RUSH: Stop caring who the media likes. Screw them!

RushLimbaugh.com ^ | January 25, 2008 | Rush Limbaugh

[Yosemitest]

This is a collection of three topics, that I've combined with extra photos and links.

Drive-Bys Love McCain, but They'll Never Vote GOP. So Who Cares?
January 25, 2008

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We return to Atlanta. John, hi. Welcome to the show.

CALLER: Rush, a pleasure speaking to you today.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I want to take issue with a phrase used in that CNN story that you played a couple segments ago, and it reminds me -- well, it's a phrase that was also used by James Brooks a couple weeks ago in which they put forth that the Republican Party is fractured. In no uncertain terms I want to say that I profoundly disagree with that assertion. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

RUSH: Why? Tell me why?

CALLER: Because this is a party that, as we have said many, many times, the president is not on the ballot, the vice president is not on the ballot. This is a wide open election. So it is the idea that we're trying to figure out:

What is the message?
What do we want to emphasize?
What is it we think is important?
And the way I understand my American civics is that the way you do that is by going through a primary process --

RUSH: Absolutely, congratulations! A gold star for you.

CALLER: Thank you, sir.

RUSH: That's exactly what primaries are about, to sort out all these ideas. The Democrat Party is at war, too, but the Drive-Bys won't tell you that. It's a war over race. We are having a war here. It's a war over philosophy. It's exactly the kind of war parties go through. We are not fractured. You know why they say we are fractured?

CALLER: Because they're a bunch of morons?

RUSH: No. Well, that,
but specifically -- I'll give you another chance.

CALLER: Because it makes us look bad, we don't know what we're doing.

RUSH: No, it's because we're not aligned behind McCain.
McCain is their candidate. McCain is their Republican. McCain's the Democrats favorite Republican, and because we aren't getting behind him, we are fractured.
Would they say we were fractured if McCain was being defeated by -- in fact, Romney is ahead on the delegate count and the popular vote so far, which is what this is all about.
This is not about winning individual states. It's about ultimate delegate counts and totals when you get to the convention.

CALLER: The idea of declaring a front-runner,

"Oh, McCain should be the front-runner of South Carolina, Huckabee is the front-runner now,"
you're exactly right. Romney has been ahead in the delegate count since Wyoming, I think, correct?

RUSH: That's right.

CALLER: Who is the front-runner?

RUSH: These clowns don't like either Romney or Rudy because they don't like conservatives.
And so, of course, McCain, Huckabee, whichever one happens to be doing well at the time is who they're going to ballyhoo and promote.
But they're just saying we're fractured because we can't get behind McCain, and their view is that McCain is a panacea for now, McCain is the savior on a white horse.
But maybe I'm making too much of this. Let me ask you, John, you're an intelligent guy, I can tell.

CALLER: Thank you.

RUSH: You're probably upscale because you live in Atlanta. It's not a cheap town.

CALLER: (laughter) I'd like to think so.

RUSH: So when you see the papers like the New York Times and the Palm Beach Post and, you know, they're very liberal on their editorial pages and are endorsing McCain, what does that say to you? Anything?
Does it matter?

CALLER: It's one more reason why I don't read them.

RUSH: I know that, we don't read them anyway. We don't know this because we read them. We know this because other media reports are telling us that they endorsed McCain.
But you have to know now that when you get down to November, the New York Times has a choice, let's say it is McCain, say McCain gets this nomination, and, of course, Hillary gets the nomination for the Democrats, and the New York Times is going to write an editorial endorsing who?

CALLER: Hillary.

RUSH: Right. So what is the value of their endorsement of any Republican?
What is the value of anybody in the mainstream media's opinion of any Republican?
We got all these stories yesterday, day before, criticizing Bill for being too mean to Barack and he's out there acting undignified and all this horrible stuff, it's all over the place, Democrat state officials.
Gets to November, who are they going to vote for?

