All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 16, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:40
January 16, 2009, Friday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome, my friends, to the fastest three hours in all of media.
I am your beloved, benevolent dictator-host, Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman, America's truth detector, and the Doctor of Democracy.
It is Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
And here's the telephone number 800-282-2882 if you'd like to be on the program today.
You can also go to the email route, LRushbow at EIBnet.com.
Now, Monday through Thursday, we only talk about what I care about.
On Friday, I'm willing to fake it.
Because when you go to the phones, it's your show.
You can talk about whatever you want, whether I care about it or not.
It's actually, it's one of our favorite days of the week.
And we've been doing an informal survey.
It's very odd that even on Friday, we find somebody who wants to talk about something I don't want to talk about.
Because even when I sacrifice the leadership role on this program, I still hold on to it.
Something that accrues to me naturally.
As you know, ladies and gentlemen, we very infrequently here have guests.
We do make occasions now and then.
Today is one of those occasions.
Ann Coulter is here.
And for those of you watching on the Ditto Cam, we've got a new camera placement so that you see Ann and a view of me that seldom is ever seen, my rear.
But Ann Coulter's new book, and I'm sure a number of you have seen her pilloried and abused on cable television for the past week.
I noted, Ann, that the original or the initial appearances, the Mount Wowers and the others, basically attacking your right to breed.
Who the hell are you?
And then whenever they deigned to get into the substance of your book, you wipe them up, and so they forget that and then start attacking your tone, which is where we are.
And I thought, you know, I've had time to read portions of the book, and is always the case with Ann Coulter books.
There is serious, unique substance in these books mixed in with the irreverent humor, which is what the critics harp on and overlook on purpose some of the substance.
And I want to talk to you about some of the substance in the book if you feel like being funny.
And thank you.
I'm so honored to be here.
I know you don't have guests.
It's a thrill to have you here.
The title of the book is Guilty, Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America.
Now, you're a prolific writer.
You come out with a book every 18 months.
Is that about right?
Roughly.
Okay, so where did the idea for this book come?
What did it start out to be?
Do you do an outline?
Your books end up as you envision them when you start them?
Not at all.
I do all my own research, and suddenly, you know, you'll find interesting things where you weren't expecting to, and you won't find interesting things where you thought you were going to.
This was going to be more on specific victims.
I mean, it started with authentic victims in America, the blacks.
There really was slavery.
There really was Jim Crow.
But then you have all these pseudo-victims, fake victims, glomming onto the black story.
Illegal immigrants, the Muslims, the gays, my favorite victim group, wealthy white women living in Scarsdale who were bored by being housewives.
That's Betty Friedan victim.
But then, as I was writing it, it was during the 2008 campaign.
And of course, the biggest victimizers of all are the media.
I mean, they are the only attack machine.
And yet they create villains.
They tell these morality tales.
And there's always a villain and a victim.
By the way, you are a big villain in these morality tales.
But of course, what they're trying to do is create an atmosphere of contempt.
What they're doing to me now, but at least I can then come and go on the Rush Limbaugh show.
I can't believe you did this without a Rush Limbaugh show for you to go on.
Okay, so what you mean here when you say that the victims are really the victimizers?
Yes.
Victims are portrayed as helpless, sorrowful, sad-sex minorities.
What you're saying is they're really power groups.
Yes, yes.
I mean, look at the Duke La Crosse players.
They were supposed to be the victimizers of this poor single mother, of course, black woman stripper dancer.
Yes, and who was being victimized in that story?
And by the way, as I describe in this book, the New York Times was holding on to the bitter end, telling the stripper side of the story, which was untrue, and lying about it.
But thanks to the internet, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize bait story on the Duke La Crosse players was torn apart within hours of it being posted online.
And you had one of my favorite ones, which I described in the story: 95% world domination is not enough.
It's about how the media, the mainstream media, is always claiming to be a victim of themselves, of the media.
The media isn't covering this.
The media isn't covering that.
And I loved this when the New York Times exposed the SWIFT program.
Remember, that was the government following the terrorist financing, which, coincidentally, by the way, which everyone has forgotten, the New York Times wrote an editorial two weeks after the 9-11 attack, basically demanding that the Bush administration start tracking terrorist financing.
That's right.
So the government does it.
They invite the media in to be open, tell the media what's going on.
A consortium of various international financial institutions are tracking terrorist financing, but they ask various outlets of the media, do not expose this.
