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Dec. 23, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:48
December 23, 2011, Friday, Hour #3
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Hey, great to be with you.
America's Anchorman is away, and this is your undocumented Anchorman sitting in.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
But I'm here on the Rush before Christmas.
Monday we will have a best of rush.
And Tuesday we're back live with Mark Belling.
And I'll be in uh I think it's uh Thursday next week.
Uh I'll uh I'll be in.
And Rush returns live uh before the uh Iowa Caucus.
He returns for the big exciting day.
Uh Iowa Caucus Day, which is now just about a week and a half away.
I was talking with Carl Rove on the TV yesterday, and Carl pointed out that most of those days are going to be taken up with holidays or post-holiday recoveries, uh, Christmas Day, New Year, and all the rest of it.
So that we're now in the stage where the the movement towards certain candidates uh starts to accelerate as people uh uh understand somebody isn't electable, so they abandon them and then they they uh they firm up with a uh particular candidate.
The latest polls, the latest polls show that Ron Paul is in the lead, has a one-point lead over Mitt Romney, who in turn has a one-point lead uh over Newt Gingrich.
Ron Paul has twenty-one percent, Mitt has twenty percent, and Newt Gingrich is nineteen percent, and then you have the second tier where uh Rick Santorum is a wee bit ahead of uh Rick Perry and Michelle Buckman, but basically they're all chasing the same vote.
And at some point you've got to figure that the conservative vote is gonna coalesce around one of those candidates, and whether it does in time for them to be up nearer to uh Mitt and Newt and Ron Paul.
What does it mean, by the way, for Iowa?
If Ron Paul wins, if Ron Paul wins Iowa.
Uh Mr. Snardley is not a uh is not a Ron Paul fan.
He wasn't a Herman Cain fan either.
Uh was he's certainly not a Ron Paul fan.
I'm not a Ron I'm not a Ron Paul fan.
You know, I like all the small government constitutional stuff.
But this kind of nineteenth century isolationism thing, uh I think is ridiculous.
And uh I I said that I'm getting a lot of hate mail from Ron Paul types in recent uh in recent days because I said I just don't I don't think his thing is credible on the you know, did Martin Martin Luther King sleeping with underage boys?
I put it in my newsletter, it doesn't mean I wrote it.
I don't know who did write it.
If something about, you know, Martin Luther King sleeping with underage boys turned up at my website, uh I'd certainly I'd certainly feel I own that, whether I'd written it or not.
If if uh Martin Luther King sleeping with underage boys turned up at Rush Limbaugh.com, Rush would basically have to take ownership of it, regardless of whether he wrote it or not.
The idea that this you could say the buck doesn't stop here when you're running for president of the United States to say I can't be expected to know every little aspect of some rinky dink small town publishing operation I've got going, uh, but I'm capable of running the government of the United States is simply not credible.
That's uh that's my point.
I'm not even bothered about the Martin Luther King thing one way or the other.
Uh don't give a if someone wants to say that kind of stuff, good uh good luck to them and they can get on with it.
But when a guy says, Oh, well, you know, uh sure it may have appeared under my name, but I did I don't know.
I can't be expected to know what's going on at a publication called the Ron Paul newsletter.
You know, Rush knows what's going on at the uh at the Limbaugh Letter, if you're one of the fellows uh who subscribes to that.
The idea that you can ha that's simply not a credible position for Ron Paul to take.
Uh we'll talk about that, and we will talk about anything else that is on your mind because you know what it is.
It's Friday, and that means...
Five in New York, it's posted by Friday!
Yes, from Monday to Friday, a high Monday to Thursday, a highly trained broadcast specialist has total control over the format of this show.
He determines the topics that are talked about.
You will have no way of introducing extraneous subjects.
You will have no way of squeezing in bugbears and weird obsessions and all the rest of it.
But today, December 23rd, the day before the day before Christmas, no highly trained broadcast specialist is available.
In full compliance with Nanny Bloomberg's Bureau of Compliance in New York City, every highly trained broadcast specialist has December the 23rd off when December the 24th falls on a weekend.
So there's only me here.
You can raise any topic you want.
If you are a Ron Paul guy, uh call up and uh defend Ron Paul.
If you're a newt guy and you like the ideas that Newt has for putting giant mirrors in space to light up the interstates, call up and explain to me how that's going to work.