CALLER: Well, it tells me when the New York Times, the AJC, the Palm Beach Post, when they endorse somebody like McCain, it's just a signal that this is not the, quote, unquote, real conservative. This is the guy that we find palatable, the guy will agree with us --

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: -- and be, quote, unquote, bipartisan.

RUSH: That we still want to cream; that we still want to wipe out when it gets to November. This is my point.
I don't care. It's amusing and it's entertaining to report on all these Drive-Bys and Democrat Party officials getting mad at Clinton for running around out there and being too mean to Barack and acting unpresidential and undignified, it doesn't mean anything. They're going to vote en masse for Hillary Clinton in November,
so I don't care what they're telling us about Senator McCain or Senator Huckabee or Governor Romney, I don't care.
Because I know that nobody in the Drive-Bys is going to vote for anybody on our side,
and I know that they're not going to endorse anybody but McCain on our side, so I don't care.
In fact, it is instructive, but why should we sit here -- well, I don't, but why should anybody get all concerned with what the Drive-Bys think of our side? They're not voting for us. Even if they chose one of our guys, which they already have, and they're just slavish in their adoration, and they promote and they love the guy, so what?
We know they're not going to vote for him.

So you gotta get out of this mode here that our acceptance or our arrival or the fact that we're making progress can be tracked by whether or not Democrats like some of us. Screw that. Because when it comes to the meat cracking time down there in November at Election Day, they're not going to vote for any of our guys.
So who cares what they say about them ever?
The more they praise 'em, the more suspicious you gotta get. Because they do not want our side to win.
There is not one of them, from Matthews -- I don't care who it is in the Drive-Bys -- not one of them that wants McCain to become president. He's just, if it happens, and if an accident happens and some hook or by crook Hillary would lose, McCain would be acceptable, and they wouldn't be afraid of him.
But the last thing they want is for him to actually win, any of our people.
Who cares what they say, endorsement-wise or otherwise.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Speaking of McCain, Paul Campos, Scripps Howard News Service, about three days ago, had a piece on the media's love affair with McCain. He said:

"One of the curiosities of American politics is the media's ongoing infatuation with John McCain. A bit of this is based on things such as McCain's opposition to torture (unfortunately, we can no longer treat opposing torture like opposing child molestation, i.e., something one assumes is standard equipment in a presidential candidate rather than a luxury upgrade). Yet most of the journalistic love affair with the Republican senator from Arizona is based on other factors. Consider this typical endorsement from the Orlando Sentinel: While McCain
'has stuck to his principles at the risk of sinking his campaign,'
Mitt Romney
'has abandoned positions that would have alienated his party's conservative base.'
(Indeed, I checked a computer database and discovered that, in the national media, Romney is at least six times more likely to be described as a flip-flopper than McCain.) This does not merely ignore but actually inverts the truth.
The fact is that no presidential candidate in either party has flip-flopped as egregiously as McCain on such a wide range of issues. Here's just a small sample of Sen. Straight Talk's recent series of remarkable conversions to politically convenient stances:
On abortion rights, McCain has done a 180-degree turn, from favoring only the most minor restrictions and opposing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, to supporting an almost total ban, while advocating that the Supreme Court reverse Roe immediately.
McCain has transformed himself from a deficit hawk who mocked supply-side economics into someone who sounds like he's drunk deeply from the wackiest vats of supply-side Kool-Aid, to the point where he now claims raising taxes decreases revenues (a claim so wildly in conflict with the facts -- for example, federal tax revenues almost doubled in real terms after the Clinton tax increases
-- that it's either a shameless lie or a product of astounding ignorance)."
Raising taxes does decrease revenue, it certainly can.

