It is the second hour of the Monday Rush Limbaugh show.
First day of our fill-in experience together.
Back tomorrow, and Rush is back on Wednesday.
Well, if you're just joining us, welcome to the Rage in the Cage featuring Michelle Bachman and Chris Wallace.
Nobody wanted this to happen, but it has.
And now I guess we just got to figure out what to do with it.
I don't want to make too much of this, but I don't want to make too little of it either.
So let me just tell you the story as it has unfolded, and we can take this to whatever extent you like, and then do some debt ceiling, some Afghanistan, some 2012 field, whatever you want to do.
Michelle Bachman is very front of mind because she announces today.
And she's very front of mind because she deserves to be.
She is a woman of substance and a candidate of great interest.
And that doesn't happen by accident.
So if you have that kind of buzz and that kind of attention, well, you're going to get on Fox News Sunday, which she did yesterday.
So there's Chris Wallace, and they're working their way through all kinds of issues about domestic topics and foreign policy topics, and all's right with the world.
Then, with just a couple of minutes left, host Chris Wallace decides to introduce the subject of the perception that exists of Michelle Bachman that she may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer.
This is an observation that usually comes from critics who oppose her politically.
Not exclusively, but usually.
It is fine to bring that up.
And in fact, if Chris Wallace had said, look, some of your critics attempt to score points against you by suggesting that you're gaffe-prone or you might be a little flighty from time to time.
What would you say to them?
Thoroughly valid question.
Yeah, except he didn't do it that way.
Instead, he gave out a couple of examples and said straight to her, as if the question was from his heart and his mind, are you a flake?
Whoops.
I have a feeling that even as he sat there on the set of Fox News Sunday, back in the office, his email account was beginning to burst into flames from listeners who were not thrilled with just the bad manners of that style of questioning.
Chris Wallace is no idiot, and he is no boarish ruffian either.
It's a delicate issue.
No candidate likes being asked stuff like that.
No questioner likes crafting a way to ask it skillfully.
And he did not ask it skillfully.
And he was one of the first people to realize it.
His online apology is not one of those, sorry, you're too stupid to figure out what I was trying to do.
It was sincere.
It speaks to Chris Wallace's character.
And as dumb as his moment was on Sunday, as bad as that moment was, that's how redeeming his apology is.
At least it seemed that way to me.
And I can't imagine a reason not to give him benefit of the doubt for that.
In his own words, I messed up.
I'm sorry.
So where are we today?
As Michelle Bachman is actually announcing for president, we have people following her around to see if she accepts the Chris Wallace apology.
Don't we have a republic hanging by a thread?
I mean, I know, I know.
And listen, I'm a talk show guy.
Believe you me, I understand how little things can become big things, and I understand why they do.
And I get why this resonates.
So let's follow it through, and I'll tell you what I think, and then you can tell me what you think.
Politico, Maggie Haberman.
Via Politico's Jennifer Epstein, Michelle Bachman isn't accepting an apology from Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace for asking her yesterday, are you a flake?
ABC News' John Carl, who's been getting FaceTime with Bachman in Waterloo in advance of her formal campaign announcement, played a clip of the web video in which Wallace said, I messed up.
I'm sorry.
When Carl asked if she accepts the apology, Bachman brushed aside the question and said, I think that it's insulting to insinuate that a candidate for president is less than serious.
Trying the question again, Bachman replied, those are the small issues.
I'm focused on the big ones.
Whew.
The episode is an unusual moment of conflict between a Republican candidate for 2012 and Fox.
It's kind of a snarky observation.
And is a stark contrast to the relationship Sarah Palin, with whom Bachman is often compared to, has with the network.
The full video that was posted Sunday of the Wallace apology had him saying, quote, a lot of you were more than perturbed.
You were upset and felt that I'd been rude to her.
And since in the end, it's really all about the answers and not about the questions, I messed up.
I'm sorry.
I didn't mean any disrespect.
Given that it clearly struck a nerve with viewers, there's a strong chance it will also add to Bachman's appeal to women voters.
What?
That's a perplexing line to me.
Maggie Haberman writing in Politico.
