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Dec. 23, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:48
December 23, 2013, Monday, Hour #2
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Now, as some of you know, when I do the rush program, I do it, what do we call this?
This is Eastern Command, right?
Uh I'm here in the New York studios.
It was seventy degrees yesterday afternoon.
I left Milwaukee early because we had a blizzard coming through.
So I get to New York Saturday night.
Yesterday it's 70 degrees.
Yet half the people walking around outside are wearing winter coats.
I thought that was real, real interesting.
In other words, the reality is that it's warm out and you can wear a t-shirt and shorts.
But because people are in this mindset that it's two days before Christmas and it must be cold.
The walk look at the pictures of the people in the streets of New York yesterday.
It was one of the New York Times.
They've all got the big bundled up stuff on.
They're wearing sweaters and jackets and ski jackets and the whole thing.
Pull me something, and I'm not sure what it is, but it's very, very hard for people to get past their pre perception of what things ought to be and accept their reality.
Speaking of perception and reality, I have been for the last several years really been on the front lines of one of the most interesting battles that we've had go on in the United States, and that was the controversy in Wisconsin over reforms that were proposed by my governor, Scott Walker, and passed by our state legislature.
It's a battle that riveted the nation.
National attention was given to the fight that we had in my state, Wisconsin, over Walker's reforms.
They were passed in 2011.
Members of the state legislature who have supported Walker were facing recalls from office.
They held a recall election in which they tried to throw the governor out in 2012.
He survived all of those things.
I thought it would be interesting during my stint guest hosting Rush to bring Scott Walker on and with the benefit now of three years' worth of hindsight, talk to him and get his impressions about the fight, what they mean for Republicans in the United States, and whether or not he has any advice on how Republicans should try to move themselves forward.
So Governor Walker, good afternoon.
Hey Mark, great to be with you.
You know we talk a lot in Milwaukee on my program here, but we now get to talk to the entire world on the Rush program.
I I would I was struggling to figure out what to ask you first because I've been so close to the fight that you've been in, and we've been through this in Wisconsin so much, yet I realized that people in the other 49 states sort of knew what went on, but didn't really know what happened.
So I want to give you kind of an open-ended question in this way.
With three years of hindsight here, explain to the people of the United States what happened.
Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty simple.
We decided once and for all we'd put the power back in the hands of the hardworking taxpayers.
And maybe spend a minute just to explain what I mean by that.
In fact, that's part of the reason why I wrote a book called Unintimidated.
It's not a campaign biography, it's really a story of what we've done over the last several years here in Wisconsin.
We knew in 2011, like most states across the country, that we faced a huge deficit.
In our case, it was about 3.6 billion dollars.
And we knew on the campaign trail that I said I wasn't gonna raise taxes to balance that deficit.
I wasn't gonna lay off thousands of public employees, even though I believe in smaller government.
I think you get there through managed reform, not through random pink slips.
And I wasn't gonna do it by big cuts and things like Medicaid.
And so in our state, about the only thing left was to cut aid to local government, and as Mark, as you know, I was a local official for several years before I became governor.
I I knew just cutting would be devastating.
Instead of austerity, we knew we had to do reform.
By doing reforms, we took on the biggest barrier at the state and the local level, and that was the public employee union bosses.
And we decided once and for all we take on collective bargaining, and in doing so, we can not only balance our budget by reducing aid to local governments to our schools and our counties and cities and towns, but in turn give them the tools to more than offset that.
And the reality is here, three years later almost, we have uh a $3.6 billion budget deficit is now about a 760 million dollar surplus.
The unemployment rate is down, the economy is back, our local governments are are balanced uh budgets, and our schools can now do things like hiring people based on merit, paying them based on performance.
That means we can put the best in the brightest in our classrooms in other government positions.
So we have reformed government and put The power back in the hands of the hardworking taxpayers.
I can tell you as somebody who's there, the critics of what Governor Walker did are no longer criticizing his reforms because they've undeniably worked.
Now the people who lost power, the union leadership, Democrats who are resentful that what Walker said he was going to do, he did.
They're still out to get him.
But they've changed their criticism of you to other issues.
