Rush Limbaugh Program - January 4, 2010, Monday, Hour #3

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Jan. 4, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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January 4, 2010, Monday, Hour #3

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	Happy New Year, America.
	Great to be with you.
	But remember, Rush returns on Wednesday, as the entire world knows, he was taken to hospital in Honolulu for a couple of days, but he's feeling great.
	There's nothing wrong with him that thirty years in Obama re-education camp until he comes out with a glassy-eyed stare wouldn't cure, and he will be back behind the microphone this Wednesday, America's anchor man back at his seat, and he's not going to take another day of vacation until the year 2037.
	I believe that's true.
	In the meantime, this is your undocumented anchor man, Mark Stein, glad to be here.
	We were talking I don't quite know how we got on to it.
	We were talking about the the Amish and the Amish opt-out of the possible fine for health care.
	And in fact, that actually gets to the genius of America.
	America is a federal state, a federal nation.
	And that means there are lots of uh different jurisdictions.
	There's fifty states, and within those states there are different counties and different towns.
	And the genius of America is that that system allows for experimentation.
	It allows for you to discover what works and what doesn't work.
	And it uh it it it certainly allows for a lot of flexibility, too.
	Obviously, uh Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco is very different from uh parts of Mississippi or whatever.
	So if you happen to incline more to the San Francisco way of doing things, you can go to San Francisco.
	If you have if you're in San Francisco and you think I'd like to be with all those bitter clingers with their guns and God, you move to Mississippi.
	That's the genius of federalism.
	Uh centralized states always fail unless they are small and unless they are homogenous.
	And if you look at the history of the last twenty years of the uh or so, the Soviet Union went barely up, uh, Yugoslavia went barely up.
	Uh big countries, big centralized nations always break up.
	And uh there was a book written on this theme a few years back uh that made the interesting point uh that if the United States had had as centralized a government of as France, it would have broken up uh two hundred years ago.
	That would be it.
	What we're trying to see now, what we're seeing now is a federal government that is in uh trying to impose uh as centralized a regime as France has, and it's going to it's going to be disastrous.
	Uh there is no reason at all uh why we should have one uh health a uniform health care, federal health care plan for for from Maine to Hawaii.
	Let's let's why don't why don't we have fifty states uh concoct their own health care arrangements and the market which will will tell us what works.
	But why don't we enable portability?
	Why don't we have health care portability?
	It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.
	That's that somehow if you move from one state to another, uh your health care plan doesn't go with you.
	What kind of what kind of crazy system is that?
	Uh that's that would be a very obvious way of making health care a lot easier in this country.
	And because it's so obvious, uh the Democrats don't want to do it because government health care, as I said, is about government, not about health care.
	Now the question is, how does all this play out in November 2010?
	There are different views of this.
	Um Carl Rove uh wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal the other day about w what uh candidates uh should be running as in the November election.
	And there's be people differ on this uh because if you get too specific uh then the anti-uh big government coalition that is certainly out there at the moment, it's not just us crazy right-wing madmen, but a lot of the so-called moderates and so-called independents have also soured on Obama, in part because he's impoverishing them.
	He's making them poorer, uh, and he's making their children's and grandchildren's future worse.
	So the question is, uh what what should Republicans be doing to capitalize on uh the weariness w uh with Obama?
	And I think that's what it uh it really is.
	The bloom is off the Obama rose far quicker than anyone expected.
	Certainly if you uh you could hardly find if you it was it was rather strange to me.
	I went in into uh a uh uh a store the other day, and they had on the stands, all uh behind sort of gathering dust at the uh along with Time and Newsweek, some of those Obama commemorative specials that all the magazines put out from January twenty-seventh or so.
	Remember like a week after the inauguration, they all had these glittering they they they all show uh Barack and Michelle waltzing on uh on the cover in a sort of w whirl of glamour as the new camelot uh explodes with fireworks into the Washington sky.
	They look like they now look like uh the some Saturday evening post from 1893 they're so dated.
	It's like it it's like that era has gone.
	The Obama glamour, the Obama cool, the the bloom is off that rose.
	But the question is, if you don't want it's not just Obama and is cool, it's also Barney Frank, and nobody's ever said Barney Frank's cool, it's also Nancy Pelosi, nobody's ever said Nancy Pelosi's cool.
