Yes, Eraba, back we are on the fastest three hours in media.
Those are the three hours hosted by me each and every day, the Rush Limbaugh program, the EIB Network.
And Friday, let's just keep it rolling.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Oh, there he is.
Bob Beckles over at CNN.
I didn't know that.
Did you know that?
I didn't know Bob Beckle went over to CNN.
Well, and no big deal.
I just didn't know it out there.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program, folks.
Open Line Friday, 800-282-2882.
The email address, ilrushbow at EIBnet.com.
I mentioned earlier that all of the, I don't know what to call it, I just call it reaction that I am getting after having spoken up for Marco Rubio the other day, not as an endorsement.
I just spoke up for him.
As those of you who are listening heard.
Yeah, here it is.
Grab soundbites 22, 23, and 24.
I've heard from a lot of people.
Rush, and I, it, it, it, it's, you know, Rubio, he's just Romney.
Don't you understand that?
Romney and Obamacare and Rubio and a gang.
That's, that's, folks, my attitude on all this, I've, I'm only going into this because I don't want to be misunderstood here.
I don't endorse people.
I never have endorsed in a primary, and people think that I should, but I don't because of all the reasons I've announced on prior occasions.
There's more downside to it than up.
I don't control their campaigns.
I don't have anything to do with their policy positions or where they're going to go from day to day.
When you endorse somebody, you're pretty much locked into what they do unless they do something so bad you have to withdraw the endorsement.
What good's that?
That's not helpful.
Plus, I think the campaign is where the winners are determined.
And I've never lived under the illusion that it's the job of the media to pick candidates, either the drive-by media or us.
So my only thing with Rubio was I actually started receiving some emails and just listening to people talk about what a rotten guy he was.
And I know he's not a rotten guy.
To me, it's no more complicated than not wanting to throw people overboard forever to excommunicate them for you can disagree with them.
You can say whatever you want if you think they're potentially dangerous.
Many people think Rubio is not conservative.
He's a wolf in sheep's clothing.
He's going to be no different than Romney.
And you wait, Rush.
It's going to all be proven because he's going to end up being the establishment candidate.
And they're going to use him.
We're going to try to defeat Cruz and so forth.
It may well be.
But none of this is a secret to anyone.
I have spoken admirably of all kinds of people in this race.
I have great admiration for many of them.
And any of them to me are preferable to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or whoever else.
And I just worry that some of these people can get so damaged in the primary that they don't have a chance if they end up getting the nomination down the road.
So I wasn't trying to stir anything up.
I wasn't trying to take momentum away from anybody or transfer it to anybody.
There was no grand scheme or design here.
And I'm only mentioning this because you can't believe the number of well-intentioned people who are reaching out to me saying, I may not have realized what I had done, or I may not have realized what I had said, or I might want to rethink.
Did you know this?
Did you know that?
And so I just wanted to say, yes, I know what I did.
I know why I did it.
I said why I did it.
I also know what I didn't do.
I didn't endorse anybody.
And I never do and never have.
Now, that's a whole other argument, too, because I have a whole lot of people telling me that I should.
If there's somebody so far and away, run away better that you ought to not just leave it up to the process because you can influence the process.
You ought to get in there and roll up your sleeves and just tell us who to vote for.
Tell us who you like.
And sometimes I must tell you the temptation is great.
But it's not as though I'm sitting here not telling you what I think.
I don't hold back what I think of people or events or policy or certain things that happen here.
I also happen to assume that everybody in this audience is capable of making up their own mind and that you usually do without me telling you what to think.
I'm not the one that thinks of you as robots incapable of thinking on your own.
That is what the Democrats try to characterize the audience at talk radio as, and I know it's not the case.
Anyway, it has become a quite frequent discussion topic on cable news.
And in many instances, it's at Fox News.
So let's go to the audio soundbites here.
We'll start at number 22.
This is the five yesterday.
And no, I take it back.
The first one is from Gretchen Carlson's show yesterday afternoon called The Real Story.
And she's speaking with the political editor at townhall.com, Guy Benson, about Rubio's campaign.
She said, a label that Rubio has been given, and I think it's fascinating because maybe in any other race, he wouldn't be given this label, but he's been called a moderate.
Where do you see that going?
He got a much-needed vote of confidence this week.
Rush Limbaugh on his number one-rated radio program just went out there and said, Look, I don't like this idea that people are calling Rubio establishment.