And of course, the New York Times puts it on their front page.
Right.
Making the easiest job in the world, head of counterterrorism, al-Qaeda.
You just have to read the New York Times every morning over your coffee and you're done.
And first, the New York Times defended itself, was indignant that, of course, Americans were hopping mad and wanted to boil the New York Times editors and reporters in oil.
First, the New York Times denied that it had done anything unusual because it was also on the cover of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.
Well, you know, the Wall Street Journal didn't appreciate being treated as the New York Times wingman and came out and said, yeah, we knew, but we weren't going to print it.
And then once you told Treasury that you weren't going to print it, Treasury asked us to print our own version of it so that at least the facts would be right.
But the greatest thing was Frank Rich wrote two columns in a row talking about how the New York Times, the poor little New York Times, was being bullied by patriotic Americans, enraged that they were revealing secret terrorist programs and actually raised the issue of anti-Semitism.
He quoted favorably Chris Matthews on Hardball saying, oh, it's the old story.
Go after big ethnic New York.
I think we need a new name for cable news called the sanitarium.
Where are the insane people in this society?
They're working in cable news for the most part.
Interestingly about this, the whole wireless, the wireless warrantless wiretap situation, that's another thing Obama's got to all hold on to.
In fact, the New York Times had a story yesterday reporting that some intelligence court is going to come out and say it's entirely legal.
Right.
After four years of trying to destroy Bush and any Republican, now it's entirely legal just in time for the Messiah to have access to it.
If there's anybody who might spy on Americans using this, it would be this incoming.
Right.
Right.
And I agree with you on Gitmo.
I've noticed that the mainstream media has suddenly started running articles in Newsweek, LA Times, not yet the New York Times, that are suddenly describing how dangerous the detainees are at Guantanamo.
I never heard about that for the past seven years.
It will manifest itself further after the one accepts the oath of office on Tuesday.
It'll be a few short days afterwards that we'll start hearing members of the administration say, We didn't know how bad it really was.
The Bush administration held out on us.
It's worse than we knew Guantanam's worse than we knew in the economy.
Right.
So they'll do what they can to continue to dump on Bush.
So this became.
So I can see how you're looking out over our culture and you see these groups of cultural victims who have become, as minorities, majorities through intimidation.
Right.
And of course, Republicans are easy to intimidate these days.
And then the more you look into it, once again, you end up with a book, not largely, but significantly about the media.
A lot of it, yes, because they are the biggest victimizers.
I mean, they talk about the Republican attack machine.
I have a whole chapter on the Republican attack machine because it's one of the many imaginary phenomenon that terrifies liberals along with global warming.
The conservative media has them, and the Republican National Committee, I guess, has them seized with terror.
And I kept hearing Republic every time I wasn't even trying to pay attention to what was on TV.
I kept hearing what are the Republicans going to do in the Republican attack machine.
So I looked up on Nexus how often Republican attack machine the phrase had been used more than 700 times in a one-year period.
There isn't one, no.
Well, yes, that's the point of the chapter.
But meanwhile, the Democrat attack machine has been used about seven times.
And there isn't even really a Democrat attack machine.
There is one attack machine.
It is the media.
And for example, I mean, it isn't the Democratic National Committee coming up with the fake National Guard documents.
That was CBS News and then calling it into the Kerry campaign.
It wasn't the Obama campaign inventing the story about at Sarah Palin rallies when she mentions Obama that members of the crowd were yelling, kill him.
No, that was a member of the media.
And the most striking proof of the media being the most powerful attack machine is once they jumped ship from the old golden boy, Bill Clinton, and the new golden boy, B. Hussein Obama, came around, you see who wins.
All right.
Now, I want to give you a chance because you just say B. Hussein Obama to your average cable news host, and they freak.
Now, I happen, as a highly trained broadcast specialist, I am to understand why you do it, but I want to hear your reason.
You're the only guy that could be Hussein Obama.
You tell them why you're doing it.
Well, it is kind of funny that we just had this huge war against an enemy named Hussein, and the Democrats are running a candidate whose middle name is Hussein.
And by the way, when we ran Jay Danforth Quayle, Calvin Trillin wrote an article, I think it was in the New York Times, I'm not sure, some mainstream media, sneering at the Republicans for being so stupid to run someone with a name like that.
And he sounds like a banker, and it fits right into the image of Republicans as the party of the rich.
Well, we can't mention because Democrats are kind of soft on terrorism.
