Rush Limbaugh Program - May 22, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3

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May 22, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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May 22, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3

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	And it's our third hour together.
	Then we are done.
	We move on to the Wednesday Rush Limbaugh Show, which will actually be hosted by Rush Limbaugh, Rush back from a day of charitable enterprise.
	He'll share that with you tomorrow, details of where he was and what he did.
	Meanwhile, what we're going to do is tackle some more topics, talk about some things we haven't gotten to yet, some things which people are still on the line for at 1800-282-2882, and maybe even a couple of things that haven't even occurred to me yet.
	But tops on the agenda here.
	I'm really excited to do this.
	If there's one of many mottos I try to live by, it's choose your heroes carefully.
	Always good advice.
	Choose your heroes carefully.
	Well, I try to, and here's one of mine.
	It is the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty.
	They do a wonderful job sticking up for religious freedom in a tough environment.
	Hannah Smith is their senior counsel, and we're going to talk a little bit about HHS mandates and Obamacare, and maybe even a few other things, because it's such a fertile field, this world of religious liberty.
	Hannah, it's a pleasure to have you.
	How are you?
	Thanks so much, Mark, for having me.
	It's great to be with you.
	I'm doing great.
	Thanks, Amelia.
	All right.
	Notre Dame is leading the charge.
	There's an explosion of new challenges to the HHS mandate, and there's been a for those who have sort of been paying half attention.
	There's a lot of negative attention that's been coming because a lot of employers, Catholic schools, uh, Catholic hospitals would be forced to forced to offer contraception if Obamacare had the level of mandates that its crafters intend.
	So there's a battle in which some of these employers are saying, wait a minute, our religious freedom is violated if you make us do this.
	Tell me about Notre Dame.
	Tell me about some folks that you've worked with at the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty and how this battle is going.
	Sure.
	This battle actually started last November when we filed on behalf of Belmont Abbey College, which is a small liberal arts college in uh North Carolina that is run by monks.
	Uh we filed on their behalf challenging this mandate in federal court in Washington, D.C. And since then, now to date, we have 23 cases that have been filed in 15 states, including the District of Columbia, on behalf of 55 plaintiffs.
	So beginning with that one case on behalf of Belmont Abbey, now we have this cascade of cases that has challenged this unconstitutional and unlawful mandate that would, you know, force these religious organizations to purchase these drugs and services against their conscience.
	So it's a really vital, a critical issue uh at the juncture of religious liberty.
	I want you to help people out with something because any arguments we make about this about constitutionality uh need to not be based on whether we like or don't like Obamacare, whether we admire or don't admire the president's goals.
	If we say something's unconstitutional, it needs to be because it is unconstitutional.
	So, counselor, if you would tell me why the HHS mandate is violative of our founding document.
	Well, the HHS mandate is unconstitutional and unlawful in so many different ways.
	What I think is really telling is that the HHS Secretary Sibelius herself has admitted under oath now before two different congressional committees, uh, when she's been up there answering questions from senators and congressmen, that she did not consult constitutional precedents, and that she didn't even ask for a legal memo from the Justice Department before making her decision on this mandate.
	So that's really amazing and amazing admission on her part uh that despite the fact that they've made these various statements that they've balanced all the interests and that they find this mandate to be constitutional.
	She actually admitted under oath that she never asked for uh advice from the Justice Department on whether in fact it's constitutional.
	Now, um of course it's unconstitutional.
	There are a variety of ways that it violates the First Amendment free exercise clause.
	It also a federal law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is a law that was actually championed by Teddy Kennedy and signed into law by Bill Clinton.
	So it's hardly a law of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
	And it actually protects uh religious exercise from the stantial burden of government.
	So it says to the federal government, you cannot uh substantially burden the religious exercise of a religious individual or entity.
	And here we have uh an amazing substantial burden on these religious groups.
	If the religious organization does not comply with this mandate, they would be forced to drop their health insurance and thereby incur a fine of $2,000 per employee, and that's just the first year, and those fines would increase in future years.