But anyway,

"In regard to ethanol subsidies, McCain has gone from treating them as the worst sort of pork to becoming a strong supporter of a program despised by economists, but beloved of Iowa farmers and the good people at Archer Daniels Midland. Six years ago, McCain sternly condemned Jerry Falwell as
'an agent of intolerance.'
Eighteen months ago, he gave the commencement address at Falwell's university, while openly embracing one of the most noxious figures of the religious right."
Now, this is a guy from the Scripps Howard News Service, Paul Campos, from whose piece I'm reading here.
"These are just a few examples from a far longer list. On topics ranging from immigration, to campaign finance reform, to gay marriage, to accepting support from various sleazy characters he previously shunned, McCain has either completely reversed his views or seriously equivocated regarding what they are this week. Yet the media continue to lavish him with worshipful paeans to his supposedly uncompromising commitment to principled leadership no matter what the political cost etc., etc.
Part of this is accounted for by lazy autopilot journalism ...
But part of it is something worse. When it comes to McCain, many of the sophisticates at the top of the media pyramid are like a masochistic spouse who treats open infidelity as a twisted sort of faithfulness. They love McCain because when he lies to their face he doesn't even pretend to be doing otherwise. According to the pretzel logic of a certain kind of journalism, that counts as candor."
When you openly lie to a journalist you're being honest about your lie, then that's candor.
"All this would be merely amusing if McCain were not a genuinely tragic figure. The young man who showed such exemplary courage in the face of his North Vietnamese tormentors has become an old man whose courage abandoned him when subjected to the more subtle tortures of worldly ambition."
Paul Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado and this appeared in the Scripps Howard News Service on January 22nd.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• Politico: McCain Praises Rush Limbaugh, Faintly

• New York Times: Editorial: Primary Choices: John McCain

• AP: GOP Rivals Say Clinton Will Raise Taxes

• AP: New York Times Endorses Clinton, McCain

• Scripps: The Media's Love Affair with McCain

• TIME: Master of the House

• TheAtlantic.com : McCain vs. Rush Limbaugh, Obama vs. Bill Clinton

• NewsBusters: CNN: Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio's Power 'Diminishing'

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.

---

McCain, the Media & Limbaugh
January 25, 2008

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, now we focus again on the "I am irrelevant" segment of the program. This is with audio sound bites. First, from West Palm Beach, right across the bridge yesterday. Senator McCain, after a town hall meeting, spoke with reporters. He was asked about me. This is what he said.

MCCAIN: I respect Rush Limbaugh. He is a voice that is respected by a lot of people who are in our party. I've been trying to convince everybody that I am the most qualified.

RUSH: And then, in an interview on FOX 35 in Orlando, Cale Ramaker,

"Rush Limbaugh, Senator McCain, why does he not like you?"

MCCAIN: I don't know. I've never met Mr. Limbaugh. I just have to run a positive campaign, my vision for the future of the country.

RUSH: And then last night on CNN, Senator McCain asked yet again about me.

MCCAIN: I know, oh yeah, he's a very influential person.

RUSH: All right. So folks, let's be honest. This is a far cry from a few years ago.
Might this have been the 2004 race, or the '06 race? I'm not really sure when it was, but it might have been during a piece of legislation. It seems like it was just yesterday, but it's probably two or four years ago, I'm not sure. But I was critical of something Senator McCain was doing, and he was going on the media and other radio and television programs, and telling people,

(paraphrasing) "Look, you can't take Limbaugh seriously, he's just an entertainer. He's a good entertainer, but he's just an entertainer."
It might have been some of the parodies that we were playing at the time I think that might have, shall we say, irritated him. The McCain mutiny might have been playing. My memory escapes me on this.
But I just want to say here, to clarify this, if anybody has any doubts whatsoever, my differences with Senator McCain are substantive. I've never met him, as he has never met me. None of this is personal with any of these candidates, particularly on our side.
The Clintons are a little different because they have actively sought to do considerable professional harm to this program and others who do what I do.
Now, I don't know him, and I'm sure McCain is very likable. A lot of people love John McCain, there's no question about it. But my attention is on issues and always has been.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Last night, PMSNBC, Hardball with Chris Matthews, they really tore into McCain last night, by the way, on the question that he got, Russert said,

"You've said recently that you're not really that versed in economics."
And McCain said something,
"I don't know where you got that. I don't think I've said that."
And so the Romney camp produced an e-mail immediately with the very quote, and it's from something like six weeks ago. Anyway, this is Chuck Todd, the political director at NBC about the Republican presidential primary. Chuck Todd says that this is about the Republicans and Rush.

