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Aug. 26, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:39
August 26, 2011, Friday, Hour #3
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One hour to go here in the show, one hour to go here in the week, and one hour to go until the weekend when we get through this and see what the hurricane does with Eastern United States and then get rushed back in the chair on Monday to sort it all out for you.
Looking forward to that.
And as we get to the end of the fill-in experience on behalf of Mark Stein, I did Monday and Mark Belling Tuesday and Wednesday.
Just a joy.
Well, we all enjoy it so very, very much.
And with that, let's get back to some more of your calls here on Open Line Friday.
I'm Mark Davis.
I'm the Mark that hangs out down here in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, doing my own show on WBAP Dallas-Fort Worth.
And then the moment it ends on days that I get to fill in, and there's no better sort of acceleration lane for a host of the Rush Limo show than knocking out your own show immediately beforehand.
We had, I just got to tell you today, and since it, hey, if it's Open Line Friday, that means I can throw anything out I want to, right?
Don't the same rules apply to me?
Dog gun it.
We had a wild time about the last hour, hour and a half.
Hot button issue, marketplace issue, media issue.
You ready for this?
And then we'll go to all your calls about everything else.
The Dallas Morning News is the go-to Metropolitan Daily around here.
I mean, you got the Star Telegram, which serves Fort Worth and Arlington and such, but it's Dallas Morning News is a big deal.
And I have written for them since 2004.
And like every, like most major metropolitan dailies, they get grilled every once in a while for being too liberal and blah, blah, blah.
And editorially, they are certainly to the left of me, but then isn't everyone.
But I will tell you this: that in my, and you go to dallasenews.com, it's, I'm sorry, you got to pay for it.
So I hope to make it worth it for you.
I don't know how anybody did not see this coming.
The newspaper industry is in an unbelievable cauldron of hell right now.
Because due to the internet, they have spent years, years, years, and years trying to sell what they are, in fact, giving away.
When I suddenly realized that I could read every newspaper in America free on my laptop, it occurred to me, wow, I don't need to get the paper in my house anymore.
And that apparently occurred to about 150 million of you as well.
I don't need to drop a quarter or 50 cents or a dollar in that box anymore at Einstein Brothers bagels.
Get to work, flip open the laptop.
There's the newspaper.
That was obviously unsustainable.
Well, so now all the newspapers make you pay through the internet to get their website.
So dallasnews.com is the Dallas Morning News, and I write on Wednesdays and occasional Sundays.
And all I would say about them is that they have always let me write absolutely anything I wanted.
I have blistered President Obama and backed it up because that's my job.
I have espoused strong conservative views and backed them up because that's my job.
And what I really love is sometimes they'll make me a point counterpoint, a Gene Robinson at the Post or somebody else that they're syndicated to receive.
It'll be me versus some liberal point counterpoint on an issue, and that's always an honor.
It's great.
But they run me and other conservative columnists as well.
But like most major metropolitan dailies, their editorial board is probably left of center.
Now, how much of that politics extends to the advertising sections?
Most specifically, the wedding section.
Don't get ahead of me.
That's right.
I don't know if it was all that long ago, but they listen, I can't remember the last time that I actually went to the wedding section, the wedding announcement section.
It's just not really where I go.
But apparently, the Dallas Morning News, and I'm sure they have company in this regard around the country.
Just take a look at your major Metropolitan Daily.
In the wedding section, do they list the gay marriages?
If they don't and your city has any kind of gay community, they're probably going to raise a little bit of a ruckus.
What are we?
Chopped liver?
What are we?
Second-class citizens?
What?
Our checks don't clear at the bank?
Because again, the wedding announcements are paid advertising.
But editorially, a newspaper can either carry them or not carry them.
If a newspaper does choose to carry them, then you might run the risk of social conservatives for whom this is such a hot-button issue that you're like a guy who was on the phone to me today in the local show saying, Mark, I just canceled my subscription because the Dallas Morning News runs the gay weddings and the wedding announcements.
And I thought to myself, really, really?
And I said, first of all, you're totally entitled.
You are part of the marketplace.
You vote with your newspaper dollars.
And if that means that much to you, knock yourself out.
And it's funny because he sounded like he was kind of conflicted about it.