What is there something about your plumbing that affects how this story is?
I know Michelle Bachman is a woman.
Listen, I'm a dude and I look forward to strong women.
I'm thrilled about the idea of strong women running for office.
You don't have to be female to have a particular radar out for good, high-quality, strong, consistent, upbeat, conservative women.
So last sentence aside, here's where we seem to be.
And I have to tell you, it's not like Michelle Bachman's calling me for campaign advice.
But the first thing I would have said is if someone asks you, do you accept the Chris Wallace apology?
The first word out of your mouth is, yes.
Now, if after that, if after that, and in fact, listen, I just supplied Chris Wallace with golden language for yesterday, if I may be so bold, let me step in and supply Congresswoman Bachman with a more artful answer.
If ABC's John Carl is going to ask her, do you accept the apology?
She should have said, ready?
I'm winging it here.
Of course I do, John.
But let's make it clear from this point forward that I am completely serious.
I consider myself completely worthy for the presidency.
My campaign will prove that I am.
And anybody suggesting otherwise needs to be asked why they're even asking that question.
Ta-da!
Was that so hard?
I don't know if Michelle just wanted to seem like she was going to keep Chris twisting in the breeze there for a day or so to reveal her toughness.
Michelle, you don't need to do this to reveal your toughness.
Your views reveal your toughness.
Your heart reveals your toughness.
Your compass on the issues reveals your toughness.
I don't need you to be frosty toward Chris Wallace for 24 hours or at all in order to know that you are one tough woman.
And see, by not doing that, by seeming to brush aside the question, If she had said exactly what I just said, Maggie Haberman does not write this piece for Politico, and you and I aren't talking about it right now on the Rush Limbaugh show.
So, you know, of course I accept the apology.
And then take 30 seconds of why the question from wherever it comes, usually liberal critics, is a snotty question that nobody better ask me again.
How about that?
So don't, just one of my primary index cards.
Don't give people reason to go off on a sideshow rant.
Don't give people reason to write stories all day today.
I hope I'm not talking about this tomorrow.
I know that's marginally up to my control.
But I mean, I hope there's no cause to because in brushing aside the question, she has, and God bless you, Michelle, I love you.
But you have planted the seeds for the Chris Wallace-Michelle Bachman feud day one.
Cha, cha, cha, cha, cha.
Would have been nice not to have that, quite frankly, which means, so let's say two things.
Number one, it would have been nice if Chris Wallace had asked the question more artfully, okay?
He didn't.
Water under the bridge.
He apologizes sincerely and very convincingly on the web apology.
And then what should have happened is Michelle should have accepted it so that we could all move on to why she needs to be the next president of the United States because that's what she wants today to be about.
And it is, but a part of the oxygen is taken up by this.
And there are two reasons why.
Number one, Chris Wallace's bad moment on Sunday.
And number two, Michelle's, I love her, I love her.
Michelle's possibly unwise decision not to accept the apology right away.
Are you with me on this?
Please tell me.
Here we go to calls, and some of it's about this and some of it's about other things, but okay, please tell me that you don't need Michelle Bachman to be cold to Chris Wallace in order to show her toughness.
Listen, I already had a call in the local show this morning.
Apparently she was on the Today show today, which is when most people are on.
And as she will be asked, as all Republicans will be asked, let's just stipulate that all Republicans who are running are going to be asked, why do you hate Obama's guts?
Why do you think the president is such a dreadful, horrible America-hating slob?
They may not phrase it exactly that way, but that's the tone.
And every Republican candidate will have to reveal a certain amount of graciousness by saying, I think the president's a lovely person, delightful father, good husband.
I'm sure he loves America too.
But here's why I think every idea in his head is wrong.
And here's why I think we can't take another four years of him, but doom, bad, doom, bad doom, on you go down to what you really need to say for your campaign.
And I want every Republican candidate to be that gracious.
Being ungracious, that's a liberal thing.
Bush is Hitler, that's a leftist thing.
Okay.
I want to be gracious.
I want to be civil.
And then I want to wholeheartedly and aggressively go after an agenda that is flat out dangerous to America.