TODD: I'm hearing from more and more Republicans, look, Limbaugh's been taking after McCain. I mean, look, he's gotta get this victory because if he doesn't get outta here you do wonder if the conservative establishment is finally going to rally around Mitt Romney. Romney has tried to get these folks to rally around him, they haven't quite done it. If he wins in Florida they may rally around him and it may be enough to stop McCain.

RUSH: This is the first time that I can recall hearing this.
Normally what we hear, you know, McCain loses New Hampshire, no biggie, Romney has to win it. If he doesn't, it's bad news. We go to New Hampshire, Romney's gotta win New Hampshire, or it's over, he's going to get out. He doesn't win New Hampshire, stays in. And then McCain wins, and it's over.
This is the first time I've heard anybody in the Drive-Bys say McCain has to win or he's in trouble, because up to now they've all been saying it's McCain, especially if McCain wins Florida, it's over.
That could well be, but I think McCain, if he wins Florida, he's gonna have to do it by more than a couple points. Otherwise, this is going to go on.
This is going to go on anyway because Romney's not going to get out. When you boil this down, this really is between McCain and Romney now, if you want to cut to the chase on this. This primary race is between McCain and Romney right now. You'd have to say that based on the polling data.
So it's McCain versus Limbaugh in Florida, and I don't mean to keep hitting you over the head with this, but I'm irrelevant, earlier in the week, I should just shut up.

In fact, on a related post, Andrew Sullivan and his blog at TheAtlantic.com, and he's got a graph here:

"McCain vs Rush Limbaugh, Obama vs Bill Clinton."
Now, do you realize the significance of that?
It doesn't say McCain versus Romney. Andrew Sullivan has Obama running against Clinton, and McCain running against me, therefore in this equation I equal Clinton on the Republican side, so Andrew Sullivan comparing me to a former president in terms of power and this is absurd.
Anyway, Sullivan writes:
"The chart above shows the remarkable polling similarities in John McCain's recent primary successes. After a slow decline, at some point late last year, voters sensed he really was their best bet on character, policies and viability.
And so the battle now is really one between the worst base instincts of both parties and their most promising candidates for the general election.
... In fact, the stronger McCain gets, the clearer it is that he represents an opportunity to move past the bitter, angry elements in today's GOP -- elements that have made it very difficult to give a positive case for conservatism's merits as a governing philosophy."

Now, Andrew Sullivan, I know you've been moving back and forth across the ideological divide in recent years, and I have always had a tremendous amount of respect for the intellect of Andrew Sullivan. This just gets it backwards.

"McCain represents an opportunity to move past the bitter angry elements in today's GOP, elements that have made it very difficult to give a positive case?"
Folks, you listen to this program, am I mad?
Does this program exist and thrive on anger?
I would submit to you that no program of this size could sustain itself in our number-one position for this many years if it was nothing but anger. It's quite the opposite.
What's here on this program is laughs, a good time, optimism, the appropriate criticism of people who don't seem to get what we're about and what we're doing. Yeah, sometimes I get passionate, but it isn't anger.
Who is it that is having to fight off the tendency to display a bad temper on the Republican side?
I believe it is Senator McCain. In fact, I believe he even got a question about that last night, and he faked getting mad, and it did draw some chuckles.

