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Dec. 22, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:28
December 22, 2011, Thursday, Hour #2
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And a good Thursday afternoon to you in progress here in Texas and across the fruited plain as Rush would sound.
We uh we have the Rush Limbaugh vacation underway.
Mark Stein is in tomorrow, and then a uh a smattering, I believe that's the collective noun of uh fill in hosts, none of whom will be me.
Uh it was so nice, it's always so nice to get the call.
I know my compadres will uh harmonize with me on this.
It's a joy and an honor to fill this seat when Rush is away.
Uh I have a lot going on next week.
Almost all of it involves doing as little as possible at my house and you know, some family stuff and this and that, just basically recharging the batteries and get ready to go to Iowa.
Uh Rush will be back on Iowa Caucus Day, uh Tuesday, January 3rd.
Gee, you think you'll have some material uh saved up by then, it should be great.
And to pilot you through all of that material between now and then.
Those of us who are eternally pleased and proud to be the uh the fill-in bench strength here on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Phone number remains 1-800-282-2882.
Website remains Rush Limbaugh.com.
Uh Mark Davis from WBAP in Dallas Fort Worth with you, as I've been so pleased to be throughout this year and uh and a few years going.
And as the the year winds down and we hit the Christmas season and a reflective time to look back at 2011.
Um just enormous gratitude to Rush and to James and H.R. and Ed and Mike and everybody whose magical voices I hear through the headphones here in Texas when I do this.
So, guys, thanks for making it a joy and a pleasure.
All right, let's uh let's keep things rolling here topically.
Before we get back to calls, let me begin each hour sort of laying down another topical layer or two.
I mentioned I had an idea about how Iowa and New Hampshire might go.
In no way, in no way, does that involve uh something rising to the level of a prediction?
Uh people I I just think that'd be crazy.
I mean, people can do it.
I mean, shoot, people predict football games, I guess.
And that's probably kind of crazy.
But uh it changes so much.
Week to week, day to day, uh just to work our way back through the calendar year.
Here in Texas in particular, we took a look at the Romney front runner status, and many people uh said that the entry of Governor Perry into the race that that would create a Romney Perry two-person race because there didn't really seem to be anybody else with enough money, enough track record, enough resume uh to make a difference.
I mean, uh Michelle Bachman has her requisite amount of fans uh here in Texas and elsewhere.
Uh there's a lot so much good to say about Rick Santorum, but he already the the stigma was starting to gather around Rick that at least nationally speaking, he could not buy a break in the polls, which is just horribly unjust to this wonderful man, and maybe Iowa will reward him with a surprising finish.
I really hope they do.
But just to show you that that everything that you think is happening, it is happening as you witness it, but it simply may not be happening for long.
Governor Perry got in and seemed to be a little adrift on the campaign trail.
I think he has found his voice now.
Is it too late?
Probably not.
Tell you about that in a minute.
Uh Michelle Bachman did very well in the Ames Iowa straw poll.
And so everybody uh we went a little loopy about her for a while, and that was great.
I that was very energizing.
I love Michelle.
Um but then Perry got in and sort of ate up all of her oxygen.
And then Herman Cain uh uh starts to catch fire.
And we all know where that went.
So everybody's sort of had their time, and this right now seems to be Newt Gingrich's time uh in the uh sort of not the on-deck circle, that's flawed.
Uh it it in in the in the Romney alternative chair, the Romney Alternative Chair, because everybody believes, most everybody believes, that what we're going to come down to in some type of home stretch, and it may take till April to get there, but some type of home stretch is someone who is Romney and someone who is not.
Nothing gets by me.
This is some top drawer analysis you're getting here.
One person will be Romney and the other one will not.
But what I mean by that is that the real race here appears to be the who's gonna be the the other I I don't want to say the anti-Romney, because that implies against.
Who's gonna be the Romney alternative?
For a while there looked like it could be Michelle.
For a while there looked like it could be Governor Perry, and it may yet be.
For a while there it looked like it was gonna be Herman Kane.
Not so much.
Now, with his time in the sun in the Romney alternative chair, it's Newt Gingrich.
And so that means that Romney's going after him.
It means that Perry's going after him because he's trying to claw back to relevancy.