	That fine is crippling to many of these religious organizations who are on shoestring budgets as homeless shelters or soup kittens or what have you.
	So this is definitely a substantial burden under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and we believe that these federal courts will agree with us on that point.
	Hannah Smith is here, and she's senior counsel for the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, and you can follow their exploits at Beckett, B E C K E T, Beckett Fund.org.
	Hannah, you mentioned just a moment ago, this is this is golden that you've done it.
	You invoked the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
	This was 1993.
	It was the beginning years of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer were all about this.
	And one of the main thrusts at that time a lot of it had to do with Native Americans.
	Some corners of whom were into, you know, the use of peyote as a sacrament or something like this.
	And the argument was that if American law runs afoul of some sincere religious wish, then maybe the law needs to rr relent a little bit.
	Which is an interesting two-sided sword because using that exact same argument, that is the argument you make in saying that the religious wishes of Catholics should be respected rather than trampled by the HHS mandate.
	Yeah, well, there was a 1990 opinion called Smith, unemployment division v.
	Smith, that actually said if a law is neutral and generally applicable, then this compelling governmental interest test doesn't apply.
	Um but there are ways in which uh Smith does not apply if a law is, for example, uh contains exemptions within it, uh individualized exemptions or categorical exemptions, meaning that it exempts a whole group of people from the application of that law, then the law is not generally applicable, and that uh standard, that higher standard of a compelling governmental interest should apply.
	And here I think we would argue under the First Amendment that there are a whole bunch of exemptions that have been granted to the Affordable Care Act.
	In fact, um there is uh an exemption that uh permits any plans that grandfathered to um to not be subject to this uh HHS mandate.
	And you know, the estimates currently are that something like a hundred million people will be grandfathered under the um the Affordable Care Act.
	And so if a hundred million people are exempted from this application of this mandate, it's hard to say that this is a generally applicable law that applies to everyone.
	Um so that's the first point.
	And then the second point is that Riffer came along after the Smith decision to overturn Smith and as a matter of federal laws say that we're going to reinstate this more uh this more advantageous test, the compelling governmental interest test for religious individuals and institutions.
	So we have both claims in our lawsuit.
	We have a claim under the First Amendment, uh this is not a generally applicable law because of all of the waivers and exemptions that have been granted, and we also have a claim under RIFRA, which says that we should get this higher compelling governmental interest test that the government can in no way meet here.
	If I if I have you, and here you are as senior counsel for a great outfit like the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, and you're invoking all these wonderful things about uh about religious freedom and the first amendment, there's another story in my stack of stuff that I'd love to bounce off you in very broad terms because I'm intrigued by it, and it's obviously right in your wheelhouse, if you don't mind.
	Here we are in 2012, a campaign year, and there are going to be uh some preachers in some pulpits saying some things that are political.
	They always have, they always will.
	I want to know if as an attorney who's who obviously cherishes and studies religious freedom, where do you think that line is drawn?
	There's a case out of Louisville where there's an Eastern Kentucky Baptist pastor who is not thrilled by President Obama's embrace of the equanimity of of gay marriage and went to went to his flock and said, you know what?
	I want you to vote against this guy.
	And that made a lot of people freak out in twelve languages.
	Oh, preachers can't do that.
	Can they?
	Well, you know, that's a really, really important issue, and it's certainly one that the Beckett Fund is very concerned with.
	And, you know, we believe at the Beckett Fund that preachers should have just as much First Amendment protection and what they say over the pulpit as any individual does in this country.
	And so certainly we would not agree with the attempt by these very secularist groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State and others that are going around the country trying to drum up these charges against preachers who talk about very significant moral issues of our time over the pulpit and indeed may have an opinion based on religious values and religious doctrine that impact on important issues that are going to be put before the electorate during an election year.
	That's exactly my thought as well.
	the preachers on this one and say they need to have just as much First Amendment rights as anyone you bet.