You see, this goes to what I was talking about in response to David Gregory's point about,

"Will the GOP reform?"
Why do we have to reform ourselves?
For crying out loud, we've won 20 of the last 28 years presidential elections, what the hell.
If anybody needs to reform itself, it's the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party hasn't had a presidential candidate get over 50% of the vote since, what, JFK? That's 1960.
This idea that we have to reform, we have to change ourselves?
The left would love that, and so would some Republicans who hate conservatives in their midst, particularly evangelicals. They would love for us to have to reform so they wouldn't be embarrassed to be in our party.
But if this reformation takes place, we are forever gonna be a minor league team, like I said in the last hour. We're going to be AAA, and none of our guys are ever going to be called up to the majors. We're going to be back to being led by guys like Bob Michel with 130 members in a 435-member House of Representatives being shut out of meetings, and we're going to be told,
"Know your place or you're not even going to get into meetings. And if you don't know your place, you're not even going to be invited to play golf with our speaker."
And we're going to go,
"Yes, sir, yes, sir, whatever you give us we're very happy with. Just make sure that we're individually reelected every year and we'll be glad to keep you in the majority."
What is this?

What is this attitude we have of defensiveness and inferiority that says we are the ones that have to reform?
In fact, I would suggest this. The Republican Party is in need of a little reformation, but I wouldn't call it a reformation, I'd call it a return.
We need to go back to our successful roots, and that's what they are trying to prevent with this need to reform,

that means, the subtle lingo there, is we need to become more moderate;
we need to have more liberal influence at the top of our party;
we need to get rid of the anger and the vitriol.
That's translated as getting rid of talk radio. This is Andrew Sullivan. He concludes with this:
"No, I don't agree with McCain on everything. But if it's a choice between him and Limbaugh, there really is no contest. McCain makes all the right people on the right angry. McCain represents a chance to remake the GOP on reformist lines, just as Obama represents a chance for the Democrats to escape the sleaze and cynicism of the Clintons.
Maybe the Republicans, unlike, it appears, the Democrats, have the courage to choose the future over the past, to break a dynasty rather than entrench one. I sure hope they do."

Now, wait a second.
In the first place, I am not on the ballot.
Andrew Sullivan is portraying this as a contest between McCain and me. It's a contest between him and Romney.
I want to know how it is that nominating and electing Romney would be investing in the past or a dynasty. His last name is not Bush, and economically he's far afield from Bush.
Folks, this is highly instructive here. If you listen to what these people who reside mostly on the left are telling us they want of us, they want us to be more like them.
McCain makes all the right people on the right angry?
Now, does that sound like Andrew Sullivan is defining McCain as a conservative?
Because the people on the right that McCain has angered are conservatives, Andrew. You used to be one. That's what needs to be translated about that. So, anyway, that's that.

CNN, let's do this one, too. This woman is hopeless, this Carol Costello babe. Wait 'til you hear this. CNN's Situation Room, this is a montage of her report about me and McCain, and she's trying to figure out, is talk radio irrelevant or not? And she just can't figure it out.

COSTELLO: Some believe that those radio talk show hosts have lost influence in large part because of who is running in the Republican primary and who happens to be hot right now. Conservative radio talkers bragged their influence helped put George Bush in office.
How times have changed. Now leading many Republican polls, John McCain, and those same talkers aren't bragging anymore. Voters have betrayed them, despite what's playing on Rush Limbaugh's show.

SPOOF PARODY SONG: Just call me maverick John McCain, my only straight talk is my name.

COSTELLO: The syndicated talkers are fuming.

BARR: I think it is a sign that no one or two talk show hosts really wield the influence that they did two or three cycles ago.

COSTELLO: Because it's a different world in the land of Republican politics. The party is fractured. Conservative talkers do realize that, but they blame John McCain. They accuse him of being covertly liberal, for working with Democrats on immigration and campaign finance reform and for voting twice against President Bush's tax cuts.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I'm a Republican primary voter, and I would like to hear some straight talk on those issues. Will I? (doing McCain impression)

"Don't count on it, Limbaugh."