And now they're running a candidate.
Well, he's about to assume the office of the presidency with a middle name, Hussein.
I might have dropped it, except every time I said it, liberals would go crazy.
But it would be, I mean, as I've said before, it would be like Republicans running in 1948, the candidate names, you know, Thomas Hitler Dewey.
I think people would notice that.
It was a couple, by the way, the couple in New Jersey, I think, that actually had a kid and they gave him the middle name Hitler.
I just saw this yesterday.
And I think he was taken away from the city.
Family services was right in there.
Well, I tell you, you know, we are going to broadcast B. Hussein, Obama's immaculate inaugural address, on Tuesday.
And I've instructed the broadcast engineer during the oath, both when it is given and he recites it, to beep, to bleep when he uses the name Hussein.
Well, remember, John McCain jumped all over people in this campaign.
So to avoid any controversy whatsoever, we will bleep when he uses his own middle name just to play through.
With Ann Coulter about her new book, Guilty, will continue after this.
Hi, welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh Open Line Friday with Ann Coulter and her new book, Guilty, Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America.
This is a special, I'll tell you, for me, a timely topic because I have, I first became aware of this in the early 90s, late 80s, when I started this show.
And I'm in the process of attracting affiliates and so forth.
And this is in the middle of the AIDS, the politicization of that research and so forth.
And I, you know, offer my opinion about it.
And here came a distinct minority that was just doing everything they could to intimidate radio stations and even me from not saying what I wanted.
And I said, and I run into some news reporters about this.
They say, well, we must give them voice.
They are a minority and they're just trying to attain the same rights everybody else has and so forth.
And I heard the Democrats talk about the tyranny of the minority when the Republicans were in the minority.
And now that they're in the majority, they don't care about the minority.
But it's amazed me how the majority has just caved.
Right.
I don't care what group of victims you're talking about.
It seems the vast majority, and all victim groups are liberals.
Yes.
It's a part and parcel of their political structure.
That's exactly what it is.
And it amazed me how, take this out of the realm of the media because your examples there are great, but it's amazing how many cultural conservatives who we would define descend from the true virtue of the founding of this country are caving to the attempt to destroy that very culture.
Well, that's part of the reason for this book.
And I describe why I think that works in this country.
It actually is sort of a nice thing about America.
Americans are incredibly charitable and kind-hearted people.
And so when they see some liberal claiming to have been mortally offended, their natural instinct is to rush in and aid the afflicted.
Well, I'm trying with this book to say these are crocodile tears.
Stop falling for it.
I know you're lovely, charitable people.
Americans are afraid of the people.
It's a political tactic.
There's nothing genuine about it.
Yes, yes.
And there is example after example.
But where's the Constitution where you have a right not to be offended?
Right.
Well, he who was offended first wins in America.
Right.
That's precisely.
How to stop it?
Well, to point it out, once people start recognizing it and chuckling at it instead of opening their wallets and their hearts, and as I described, Americans are the most charitable people in the universe.
So I understand why it works.
They love a disaster, whether it's a tsunami or I shouldn't say love, but they are almost greedy to help people who are in hurting from a terrorist attack to a tsunami to a little girl down a pipe in Texas.
Americans are making sandwiches and raising money and donating blood.
And the whole country will be fixated on the little girl in the pipe.
So Americans are sitting ducks for this, the crocodile tears of the liberal.
All right.
Now, does this relate in any way?
We go back to 2006 elections.
I think one of the reasons we had a McCain in 2008 is because we lost George Allen in 2006 over a word.
And I think we lost the House of Representatives because of Mark Foley.
Nothing the Democrats did.
The word was macaca.
Right.
What is the truth behind this?
And what did George Allen do that was wrong in the aftermath, if anything?
I described this.
First of all, George Allen was down in a not very wealthy area of Virginia, a rural part of town.
The richest person, the most privileged person in the audience was this kid who was called Macaca.
So in the audience, the most privileged individual becomes.
And this kid's a plant, right?
Well, yes, he was from the opposition research.
He's, as I call them, the Nazi block watchers.
They show up at the opponent's campaign with their little cameras.
And I think what Allen was doing was alerting these Americans in the audience, these lovely poor, not poor, but not wealthy people, that if they ask a stupid question, they were about to become YouTube celebrities.
So he interrupts himself, and it's actually a cheerful, nice thing.
And also, you know, there's this one glum kid standing in the middle, frowning and filming everyone.