	Now here's the even handedness test and and and if if there is a preacher somewhere who based on uh real a religious argument as he sees fit wishes to compel the electorate to vote for President Obama against Vice President Romney, I would surely disagree with that logic, but I would stick up for his rights to do it as well.
	Well sure I mean we have to apply it even handedly and we have to say that people can preach uh according to the dictates of their own conscience and they should be able to talk about moral issues on an election year.
	So yeah I would agree with that.
	And you know the important point to note here is that the Beckett Fund is not a partisan outfit.
	You know we we defend everyone's religious freedom.
	We're named after Thomas Beckett who is a twelfth century priest who battled King Henry the Second of England over the rights and privileges of the church and he was ul ultimately martyred for it.
	Um and so you know we represent everyone from A to Z, from Anglicans to Zoroastrians.
	As long as they're sincere believers, we don't care what the politics are, we don't care about partisan issues.
	We care about defending religious liberty.
	So go to Bucket Fund dot org and you can find a great resource page on there about the HHS mandate cases and a whole bunch of other cases that we're litigating across the country right now.
	When I woke up this morning I did not know that I would hear the word Zoroastrians spoken by a guest caller or me on the Rush Limbaugh show.
	Hannah thank you very much and continued congratulations.
	Keep fighting the good fight.
	We appreciate you a lot.
	Thanks so much Mark.
	That is Hannah Smith, senior counsel for the Beckett Fund for religious liberty and that is uh Beckett Fund, B E C K E T one T B E C K E T Beckett Fund dot org.
	Alrighty Well I wanted to ask her about that and listen I want to ask you about it too because here was this story and in fact I won't tell the whole thing let me just let's let's package this when we come back I'll tell you the story of Pastor Ronnie Spriggs of Hager Hill Free Will Baptist Church and he had a little something on his mind May thirteenth and you may agree with it, you may disagree with it, but I think he had the right to say it.
	So we'll see what uh how political can pastors get uh should anybody you know go banging on the door go you can't be saying that um under what circumstances uh would you uh uh draw a line on what pastors can do from the pulpit when when it invariably as it will sometimes do turn to uh politics.
	All right we have that and everything else we've got cooking some twenty twelve talk, some Bane Capital talk, venture capital in general a lot of other things we haven't even gotten into.
	Got forty three minutes left together let's make the most of them on these phone lines is 1 eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two.
	Mark Davis in for rush back in a moment it is the Tuesday Rush Limbaugh Show.
	Rush will be back tomorrow.
	I'm Mark Davis filling in making the flight up to Texas last night turnaround going home today.
	Quick old turnaround that's just a joy working here with Bo and Mike and and Allie and everybody here at the EIB Northern Command.
	It's a joy and as a matter of fact since I live to serve in these little blips of opportunity here in the uh in the in the rush uh uh substitute chair uh I I've mentioned following in the world of Twitter at uh Mark Davis M A R K D A V I S. And what I did right before the show is uh whipped out the iPhone.
	I've the why frog I'm done.
	I've esta I've now established a YouTube channel.
	Don't ever give a child a toy he's not ready for but I have a YouTube channel.
	And so it's like twenty one seconds of me sitting in this chair uh showing you the room through the window where Mike and Bo are and the Greek salad that Ali went and got for me that I have now consumed.
	So if this is if this is what you need to complete your day, there it is right there on Twitter at Mark Davis with more videos and other fun stuff to come.
	Stuff I write, things I do, things to hopefully delight and amaze you on the Twitter world at Mark Davis.
	Thank you very much.
	Appreciate it and thanks for all of your calls today.
	They have been great.
	Let us head into Hanford California.
	Donna hi, Mark Davison for Rush, how are you?
	Okay.
	Uh I have been you know for me the idea that Obama would uh dump Biden off a ticket this year has just been a forec foregone conclusion.
	Really?
	Because I think the reason he was put on it, you know, in case he lost, you know the racist white guy was a reason because we know it couldn't be Obama's fault.