	It's if you want to roll back what they've inflicted on us in the last year, what is the best policy for Republicans this November?
	Uh is it enough just to oppose, just to be against the last year or the last two years as it will be by then?
	Uh, or do they have to actually uh articulate something more specific?
	A real commitment to getting government uh out of every aspect of your life, to saying no, uh this is not just about a different view of policy, it is about a profound principle.
	It doesn't matter whether government health care is better for you, it doesn't matter whether it increases your life expectancy or it'll ensure you get swifter treatment uh if if you happen to need a kidney transplant, even if all those things were true, it is wrong.
	It is wrong for government to say if you don't do this, if you don't have this particular type of insurance that meets our approval, we're fining you $750 uh unless you belong to the Amish or some other influential lobby group.
	Uh that is that is a conservative principle to stand on.
	Uh and I think and I think the concern of uh some people who say, oh no, no, uh the Republicans should just be the alternative.
	The Republicans should just be running as the not Barack Obama Party, uh, is that you risk what happened in uh that congressional district uh way up in north uh north uh eastern New York, just by the Quebec border.
	You risk the same thing where all kinds of people see the prevailing winds uh uh uh blowing their way, and uh you wind up with a Congress that's uh full of squishes who no don't particularly believe in anything and who go along to get along and who trim their views accordingly.
	Carl Rove's point is that this is a time when Americans want authenticity.
	They want to know if they're gonna elect Republicans, if they're gonna elect conservatives, they want to know that these people are who they say they are.
	Now you look at Ben Nelson.
	Who is Ben Nelson?
	Nobody knows.
	He was supposed to be this uh big, strong pro-life conservative Democrat, uh and turned out he was uh he could be bought off uh with uh with something that his own constituents don't even want.
	And Ben Nelson is this wretched figure when you look at this grisly uh campaign ad he's he's running uh back home at the moment.
	He's this wretched, pitiful figure, man who believes in nothing, man who stands for nothing, a man whose so-called blue dog democrat principles, blue dog doesn't mean anything except that you're the guy who signs on last and usually because there's uh been some uh corn husker kickback or whatever attached to it.
	Uh Carl Rose's point is that Americans at this stage want someone who can stand for the animating principles of the American idea.
	And the animating principles of the American idea of self-reliance, uh which drives innovation, which drives growth, which has made this country uh the indispensable global power for the last sixty years, uh that those animating principles are are something that you should be prepared.
	It's the very least uh we're entitled to expect that you're prepared to stand up for that.
	I mentioned last week the big difference, The huge difference between the the uh popular dissatisfaction here and elsewhere in the developed world.
	Elsewhere in the developed world, from Iceland to Bulgaria, you had people demonstrating outside Parliament.
	When the economy went belly up, people took to the streets to demand the government do more for them.
	This is the only country in the developed world where people took to the streets to tell the government I could do just fine if you back off, if you'd stop leeching off me, if you'd stop taking the money from my productive enterprise and from my labors and tossing it down the great sucking more of the Federal Treasury, giving it to favored client groups uh to make things and do things that nobody wants and nobody needs.
	We uh we are in great danger here because one of the bedrocks of a dynamic economy is property and property ownership.
	And in this blank check we see now going to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we are continuing to undermine uh one of the the pillars of a free society, which is genuine property ownership.
	Uh and uh how that reflects itself and percolates up uh through the rest of the economy when you when you have a vibrant property market and a genuine property market.
	Uh and that is why we need to we need at the very minimum candidates who will who will stand for restoring the integrity of the property market and for getting government distortion of the market out of our face.
	Uh what Obama stands for is more and more distortion of the market.
	What Barney Frank stands for is greater and greater government annexation of your life.
	What Harry Reid's grotesque bill stands for is actually government annexation of your body.
	Why can't you decide how you want to make your health care arrangements?
	This constitutional abomination says no.
	We're the government.
	We've nationalized your body.
	We know better than you the decisions that should be taken in the interests of your body.
	And what uh I think after this last year, that conservatives are entitled to in Republican candidates this November is candidates who at least understand the animating principles of the American idea and uh don't just oppose uh what has been done in the last year, but actually want to roll it back and reclaim American liberty.
