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Sept. 3, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
September 3, 2010, Friday, Hour #2
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Hour number two of the Friday Rush Limbaugh Show, rush back on Tuesday after Labor Day weekend.
I hope everybody has a fantastic Labor Day weekend.
You know what I really hope?
I hope that since Earl fizzled to but a fraction of the uh nightmare proportions that uh that might have occurred, that I hope that that uh can people, if you got the opportunity, can you toss some vacc can you make some last minute plans and just get in the car, drive out to the outer banks of North Carolina?
Uh I grew up in the in the suburbs of DC in WMAL country there, as uh as the Libbo show likes to call it.
And uh that's where I picked up the sinister accent, this middle Atlantic brogue that that Brother Stein referred to back on uh on Wednesday.
Um and so we did a lot of Ocean City and Bethany Beach, Delaware and all that good stuff.
But we also very early on discovered uh Nag's head and Kill Double Hills and Kitty Hawk and or you know, the there's so much history out there with the Wright brothers in the first plane, but it's also just really cool.
And so I was hoping that the that that Earl wasn't about to eat the outer banks of North Carolina, but uh all we've heard about for these last few days while watching uh news correspondents standing in the surf with their hip waiters, uh, is that that the the tourism industry has just been destroyed out there on the last big weekend of of summer.
And uh, you know, I mean it's not uh, you know, gulf oil spill style uh uh the tourist industry uh blow to the head, but it's uh can you I mean, what did you do?
If you had a room booked for uh for Labor Day in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, uh the sound you've heard for the last week is people canceling it.
Well, get on back out there, man.
It's beautiful, it's great.
Um and I'm guessing rooms are cheap and plentiful.
Anyway, speaking of that general part of the country, uh, we had a caller invoke some of the forecasting of Larry Sabateau at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.
And so I've gotten a hold of some of those specific numbers, and as soon as I mention it, and I love when this happens, uh because keep in mind Larry Saboteau is no Larry has some very uh uh has some some news, some prognostications that Republicans will find uplifting.
Let's just say that, and it's noteworthy because Larry Saboteau is no conservative fire brand.
In fact, I want to reach out to uh to Jeff in Henrico, Virginia, not Henrico, Henrico, right there close to the uh the capital of uh Richmond there, that fine Commonwealth, who really doesn't like Larry at all.
Mr. Saboteau's a left-wing hack who sits up there in the communist enclave in Charlottesville and insinuates himself and his elitist Marxist views into political races.
Woo!
Okay.
I have a feeling uh well, as as Jeff shares in his email, that um that the he was tossed from the local station in Virginia or something after carving out his niche in the in the throat of George Allen.
What was this back in the uh w uh uh macaca?
What was the thing that George Allen threw out?
And George Allen was a good guy.
That was a really dumb moment.
He had some weird thing to say about some uh some sub uh was it an Indian kid who was filming for the opposition or just just listen, just don't do stupid things.
Here's my my solution.
Every time somebody gets all worked up when uh uh an otherwise worthy conservative does something stupid and and gets blistered for it, I've got a great solution.
Don't do stupid things.
How about that?
How about that?
You know, how about get out there and don't do stupid things?
You know, dear, maybe I'm asking too much.
Anyway, let's uh all right.
Larry Sabateau writes, 2010 was always going to be a Republican year in the midterm tradition.
But conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer.
The economy appears rotten appears.
Hmm, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November second.
Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish, and public confidence quite low.
The Democrats self-proclaimed recovery summer has become a term of derision.
And to most voters, fair or not, it seems that President Obama has overpromised and underdelivered.
Well, guess what, Larry?
Fair.
Maybe even Jeff's feeling better about you in Henrico.
That's let's keep going.
See if you can win Jeff over with this.
Given what we see at this moment, Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as forty-seven seats net.
This is a net number since the GOP will probably lose several of its own congressional districts in Delaware, Hawaii, and Louisiana.
This estimate, which may be raised or lowered by election day, is based on a careful district by district analysis, plus electoral modeling based on trends in President Obama's gallop job approval rating and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
On the Senate.
In the Senate, Larry Sabateau, UVA, we now believe the GOP will do a bit better than our longtime prediction of plus seven seats.
Republicans have an outside shot at winning full control, which would be plus ten.
But they're more likely to wind up with plus eight or maybe plus nine.
