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May 7, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:53
May 7, 2009, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, indeed.
America's Anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented Anchorman, Mark Stein sitting in.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
I'm uh I'm like swine flu.
You can't seal the border.
It's it's Steinflu, the excellence in broadcasting network has come down with Steinflu.
I just seep across the border and infect America.
Uh Mark Davis is going to be uh here tomorrow, and Rush returns fighting fit on uh Monday.
It's uh it's national prayer day today, National Prayer Day.
Uh President Obama has uh has scaled back events at the at the White House.
He says he's going to uh uh observe National Prayer Day in private.
He'll just go into the White House press room uh and they'll fall on their knees before him.
Uh so just the usual low-key morning worship by the Washington press corps.
Nothing fancy, scaling it back.
Uh Maine uh approves gay marriage.
Uh as Maine gays, so gays the nation.
Isn't that what they used to say?
Uh we may get into gay marriage uh a little later.
Uh the New York the New York Times has a story here.
Uh headline, with gay issues in view, Obaba is pressed to engage.
I I misread that.
I I confess when I first saw it in the uh in the New York Times this morning, I thought it said, with gay issues in view, Obama is pressed to get engaged.
And I was going to suggest we take uh take a few suggestions as to who he he might like to hear.
Actually, politically he seems pretty nicely hitched with uh Barney Frank at the moment.
So we wouldn't want to break up uh uh that uh happy couple.
Uh less happy couples.
I see Elizabeth Edwards is talking about uh John Edwards' adultery.
I I really can't face watching this.
I f I f I found John Edwards almost impossible to watch when he was just like a a regular oleagenous creep, but now that he's a kind of adulterous uh oleaginous creep, I c I just I can't uh I can't get into it at all.
I've gathered Riel Hunter, uh Riel Hunter, uh, who is uh the his mistress and who recently had this uh this baby with fabulous hair.
Uh Riel Hunter has uh asked for a sample of John Edwards DNA.
Uh is isn't that the uh isn't that the the the kind of thing that got her into trouble in the first place?
Anyway, we don't want to get it.
We don't want to get anywhere near uh John Edwards and uh Elizabeth Edwards uh today.
Um I bumped into Alan Combs uh yesterday and he wanted to know, he's he he said to me, is uh so you're sending in for rush tomorrow.
Is that because Rush is cowering in fear?
He's so devastated by this brutal attack on him uh by Colin Powell.
And of course, uh yeah, that's that's right.
It's like uh Colin uh Powell is Kiefer Sutherland, and Rush is that fashion designer who got headbutted by him.
So like uh Rush is just reeling.
He's he's reeling.
He can't face the world after this devastating assault on him uh by uh by Colin Powell.
Because uh it's it's what it's it's it's like being it's like being headbutted by a butterscotch pudding.
Uh you know, you just get this like gooey like this wimpy gooey stuff all swapped in your face, uh, and it really leaves a uh a brutal mark.
So uh so Colin Powell.
I would like to talk about this because uh it is the issue of where the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement go is important.
And Colin Powell has finally come out with a uh what for him is the clearest philosophical statement.
You know, Colin Powell is always moderate, moderate, moderate, moderate.
And it's never been entirely clear what what that involves.
He's always sort of vague.
He's just like moderation uh as an end in itself is is all he's interested in.
If you recall, after September 11th, he he went on Meet the Press, and um uh President Bush had just uh done this incredible attack on the Taliban, uh saying that the Taliban had to hand over Osama bin Laden uh and uh Al-Qaeda, or it was gonna be big time trouble for them.
And so immediately, two days later, Colin Powell goes on meet the press, and he says he's interested in working with quote moderate Taliban.
Moderate Taliban.
Uh he says he would be interested in working with you know, this is like the this is like the uh the third way.
You uh Uh, you remember that Tony Blair was uh in there and they used to talk about with Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton was a new Democrat.
Tony Blair was a new Labour uh guy, and Colin Powell was thinking, well, there must be some new Taliban types out there.
So he was interested in reaching out to moderate Taliban.
Uh moderate Taliban in a quote, broad-based government.
Of course, there's no such thing as a Taliban government based on broads.
There's no broads at all in the Taliban uh government.
There's no Hillary Clinton, no Janet Napolitano.