It's like, it's like losing an old friend because I love their sports section and I love this and all that.
And I said, well, if it means that much to you, then don't do it.
Well, it apparently did.
So he did it.
And that was his decision.
It's his slice of the marketplace.
And that is it.
And I never begrudge anyone whatever decisions they may choose to make.
But the calls that came in afterward were interesting.
There's one young lady who called and said, hey, Mark, I wonder if he minds the strip club ads in the sports section.
And I don't even know if those are still there anymore.
Or I wonder if there are some newspapers that run personal ads, you know, men for men, women for women, or men for women for illicit hookups.
And don't even get me started on escort advertising.
Oh, this might or might not draw the ire, but gay weddings in the wedding section, ooh, there's your deal breaker.
And I thought that was kind of an interesting, kind of an interesting call.
So I took it through what I often do, a bit of a flow chart.
Step one, step two, step three, step four.
Number one, there's such a thing as gay people.
Number two, they get married.
Now let's stop right there because Texas is one of the states that are the majority that do not recognize as legal equal to heterosexual marriage.
We don't recognize gay marriage.
Now, this is funny.
If you're thinking that must mean that gays aren't getting married, guess what?
They're getting married all over the place today, every day.
And you know what?
They're totally free to.
Every time I hear the word gay marriage ban, it makes me nuts.
You can't ban gay marriage.
It's going to be a knock on the church door.
You homosexuals getting married in there.
Get out, get out, get out.
No.
It's not whether gay marriages happen.
It's whether they are the legal equal of heterosexual marriages.
That's it.
A marriage is in fact, or a wedding, a marriage, is three things.
It is legal.
It is social.
It is religious.
It has a legal, social, and religious component.
The legal component is the only one that is the national debate.
And that is, in fact, the only one that is any of our business.
Will our states recognize as legal equals gay and heterosexual marriages?
The social angle is, will people show up and bring gifts?
And do you have a champagne fountain and have a dance afterward?
And is it a societal thing?
And is the couple viewed as married by the people they hang out with?
That's the social element.
And the third element is religious.
Is there a church that will hold a ceremony and a member of the clergy who will perform it?
If that's a yes, boom, there you go.
Got it covered.
And all of that is other people's business.
The legal angle is the only one that is everybody's business and the only one around which there is the current debate.
So if these weddings are going to happen, and they are, and you have a big old newspaper, probably one that is as starved for cash as most of them are, do you accept the gay wedding announcements to run in the paper?
If you do, then you might hack off the occasional reader.
If you don't, you will hack off the occasional gay reader.
So the Dallas Morning News apparently made the judgment call to go ahead and run them, maybe hoping not a whole lot of people would notice.
So I may not be doing them that much a favor now.
And again, I love these guys.
They've been nothing but kind to me.
They run my column.
And in fact, let me just jump out and tell you exactly what I think.
You want to know what my take on this is?
I will tell you.
And I've written columns about this.
I strongly believe in the unique special legal recognition of heterosexual marriage.
That if we view as legal equals heterosexual and gay marriage, that if my marrying a woman is the same as my marrying a man, that is a dangerous legal precedent that says that manhood and womanhood are in fact the same.
If A equals B and A equals C, then B equals C. Remember, eighth grade?
There's not a homophobic bone in my body.
If gay folks want to get married, none of my business.
Knock yourselves out.
The question, you go find the church, go.
Find the assembly hall, have the reception, knock yourselves out.
None of my business.
What is my business is what does my state is what is the legal recognition afforded that union by my state?
That's my business.
And that is my view.
It is the conservative view.
But there's another view I have called, I don't care what's in the wedding section of the newspaper.
If these weddings occur and the newspaper chooses to run their announcements, I just, I don't have the time to get bent into a pretzel about it.
If you do, then God love you.
So what I said today on the local show was: I have a feeling that there are a whole lot of people who agree with me about marriage, about man-woman marriage, but who also agree with me that they're not going to blister a newspaper that happens to run the gay wedding announcements.
It's like, okay, whatever.
So that was a big deal today.
And if this has ever been a big deal in your world, let me know.
And here's one thing.