I'd love to I'd love to hear that.
1-800-282-2882.
If you're a huntsman guy, oh no, wait a minute.
We we already heard from the Huntsman guy, one huntsman guy in uh Virginia, the Huntsman guy in Virginia, so we're probably not likely statistically improbable to get another huntsman guy.
But we we'll do our best.
If you're a Mitt guy, if you Mitt was at the uh Tilton Diner today in New Hampshire, the Tilton Diner is a diner I know well.
And Mitt was over there attacking Joe Biden.
If you were in the Tilton Diner in New Hampshire with Mitt, uh call me up and tell me what you thought uh of what he said.
1-800-282-2882.
If you are disgusted with uh the caving, as they're all putting it, of the Republican House leadership over this payroll tax cut, call me up.
I would like to hear that.
But on the other hand, on the other hand, if you think this is just politically necessary, John Boehner was right to get it out the way.
Again, Carl Rove made an interesting point about this.
He he was in favor of uh the Republican leadership getting rid of the dead horse, but he thought they would have been better to wait until after Christmas and do it uh uh around uh Boxing Day or the day after.
He's taken to calling December the twenty-sixth Boxing Day now to uh for some reason just to uh just just to wind me up.
I don't know why he's doing it.
But he keeps using the term boxing day.
But Karl Rove's theory was that the Republicans were right to cave, but they would have been better to cave.
He he recommended they throw in the towel uh between Christmas and New Year when nobody would have noticed.
Instead they do it on the eve of Christmas when everybody notices, when it enables uh hands uh Barack Obama a huge political victory and enables him to go uh off on his Hawaiian vacation as a gimmick.
A gimmick.
It's nothing.
It's nothing.
It does nothing for anything.
It's irrelevant to the debt crisis this country faces, it's irrelevant to economic recovery, but it in political terms, caving on the stupid, worthless, pointless gimmick uh hands Obama a victory.
And interestingly, you know, this guy had had his ratings in the basement a month ago.
They're upticking now.
Uh Obama is getting back numbers-wise to where, you know, re-election, given the way things are likely to go, given that uh eventually uh come the late spring, it will not be about Obama versus generic unknown Republican, but it will be Obama versus Romney, Obama versus Gingrich, Obama versus Perry, Obama versus Ron Paul.
It will be Obama against a definite individual.
And Obama must be looking at these numbers.
The last uh last the uptick he's had in the last couple of weeks in the polls.
He's out of the basement, he's heading back into the mid-40s.
Uh he's getting to the point where the uh the the the job satisfaction numbers are kind of pretty much awash, and he's figuring you get a couple of extra percentage points once the media start piling on uh the guy who's the Republican candidate.
I bet he's figuring, and he and uh and his advisers are figuring that the re-election scenarios are looking a whole lot better for him than they did before uh the payroll tax cut dispute.
So uh I'd be interested to get your take on that too.
1-800-282.
288 uh two.
Uh lots of other things going on.
The um Iraq scene.
Uh Obama declared the war was over in Iraq, had the worst day of violence uh since uh since he said that yesterday, it was almost as if uh these guys waited till the Americans were out the door to start blowing stuff up again, dozens of people dead.
Uh the Iraqi vice president is holed up in the north, in the Kurdish North, basically uh keeping uh lying low because the Iraqi Prime Minister, a Shi'ite, has issued an arrest warrant on trumped up terrorism charges for the Iraqi vice president who is a Sunni.
Uh so the question then goes, if the if we take uh if if uh if we take it as red that the Iraqi war is over, uh and he's uh and he's right, uh who who won that war?
Who won that war?
Uh normally wars end when somebody wins or loses.
Uh They don't end just because someone decides it's over and uh and we're gonna and we're gonna come home.
Normally there's there there are pluses and minuses.
There's a victory and and a defeat.
Uh and when you look at what's happened uh in it what's happening in Iraq, is that state gonna hold together?
Uh is it just going to be an Iranian client state?
Uh to look at other parts of the world enjoying the blessings of an Arab Spring.
Several thousand Egyptians uh were rallying in Tarea Square today to denounce violence against protesters, especially these images of women protesters being dragged by their hair, beaten and kicked by troops.
I love this, by the way.
The these guys uh the the uh Egyptian military's explanation for why they ill treat these women is that they're women of loose morals.
This is the so-called Facebook revolution, folks.
