrity and all of that that you like.
But don't get away from freedom as a morality play.
It is.
It's all about taxes are a moral issue, not an economic issue.
The right to keep the fruits of your labor is about as moral as you can get.
You are either going to be enslaved or you're not.
If that isn't morality, I don't know what is.
The real danger, the real danger where I think social conservatism is running afoul, is evangelical environmentalists.
Oh, when we talk about the need, the the biblical need to be a good steward, which has been totally taken out of context by some Republicans going wobbly on the environment, going wobbly on K through twelve education, jettisoning choice, and going for, well, you know, we've got to we gotta beef up this, we gotta beef up that.
Uh reading into biblical precepts, the whole notion of the welfare state, that's the real danger on social conservatism.
It's not the life issue.
It's not uh, you know, uh same-sex marriage or those issues.
Now, by the way, I happen to have my own view on those.
I happen to be pro-life.
I think marriage ought to be between a man and a woman.
But if you really want a political roadmap and you're concerned about that, down in Little Rock or any place else, the answer is quite simple.
It's called the Constitution of the United States.
It's called federalism.
Those issues, whether it's medicinal marijuana or whether it's the death penalty, uh, assisted suicide, abortion, uh, gay marriage, are properly reserved to the states in this Republican form of government.
And you're never going to have a one-size fits-all.
And we had that in the United States of America for nearly 200 years, up until an activist court in the 60s, decided, well, you know, we find penumbras of so-called rights that are nowhere to be found, and we're going to impose them on state legislatures.
You know, prior to Griswold in 1965, uh, the issue of contraception or anything else was a state issue.
The issue of marriage is a state issue.
Family law is a state issue.
I happen to think medicinal marijuana should be a state issue.
So those particular issues, there's an easy conservative answer.
Uh return them to their proper venue the way the framers intended, and be willing, even though I'm pro-life.
I want to I want to go back to a pre-Roe v.
Wade era.
Uh overturning Roe v.
Wade is not going to ban abortion.
If I were in a state legislature, I would vote to ban it, quite frankly.
But I believe in the process, because the process is our guarantor of liberty.
And and the process says up until 1973, states decided those issues.
You know, it's it's like this Prop eight nonsense in California.
The radical, the radical gay left, unlike the mainstream gay left or right, if you will, is literally going after people in California who didn't vote the right way on Prop 8.
Uh that's called intolerance.
I mean, you're your beef is not with the state constitution or a court or a legislature.
If you don't like Prop 8, look at your fellow Californian.
And they're just they're demanding that people change their mind and comport with their view.
I hate to break it to those folks out there.
There is no right to marriage, whether it's homosexual or heterosexual.
That is a civil construct that government decided to bequeath to encourage child bearing to encourage procreation.
But there's no right to that.
What did I hear on Meet the Press yesterday?
I think it was Gregory or somebody saying, well, the uh Rick Warren invited for the inauguration, getting a lot of flack because he's anti-gay rights.
Prop eight in California, anti-gay right initiative.
Really?
Gays in California can't hold property.
They can't vote.
They can't ride mass transit?
That could be a downside.
They can't do of course they have rights.
But nobody has a right to get a lower tax rate if you file this joint.
Any more than somebody has a right to a farm subsidy.
That is a government bequeathing of something.
So please, w whatever way you come down on this issue, don't confuse it with the right.
But the point is, uh you know, these are issues properly reserved to the states, and that's where most of these vexing social issues ought to go, and that is a conservative position that happens to comport with the Constitution of the United States in Los Angeles, Taro, you are up next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hello, Sana Jason, and uh didos to this whole program.
Well, thank you very much.
This is Teru Minaliq in South Los Angeles, and uh I speak as one of the two head clergy of the first and oldest black church in history, and that's the Abyssinian messianic Jews.
And as such, I think I have a solution for these huge losses of the polls.
Uh there's three points here.
First, recognize that the only real conservatives are moral conservatives.
And uh and I speak that to the shame of some of my fellow black people out there who try to call themselves Christian and conservative, uh and yet they're going over to the other side.
And they forgot to put Christ before color.
Second, recognize that the Libs have changed the rules of the game by infiltrating the GOP.
I mean, after all, uh, how do you think M McCain won the nomination?
And uh you know, don't sugarcoat it there, Taro, give it to us straight.
And conservatives better wake up and and catch up with modern political strategy.
Because the only way that we are going to get the game back in our favor is if we turn the tables and get as many conservatives as possible on every Democratic ticket from dog catcher to president.