At which point, it'll be interesting to see how Senators like Joe Lieberman of Connecticut or Ben Nelson of Nebraska and others react.
So there's Larry Sabato.
Um, Larry, like Charlie Cook and like some other analysts, are are are very nuts and bolts about this.
Let's look at this district in Delaware, this district in Louisiana.
Let's look at this district in Nebraska, which may be counterbalanced by this district in Mississippi.
And believe you me, that's a very academic way to go about it.
Uh and that has value.
But it there's no way that approach can capture something that is sort of ethereal.
Something that is it just happens.
It's it's the wave.
It's the wave.
A wave election.
1994, wave election.
Where the the nobody saw fifty-two, fifty-four pickups for Republicans, you kidding?
But once it started to happen, the wave just hit the shore.
The the s the snowball kept rolling.
Choose your metaphor.
And we may get to the point where, you know, once we get Halloween past us, and you know, and it's pretty quick, November 1st and then boom, November 2nd.
In a bunch of districts that are kind of coin flips, maybe even a few districts that are leaning a smidge Democrat.
You know, the Tea Party passions may say, man, look, there's something happening here.
There's something happening here.
This is a grass roots rebellion against this nonsense, and I want to be part of it.
And then it becomes a turnout game.
Because if, you know, the average even big election has a, you know, let's say roughly 50% turnout, uh, have you heard about the enthusiasm gap?
It's just a fun term.
It's the enthusiasm gap.
It basically means that Democrats are living in dread of this election, and Republicans would crawl on broken glass to vote at three o'clock in the morning.
That's the enthusiasm gap.
So if Democrats turn up, you know, like thirty percent of Democrats in a given election, while seventy percent of the Republicans are are are are waking up and deciding to go vote and be a part of this uh storyline, then that's how you get uh some districts that that are 50-50, just going uh going Republican.
Or some districts red Democrat might have a two or three point, you know, a slim lead, all of a sudden that lead eaten alive by the enthusiasm gap.
So just a little bit of a way that uh little bit of the way that things might go.
All righty, let us get back to your calls here on the Friday Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Mark Davis filling in from WBAP Dallas, Fort Worth, Texas.
Let's head up to I don't know what exit number it is on the turnpike.
It's Edison, New Jersey.
Jay, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
How are you?
Hi, Mark.
I would like to challenge uh President Obama's concept that green jobs will generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
Uh he never addresses the possibility or suggests how many carbon-based jobs in in the oil industry will be lost equivalently.
Yeah.
There is kind of a zero-sum game there if we create a job for people, you know, making uh solar panels or wind farms, uh, maybe and and if if that does wind up replacing fossil fuels, which he desperately wants, there'll be fewer jobs in the uh the industry that deals with the energy sources that we say goodbye to.
Yeah, I suggest that it might be a two to one ratio for every miner, uh for everyone who's making a solar panel.
There could be two miners who lose their jobs.
Now, as a marketplace guy, let me share with you my thought about that and see what you think.
All right.
If it turns out that America just wants uh natural gas more than coal, or wind farms and solar more than oil for some things, if we actually really want it, then what happens to the job market happens to the job market.
Absolutely.
If some things go the way of the buggy whip, they go the way of the buggy whip.
What I don't want to have happen, what I don't need, is for this president or any president to spend one thin dime shoving me toward green technology that I don't want.
Well, my my uh I uh you know, I'm not here to m discuss the merits of whether green is the way to go, because we we've we've heard all the arguments pro and con.
I'm just concerned about the it's a one-sided argument that we're gonna gain a hundred thousand new jobs.
Yeah.
And we leave out the fact that there will be people who will lose their jobs.
Yeah, that's that's completely true.
And as long as long as the the and and whatever the marketplace embraces, it does, and we have to be okay with that.
But I want the marketplace to be unfettered by presidential uh uh interference.
I don't want him up there jamming solar in my face or uh or or telling me that we've somehow gotta invest zillions of dollars uh in wind farms.
Listen, peep if people want solar, go get it, go make it, go do it.
Uh that's look what happened with the with hybrid cars.
I'll be the first to admit I scoffed a little at hybrid cars.
I said, okay, let's see how this works out.
Well then gas goes to four dollars a gallon and you couldn't find a Prius.
You know, you uh and and so good the marketplace did what it did.
It didn't take a penny of government money for people to want hybrid cars.