	Mark Stein in for Rush, 1-800-282-2882.
	Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
	Great to be with you.
	Let's go to John in Salisbury, Maryland.
	Uh uh John uh actually, John, did I pronounce that right?
	Is it Salisbury or Salisbury?
	It's Salisbury.
	Oh, great.
	Okay.
	Dowsbury's the on the other side of the pond.
	I I it's it's basically a crapshoot as to whether I get uh feel free to connect.
	Did I pronounce uh Maryland right?
	You pronounce Maryland right.
	Mark, I want uh first Mago did us mega did us to rush.
	I I hope everything's gonna be fine.
	Um the the issue is the Amish get a good deal, the Amish get a good deal because they're gonna pay cash.
	There's no bureaucracy.
	Central governments fail because bureaucracy becomes overwhelming.
	It takes away the money from health care.
	Likewise, the Republicans therefore have to push on this concept of big government is bad.
	We need to make choices ourselves, not only about our health care, but how we're going to hit our homes, where we want our service debt, what kind of vehicle we is best for our families.
	And I think that's where they have to pound pound pound about big government and bureaucracy.
	And if they and that requires not just stopping it, but going back to where we used to be.
	What our founding fathers thought about when they put together a constitution.
	Yeah, because the big government is the only thing that doesn't bring economies of scale.
	Normally, if uh Coca-Cola buys up mom and pop cola in your little small town and takes it over, there'll be economies of scale uh in transitioning from a company that makes Coca-Cola for one small town to something that makes Coca-Cola for the planet.
	But big government has no economies of scale.
	Every time uh uh government gets bigger and more remote, uh it gets more costly, as you say, it gets more bureaucratic, it gets more wasteful.
	That's why the genius of America uh when uh it in back in 1776 was uh self-governing towns and self-governing Counties uh d uh doing most of what government needed to do within those small accountable jurisdictions.
	The minute you uh funnel it up to a national level or even to a global level as the UN now wants with things like this uh global environmental tax and everything, you ensure, as you say, more bureaucracy and more waste.
	And that's that's a given.
	That's a given.
	There's no economies of scale in big government.
	Well, no one's more interested in making decisions for their family than the family.
	And once you start to take those decisions away from the family, they lose all control.
	And health care is probably the most important decisions we make about ourselves and our family members.
	And to not be able to do that is just i the uh the total antithesis of what this country stands for.
	Yeah, and uh uh and that that's why I use the phrase the nationalization of your body.
	Because if if the United States government believes it can fine you uh for not uh uh providing for government approved uh health care, then in a sense it is no longer your body.
	They've essentially said, no, uh the they you may be walking around with them, but there are kidneys, there are lungs, there are bladder.
	We we have jurisdiction over all your body parts.
	That's what it boils down to.
	Uh it would not be good.
	And that's why Republicans have to not just try and stop, they have to reverse.
	You have to go back.
	And I would like to see, I don't know whether we need a contract for America or whatever, but on the assumption that something passes Congress, I would like to see uh Republican candidates this November com committed to reversing that.
	Not just w we we've seen with too many things.
	Uh the Federal Department of Education, the Federal Department of Energy, little things that uh Republicans were against back in the when they uh were introduced uh in the late nineteen seventies.
	Even those peripheral things Republicans have never managed to reverse.
	This thing can't be allowed to sit there at the heart of government and just expand the way everything does.
	It's actually got to be killed stoned dead.
	It's got to have a a stake driven through it, and you gotta sit there for three days and nights and make sure it doesn't come back to life, John.
	My health and the health of my family is more important to me than almost anything else.
	And that's why it has to be reversed.
	This is much, much, much more important than those issues in the past.
	Yep, you're absolutely right, John.
	And and by the way, I mentioned a film uh when I was here uh a few days ago that is just marvelous on this Barbarian Invasions, which is a uh film out of uh Quebec that won the Oscar of a couple of years ago.
	And it's in French, but don't hold that against you.
	You can probably click a button on your DVD and they'll all be jabbering away in English.
	So it doesn't make any difference.