If you're if you've uh voted uh with with the Arab Spring, if you thought the Arab Spring was a great thing, uh if you thought it was terrific news, the Coptic Christians, the Israeli diplomats, and the women, the uncovered women, already know that the Arab Spring is turning into a long, hard, unending winter.
Uh my line on this is that uh Egypt Egypt has basically just got worse, got worse over the years.
It was 1922, Ramshackle Kingdom of Egypt, uh not the greatest place in the world, but the first finance minister in Egypt that uh that time was a Jew.
Couldn't happen now.
The idea of a Jew, all the Jews have left Egypt.
Uh I had an email from the guy's grandson uh the other day, lives in France.
The uh the Arab Spring, boom, gone.
Uh Egypt got worse.
Uh uh NASA's Egypt was worse than King Farouk's Egypt.
Mubarak's Egypt was worse than NASA's Egypt.
Now we have this Arab Spring, and that's going to be worse than Mubarak's Egypt.
And the question is whether Iraq is on that same glum trajectory.
So we can talk about that.
1800-282-2882.
And uh the some of this uh terrible economic news, the new home sales, the worst year for new home sales since records began.
I don't know what that means.
Um, since 1963.
I thought it might be since 1776.
That would have been worrying, but it's the worst year since uh records began uh in 1963.
Worst year for new home sales.
This economy is flatlined, it's a dead parrot economy.
Uh what are we gonna do?
As we were talking about in the last hour with Bob from Gillette in Wyoming.
Uh the hyper regulation is throttling economic uh energy in this country.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein, InfoRush, Mordeca.
Mark Stein in for Rush, December the twenty-third, Christmas Eve, tomorrow, Christmas Day on Sunday, open line Friday.
Let's go to Bob in Wilmington, Delaware, home of the Joe Biden high speed rail interchange that connects uh the Yukon with Papua New Guinea via high speed rail.
I think that's due to open in 2013.
Great to have you with us, Bob.
We just call him General Joe Mark.
Yeah, General General Joe.
How many uh how many years has he been uh he was uh he was basically representing Delaware since about 1971 or 72.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I do hope when he retires as Vice President that he'll come back and serve as your senator for another 40 years.
Thank you so much.
That's just what you need.
What a wonderful wish.
Merry Christmas to you, and I wanted to say thank you.
I was um when not thinking about politics, I listened to that wonderful interview with Irving Berlin's daughter and White Christmas on your page.
Yeah, yeah.
It was i it it's full of information.
The piano must be remarkable.
Yeah, that's uh for for folks who don't know that, that's uh I I spoke up uh uh uh my website at uh Stein Online.
I interviewed Irving Berlin's daughter, and in the course of it uh she she performed his great song White Christmas on uh Irving Berlin's very own piano, which uh is a great historical artifact.
He wrote that song because he loved this it's that song is not about snow.
Uh he was born in Siberia, came to this country as a child.
You could you you couldn't write White Christmas about Siberia, even though it's got just as much snow as uh most parts of the Northern United States.
That's a country about his love of home and his love of America.
And I wish we had a few more songs like that uh these days.
So what else is on your mind, Bob?
Well, it's boring politics.
I called Congressman Alan West's um office and spoke to one of his assistants, and the this uh thing with the um uh tax so called tax amendment uh had gotten to my skin to the point where I actually read the amendment.
So I called Congressman um West office and said there's too much fun in this short one page amendment.
First of all, the Senate thought so little of the House that they left in the language of a one year, just as the House was asking for it.
So and a ten year payback.
But the most fun was the the government, I guess, can only collect back clawback money from Fannie Mae mortgages and federal home loan mortgages.
That's about ninety percent of the mortgages in the United States.
What ten percent do you think that a private bank would value so much that they wouldn't have to go to Fanny or the Federal Home Loan?
No.
No, you're you're you're you're right.
You're absolutely right on that.
I mean, this is like an accounting gimmick, isn't it?
Well, the but the at the end of the day, the wealthiest one percent won't have to pay back this thousand dollars.
Right, right, right.
So I know.
I know they could have had a I said, you're sitting on a gold mine here just to ha you it's it's such good sport.
You've got to lighten up at Christmas.
Yeah.
And send someone out and say, we have got to make sure the top one percent pay too.
Now wait wait uh wait a minute here, Bob.
