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Sept. 17, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:42
September 17, 2010, Friday, Hour #2
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Hour number two of what should truly be just a one-day exercise.
Looking for Rush back on Monday, recovering from the cold you could actually hear forming on yesterday's show.
Rest up, sir.
Rest up.
Have a good time.
Good weekend with the bride.
Kickback.
Catch some football.
Catch your Steelers.
See what's going on there.
The Rothless Burger-less Steelers.
As well, they should be.
For Rush, I'm sure it's tough.
Because if you, listen, anytime you love a team and your quarterback winds up being a skank and probably should have been kicked out of the game or cut by the Steelers, that's always hard.
But what is it, four games?
And then, you know, Big Men probably comes back and the Steelers may go to the playoffs.
I don't know.
Weird week one of the NFL.
Here in Texas, there's good news and bad news up here in the Metroplex.
It's like the Cowboys.
What was that on the field at Washington?
I know the Redskins fans are thrilled in WMAL country, but sit tight on that a little bit.
That wasn't exactly a stellar performance either.
Our other team, the Houston Texans, take on the Redskins in week two, and the Cowboys get to hopefully beat up on the Bears.
We'll see how that works out.
So anyway, I know Rush is a big NFL fan, so I wish him a good, restful weekend catching some pigskin and getting back in good health and back in this chair on Monday.
Let's take a look at the anatomy of a hero gone wrong, gone astray.
And I'm talking about Dr. Krauthammer.
And the only reason I kind of dwell on this a lot is because I love this guy so very, very much.
I'm not doing this to make his life hard or, I mean, please, not at all.
My full expectation is that the next 150 columns I read by Charles Krauthammer will lift my heart, empower me, and enrich my soul as virtually everything this man does has done in the past.
But this story starts earlier this week when Dr. Krauthammer was on, I guess somewhere on Fox News and essentially called you names if you were thinking of voting for Christine O'Donnell.
The Palin endorsement, I think, is destructive and capricious.
Bill Buckley had a rule that he always supported the most conservative candidate who was electable.
Otherwise, the vote is simply self-indulgence.
Now, Jim DeMent from South Carolina also endorsed Christine O'Donnell.
Equally capricious and irresponsible.
Wow.
So Christine O'Donnell wins.
Do we have, is Charles retreating?
No.
What's at stake here is control of the Senate.
This is not an ordinary year.
This is not an ordinary Democratic administration.
This is a Democratic administration with a very ambitious social democratic agenda.
They want to change America.
They've had 18 months.
They have passed, for example, Obamacare, which will change America structurally and in a way that will not be reversible.
Now, they have ambitions to do the same with energy, with education, with taxation.
They're going to appoint Supreme Court justices.
The paramount objective of any Republican and conservative today is to gain control of one or other of the houses.
Wrong.
Wrong, Charles.
That is very 2007.
That's no longer true.
R, the letter R at any cost.
Look at the calendar, sir.
Please, we love you.
We love you.
We want you back.
We want you back for the modern day and the future that is to follow because it's a future that's bright.
And it's not a future built on the jelly spines of Mike Castle and the jelly spines of Charlie Christ.
It's built on the unapologetic, upbeat conservatism of either Christine O'Donnell or Marco Rubio or Joe Miller in Alaska, whomever you want to choose.
That is the future.
That is the new trail to be blazed.
And the cruel irony here is that Krauthammer wants exactly what you and I want to stop the Obama agenda.
But he believes that it cannot be done, that we cannot get the Christine O'Donnell's into office.
Well, it wasn't so very long ago.
I was telling callers down here in Texas, they said, hey, should I go up in Massachusetts and try to work for Scott Brown?
I said, well, you could do that or bang your head against a wall.
Same effect.
Well, I had to change my tune in a lightning hurry because darned if I didn't turn around a couple of days after that and see Scott Brown gaining on Martha Coakley.
And last I recall, Scott Brown beat Martha Coakley.
Not in Utah or Alabama, but in Massachusetts.
Don't tell me she can't win.
Don't say to me she's unelectable.
So we have a column today.
And again, I'm going to say this 15 times.
And here's how much I love Charles, and he is a hero to me.
And that's why this is important to me.