I don't for one minute believe that those are mutually exclusive.
I had a call from a very kind lady this morning who said, I might be out on Michelle Bachman.
I might be out on her.
She might have lost credibility with me.
And you know why?
Because, did I say Michelle Obama?
Because Michelle Bachman had done exactly what I just said.
She was gracious when asked about the president, personally.
It was as if the lady wanted Michelle Bachman to say, well, I just think he's a repulsive human being.
He makes my skin crawl.
And I think he despises America.
And you know what happens the minute you do that?
Oh, the fist-pumping base goes crazy.
But every independent you once had goes, huh, where's the door?
And every possible crossover vote.
Don't you realize what we've got to do in 2012?
We've got to put up a candidate who's going to ask people to vote Republican, maybe for the first time in their lives.
We're asking people to vote Republican, maybe for the first time in their lives.
Now, in no way does that mean be timid.
Shoot no, in no way does it mean be moderate or be Democrat-like.
No, no, no, Mitt Romney, John Huntsman, and whoever else wants to play that game.
But it does mean that you're going to have to walk and chew gum at the same time.
And here's what walking and chewing gum mean.
Be tough as nails on his policies.
Be clear and concise about why the ideas in President Obama's head and heart are just bad for America.
And do every single bit of it with a smile on your face, being pleasant about him personally.
Boom.
There you go.
Anybody that can't do both of those, sorry, it's going to be a problem.
The good news is everybody can do that.
Everybody can do that.
Everybody in our field can do that.
And they should.
So I just, and so this isn't about the field.
It's about you.
I hope you're not sitting there saying, well, I'll tell you what.
I'll tell you when I know somebody's tough enough for my vote.
It's when they get on a debate stage and put their finger in his face and say, you're just a good-for-nothing socialist.
No.
Let the talk show guys, let other talk show guys handle that.
Don't need that on the campaign trail.
Not helpful.
Okay.
Is this all working out okay for you?
Am I making some sense?
If so, call me.
If not, really call me.
Mark Davis, InforRush, 1-800-282-2882.
More of your calls next on the EIB network.
It is the Monday Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis filling in from WBAP, Dallas-Fort Worth.
In Texas, the state that may yet yield another president.
We'll see how that goes.
It's funny because I've known Rick Perry since he was agriculture commissioner of our state.
I got here in 1994.
And then he was lieutenant governor for a while.
And then when George W. Bush left the governor's chair to go run for president, which worked out quite well, Rick Perry became governor and now has been governor for longer than anybody else has ever been Texas governor.
And maybe you've noticed that we have been somewhat recession resistant.
Nobody's recession proof.
But as the country has convulsed from an ailing economy with little to help it from this administration, that Texas has managed to do better than most, if not all, other states in a lot of ways.
Governor Perry would like you to think that that's because of him.
And you know what?
It is because of him in a lot of ways under another governor.
I don't know if we would have been as hardy, as tough, as resistant to the slings and arrows of a bad economy.
Because we do have a pro-business atmosphere in Texas.
We have four new congressional seats.
As they try to get rid of two in New York, and I think I know which one they're going to get rid of.
We have four brand new members of Congress we got to figure out where to put.
We went from 32 to 36 because people are tripping over themselves to move here to Texas, and it ain't because it's cool in the summertime.
Okay, you follow me here?
So Governor Perry can rightly point to policies that he has espoused that has given us a business, a pro-business climate.
You know, his love of liberty, his stances to invoke states' rights up against federal government tyranny.
I'm not suggesting that that's why everybody, people wake up in the middle of Ohio or Nevada or Missouri and go, I got to move to Texas.
Their governor loves liberty.
It tends to be more of a nuts and bolts decision than that.
But you know what?
Our housing prices are pretty darn great.
Our business climate is pretty darn great.
We got good people too.
And one of those good people is our governor, and he might just run for president.
Do I have any special insight on that?
Nope.
Wish I did.
I will tell you that he's given off all of the vibes of someone who's considering running.
There is speculation that there is an event at the beginning of August that he may use, meaning he may use the entire month of July to sort of see how this Michelle Bachman thing goes.