	But as for Hillary Clinton being on the ticket, I don't think so because now we've got two political piranhas, very smart ones too in the Clintons.
	And they're not see she was safety secretary of state because she was out of the general mix of what was going on here.
	Right.
	But if she ties her name to Obama when she runs in two thousand sixteen, she's gonna lose.
	You're giving me such material.
	Let me let me take one thing at a time.
	So you think that President Obama would be loath to pick Hillary.
	It sounded like you're suggesting that she that he would feel that she would be sort of sniping at his heels.
	No, no, no, no.
	She doesn't want to be connected to him because he's been a dismal failure.
	She doesn't want to take herself being associated with him as far as domestic policy here is But do vice presidents always wear that stain?
	Uh if you're because I mean it it is it isn't so I mean, okay, uh she is his secretary of state right now and by far the most admired member of his cabinet, maybe the only member of his well that I don't want to be that unkind.
	I was gonna say the only member of his cabinet who's genuinely qualified for the title.
	Uh that that after four years as his vice president, she would her her her value would be diminished by proximity to him, you think.
	Yes.
	All right.
	Um that that's fair.
	Let me go to the second thing that you gave me, which is a really interesting point, and and and this is something that Bo mentioned when we were talking about this during the newsbreak.
	Uh and that is that if you get if as as has been the case since day one, if you get one Clinton, you get them both.
	I have a feeling Barack Obama gets tingly at the notion of running with Hillary because it may be the only way he can win he can win, and she would help him win maybe comfortably.
	But with Hillary, you get Bill, and I I deeply think right I I I think that that Bill Clinton makes Barack Obama's teeth itch, and it might be mutual.
	I don't think these guys like each other very much.
	So um that may be a negative, but don't you think that all that falls away if if Barack Obama looks at Hillary and says and if if he looks real hard and real honestly at the situation, it may be the only way that he can win.
	Yeah.
	I think he she will reject him though.
	That's that's the point.
	She will reject him.
	She does not want to be tied to him for her bid in two thousand sixteen.
	But then we come to the second part of my point that Obama still owes some debt for the two thousand eight support, and then a lot of it is to the Kennedy family.
	Because they're not happy.
	You know, the Kennedys don't play well with others, and when they don't get their way, they get really mad.
	So he's going to have to do something to bring them back, bring their money back, bring their support back.
	So I think he he just might put Robert Kennedy Jr.
	No, go, whoa, whoa, whoa, boy, not after the last couple of weeks.
	I don't know.
	Oh, you first of all you're saying.
	No, yeah, okay, wow, but that that might be that just might be a little a name that's a little too hot to handle these these days.
	Well, uh the girl, but wonderful analysis and entertaining stuff and d and thoughtful stuff.
	Donna, thank you very, very much.
	Okay, all right.
	The the lady gives us a couple of premises.
	Um is if if the Hillary's interest in the vice presidency is probably negligible.
	What she and and I don't blame her for this, this is probably true of most politically ambitious people, what they really want is the presidency.
	So you look at every single possible move and and ask yourself, does this help me win the presidency or does it not?
	The lady's point is a term as Barack Obama's vice president, not so much.
	But if she leaves and just and goes off and writes books and does speaking engagements and stuff and then comes back and runs in 2016, because you know, the the Democrats will be wide open in 2016, no matter what, because they'll either be running to fill the Barack Obama eight years and now vacancy, or they'll be running against uh incumbent Mitt Romney.
	Now Hillary is sixty-four, she would then be sixty-eight.
	Um women outlive men.
	I mean, you know, that doesn't seem to be a big issue.
	Um weigh that one a little bit, because that's if if if if you are if you are Hillary, if you are Hillary and and if your own the only thing left for you is the presidency.
	That that's a That's a fantastic point.
	Because there's a part of me that says if if you can ride out the the vice presidency, do it.
	I'm taking back to what was it John McCain's line originally.
	The vice president essentially has two functions.
	Number one, attend the de the funerals of foreign dignitaries, and number two, inquire daily as to the health of the president.