And I'm getting, I got just a boatload of emails from this just locally.
Oh, by the way, if you want to remain in touch with me for some odd reason, Twitter, all one word, Mark Davis, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S, Mark Davis, all one word.
There you go.
Where I post various things.
That's what Twitter's for.
But here's the thing.
I want to differentiate between this and another kind of case where there's someone you can admire and there's a view they can hold and you're just done with them.
This is so not that.
As important as this is, this is so not that.
All right.
Again, I thoroughly expect, I don't know when or if, again, a Charles Krauthammer position will annoy me.
I mean, I can't, it's like, hand me the piano.
Is that George Carlin's sentence you never hear said?
A Charles Krauthammer column that annoys me.
Are you kidding me?
Only because it's too short.
I love the guy.
I don't anticipate this ever happening again.
I hope.
The reason I differentiate is we've all had, no matter our politics, maybe there's, you know, somebody whom you have admired or found a reason to drop the little legal pad ledger on one side and on the other.
You know, plus outweighs minus.
So all other things being equal, you're okay with the person.
But then they come out with something and you go, okay, that's it.
Deal breaker.
And the example that I offer here, again, and I don't mean it to be unkind to this wonderful man, but it's an example of where this was different.
And that is, and it's a guy you know well, probably a guy you may love, and that's okay if you love him.
I love him too for some things.
That would be one of our own congressmen here in Texas, the always, always interesting Ron Paul.
I wish to God every Republican had Ron Paul's courage on sticking to the Constitution.
I wish to God every Republican had Ron Paul's clarity on how small and limited government should be.
Please, can we clone that, graft that, inject it into the brainstem of every Republican?
Because it's what we need.
But boy, you remember the 08 primary?
We're up on a stage.
We got all the Republicans, all the Republicans up there in 08.
And Congressman slash Dr. Paul busts out with his 9-11 was essentially America's fault.
Well, look at our positions.
I mean, look what we're doing in Iraq.
Can you imagine if China tried to do that to us?
Good Lord.
I should have been done with him that day.
Because if you are that muddled about the war on terror, listen, it's okay if he doesn't want to fight the war on terror.
It's okay if his brand of libertarianism leads him to a non-interventionism that is essentially, you know, fortress America and don't ever do anything around the world.
If he's an isolationist, that's okay.
I'll just disagree.
But what kind of perverse, false equivalency is that?
Well, the reason they did 9-11 is because look what we're doing to them.
Well, I somehow got over that.
I shouldn't have, but I did.
But back to a similar subject matter.
The last thing that sent America to Ron Paul's website was his slandering of you if you oppose, don't get ahead of me.
That's right.
The mosque at ground zero.
This can only be Islamophobia.
That's it.
So I'm sorry.
Out.
See ya.
Wish you well.
Gone.
Bye.
Anybody who is, and that's worse than muddled.
I'm muddled on some things.
I'm foggy on some things.
Not this.
I, you know, please, clarity is always a goal, and most of us have a varying batting average in reaching it.
But if you are so scramble-brained that it leads you to that level of viciousness, where you take the good-hearted people of America who are not beating up Muslims in the streets even after 9-11, who are not engaging in wild rampages of anti-Muslim violence.
It's just not happening as any kind of appreciable narrative.
You take a country that about 70% of which don't want a mosque at ground zero and you tell them they are religious bigots, then I am done with you, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, whether I think you are really heroic on other things or an idiot on other things.
You say that to me, and it's the last thing you'll say to me that I will pay attention to.
So that was that.
This is not that.
Our moment here with Dr. Krauthammer, I trust will be as brief as it is troubling.
And so we'll take our break.
We'll come back.
We'll take some calls.
I'll share a little bit of his column today, Washington Post, called The Buckley Rule.
I get it.
I get the Buckley Rule.
It's called Support the Most Conservative Candidate Who Is Electable.
So really, the only difference here is that Charles does not think she's electable, and I do.
And so we'll explore that difference and some other things going on in the news today and some other things from the week gone by as well as we work our way through the Friday Rush Limbaugh show.
Your calls are next.
Mark Davis filling in for Rush.
Don't move.
It's the EIB Network.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show for a Friday.
Great to have you here.