So he introduces the kid and says, you know, in a cheerful way.
And at the same time, Jim Webb, George Allen's opponent, was out meeting with some Hollywood celebrities to raise money.
So Alan makes a joke about that and says, this is, you know, I want to introduce.
I don't know what your name is, Macaca.
You're here for my opponent's campaign.
Tell them what real America is like.
He's out meeting with Hollywood celebrities.
The Washington Post ran hundreds of articles on this.
I don't know how Indian America, oh, but the Macau was a kid from a privileged family, went to good schools in a wealthy suburb of Washington in Virginia.
He was going to University of Virginia.
How does he become the victim in this story?
He's trying to make fun of normal Americans showing up at a campaign rally.
Okay, meanwhile, Flash 2, Alan's opponent, Jim Webb, who was producing, and you will search high and low to find any news stories on this, what I think are pretty clearly viciously anti-Semitic flyers against his primary opponent, who was Jewish.
I described them in the book.
It shows his opponent in caricature, like something out of Al Jazeera, with a big hook nose and money coming out of his pocket.
He calls him jobs killer and the antichrist of outsourcing.
And in each picture, there's framed pictures of a dollar sign.
That raises absolutely no attention.
Well, we all know why, and that's because the Democrats are incapable of such things.
Even when they do them, well, no, they don't pretend to have any standards.
They can't violate them.
But they're protected.
It's just like Geithner can get away without paying his taxes, but you and I can't.
Right.
Two sets of rules, liberals, everybody else.
But I'd never heard of the word maca.
And I was stunned to see weeks and weeks exploration, in-depth investigative reporting of just what the hell a maca was.
I still don't know.
What is a macaca?
Well, they dig up some foreign language in which it means monkey, but A, no one in the audience would have known that, even if George Allen did, because his mother had once lived in this country, was from some African country.
Even if he knew what it meant, no one in the audience knew, so it wasn't a way of getting people to laugh and ridicule this kid.
But moreover, when did Indian Americans become a special certified victim category?
What did we ever do to the Indians?
Which Indians?
The Indians from India.
Yeah.
No, the other Indians, I know what we did to.
And that was the Democrats.
Once again, Andrew Jackson.
Now, she knows her history now.
That's exactly right.
Now, we got one minute.
Where did Allen go wrong, in your opinion?
If you had been running his show, where'd he go wrong once the onslaught began?
Not only he, but the Republicans around him, he apologized.
He should never, ever have apologized.
That's exactly right.
See, this is, oh, no, we're nice people.
Right.
We're not racist.
We're not any of these things you say.
And so, Gorda, I'm sorry I offended you and said.
And of course, the people on the side of the attack.
Right.
The moment you apologize, you have admitted that what they were attacking you for had some merit.
Well, it didn't have merit.
If you ever do something wrong, fine.
I'm not against apologizing.
But these are always synthetic scandals.
There's always a completely phony victim.
Like I say, the wealthiest person in the audience was the victim in this story.
Exactly right.
Well, I agree with you.
I don't apologize ever.
Helps that I'm never wrong.
Yes, you never make a mistake.
No, in a political thing, you know, an apology is a tantamount admission to the charge they're demanding you apologize for.
And that's where Alan went wrong.
Are we going to briefly, you got a couple more minutes here?
Yes, okay.
Well, Ann Coulter is the rare guest today, and we will be back.
And we're back.
It's Open Line Friday.
Elle Rushball, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling maha rushy with Ann Coulter and her new book, which I'm kind of on and we're actually discussing what's in the book for the first time in her week-long series of interviews rather than her tone.
Title of the book is Guilty Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America.
Now, and it's fascinating, folks.
It is a fascinating premise: this whole business of how these poor, oppressed, victimized little groups are running this country with the aid of their willing accomplices in the drive-by media.
Now, George Soros, two more people I want to ask you about here: George Soros, and as you say, B. Hussein Obama.
Now, everybody thinks, well, not everybody, a lot of people think that we know George Soros, that he funds a bunch of 527s for Democrats and that he would spare no expense to get Hillary elected, then be Hussein Obama or whatever.
But you have a little bit more information about Soros in your book than a lot of people know and how he does what he does.
Right, right.
Well, first of all, he does own the Democratic Party thanks to campaign finance reform.
Thank you, John McCain.
Now, individuals have less power.
Plutocrats, like George Soros, have more power.