It's a broad-free zone.
It's it's not going to happen.
If you want a broad-based, broad-based government, no, no, not a lot of gays.
There's not a no H.R. has just pointed out there's not a lot of gays in uh in the in government.
There's no uh so uh there's it's not a broad-based government.
Uh it's if you want a broad-based government, try the Swedes, try the Canadians, but basically uh Colin Bowl was wasting his time in reaching out to moderate Taliban in a broad-based government.
And I think that's actually why Bush, uh Bush, if you notice, uh two days later, he stopped talking about the Taliban, and he started just an Al-Qaeda and just uh started referring to evildoers.
Uh and any moment after that, I expected uh Colin Powell to go on meet the press and say he was interested in reaching out and working with moderate evildoers.
Uh Colin Powell is someone who essentially believes in moderation as an end in it uh as an end in itself.
Uh I don't I don't particularly see the virtues for that.
It's fine if you're Colin Powell sitting in your Washington office being moderate.
It's not always so great to be on the receiving end of Colin Powell's moderation.
You remember his moderate end to the first Gulf War, uh, when this fantastic coalition was at the gates of Baghdad, and that's that's normally when you storm the city and string up the dictator, and they decided, hey no, we're gonna we're gonna let Saddam Hussein remain in power.
And the first thing he did, even as all those troops were uh with those uh that great coalition was withdrawing, was he started massacring all his enemies uh under the cover of that so-called act of moderate warmongering by Colin Powell.
So I'm not a great uh fan of uh Colin Powell moderation.
And his whole shtick, you know, about how the Republican Party needs to change.
We've heard now for ten years.
Uh I think I I think the first time I heard Colin Powell do this uh nonsense was at uh the Republican convention in Philadelphia in in 2000.
He gave the keynote address.
I don't know why, no idea why.
Uh I don't know whether you r remember that convention.
It was all very positive, nothing mean-spirited at all.
It was all celebrate diversity.
They had uh it was like wall-to-wall gays, wall-to-wall Hispanics, uh everything on stage uh except white uh men.
I I bumped into uh my uh senator from New Hampshire, Bob Smith, at an event downtown in Philadelphia during the convention.
I said, How are you enjoying the convention?
And he said, Well, I I haven't I haven't succeeded in getting in yet.
I went there and they turned me away at the gate, and obviously because he had this exotic name like Bob Smith, and he just couldn't get in there with all these uh gays and Hispanics and everyone they had uh on the stage.
Uh they had a blind mountaineer.
Do you remember that?
They had a blind mountaineer there.
Uh and um I remember he with his seeing eye dog, uh the guy had climbed uh what's it called?
K two.
The seeing eye dog was the first K-9 up K uh uh up K two, apparently.
That's the uh the the blind mountaineer at the uh at the convention.
So i every time you went into the convention hall, there'd be a mariachi band uh playing La Cucaracha, a Cucaracha band playing La Mariachi, you'd go in there, there'd be the blind mountaineer, the seeing eye dog, and the mariachi band.
It was all celebrate diversity, celebrate diversity, and I was so longing for some mean, vicious red meat, uh, and finally it came uh at the at the Republican convention, somebody had the guts to stand up, go negative, and launch a vicious personal attack.
And of course it was Colin Powell launching a mean, vicious personal attack on on the Republicans.
He argued in his fantastic keynote address that Republicans uh were racist hypocrites who'd abandoned the mantle of Lint Lincoln and uh cared nothing for helping black children while being happy to provide uh corporate affirmative action uh for all the fat cats.
And uh I remember sitting there in the audience, really impressed by uh this keynote address and thinking, wow, you know, the Democratic Convention is off to a great start.
Uh And then of course I remember, no, hang on a minute, this is supposed to be the Republican convention.
That's always what Colin Powell was great at.
He's terrify if you want someone to eviscerate the Republican Party, he'll do it any time.
And two days, again, he did his usual moderate Taliban moderate evildoers shtick.
Two days after giving the keynote address at the Republican convention, he goes on meet the press and he says he'd certainly be willing to serve in an Al Gore administration.
Colin Powell has been doing this now for a decade.
I got nothing against it.
It's uh still a free country, just about.
Uh and that's fine.
He voted for Obama.