It means Ron Paul, Lord knows Ron Paul's going after him.
And uh and so Newt is just getting bludgeoned in just about every commercial break that you can find on the TV sets of Iowa.
Is that having an effect?
Yeah, it is.
Uh that Rasmussen poll that had Newt up on Mitt 32-19 a month ago now shows Mitt back on top of Newt, 23 to 20.
And yes, for you Paul heads, there's Ron Paul at 18.
So i it's it's all fluid.
It is ch the Iowa caucuses are a snapshot of what's going on on January 3rd.
Can you imagine if the Iowa caucuses had been last week?
Newt Gingrich or two weeks ago.
Newt Gingrich would have won.
He would have won going away.
But the Iowa caucuses were not two weeks ago.
They are a couple of weeks from now.
And so it's it's weird.
The horse race analogy works.
I mean, a horse can lag behind, a horse can be in the lead at the first turn, the second turn, the clubhouse turn.
Doesn't mean squat.
What matters is who's ahead at the finish line.
The Iowa finish line will take place in barns and school gymnasiums and living rooms on the evening of January 3rd.
That's when we get what might be a photo finish, or it might be secretariat nearly lapping the field.
It's impossible to know that now.
Because what I tell you what, there's here's one thing that we know.
Romney will finish strong.
Ah, that's some bold stuff, isn't it?
That Mark Davis, he's a bold son of a gun.
Romney will finish strong.
Will he win Iowa?
I don't know.
Newt might still beat him.
Ron Paul might do better in uh than Romney in Iowa.
I don't know.
Perry might surprise living daylights out of people.
Here, yeah, I know I'm killing you with this this Perry stuff.
Here's the deal.
Here are a couple of ifs, a couple of ifs for you.
If it really is true that Republican America cannot get sufficiently excited about Mitt Romney, and if it is true that Republican America admires Newt and is energized by Newt, but the idea of an actual Newt campaign, an actual Newt presidency might be a little unnerving.
If those are true of a lot of people, there's really only one thoroughly plausible got the money, got the street cred guy to say, hi.
I'm still here.
Remember me?
Yeah, I forgot that third cabinet department.
And yeah, every once in a while I'll mess up how old you are to vote and even where the election day is, but my head is true, my heart is right.
You don't have to worry about whether I once favored man-made global warming is a theory.
You don't have to worry about finding old documents where I seem to think that an individual health care mandate was a good idea.
You don't have any of that BS with me.
I'm Rick Perry.
And as long as he does that, that's going to have some appeal.
How much?
I don't know.
That's yet to, as every story says, yet to be determined.
But it is.
It's totally yet to be determined.
So Iowa will anoint its winner on the evening of January 3rd.
Is that predictive?
Not so much.
Often the Iowa caucus winner uh gets um waylaid the following uh week, next few days in New Hampshire.
Remember 2008, Barack Obama won Iowa.
You know who else did?
Mike Huckabee.
Uh last I saw Mike was writing books and hosting TV shows and doing a fine job at both.
And probably wondering why didn't I run?
We love you, Mike.
Uh then you go to New Hampshire, and uh John McCain won New Hampshire.
And so did Hillary.
So Iowa and New Hampshire are important, but they're not predictive.
They they are they have value in winnowing down the field.
They sort of give heft to some candacies, suck the air out of a few more, so that it becomes kind of clear, not just after Iowa and New Hampshire, but then South Carolina and Florida to follow.
You will we'll be having conversations.
I will on the local show that I host here in DFW, and Rush will be having this conversation, and all of us in fill-in land will have it with you when we sit in for Rush.
Uh I mean, if that happens a great deal during the primary stretch, it may not.
I've What America needs is Rush in this chair from January through at least Super Tuesday.
So I hope that golf weather is not that appealing.
Kidding.
And what ultimately is going to happen is the conversation will uh it'll go like this.
If it's already started sort of prematurely.
I love when people call me and go, yeah, Mark, isn't it time for Rick Santorum to get out of what?
It's not time for anybody to do anything.
When Michelle Bachman went from really high in the polls and then wound up back down in mid-single digits, people would email me and go, Yeah, Mark, uh Michelle Bachman, doesn't she need to kind of get out of the way?
No, no.
Real human beings need to cast real votes.