The gentleman did say that he called the paper and spoke to somebody in the publisher's office who said, man, if we didn't run the gay wedding announcements, we'd get sued.
Really?
Please tell me that would get thrown out of court.
Because editorially speaking, I believe the newspaper has the right to run or not run whatever wedding announcements they wish.
And if newspaper A says, absolutely, we'll run the gay wedding announcements, they can do it.
If newspaper B says, nope, we ain't going to run them, they can do that.
The notion that this would wind up in litigation is depressing, yet probably true.
All righty.
Well, there's a little something, something.
1-800-282-2882.
Let's do at least one call before we hit our first break of the hour, this final hour of the day.
We are in Glendora, California.
Sandy, Mark Davis, in for Rush.
How are you?
I'm fine.
How are you?
Great.
Heading up for the weekend, huh?
Well, I tell you what, I just, in Texas, our main wish for the weekend is to have daily highs below 105.
So we're stoked.
Yeah, I've lived in Texas, and they're the most friendly people in the world.
We try.
Yeah.
My issue that I would like to talk about today is all this spending in Washington, you know, and Obama's rant about buying American.
But he's, you know, I mean, vacations with 40 and 60-person entourages and the way Congress has been spending and everything.
They're treating this whole, they're treating their tenure, and Obama's treating his presidency like a knee ticket at Disneyland.
Yeah, ma'am.
Let me offer the consistency check.
If this was a president you voted for and whose agenda you admired, would you mind the vacationing and the trappings of leisure?
You know, Ronald Reagan never took that many vacations.
Neither did Bush.
You know, in terms of raw days spent on vacation, I'd be interested in the total.
And I do believe, I totally understand that the president never really fully goes on vacation and unplugs like, I don't know, I do.
But I would be a lot of it is imagery.
When Bush and Reagan went on vacation, they went to ranches.
They cleared brush.
They chopped wood.
Yeah.
You know, this president eats finger sandwiches in Martha's Vineyard.
It's a different look.
Did Michelle have to go with 40 people to Spain?
Yeah, that's you know what?
My own consistency check is in an era of austerity when we just truly don't have the money to do virtually anything, if a president I voted for and admired greatly was dragging the family along with costly entourages, I would indeed have the same lament.
Yes, I would.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
But you just don't see conservatives doing it.
Yeah, I mean, you know, well, when's, well, we had eight years of President Bush, and then he tended to, of course, post-9-11, you know, and he said, I'm not going to play golf.
A policy that didn't, that's one Bush policy Obama chose not to continue.
It'll be interesting.
If we get a Republican president to succeed Obama this time, please, God let that happen.
I think we'll probably all go on vacation watch and see just, you know, when's he going?
Where's he going?
My recommendation, get a ranch.
A ranch is excellent vacation Teflon.
Thank you, Sandy.
Appreciate it very, very much.
Mark Davis in for Rush.
Back in a moment on the EIB network.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show, which on Monday will actually be hosted by Rush Limbaugh.
There you go.
There's a reason to feel good about a Monday, huh?
Everybody feels good about Friday because it's open line Friday here on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Mark Davis filling in.
Let's get back to some of your calls, see what's cooking.
Let's do some Sacramento action, shall we?
Roger, hey, Mark Davis, how are you?
Nice to be having the Rush Limbaugh.
Firstly, thank you for helping educate the people that are the listeners.
I'm really leaning heavily towards Governor Rick Perry, and I'm trying to learn his feelings on if he has any feelings towards amnesty, towards our illegal immigrants of all nationalities.
You have posed one of the more interesting questions that will unfold during the Perry campaign.
In his long years as Texas governor, he has given us a lot of imagery of him in a members-only jacket down at the border, vigilant, making sure that the borders really mean something.
But he has not been the kind of border warrior of, you know, like a Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, me, Rush, mainly concerned about waves upon waves upon waves of illegals coming across and taxing our social structure and taking our jobs.
The Rick Perry border warrior has been concerned about drugs and international gangs and people getting their heads chopped off in Juarez and stuff like that, all of which is a very valid issue.
That's all true, too.
But not so much the kind of illegal immigration passion that most conservatives have had.
Now, that's up till really recently.