What you're you're in Wilmington, Delaware, and uh Congressman West is a congressman from Florida.
Why did you call his office?
Uh because we're so blue that uh I probably would have been picked up by a black helicopter.
Now I spoke I uh I was at an event in Palm Beach, uh Russia's uh part of the world.
Uh speaking at the breakers, uh Congressman West spoke just before me and then I spoke, and he's a terrific speaker.
And a real actually does a real red meat speech.
He'd he'd read my book and he said, if we don't want the scenario, I'm basically the doom and gloom guy, and I say if you don't do anything, it's over.
This is what's gonna happen.
Uh boom, Armageddon, head for the hills, uh apocalypse now.
This is it.
Uh and Alan West is Mr. Upbeat.
He's the one who says, if you don't want the Stein scenario to come true, you gotta do this, this, this, and this.
And he and he gives a terrific speech.
Now, why are guys like that not uh running for president and not in the House leadership in uh in the request?
Well, at least uh it w as you described him and Jeb Bush's editorial in the Wall Street Journal, I thought was a he was laying out just short of a crayon how to win the White House.
They have the upbeat, this is what we can do message, why an individualist government versus a state government works better.
And yet the candidates that are on uh this let's make a deal game show format, none of them have taken the opportunity to l to raise their eyes.
I I think that they think I'm too dumb to understand that.
No, and I and I think I think this is one of those Frank Lunt's focus group type things where uh where pe people said uh when when you talked about uh when uh Republicans used to talk about uh uh getting rid of the Federal Department of Education that all the average American heard was that Americans uh that the Republicans were opposed to education.
And and here's the thing uh this time round where uh Republicans are making the advantage uh uh making the argument that you need permanence and you need certainty, uh and it's it's a waste of time in these two month uh gimmicks.
Uh all th the average American hears is that Republicans are opposed to tax cuts.
And uh the nobody uh nobody wants that's why it's better, I think, i t to err on the side of uh uh of of keeping it simple, to on the side of keeping it dramatically simple.
Let's put a big number on what you want to uh reduce taxes down to, what you want to cut corporate taxes to, what you want to cut regulations by.
Keep it simple.
Keep it simple, but it has to be uh to under we have to do it with the object of getting Americans to understand the existential crisis we face, Bob.
Absolutely.
You have a wonderful Christmas.
And you too, Bob, but I certainly have may all your Christmases be white.
Bob uh Bob sounded cheerier when he and I were talking about Irving Berlin and White Christmas, and Then we got on to Alan West, I must say I had a great time with Alan West.
Uh we were down at the uh the breakers in Palm Beach in Florida.
Uh speaking at uh at David Horowitz's Restoration Weekend.
And and the great thing uh uh about Alan West is uh he's he's he he says it's not over.
It's not over.
You know, decline is a choice.
Uh long term uh societal collapse is a choice.
Uh but he says he's confident that he can persuade enough Americans not to make that choice.
And more Republicans uh should be arguing on the terms uh he's arguing with.
Uh decline is a choice, don't choose it, America.
Fall is a choice.
Don't choose it.
Listen to people like Alan West instead.
Hey, that's me again from my Christmas CD.
Uh you know, but normally when I do these shows, uh Mike is uh running the uh show technically speaking, and Mike is fastidious that we in the Christmas season we only have EIB approved Christmas music.
And he's so he's he's very sparing.
He'll only like he'll maybe do one track per show if I if I absolutely if if I absolutely grov and beg him enough, he'll play one track.
But today Ed's been sicking uh sitting in for Mike, and he's just basically sick with my Christmas CD.
He can't get enough of it.
He'd be playing he'd be he'd be playing r rush Rush who's got uh like the big manheim steamroller collection.
Everything they they uh Rush has got everything Manheim Steamroller has ever done.
He's got Mannheim steamrollers, notes to the milkman.
He's got Mannheim steamrollers, receipts for the accountant.
He's got everything Mannheim steamroller have ever done.
Uh and so he will not be happy about this.
But that's me and my pal Jessica Martin uh doing our little song running on Eggnall.
Because there was no there was no great eggnog song.
There's uh songs about marshmallows, the songs about gingerbread, but there was no great eggnog song, so I th I felt it was time we put one out there.
We're gonna get it uh taken up by the Eggnog Marketing Board and we'll make a fortune.