This is where genuine surprises can happen.
Will they?
I don't know.
And probably, probably, the polls and the way the polls have been going are fairly reliable.
I mean, the it's uh elections don't always go the way polls go, but more often than not, polls uh I mean, this the the ones that are done that are actual random scientific samplings, none of this online poll nonsense, whether it illicits a result you like or it doesn't.
I mean, real polls.
I mean Romney is strong.
Gingrich is strong right now.
Uh Herman Cain was strong.
His his appeal did build, and then it did wane.
Rick Perry did enter strong, and then boy, did that go away.
And he may be, you know, coming back somewhat.
Ron Paul is strong, and God knows we're gonna figure out what to do with that.
Uh, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
So um the idea I and I listen, all I want for Brother Santorum, whom I think I've made clear I love, uh is maybe the interesting surprise of a gosh, what do I dare dream?
Of a fourth place finish.
You know, you if if you finish, if you finish top four in Iowa, that's something.
I mean, fifth is like, you know, okay.
But fourth, you can s you can you can argue for your relevancy.
And that's what everybody's gonna be doing as these dates pass before us, arguing for their continued relevancy as the drama unfolds.
All right, um, this year has unfolded, and another way in which it's been quite the adventure is economically.
When we come back, we are going to take uh, of course, a bunch of your calls at 1800-282-2882 on a variety of things.
But Paul Wiseman is the economics writer over at AP, and he has a very interesting opening to his uh sort of retroactive um, his sort of um reminiscence about the uh the 2011 economic year.
It might raise an eyebrow.
We'll talk about that next.
Mark Davis in for Rush on the EIB Network.
EIB Network.
It is the Thursday Rush Limbaugh show, the first day of Rush's vacation.
Mark Davis in today, Mark Stein tomorrow.
Collection of folks next week.
Rush back Tuesday, January 3rd, Iowa caucus day.
Let's dance.
Toward the phones.
And uh metaphorically speaking, dance through some of the topics of the week gone by, the year gone by, or some of what your thoughts are about where you think uh everything is going in 2012.
I've got the um uh the the AP economics uh writer story here, but let me go ahead and uh put some people on the air who've been waiting, and then I'll I'll get to that because the the what it's going to ask you to do, what it's going to ask you to do is answer the question, how do you think the economy is actually going?
Is it ending in a kind of a boom?
Is it um is it is it's it was oh let me do it right now.
Just take a second.
Paul Wiseman, AP economics writer.
The economy is ending 2011 on a roll.
Hmm.
Okay.
The job market is healthier, Americans are spending lustily on holiday gifts, a long-awaited turnaround for the depressed housing industry may be underway.
Gas is cheaper, factories are busier, stocks are higher.
Not bad for an economy faced with a debt crisis in Europe.
And as recently as last summer scattered predictions of a second recession at home.
Instead, the economy has grown faster each quarter this year, and the last three months should be the best.
Well, holy cow, let's hold the election now and give us that Obama second term if things are that great.
You know, everything truly is relative.
Are things better now than they were, you know, eight or nine months ago?
Yeah, smidge, sure.
I mean, how long can things stay in the toilet?
You know, the the the economy is going to get better.
The under the worst and most harmful presidents, there is still some vestige of of of market energy of people wanting to do something in their businesses, of people wanting to to find work, even if God forbid they have to move to do it.
There are people who are going to have that survival instinct, and that will keep the engines of the economy going, even under the most socialist leaning of presidents.
Oof.
Mr. Wiseman continues.
Many economists still worry that the year-end surge isn't sustainable.
In part because the average worker's pay is barely rising, and Europe may already be sliding into a recession that will infect the United States.
Yet for now, the economy is on an upswing that few had predicted.
What?
Can I share something with you?
I predicted it, and I ain't that special.
Okay, I'm sorta special.
No, I you don't have to be, you know, some economic genius to say that the most recognizable phenomenon in all of economic life, the the most recognizable metaphor is the pendulum.
Once things are a certain way, at some point, they swing back the other way.
The only thing that government can really do is provide the best way for the pendulum to swing more decidedly to the positive.
Ronald Reagan will tell you, would tell you if he were here.
He didn't make the economy better in the nineteen eighties.