He voted for Obama.
He's one of these guys who, if you listen to him, he voted for Obama because Obama was the moderate bipartisan centrist.
There's no such Obama.
All the guys if you voted for Obama because uh he was a transformative leftist on domestic policy, uh, then congratulations.
You understand him.
But if you if you were one of these conservatives, so-called, or Republicans so-called, uh, who voted for him because he was a moderate bipartisan centrist, then you got suckered.
Uh so I have no idea why this group in Washington wants to pay a huge sum to listen to Colin Powell's advice for the Republican Party.
This is a man who uh whose own rationale for voting for Barack Obama has been proven to be bunk, and there's no reason at all uh for the Republican Party to pay him any heed.
But we should, I think, actually uh take the words he said and flip them upside down.
He said that Americans are willing to pay more taxes for more services, more taxes for more government.
There's no evidence for this at all, and quite a lot of evidence uh that in fact people people do strongly oppose that.
So we're gonna we're gonna look behind uh what uh what Colin Powell said.
Now I I'm very hard on on Colin Powell.
I'm not a uh not a big fan of his at all.
Uh and I think he I I think the Powell so-called Powell doctrine for the military was rubbish and actually was an embarrassment uh to this nation.
Uh uh the only thing on Colin Powell's book that I ever liked uh is the bit where he says he he's writing about his favorite music.
And he says his favorite music is Andrew Lloyd Webber.
And Jesse Jackson uh commented on that.
Is this guy even black?
That's the only That's the only uh element of Colin Powell's book uh that I've ever uh ever really cared for.
Uh so we'll get into that.
Uh where should the Republican Party and Conservatism go?
Uh all of that and lots more straight ahead.
1800-282-2882.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the EIB network.
Mark Stein in Farush on the EIB network.
Colin Powell thinks that the Republican Party needs to move to the center.
Okay, we've had uh compassionate conservatism, uh we'd have we've had John McCain reaching across the aisle.
Uh there is a lesson here.
There is a lesson, a very basic lesson.
Effective politicians move the center toward them.
Uh that is what Ronald Reagan did in uh 1980.
Uh that is what uh Mrs. Thatcher did in 1979, and both those countries, by the way, had had a tradition uh for at least a couple of generations, where they basically accepted the uh uh left-wing liberal position uh and uh and essentially said th we can't have a two-party system anymore, we're just gonna g have a one and a half party system.
Uh in other words, uh you can have the express lane uh to liberalism, or you can have the stopping service.
We'll go a little bit slower uh than the other guys.
Uh they want to bring in socialized health care overnight, so we'll bring it in over a slightly longer period.
Uh and that me toism is not enough.
It's a recipe to lose.
Uh and at some point uh uh uh if you want to be effective as a uh as a political figure, you say no, uh you you move the political center closer to where you are.
And whatever you think about Barack Obama, by the way, you you try to imagine where Barack Obama thinks the center of American politics is.
Let's say Colin Powell wasn't a dupe and hadn't been fooled, uh, but that the bur but that he thought Barack Obama sincerely was a centrist.
You look at where Barack Obama has lived his life uh in in uh in in the uh hothouse university leftism of Chicago with Sunday trips to Jeremiah Wright's church.
Where do you think Barack Obama's idea of the center is?
His idea of this where the center is is well to the left of where most Americans uh would put the would put the center.
So what does he care?
He doesn't care at all.
He says, this is what I'm doing, and the center moves towards me.
The center has to move towards me.
Uh and that is what effective uh political leaders do if they want to if they want to actually do something as opposed to just sitting in office and just enjoying the perks and the limo and the driver and uh being able to expense everything.
Uh Colin Powell uh has got absolutely the wrong strategy for uh republicanism and conservatism, which is why the media is happy to to talk it up.
Uh because you imagine if people took his advice and said, okay, we're gonna sign on to big government and more taxes and better services and government this and government that and government everything.
Then what is the rationale for opposing Barack Obama?
There is no rationale.
All you can do is um you know, you can do the bit of Susan Collins negotiation.
You can say, oh, oh well he's proposing two trillion dollars in spending this week, so we're gonna cut out uh five billion dollars of it, and then we will look like like the moderates.
Uh that is a recipe for disaster.