More of your calls just a moment.
Mark Davis filling in from Texas.
All righty.
The opening paragraph of the Krauthammer column today, about the Buckley rule, identifies why his passions lead him to oppose Christine because he believes that our shared goal of stopping the Obama agenda cannot be achieved with her.
I do not know what has caused him to, what it is in him that gives him zero faith.
I mean, I don't know how much expectation to have.
It's going to depend on how much money she can raise, apparently a lot.
It's going to depend on what kind of candidate she is.
She's going to have to be sharp and smart and bring her A game.
Will she?
I don't know.
We'll find out, won't we?
But I'm sure willing to take this chance for a real conservative in Delaware, to build a majority with real conservatives rather than these cafeteria conservatives.
Oh, I guess I like Reagan, but I kind of like cap and trade.
I guess taxes ought to be lower, but the war is annoying to me.
I guess, like, God, my head hurts.
Stop it.
The left does not trouble itself with this.
I mean, it just doesn't.
Do you think Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Barack Obama and Ron Emanuel get together in rooms and go, oh my heavens, we are so in trouble if we don't conservative up, if we don't reach out to Republicans.
No, all they do is fill their days trying to beat our brains in.
I envy them their focus.
All right, so Charles Wright said at the beginning of his column: Tuesday in Delaware was a bad day, not only for Republicans, but also for conservatives.
Tea Partier Christine O'Donnell scored a stunning victory over establishment Republican Mike Castle.
Stunning, but Pyrrhic.
The very people who have most alerted the country to the perils of President Obama's social democratic agenda may have just made it impossible for Republicans to retake the Senate and definitively stop that agenda.
You know something, Charles?
That's a true sentence.
But can I give you another true sentence?
The sentence you wrote is: the very people who have most alerted the country to the perils of President Obama's social democratic agenda may, may have just made it impossible for Republicans to retake the Senate.
May I write a companion sentence, sir, in love and respect?
You know what those very people who have most alerted the country to the perils of President Obama may also have done?
They may also have elevated a candidate who will actually try to stop that agenda all the time instead of just a dicey, wishy, washy half the time.
That's what your man, Mike Castle, would have done.
Would he have been an almost certain R in that seat?
Yes.
You talk about Pyrrhic victories?
At what cost?
At what cost victory?
For Mike Castle.
At what cost?
Oh, yeah, well, pop the champagne corks.
Mike Castle won.
Great.
Now you instantly go about making the list on which things he'll be with us and the list of things on which he'll be against us.
And we'll all be in the same hell that we're in with all these other people.
You know, God bless these guys when they're right, John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
When they're right, it's like, this is tremendous.
I love it.
But how often are they going to be?
How often are they going to be?
Suddenly, that question actually means something.
All right.
Let's go to some calls that mean something.
Let's head to Fort Myers, Florida.
Derek, Mark Davis, in for Rush.
It's a pleasure to have you.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my call, Mark.
You know, I read Charles Krauthaumer's article this morning, and I actually got livid.
I had met William F. Buckley Jr. twice in the 1980s.
I had a chance to speak with him.
It was about terrorism, which he was for killing terrorists.
And he was not a pragmatic compromiser.
They're invoking the Buckley rule, so-called.
But there was also something else that he stood for, and he mentions it in one of his earlier books.
There was a saying during the Cold War: better dead than red.
Well, his twist on that was: better the possibility of being dead than the certainty of being red.
Exactly.
And that can be applied directly to this situation in Delaware.
It's these guys, including Krauthammer and Karl Rove, Andrew Jackson used to call those type of guys grannies.
And William F. Buckley would have said, if he had lived to see this administration, this regime, in action, he would have applied that same saying of it is better the possibility. of being dead than the certainty of being red.
And that's what would have been a certainty of us heading down this Marxist slope that we're on now.
He would have been appalled that anybody who calls himself a conservative would not stick to principle and vote for the true conservative instead of the phony Republicans and put all of their weight and fight behind the conservative to beat the Marxist.
And that's what he would have done.
That's how high the stakes are.
Derek, thank you.
Golden clarity.
Some things require no embellishment from me.
They're few, but they...
I'm teasing.
Let's go to Mansfield, Ohio.