	But and it's made, best of all, it's made by all these Canadian lefties, all these Quebec lefties in Montreal, horrified by their decrepit health system.
	But there's a beautiful scene in that.
	The camera pans through the hospital, this big hospital in Montreal, and it looks like a third world refugee camp.
	The corridors are filled with people who are being untreated, who are lying on gurneys in the corridor, uh there's tubes snaking everywhere because when a guy does actually get hooked up to some drip, uh he's still lying in the corridor and the and the tube of the drips uh circles down seven miles of corridor and eventually comes into wherever they're sticking the stuff inside him in.
	But there's a beautiful moment when this guy is trying to get decent uh service and health care for his dad, uh, opens a door and finds where the bureaucracy resides in that hospital.
	And suddenly it's no longer a third world refugee camp and the corridors are no longer clogged with bodies on gurneys.
	Suddenly there's big, bright, open windows, bright spaces, fabulous furniture, pot plants, uh beautiful pictures on the walls.
	He's entered another world.
	That's the health care bureaucracy.
	The minute you have government health care, uh it it becomes not about the patients, not about the doctors, not about the nurses, it becomes about the bureaucrats.
	It becomes about a bureaucracy that protects itself.
	Uh and that is why uh it's it's uh i it's important to reverse uh reverse it.
	That's true of anything, I think.
	Uh that's true of homeland security.
	We were talking to David from Massachusetts earlier, who said that uh six federal agencies were investigating him.
	He's he's on the no-fly list, he's not a terrorist, he's been on there since the fall of two thousand one.
	He'd like to get off it.
	They've got six bureaucracies investigating him to decide whether to take him off the uh off the terrorist watch list.
	You add up, even if they wall on minimum wage, even if they're all just getting eight bucks an hour, you imagine the cost to you, because you're paying for it, of uh this three year investigation into a man who's not a terrorist, a man who was born in Hopkinson, Massachusetts, a man who does not fly to Yemen, who does not have a bomb in his underwear.
	Uh and yet six federal agencies have been investigating him for three years.
	Because it's it's it's the bureaucracy.
	It's the bureaucracy.
	All you do with big government is empower bureaucracy.
	Think of anything you enjoy in your life.
	Think of anything you enjoy in your life.
	Do you like watching movies?
	Do you like renting movies from Netflix?
	Would you want Netflix to be nationalized by the government and to be run by the DMV?
	Think of anything you like in your life and then figure out whether you'd want that run by the United States government, everybody all the same from Maine to Hawaii.
	Mark Stein in for Rush.
	Lots more straight ahead.
	Hey, great to be with you.
	Don't forget Rush returns Wednesday.
	He is fighting fit and rearing to go.
	I I want to uh just return that point we made uh just before the break, uh talking about the bureaucratization that that comes with health care.
	The the m at the moment healthcare is responsibility of you and your family.
	Uh now it's gonna be a bureaucracy running it.
	Whenever I uh mention horror stories from Euro Canadian health care, I always get people who send me emails and say, Oh yeah, but there are horror stories.
	You can find horror stories uh from American hospitals too.
	True.
	But there's a difference.
	Uh and the difference is this.
	The American horror stories are about the ten are about the doctors and the nurses.
	Uh the Euro Canadian horror stories are about the bureaucracies.
	They're about the bureaucracies.
	They're about the uh what happens when you accept the principle that the government has jurisdiction over your body.
	They're about uh impotence.
	Uh not in the uh is Barack Obama gonna pay for my Viagra sense, but in terms of uh civic dignity and uh in individual liberty.
	There was a young man called Gerald Augustin, who lived in Rivier de Prairie, Quebec, and he went to the St. Andre Medical Clinic complaining of stomach pain.
	He was like Rush.
	He was like Rush.
	He had a bit of pain and he went to uh get it checked out and see what had happened.
	But he'd forgotten to bring his government medical card, so they turned him away.
	Now this guy was a uh Quebec born and bred, and he was in their computer.
	But uh they could have looked him up in the computer.
	He'd be in there.
	But no card, no service.
	That's just the way it is.
	So they sent him back home to collect his card, and he got home and he collapsed of acute appendicitis, and by the time the ambulance arrived, he was dead.
	This guy was twenty-one years old.