People wanted them, folks started making them.
That's the same with solar, that's the same with wind, that's the same with running our cars on peanut butter and corn pone or whatever we want to do.
Uh if but you know what?
I have a feeling we're gonna want fossil fuel.
I like fossil fuel.
If somebody gives me something that'll run my car just as well, just as reliably, just as affordably, with just as much power, I'll be glad to consider it.
Till then, I like fossil fuel.
But to whatever degree others want to do other things, that's their choice.
All about choice in in in the world of the marketplace, and whatever jobs are created or created, whatever jobs are lost or lost, but uh as with so many other things, I want uh want government to butt out of that process.
Jay, thank you.
Let's pause, come back, see what else is going on on the big caller environment across the fruited plain on the Rush Limbaugh Show for this Friday.
Mark Davis filling in back in a moment on the EIB network.
Oh, it's a happy sound, the sound of a Friday on the Rush Limbaugh Show, and I'm Mark Davis filling in from WBAP Dallas Fort Worth, Proud limbo affiliate since 1993.
Yes indeed.
And uh as we get ready to head back to some of your calls, um let me mention something to you real quick.
There's a wonderful story about a Wyoming man, our uh hero of the day, if you wish.
Maybe there are other nominations we can get into here in our remaining hour and thirty-eight minutes.
Uh there's a Wyoming gentleman who has written a one and a half million dollar check to the Arizona Legal Defense Fund, as you know, Arizona under attack from our own uh from our own federal government, uh and roundly slandered by people who just cannot handle the fact of a state that's actually doing something about illegal immigration.
But there is um there's a gentleman in Wyoming who wrote a one and a half million dollar check.
This is funny, because in so doing, he now essentially becomes half of what the fund has raised, uh just under three point six million so far.
And that's great.
Website is keep a z, as in Arizona, keep azafe.com, keep azafe dot com.
If you don't want to mess with that or you're driving, don't want to wreck the car writing it down, uh just a couple of times however I fill in, I'm always glad to mention.
Uh you can follow me in the world of Twitter if you are so inclined.
It's Mark Davis, all one word, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S, and I just put the keep A Z safe.
Link on there.
So um now I do warn you if you're in, you know, Sheboygan or Sarasota, uh, that a lot of what I do is extremely nationally significant.
Big stories about, you know, from stuff from Obama to Al Gore to weird things and other things.
But some of it'll be very local Texas stuff.
Others it'll be like pictures of my family and our glitter tattoos at a local attraction.
So I warn you, you're gonna get a big snootful of my life or the pluses and the minuses there.
So uh Mark Davis, all one word at Twitter, knock yourself out.
Thank you very, very much.
M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S.
Okay.
Uh let's do some more calls, see what's going on in Westchester, New York.
Steven uh on WABC again, I'm guessing.
Mark Davis filling in for Rush.
How are you?
I'm doing good, Mark.
Uh good to listen to you and good to speak to you on uh the other marks during the week of Donistello.
Filling in.
Um my comment is I I'm a bit of a history bot to say the least.
And uh during Obama's speech the other night, not that anything you said in particular jogging my mind, but I realized that um you could do a direct comparison between Emperor Nero of Rome and Obama in so many ways.
Obama is like Emperor Nero reincarnate.
Um they're both supreme narcissists.
Um led the Roman state dry, taxing them to build to build projects, put up this building, do this and do that.
Obama is is doing the very the very same thing and answering to nobody just like just like Nero did.
Um the uh if you go if you go back and look at uh Emperor Nero's reign, the similarities are are are pretty darn startling and it it's almost scary.
This is good.
This is certainly better than the Hitler analogy is the one that will sometimes arise a little less emotional there.
Uh and if you go back to go with Nero, what, first century BC, I guess, uh it shows just how universal some things are.
That societies, whether ancient Rome or modern America, ask for nothing but trouble uh by uh uh in spending money they do not have and spending it profligately and on things that are beyond uh what uh are are in the the collective's best interest.
I I say collective, not as it sounds like communist code language.
Uh the c let's use it as an adjective instead.
The collective, the general welfare to go constitutional on you, beyond what government really ought to do for people.
Um and and in fact, e in let's go to a little more recent history, uh to some things that are generally smiled on.
Uh FDR's New Deal, uh Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, viewed as crowning achievements by these uh beloved Democrat presidents.