Pam, Mark Davis in for Rush, Limbaugh.
Hello, happy Friday.
Hey, Mark, I got to tell you, I couldn't concur more with Derek.
This tsunami that is coming, mark my words.
Mansfield, Ohio is a microcosm of the whole.
I can't tell you how many times CBS, ABC, and I don't know a Fox, but bless their hearts, I hope they have, we are a microcosm of the whole.
This tsunami that is coming is so huge, you can't imagine it.
Conservatives take hope.
The revolution has not only begun, it's going to be consummated November 2nd.
Yeah.
And I've got to tell you, it's a problem.
There's vivid imagery.
Pam, I think, yeah, the stage is set.
We are six and a fraction weeks from bringing into reality what we've been talking about pretty well since President Obama's hand came off the Bible on Inauguration Day.
And here's our chance.
We will not get it again in our lifetime.
That's why we talked a lot about this.
I've referred to 2012.
Everybody always says, oh, this is the most important election of your life.
Everybody said it all the time, and it's like, boy who cried wolf syndrome.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Except this one is.
Now, 2012 may be even more important because then we can actually change presidents.
But we don't get to 2012 if we don't do 2010 right.
We have no chance to get rid of the Obama presidency if we don't deliver it a blow in 2010.
So this one right here, right in front of us, right in our faces, the most important election of our lives.
We dare not screw it up.
And the good news is it appears we are on a course to actually do something to bring about real hope and real change, a change back to something that'll still have conservatives and liberals.
It'll still have Republicans and Democrats, but it'll start to look like the fabric of America again.
And that sounds like red flag talk show words, but I mean them.
Mark Davis in for Rush.
The official theme of many a show, George Thoroughgoods, you talk too much.
Well, all right.
If that's your way of saying go to the phones, we'll go to the phones.
1-800, 282-2882.
Let's get back and see what's going on.
In fact, I got a hankering to go back to Delaware.
You know, listen, if we heap all kinds of love on one Republican woman, as we are well doing with Christine O'Donnell, let's not forget some of the others who deserve our attention.
I have a magnificent Sharon Angle ad that is running right now in Nevada, not Nevada, Nevada, trust me on that one.
And we'll play that here in a second.
But for the moment, let's go back to Delaware, back to Georgetown, Delaware.
And Mike, you are next.
Mark Davis in for Rush.
How you doing?
Hey, Mark.
How's it going?
Good.
Okay.
Well, first, I worked inside for the GOP here in Delaware during the 2008 election.
And the establishment didn't want Palin, and they weren't happy about McCain, so they did nothing like they're doing with Christine.
Well, whom did you think, were they Romney people?
What did they do?
The whole focus was get Castle elected.
All right.
Well, what's coming out down here was Castle was going to switch parties if he got elected.
Imagine that.
There was a woman named Michelle Rollins, who's a longtime Biden financial supporter, was running as a conservative Republican for the House.
She was supposed, as the word we're getting to at here, was she was supposed to step down in 2012.
Beau Biden was going to go on a ticket for the House.
That would have given them two Bidens on a ticket in 2012.
You there?
All right, right, Mike.
I am wondering where we're going.
So give me a payoff, and I appreciate it.
Okay, yeah.
Well, like I said, Biden's Castle was going to change parties.
And the Republican establishment banner here is so much against O'Donnell.
I referenced your earlier call where he couldn't even get a phone number for her campaign.
Well, do you think they're going to get over it?
Are people going to storm the offices?
You know, peasants with pitchforks going to be out there from Wilmington to Rehoboth to Bethany to Dover to say, hey, we are the Republicans.
We are the Republican voices.
Not you, Mike Ross.
We are the Republican voices that are here to be heard.
We want Christine O'Donnell.
We wanted a real conservative.
And if you won't back us, then maybe we need whole new Republican leadership in Delaware.
That is about to happen here in Sussex County in the very near future.
Well, God bless you because that may be exactly.
And listen, I want to give these people time for their individual epiphany.
I want to give Mr. Ross an opportunity to slap his forehead with his hand and go, dope, how wrong I've been.
And if he does, say, Mike, I understand.
You are comfortable with Mike Castle.
You had a kind of an elitist mentality going.