See if it's a momentary flash or if she just goes nuts and leads Romney in the polls.
Ooh, but there might be all your tea party love going with her.
And if that's the case, then maybe you think twice.
But if it's Bachman 20-something, if it's Romney 20-something, Bachman 20-something, and everybody else 10-742, there's room.
There's room when you got a resume and a Rolodex like Rick Perry has.
So your thoughts are welcome.
In Amanda, Ohio, Will has a thought or two on just that very thing.
Hey, Will, Mark Davis, in for Rush.
How are you?
Hey, Mark.
How are you doing?
Good.
Hey, Rick Perry, in my eyes, is a career politician.
He supported the NAFTA Superhighway.
He supported giving support to children of illegal aliens.
And like you said, our republic is hanging by a thread.
Our Constitution is hanging by a thread.
We don't have any more time, Mark.
We are out of time.
We need a strong constitutionalist that's not a career politician that's willing to go in there and get the job done.
What does that mean?
So at what level of service does someone become a career politician?
Well, how many years ago?
I mean, he's got political office for years.
So how many years?
At what point do you start to go bad like a salad in the fridge?
How many years before?
I've had the luxury to take that chance, Mark.
Yeah, okay, okay.
All right, well, I love you, and I appreciate it.
And the gentleman gives me an opportunity to dwell on a couple of things on the Perry record that might make a couple of conservatives go, so I'll do that for you.
But here's the thing.
I no longer care how long you've been around.
Five minutes or five decades.
What's in your heart?
What's in your head?
That's what matters.
I'm all about the fresh faces thing.
I'm good with the fresh faces, but I'm not going to dick somebody just because they've been around for a while.
Come on.
Mark Davis, in for Rush.
Stick around.
You know what a charge it is just to hear that?
It's an honor.
Thanks to Rush and everybody at EIB and all of you for enduring the fill-in guy for a couple of days, whoever it may be.
I know that Brother Stein feels the same way, Mark Belling, Walter Williams, all of us who get the thrill of being in our various adjunct professor roles or whatever you want to call it at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
We have the joy of doing this from time to time.
And I hope that Rush is enjoying a couple of days off.
And he will be back on Wednesday.
All right.
Amid our 2012 talk, a lot of it is very Bachman-centric with her announcement today.
And it's funny because a lot of times if you're hearing somebody for the first time, if they're filling in for Rush or if you're driving through America and you wander across a show, maybe it maybe it's helpful if that particular host sort of wanders through the entire field very briefly and lets you know what he thinks about him so as so you can see if things resonate with you or don't.
And I will do that for you here in just a second.
But first, being here in Texas and with some longtime familiarity with Governor Perry, whom I am a big fan of personally, the guy's a prince.
I love him.
We are, you know, it's like we're doing, we're not doing coffee every Friday, but he is a friend.
Now, that having been said, in the path that I've traveled as a talk show guy, and from Jacksonville to Memphis to back to DC, where I grew up in the suburbs in Maryland, now to my native Texas for these last 17 and a half years, there are two things that I'll always do at the same time.
Number one, I'll tell you what I think of somebody personally, but I will never let that color my two other things.
I can never let that have an effect on two other things.
Number one, if I disagree with you about something, you're going to know it anyway, even if I love you.
And number two, an objective assessment of how I think you're going to go, of how I think, of how I think your race is going to go.
Case in point, I love Herman Cain.
Do I think he's going to be the nominee?
No, I don't.
Do I wish he would be?
Sure, why not?
But I will tell you that every view in Herman's head is probably held by somebody who probably has a little more resume, a little more fundraising, a little more on-the-ground operation.
So we're going to be okay.
Please let us be okay.
All right.
So, but I love Herman.
I've talked to him five, six times.
I love the guy.
All right.
I mean, love him.
I'll tell you somebody I love back from presidential campaigns past, Steve Forbes.
I would crawl on broken glass to vote for Steve Forbes for president today.
I never, I never allowed that to put gauze over my analysts' eyes to think that Steve ever really had a chance because it appears that he didn't.
All right.
I could go on.
All right.