They're not trying to relitigate this case.
They're not arguing about your reforms anymore.
And I think by their actions and their lack of attacking you on this that they're acknowledging that you've been successful.
Is that your read on this?
Oh, yeah, there's no doubt about it.
In fact, uh one of the fun chapters in our book on Intimidated is as we got close to the recall, we heard this and I put it as a chapter.
It says, Does anybody remember what the recall was about?
Uh because uh as you saw, Mark, they the closer we marched to June 5th a year ago, the less and less and left the left talked about.
In fact, even today, uh about a year and a half after that, uh, even though we're in a state in Wisconsin, like many Midwestern battleground states where we're almost equally divided between Republicans and Democrats consistently in elections, if not skewed a little bit to the Democrat side.
Even today with the electorate divided on a ballot test, if you poll them about a reforms, there shows overwhelmingly strong support because in the end they saw that all the hype and hysteria about the schools and local governments falling apart about all these other problems didn't happen at all.
And in fact, most schools, like the kids where mine went to actually got better, and uh local governments did better, and in the end the state was able to make you know prudent long-term investments and things that mattered, uh, like the economy and like worker trending and things of that nature, but they'll keep pounding.
I've got another another election in 2014.
Uh in fact, folks who are interested uh can look at our details at Scott Walker.com because we're going to be under immense pressure um to come after us and get us, and if somehow they were to win, all the things they're not talking about anymore.
You can be certain if they were able to pick me off next November, they would contend that the whole reason that happened was because of our reform.
Oh, yeah.
They're not going to run against you on that issue, but they're going to claim that's why you lose if you would lose.
Every state is different and they all have their own issues.
And in many states there are real problems with funding their pension plans, which wasn't an issue in Wisconsin so much as the need to stop spending so much on those plans with public money was.
But it is very, very hard in almost every state to take on a really entrenched powerful group, like, for example, the public employee unions.
We see now that Illinois has finally put its toe in the water.
Some large cities are thinking about doing it, but in most cases, you've got real problems funding pensions, you've got real problems in dealing with state budgets that are in deficit situation, yet you were able to solve it.
Is there a national lesson to be learned here that you actually can make that tough decision and write it through?
I I think so.
Yeah, without a doubt.
I mean, I think the fact that they they brought in a hundred thousand protesters, some in states, some from across the country, uh, to our Capitol.
They they did the recall first against state senators, then against me, and in each case, we ultimately were successful with with the outcome of my recall, and we still have the state Senate, still have the state assembly majorities actually grew them last fall.
I think those are all great signs that you can make tough, bold decisions.
And in the end, I I think what the center craves more than anything isn't people running to the center, it's leadership.
People are so hungry for leadership, they crave that, they want that, the desire that you can make the case for that.
But the other lesson, I want to stop you on that point.
So you're saying that moderates, basically the they're not Republicans, they're not Democrats, they're described as centrists.
You're saying that their focus isn't necessarily on a solution from the middle.
They just want a solution.
They want someone who's going to take action and try to solve our problems.
Am I quoting you correctly?
Absolutely.
In fact, I I read a lesson learned in the back of my book on Intimidated, where it talks about just that, that the way uh to get to the center is not to move to the center, the way to do it is to lead.
I I have a phrase for it that's a little bit odd.
You're familiar with it, Mark, but it's Obama Walker voters.
Because in 2012, I won by seven and a half percentage points in the recall election, although it certainly won't be that big of a margin next year.
But but Barack Obama won by about seven points in the same state.
Why?
Because even though I don't agree with his policies, at least he laid out a vision.
I laid out a vision, and each of our opponents in the gubernatorial race and in the presidential race set uh essentially a uh a campaign that was just about not being the incumbent.
And for most people in the middle, that's not enough.
They need to know what are you going to do to make my life better, uh, even though it was two very different views.
Our battleground state proved that leadership does matter to the middle.
It's not moving to the middle, it's leading that matters.
You've been somewhat critical of National Republicans and their inability to frame a message.
I'm wondering if you can expand upon that and deal with where we are now as a country with Obamacare kicking in and so on.
If you could give one or two pieces of advice to the Republican congressional leadership or in general to Republican leaders in America, what would it be?