He is a full-throated, legitimate Reagan conservative.
That is a very welcome soundbite for the Rubio campaign.
Right.
Now, the reaction to that, and there has been much, I mean, coming my way.
What do you mean, Reagan conservative?
What do you mean, Reagan?
Reagan amnesty?
Wait a minute now.
Yeah, Reagan amnesty.
I wasn't thinking of that when I said it, but there was the Simpson-Mazzoli bill.
But be careful what you say to me because I, when I think Reagan, Reagan Conservative, did you see Rubio's speech?
I've even had people complaining.
Rubio, you know what he did?
He went out there and he acted like he won after the Iowa caucus.
How dare he?
He went on and acted like he won based on expectations he did.
It's common.
The winner of the Iowa caucus is not often the big story.
Sometimes the second or third place finisher is.
It's all based on expectations.
Anyway, Rubio was first, and the reason he was first, he might have gone out there to hog the limelight.
I don't know.
But traditionally, the loser goes and then the winner.
Now, in this case, three people were going to head out there.
And there may have been more.
Somebody might have spoken before Rubio, but it was Rubio and then Trump spoke and then Cruz, as it normally is.
When I've spoken to Marco Rubio, when Marco Rubio has talked to me about what he believes in his future vision for the country and so forth, it sounds conservative to me.
Now, I know, you don't have to tell me you're blue in the face, gang of eight.
I understand.
Look, I've been seduced by that same crowd.
That same crowd, I've told you, starting in 2002, I've had emissaries from the White House descend on me, try to get my mind right on immigration.
Tell me where I'm wrong.
Tell me how to think of it.
Some members of the Gang of Eight begged me not to call their bill amnesty because if I called it amnesty, then that would kill it.
I didn't get seduced by it.
They didn't change my mind, but Rubio, as a freshman senator, did.
And he joined the gang of eight, and it came off that he was supporting.
And not only did it come off, he was supporting, but it came off that he had allowed himself to be used as a fresh young Hispanic face in the Senate to try to do the work of the establishment.
I'm fully aware of all that.
Now, Rubio has tried to tell people it was a youthful mistake, that it's not representative of the thought processes he has now.
And who knows?
I understand all this is the point.
But in saying what I said about Rubio as a full-throated conservative, I'm just talking about a speech on Monday night after the Iowa caucus.
His speech at the Republican convention last year, which is a stump speech, a stock speech.
He gives it frequently.
But more than anything, it was the idea that he's a squish rhino moderate.
That I don't see.
I could be dead wrong on it.
I'll probably hear about that as well.
Here is the next bite.
This is the next tour from the five.
And it's, let's say, Juan Williams and Brian Kilmead discussing this whole thing.
Rush Limbaugh says he's upset that people are saying that Rubio is not a true conservative.
I don't like this idea that Marco Rubio is all of a sudden being labeled as an establishment candidate.
I know that Rubio's got the baggage of that gang of eight bill.
I understand that.
Marco Rubio is no moderate Republican centrist.
I don't see Marco Rubio as anything other than a legitimate, full-throated conservative.
Nobody's pure, and nobody is ever free of making mistakes.
Now, there are people who say that Rush, you're wrong.
Marco Rubio is Nitt Romney.
I say, how do you figure that?
And what they say to me is, as Obamacare was to Romney, gang of eight is to Rubio.
And what they mean is Romney could no more oppose Obama and Obamacare because he was the architect RomneyCare in Massachusetts.
And it's true.
It was the framework and the foundation for Obamacare.
And that clown who wrote it admitted so.
I'm having a medal block on this guy's name.
We've talked about him constantly.
But it's been admitted that Romney Care was the foundation for Obamacare, no question about it.
And we did.
We nominated somebody in 2012 who, because of that, could not go after the number one reason we were seeking to beat Obama, which was to repeal it.
Understand that.
So what they're telling me is: well, if Rubio gets elected, he's just going to be the gang of eight version of Romney Care.
He's going to go out there and he's already said he's for amnesty and he is for global intervention and this kind of stuff.
So we're going to be nominating maybe and electing a guy who at one time said he was for Amy.
Are you going to roll a dice rush if he's changed his mind?
I get all of that.
And I can't explain it and I'm not trying to.
I don't know if he got seduced as a new arrival in the Senate and these guys put the moves on him and offered him a chance to gain power fast.
I don't know.