So, and the converse is true, too.
If there's something about you that I think is squirrely, but you're on fire, I'll admit it.
Okay.
So, again, it's the personal feelings versus analysis angle here.
So, I use that as a really long and clumsy way to get into the following.
If you're out listening in someplace other than Texas, you may or may not have heard of some of the things I'm about to tell you about Rick Perry.
Your reaction may either be, oh, I didn't know that, deal breaker, or who cares, or anything in between, all right?
But if Governor Perry runs, and I will flat tell you I would love it if he did, and I would love it if he were the nominee, and I would proudly vote for him for president, okay?
Because A, I love the guy, and B, his positives enormously outweigh the negatives.
And, you know, compared to the nose-holding I had to do in voting for McCain, well, you know what?
Is that really right?
I mean, compared to Obama, are you kidding?
I proudly voted for McCain.
But as we went through the process and it just became clear that we were going to have an insufficiently conservative nominee, I just don't want that again.
You know, I just don't want that again.
Now, are there some things I've disagreed with Governor Perry about over the years?
Yes.
Let me tell you what a couple of them were, what a couple of things are that have been troublesome with his base.
A couple of them, one involves essentially two transportation issues.
This is going to get a little policy wonky here, but believe you me, it may come up.
My overall point in the column that I wrote in the Dallas Morning News this past week is it's going to come up in Texas, but a lot of the people whom Governor Perry alienated with these things in Texas, they now really are holding long and hard grudges.
Now, how many people is it?
The answer is not enough to make a difference in the gubernatorial election because he smoked Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose power and resume are without peer.
And she's a wonderful woman who's done wonderful things, and he beat her like a drum.
So these things weren't even that big in Texas.
But the people for whom it was a problem, they're calling me every day down here in Dallas, Fort Worth, saying, oh, Marco, Rick Perry's toast once America learns about these things.
You ready?
See if any of these make you just drive off the road.
First, we got a couple of transportation issues.
There was a thing there for a while called the Trans-Texas Corridor.
It was a massive corridor, as its name suggests, for cars, trucks, railway tracks, utility lines, would have cut a north-south path through Texas that by necessity would have snarfed up zillions of acres of farm and ranch land through eminent domain.
Yeah, that didn't go over big, especially in the parts of Texas where that land would be snatched up.
The Trans-Texas corridor proved so unpopular that it just had to die on the vine.
But here's the deal.
Like whatever state you're listening to me in, here in Texas, we have massive transportation issues and not enough money to address them.
Not enough money to address them.
The TTC had to be abandoned under the staggering weight of its unpopularity.
The fact is that we got a transportation crisis, and there's going to be some type of major sacrifice of land, sacrifice of money.
Something's coming.
Tough answers to tough questions that some future governor will probably handle after Rick Perry is already president, if he is.
And when that day comes, when we're a little bit past all the bad blood of the Trans-Texas corridor here in Texas, a lot of folks are going to look at that and say, you know what?
It was at least an attempt to fend off that transportation crisis sooner rather than later.
The other deal involves toll roads.
I don't know how you're doing toll roads in your state or whether you like toll roads or don't like toll roads, but we have farmed out the construction of some toll roads in Texas to a Spanish company called Cintra, C-I-N-T-R-A.
Uh-oh, foreigners.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wait a minute.
And what they're going to get is they are going to get a lot of those tolls for years and years to come.
Uh-oh.
Foreign company getting our toll money?
That ain't right.
Yeah, but you know what the company's also going to do?
Build the roads in the first place.
Build the roads in the first place.
I'm paying nothing as a Texas taxpayer for the construction of countless miles of roads that otherwise I'd be paying for now.
Now, later on, will the tax coffers of Texas not benefit from tolls?
Yep, the Spanish company will be getting that.
And listen, if you don't like that, you don't want that.
That is a debate that people can have.
Let's just suck it up and build our roads now and we'll make it back through the tolls in the future.
I think that's what a lot of people said, maybe even a majority in our state.
But it did not prove to be a deal breaker in the Perry for Governor campaign.
And okay, keep going.
Here we go.
Ever heard of Gardasil?