But in the legislative session just ended, Governor Perry made a point of stressing what was called a sanctuary cities bill, a bill that, for those who don't know, a sanctuary city is a city that it's kind of funny.
It's really vague and kind of nebulous, but you just kind of get the feeling that their cops are not allowed to ask about anybody's immigration status during a traffic stop or any time else for that matter, thus creating the image of a sanctuary for illegals, even if they break the law.
The bill, there you go.
The bill from Governor Perry, which did not ultimately pass, was not his fault, would have essentially made it illegal for a city to do that.
It wouldn't require cities to turn into little Arizonas, but it would prevent them from having policies that were de facto sanctuary policies.
So, was that, and I guess we'll see in terms of the rhetoric we get from his campaign and maybe in some debates and what he sticks up on websites and makes advertisements about.
Has he become the kind of border warrior that I think most Republican voters want, with attention not just paid to multinational violent gangs, but to the wave upon wave of admittedly well-meaning folks from south of the border who just want to come over and have a better life, but sorry, it violates our laws and we have to say no with a border that really stops them.
That's a big we'll see.
That's a big we'll see.
May I ask one more question?
Sure.
I'm ignorant of the fact if there's a problem with truck drivers coming in over the border in Texas and they're not being charged a tariff to come in.
But for our truck drivers to go into Mexico, they're being charged.
Is that true or false?
Well, are truck drivers from Mexico allowed to cross the border?
That answer is yes.
It is the border is a sloppy premise.
We don't keep out enough of our illegals and we don't have proper oversight over where trucks are coming from, how supervised they are in terms of safety, and the degree to which all the books and records are kept properly in terms of tariffs they pay, fees they pay, et cetera, et cetera.
This is one of the many, many ways in which the border is a mess.
If that is my way of essentially saying I don't know and nobody else does, then that is the very unsatisfactory answer.
In the post-NAFTA era or the NAFTA era, obviously trucks from America are supposed to go to Mexico, trucks from Mexico supposed to come to America.
It's all part of free trade.
And there are elements of free trade that are lovely.
But if we allow things like that to result in a laxitude about the safety of and the fee paying of trucks that are northbound, then that's problematic.
All righty, man.
Thank you.
1-800-282-2882.
All right.
Tell you what, rather than give a caller extremely short shrift, let me just tell you once again that Rush is back on Monday.
Always go to rushlimbaugh.com, find out what's going on here in the Limbaugh world.
If you want to follow me around, Mark Davis on Twitter, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S.
We put stuff on there.
And when we come back, we're going to spend a little time on some foreign policy.
There's a gentleman who wants, he says he doesn't want us to be overly aggressive on Iran.
And we'll also take a look at what to expect in the week to come on the 2012 campaign trail, what to look for.
It's kind of funny.
Monday's news is going to be filled with Irene and response to Irene.
I'll give you a little preview on what we might expect from that.
And of course, more of your calls in the final half hour of Open Line Friday.
I'm Mark Davis.
And for us, stick around.
Be right back with you.
Home stretch.
Final half hour.
Then we are out of here.
Off to the weekend.
And I've said it 47 times, and I'll say it again just to everybody: North Carolina, Virginia, and Northward all the way to New York and beyond.
Just safety, safety, good wishes, prayers.
Hope it all just kind of fizzles and turns into nothing.
But yeah, it seems like it's going to be something.
Already is.
And if the evacuation order comes, do it.
Okay.
And listen, I don't want to be cavalier about that.
I've never been in a position where some authority said, you need to leave your house now.
And I, you know, that's got to be hard.
It's like, well, this is all my stuff.
I mean, what do I do?
What am I supposed to do?
Well, you're supposed to get out of there and save your own life.
That's what you're supposed to do.
And it's not like you haven't had some days to prep for this.
So hopefully you've gathered all of your stuff.
And it's weird because I don't remember if it was Katrina related.
I don't know.
Just maybe if anything ever did happen.
Thankfully, we don't get a lot of hurricanes or earthquakes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
One of the many reasons I like living here.
But if you knew your house was just going to be obliterated and soon, what would you run get and get out of there with?
I mean, other than living things, your kids and your pets, obviously, okay?
Okay, most of the pets.
The hermit crabs, we'll talk.