It would be more like governors.
And what I mean by that is we're optimistic.
We speak in terms that are relevant to real voters.
And then we show we have the courage to act and put those things into place.
Too many people, right or wrong view national Republicans, at least those in Washington, right or wrong, as being the party of now, as people who are just against this president, who are just about cutting things, who are just about austerity.
I say time and time again, austerity is not the answer.
Reform is reform means not just reducing the size of government, but for what is left and necessary, making it work.
And too often people think we hate government.
I don't hate government.
I hate a government that's too big, too intrusive, too involved in my life, and for what's left, I hate government that doesn't work.
And we've got to show that we're the ones that, yeah, want limited government, we want more power in the hands of the people, but for the little bit that's left, we also want it to work.
I I think that is key.
The other thing I think helped us per your question about the pensions and so forth is we shouldn't concede the fairness battle to the left.
You know, the president talks all the time about paying your fair share and nonsense like that.
We should not concede that argument.
Our our beliefs when it comes to economic and fiscal issues are just as morally right, if not more so than the arguments on the left.
But too often we think and talk with our head, they think and talk with their heart.
We need to think with our head but talk with our heart, and I think Americans, by and large, are still with us.
I want to uh uh I I want to carry you through the break here because I want to ask you about Obamacare and America riding through this and the nightmare that may be in front of us, and also I want to challenge her for a moment on your thesis that you can make these strong moves and still come out and survive.
So I'd like you to stick around for just a moment.
I'm speaking to my governor because I'm from Wisconsin.
His name is Scott Walker, and he is in the latter stages of a first term that may be as interesting as any term that any governor anywhere in the United States has served in decades in this country.
My name is Mark Elling, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Gelling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Whenever I travel around the country and see some of my friends in the horse racing world or elsewhere, they always bring up what's going on with Wis Wisconsin.
Did Walker survive?
How's Walker handling this?
Is Walker's or Walker's reforms going through?
What's going on with them?
It's a story that really touched the nation, the reforms that we enacted in Wisconsin.
I want to challenge Governor Walker, though, for a moment here.
You argue that you can lead.
You if you lead, if you're proactive, if you take on a bold solution, the center will reward you, the public will support you, and you can survive by walking through all of this.
There have got to be a lot of other Republicans who are in government listening to this and saying, Yeah, but look at all that you went through.
They tried to recall you out of office.
There's still a target on your back.
They really want to beat you next year in 2014.
There may be more money spent per capita against you than any other incumbent governor in the United States next year.
They keep bringing up these John Doe investigations in an attempt to find something on anyone who was ever supportive of you.
Uh if you would have taken a different repro approach, go along to get along, govern a little bit more conservatively than the other side did, you wouldn't have had all of this, and you probably would have coasted to re-election and still put you know potentially have some sort of national future.
So I I want to challenge this notion that what you did actually is a formula for success.
Why should any other Republican public public official take on the unions and take on the power structure that you did, given all that you've gone through in the fact that they're still out to get you?
Well, one, because it's the right thing to do.
It is.
In the end, it it it worked and and it's made our state that much better, and it's we took our uh you know $3.6 billion budget deficit and now have a seven hundred and sixty million dollar surplus.
We were able to cut property taxes this for the third year in a row.
We we've done all sorts of good things.
And I think many of those things would have been unattainable had we not taken on those reforms.
But you're right.
There could have been an easier path.
I would imagine there are some other elected officials who prefer to take that.
But to me, I didn't get elected to get reelected.
I got elected to do something.
And I would hope, I think even from my years, Mark, you remember back before I was in the governorship, I was a county exec.
And I think part of the reason why I wanted a county that has never elected a Republican before was for some of the same reasons.
In times of crisis, people want leadership.
And I'm still convinced, as tough as it's going to be.
In fact, you're right, next year they're going to come out with even more.
In fact, I'm hoping uh we can do what we did in the past, which is have a lot of grassroots supporters go to our website, Scott Walker.com, particularly before the end of the year.
You know, you're getting good at this.
You've plugged the book twice and you've gotten the website on there uh on there twice.