It was a horrible mistake that he made, if it was a mistake, if that's what he really believes.
Yeah, Jonathan Gruber, healthcare architect.
If it's what he really believes, that's going to be fleshed out in the campaign.
And there's nobody better to flesh it out than Cruz, by the way.
And they've been having their arguments back and forth on this as to who stands for what, what position here, where, there, and everywhere.
It'll get fleshed out.
I'm just, to me, Rubio's not a bad guy.
And I do not associate him with some of the others that you are, that we all are automatically attaching to the so-called establishment.
Heck, guys, he was at one point, he was the favorite of the Tea Party crowd.
Now, the latest rub on Rubio is he doesn't have any achievements.
And the best way to stymie some of his supporters, he's got like Santorum and others have endorsed him, and they've been on TV.
And then they've said, name, name one Rubio achievement, and they can't.
They draw a blank and they fumble around.
And I'm fully aware Joe Scarborough over on MSNBC, for whatever reason, doesn't like Marco Rubio at all and has been dumping on him every chance he gets for the longest time.
I don't know if there's interstate rivalry there going on.
Don't know the full story of that.
But I hear it all.
I'm fully aware of the problems people have with Rubio.
Here's the next bite.
And this is Kimberly Guilfoyle and Brian Kilmead reacting to the bite that Juan Williams just played.
Rush that he articulated that very well.
I think that's a good argument that people should do.
I hear he has a lot of listeners.
That people should do if they're trying to support Marco Rubio.
That's how you explain it.
But isn't it bizarre that every day it's like, who's in what lane?
Wait, are you a salesman today, but you're not?
You're an outsider, but then you're a centrist.
I mean, it's very confusing.
That's Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Now, as far as the other people going on in the campaign, Trump still leads in New Hampshire, but the polling says not nearly as dominant.
This is Nate Silver and the 538 website.
This is the former New York Times poll analyst that the left just loved, and then they hated him when he left and went over to ESPN.
But he's been analyzing all this latest polling data, including the most recently released public policy polling national poll, which shows a near three-way tie.
Trump at 25, Cruz at 21, Marco Rubio at 21.
Trump is down nine points in the PPP poll since the last one was taken in December.
Another national poll from the Morning Consult doesn't give the same impression.
Trump is well ahead in that poll at 38%, but that is also down.
It's a meager three points from the prior morning consult poll.
Rubio is up four and Cruz is up two.
And I think, which poll is it that Rubio's moved into second place?
One of these polls in New Hampshire has Rubio in second place with Cruz in third place.
And then there's a poll, the Harper poll, whatever the heck that is, that shows Jeb Bush doing better than he is anywhere else.
In fact, they're showing the Harper poll showing Jeb Bush at close to 30%.
Second place, rather.
And I'm just looking at the clock.
I've got to take a break here.
But one thing about the WMUR poll that's out there today, CNNW, that margin of error is plus or minus seven.
You can't take anything in that poll with a margin of that big.
Right?
It's the WMUR-TV CNN poll that shows Marco Rubio in second place at 18% ahead of Cruz.
It shows Rubio up from 11 to 18%.
Here's the problem, that poll.
It has a margin of error, seven points, plus or minus seven.
Who releases a poll with a margin of error of plus or minus seven?
This poll does show Trump in the lead at 29%, unchanged from Iowa, unchanged from before Iowa.
Joan in Loma Linda, California, back to the phones at Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hello.
Hey.
Thank you for taking my call.
You were talking about Bernie Sanders and Hillary and watching this.
I held my nose and watched it last night.
Yes.
And what occurred to me, is it possible that Bernie is actually their worst nightmare?
He doesn't know how to play the game.
He honestly believes in it.
So he represents all the voters out there who have been drinking the Kool-Aid all these years.
Smoking the dope, you mean?
Yes, and they can't expose him without exposing themselves.
For years, we've had these, you know, hypocrites run who say one thing and do another.
But Bernie's their problem because he really believes in it.
And they're going to have to take him out in some way that discredits him.
So you're saying the Democrat Party, they go in and they talk all this socialism stuff.
But at the end of the day, they're really not in favor of it as much as Bernie is.
But Bernie is a true believer and poses a great threat if he wins, and that's why they've got to take him out.
Right, because he does stand a chance of pulling all races, all ages and everything, who really have believed that this was going to work all these years.
And by calling it by its real name, they are in a terrible position.