Uh-huh.
Maybe not.
Gardasil was developed to, it was a shot that was developed to fight the human papillomavirus, HPV, which is a dominant factor in the development of cervical cancer.
So far, so good.
That may be something you may want your adolescent daughter to get.
Okay.
Governor Perry kind of made it an initiative.
Like, guess what?
Our adolescent girls in the public schools, you're going to get this shot.
People freaked out.
And you know what?
Properly so.
Conservatives said, Excuse me, I'm a mom or a dad.
I'll determine whether my kid gets a Gardasil shot.
I remember talking about this on the show.
And listen, there are other inoculations that kids get.
And it's if you're at the public schools, guess what?
You're going to get it.
I mean, hepatitis B, you know, you're going to get it.
And the thing that defused this for some was that it had the easiest opt-out in the history of opt-outs.
All you had to do was say, guess what?
I don't want my kid to get it.
Okay, that's it.
Boom.
But still, that didn't go over real well.
And the third thing, as the last gentleman suggested, was immigration.
What kind of border warrior is Governor Perry?
He had a famous campaign ad.
He's in the members-only jacket, looking good.
They're at the border, hanging tough.
Against multinational gangs, drug thugs, the kind of people that'll slice your head off in Juarez if you make the wrong turn.
And sure, and that's fine.
That's good.
Believe you me, the crime at the border, you don't want to know.
But that's not the kind of illegal immigration that, quite frankly, has America's conservatives worked up.
We're more concerned about the kind of illegal immigration that comes over here to take millions of our jobs.
The gentleman invoked, and it was a true fact, as we say in the Redundancy Department.
The governor did advocate maintaining in-state tuition for illegal immigrant kids.
What?
And that's not my favorite thing.
But is it possible that he's smelling the tea on this a little bit?
Because the governor in this past legislative session sponsored something called, you'll be familiar with this, the Sanctuary Cities Bill.
Sanctuary cities are municipalities that essentially tell that they telegraph, sometimes in useful code language, we are not going to have our police checking the immigration status of people whom we have detained already for other stuff.
Nobody, nobody is talking about going, you know, having cops wander along the streets.
Hey, there's somebody, Brown.
Let's give them a tough day.
Assume the position.
Nobody's talking about that.
We're talking about a stop made for something.
Maybe your taillight's out.
Maybe you got a bag of weed in your pocket.
It's a stop for something else.
And oh, while we have you, are you here in America illegally?
Somebody, please tell me how that's not a reasonable and rational thing to do.
The sanctuary city concept involves city leadership saying, we're not going to do that.
As a matter of policy, we're not going to do that, which would have the effect of rendering that city a sanctuary for illegal immigrants.
Well, it was Governor Perry who said, we're going to say you can't do that if you're a city in Texas.
You can't.
So is he trying to earn back some illegal immigration cred?
I would say so.
And I would say that it's probably going to work.
Now, here's the bottom line as we get to our break and come back, take your calls on this or whatever else you want to do.
All these things put together barely put a roadblock in front of him in winning the governorship.
Is Michelle Bachman going to blister him in New Hampshire about the Trans-Texas corridor?
Is Tim Palenti gonna try to chap him about gardasil in Iowa?
Come on.
So there you go.
Little inside Texas for you.
Let me know what you think on this or anything else.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Mark Davis filling in for Rush.
More people on the radio next on the EIB network.
It is the Monday Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Mark Davis filling in from WBAP Dallas Fort Worth.
If you just can't find enough people to follow on Twitter and you want to carve out a little niche for me, it's Mark Davis, all one word, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S.
Thanks.
We try to leave fun stuff on there all the time.
Mark Davis, MARK D-A-V-I-S.
Thanks a bunch.
Together today and tomorrow here on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Always go to Rush Limbaugh.com.
And boy, I would have thought by now my case of 2F by T would have arrived.
Maybe I misunderstood.
I don't know.
I'm kidding.
I am, however, well familiar with some folks who have ordered and say, and it's kind of funny, and they don't have to.
Believe you me, these are the kind of folks, very consumer-oriented, that if the stuff had not been great, they'd have told me.