Uh Mark Steinin for Rush on the EIB network.
We will have a best of rush on Monday.
Uh John Edwards.
Developments in the John Edwards case, he's trying to get the trial postponed for two months.
In other words, he's gonna get it postponed until the next payroll tax cut expiry crisis uh on the grounds that he has some health issues.
You know, I think John Edwards is about as low and as uh pathetic and as miserable and as wretched a man as ever walked God's green earth.
But the idea that uh you should get five to twenty-five years in jail, uh essentially for uh impregnating your mistress and then uh uh uh uh sluicing some campaign funds uh from a wealthy donor to her uh to set up the love child in a love nest.
Uh I find that I'm not I'm not entirely happy about that.
I loathe and despise John Edwards.
The oleaginous creep uh makes me uh w nauseous.
But the idea of him going to jail for five to twenty-five years I find uh uh a wee bit uh disproportionate.
Uh public disgrace.
It would have been far better if the media just hounded him out of the race and done their job, by the way, all his pals in the media.
They did him no favor if they'd just gone along uh and actually reported the story in two thousand and seven, two thousand eight when it came up.
This guy wouldn't be looking at five to twenty-five years in jail.
The mainstream the liberal bias of the mainstream media is gonna send John Edwards to the big house uh for for a good half decade at minimum.
Uh he should be furious with those guys at uh the New York Times and the LA Times and all the rest of it, and CNN for not exposing uh what he was up to back in two thousand seven, two thousand eight, he wouldn't be headed to jail.
Let us go.
I tell you what, let's go to Glenn in New Hill, North Carolina.
Glenn, you are live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Thanks, Mark.
Just wanted to uh uh ask the question of why are we treating Ron Paul like Al Sharpton treats treats uh our candidates.
That is why are we um dredging up and basically calling him a racist?
Uh because uh we know he's not a racist.
Uh we know Ron Paul's not a racist, and and uh yet uh yet we're all taking something out of him from thirty years ago that he may have may or may or may not have written or may or may not have looked at and are basically putting it back in his face every five minutes.
Uh uh I I'm not a Ron Paul guy, but it just seems ridiculous that we're we are uh taking and uh using the tactics of the left on our own on our own people.
It's seems really stupid.
Well, look, h here's why I would say.
I mean, I don't think Ron Paul is uh a racist, especially, and I don't particularly care what he says uh what he said twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago.
What I find interesting is that Ron Paul is like basically an open borders.
He's an if he is a racist, he's an open borders racist.
So is the whole Republican Party.
Yeah, exactly.
So he's like a pro he's a pro-amnasty pro-illegal immigration, racist.
That's quite a nice trick if you can pull it off.
Here's why I think uh I don't really care if Ron Paul's feelings are hurt over this, because you say why are Republicans playing the race card with Ron Paul?
Ron Paul was on TV the other night and uh and said that uh Rick Samtorum is uh obsessed with uh gays and uh Michelle Buckman is obsessed with gays and Muslims.
So he basically played the homophobia card uh with the Rick Samtorum and he played the homophobia and Islamophobia card uh with Michelle Bachmann.
So in a sense, this is uh this is payback time and uh it uh and it's like cosmic karma and all the rest of it.
I think we shouldn't be doing that to each other.
We we should be asking about the issues that they stand for, the legislation that they push forward.
I don't really give uh give a a rip about what what each uh what each of them call each other in the echo chamber.
I want to know what what their what their what their record is.
No, but most of the candidates up there don't have a don't well, some of them do, but but most of them don't have a record of standing for smaller government like Ron Paul does.
No, and that's impartial to him.
And that's uh and that's true, and that's a fair enough point.
And I've been happy to have Ron Paul in the debates.
I mean, I'm perfectly clear about Ron Paul.
I think it would be a disaster if the Republican Party were to nominate him.
But I like having a guy on stage.
Uh, four years ago when he said was going on about the Federal Reserve, people thought he was cooky and wacky or or zany, as we now say.
Uh but in fact uh when you live in a country as we do at the moment where the Federal Reserve buys seventy percent of U.S. Treasury debt, in other words, the left hand of the United States government buys seventy percent of the right hand of the United States government's debt,
you begin you you begin to think actually Ron Paul's not out of his mind on the Federal Reserve and fiat currencies and all the other wacky stuff for w w what was wacky fringe stuff four years ago is actually directly relevant uh to this country's insolvency right now.