I'll tell you why it's worrying me.
I think you're on to something.
I really do.
But the reason it's worrying people is that Bernie is pulling every freeloader into his orbit.
That's who's glomming onto him.
Every freeloader, everybody who wants the government to give him everything because they feel ticked off and screwed by the system and so forth.
And many of them are young people who've been taught that by their idiot socialist professors.
Our last caller has a good point when she says that Bernie is such just the real deal, meaning he's not slick, he's not pre-programmed, he's not poll-tested, he just goes out and says what he thinks, and it comes across as real.
And as such, they got to be careful how they take the guy out because he's got something Hillary doesn't have.
And by the way, this is true.
He has a bond with his supporters.
Hillary doesn't.
Hillary's supporters are there because she's going to be the one with a D by her name.
There may be a small segment of Hillary supporters that are actually into Hillary and really dig Hillary.
That's such an infinitesimally small number of people of the total that will vote for her if she's the nominee.
She, believe me, doesn't get anywhere near the connection that Bernie Sanders has with his voters.
And so her point was that the Democrats are going to take old Bernie out.
They've got to be very careful how they do it because they could so anger Bernie's supporters that these wackos, who knows what they might do.
You know, go find Ralph Nader and ask him to run again or some other silly third party vessel.
She has a point about that.
Now, there's a story here from Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Mag, which actually is just a story about an AP writer in Vermont who covered Bernie Sanders for 28 years.
And what is this guy's name?
This guy's name is Chris Graff, G-R-A-F, covered Bernie Sanders 25 years as the AP bureau chief in Vermont.
That probably meant he's the bureau chief and reporter.
I mean, how big a staff could they have had for Vermont?
So this guy was all over Bernie Sanders 25 years.
And his take on Bernie Sanders is that he has no social skills.
Now you figure AP, this guy's got to be a liberal Democrat.
A, he's with APP.
He lives in Vermont.
So he's got to be in the same ideological school as Bernie.
And he says Bernie Sanders has no social skills.
He has no sense of humor, which, by the way, is the same as Hillary.
She doesn't have a sense of humor.
She doesn't know how to make you laugh with her.
But apparently with Bernie, it's really bad.
This guy, Chris Graff, who covered him 25 years, says no social skills, no sense of humor, quick to boil over, has a very bad temper.
And furthermore, well, I can't.
Two other terms he uses to describe him.
I can't repeat here.
But, okay, he's a penis and a what else is a penis and he's the exit hole.
You go, okay, that's what he said.
This guy covered Bernie Sanders for 25 years.
And for these reasons, this guy said the word some people use to describe Bernie Sanders' attitude toward his employees was abusive.
So here you have a socialist with no social skills who abuses workers and have no sense of humor.
Sounds just like Joe Stalin to me, sounds like Lennon to me.
Sounds like Marx.
Sounds like all the rest of these guys to me.
But his supporters think, oh, Bernie, he does have that bond.
There's no question about that.
Here's Jake in Annapolis, Maryland.
Jake, glad you waited.
Great to have you here, sir.
Hello.
Hey, thanks.
Thanks, Russia.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
So my comment is that I think that America should adopt the Nordic style, the Nordic model, like they have in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland.
Yeah, we have a welfare economy.
There is more equality in those types of countries.
There is universal health care.
People's health is better.
People live longer there.
There is much lower unemployment, much lower rates of childhood poverty, much better education.
The standard of living in these countries are phenomenally better than in the United States.
And I suspect, I think that we could learn a lot.
We could benefit if we adopted some of the policies that we have in these countries.
Well, that's exactly the Bernie Sanders platform.
Yeah, I'm aware of that.
Yeah, I'm supporting Bernie Sanders.
Oh, you do?
There's only one problem, one overall problem.
There's just one gee, I hate to do that.
There's just one little problem with it.
That.
Denmark and some of the other Nordic Scandinavian countries have discovered in the last year or two that it doesn't work.
And they are reforming.
They are reducing the size of their welfare state economies.
They are reducing benefits, particularly with this influx of refugees now who are demanding to be fed, clothed, medically treated, taken care of.
But I'm not kidding.
I'm trying to do this as politely as I can.
They are all reforming.
And I'm not going to say that they're becoming market economic countries, but they are really, they can't afford it anymore.
They can't pay for it.
They're in deep, deep doo-doo.
The standard of living argument, too, is a little bit of a stretch.