Uh the basic problem with the developed world right now is that it's gone down the colon uh Powell route, uh that it's effectively uh both parties in in most systems have agreed uh that what is uh what is essentially a a uh uh a semi-government economy uh is something that is a permanent feature of life.
That g that it's a permanent feature of life, that governments spend more money than they can afford, uh and they have uh social entitlements beyond what anyone can afford, and both parties support that.
If you look at a French election, it's generally a choice between the the left of center candidate and the ever so slightly right of left of right of left of right of left of center candidate.
But basically they agree on ninety percent of everything.
And it's driven the French economy into a hole.
Same thing in Germany, uh same thing in Austria.
Austria had a two-party system where it made no difference whether you voted for the uh slightly left of center candidate or the slightly right of center candidate, they governed in the same uh left of right of left of center coalition for forty years until Austrians finally wised up uh and decided they'd like a choice.
A two-party system needs two parties.
Uh you can't make a two-party system work with one and a half parties, which is what uh the Colin Powell solution to these things are.
And it's simply uh not the case at the moment.
Right now, what the American people want is people who will do what Rush does and what m Mark Levin does in his uh new book, and they will stand up and make the case for liberty.
We've got one party doing a very good job of making the case for big government, massive spending, uh uh multi-trillion dollar debts that will ensure our children and grandchildren never have the opportunity to live the American dream.
We've got one party doing that brilliantly, brilliantly, to the nth degree.
We don't need a second party uh that won't argue uh for big government half as effectively as the Democrats will.
So we don't need we don't need Democrat light.
Uh what uh a substantial chunk of people in this country want, and maybe it's not fifty-one percent yet.
Maybe it's not fifty-one percent, but it's actually mighty close.
What they want uh is a party that will stand up for small government, uh for individual liberty, uh for a responsible attitude uh to public spending.
Uh and that is a big tent.
It's actually a a a party uh that can accommodate uh national if you l you uh th this is where again where Colin Powell says, you know, the Republicans need a bigger ten.
Uh the Republican Party is a big tent.
You've got your social conservatives, you've got your libertarians, you've got your fiscal conservatives, you've got your national security conservatives.
A lot of those don't get on with each other.
A lot of libertarians can't see what the big deal is about gay marriage.
A lot of social conservatives couldn't understand what the idea of just going around the world invading places was all about.
A lot of the national security conservatives couldn't see why we should get so hung up about spending at a time of war.
This is a big tent.
In the Democratic Party, everybody in that tent is agreed on one important point, which is that whatever your little bugbear is, whatever your hobby horse is...
more government more government spending and more government control is the answer that's a big unifying factor over on the Democrat side of the tent uh and oh and and for the Republicans uh I think I think uh this country uh desperately needs a strong voice to stand against that uh and uh when when Republicans do that effectively uh they win.
When you get some cranky old guy who's just running on his ability to reach across the aisle, you don't.
You lose.
More straight ahead.
Yeah, Stein flu infecting America all over.
You can't stop the Stein flu.
It just seeps across the air.
There's no point.
There's no point.
Everyone thinks you can just wear a surgical mask and you won't be.
Michael Jackson is wearing a surgical mask over his surgical mask.
It's not helping.
The Stein flu is out there infecting America.
Rush will be back on Monday.
Mark Davison tomorrow.
Rush is a great promoter of one of the great liberal fantasies, the anthropomorphized SUV.
You know, when I was a kid, I used to lie in bed at night and you'd hear something like in the trees outside and you'd think it was the bogeyman.
The bogeyman's out there.
He's going to get you.
And, of course, now the liberals worry that it's like an SUV out there.
It's an SUV.
The anthropomorphized SUV.
When Rush does these stories where, you know, the SUV is reported.
The SUV careered out of control and smashed through the window of Filene's basement, ending up in the lingerie department.
And it always sounds as if the SUV just was out at Bud's Roadhouse on Route 27 and got totally hammered.
And then this Toyota Corolla he tried to pick up wouldn't play ball.
the SUV just drove into town and uh and smashed the place up.
And these stories are becoming impossible to parody now.
This is a headline on uh WLTX in uh Columbia, South Carolina headline SUV runs into apartment flees scene.