	Gerald Augustam, Rivier de Prairie, Quebec.
	He was twenty-one years old, and he didn't make it to twenty-two because he uh was forced to accept the right of a government bureaucrat uh to refuse him medical treatment for which he and his family had been uh confiscatorily taxed all their lives.
	Um and uh when uh there were complaints about this and became a scandal in the press, the the administrator of the clinic said, I don't see what we did wrong.
	We just followed the rules.
	No big deal.
	Nobody even remembered him.
	No one even remembered him turning him down when he came in in pain because he didn't have the government card.
	And that's the difference between horror stories uh from north and south of the border, is the horror stories from government health care systems are always about the bureaucracy.
	What the bureaucracy kindly agrees to let you do uh and let and the treatment it kindly agrees, graciously agrees, the all-powerful king of health care uh graciously consents to allow his humble subjects this amount of health care or that amount of health care or sometimes no health care at all.
	Let's go to Tom in Omanda, Ohio.
	Tom, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
	Great to have you with us.
	Thank you, Mark.
	How are you?
	I'm doing good.
	How are you?
	Very good, sir.
	Hey, I disagree with one of your premises earlier.
	Okay.
	Go for it.
	Well, you while you were discussing um the ho the federal government mandating that people have insurance and you don't agree with that.
	And I argue that point because the federal government mandates that health care systems and hospitals in general have to accept everybody, whether they have health care or not.
	Well, th well, just just to be fair on that.
	That predates the United States.
	That that essentially is the Hippocratic Oath, that if you're a medical professional and a sick person shows up in your room, uh you are obligated to treat him.
	That goes back to time immemorial.
	And in fact, um so when when you say that if you go to an emergency room in the United States, they're obligated uh to treat you.
	That is a general medical principle that predates the United States.
	But I accept your point is obviously these people are costing us money.
	Is that is that uh basically uh the one way or another we're paying for these guys?
	Yes.
	And I do I I really do think that the federal government, you should have some kind of catastrophic insurance and you know, whatever that whatever they determine that to be.
	It's like just in I live in Ohio, obviously, but the state of Ohio for our car insurance, you don't have to have a big comprehensive policy, 25500,000.
	You don't have to have all that.
	All you have to do is have liability insurance up to an extent.
	It used to be twenty thousand, it might be more now, I don't know.
	But it but you just have to have a basic almost a catastrophic policy in place just in case, you know, I'm thirty-seven, I don't think I'll have a heart attack any time soon.
	But if I did, I have insurance, but if I did, then you know, there's somebody there's something something's gonna take care of it.
	But you know, Mitt, Mitt uh Romney in Massachusetts, this was his argument, Tom.
	Uh Mitt's line was that uh everyone in Massachusetts were paying for these uninsured who turn up at the emergency rooms and basically use the emergency rooms as the health clinic.
	So that uh Massachusetts taxpayers are getting stuck with the tab and are uh having to pay for it anyway.
	And so he introduced uh MIT care to Massachusetts, and as a result of that now, it costs even more money.
	There's no let up on people turning up uh at emergency rooms uh anyway, and in and John Kerry has been trying to sell the health care bill uh to the people of Massachusetts by saying, Oh, don't worry now, the the federal government is gonna come in and bail us out from our unsustainable hate uh state health care plan.
	I think I think uh Tom, the problem here is that uninsured can mean various different things.
	If you look at, say uh the by this figure, for example, of 45 million uninsured Americans, for a start uh one fifth of them aren't Americans, another fifth uh aren't uh uninsured but are covered by Medicare, but uh for whatever reason uh uh don't take advantage of it.
	Another two-fifths are the young and uh the mobile, they they don't have a health insurance, but they're they're 22 and they don't care.
	They're immortal.
	You are when you're 22.
	Uh and the remaining fifth are wealthy.
	Uh they're according to a two thousand and six Census Bureau report, nineteen percent of the so-called uninsured have household income of over seventy-five thousand dollars.
	So when they turn up at the hospital in Omanda, Ohio, uh they're perfectly capable of paying for whatever treatment uh that they're that the that they're receiving there.
	And and your point, I think, Tom, uh that we all end up paying for what uh for what happens when the uninsured go to emergency rooms.