And I'm glad to have him up on stage talking about that.
Uh I'm not happy with him being an open borders guy on illegal immigration.
I think his idea of a Fortress America isolationist fortress America is uh absurd, he's going nowhere.
Uh I mean his whole open bo I mean that's the other thing.
That's even uh crazier than being an open borders racist is being uh an open borders fortress America type.
You can have Fortress America or you can have open borders, but you can't in both.
North Carolina's a military state.
We we love the military here.
We have a huge uh presence here.
Who who which uh which candidate has more support for military active duty military people than Ron Paul.
Yeah, no, but that but you know that's that again, and again, he's not wrong uh to look at it to to put it to put it this way, he's not wrong on this, that when uh you have United States military personnel, I believe are actually on the ground in over one hundred nations around the world right now.
Uh something isn't something isn't right there.
Uh when he talks about the cost of these foreign wars, again, he's got a point.
Uh the the issue in Afghanistan is not that we haven't spent enough money, but that we've wasted a ton of money.
We've wasted a ton of money.
Uh the issue in Afghanistan is a lack of uh strategic clarity, and that's very cheap.
That's six guys sitting around on an office table from staples that costs you a hundred and seventy bucks in a basement in the Pentagon.
You can get strategic clarity uh uh relatively cheaply.
He's not wrong on some of those issues.
But when he starts talking uh uh as he does, that uh uh a vast transformative act such as Iran going nuclear and that Iran is only going nuclear uh because of uh the United States, at that point he's flown the coupe.
And and uh his good points at that uh at that stage his good points are outweighed by his bad.
But if you're saying to me, would I rather talk about the cookie stuff that uh Ron Paul said uh on TV a week ago or what his stupid unread newsletter printed in nineteen ninety two, you're that's fair enough.
I'd rather talk about what he said last week than what he said twenty years ago.
I also have some interesting insight about John Edwards.
Okay, give it give us give us your best on John Edwards.
Well, the reason that uh he's getting sick all of a sudden is he wants to prolong this uh this trial out to uh close to the election because the guy who brought up the charges against him happens to be running for Congress uh this this upcoming time.
So he's basically going to make the case that look, it's all political trumped up charges, which unfortunately they are, but uh but it is a uh John Edwards is uh is someone who is uh a huge embarrassment to this state, not how it should go away.
Yeah, does he still have that hideously big house uh connected with that sort of huge so-called pseudo barn collect can connected by a covered walkway.
It is he's still Oh right, okay, that's good.
I think uh I think it's time for Joe Biden to put in a high speed uh rail link up John Edwards front drive, because that that's like seven miles long or something.
That's what we need to that's what we need to stimulate the economy in North Carolina, Glenn.
Thanks for your call.
Great to have you with us over Light Friday of the Rush Limbaugh Show, the eve of Chr well, the eve of the eve of Christmas.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush Wheel of More in just a moment.
Rush Wheel of More Mark Stein in for us, Christmas at the EIB Network.
Let's get in uh a couple more calls before we uh go and uh full face down in the Wassel for the rest of the weekend.
Let's go to John in Lake Zurich, Illinois.
John, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Great to have you with us.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas, Mark, from a confirmed stynophile.
Oh, that's that's great.
That's uh it's a small club but a select club.
G great to have you with it.
Always look forward to your appearances wherever you uh might be posting your opinions or whatever.
Okay, well, uh promise to come to Lake Zurich in Illinois and pack out the biggest venue in town.
What whatever it is.
What is the biggest venue?
Anyway, uh as an optimistic uh person on team uh replace Obama, I I'm concerned by the people I'm hearing call in, you know, that typically only have one candidate that they are excited about or in love with,
and and uh I'd like to remind them that this is a job interview, and we've got people with, you know uh strong points and weak points, and you can't just dismiss people uh because you don't like one, two or three things about them.
I think uh Mitt Romney's getting way too many people, you know, like Mark yesterday said, he's not sufficiently conservative.
Now, I don't know where that comes from.
Uh I think fiscally there's nobody who uh is more conservative than him.
I don't think uh you know he's he's as strong a free market guy as I think uh as we've got out there.
Uh and I think uh, you know, there are two aspects, for example, that are being overlooked.
Uh one is the way his so-called flip-flops are being compared to uh Newt's.