And uh this was uh 7 p.m deputies responded to a report that a vehicle had run over an air conditioning unit and then hit an apartment building at Hillendale apartments off Alcott Drive.
Authorities say the SUV entered one of the units at the apartment.
See they're breaking and entering now.
Authorities say the SUV entered one of the units of the apartment but no one inside was injured.
If you've got any information uh call Crime Stoppers in South Carolina.
That's a fantastic headline SUV runs into apartment flee scene.
You know we've been plagued by these now we're getting these SUV home invasions, you know you think you're sitting in your nice you've got your expensive gated community thing.
What happens if the SUV comes through the gates and into your house?
That is the situation that many Americans face.
Fortunately Obama's plans for the car industry when you're all going to be driving around now in the new Subaru cup holder this new compact vehicle it's m absolutely marvelous.
I believe Barack Obama's releasing the plans later today once everybody's in the new Subaru uh cup holder then the handful of remaining rogue SUVs on the road that are running into the apartments and then fleeing the scene will be much easier to spot.
1 800 28282 in uh California you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Welcome welcome to the EIB network.
Mark it's a pleasure I I've read your stuff and I listened to you on the internet and uh it it is it is truly a pleasure to talk to you.
What I'm calling about is the moderate slash balance notion.
Right.
Yeah.
Mr. Miyagi comes to mind.
Stand right, stand left, find the balance, Danielson.
But but the but you know Eastern mysticism isn't helping our problems because a decision is not based on balance.
It is based on it is based on instinct, it's based on on the position your mind is already set in, and to make a good decision, you can't you don't want to be balanced.
You want to be right.
Yes.
And you know, Lady Liberty holds the scale.
The scale is not to be balanced.
The justice uh holds the scale and when something is right, it is weighty and it leans toward that side.
And when something is wrong, it leans toward that side.
And so uh when people look at Lady Liberty, don't think balance and moderation.
Besides, a moderator, what is he?
He's somebody that, you know, two people are speaking and there's a moderator.
He's just there to make sure the rules are followed.
But when it comes to uh what's right or wrong, there's still there's still got to be a determination.
But you you make you make a very good point, John, uh, in that you're saying that the whole idea of being moderate and balanced is in i is to the contemporary mind evokes the kind of eastern mysticism of just like staying calm, uh new age music uh playing in the background, uh it's non committal.
Yeah.
And and and you're right.
I I was uh last year sometime, maybe the year before, I was interviewing one of these NPR shows, uh National Public Radio, where everyone everyone who calls in sounds like they've been heavily sedated.
You know, I was pining I was pining for one of these crazy left wing kook, you know, Michael Moore types who uh thinks that uh uh the whole uh Halliburton plan the whole Afghan invasion uh to uh to seize access to Afghanistan's renowned uh world famous uh sources uh uh uh uh of rubble.
Like after and then they they just uh wanted to invade for no reason.
I like the kooks.
But here, most people were all just they all have that kind of so-porific, uh balanced, moderate voice.
They've all got the same two or three Gandhi quotes which they apply to everything.
Uh and uh the as you say, the whole idea of being balanced is like some eastern.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's it is a it's a child it's a child's thing, uh, and and what's important as you say, is to be right.
Correct, because if you've got a if you've got a balance skill and there's right and wrong, do you want to be found in the middle?
If you have a moral issue and there's a right or wrong answer, do you want to be found in the middle?
Uh, you know, uh um murder.
Are we gonna look at murder from a balance perspective?
That oh oh, you know, we're gonna try to find out how right this guy was in murdering somebody.
No, you get the evidence, you weigh the evidence.
The evidence weighs one way or the other.
It's not about balance.
Balance is for tight ropes, unicycles, and if you're walking a fence lying, if you fall, you may take a picket.
I like the idea of Colin Powell on the unicycle.
Uh but yeah, let's let's see that on pay-per-view.
But you're um you are you're right there, but that's the Colin Powell approach.
That's why he gets into this i business of going on TV and announcing that he's going to work with moderate Taliban.
That his idea is uh and this is the way this is the great problem with the sort of transnational scene in general, that you take, say, uh the American view of the First Amendment and free speech, and then you take the Sudanese view, and if you split the difference, you've got a global consensus that we can all unite around.
And as you say, what's important on those issues is it's better to be right.