Uh, you know, because if you get enough out there, you got what you call the shotgun effect, you're bound to get some hits uh and including in the legislature.
Well, let's tie in your points with Sharon, who called in earlier talking about growing from the ground up as opposed to the top down.
We all get exercised over who the presidential nominee is going to be or who the majority leader is going to be, when in fact, if you could control the LA City Council, or whatever city you live in out there in the basin, if if you could control your county commission, your city council, your school board, I would gladly give up quite frankly the presidency in some cases when when in fact you had control at the grassroots.
Unfortunately, you look at the at the grassroots and all these these tentacles of local government, and they are liberal bastions.
So I I think the the starting locally, the only honest thing the environmental community ever said, you know, the thing globally act locally, that would be one particular route.
Well, we have to do it as a blitz, though, because once they catch on to what we're doing, then they're gonna do something back.
Well, how would you infiltrate the Democratic Party?
Just you know Well, simply you put you put as many real conservatives on the Democratic ticket uh as possible, because Democrats don't really think about who they're voting for.
They vote according to who sounds like they have the best name or what color they're gonna do.
Well, are you saying are you suggesting that they pull a a bit of a con game, they talk like a Democrat, and then once they elected, they're they govern?
No, no.
I'm just saying say as little as necessary, you know, but just get your name on the ballot because the voters are going out there not knowing who anybody is.
They don't know each person from Adam.
They only look at superficial things.
And so if your superficial things are attractive to them, they're gonna vote for you no matter who you are.
Well it is true.
It is true that the rise of Al Franken in Minnesota makes one want to rethink the voting rights act.
I understand your point.
Uh but uh but I I don't think that would work if they're actually honest, because believe it or not, during the nomination process, the majority of the um loons in the Democrat uh party thought Hillary Clinton was too conservative.
She was the centrist.
So I don't think, you know, if you're honest at all, I don't think you'd get you're gonna get anywhere doing that.
I think we just need to return to our basic roots.
There does there does there is some technical aspects or are some technical aspects lacking in the GOP machinery, and that is the the the lack of of savvy internet use and some organizational things that need to be beefed up upon.
But none of that is possible without a coherent philosophy.
Back with more when we return, so don't go anywhere.
Hey, with talent on loan from Rush, once again I am Jason Lewis.
I'll be here tomorrow as well to guide you through your Tuesday.
Walter Williams returns, New Year's Eve.
That should be fun.
And then of course Mark Stein, always fun on Friday, best of rush on Thursday, and El Rushbow uh returns Monday, that would be January fifth, isn't it, boys?
I think it is, yes.
So one eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two.
I am Jason Lewis, and this is Paul in Binghamton, New York, or Binghamton, New York.
You're on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Hi.
Hey, Jason, thanks for taking my call.
Sure.
I I am a Democrat, uh a non-confrontational one, but I've been I've been listening to you and um I I'll give you a voice from the other side, and that is that I think the reason why the GOP is in such bad shape can be summed up in the eight years of George Bush and before and prior to that, uh or shouldn't say prior to that, but early in his his administration, Tom Delay.
I mean you uh I I will tell you that there are some people who listened to you and others eight years ago and very supportive of this man, and I feel like our country is on our knees as a result of his administration.
Well, I'm not look, look, I'll be honest with you.
I I'm not a huge Bush fan.
Um I I think a lot he inherited a lot of things that were not his fault.
I mean, the greatest attack on American soil, what do you do?
It's an amazing the the the economy didn't go into into a depression after that, and quite frankly, were it not for the top income tax rate cuts in two thousand and three, one and three, I think we would have.
Uh I think he deserves credit for that.
I think he deserves credit for keeping us safe for eight years.
But when it comes to spending, I am no Bush apologist, and I think the damage to the party, along with what members of Congress did, who were Republicans, uh are the reason that there is no faith in, at least on the fiscal side, or no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
But let me turn this around if I may.
My question for you is as a Democrat, i what what did Bush do that you so disapprove of?
I mean, he he was for uh the McCain Feingold um uh campaign finance nonsense.
He adopted Ted Kennedy's education bill.
Uh he would not get tough on the borders, according to conservatives.
So where is it that as a Democrat you find this guy so unlikable unless it's personal?
It's not personal.
I was I was fully in his camp post-9 eleven, and I feel as though he squandered the trust of our country and and the and the world.
Uh the the way he handled it.
I mean, we had the whole world on our side after nine eleven.
And it would have been an opportunity.