I suggest that those things are exactly what started to send us down the road to ruin that we may please God be about to divert ourselves from.
As soon as as FDR took a look at a depression and said, let's spend our way out of it.
Sure, you get some CCC, some WPA, you know, you get a a a world war that helps us out economically.
Uh but I would love to get in a time tunnel, go back, and not have us do the new deal.
I would certainly love to go back in that same time machine to the 60s and not do the great society.
As Ann Coulter is fond of saying, uh you want to talk about a failed war.
How about the war on poverty?
What's the exit strategy from that quagmire?
So um love the history, Stephen.
Thank you.
Let's head next to Conway, Arkansas.
John, hi, Mark Davis in for Rush.
How are you?
Yeah, I'm fine, Mark.
I wanted to get right to something here.
You said earlier in the program that you don't make a difference.
I want to tell you that you do.
I spoke to you some thirteen years ago when I was overcoming a chemical dependency problem.
And you had made a statement on your program about personal responsibility and how people that overcome adversity should be proud of it.
And that inspired me.
I went back to school, uh, overcame cup economic times on my own with my wife.
Uh we put our nose to the grindstone.
Um I've done a lot of things.
Right.
I've been in law enforcement for the last four years because I wanted to give something back to society.
Wow.
The trouble with our society is people are too dependent on the government.
Tell me.
They don't they don't uh spend for themselves.
I am uh I am unbelievably humbled and and and moved by that.
Uh my the whole quote from me is, you know, we talk show guys.
We can't do anything by ourselves.
Our words alone don't do anything.
And I would say about you what I would say about all of us who've been talking about the government.
I mean, how did Clinton get elected twice with the Rush Limbaugh show at its apex?
You know, Rush was as as big big a genius in the mid-90s as he is now, but Clinton won twice.
It's because not enough people were getting the message.
Now they are.
In your case, if anything I said inspired you, uh that makes my day.
It makes my month.
But you had to do it.
You had to do it.
I'm getting five hundred other guys, whatever I was talking about that day about personal responsibility.
Five hundred other guys heard that and then went out and bought some crack.
You didn't.
The difference was you.
And I'm so proud and extremely humbled.
And thank you very, very, very much.
Wow.
Didn't see that coming.
All righty.
Uh let's see.
Uh let's see what happens next.
Jolly, let's let's go to some more calls.
I got some more news.
I got some stuff going on, plenty of development.
Let's do some weekend review, some things that have happened since uh since Monday.
It's been a busy and fascinating week.
We have the president in the Rose Garden spin of the economy this morning, got some excerpts from that.
Mark Davis in for Rush.
More of the Friday show next.
Thanks everybody.
Appreciate it.
1800-282-2882.
Mark Davis in for Rush as we get ready to go back to some of your calls.
During the uh it's funny, things will take me down certain roads, and I just want to let you know that I'm always in the mood to fact-check myself.
Guy calls and throws down the Obama, uh, the imagery, the the uh the comparison, the analogy, uh f uh of Nero fiddling while Rome burns.
And I crafted what I thought was a lovely sentence, and I guess then and the the principle is good that even through thousands of years of history, certain truths uh are always there that a society should not spend more than it takes in and should not profit profligately to invent an adverb, maybe, uh, or one that's certainly hard to say, uh devote a lot of time and attention uh of spending government money, taxpayer money, on stuff that government should not do.
And I mentioned that's true whether it's modern America or in Rome in the first century B.C. Well, during the commercial break, this little voice occurs to me and says, you know, talk show boy, uh Caesar, uh that's that's the first century BC.
But uh, you know, Roman emperors straddle uh the lifetime of Christ, and uh might Nero have been the first century A.D. And the answer is yes he was, because that great fire of Rome there was like in 74 A.D. And and and I and history is what it is, uh the fiddle had not been invented yet.
Uh we probably just jacked with that a little bit because uh sort of the stringed instrument that would have been around in Rome at the time.
Insert your own political joke here would have been the liar.
L Y R E, I know.
Craft your own Obama joke now.
Ready, go.
Okay, very it is a Friday, isn't it?
All right, Rush Limbaugh Show for a Friday.
I'm Mark Davis filling in for WBAP Dallas Fort Worth.
We're we're giddy down here uh because uh it's the the temperature is below 147 degrees.
It's September, and we're just thrilled, and I love that.