I understand.
If you've awakened to smell the tea, then good for you.
And come on in and let's work together and get things done.
Give him a chance to do it.
If he doesn't, then he needs to feel your boot in his butt.
Mike, thank you.
We are next in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Al, Mark Davison for Rush.
Hi.
Yeah, hi, Mark.
Hello, Al.
Just wanted to thank you for your passion today and to keep it up.
My pleasure.
Why do we always have to take the high road?
Because it's better to.
Why is it better to?
These guys, these other guys, these Democrats, they don't.
They don't.
I know, but let's not be like, let's beat them with honor and civility and decency and facts and principle.
We don't have to get down in the mud with it.
This is a conversation I have a lot, and I'm glad you're here because it can be frustrating.
Democrats will lie, they will cheat, and they will often win in so doing.
Makes it very tempting to just do the same so that we can win at any cost.
I don't want to.
I want to win honorably and factually and run races that I can be proud of.
Well, yeah, that's true.
Wow, it sounded so good.
I sense that you're unswaying.
I'm Jesus.
Go ahead.
But the Democrats always show their true colors when push comes to show.
I know, but so I want to show ours.
Honor, decency, accuracy.
But, you know, the everyday person wants to see a little, I mean, you're showing some spark.
Well, Russia's showing some spark the other day.
But this has to be, you know, I was watching Rivera this morning on Fox.
Yeah.
And he spouted the same old Democratic, well, this girl's got baggage.
She's got this.
She's got that.
Even Krautheimer, even Roe.
If that was me sitting there in a chair, I would have said, okay, Charlie Rangel, what is he, a saint?
Yeah, Maxine Waters.
Yeah.
Let's talk about ethics.
You know, I have a theory.
I have a theory.
Let me run it by you.
I have a theory that when you're talking about that what you want is not so much for us to be dirty, not for us to cheat or lie, but for us to simply not be so doggone.
I don't even want to say nice, but it seems that a lot of people, when they talk about civility, I talk about civility a lot.
I am civil every day.
But that doesn't mean I lack passion.
Is there anything that I've said, even with my effusiveness, that is uncivil?
No.
And a lot of people, when they say civility, it comes across meaning wimpishness or fighting with a faint heart or being lily-livered or unwilling to put up your dukes when it's time to put up your dukes.
Nobody, I'm certainly not talking about that.
It just seems like a lot of Republican battles have been fought too softly.
Does that ring a bell?
Yeah, definitely.
Okay.
But you can't trust the Democrats.
Well, we returned to the common thing.
I'll never vote for that as long as there's federal money in there.
Yep.
Well, they said they were going to do this.
It gets me.
I'll tell you.
It gets me too.
And you keep that passion absolutely.
Al, thank you very, very, very, very much.
I've had this conversation a ton of times.
It's like, Mark, we need to, you know, we need to, we need to fight back.
Absolutely, we need to fight back.
But we don't have to be dirty.
We don't have to lie.
We don't have to trash people personally.
We don't have to do any of those things.
When facts and history are on your side, pick them up as the worthy weapons that they are and go into the arena of political battle and wield them with skill.
Wield them with an upbeat heart and a positive countenance and wield them with a will that says we are on the right side of these issues.
We don't have to be as ugly as they are.
We don't have to trash them.
We don't have to take the low road.
The high road is a good place to be.
It's a good place to be.
And there's a more valid path to victory along the high road than there will ever be in the gutters where much of the left fights its battles, calling us Nazis, calling us racists, calling us whatever they choose to call us when they just don't want to take us on on the issues.
We are in Ventura, California.
Dale, Mark Davis in Faraj, how are you doing?
Mark, thank you for taking my call.
My pleasure.
I too like Karl Rove and I like Charles Craunhammer, but they need to realize they've been so busy going around telling all the Democrats that they just don't see it.
There's a revolution going on and they're not getting it.
They need to realize that no longer is the American voter got the scarlet letter A beside his name for apathetic.
We're not letting this country fall back to the way it's become.
We want this country back the way it was in the beginning, and we're not going to sit on the side and hold our noses and check unless they're the two evils.
No, we used to have to, and Dale, pardon me because I got a bail both because of the clock and the roughly batting 500 cell phone connection that we have here.
But thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
This is what is different about now.
I mean, in 1996, okay, we got Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, a ticket I was proud to vote for.
You know, was Dole, my favorite guy at the time?
I don't know, you know, but I've always loved Jack Kemp, and I was honored to vote for that ticket.
Did I know we were going to get our clocks cleaned?
Yes.
You know, in many, many other years, we've had this constant struggle.
And I know this is what Rove and Krauthammer are talking about, that sometimes the most conservative person you want just isn't going to win.
And you got to be a big boy and a big girl about that.
I know.
I've heard that lecture.
I've delivered that lecture.
But that lecture is on hold.
That finger-wagging advice, oh, don't you go with a real conservative because they're just going to lose.
Oh, really?
Oh, really?
You know what?
Show me.
Show me Christine O'Donnell losing by 30 to Chris Coons.
And I'll say, okay, I will not regret backing Christine, but I'll say, all right, you know what?
Maybe we need a slightly different kind of Republican to run next time.
Maybe we do.
Maybe we don't.
I don't know.
But this time, we gave it a try.
We stood for something.
We stood for something.
And I'll always be proud to stand for something.
I'd rather stand for something and lose in the process than put up squishes like Charlie Christ and Mike Castle and be told that I should be dancing in the streets because we have people who happen to have an R by their names.
Spare me the people with R's by their names who don't have the conservatism in their heart.
Spare me the people who are technically Republicans, meaning they'll vote for, you know, Boehner for Speaker.
We got to talk about Boehner.
He'd better be getting a whiff of what's going on here if he's going to be the next speaker of the house.
And I like Boehner.
I've sensed a change in Boehner where he's, you know, stiffening of his spine.
Hope that's a work in progress because there are going to be a whole lot of people, a whole lot of people, who are going to be looking at John Boehner the morning of after election day and say, okay, show me you need to be speaker.
Show me you do.
Show me you're worthy of that in the Tea Party 2010.
We're done with the squishiness era.
Show us that.
All right.
I'm in the middle of three sentences.
So let's pause and I'll finish all of them and take a bunch more of your calls in a moment.
It's the Rush Limbaugh Show for a Friday.
Mark Davis filling in.
Don't move.
Friday, Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis filling in and thrilled to do so.
I hate the reason.
Rush under the weather.
Just hopefully a one-day thing, three-day weekend.
Take care of that.
Have him back in the chair on Monday after hopefully the cold that we heard forming yesterday is already in the process of going away.
Hope he's already feeling better and we'll be back on Monday.
You want to know, you want to know just the definition of blessings in this industry?
Sitting here hosting the Rush Limbaugh Show, checking your email and finding something from Mark Levin.
I am blessed beyond anything I deserve.
And Brother Levin sent a little something that's a link to a little bit of writing that he is putting out today, largely along the lines of what I've been talking about about Rove and Krauthammer and all of this.
It's weird.
I mean, the Weekly Standard, National Review.
I mean, these are magnificent publications, places you can reliably go for good mainstream and even bolder conservative thought.
For some reason, not on this.
And he talks about Charles and how it's not like Charles is the be-all and end-all of prognosticators.
I don't see his endorsements of Angle in Nevada, Lee in Utah, Bennett in Colorado, Paul in Kentucky before they actually run.
So it's not as if he and the others have a good eye for these things or good judgment about them.
This conservative ascendancy is occurring without their ability to influence it in directions that they might prefer from their offices in Washington.
It is a grassroots movement, and these folks are largely irrelevant, Brother Levin writes.
And now Krauthammer is not only attacking O'Donnell, he's attacking the two most effective conservative leaders in this midterm election, Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint, who are, in fact, having an effect on events.
Krauthammer and his colleagues at the Weekly Standard continue this destructive course at their own peril.
They're becoming increasingly irrelevant.
My friendly advice to the small cabal there is to stop the petulance and reboot.
Greatness of Levin.
All righty, 1-800-282-2882 on the Rush Limbaugh Show, and we are in Van Wert, Ohio.
And Thad, Mark Davis in for Rush, how you doing?
Hey, I'm doing well, Mark.
Thank you for pinch hitting for Rush today.