COSTELLO: Perhaps another sign of these talkers' diminishing power, John McCain himself. He appears unfazed by them. Asked about Limbaugh...

MCCAIN: I know, oh, yeah, he's a very influential person. I'm confident I can secure the base of the party and win the nomination and win the election.

COSTELLO: And maybe he can. There he is on the cover of TIME Magazine as the new comeback kid. The only image likely to drive Limbaugh crazier is if McCain and Mike Huckabee were the TIME cover boys.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I'm here to tell you if either of these two guys get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party, it's going to change it forever, be the end of it.

COSTELLO: Hugh Hewitt believes McCain is doing so well because he's a darling of the liberal media, including CNN, says Hewitt. He believes we've put McCain on top, but thinks Mitt Romney will prevail in the end.

RUSH: Folks, they're so desperate to write the story of my demise, and yet with each story they do, they illustrate just the opposite.
All right, a quick time-out. We'll come back. There's a lot more to say about that but it speaks for itself, and we've already addressed this end of the Republican Party stuff, you know what that means, you know all that, so we'll get to your phone calls right after this, when we get back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's the sound bite of Senator McCain last night on the economic question I've been referring to. It's Tim Russert. He says,

"Senator McCain, you said repeatedly, quote,
'I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated on economics.'
Is it a problem for your campaign that the economy is now the most important issue, one that, by your own acknowledgement, you're not well versed on?"

MCCAIN: I don't know where you got that quote from. I'm very well versed in economics. I was there at the Reagan revolution. I was there when we enacted the first
-- or just after we enacted the first tax cuts and restraints on spending. I was chairman of the commerce committee in the United States Senate which addresses virtually every major economic issue that affects the United States of America.

RUSH: Right, screws it.

MCCAIN: I'm very well versed on economics, and that's why I have the support of people like Jack Kemp, people like Phil Gramm, people like Warren Rudman.

RUSH: Yeah, Warren Rudman as an economic -- well, that's cool.
All right, so the Romney camp got it out in time for the post-debate analysis, and it was just five or six weeks ago that McCain said this, that he was inexperienced in economics and had to be educated about it.

"I don't know where you got that quote from. I'm very versed."

Some of you people don't know who Bob Michel is. He ran the House, literally.
Before 1994 the Republicans were a 40-year minority, and at most they had 170 seats out of 435. This is from December 25th of 1995, TIME Magazine:

"The old minority leader, the sweetly irrelevant Bob Michel of Illinois, would greet freshly elected G.O.P. members with the revelation that
'every day I wake up and look in the mirror and say to myself,
"Today you're going to be a loser."'
And after you're here a while, you'll start to feel the same way. But don't let it bother you. You'll get used to it."
Now, imagine Tom Coughlin, the head coach of the New Jersey Giants in his pregame speech before the Super Bowl with the New England Patriots saying something like that.
"Boys, men, we're losers and you know you're going to lose, just get used to it. We're going to get blown out today by these guys and we all know it."
This is what the Democrats want us to return to.
This is what some Republican pundits want us to return to.
This is certainly what a bunch of liberals want us to return to as a party:
the minor leagues with no chance to go up to the big leagues, to the show, and basically be irrelevant.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• Politico: McCain Praises Rush Limbaugh, Faintly

• New York Times: Editorial: Primary Choices: John McCain

• AP: GOP Rivals Say Clinton Will Raise Taxes

• AP: New York Times Endorses Clinton, McCain

• Scripps: The Media's Love Affair with McCain

• TIME: Master of the House

• TheAtlantic.com : McCain vs. Rush Limbaugh, Obama vs. Bill Clinton

• NewsBusters: CNN: Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio's Power 'Diminishing'

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.