Uh very glad along the Atlantic coast that Earl didn't wind up to be the uh uh the beach eating monster that a lot of people thought it was gonna be.
Um here comes the last wave of uh of of the waterboarding torture that is exhibition football, real games, uh Russia's Steelers, our cowboys, uh getting into action next weekend college football, getting off to uh a big start this weekend, stoked about that.
So everybody's kids back in school, fall going well for you so far.
I hope.
And the highlight of the fall, oh my, oh yes, election day twenty ten.
We certainly have a lot of people plugged into and interested in that.
Here's an interesting story from the capital city of the great state of South Carolina.
Let's go to Charleston.
Matt, Mark Davison for Rush, how are you?
Hey, Mark, good job coming in.
Thank you.
You know what, Mark, I have to beg the different when you say that your words don't really mean anything.
Oh, well, stop it.
All right, I get it.
Okay, and let me tell you where I'm going with that.
Okay.
At work, we have a break room.
Okay.
And we traditionally come in, you know, around lunchtime, we hang out, we watch TV.
Let's say Obama's giving a speech, okay?
Even the now, this is finger on the pulse type stuff, is this is where I'm going.
People who are traditionally, you know, big-time Obama supporters.
They're hardcore Democrats.
We watch him sit there and blah, blah, blah, and we look at them, and they even start laughing.
And they watch the coverage, and they can't take it.
It's like, you know what?
They're uh what would you call it?
The uh the turnout, the motivation, or whatever it is.
For the Democrats, my man, it is below zero.
Well, uh, that is some interesting testimony.
and I think what it it leads to is a lot of people, a lot of people voted in 2008 because wow, isn't this cool?
He's a cool guy, first black president is cool, we're gonna make some history, the history is cool, hoping change, that's cool, those are nice words.
I enjoy hearing those.
Uh but now upon learning what exact kind of change we're talking about, and and how grotesque its realities really are.
And listen, I know there are plenty of dyed in the wool hardcore liberals who love everything the guy's doing, but some people who who were centrists, independents, moderates, whatever word you want to use, who said, eh, other things being equal, I'll go ahead and vote for this guy, now are slapping their foreheads and saying, what was I thinking?
Let me tell you something, Mark.
It is because of the daily hard work of Rush, of you, of sanity, they all fill in the blank that this is finally resonating even with the masses.
Okay.
I I don't I don't want to belabor.
But but seriously, okay?
Serious.
And I don't want to I I will never put words in Rush's mouth or Sean's or anybody's.
And if it if if I here's the thing.
I I and and maybe it's maybe it's both sides of the same coin, and maybe it is semantics.
We've talked about that a lot.
In in 19 all right, wh why couldn't Rush keep Clinton from being elected twice?
Well, you know what, Mark?
There's an answer to that.
There's an answer to that.
What is it?
Why couldn't he keep Obama from being elected?
I don't know.
There seems to be a big lag time between the truth and media.
You know something?
Oh, okay.
Uh and I guess maybe there's a way we can meet in the middle, and that is the the words of all of us in the talk radio community.
Maybe at first there's X number of people listening, and they go, wow, you know, okay, can't vote for that scalawag or whatever.
And then as and then the ball rolls a little bit, and then people get a little more hip and actually start paying attention.
In which point, uh at which point I guess you can say that all the talk show hosts finally had some effect.
Okay, uh you bet.
And and please, in no way, I mean, if like three callers who say, Yeah, Mark, I don't believe that your words have no effect.
Nobody's saying they have no effect.
My only thesis, it's probably the last thing we need to say about this, because even I'm getting fatigued by it, is that talk shows by themselves cannot change America.
It's like speech 101.
Uh, one of my favorite courses in college, University of Maryland, speech 101, just introduction to everything speech related.
And it was for sender, message, listener.
For communication to take place, you have to have sender, message, listener.
Someone sending the message, actual content of the message, and people receiving the message.
The sender of the message always there.
Since 1988, when when the America discovers the Rush Limbaugh show, the national launch of Rush, there's the sender, there's the message.
I've done this since 1982 at WOKV in Jacksonville, Florida.
And uh, and so sender and message always there.
What's different?
Listener.
Literally, listeners, people hearing, you know, whatever Rush or or Sean or Levin or uh or or or I and various local shows are doing.
It's what you guys do with it that really are the ultimate turnstile for whether change actually comes about.