He got government out of the way so that it could get better on its own.
Republicans of today will tell you that they're not seeking by some magical governmental wave of a magic wand to somehow by force of will make the economy better.
We're looking to get government out of the way so that it can get better.
Therein lies the basic difference between the way the left and right see the economy.
The economy to the left is something to be managed at a governmental level for the greater collective good.
The conservative view is to let market forces, free markets, free people determine the progress of an economy, because when that happens, government's not picking winners and losers.
Taxation is not confiscatory, success is not punished.
So very different views of America, as we've as we've discussed on a on a couple of issues today.
1800-282-2882.
Let us head to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Karen, Mark Davis in for Rush.
How are you?
Hi, Mark.
Hey.
Listen, uh, the reason that those of us that love Rush and all of his guest hosts, you, uh Mark Davis, Mark Stein, and Walter Williams, is because you guys not only are very intelligent, but you also the huge thing to me is common sense.
And I think that that's what separates the Republican Party, and I'm not talking about the establishment official Republican Party, because I've lost faith in them.
But I'm talking about um you know, the conservatives, the conservatives out there like like me who are now tea parties.
And look at the Tea Party.
I mean, common sense would tell you they have a huge group.
They go out there, they clean up after themselves.
That's common sense.
The Occupy people occupy everywhere, Wall Street, Portland, wherever.
They have no common sense.
Therefore they do every disgusting thing that you can think of all over the area, and they have to bulldoze the place after they've left.
And what do the liberals say?
Well, you know, they were just they were just expressing their opinion.
But the Tea Party or we're just radical you know, mad people.
Interesting relationship between uh between common sense and hygiene there, Karen.
I keep keep keeping keeping in mind that just in the very loosey goosey dictionary, common sense is defined as anything you agree with.
I'm sure you know Barack Obama thought common sense uh I should own GM.
I mean, I'm sure he probably felt that way.
Yeah, you're probably right.
But intellect is the thing.
Good, I'm sorry.
Common sense.
That just means you can you can be smart at something.
Chemical engineer, but you know, you you don't have enough common sense to save enough money so you can survive.
We all know folks like that.
Karen, let me let me thank you greatly on that.
And ultimately, what Karen has given us, if if common sense is a very nebulous term and very eye of the beholder kind of thing, the way we win in 2012 is making less government and stopping wasteful Washington spending and being serious about national security, making the things we Republicans, we conservatives want to do, making those things look like and seem like common sense to independent voters.
That's the key to success.
Mark Davis in for Rush.
We can confirm it for you.
Santa Claus is indeed coming to town in three count them three shopping days.
Shopping, man, the phenomenon of shopping.
Uh how's that working out for you?
That's very generic talk show guy stuff, and I'm perhaps asking that rhetorically.
But uh just coming off the gentleman's um uh article for AP about about the economy.
And yes, listen, uh uh Black Friday was great.
Cyber Monday was a butt kicker, it worked out uh nice uh uh nicely.
Uh adverbs, everybody, adverbs.
Um yes, I mean there are there are people who seem willing.
I uh uh and and I know this looks very much like uh seen through my political lenses.
But so I'll I'll lay it out this way.
Here are the possibilities.
The economy is slowly beginning to awaken, far more slowly than our gentleman writing that last story would seem to uh seem to portray, uh for one of two reasons.
Either all of these Obama policies are after an excruciating delay, finally starting to take hold.
America is realizing all along that the anointed one has been right.
He's been right, the stimulus.
Oh, that's right.
It was a good idea.
Obamacare.
Well, it was a good idea.
So I guess it's okay to loosen the purse strings a little bit and and maybe grow my business or maybe get off the couch and get a job and do all those cool things.
Right, there's possibility number one.
I kind of like possibility number two, that some people are participating or or are living by something Russia's mentioned, it's it's probably from some motivational book somewhere, uh along the lines of if there is a recession, simply refuse to participate.
Through the sweat of your own brow and and through commitment to your own excellence, carve out for yourself some level of success in the toughest of times.
And maybe people have just had it with the funk of of of uh the end of 2008 and 2009 and 10 and now most of eleven, and have said, doggone it, man.
Whatever I gotta do, I gotta do.
My family's gotta eat.