I'd normally call people on it, but I'm I'm supportive of the clause.
Let me shift gears for just a second here.
Obamacare is affecting the states dramatically.
One of the provisions in Obamacare is to increase the number of people who go on Medicaid.
I happen to think that this is going to be a nightmare for people in the United States, because when employers start dropping coverage next year, when the employer mandate uh starts to kick in, a lot of those people, low-income people are going to go on Medicaid.
The government doesn't pay the full cost of them.
I think that's going to be a major problem, especially in the states that accept the fet accepted the federal money to be part of the expanded Medicaid program.
You're taking a different approach in Wisconsin, and if I could get you in two minutes or less, your thoughts on Obamacare, the states navigating through this and where we are as a country with this whole nightmare now coming to fruition.
It is a nightmare.
It's not just the website, the uh Obama folks like to pawn it off as just being a problem with the website, which is bad enough.
It is the uh the lie that you could keep your doctor, it's the canceled plan, it's what's going to happen to small businesses where even the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel paper, you know, Mark is is anything uh uh far away from move from from conservative.
Even they admitted last week that small businesses are looking at anywhere from twenty-five to thirty percent for most, if not fifty to sixty percent premium increases next year.
That's the sticker shock that people are getting.
And and it's not doing a whole lot to change access.
In our state, we did something unique.
We cover everyone living in poverty for the first time in our state's history, but everyone living above it has moved into the marketplace, and we don't expose our taxpayers to what I know will happen, because it's already happening in most states across the country, and that is the Federal Government's backing away from their commitments.
It'll back away even more in the future.
And we're gonna have a huge problem.
But the worst part is the one least talked about, and that is that a huge problem for the nation's economy because small business owners in particular are reluctant to add more staff, reluctant to grow their their own businesses because they don't know what's next.
That's the biggest problem with Obamacare.
And that'll really start kicking in next year as we face the employer mandate, unless he changes that rule, and that's the other part of this, this constant changing of the rules that's going on.
No one can plan, no one even knows which side is up right now.
I I do y you you in Wisconsin were forced to delay your reforms for three months so that some of the individuals that would have been transitioned from Medicaid to the Obamacare exchanges have three months here to ride this out.
And I think to summarize, you did it because Obamacare is so fouled up you were afraid to have anybody be forced to go into it right now.
Exactly.
I said I'm not gonna let the failure of the federal government push people to fall through the cracks.
We didn't set up an exchange, we didn't take the Medicaid expansion, those folks would have been dependent uh on the Obamacare system being up in operation, and it will not be fully effective for those people by j January one.
And I said I'm just not gonna allow people to fall through the cracks.
But it does show you how screwed up this is.
This is an administration that's not only wrong philosophically, but wrong in the sense that they listen to their political shop without ever checking with their cabinet and their policy making team.
That is a critical, Critical mistake, something that any reasonable governor would never do.
Don't make political promises.
You can't act on what particular when it's something this big.
And that's another part of the unraveling of Obamacare.
I want to thank you for joining us.
Thank you.
Have a great Christmas.
Sure thing.
That's Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
Uh there have been a lot of people who've talked about him running for president.
I've got a mixed view on that.
I don't want to lose him as my governor in Wisconsin.
Plus, he has a tough re-election campaign to go through next year if people think that he's thinking of himself as presidential material.
Maybe he's too big for his britches.
Should we re-elect him as governor?
And all of that stuff.
But I know why he's attracted the attention of a lot of Republicans.
They seen so many of our elected officials get in there and talk, talk, talk and never do anything.
Here's a guy who actually, for better or worse, and it's been for better, did something.
And I think our folks are screaming out for that.
Mark Bellingon for Rush.
I didn't hear my name loudly enough on that.
I think the music kind of overwhelmed my name.
Let's do that nine more.
No.
I I am Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
By the way, for those of you who did not hear the beginning of the program, today's that you're supposed to sign up for Obamacare, you know.
All of you tens of millions that just can't wait to be part of it.
Today's the day.
1-800, you're screwed.
Just call them up and they'll take care of things for.
I you time to go to the phones here.
1-800-282882 is the Rush Limbaugh phone number.