And one of his minions said, We bought it, we own it, it's ours.
When he switched from the Clintons to Obama, like the media, you see who wins.
He also, what I think is interesting about Soros and Marcos, whatever his name is of Daily Cause, and Ariana Huffington are, you know, basically the three unofficial spokesmen of the Democratic Party.
And they all speak in the foreign accents of their foreign upbringings.
You know, can't you wait a few generations?
Let your grandkids do the America bashing.
You know, not right away.
You can barely understand.
Mariana, you need a translator.
And George Soros.
Oh, yeah, him too.
I've never heard the Daily Cause guy speak.
Yeah, he was brought up in someplace in Latin America.
You can't understand them.
They speak in foreign accents.
They represent the Democratic Party.
George Soros, to show his great patriotism on 9-11, this is all you need to know about George Soros.
After the 9-11 attack, there was a big move on Wall Street to buy American because there was a fear that when the market opened the following Monday, there would be a huge stock market crash.
And short sellers who bet that American stocks will go down, if there are a lot of short sellers, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because everybody's trying to not lose money by not short-selling.
So there was a big campaign by bond managers sending out letters to all of their investors saying there's nothing that would, I think, would upset a lot of terrible people more than a big stock market rally on Monday.
Out across America, you had little old ladies and farmers and bankers and waitresses calling their banks.
They've never bought a stock before, finding out how to buy $50 worth of stock.
And on Monday, the stock market opens.
They sing the God bless America, ring the bell.
And George Soros said, sell, sell, sell.
So he went short.
Yeah, and when asked about it by Steve Croft, he said, for one thing, he finally, well, it's very clearly unquoted in my book, he admitted to collaborating with the Nazis as a teenager.
And he said the same thing about selling America short as collaborating with the Nazis.
Well, if I hadn't done it, someone else would have.
That's the man who runs the Democratic Party.
B. Hussein Obama, again, as you refer to him.
Everybody knows that, well, again, I think everybody listening to this program knows that in his race for the U.S. Senate in 2004, it was 2004, right?
I think that's right.
Because he's only been a senator for, what, six or seven minutes?
Yeah, that's right, because Roland Burris, moving on up.
We'll only have two years in the Senate, right?
So the media helped Obama get private divorce files of one opponent, but there were two.
There were two.
There were two.
Well, that's been one of Obama's motus operandis is to clear the playing field, not so that there is nobody you have to beat.
And, I mean, this is the power of the media and why they're running the Democrats rather than the Democrats running the media.
Obama and other liberal Democrats can always stand up and give magnanimous speeches about how I would never go after my opponent's family.
Well, of course, you don't have to.
You got the media doing it for you.
And so both times, first with Obama's primary opponent, who was way ahead in the polls.
He was very wealthy.
He was going to win the primary.
And so the media go in and get his sealed divorce records unsealed.
And by the way, speaking as a lawyer, I don't understand the point of sealing records if all that has to happen is for the media to say, we think they'd be interesting.
Could you unseal them for us and get them unsealed?
It's Chicago.
Well, and then California, in the case of Jack Ryan, a stunning Republican candidate.
And this is another example of why, well, you and I may be the last Republicans in name only because the actual Republican Party completely dumped a magnificent candidate, Jack Ryan.
Once again, luckily for Obama, his opponent was divorced.
And so the media fly out to California.
They get his divorce records, actually the custody records in this case unsealed.
There is a highly implausible claim in the divorce records from his ex-wife, a member of Star Trek Voyager.
He accused her of having an affair, and she responded, the only reason I had an affair was because he took me to sex clubs in New York, Paris, and I think New Orleans.
So once again, we have a Republican sex scandal that doesn't involve anyone having sex.
He was accused of propositioning his own wife.
And by the way, then when Obama's running against Sarah Palin, I noticed once again Obama has a tough, a formidable opponent, which John McCain was not.
Someone's divorce records would have to be unsealed.
Of course, Sarah Palin wasn't divorced, so it wasn't her divorce records.
Reporters fly into Alaska.
They unseal the divorce records of Todd Palin's business partner, with whom Sarah Palin was accused of having an affair.
Alas, she was not.
What is the miss traces back to Chicago and Illinois politics?
What is the media, local and national, what's the real attraction to Obama?
Is it race?
Part of it definitely is.
For one thing, the media is more left-wing than probably the average of the Democratic Party, even elected officials say.
Certainly.
Could be tough to be.