---

Vote Populist & Lose Huge: We're Not the Democrats' Minor League!
January 25, 2008

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The New York Times, by the way, yesterday, hold onto your coffee cup or your steering wheel if you haven't heard this. After months of pondering, the New York Times announced its endorsements for the Democrats and Republicans, and here they are. There was no surprise who they endorsed for the Democrats, and there was not much surprise about who they endorsed for our side. They endorsed Hillary on the Democrat side and they endorsed McCain.
So this is a serious, serious question. A serious number of liberal newspapers have endorsed John McCain.
I ask myself -- I'm not even asking you to think about this -- I'm thinking to myself here, and I happen to be verbalizing thoughts. What in the world am I supposed to think when liberal newspapers endorse McCain as the Republican, when I know for a fact they're not going to vote for him?
When I know for a fact that when it comes to November, whenever they issue their final endorsements, they're going to endorse Hillary or whoever the Democrat is?
So what is the game plan here?
What is the gambit?
What are these liberal papers trying to do?
Are they trying to be consistent?

Well, if we're going to endorse a liberal Democrat on the Democrat side, how can we endorse this big-time conservative on the right?
I don't understand it. Well, I do understand it, but I don't understand what they hope to accomplish.
Well, I understand that, too.
Sorry, I do know what they hope to accomplish. What I don't know is what Republican primary voters think of all this. They probably don't think too much about it because they don't care about the New York Times.
Three newspapers here in Florida have endorsed McCain, one the Palm Beach Post. I forget the other two, Gainesville, maybe. Tallahassee was maybe the other one. There will be others.
They're all liberal newspapers. When we get to November they're not going to endorse McCain. So what will the Republican primary voters' reaction be to this?
And also in this New York Times editorial, my God, folks, the hatred, the out-and-out hatred for Rudy Giuliani in the New York Times editorial endorsing McCain and Hillary. They savage Rudy. They almost draw and quarter Rudy Giuliani, which gives me pause. If the New York Times, and we all know who they are and what their ultimate objectives and desire for the country happen to be, if they are savaging Rudy Giuliani, maybe he deserves a second look.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Great to have you, El Rushbo, Open Line Friday, back to the phones to Falls Church, Virginia.
This is Jason.
Hi. How are you, sir?

CALLER: Rush, it's an honor. How are you?

RUSH: Fine, sir. Thanks very much.

CALLER: Great. Rush, if I had a dollar for every time Huckabee complained about Romney being rich and Huckabee being poor, I'd be as rich as Romney.

RUSH: Well, that's what populists do.

CALLER: You know what's crazy is when a man can be very successful, work very hard, become very rich, I mean isn't that the promise of conservatism?

RUSH: Well, yes. It's the promise of America, if administered by conservatives. Because of the founding, everybody's entitled.
We are all endowed by our Creator, certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, however you define that.
If happiness to you is earning a lot of money, then that's what this country is for, within moral grounds.
If happiness to you is sleeping with horses, then, of course, we draw the line, except in Seattle.

CALLER: So how is it that Republicans can use this as sort of like a negative attack?

RUSH: Because they're not conservative. It's what I've been trying to tell you.
I'm trying to tell you we've got a couple people in this list who are not conservative.
I'm trying to hold the coalition of the Republican Party together. If a couple people, one of the two people win this party's nomination, we're going to lose in a landslide that would make Goldwater look like a victory.
When that landslide happens, the finger-pointing in the Republican Party is going to start, and everybody is going to get blamed by everybody. I'm going to get blamed. Candidates are going to get blamed. Peggy Noonan is going to get blamed. David Brooks is going to
-- well, sorry. Brooks and that group will not get blamed. They'll be assigned the duty of assigning blame, and then we'll sit around and tell 'em how they're wrong.
But, no, your question is right on the money.
And Huckabee -- I saw this last night -- he's just out telling jokes. He doesn't have any money in Florida, he's run out of money, so he's using the debate here to try to shore things up. The latest poll in Georgia is he's leading everybody in Georgia. Yes, Huckabee, Governor Huckabee, leading everybody in Georgia now.