	We all end up paying for the government bureaucracy uh erected to manage that.
	Uh we all end up paying uh for what is already a grossly distorted system of health care.
	If you if you think what what do we what do you what do you think an average uh procedure, if you've got a hernia, what do you think that costs, Tom?
	It it it kind of depends, but it doesn't.
	Yeah, exactly.
	There's no market price for a hernia.
	Nobody knows what it is.
	Is a hernia three hundred dollars or three thousand dollars?
	Nobody knows.
	Mark.
	Oh.
	What happened to Tom?
	I don't know.
	That was a kind of sudden ending.
	He sounded like he was being choked.
	Is that crazy Dutch uh video maker who wouldn't sit in his seat for the last hour of the Detroit flight and insisted on jumping on that poor harmless Nigerian jihadist sounded like he jumped on Tom and got him into a chokehold and yapped him off the phone.
	Look, yes, uh in a crude sense, you're if if someone turns up at an emergency room.
	This point is is worth making because uh the costs of the American health care system in border states, uh in the Southwest particularly, are being overwhelmed because Mexico is uh essentially using uh California as its medical system.
	You can't do anything about that in a health care system.
	However you you organize U.S. health care, unless you enforce the border, uh Mexicans are still gonna be using California as their health care system.
	So there's nothing in Harry Reed's bill that is going to do anything for the the costs that have overwhelmed uh emergency rooms in California.
	But in the rest of the country, uh the the guy who who turns up uh because he's got a bleeding ulcer in the emergency room and he hasn't got any health insurance, that's not doing anything to drive up health costs in Massachusetts or anywhere else.
	The distortion of the market uh by intervening third parties, most particularly the United States government, is uh is causing more distortion.
	If you look at Medicare procedures, which are uh subsidized, what do you think that does to the thing?
	More and more doctors are saying we don't want to take Medicare patients because we only get reimbursed peanuts from it.
	Uh but if they uh even if you uh they accept the Medicare patients, who do you think they're passing on the rest of the real cost of that procedure to?
	They're passing it on to you.
	So further government control of the American health care system is only going to increase costs and further distort the market relationship.
	Uh Mark Stein Infrarush on this first live show on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network for two thousand and ten.
	And don't forget the year proper, if you're weary of this uh substitute host level excellence in broadcasting and you want the real deal, Rush returns live this Wednesday.
	Mark Stein Infrarush.
	I'd still like to know what happened to Tom in uh Amanda, Ohio.
	I I asked him what do you think the real market price of a hernia is, and he uh he just like goes, ah the phone the phone drops to the floor.
	I think I gave him a hernia.
	I don't know what I don't know what that's all about.
	Let's go to Judy in Athens, Alabama.
	Judy, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
	Great to have you with us.
	Hi, Ru How are you?
	I'm doing great.
	And dittoes to Rush.
	Yeah, did o diddos to rush.
	So you looking ahead looking forward to the uh November election, Judy?
	Absolutely.
	Uh we're um going to need to do something different.
	Um the main reason I called was actually twofold.
	Um you know, my fear is that the Obama administration is going to look at everything finally and uh head straight to the right, like President Clinton did.
	And um uh now, you know, they refer to Clinton as the shining example of what the economy uh should be and uh his administration how good it was.
	Well well well well, there is a difference though, I think.
	I mean Clinton uh himself likes to say he governed as an Eisenhower Republican.
	That's that's what he tells people in private, apparently.
	Uh the but I don't think Obama can do this because he he ran in November two thousand and eight as this so-called post-partisan uh healer uh as this great centrist figure.
	And I don't think he can he can then after cash for clunkers and after government health care and after cap and trade and all the rest of it, then do that again.
	I don't I think he shot that bolt.
	I don't think he can he because he basically did that last time round.
	Well, I think it would probably be better for uh conservatives if uh that were the case.
	Yeah.
	Well you're you're right there.
	What should the GOP do, Judy?
	Well, I think they need to get uh an agenda for one thing, though the material that I get uh from the GOP is uh not that great.
	You know, it's um uh it's it's pardon the expression, but for motherhood and against sin.