Mike in Fairfield, California.
It's your turn on EIB.
Thanks for taking my call, Mark, and Merry Christmas.
Thank you.
Great conversation with Governor Walker.
It's nice to see somebody walking the walk.
You know, I do want to give I I I was going to I I forgot to make this point, and I wanted to make it.
One of the advantages Walker had he, when he put through his reforms and even now has a total Republican legislature, State Assembly who's Republican, and Senate is Republican, which is why he was able to, you know, throw the home run and go for the major reform.
He wasn't forced to compromise with Democrats.
So that is one of the advantages that he had.
I think he rightly realized that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where we controlled everything.
Let's not go for the small little fix.
Let's try to solve all of Wisconsin's problems or a big chunk of Wisconsin's problems with one major policy initiative.
Obviously, in other states, Republicans may share power with Democrats, and you can't get everything you want.
Anyway, uh, what did you have in your mind, Mike?
Uh the reason for my call is uh I think I have a possible solution for the AE network.
Yes, the one that uh is putting Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty on hiatus.
Yes, it would be uh a new reality show called PJ'An Afraid.
Um where they take the uh pajama boy from the Obamacare uh and drop him in the back Bayou County of Louisiana and see how long it takes for him to pray to Jesus that it's Phil Robertson who finds him first.
You know, that that's good stuff.
Thanks for the call, Mike.
Thank you.
I want to speak for a moment about the whole Duck Dynasty thing.
And I want to combine it with what time of the year we're at.
Today is the 23rd of December, for those of you who listen to the program live.
People have been arguing forever about whether or not we have a war on Christmas.
People who say that there's a war on Christmas underway, we're being mocked.
No, there's no war on Christmas, Christmas is everywhere.
But the reality is every day you see about some school district somewhere where some kid was singing a Christmas carol and he got in trouble, or they hold a concert and they don't put the I think Silent Night, some school district somewhere took the religious part of some religious lyrics of silent night out.
Back in my own home area of Wisconsin, you've got schools that are holding winter solstice festivals because they don't want to say the word Christmas.
Winter solstice itself was a pagan festival.
They don't even realize that they're being religious themselves and denying others their religiosity.
It's the same sort of thing.
You're not supposed to say Christmas.
You're not supposed to say Merry Christmas.
You're supposed to say happy holidays.
We're supposed to be respectful of all to the point that Christmas is something that isn't supposed to be said aloud.
We're not supposed to focus at all at the religious aspect Of it.
That's hushed away.
Yet in the meantime, all of the television networks run all of these Christmas specials and try to get big ratings off of them.
They all take in tremendous amount of advertising revenue from retailers that are out there with all of their Christmas sales.
They use Christmas to generate millions and millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in retail sales.
The major retailers make Christmas, their opportunity for their biggest push of the year.
This is similar to the Duck Dynasty thing.
They want our money.
But they want us to shut up.
They want there to be a Christmas.
Because if it there was no Christmas, there wouldn't be all of this advertising for all of the newspapers to rake in.
I look at today's New York Times.
The whole thing is Christmas ads.
The retailers need to have Christmas in order to have an excuse for people to go out and buy things to give to one another.
So they want Christmas.
They need Christmas.
You're just not supposed to be able to say what Christmas is.
And when you do, you my goodness, you're going to offend a Muslim, you're going to offend a Buddhist, you're going to offend an atheist.
Stop talking about that.
Let's just refer to the holiday season.
So in other words, they need our religion.
And when I say our, I understand not everyone listening to me right now as a Christian, but I'm a Christian.
It's my holiday.
They want my holiday.
They want it to be a big deal.
They just want to take everything out of the holiday that made it a holiday in the first place.
Well, the same as the same is true with Duck Dynasty.
AE put this program on the air.
Why'd they do it?
They figured it would find an audience.
They found these people and where do you think the idea for a show like this comes from?
How do they even find them?
This is a family from Louisiana that what?
Makes duck calls and duck decoys.
They're out there always scouring around for these reality shows, and they find these people who look like Z Z Top.
They've made all this money and live this backwoods wilderness lifestyle.
All right, let's turn a camera on and show them to the American public.