I think I think a leader like Ronald Reagan, and I I I do support a lot of what Reagan did.
I think a a leader like Ronald Reagan would have used that political capital to our gain rather than rushing into Iraq the way he did.
Well, he didn't go into Iraq until 2003.
Well, if the se the seeds were sowed then.
And what would you not I mean, we wouldn't do Afghanistan immediately, but the seas were sown uh with the uh with the discussion of weapons of mass destruction.
How do you think Iraq is going today?
Better than I thought it would.
Well, uh I mean th that's that's political fortitude.
That's correct courage.
I mean, he was nobody was for the surge, nobody, but he stuck it out, and now he may pull it out in Iraq.
That's why the media aren't covering it.
Here's my question to you.
I do think, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't think you're a bad person for questioning the the efforts in Iraq.
There have been conservatives who have questioned it from Bill Buckley to Bob Novak and And others.
Um I don't I don't think the verdict is I don't think the verdict is in yet, to be honest with you.
I think what time will tell what happens.
But here's here's what what I find so interesting in this debate.
Barack Obama's not going to withdraw from the Middle East.
All he's gonna do is shift troops.
The Democrats were fully on board of the Iraq.
They were they were climbing all over themselves to try to make nasty quotes about Saddam Hussein.
So were the British.
How can this just be a Bush fault?
Well, I mean, if you look back seriously at the debate that occurred before we went into Iraq, um, there had to have been some political punches very pulled very quickly.
That vote came up very quickly, and to vote against Iraq with the evidence that allegedly was at hand would have been a it would have been a damning thing.
Well then but wait a minute.
Well you had a number of members of Congress who were uh in in classified committees or or executive committee that had most of the intelligence.
Uh almost all the intelligence that was privy to a whole host of others in the executive branch, and they didn't raise any red flags at that point, and it wasn't until it was politically expedient, it seems to me.
A member of his own cabinet, uh, yeah, he didn't raise well why didn't he resign?
He well, uh you saw what happened in 08.
He didn't he did not resign.
He uh but I I make it What would you have done?
Here's the sixty-four thousand dollar question in all sincerity.
What would you have done?
All right.
We've gone we went into to Afghanistan, we routed the Taliban, still didn't have Bin Laden, Pakistan had said no foreign troops in our country.
That would have been a quagmire and a bloodbath.
Some, then like the New York Times, I believe, was saying already after three weeks in Afghanistan, we were being bogged down.
So if you don't go into Iraq, and we don't have bin Laden, what would you have done?
I would have focused on Afghanistan.
You said we took out the Taliban.
Afghanistan is is is a trouble spot again.
We didn't get the job done there.
Well, so so you're not in uh opposed to the the troops and even getting into a quagmire.
I mean, you've got some in the Democrat Party pointing their finger at Pakistan.
You want a bloodbath that's gonna make Iraq look much, much less onerous.
That's going to be it.
Are you going to do that?
You're gonna go into Pakistan against their will?
Because he's probably hiding in Pakistan.
My my point is would have been to secure Afghanistan.
You had Saddam politically isolated.
He wasn't gonna pull anything.
If he did, then you go in with all guns blazing and you have the whole world with you.
Well, we did.
I mean, we've got Carzi for crying out loud, things are getting heated up again, but it wasn't as though we left Afghanistan to uh to somebody else.
We were in there.
Anyway, I that's I appreciate your call and I'm glad for your tone.
You seem like a reasonable guy.
Thanks for checking in.
I got a break, but back, so stay with us on the Rush Limbaugh program.
All right, we will be back here tomorrow, as I said uh a little earlier, Walter Williams on Wednesday.
Rush, best of Thursday, Mark Stein on Friday, then the big guy returns on Monday.
Let's squeeze in a call from Janna in College Station, Texas.
Before we uh say goodbye today, Janna, you are on the big show.
Um I think my call.
Um I I like several comments uh that you brought the program today, and one thing is that I have kind of I'm evangelical Christian.
Um I believe in capitalist society.
Um all the freedoms we can get, and I hate government intervention, I guess almost to the point of being a Sam Houstonian.
And remember the Alamo.
That's right.
And um uh one thing that you brought up that I thought was applicable to my way of thinking that changed my thoughts was the two things is um the point you made about evangelicals and and Christians um feeling the stewardship of the earth thing biblical.
I'm up against the clock, my dear, but I'm so glad you agree.
Uh trust me, there's a lot of folks in the evangelical community going wobbly on the environment.
I'm Jason Lewis, right back here tomorrow.
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