You know, I'm not gonna sit there and and and lolly gag in the suspended animation of unemployment checks for 99 stinking weeks.
I'm not gonna do it.
So there are people doing that, and then here's another phenomenon that comes into the alternative explanation of why the economy might be doing a little better.
And this is one Republicans ought to pay some attention to because we may need it come the summer and the early fall.
Well, just the summer.
Well, yeah, summer and early fall of next year.
If the economy really is doing better and President Obama is uh has the gall to claim credit for it, maybe America senses that the grown-ups are waiting in the wings and ready to take over.
The House Republicans is unpied to I see it all day.
Um poll numbers for Congress enters negative numbers.
Most Americans feel Congress will rot in the lake of fire.
Okay, I get it, I get it, I get it.
Congress has low approval ratings.
I know.
But no matter what people think of Congress institutionally, if you ask them between Republicans and Democrats, who seems to have their eye on the prize?
Who seems to have their nose to the grindstone of um of bringing spending under control?
Of reducing the size of out-of-control government.
I know Democrats will always score high on who cares about you, who loves you, who wants to make sure that you never uh want for anything.
Yeah, that'll be the Democratic Party.
But can but the Republican Party needs to be your dad.
That your dad, you remember when your dad would tell you things that were unpleasant, but they were necessary truth, Listen in single parent families, maybe it was a mom who had to do that.
It was a parent who came in and said, Look, you might not like hearing this, but here's the reality of the world, live by it.
That's the that's that's conservatism.
And it is always a tougher message to deliver because we are the politicians who always say we want to do less for you.
The politicians of the left will promise you the moon and the stars and then make you pay for them so that they can deliver as much of them as possible.
Conservatives will say, look, we we will do less for you, but the good news is you get to do these things for yourself.
And in so doing, you get to keep more of your stuff.
You're going to keep more of your money.
You're going to keep more of your liberty.
You're left to be a grown-up under our rule rule.
Under our uh okay.
When we own uh own it's word selection Thursday on the Rush Lib Ball Show.
When we have the the reins of the House, and when we have the reins of the Senate, and when there's a Republican in the in the White House, yes, these are politicians who are going to swear to do less for you.
And the good news that lies therein is that you get to do more for yourself.
The pride is yours.
The success is yours.
You're not punished for that success.
And there is no ceiling on that success placed by government that dares to step in and talk about how much of your money that you should be able to keep.
That should not be a harder message to deliver.
But in an America where half of the country does not pay taxes and receives free stuff from the half that does, it's a challenge.
All righty, we are in Canton, Ohio.
Brian, hey, Mark Davis in for Rush.
How are you?
Yeah, Merry Christmas.
Mark's family.
Thank you.
He told me to get quick.
So number one, on the with the theory of uh how the f do these tax cuts, maybe you want to just uh give the Democrats all the rope they need to hang themselves.
Go ahead and put it through and let this deficit just keep climbing and then just wipe them out when the election comes in two thousand twelve.
Well, it's funny, one could argue that's a little of what's happened.
I mean, we had one party rule for a while.
The economy went to hell, uh, things became terrible.
Republicans won the House in the 2010 elections, and and now we've got to sort of navigate these waters and say, look, there are things we've tried to do.
Some of them we've succeeded, some of them we haven't, but our instincts seem noble.
So if you want if you like our instincts of of smaller government, of less spending and less punitive taxes, then give us colleagues in the Senate and a colleague in the White House we can work with, that needs to be the pitch.
Yeah.
On the holder with the racism, when Kevin called uh where to go, these people, I mean they don't look at the numbers.
You know, they they the unemployment rate was 5.9% when Barack Obama was elected.
And it went to 10.2.
And because we criticize or disagree, you're racist.
When look through history, real racism's been on the side of the Democratic Party forever.
And these people that are are just basically indentured slaves to the Democratic Party for whatever they want to give them in handout.
And they don't see it.
This is what Herman Cain meant by brainwashing.
I mean, there was uh the the gentleman also from Ohio, I think, right from Columbus, right?
And he said that, you know, uh I'm sure you white people like Herman Cain, he thinks black folk are brainwashed.