Kidding.
And the answer kept coming back.
Pictures.
Pictures.
And it's weird in this digital age, all my pictures are on my computer.
And all I need to do is just re-establish some Wi-Fi and the little hard disk.
And then the wonderful world of Apple, I got that thing called the time machine where every picture I've ever put on there is retrievable, even if my computer drops into the ocean right now.
But I haven't scanned everything.
I don't know if I ever will, but I live long enough to scan everything from the 60s of my youth and the 70s of my adolescence and the 80s of my young adulthood and beyond.
So I think I'd run and get every hard copy photograph, every picture album.
Just run and get that.
And if that's all I could get, then that's it.
Everything else, everything else is replaceable.
So, gosh, just as I'm sitting here saying these things, I'm sitting in the middle of Texas looking at sunny skies, complaining because it's going to be 106 when I get in the car.
Yeah, I don't have it so bad.
Many of you are being just buffeted by storms like maybe you've never seen.
I just, on behalf of all of us listening, we just wish all of you well and that the weekend goes as free of loss for you as it can.
All righty.
1-800-282-2882.
Speaking of North Carolina, we're a little bit west, but let's go to Winston-Salem.
Josh, hey, Mark Davis, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hey, Mark, good afternoon.
Thank you for taking my call.
My pleasure.
The reason why I decided to pick up the phone and make this call is it struck me kind of odd.
You're saying that your three issues on gay marriage is legal, social, and religious.
And then you said that you're only fighting, well, not dog and fight, that's not the word you used, but basically the way I felt, the way you were verbaging your outlook on it and was the legal issue.
Well, I take issue with that because, first of all, if you don't believe in Obama and his ideologies and social liberal movement, you're considered racist.
Well, the way you said and were very adamant about saying, I don't have a homophobic bone in my body.
Well, if I don't agree with the homosexual lifestyle and their marriage, it's going to make me homophobic.
Absolutely right.
I believe in the body.
Exactly right.
But when I sin, I know I sin and I repent for my sin.
The difference between that is their sin is they think it's okay and God accepts it and he does.
And now, what two grown people do in their bedroom is between them, two consenting adult people.
That's their business.
But they take their gay agenda, their homosexual agenda, and they push it.
And that's within the gay marriage.
And as far as I'm concerned, that is synonymous with the liberal agenda.
And it's destroying this country.
I have hopefully good news, and that is that you and I don't really disagree at all.
The three prongs of the issue that I mentioned were about identifying the only one that is our business to change in somebody else's life.
A wedding is legal.
It is social.
It has a legal aspect, a social aspect, and a religious aspect.
The only one that we can change for other people is the legal aspect.
We can decide in the states in which we live whether the gay marriages are going to be legally recognized equal as heterosexual marriages.
We cannot tell them not to hold those weddings.
We cannot tell churches not to condone them.
That's all.
That's all I meant.
We're all entitled to our opinions.
There are things we can agree with and disagree with, but the only one we can do something about is the legal recognition of those unions.
That's all.
And then Dutch stands up and says this is not a Christian nation, which it is, then from the Christian standpoint, homosexual in a marriage is wrong.
And so there's a lot of people who are not.
Okay, but Josh, here's where we get into.
Here's where we get into really interesting stuff about the language.
The majority of people in America are Christian.
Are we a white nation if the majority of Americans are white?
We are a nation of complete religious freedom.
I have long lamented that the devoutness of the Founding Fathers has been purged from our educations.
The people who founded this country were extremely mindful of God, extremely mindful of divine providence, as they often called it, etc.
You didn't get a whole lot of Jesus talk from the Founding Fathers in a sort of a modern Christian way, but they were absolutely very religiously minded.
I think referring to all of them as deists is a bit of a stretch.
Let's just all admit they were very religious people who had a very strong sense of religious overtones as they created what they felt was a divinely blessed country.
Okay, boom, so far so good, right?
That having been said, the term Christian nation has a problematic air to it because it suggests that if you are not Christian, you are somehow somewhat less American.
You follow me?
I can follow where that genre might be thought up, but I mean, I don't agree with it.
To be a Christian nation doesn't mean anybody's less accepted because they're not a Christian, but don't come over here and try to change.