	If Hillary were vice president, I I it and and we get four more years of Obama that everybody just hates more.
	Thus we we got what we uh we got exactly what we deserved.
	How much of that stain attaches to her?
	I don't know.
	The the the one thing the vice president does have to do is is is be right in lockstep with the president, and she may not want to do that at all.
	Of course, is as Joe Biden ever lived by that standard.
	Oh heavens.
	Great stuff, great stuff, great stuff.
	All right, Mark Davis InfoRush.
	We'll be back on the phones with you in just a moment.
	It is the home stretch.
	Little James Brown.
	Very special to me.
	Boy, if we can invoke pop culture and everything, it's it's if every time I'm here, we're fresh on the heels of or in the midst of a big pop culture death, two times back was Dick Clark, one time back was Donald Duck Dunn of uh Booker T and the MGs, uh just great Memphis musician.
	And now just a couple of uh couple of days ago, Robin Gibb.
	And this this one was hard, not just because that's my total wheelhouse, and I mean both wheelhouses, not just, you know, s I'm fifty-four, all right.
	So Saturday Night Fever was like my sophomore junior year of college.
	But the um here's well, first of all, the thing that made that tough was remember the story just not long ago, and and and and in fact I think I I'd mentioned at the time of Dick Clark's passing that this it's uh these are just tough times.
	You know, for for uh pop culture losses because uh Robin Gibb was just teetering on the edge of the great beyond.
	And then uh a couple of days later he wakes up from a coma, boom.
	It's like wow.
	And and maybe I don't know if I just expected him to suddenly live another 15 more years, but uh uh the illness got him again and he passed away just a couple of years ago.
	Now here's what drove me insane, all right.
	All the headlines.
	Disco's Robin Gibb, remembered as dot dot dot, or disco this or disco that.
	Now, let's stipulate.
	If you're my age and and a white man, or maybe what maybe there's nothing well, no, no, I'm gonna say if you're if you're a fifty-four-year-old white guy and you're walking around in 75, 76, 77, 78, uh you're you're probably you're probably working from the journey,
	foreigner, rush, sticks, Ted Nugent fog uh realm, and and the very sound of the Andrea True connection singing more and more more was kryptonite to the depth of your soul, all right.
	Saturday Night Fever was an amazing body of work, but if you walked around and suggested that that you actually enjoyed this, it is the stuff of stairwell beatings.
	Right.
	Now time broadens our thoughts and and I appreciate the entire BG's catalog, from staying alive to night fever, how deep is your love.
	But the thing that made me crazy is as people look back on the career of Robin Gibb, and I guess that's where the record sales came from.
	I guess he sold a lot more, you know, as a disco artist than he did before, but this, hey, disco's Robin Gibb passes away at da-da-da-da-da.
	That gives the back of the hand to Robin Gibb and Barry and Morris Gibbs, previous decade of greatness from from Robin's own vocal on I Started a Joke, uh to New York mining disaster to How Do You Mend a Broken Heart, to just some of the most some of the greatest records of the 60s and early 70s.
	So it was an just so from from all of that put together.
	Uh don't sell Robin Gibbs short by pigeonholing him as a disco artist, okay?
	Even though that was great stuff, admittedly.
	And um was just an uh an amazing guy.
	And um so Barry, pretty well the only one left at this point.
	Speaking of big groups, um, speaking of speaking of uh of of big groups, uh of few of whom are left alive, I watched something on the plane here.
	Uh it was on HBO and I missed it completely.
	Martin Scorsese, right?
	Uh the li his documentary about George Harrison, living in the material world.
	Excellent.
	I mean, it is so very good.
	I mean, it goes way back to the the the the the skiffle days.
	I mean to the I'll be way when, you know, j uh when he first met Lennon and McCartney and before that and and I'm about halfway through it, which means he's hanging out with Ravi Shankar every day, uh, you know, uh trying to weave sitar sounds into everything he's doing, and they're recording All Things Must Pass around nineteen seventy with the exceedingly bizarre Phil Spector.