That's all.
Mark, great job.
I appreciate that.
Well, God bless you, thank you.
Okay, enough.
Thank you.
Enough on the somebody write a doctoral dissertation on uh on I think you get me here.
I'm and I'm I'm never please, are you kidding me?
Uh the whole new media thing, there are in fact it may ultimately be a distinction without a difference.
Just because it does ultimately take listeners to change things for you to actually vote accordingly when hearing the logic that comes off of a limbaugh show or or a Mark Davis show, wherever it's being conducted, or uh or any of the other national folks or the local hosts in your area, of course the ultimate difference is you.
But once you do absorb, you know, some some logic and go out and act on it, and if that turns out to to bring about change, yeah, you can look back and say, well, I I heard Rush or somebody talking about that.
And that's what got me to thinking differently about certain things.
And heaven knows if there is anything that is the crowning achievement of of talk radio in its modern incarnation.
It is the ability for it to provide to you uh news you wouldn't get anywhere else.
And I don't just mean opinions.
Obviously, talk radio is a is an opinion vehicle, but also you will I mean Rush will bring up stories that for some reason Katie Currick chooses not to cover.
I've spent my life bringing stuff up that I've run across that for some reason doesn't wind up on the front page of the newspaper in the city where I live.
And in that regard, and that places a huge responsibility on us not to make stuff up or or I mean to have our facts right and to back up our opinions uh in a responsible way.
But it it may well be that there are millions of may well be, it definitely is, that there are millions of you who hear about something, not because the dominant media culture chose to tell you, but because a talk show chose to tell you.
Or a blogger chose to tell you.
Maybe an Andrew Breitbart or a Michelle Malkin chose to tell you, making uh an editorial choice for topic matter that maybe you're not gonna get from CNN or ABC or NBC or CBS or such.
So you know, I tell you what, I officially don't care.
I officially don't care by what hook or crook uh messages from talk shows get into people's heads and they act on them accordingly.
Just so you do.
Just so you do.
Let others examine the minutia of that.
Let's just enjoy watching it happen in front of our faces.
Uh here we go.
The countdown on between now and uh November 2nd.
Um it's it's it it never ends, you know.
It never ends.
Once we uh the November 2nd is not an end, it's a beginning.
It is the beginning of the first chapter in trying to uh to to take the country back.
I have not uh I haven't spent as you can if you can do the math, I've been doing talk shows for like twenty-eight years, and uh I have not been one to spend a whole lot of time talking about we've got to take the country back.
Usually through a lot of my career, I've when people have talked about taking the country back, I've said, you know, guys, hey, tap the brakes, it's still America.
You know, people said it a lot during Clinton, they said it during Carter, and I said, okay, I kind of get it.
They're Democrats, we disagree with them, but it's still basically America.
Yeah.
That was then, this is now.
Now it is time to take the country back.
And I'll tell you why those words are thoroughly appropriate now uh when we continue.
It is the Friday Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis filling in back in a moment on the EIB network.
It is the Friday Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hope everybody's doing well.
I'm Mark Davis filling in from Texas.
And let us head to, as we've learned on today's program, not Henrico, but Henrico, Virginia, not Medina, but Medina, Ohio, just south of Cleveland.
Hey, Dale Mark Davis, in for Rush, how are you?
Well good, Mark.
I'm glad to be able to get a hold of you.
Uh, you were mentioning last hour about the uh the um uh matter the words matter about Frank Lunch and about words matter.
I think there's uh distinct difference between shrinking the government and limited government.
Uh a lot of Republicans talk about looking for smaller government.
Right.
I don't think that's I think that's disingenuous.
Because the government I've been in all the political science for thirty years.
Right.
And uh I I understand that um bureaucracies grow.
It's a natural progression.
Well, until we stop it.
I mean, it's a na well well well, no, it's not a natural progression.
Uh I know what you mean.
The the bureaucracies grow because we allow them to.
Allow them to, right, exactly.
Well, uh Jimmy Carter called streamlining.
It didn't work under Jimmy Carter.
Ronald Reagan tried to shrink the government and it didn't work under him, and it actually grew.
Entitlements grew, everything grew.
But you know what that's called?
It's called not trying hard enough.
I agree.
Uh but I guess what I'm saying is that words matter because you can talk about smaller government, but the only way you get smaller government is by limiting government.
Right.