Well, and certainly people who call themselves Democrat.
The media is very, very left-wing.
You have with Obama the most left-wing president we've ever had.
So they like that he's at least what he said he was going to do.
But we're hoping he's going to be, have been lying to Daily Cause.
And also there is the fact that he's black, because as I point out, I mean, when it mattered during slavery, during the civil rights battles, the Democratic Party was on the wrong side.
So, you know, 40 years later, they want to do over, which is why they're constantly creating fake racial hoaxes in this country.
So now they can finally come out and take a stand against racism at the precise moment when no one is defending racism.
So thanks, Democrats.
Now, speaking of all this, Obama will be emaculated on Tuesday.
What do you, I mean, the Republican Party to a person is out saying, we hope he succeeds.
We want the new young president to succeed.
What do you think's going to happen?
Let's go current events here.
I know you didn't touch on this in the book.
Well, what do you think is going to happen in the Obama administration?
I think you are right from what you were saying in the first part of your program.
And I hope he succeeds in the sense that if he succeeds, that means he was totally lying to the New York Times and Code Pink.
That means he was lying to them, and he will have to govern like a conservative.
And I suspect he may be doing what you were talking about in your program, backing down from closing Gitma.
We'll just rename it Obamavale, backing down from pulling out of Iraq, not raising taxes on, quote, the rich, i.e., people who work for a living.
Because if he doesn't, he's going to be another Jimmy Carter and it's going to be a four-year term.
So he gets elected, as you say, is the cult figure.
They're all getting on the comet.
But then for him to succeed, I mean, in his heart, he's a liberal, so I don't know where the liberalism is going to come out.
Maybe it will be in things like abortion and gay marriage.
But if he raises taxes, the economy will collapse.
Abortion, gay marriage, same-sex marriage.
Right.
Well, there's a third element to this, and I'm having a middle blocker, but there are three pillars to the cultural overhaul that they want to engage in.
Look, the guy is a full-fledged leftist.
Right.
He's just a full-fledged leftist, but he couldn't, he won't be able to get away with getting what he wants if he talks that way.
That's why these cabinet members are moderate figureheads.
We all know that Bill Ayers will provide primary advice on education.
They can never put him in a cabinet.
Right, and that does show the victory, by the way.
I mean, I'd like more of a substantive victory, but the victory of conservative ideas in America, even Obama runs on tax cuts.
I mean, he says he's going to give tax cuts to everyone, including people who don't pay taxes, which was a little suspicious to some of us.
I think that's called welfare.
But he doesn't run saying I'm going to raise taxes and raise welfare benefits.
He says I'm cutting taxes.
Well, he's still saying some dangerous things, though.
Government is the only element that can fix the economy, all these sorts of things.
So it's going to be interesting to see.
He's going to have no opposition.
Republicans are laying down.
Republicans are bending over forwards.
They're bending over backwards and grabbing the ankles.
And blaming you.
I knew it was your fault that John McCain lost.
Well, Colin Powell blamed me.
So the Republicans need to stop listening, which they did a long time ago.
Who was it?
It was Chris Matthews on Hardball last night who said, or no, it was one of his Steve McMahon, you know, one of these Ken Doll inside the Beltway Democrat strategists.
And he said, the problem with the Republican Party is that Rush Limbo's dragging him to the right.
If only that's right.
Well, look, your book, it's been out what?
One week.
One week.
And you're debuting at number two on the New York Times.
Number one on BookScan.
Number one on BookScan.
Well, after this, we'll take care of what was number two is and number threes and all that.
Wish you the best with you.
You are a prolific writer, and you've got a lot of admirers out there because you don't take the guff and you do not allow yourself to be manipulated or intimidated by these people.
And you say to some of these people who interview what a lot of Republican and conservative voters wish their elected officials would say.
Plus, you make people laugh, and there's nothing wrong with that, especially now.
Thank you, Rush Lee.
Great that you came by.
Good luck with the book.
You got an idea for your next one?
You worked that far in advance?
Not exactly.
A few ideas.
And I have to say, when I was writing this, I kept thinking this could be the Encyclopedia Britannica.
I can't put it all in.
But I think George Will told me Shelley said, the poet, a poem is never finished, it's abandoned.
And that's what I always end up doing with the books because I can think of 17 more chapters for this book.
Well, put them in the paperback.
Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Ann Coulter, we've got a brief timeout.
We'll come back and get to more of your phone calls right after this.