Well, uh you know, uh if the definition of brainwashing in in a a bit of a hyperbolic sense is to sort of march in lockstep and do stuff without really thinking about it very much, um, then yeah, because uh as I told him, if if black America was 60, 40 liberal, 70, 30 liberal, shoot, eighty, twenty liberal, uh, whatever.
Ninety, ten?
I listen, I hear I hear this a lot, and I hear it from black conservatives.
I hear it from black conservatives.
They say from the barbershops to the family reunions, they catch holy you know what.
But then when they get into conversations with people, they find that the reasons they vote Democrat, vote Democrat, vote Democrat, vote Democrat, vote Democrat, is because Republicans remained the white devil.
Republicans remained the white devil in their minds, uh blocking any ability to take a look at at the it on an issue by issue basis.
So, Brian, listen, thank you.
If there is a uh I appreciate it.
If there is a uh and I'm listening did we I think we found one last time I filled in.
And of course I've promptly lost it.
Welcome to me.
There is a uh Google something like this.
The like a candidate selector, a candidate quiz where you just answer a bunch of questions.
Listen, some of them may be good, some of them may not be.
But the one of the fun exercises is it asks you questions on various issues.
Abortion, gun control, taxes, spending, health care.
And it chronicles your answers and then tells you what candidate is closest to you.
Without the stigma of the R or the D or the stigma of personality.
Somebody goes, Well, I don't like Newt.
Yeah, well, guess what?
Maybe if it turns out you you agree with him on most everything, you gotta put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Uh many is the time.
Many is the time.
That uh that it it's it's a it's a phenomenon called black folks learning they're more Republican than they thought they were.
And it's not limited to black folks.
You'll you'll find a lot of white uh uh folks who've been voting Democrat all the time, just your family reasons or whatever reasons.
Or just the the inherent um uh biases they've had infused into them that Republicans are racist.
Well, listen, popular culture tells them.
The news media tell them.
Academia tells them, Hollywood tells them that to be conservative is to be racist.
To be conservative is to hate the planet.
To be conservative is to be misogynist, a hater of women.
To be conservative is to be all manner of evil things.
If you hear that day in and day out, funny thing, you start to believe it.
So how sad that before we even get to talking about day-to-day policies that we want to uh enact, we have to go around uh you know, undoing the reputational damage done by so much of our popular culture.
Hi, I'm Mark Davis.
I'm conservative, and I don't hate black people.
You know, I don't hate gay people.
I don't hate the planet.
I you know, I uh I uh it's it's it's it's a necessary chore.
We better be up for it.
Um because that's that's the um that's the task at hand when you have an entire uh culture tilted against you.
But we are in no ways tired, as the saying goes.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis filling in 1-800-282-2882.
And we'll continue in just a moment on the EIB Network.
EIB Network.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show for a Thursday.
Mark Davis filling in from Texas.
Back to your calls here in a moment.
You know, this Twitter thing may just work out someday.
Follow me if you like at Mark Davis, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S at Mark Davis.
And I told all you all is the beginning of today's show.
If there's something you want to throw me, uh I'll I'll draw attention to it or because you can call us, of course, at 1-800-282-2882.
I want to thank uh Paul of Florida.
There, as I said, there are a lot of those candidate selector things, and he sent me one, and I in turn grabbed it and put it up.
Seems to be something from ABC News.
This one's a little different.
This one, every time I'm on, there's a new candidate selector.
Is that just what I'm known by?
Yeah, that's the fill-in guy who always gives us a candidate selector website.
Doesn't do much else, but he gives us a candidate selector website.
We love that.
Um rather than give you positions like uh on abortion are do you do you think it's between a woman and her doctor or it's murder, or on uh taxes, do you think they're too high, too low, or about right.
This one gives you actual candidate statements and asks you to find the one that you align yourself with uh most closely, which is fine.
I'll let you all be the judge of it, and in fact I will do it myself and see what candidate I wind up with.
But for example, the first one it has is the economy and jobs.
How can the U.S. create more jobs?
Options are repeal the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, repeal the financial services reforms, make more trade deals, invest in infrastructure, eliminate the EPA and create new jobs in energy development, eliminate capital gains tax and the estate tax and reduce corporate income tax.
There are six options.
I love four of them.
I guess I've got to find the one that I love the best, love the most, prefer.