Their populations are not nearly big enough to have a real honest comparison on standard of living.
But I got to tell you, I just have to tell you out there, Jake, that there is not a country on the face of the earth that has ever created a higher standard of living for more millions of people than the United States of America until Democrats are elected president, and then we have problems set in.
But other than that, back to the phones open line Friday, it's Cody in Portland, Oregon.
Welcome, sir.
Great to have you here.
Hi.
Hey, thank you, Rush.
How are you doing?
I'm very well, sir.
Thank you.
Good.
I'm just calling to let you know back in October, you sent me your books, the children's books.
I have two daughters, three and five.
And you told me to kind of try it out and see if they like it because they were younger.
But I just wanted to call and let you know that they absolutely enjoy them.
My daughter, who's three, you sent Horse Liberty.
Yeah.
She just loves that horse, sleeps with it, loves holding it while we read the books.
And just want to say thank you for that.
Well, thank you for calling to say so.
Yeah, yeah, no problem.
I'm flattered you went to the trouble to get through here.
It takes a while.
You've been at home for, I guess, some time.
So thank you very much.
I'm gratified.
Three and five is a little beneath the target age group, which makes it even better.
What all did we send you?
You sent the Brave Pilgrim.
I think it was right before the last one came out.
So there was four of them.
You sent the four with the plush Liberty doll.
Oh, great.
Well, look, Cody, I really appreciate it.
Those books are a project unto themselves.
Tell you what it is.
It's all about trying to teach the truth of American history before college professors, even high school, get a hold of these kids.
You look at Bernie Sanders' support.
Folks, a lot of his support is millennials, young people, who are, I mean, they're openly, they'll tell you, they know what socialism is and they like it.
How can that be?
And had a story last week, didn't get to it in very much detail, but they're being taught it.
They're being taught it.
It's not that they're being entrapped or fooled.
They're openly embracing it.
And that's not good.
It's just not good.
So, Cody thinks, make sure they keep reading those books as they get older.
Thank you so much for the call.
Okay, Huffing and Puffington Post.
Super Bowl on Sunday, the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos.
The environmentalist wacko method would say, Carolina, predator, big cats versus Broncos.
Broncos, you know, bucking Broncos and horses, but they're not predators.
And horses, they allow themselves to be ridden by human beings.
They allow themselves to be abused by humans.
No, you've got to go with the predator cat, environmental wacko.
It's tough when you've got two animals going.
How do you choose?
That's how you do it.
The Huffing and Puffington Post.
By the way, that I think is correct.
The Panthers are favored for a reason, and that is the Denver defense is where this game is going to take.
If they can't stop the Carolina offense, I don't know that the Denver offense can get in the shootout and stay with them.
That's on paper, and I happen to agree this season where the game shakes out on paper.
But Huffing and Puffington Post has a story.
The Panthers are the most unapologetically black team in NFL history, and it's awesome.
What does this mean?
Well, here's what they say: The culture of football is such that a league made up of mostly black men is supposed to comply with certain standards created and enforced by mostly white men.
Ideally, the players would act subdued in public, celebrate their achievements quietly, and speak in a manner that avoids the spotlight.
The Carolina Panthers haven't done any of that this season.
On the way to a 15-and-1 regular season record in the first Super Bowl appearance since 2004, the team has had fun and has been fun to watch.
They talk loudly, they dance loudly, they celebrate loudly, but they've done something significant along the way, too.
They have embraced, demonstrated, and exuded aspects of their blackness in a way that few predominantly black teams have done in the past.
They have been wonderfully, unapologetically, proudly black.
A lot of credit should be given to the coach, Ron Rivera, for empowering the players to be them black selves.
The only Latino coach in the league.
Look at the way these libs identify people.
Only Latino coach in the league.
Rivera knows what it means to stand out.
So I guess reading this, these black players on the Panthers are shooting the bird to the white power structure of the NFL, which says, behave yourself, be polite, don't overdo it celebrating the Panthers.
Screw you.
And they're celebrating and they're dancing and they are being their blackness apologetically.
And that makes them the most unapologetically black team in the NFL ever.
Huffing and Puffington Post.
Not me.
I'm just reading what the latest batch of liberal media sports drive-bys happen to be saying.
I never realized that black people were so different from everyone else.
Thank goodness we have the left to remind us of that day in and day out, like that story in the Huffing and Puffington Post.