And sometimes being right involves being lonely, uh and uh the it's still better to be right and lonely and persuade people to make your side of the aisle a little less lonely than just to say, okay, there's no right or wrong.
Uh there's uh there's uh just uh degrees of compromise uh and it doesn't and it doesn't matter how much you're prepared to compromise, as long as, like Colin Powell, you wind up with the office and the limo and the driver and the roller decks full of A-list contacts.
Uh thanks very much for your call, John.
Uh let's go to uh let's go to another John.
Let's have all John all John Day on.
It's a we had uh open line, because we we're format break.
We had open line Friday on Wednesday, so we're having uh like uh all old John Thursday on no what day it is all John Thursday.
Okay, let's go to John in Libertyville, Illinois.
You're the second John of the day.
We may have a prize for the uh twenty ninth John of the day.
John, you're on the air.
Thanks for taking my call.
I guess I have a dissenting uh opinion from your last caller.
Um I wanted to respond to your comment that, you know, we need a two party system, the two parties should be more vastly opposite from each other.
I think that I think that the notion that anything that isn't explicitly conservative by Rush Limbaugh's definition or by other people who do talk radio for a living, do conservative talk radio for a living, anything that isn't explicitly conservative by those standards is necessarily liberal.
Serves the profitability of conservative propaganda radio, but I don't think it really serves the Republican Party nor the country as a whole.
The the inescapable fact is that the opposite of moderation is extremity.
And as long as the Republican Party and conservatives decide to be the champions of extremity, they're going to be marginal.
Well you make an you you make a a point that a lot of people have made in the last couple of weeks which which you say uh essentially is that uh fellas like Rush uh and the other uh big conservative talkers that essentially it's a niche market uh that we do very well on the air but that in the end uh we cannot uh no matter how big the audience gets it's never gonna it's never gonna be fifty one percent.
And I I I don't happen to think that's true on the facts.
I think if you think of if you look at the millions of people who actually listen to Rush in the course of a week and you were to take them uh out of the voting booths in November uh there wouldn't be much left of a conservative base uh in America.
So clearly uh there is a big degree of alignment between uh between people who who support the Republican Party and people who listen to Rush.
Now I would agree with you to this extent that I think you can have degrees uh degrees of engagement.
Uh that's why for political movements it sometimes doesn't always hurt to be out of power.
Uh the Democrats have been out of power uh for quite a long time uh in the last uh twenty to thirty years uh and yet they've made huge advances because they've successfully penetrated other institutions rather than simply elective office.
They're they're in the media, they're in the pop culture, they're in the schools, uh and they've done very effectively at that.
Likewise even in uh even in countries that have elected uh non-right wing governments, uh the fact that there's a passionate engaged conservative movement uh big enough uh to require that people take notice of it will help keep uh uh a generally squishy professional political class on their toes.
It will prevent them doing less uh prevent them doing as much damage uh as you uh as they would otherwise do.
And that's why that's why when you say that's why taking aside your you as Rush always says he's an entertainer.
But the fact is that uh that if you had taken Rush and his listeners and the conservative talk radio movement and Fox News out of the history of America the last fifteen years you imagine how squishy Arlen Specter and Susan Collins and Olympia Snow and and John McCain and the rest of them would be uh in a sense without having to get tugged uh even a little bit to the right well I I I don't know.
I I think that I I certainly think the country moved fastly to the right during the eight years of George W. Bush with or and it would have happened with or without the aid of conservative talk radio or Fox News.
And I have to tell you the profitability of the conservative movement remains intact regardless of how marginal it becomes you can't escape the reality that right now the overwhelming perception of Americans is that the Republican Party is extreme and the Democratic Party is is moderate by comparison no matter how much you and Rush Limbaugh try to convince America that you know Barack Obama is a big commie.
I mean Americans just aren't buying that well hey hey hang on hang on a hang on a minute John I gotta take a break but I like I'd like to come back to you uh on that uh can you stay on the line uh a couple of minutes uh Mark Side City in for Rush John from Libertyville great, great town, and I'd like him to live up to it a bit more, though.
But we'll we'll we'll come back to to John and take that up with him and more, straight ahead on the Rush Limbaugh show 1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
John from Libertyville has uh has joined us.