	It's just really, really cool.
	So if you're looking for something to to blow money on iTunes, uh it's living in the material world, uh the Scorsese documentary about George George Harrison.
	Very, very cool.
	Yes, I'm halfway through it.
	I'll I'll knock down the other half.
	Oh, is there more to come?
	Alrighty.
	I'll knock down the other half on the plane in about five or six hours.
	So woo, there we go.
	Okay, I live to serve.
	Now, how about shut up and take some calls, substitute boy?
	Let's do it.
	We're in Miami.
	Juan, hey, Mark Davison for Rush.
	How are you doing?
	Hi, Mark.
	Um as a previous caller explained, Venture Capital is banking of last resort for struggling corporations.
	It's that simple.
	Obama criticizes venture capital.
	Now the question that Romney should ask is what has Obama in his four years as president offered as an alternative to venture capital.
	Absolutely right.
	Exactly right.
	And and this is another great uh bit of advice if Romney's folks are listening, and I trust they are, even when the substitute guy is here, uh, because it's a lot of heartfelt thoughts from people who say this is what we want our nominee to do and to say.
	It's like if you're gonna come at me with with criticism about my management of money and my, you know, vision of how money should go in a in a free market.
	How about your vision of how money should go, sucked into the rat hole of expansionist collectivist government.
	I'll put my record up against yours any time, Mr. President.
	I think maybe Governor Romney needs to find a more delicate way to phrase that, but I I think your idea is spot on.
	Thank you, sir.
	Thank you, Juan, appreciate it very much.
	We are in Salt Lake City.
	Hi, Aaron, Mark Davis in for Rush.
	How are you?
	Great.
	Yeah, and um going back to religious leaders talking politics.
	My thought on that is if religious leaders aren't allowed to talk politics in their churches, um then neither should celebrities who have even larger audiences listening and following what they say.
	Well, uh uh I achieve consistency by saying let everybody say what you wish and just agree and disagree and everybody get on with their lives.
	There's a special argument though.
	I'll tell you where the argument comes from, and you can agree or disagree.
	But the notion is sparked by the following that a preacher in a pulpit, that a clergyman, a man or woman of the cloth, is a little different than Oprah or Bruce Springsteen or or Merrill Streep spouting off, because they are involved in a specifically religious exercise that is exempt from taxes, create you know that sort of church state separation thing that people either love or hate, depending on the situation.
	And uh it and it's the argument has gone that if we're g hey churches, since we don't make you pay taxes, you need to stay out of politics.
	That's the way the logic has gone.
	I've never found it to be logical.
	I've always found that to be a a an absolute disaster.
	I believe that if a preacher of any faith has a moral thought in his head that has a political angle, he is free to share it.
	Uh whether I agree with it or not, whether it's a liberal view or a conservative view, and let the folks in the congregation either like it and remain in that church or dislike it and find the door.
	Yeah, I totally agree.
	That'd be my thought.
	All righty, Aaron, thank you.
	Appreciate it very much.
	1800-282-2882.
	Let's go across the river, shall we?
	We're in Brooklyn.
	Jimmy, Mark Davison for Rush.
	How you doing?
	Uh you're doing a great job filling in.
	A lot of people don't realize just how far left Hillary Clinton is.
	I mean, she actually wrote her thesis on that Marxist street strategist, Solomonsky.
	I have a copy of it.
	It's amazing how brilliant and how much she she thinks uh Soloninski's a great guy.
	Okay.
	Let's say one thing at a time, one thing at a time.
	Because okay, that's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
	And and here's the interesting thing about about wrapping Sol Alinsky around somebody.
	Uh, because Lord knows Newt would have loved to have done that with Barack Obama at every single presidential debate, and I don't know how much good it would have done.
	Would have been true, would have been lovely.
	I don't know how much good it would have done.
	Here's the question.
	If somebody held a radical view forty years ago, do they hold it still?
	In the case of President Obama, the evidence is ample that he still does.