My pleasure.
Hey, it's good to talk to you.
I just got one quick comment, and that is to say that somebody is not electable is a pretty arbitrary judgment.
You know, if a couple of people get together and say, you know, in the party or talking heads and say, hey, this person can't win, then, you know, you've torpedoed their campaign and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You can, you can.
I mean, it's certainly not helpful for you if people are saying about you that you are unelectable, but it is undeniable that sometimes it is true.
There is many a race in my long history of broadcasting and writing and such where I have said and may yet again say about someone, there's no way that person can win.
I've rarely been wrong.
There's one big one.
It was called the 08 presidency before the economy tanked.
Before the economy tanked, I considered Obama unelectable.
I said there's no way he's going to win unless something huge to shift the tech happens to shift the tectonic plates.
Well, of course, the economy tanked.
Maybe that was it.
I no longer use that as an excuse.
But I don't want to take away someone's ability to look at a race and say, you know what?
Here is someone who truly has no chance of winning.
I just want them to be able to back it up.
Are they at 1% in the polls?
Are they a crazy wheels-off soul who has no chance of garnering support?
None of that is true of Christine O'Donnell, especially not in a tea party year.
The stunned silence.
I'll tell you what, let's do.
Maybe that's God's way of saying take the break.
So let's do it.
It's the Rush Limbaugh Show for a Friday.
Mark Davis back with more of you filling in in just a moment.
Final segment of the second hour, but hey, there's one more yet to go.
I'm Mark Davis filling in for Rush today.
Health permitting, he's back on Monday, and I'm sure that's the case.
So if it's just one of these little colds, one of these little things, and he'll spend the weekend recovering from that and be right back with you on Monday.
Meanwhile, though, you and me, Mark Davis from WBAP, Dallas, Fort Worth, follow me in the world of Twitter at MarkDavisAllOneWord if you want to, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S, as we go to a couple more of your calls to wrap up this hour.
I'm going to put on, we can continue with absolutely all of this.
Believe you me, there are doctoral dissertations that'll be written about some of these shifts in Republican land and the effect of actual bold and assertive conservatives in the midst of what has been a wishy-washy chapter in the party's history.
But I'm going to add some other things and talk about various other issues in the next hour.
So a little topical variety for you.
But no topic ever dies on Open Line Friday.
Whatever you want to do, you can do.
Hey, those are the rules.
Let's, boy, you know, as we go to Baltimore, what a wild thing at Johns Hopkins yesterday.
And how, as soon as I heard about the thing at Johns Hopkins, all I remember is my sweetwife, Lisa, telling me about the Gray's Anatomy finale.
She told me about the Gray's Anatomy finale because I watched the occasional episode just because I love her and the show's okay.
It's all right.
It doesn't make my brain weak.
But it's about a crazy guy who shows up, wants to kill a doctor, wants to, and it happened.
And they re-ran that season finale last night.
Yeesh.
Talk about art imitating life.
So in Baltimore, Henry, Mark Davis in for Rush, how are you?
Hello, Mr. Davis.
Hey.
I just wondered why in these primaries, so many conservatives are being successful.
Why it didn't work for J.D. Hayward?
Well, because John McCain did two things.
John McCain did a successful job of accentuating the positive, as the famous song says.
He reminded Arizonans and the country of everything on which he's right.
He also adjusted some views in order to appear right on some things.
Either the Tea Party passions have converted him and energized him, or he's snowing us.
We'll find out because he's going to win.
The other reason is JD was an honorable guy.
He ran an okay campaign.
There was nothing the matter with it, but he had to just, you got to beat the champ, as they say.
And it just wasn't enough.
And I think a lot of people in Arizona said, look, here's our guy.
And pardon the way this sounds, he ain't going to be around much longer.
And he ran for president.
And if he'd won, we wouldn't have had Obama and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So there's a certain, there is an not inappropriate affection for Senator McCain in Arizona.
And so that's how that all happened.
My prayer is that a revitalized John McCain has seen what he truly was up against in the 08 presidential campaign and now watching them govern realizes how important it is to oppose them at far more turns than he was willing to prior to 2008.
I hope it's been a lesson for him, as it's been for all of us.
Mark Davison for us.
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