Stay with us.
I ask you people patiently.
I asked you kindly.
And I have been rebuffed.
Do you remember, ladies and gentlemen, the woman that called within the past year who said she had a little puppy, little dog.
And she was thinking about naming it after me.
And I asked her not to do it.
It was a male dog.
And I said, please, I'm honored, but please don't do it because I don't want you calling a vet saying, hi, I need to bring Rush in to be neutered.
Well, I have a story here from PMS NBC.
They have a apparently Veterinary Pet Insurance, the nation's largest and oldest provider of pet health insurance, scoured its database of more than 466,000 insured pets to find the most popular dog and cat names of 2008.
Number one most popular dog name.
Well, no, most unusual, not most popular.
The most unusual name is Rush Limbark.
And so you people are naming, some of you people are naming your dogs after me.
I just beg you, please, when you go to the vet, please don't call and say, Rush needs to be neutered.
Back to the phones we go.
This is Laurel Merrill and Ivan's been holding on for a while.
Great to have you here, Ivan.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Well, thank you very much.
I got to say I'm a little bit nervous, but it's my first time calling.
But at any rate, I'm a proud black Christian conservative.
And I just had some, you just talked with Ann about taking blame.
And I think strategy-wise, to me, I think some of the talk show hosts, including yourself, could probably take some blame that Obama's going to be inaugurated.
Because back in the primary, when Huckabee, there was a time in the election when everybody wanted Huckabee to drop out so the conservatives could coalesce behind Romney.
But then, as it turned out, Romney dropped out first.
But then, you know, nobody coalesced behind Huckabee.
And to me, if you were going to have to hold your nose and vote for a conservative, Huckabee would have been a far greater candidate than McCain.
Let me help you with something here.
You are asserting here that I had the power to coalesce people around Huckabee.
And since I chose not to do it, we got McCain.
And therefore, you are somewhat blaming me.
Yes, I am.
See that we lost because of McCain and his nominee.
You tell me what I am supposed to do when I am sent an email quoting a Huckabee campaign advisor, speaking anonymously, saying, we don't care about Limbaugh.
He's just part of the Republican National Committee talking points.
He just says what he's being fed to say by the Republican establishment.
I mean, the email I got was entitled, Huckabee Forces Attack Limbaugh.
Now, what am I supposed to do there, Ivan?
Well, Russia.
And I don't endorse people.
I don't endorse people during primaries anyway.
Candidates are supposed to win elections, not me.
You're absolutely right, Rush.
And I'm going to say I agree with what you said.
But at the same time, I believe that, and for the sake of the country, I believe that you're bigger than that to jump past what they, you know, and you have to look at what's best for the country.
And I think, you know, while I don't know a lot about Huckabee, I just know that Huckabee would have been a better candidate than McCain.
Well, I should be a bigger man than that.
It's not that it insulted me.
It's not that I was being petulant and saying, oh, yeah, you send your guys out to anonymously insult me, then screw you.
That wasn't my attitude.
My attitude was, why do these guys need to start taking shots at everybody else in the Republican Party?
It showed a temperament and a campaign organization that kind of did not inspire confidence.
So it had nothing to do with that I was offended and decided I wasn't going to support.
Besides, at the end of the day, what happened out there, Ivan, was that McCain and Huckabee teamed up because Huckabee, at some point, realized he was not going to win the nomination.
And both McCain and Huckabee hated Romney because of the negative ads he was running.
And so they sort of combined forces starting in West Virginia, where Romney won in the first ballot, but not enough to win.
So Huckabee and McCain combined forces in the second ballot to beat Romney.
And that's pretty much what started the Romney decline.
And then, of course, there's what happened in Florida with Charlie Crist on the Saturday before the election endorsing McCain when he had said he was going to endorse somebody else.
It was a comedy of errors.
But really, what it boils down to, and the reason Republican prime, and I will agree with you, by the way, Ivan, I will agree with you that I have the power you have assigned to me.
I don't doubt it at all.
And it's just a question to me of the responsible use of the power.
And I must tell you, as I said, well, I'm long here.
I've got to take a timeout.
Nobody inspired me is the point.
So Obama goes to the Washington Post yesterday for his first interview there, and he gets applause.
No, he got applause as he walked in the door.
And Howard Kurtz writes, oh, that wasn't reporters so much.
It was clerical staff and so forth.
No, folks, just get used to it.
▲
Export Selection