They probably thought that the show would be successful, but to their glee, it's really successful.
I suspect they never thought they'd have one of the top programs in the history of cable television, but they do.
What makes it such a hit a hit?
Well, I think I know.
Because a few months ago on my program in Milwaukee, I was commenting on all the TV programs that are hits right now that I not only have never seen but have never heard of, and I made a passing time.
This is like five months ago.
I made a passing comment to my audience after I saw the Duck Dynasty was number one in the ratings.
I've never heard of this program.
And I had lots of people tell me why I needed to watch it and why they loved it.
And it was all the same thing.
It wasn't that these are backwoods hicks.
It's not because they were rubes.
They liked the fact that this was a program about an intact loving family that believes in God, and they end each of their programs with a prayer.
And I heard that over and over and over from the people who watch the show.
So that's clearly why it's a hit.
It's a contrast to everything else else that's out there on television right now.
They're bringing values that a lot of people want to see.
So AE takes advantage of this.
They've got this giant hit.
These strange-looking people who do strange things like pray and live their lives in this seemingly old-fashioned hick way, yet have all of this money.
They want the Duck Dynasty people, and they want to pee the people who like Duck Dynasty to tune in and watch their program so that they can sell advertising rates on that show for a lot of money, and their network AE is a big, big, big hit.
They want Duck Dynasty and they want the Duck Dynasty viewers, but They don't want us to talk.
And they don't want the Duck Dynasty people to actually talk.
The weird thing is that they call this a reality show.
Yet the first time we actually got any real reality, the network shudders.
This wasn't something you could put on the editing room floor because he said it to a magazine and it made big news.
They want our votes.
Politicians of both parties, the Republicans and the Democrats.
Barack Obama, he even posed for a picture at the White House correspondence dinner with the Duck Dynasty people.
He wants to appeal to those people.
They want our votes.
They want us to watch our shows.
They want us to go to their movies.
But they don't respect us.
If you're a Christian who happens to agree with Phil Robertson that homosexuality is a sin, and God doesn't want you to engage in homosexual acts, if you happen to believe that, they don't respect you.
They think you're a bigot.
Well, whether you agree with him or not, a lot of people think the way Phil Robertson thinks.
There are tens of millions of Americans who are Christians, believe the Bible, believe the teachings in the Bible.
They don't believe that the Bible is to be reinterpreted and turned upside down.
They agree with that.
There are also millions of Americans who, when Phil Robertson explained very graphically, why it doesn't make any sense to him as to why you'd want to be a gay, nodded their head and say, you know what, Phil's right.
And they're not surprised that Phil said that because they watch him on the TV show and they see the people praying, and you pretty much tell what their values and their thoughts and their philosophy and ideology is.
He just did the thing that you're not supposed to do.
He said this.
Why?
You're not supposed to say that.
We live in a world in which gays are marrying.
People who have a negative view toward homosexuality, that's so passe.
That's wrong.
That's bigoted.
So they've determined these rules of what you can say and what you can think, which would all be fine.
AE has every right to throw Phil Robertson show off the air if he wants to.
It's a free country too from their perspective.
They have First Amendment rights.
They don't want to have him on the program.
They don't have to, just as Rush doesn't have to have as a guest host some lefty who wants to come in here and spew liberalism when Rush isn't around.
And he doesn't have to have that program on the air.
The thing is, though, they want the program on the air.
They want the people who believe all the things that Phil Robertson believes to be watching the network.
They want to take it all in.
They just don't want the whole picture to come out.
They don't want the real beliefs of Duck Dynasty to be out there just as they don't believe those of us who have points of view that agree with Phil Robertson, they don't want us to talk aloud about them.
Well, then I say to them, then don't put the show on the air.
What are they even allowing the guy to do interviews for?
What did they think he was going to say?
Oh, yeah, I think gay should be able to marry.
You know, I talk about religion on my program, but I think the Bible is crazy.
I don't buy any.
And of course he wasn't going to say this.
It was only a matter of time before he starts saying some of these things.
I suspect you put another microphone in his mouth, he's got all sorts of thoughts and attitudes that might appall the people at AE.
Fine.