	Yeah, but you you you you make a good point you make a great point there, Judy, because if you look at the last year, don't forget this time last year, all the magazines, all the newspapers were running these things, the death of conservatism, is conservatism over, conservatives are no longer relevant.
	Uh and what happened in the last year was that a leaderless, rudderless GOP, uh just at the grassroots, if you look at the Tea Parties and all the rest of it, just at the grassroots, not from Washington, not from inside the beltway.
	Some of them tried to ride the coattails, uh, but in the main it was gen it was uh generated not by uh big shot congressmen or senators or anything else that came from the grassroots.
	The Republican Party has had a great year in part because it's leaderless and rudderless.
	Well, I think they should take a cue from the Tea Party people and um get a solid agenda and go forth with it.
	And uh uh I you know, my heart was with the tea parties.
	Um I couldn't be in Washington, but I was there in spirit.
	Well well, that's uh that's a good point.
	Thank thank you for your call, uh Judy.
	But you know, don't look to don't look to charismatic leadership uh and all the rest and all the rest of it.
	What you want uh at this stage uh are people because uh what Obama does, by the way, isn't important.
	Obama ran, I think he ran uh an almost ludicrously false campaign uh in 2008, present pretending to be this post-partisan healer, then he gets into office and he basically says to Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank, okay, you guys do what you want.
	Whatever you want's cool with me.
	So he can't at this stage uh reinvent himself uh by running to the right.
	He ran to the right last time round, and he didn't live up to it.
	So if if the Republicans are foolish enough to let him get away with that uh this time round, uh what they need, which they didn't have last time round, is a candidate who stands for something.
	Uh John McCain stood for John McCain.
	And if you happen to like John McCain, then he was the John McCainiest candidate around.
	But he was an idiot on the economy.
	He was uh he he couldn't string a coherent sentence together on the economy.
	So after September the 16th, he was irrelevant.
	Half the stuff uh that Obama's hot for McCain went along with.
	McCain uh is all uh has got the global warming fever.
	Uh so if you were given a choice uh between uh a a caris a young, charismatic, stylish historic candidate, and a guy who couldn't even articulate a rationale for himself, other than the fact that he wa you know he's Mr. Maverick and he's terrific at r hammering the Republican Party.
	If we go down that route again, uh Republicans deserve to get clobbered.
	What's what's needed this time is a choice, a real choice, someone who can articulate not just their own indispensability, but uh a serious case uh for conservatism, big government, uh the American idea, uh the virtues of self-reliance, and the genuine dynamism uh that has has made this country the global leader.
	And that's what that's what uh American conservatism needs this November.
	Mark Stein Inforush, lots more straight ahead.
	Mark Stein, InfoRush on the EIB network.
	As you know, Rush has been all over the papers.
	What's he like, what's his condition, how's he doing?
	He's in terrific shape.
	Uh he's resting up, and he is gonna be here live on Wednesday.
	You can go to Rush Limbaugh.com and you'll be able to see the video of uh Russia's uh press conference in Hol Honolulu, and you'll also be able to read uh Rush's uh special message there for listeners.
	But he's doing great, and he's gonna be here live on Wednesday to kick off and uh kick off really the new year proper.
	What is January the sixth, I think that's uh twelfth night, isn't it?
	That's the end of the the twelfth.
	Uh it no, it isn't.
	That's the odd the twelfth day of the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a part twelve partridge in a pear tree.
	Well, this is January the sixth is the twelfth night.
	That's when you hit the jackpot.
	But instead of worrying about the uh partridge in a pear tree and the two turtledoves, you're gonna get rush back.
	And that is the the the greatest twelfth night present.
	You don't need you can skip the partridge in a pear tree.
	Don't sign for it.
	Send it back, tell the FedEx guy to take it back.
	Uh you'll get rush back live Wednesday.
	Uh I've had a ball, but the ball's uh almost over.
	We're approaching uh the midnight hour when my trusty armish-made gold coach uh turns back into a pair of explosive Yemeni underpants.
	Uh but it's been a terrific, uh terrific uh three hours, and I look forward to seeing you again uh tomorrow for another three hours of substitute host level excellence in broadcasting.
	And as I said, the man himself, Rush returns on uh Wednesday 12 noon uh Eastern, and he is raring to go.

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