	All right?
	Right.
	Uh, You know, and and I I wasn't kidding so very, very much when I said after three years of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton looks like Margaret Thatcher.
	And I and I I don't know how much we can wrap Mr. Olinsky around Hillary at the age of sixty-four.
	Well, there's also a doctor Quinton Young who spread the rumor, helped work with the rumor that the U.S. used biological weapons in the Korean War.
	Dr. Quinton Young was an advisor on Hillary Clinton's task force.
	So she's still in and when Bill Clinton was president when he brought on all these radical Marxists like genetic hole and everybody like that, or the transition team, those were all Hillary Clinton's suggestions.
	So she may have a cleaner, clearer, better image than Obama, but she's just as far left.
	I mean, you go back to the governor's schools in Arkansas.
	I don't know, okay.
	I don't know.
	As soon as you start a sentence you gotta go back, the first thing that occurs to me is maybe you don't.
	Because voters aren't going to want to go with you.
	I mean, they're just most m a lot of folks are just gonna go, dude, you're telling me stories from the nineteen sixties here, please.
	Especially if there's evidence that someone has mitigated and moderated their views to some degree.
	Now, im Hillary Clinton is no conservative.
	Please, absolutely not.
	But compared to but she certainly is to the right of Obama on at least a few important issues, uh and would be a, I believe, a more palatable running mate than Joe Biden, and a more palatable president.
	I mean, I I've there's we're not so far past the idea that some people add that she ought to just go ahead and run for president, challenge President Obama in the primaries these last few months and just have the Hillary Clinton I told you so tour twenty twelve, which may well have been successful.
	I do think that Hillary would probably help Obama if she ran for vice president.
	I was just pointing out her true left-wing leadership.
	I understand it, and and and that and that is of value, and I and I appreciate it, Jimmy.
	Thank you.
	Uh the the the way to the way to sort of filter that through the sieve of twenty twelve is as follows.
	If you have somebody who has some stuff in their past, right, the key question is how much of that still properly hangs off of them today.
	I mean, would you want to be judged by everybody you were hanging out with when you were twenty-two?
	Uh and and I don't mean that as a you know, get out of jail free card for everybody or as an excuse for everything.
	But if, like the president, you are still walking around saying things and and still walking around holding views and still walking around displaying behaviors that show you to be as radical as you were when you were uh in college or shortly thereafter.
	Well, that's one thing.
	Um in general, I'll close this segment with the following observation.
	I think it's true.
	If you don't, you got sixteen minutes to call me on it.
	I think everybody is just about done with hey, here's what person acts.
	I mean, agree, disagree, Republican, Democrat, whatever, hey, let's make a big deal out of something somebody did decades ago.
	Hey, let's bring up all this stuff and find these documents and find this stuff, and I'm not talking birth certificate necessarily or college transcripts uh necessarily, or or call or college papers or whatever.
	I'm not picking on any of that.
	I am as interested in all of that as anybody.
	I'm just making an observation about the electorate.
	And I think the electorate doesn't give two flips about stuff like that anymore.
	What they care about is what are you going to do the minute you are president of the United States?
	What is the recent evidence of ideas in your head that you will bring to the presidency now and in the future, not what were you what and whom were you jacking around with during the Johnson administration.
	Just saying.
	Mark Davison for Rush, be right back.
	It is the closing segments of the Tuesday Rush Limbaugh Show.
	Rush is back tomorrow.
	Mark Davis filling in.
	When we spoke to um the lady from the uh Beckett Institute for Religious Liberty, I'd mention a story out of Eastern Kentucky.
	Let me give you the particulars on that.
	Pastor Ronnie Spriggs of Hager Hill Free Will Baptist Church, May 13th sermon.
	He said he wants Obama voted out of office because of the president's support of gay marriage.
	Uh this is not just Pastor Spriggs deciding to, you know, launch a political vendetta since he's got some podium time on a Sunday.
	This is biblically based.
	Obama, quote, said that he believes that gays ought to have the right to marry in the United States.