And uh the second thing is the fact that he just lives a conservative lifestyle.
You know, he's uh he's you know been married for thirty-seven years, or how many is he you know, he uh in the uh race for Senate, he took uh criticism for as a Mormon elder trying to talk a woman or I don't know whether you succeed or not, trying to talk her out of having an abortion.
These things are living a conservative lifestyle.
But what people are concerned about with Mitt is his experience in government, for example, is basically confined to one term in Massachusetts.
exits.
And that's and uh they look at that and the that's a mixed picture as far as they're concerned.
And I think, you know, that experience was naturally a nature of him, you know, living he wouldn't have been in Massachusetts if he hadn't been a career man at at Bain, because that's where Bain was located.
And you know, getting elected in the People's Republic of Massachusetts is kind of like I think running for office in Sweden.
And if you don't uh have at least what the general populace would consider an acceptable set of uh criteria.
I think the thing with Mitt is he's evolved based on the re the offices he's run for.
And you'd have to say I think you'd have to say that running for Teddy Kennedy's seat, you have to be more liberal than if or more moderate than if you're running for government.
There's an i there's an issue.
There is an issue here, John.
For about fifteen years, sixteen years or whatever, before uh Mitt Romney, they'd been electing Republican governors in Massachusetts.
All kind of rhino squish type guys, Bill Weld and Paul Salucci, and uh what was the uh lady's name?
Jane Swift, I think it was.
And uh so for about a decade and a half they'd had Republican governors.
Republican governors don't didn't have any difficulty getting elected in Massachusetts.
Uh the question the question though, uh Massachusetts people seem to quite like the idea of having an overwhelmingly Democrat legislature and then a rhino squish in the governor's uh mansion.
But the question is uh whether uh whether Mitt did anything in that term that warrants uh that gives any indication of how he would do in government.
Now I'll tell you what I do like about Mitt uh John, which I think he did a terrific job on.
I mean, I think turning around the Salt Lake Olympics, uh when you look at the state they were in before Mitt Romney got hold of them, uh we're basically that that's the state the United States government is in.
If he can do for the United States government what he did for the Salt Lake City Olympics, uh where he he he turned around a disaster, a dysfunctional organization.
He took sports that nobody even likes.
I know.
I I I did play-by-play curling once, filling in for a friend years by years, yeah years and years ago in Canada.
He nobody wants to see curling down uh here.
You can I don't care if you've got an 800-channel cable package, you don't get the curling channel.
They've got a curling channel up in Canada.
You can't get it down here in the United States.
I don't care how many channels you get.
Uh he took uh the four uh whatever it is, the two-man luge.
Nobody likes that.
Nobody likes the thing where they're all like uh coming down the hill uh uh arching uh their pelvises up in the air and you're wondering what the hell is that going on, and then they tell you it's a sport.
Nobody's interested in the two-man luge.
He made money off of the two-man luge.
Nobody's interested in ice dancing, watching some some guy twirl around the ice in a little spangly bolero jacket like some camp waiter at at John Kerry's favorite restaurant after after he sent back the uh cranberry coolie or nobody's interested in that.
Mitt Romney made money off of these sports.
And if he was saying he if he was saying I did it with the two-man luge, I did it, and I can do it uh with Medicare.
I did it with the camp old ice dancing guy, and I can do it with social security reform.
That would be an argument, but Massachusetts, I don't think is an argument, John.
We'll see how that pans out.
Thank you for your call, John.
I promise to come by uh Lake Zurich, Illinois sometime in the next uh couple of years.
Mark Stein for us, more to come.
Dig the halls with Boughs of Holly.
It's It's time for me to don my gay apparel and go off to troll the ancient Yule Tide Carol.
Uh President Obama yesterday delivered what ought to be the line of the campaign.
He was uh going Christmas shopping.
Uh I think it was a Best Buy, presumably with a government credit card.
And he got out the card to pay for a couple of items at Best Buy, and he said, Let's see if my credit card still works.
That ought to be the line of the 2012 election.
America's credit card is tapped out.
It's busted.
They ought to be running that moment of film over and over and over again.
Let's see if my credit card still works.
I would love I would love, by the way, if uh that card had been rejected for the president of the Best Buy transaction.
It would have been even better.
But uh America's credit card is still in uh a big heap of trouble.
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