And his thing is basically, you know, extremism is terrific uh for talk radio.
Uh it's uh big business, it's um been a gold mine for talk radio, but it is not good for the United States of America, and that is why the American people are rejecting uh it.
Uh extremism in the defense of liberty is great for talk radio profits, but it's uh hell for the United States.
Uh now, John.
Uh th the the prob the problem uh I think is that uh you have one very sound point, which is that when people are raging uh uh about Barack Obama as the communist in chief and all the rest of it, it's that uh that sounds very weird to people who just uh c flicking through the channels and they see him on TV reading his teleprompter and just looking very thoughtful and calm and mild.
Uh and you're right to that degree that in that in fact when he's up there doing his shtick with the teleprompter, uh he's he's very uh moderate and calm, and uh that makes him a slightly difficult opponent uh if you're just gonna uh rant and rave at him.
But the fact is uh that what he is doing, when you actually poll his individual policies, they do not seem to resonate uh quite so well with the American people.
How about that?
Well, I don't know.
I think that uh I I I I I've personally I I think that it's definitely true that if you were to contrast people's approval of his policies with whether or not people approve with the notion that because he wants to raise the top marginal tax rate from uh you know by four points, or that he opposes torture, if that makes him an anti-American socialist.
I think that notion I hold on.
I think that that notion would get worse approval ratings than Obama's actual policy.
Uh well, yeah.
Let's let's I mean that's the genius of this guy.
Uh he uh he opposes torture.
He's uh he's uh he's he's not so clear he opposes it when he's outsourcing it to some of our pals uh in uh in the murkier parts of Pakistan to do it.
It's also clear, in fact, what's going to be happening uh at uh at Gitmo in any case.
Uh on all those issues, in fact, the calmness blurs uh serves as a very good blurry it's like the filter on uh the late Doris Day pictures where you can hardly see her face because they've got so much gauzy filter uh in there because uh because Doris couldn't withstand the scrutiny.
Don't get me wrong, I love Doris Day.
But uh and I'm certainly not comparing Barack Obama to Doris Day, because case arraserah, we know what will be, and it will be hell.
But there's a b but but but uh well I've got all distracted now.
What was I talking about?
Uh John uh John from Libertyville still there?
Is he is he gone?
Wait, we're talking wait, where how uh what was I talking about before I got hung up on Doris Day?
It's uh I completely uh I c uh John Doris Day, uh Barack Obama comparing it.
Yeah, that's that's right.
That's right.
The Doris Day filter.
It's like the Vaseline on the camera lens.
It's like Barack Obama's up there and he's got like Vaseline smeared over his policies.
And so he seems like and he's uh he's like, so this is the way the guy the guy goes up there and he's got these multi-trillion dollar budgets and he goes uh but we're looking for a hundred million dollars in cuts.
So uh if you're just like watching casually, he seems to be a calm guy, saying there's gonna be accountability, uh there's gonna be uh we're we're gonna we're we're gonna save money, we're gonna balance budgets, and it's only when you get into the green eye shades that you see he's actually spending trillions of dollars.
He's got he's been very good at projecting uh this image of calm thoughtfulness.
Apart from anything else, he he's there's something very hypnotic about watching him.
He turns, you know, he's got the left teleprompter and the right teleprompter, and he turns his head left, right, left, right, left, right.
It's like when you're watching uh the US Open or Wimbledon, and you see the person sitting just by the net, turning their head, watching the volleys.
Left, right, left, right, you are feeling sleepy, you are feeling drowsy.
He's very calm, he's very thoughtful, there's nothing to be scared about.
Don't worry about it.
Uh if you can pass yourself off as moderate, if you can appear moderate while doing radical things, uh, that is ingenious.
And I do believe that when the next uh great conservative leader comes along, it will be someone who's sunny and optimistic about this.
Uh it will be a Ronald Reagan type happy warrior uh who will be able to say things about government uh that will make people laugh and recognize the basic truth of.
Uh and that person will lead uh a Republican Party to to great things.
But until that person emerges, there's absolutely no point in abandoning core conservative principles.
1-800-282-2882.
More straight ahead on the Rush Nimble Show.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB Network.
Lots more straight ahead.
Mark Davis in tomorrow.
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