	That's the President of the United States who said that.
	I don't know about you folks, but I'm going on record and I don't care who knows it, I want the guy out.
	The statements elicited cheers from the flock and supporting shouts of Amen.
	But over at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
	They said that uh Reverend Sprigg's comments violate a federal law that said that tax exempt churches should not oppose a candidate.
	This has always struck me as crazy.
	And again, the even-handedness test.
	If some pastor somewhere wants to craft a religious reason uh uh uh to vote for Obama, knock yourself out, go do it.
	Uh and the liberty angle works as follows.
	Uh everybody in that uh in that congregation is free to either absorb that message, love it, and stick around, or be repelled by that marriage and get the heck out of there.
	It's what liberty looks like.
	It's what liberty looks like.
	We are in North Plainfield, New Jersey.
	Tom, Mark Davis in for Rush.
	How are you doing?
	Yeah, I worry.
	I'm I'm very frustrated as a as a Republican out here.
	And let me just explain to you why.
	This attack with the uh Bain as far as the uh Mitt Romney with Payne.
	The bottom line is this.
	We need to to at least uh acknowledge it and shoot back.
	When you look at what Obama has done, let's just use GM as the example.
	How many how many uh billions of dollars are still owed, number one.
	Number two, how many dealerships were closed?
	Number three, did in fact GM end up in bankruptcy, which is what Mr. Romney had called for in the beginning.
	And and nobody's talking.
	Why don't the why doesn't the Republican Party go out and find those people who worked for those for those dealerships and put them into an ad.
	That's a great idea.
	But this and put an end to the garbage.
	And then you could even go one step further and actually use the policy.
	Um the the uh cylindra, which is government money, which is our tax dollars, which were used to prop those his friends up and so on and so forth in those corporations, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, whatever it is.
	And then those people are now unemployed.
	Put those people into an ad.
	Let them tell us what happened and why, you know, why you it just doesn't make any sense to me.
	Tom, I gotta tell you something.
	Uh if uh for for being perplexed and frustrated and in a hand-wringing fit, you've given us clarity and value, as have so many other people today.
	Uh if if the Romney folks are listening, and I hope that they are, there have been uh more than a dozen people, and I'm not even talking about me.
	Uh I just walk in, sit down and talk about stuff.
	Callers who are venture capitalists, callers who are uh uh versed in various uh uh portions of life's path are offering up some magnificent ideas for the sort of tact that that that Governor Romney needs to take.
	And almost after every single one of these calls, there's something that occurs to me uh as as a line or two that boils it down.
	And and for this gentleman right there in New Jersey, it occurs to me this way that Governor Romney's position needs to be hey, I did a better job with private sector money than President Obama did with taxpayer money.
	It is the marketplace that should choose winners and losers and not government.
	How tough is that?
	I mean, I think that's a golden message.
	I think it resonates, I think it works.
	You don't have to go into any 500 page dissertation on what venture capital does that'll make everybody's eyes glaze over, and I think it's a winner with independent voters.
	Just me, just saying.
	All righty, 1-800-282-2882.
	Let's see what we have time for in the final segment because that is the one that is next.
	And that means that Rush is back tomorrow after just a couple more minutes of me.
	So let me share a couple of things with you on the other side, and then we'll conclude here on the EIB network.
	If I can wrap up with one big space dork moment, congratulations for the folks at SpaceX and that Falcon 9 launch vehicle taking a payload up to the International Space Station.
	Now let's take some human beings, man.
	Let's go.
	Let's get some people into Earth orbit.
	Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it.
	Okay, I'm done.
	Uh, quite literally done.
	And Rush is back tomorrow.
	And once again, I've I've gotten the honor of doing this a lot lately, thanking Bo and Mike and Ally and all the people who make this just such an incredible joy, and thanks particularly to Rush for just letting me do it.
	And thanks to you for enduring me.
	Rush is back tomorrow.
	God bless our country and our troops, and I hope to see you all again very, very soon.

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