1-800-282-2882.
We are in uh Nevada, Texas.
Jim, hey, Mark Davis, how are you?
Doing fine, Mark.
Thank you for taking my call.
My pleasure.
I was uh watching the news a little earlier, and the White House spokesman came on.
I can't remember the guy's name, but he was saying Jay Carney.
He was saying that the White House numbers show that the Republican if the Republicans don't extend this tax cut, it cost the average family a thousand dollars a month.
I believe he may have said almost a thousand dollars.
I mean a year.
Almost a thousand dollars a year.
Right.
And he stressed that the White House figures showed that that was $40 a month.
And the last time that I multiplied $40 times, $480.
I think almost a thousand.
You'll get you're getting forty a week, you're getting forty a month.
Uh yeah.
It's a little chunk of change.
There's no doubt about it.
And and the the merits of this are going to roll on whether or not Republicans can nuance the fact that yes, they are the ones suggesting that a tax cut should not be extended.
And they're the reason they're for it is because this is actually this is uh the the most rare thing in all of Washington.
Money that actually goes where government says it's going to go, in this case, into a social security fund that is strapped for cash.
And if we're going to have a way to maintain that tax cut, which the House conferees are ready to talk about right now, if the Senate will only come back, uh then it is something that has to be paid for with cuts elsewhere.
I I I want this, I want this Congress, want every Republican in Congress to be willing to go along with all kinds of things.
If, in fact, if in fact they are paid for by cuts.
If you're we're looking for something we're gonna strike some kind of balance, okay, fine.
Let's pay for it by cutting something we don't need.
Jim Thanks.
We are next in doing a little Arizona action.
Steve.
Hi, Mark Davis in for Rush.
How are you?
Uh thank you for taking my call.
Sure.
Certainly, thank you for putting my call through.
Uh if you'll allow me, Mark, I want to take a moment, and on behalf of all Romanian Americans, I want to send a big salute to the Supreme Commander of Patriot Forces and Conservative Forces, Rush Limbaugh.
From Bucharest to Rush's ears.
He appreciates it, and so do I. You bet.
Appreciate him.
Uh real quick, uh, Mark.
Uh you always hear about racism.
You always hear how we should be more like uh Europe.
Uh but uh words are empty, accents are everything, Mark.
Uh let's take a look at uh uh Europe, Mr. Obama, Mr. Holder.
Let's take a look at uh Italy, Germany, uh, England, Switzerland.
How many uh HTs, how many attorney generals do they have, Mr. Holder?
Uh how many how how how racist is America in comparison to all the presidents that uh Italy, Germany, Switzerland, uh France, uh England has.
Uh, this is better than this is more uh good, I'm sorry.
Uh we have to get uh past the smoke screen and the lies.
Uh you said earlier that uh, you know, the uh uh Republicans are the evil uh white uh the white devil in the mind of many black folks, Republicans or the white devil.
Well, uh, I uh challenge all African Americans to refer to the speeches and writings and uh uh you know to the actions of Martin Luther King, if I'm not mistaken.
Dr. Martin Luther King was a registered uh Republican, wasn't he?
Well, listen, if the from from the 50s to the sixties to and I love when people throw down Lincoln Lincoln was a Republican.
Listen, that's all fine, that's all true.
What what matters most is right now, right now in 2012 is 2012 prepares to dawn, and Steve let me thank you.
Enormously appreciate it, and Rush appreciates it, and thank you.
Uh uh a challenge born of the last couple of years instead of maybe the last fifty, and that is find a Republican saying an actually racist thing.
What you will find is Republicans talking about less government, lower taxes, more personal liberty for people.
There's some who will try to spin that into racism.
That needs to fail and fail horribly and loudly.
Because there is no more caring thing that a politician can do for you than to let you live your life on your terms unfettered by government.
Back in a month.
Back in a month.
All right, I'm gonna play with a candidate selector that I just put up on Twitter at Mark Davis, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S at Mark Davis.
Uh some of them are flawed, some of them are great.
Which one's this?
We'll find out.
We'll take a bunch more of your calls, talk about some of the other news of the week, talk about things for 2012 that loom ahead.
It's the Rush Limbaugh Vacation Day One.
Mark Davis filling in.
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