You know, if I moved to France and I moved into a country that believed in this kind of cultural and religious atmosphere, I would, if I chose to move there, then I would, you know, I wouldn't go there and try and change it.
And that's what everybody seems to be doing to move into America.
It's not that if you come over here and you're not Christian, you have to become a Christian, but you have to accept that this is a Christian nation.
And if you don't, don't try to change the nation.
That's what I'm saying.
But no, you don't.
You don't have to accept anything of the kind.
I think that when I talk a lot about something I think you probably believe in a lot when immigrants come here about assimilating, about assimilating to a certain sense of American values.
If you want to call it Judeo-Christian, if that's not too inclusive for you, that there are certain ways to come over here and be rather than setting up your own kind of enclave of things that seem hostile to American values.
I'm right there with you for all of that.
But we are a nation of complete religious freedom where you can come here and be of whatever faith you wish or none at all, and you are just as American as you are and as I am.
That's just, and I know that's we probably, again, Josh, I appreciate you.
Love you.
My best, everybody, in Winston-Salem.
And that's where, because this is the tree you can run around five times, because Josh is right.
I'm totally with him.
I'm totally with the guy.
It's not binary.
It's not like a switch either being on or off, where there's mandatory Christianity or forced secular humanism.
We are a nation of complete religious freedom.
You can come here and be whatever you want.
The really horrible thing that started to happen is 50 or so years ago when the question arose over whether we had to have prayers to Jesus coming over the public address system in a public school, which is government.
I think there's a strong libertarian argument to be made, and I will make it, that religion is the personal business of everybody and that government should neither prod you toward nor away from any religious belief.
Meaning, if the kids want to gather for a prayer meeting around the flagpole before school, you let them.
But if they want to have Bible study over the school PA, might want to sit tight on that.
That's the libertarian view, and it is mine.
But the problem became that instead of having government, schools, and the rest of government be religiously neutral, I believe that you should have a strong feeling that the government does not care what religion you are.
That's what I want.
I want the government to not care what religion I am.
That's the neutrality that I think is the best groundwork for total religious freedom.
But what wound up happening was religious hostility.
You've heard all the anecdotal stories.
Kids saying grace over lunch and getting punished or suspended.
A kid getting punished or suspended for giving a classmate a Christmas card with the Virgin Mary on it.
That's insane.
And the purging, the purging from curricula.
Do your kids know, do they know how religious the founding fathers were?
They'd better.
I think every high school kid should be taught extensively about the Bible.
And yes, the Quran and yes, other religious texts of significance.
Yes.
But if a kid graduates from high school and doesn't know what the Bible says or what it teaches, I don't mean with any teacher saying, you should believe this from Deuteronomy or you should live by this from the book of Psalms.
No, that's a preacher's job or a family's job.
It is a school's job to teach a kid what Christianity is and other faiths as well.
And we have stripped that for fear of violating that religious neutrality, we've stripped that away and said, wait a minute, just because government can't play favorites in terms of religion, we are going to banish religiosity and the subject of it from any history of texts, which is horrible.
Because if you've grown up, any kid that graduates from high school that thinks that the Founding Fathers just really liked freedom and really wanted to get away from the British and stuff and have free trade and prosperity and things like that, if their education does not contain how deeply religious the Founding Fathers were, then it is an incomplete education.
All righty, the almost complete Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis filling in.
Back in a moment.
We're in the waning moments of the Friday Rush Limbaugh Show Open Line Friday.
So let's go to those open lines and see what opens up.
Mark Davis filling in for us today.
It's been a joy all week.
And I know that Mark Stein feels that way about Monday and Mark Belling does about Tuesday and Wednesday.
And it's always, always a joy to come in here into this environment and hang out with Bo and Mike and Greg Chapin doing the call screen today.
It's just a joy to hear those guys through my headphone ears.
And so much appreciate y'all.
All right, let's see what's going on in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Tricia, Mark Davis, in for Rush.
How are you?
Oh, fine, Mark.
On the presidential candidates, I think that Romney is presidential and he has the resume.
He's competent and can get the votes of Independents and Democrats.