Uh for instance, when it created the Homeland Security Department, what does that do?
Increase increase the size of government.
Right.
No, yeah.
So basically what you have to do is limit what the government does.
If you live at what the government does, then it'll be a natural progression.
I I agree with you in that respect.
You can treat the government that way.
Well, are you so are you talking about the difference between actually reducing the size of government, cutting it, which is what I want, and simply slowing the rate at which it grows?
Uh well, the the only way you can slow the rate or even cut the government is by limiting what the government does.
The federal government, uh like for instance, uh the uh this uh taking care of the uh Department of Education or Department of Uh Energy, those are those are uh two direct routes of reducing the size of government because you're limiting the scope of what the R. So is that I'm wondering if, and on a on a very semantics-laden show, I wonder if we're not talking about the same thing.
I would get rid of the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Education tomorrow.
And I might come after the Department of Homeland Security next because I think with every uh the we could simply have tasked the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Defense with everything Homeland Security does.
So those are those are certainly limit those are limiting government.
I'm looking at more limited government, but that's also a smaller government.
So I don't really see what the difference is.
Well, that's where uh the thing is whenever you talk about smaller government, uh because the the key is is you're you're scaring a lot of government workers that are voters.
Ooh.
Well, guess what?
They are.
Yeah, well, I I know, I realize that.
Okay, but but you okay, you're now now I think I get it.
So in order to that if if we say limited government instead of the the the somewhat harsher smaller government, cutting government, we might not frighten off uh government workers who fear for their own livelihoods.
Uh yeah, precisely.
All right.
To which the first thing that occurs to me is how many government workers vote Republican anyway.
Uh I I wouldn't say I would say there's quite a few of them.
I mean you look at police departments, you look at fire departments.
Uh uh they'll already vote for a Republicans, but uh when you start getting into departments like welfare departments and him teachers, uh uh is a real good example.
But but that's what the people that vote uh you know in another.
You better.
But that's not but it you know, when I when I talk about cutting the size of government, I ain't talking about firefighters and policemen.
I'm talking about people in the entitlement industries.
I'm talking about bureaucrats.
And if hearing that message makes them fear for their jobs, I I mean I guess I get it.
I I wonder how much we really achieve i if uh there's some things I'm willing to uh play some um some semantic football with uh it because it it it accrues to our general benefit.
Uh I think being Nambi Pamby and mealy mouthed about what I'm looking to do with government may not be one of them.
Uh because there's uh and the other thing is sometimes just come out and speak truth and see how it works out for you.
Government is clearly two, maybe three times bigger than it should be right now.
And I'm not talking about curbing the rate at which it grows.
I'm talking about cutting it, coming at it with an axe.
And I know that I'm violating every Frank Lunt's rule in the book right now, but I want to find a way to phrase that if I were a candidate and not a talk show guy, to make clear that while it does mean that there'll be fewer government jobs, and maybe that means government bureaucrat AY, X, Y, and Z are not going to vote for me, everybody else will, because I'm gonna give them government that is more the size of what the founding fathers intended.
Much appreciate you, sir.
Thank you.
Mark Davison for Rush, back in a moment on the EIB network.
Couple of minutes left in this hour, and then one more to go before Labor Day weekend.
Let's try to get a call in forward done here, head down Northwest Florida way.
Tommy, Mark Davis in for Rush, how are you?
I'm doing great.
Yourself?
Great, thank you.
Um I'd like to speak to you about the uh mosque going in uh at ground zero in New York.
Sure.
Um I think it's an excellent idea.
I I think that they should be allowed to build the mosque if they would be willing to allow American Christian organizations to go to all of the countries that he traveled to on his state funded uh bookselling trip.
Yes.
To set up churches and educate the people of those countries about, you know, other things.
Yep.
You have uh Tommy, you have skillfully made a point that that is that is very valuable to make that all this talk of religious tolerance in America and this is somehow a touchstone of our religious tolerance, which it is not, uh amid uh uh uh the the the uh the other side of this is uh you know you try to build a a Christian church in Saudi Arabia, see how that works.
Uh great good point, but literally, quite literally, not interested in the trade-off.
If Saudi Arabia were to say Christian churches are welcome all over our sandy nation tomorrow, the mosque is still a horrible, horrible idea.
Not a trade I would make.
All righty, here's a deal I'll make.
Back after the news on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis filling in.
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