Don't put the show on the air.
The major media in this country, the political elite, the liberal establishment, they want our money, they want our votes, they want our taxes, but they do not respect us.
And when one of us dares to talk, say what he actually thinks, they tell him to keep his big mouth shut because we don't want to hear that stuff.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
I think how the Robertson family, the Duck Dynasty people play this is going to be interesting.
You know, when you say something that the elitists say is offensive, usually you're forced to apologize.
Oh, I shouldn't say that I deeply apologize.
And somebody who's been through that himself, sometimes you do say things that you regret.
And you do apologize for them.
I do a live radio program.
I'm going to say a few things that I wish that I hadn't said.
So far I don't think any today, but who knows?
But you can make mistakes.
In this case, though, it's clear that Phil Robertson doesn't feel as though he has anything to apologize for.
He can play the game and say, Oh, I'm sorry, and I didn't mean to offend anybody, and I guess you know this is just the way I was raised, and I was wrong.
I apologize, I apologize, I can apologize.
We can stick by his guns and tell A and E he wants to be released from his contract and wants to put a show on another network.
He did lead a Bible study group in his hometown of West Monroe, Louisiana, yesterday, and a website and newspaper from England named the Daily Mail was allowed to attend, and they quote some of the comments that he made.
He said, I love all men and women.
I am a lover of humanity and not a hater.
And then went on to say that he doesn't feel as though he has anything to apologize for and doesn't intend to do so.
So the early signs are that he's gonna stand by his guns here.
Earlier, according to this website, he stood in front of a small class at White Ferry Road Church, wearing his full camouflage suit and dressed the group for about around 45 minutes.
He said, I have an immoral drunk high.
I ran with the wicked people for twenty-eight years, and I have run with the Jesus people since, and the contrast is a sounding.
I tell people you are a sinner.
We all are.
Do you want to hear my story before I give you the bottom line on your story?
We murder each other and we steal from one another.
Sex and immorality goes ballistic.
All the diseases that just happen just so happened to follow sexual mischief.
Boy, there are some microbes running around now.
Sexual sins are numerous and many.
I have a few myself.
You can have fun, but one thing is for sure, as long as you are both healthy in the first place, you are not going to catch some debility in disease, there is safety there.
And then he goes on and talks about what Jesus said from the beginning.
Jesus said as a man and a woman.
I don't think the guy's going to back down in part because he's got a fair amount of leverage.
The thing that's interesting about this is that AE didn't pick on some obscure program that has no viewers.
They went after the biggest hit that's on their network.
Last week in the cable ratings, Duck Dynasty, and I think it was even a repeat, Duck Dynasty had the highest ratings of any non-sports broadcast on cable television.
Phil Robertson and his family can take their program elsewhere if AE doesn't want to associate with them anymore.
And this notion of putting the guy on hiatus so that he can't be on the program that's about his family and his business, that's just silly.
What it comes down to is this.
Those of us, and there are tens of millions of us, who've been shoved around and bullied in being told that all these things that we think are wrong and you can't say them aloud.
Wonder what would happen if some people just said, We're not gonna take this anymore.
And I think Phil Robertson has enough power with the success of that program to take his show somewhere else.
And I hope he does so.
Mark Belling's sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
San Bernardino, California, Sandra, it's your turn on EIB.
Well, yes, good morning, Mark, and Merry Christmas from sunny Southern California.
Your uh last segment on Duck Dynasty had me just writing frantically your phrases down because they were just fitting into what I wanted to talk about.
Um speaking of wanting us to shut up and not uh say anything that might offend.
Um I wanted to let you know and the listeners to know that the Rose Parade this year is going to be featuring a float where they will be performing a gay marriage.
During the parade.
During the parade, yes.
It is um the AIDS Health Care Foundation float.
That's an interesting story, Sandra.
I have to cut you a little bit short because I'm up against the end of the hour, but that's a fascinating story that Sandra shares.
The Rose Parade is going to feature a live gay marriage.
Why do that?
To get in the face of the people who disapprove and don't like it.
There are going to be people who are offended by that.
How come when our side is offended by anything, we don't get to veto anything?
It all works only one way in our society.
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