His basic problem is that he's kind of like Ward Cleaver, a little bit boring to people that want the newest, latest thing.
And that didn't work out very well with Obama.
And I think that Perry has a Texas problem for the people, especially Democrats and Independents, who will not give up their BDS.
Bush derangement syndrome.
Well, I know, I know, I know.
I thought I recognized the term.
When President Bush first ran, he got saddled with the Texas cowboy imagery, but he won and he won twice.
I know what you mean about Romney.
I can't get actor Hugh Beaumont out of my head now with the Ward Cleaver reference.
So that really works.
It works great.
Thanks.
Do we, in order to beat Obama, need to offer up someone who is palatable to the great middle?
The short answer is yes, but there are a couple of ways to do that.
One is to offer up a candidate who's actually not conservative enough on a couple of issues, and that's Romney.
The other is to offer up a candidate who gets passion points and people nodding, not in total agreement, but in sufficient agreement to vote for him against the backdrop of this disastrous presidency.
Reagan did not have to moderate his views in order to get elected twice.
And, you know, Perry and Reagan are not the same creature.
Perry's a little, oh, I don't know, a little bolder, a little more assertive, might get himself in trouble a couple of times for that.
And there's a risk to that.
But that might be the exact kind of passion that Republican primary voters are looking for.
All righty, with that, we'll move on.
I'm sorry, go ahead, Trisha.
Mandate that Gardasil is for 11-year-old girls to be mandated and take away parental rights to determine what their children needed.
This is one of the things that really caused him some trouble in his conservative base in Texas.
It was the Gardasil Initiative, where a drug that goes up against the human papillomavirus, which can morph into cervical cancer.
If you want that for your daughter, that's lovely.
The idea of it being mandated by government was really distasteful.
He has now said, I shouldn't have done that.
I don't know if that helps you or not.
What kept it from being such an enormous, seething issue for me wasn't my favorite thing either.
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 to do it.
And your school would say, okay.
But still, but still, that's not an invalid point.
Well, I think another problem for Perry, too, is he has jumped on trying to grab all the Huckabee supporters.
And so there are people besides the Bush derangement syndrome, people that Planned Parenthood people and gay activists that fight against anyone like Michelle Bachman or Rick Santorum that stand for these conservative issues.
And so there again, you alienate a lot of constituents amongst the people.
But let's not overstate that.
Are you using a little bit of code language here?
When you say trying to win over the Huckabee voters, are you talking about the degree to which Governor Perry is comfortable in the evangelical community?
Well, yes, but I think his very obvious things, which, I mean, I love these things.
I'm a Christian myself.
I happen to be a Mormon, but I don't support Romney because he's a Mormon.
Okay, in about 30 seconds, because time is gone.
Give me an example of something that Rick Perry has seen to do that strikes you as too religious for this.
I've got to have a rally with the prayer thing.
What's the problem with that?
Well, with me, it's not a problem at all, but I think it was a very obvious play for the Huckabee supporters.
Or was it a sincere immersion into an evangelical community that he feels comfortable in and a clear message to Republican voters?
Hey, guess what?
Some people are not comfortable with this.
I am.
I guess it depends on what kind of credit you give him for sincerity.
Listen, I enormously appreciate you, Tricia.
Thank you.
All right, let's get our last break in.
Come back and enjoy some final moments together, shall we?
Not too melancholy, because when I'm done, it means Rush is back on Monday, and that's nothing but a good thing.
Mark Davis, back in a moment.
Well, that ought to about do it for two enjoyable days for me and a week of enjoyable days for Mark Stein, Mark Belling, and me, Mark Davis, out of WBAP, Dallas-Fort Worth.
Follow me in the world of Twitter if you want to at Mark Davis, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S.
And just thanks enormously to Beau Snerdley, Mike Mamone, Greg Chapin, the people who have made it all possible today.
The folks who really make it possible are you by actually hanging out and listening and calling.
I deeply appreciate that.
Let's send every blessing and every prayer and every good wish to our listeners who are along the Atlantic coast right in the path of Hurricane Irene.
I hope that all works out as best as it can for you.
And Rush will be back on Monday.
God bless our country and our troops.
God bless you.
Thanks for listening.
I'm Mark Davison for Rush.
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