And their testimony is it's great.
I hope my 30 seconds, they have to bill Rush for those 30 seconds because he is paying the prevailing rate.
He's not just choosing.
Oh, Kevin Stevens.
Sorry, Rush.
I don't ever want to fill in and cost you money.
All righty, 1-800-282-2882.
Plenty of 2012 talk going on and various other things, as is your wish.
Let us go to Yardley, Pennsylvania.
Mark, hi, Mark Davis in for Rush on this Monday.
Welcome.
How are you?
Hi, Mark.
I'm good.
How are you doing?
Very well.
I enjoy it when you sub for Rush.
You're a reasonable guy, and I've enjoyed the show so far today.
I originally called when you were talking about Romney, and I feel like he was a, you know, it's an opportunity wasted when he did not take the chance to stand up and say, this is what nationalized health care is going to be.
Take a look at Massachusetts.
My plan that I put in place with good intentions just isn't working.
And I wish I knew then what I know now, but it's clear it's not going to work.
And then that's why we have to repeal Obamacare.
He didn't do that.
He just decided he needed to defend what he did, and then he was going to stick to his guns, and it's going to come back and fight him.
When he started talking about global warming, that was it for me.
I cannot support it.
That's it.
I can't do it.
Let's spend a moment on both.
First, I believe Mitt Romney.
I do believe him when he says what I sought to do at the state level, I would never seek to do on a national level.
Just because I did Romney care, a term he'll never use, because believe you me, if you ever have your last name and the suffix care, it's not a good thing.
So just because I did that doesn't mean I would do it to America.
Mine was a state-level decision.
I absolutely believe him.
However, that good news only goes so far.
Because if you are willing to foist an individual insurance purchase mandate on the people of your state, under what other circumstances might you do an unconservative thing?
Where else might your rudder falter?
Where else might your compass go haywire?
And when you go to man-made global warming, do not get me started.
Anyone willing to drink from that Kool-Aid, and I'll be extremely precise here, might humanity be putting the plant's temperature up a tick?
Maybe.
I don't know.
And guess what?
Neither do you.
Neither is Al Gore.
Neither does anybody.
Planetary temperatures go in cycles.
There is no way, no way of knowing whether the current uptick, if there is one, is the product of one of those cycles or the product of human productivity.
There is no evidence that it is human productivity, and crafting policy along those lines is crazy.
And any politician who ever thought about it, Tim Polenti, has a problem with me.
That's just me.
It's just me.
How about you?
You want to wrap it up?
Can I chime in on Michelle Bachman and Rollers?
Yeah, give me 60 seconds.
You know, Chris Wallace is a real generous guy.
He's a reasonable man.
And I've never seen him attack anybody maliciously on this show.
He never has the big one-sided panel of guests and one lone liberal or one lone Republican.
Everybody seems to have a diverse opinion, and they have good discussions.
Juan Williams and Britt Hume and everybody.
I've never seen him go after anybody.
And I think, you know, in talk shows these days, everybody's trying to carve out their own little niche and be a little bit different than the other guy.
All these Sunday shows are practically clones of each other.
I think he just tried to be a little bit unique and have a different spin on something.
And obviously he looked back on it and he said, oh, my God, what was I thinking?
I think that's thoroughly good analysis, Mark.
Thank you very much.
You know, it came to the time where he wanted to address this, a perception that is out there, but it's largely out there on the left.
So couch it in that way rather than making it seem like it's your own little pet question.
Like, wow, are you actually a flake there, woman?
And that's the way it came across.
And the speed with which he realized how badly that worked out is a testament to his character.
And if Michelle Bachman hasn't accepted that apology yet today, can you please get on that man so that we can stop this stupid feud talk and get on to your actual campaign?
Can you do that for me, please?
Please?
Just, you know, all righty.
Mark Davis on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Back in a moment.
Are we having a sufficient amount of fun?
Two hours down, one to go.
I'm Mark Davis.
It's all I want.
Just want to keep, no matter what happens, our toes still tapping.
Mark Davis in for us.
Lots more 2012 talk and anything else you want in our next hour.