At any rate, telling jokes about Romney's wealth, that's populism, that's what liberals do, make fun of people that have money, or criticize them for having money, or say they're out of touch because they have money.
Mitt Romney -- this is not an endorsement -- has demonstrated economic expertise.
Where are we headed?
Where do most people think we're headed?
They think we're headed into a recession even though we're not. Not one Democrat has demonstrated any knowledge about the economy.
Senator McCain last night got caught in the debate. He said he doesn't have much economic knowledge, his expertise, his foreign policy and that sort of thing. In fact, he's reading Greenspan's books. He needs more knowledge on economics.
So Russert asked him about that quote. McCain said,

"I don't remember saying it. I don't think I said it."
And he said it a month ago! He said it a month ago, six weeks ago, the Washington Post. He has said it a couple times.
Now, Romney has demonstrated an understanding of economics -- (interruption)
No, it's Clinton that says,
"You can't hold that against me, Limbaugh, for what I said in my youth."
But President Clinton, it was six weeks ago.
"Prove it!"
Anyway, that's the answer.

Let me go to audio sound bite number four. David Gregory on MSNBC Nightly News. This is before the debate.

GREGORY: It was Reagan who united social, economic, and national security conservatives into a Republican coalition that has held the White House for 20 of the past 28 years.
Mitt Romney is campaigning as the only heir to that legacy, and now some leading voices in the party, like Rush Limbaugh, fear the GOP will lose its way if McCain or Mike Huckabee wins the nomination.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I'm here to tell you if either of these two guys gets the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party, r>be the end of it.
A lot of people aren't going to vote.
You watch.

GREGORY: But in red state South Carolina, conservatives did vote for both McCain and Huckabee. Change is in the air this campaign.
But is the Grand Old Party ready to become something new?

RUSH: In your dreams.
You want us to become something new because you want us to become like you, and that's what we're trying to stop here.
The Republican Party is not the minor leagues of the Democrat Party, and that's what people want to turn it into and I'm not going to play on a Triple-A team. I'm not going to play on a Double-A team. I'm not going to play in NCAA Division IV.
I'm not going to be a farm team for the Democrat Party, and that's what these people like Gregory and all these others, the New York Times endorsement of McCain, Palm Beach, all these other people are trying to destroy this party. Peggy Noonan called me absurd today for saying this, that if Huckabee or McCain get the nominations, it's the end of the party.
It's the end of the party as we know it.
The Republican Party is not going to go away, but I will guarantee you that if either of these guys get the nomination, it's going to be a landslide defeat and it's going to be the Clintons pulling it off, because Obama is not going to get the nomination.
You can dream, but he's not going to get the nomination.

If we're not careful, we're going to have such a landslide defeat
that the first thing that will happen is the evangelicals will get blamed by the country club blue-bloods who have wanted to get rid of the evangelicals in this party for as long as I can remember. They didn't even particularly like Reagan.
And, by the way, Gregory, this business of Reagan, united social, economic, and national security conservatives into a coalition that's held the White House -- yeah, we're trying to hold that together -- but Reagan did not attract those people by being like them.
Why do we, as the Republican Party, have to sit around and use as our basis for existence,

"Gee, we hope the Democrats will accept us. We hope we'll get some Democrats to vote for us."
Why don't we have the attitude the Democrats are the damn farm team forever, and guess what, very few of them ever get drafted up to the big leagues?
They have to go a long way to prove that they are worthwhile to be in the Republican Party, and they're not going to be in the Republican Party being commie libs.
But, no, we don't have this attitude.

We still have this attitude of inferiority and defensiveness, that somehow what we are as conservatives isn't enough, it isn't good enough.
We have to open the tent and we have to show that,

"Yeah, we got some of those crazy conservatives, but look at the rest of us. We're reasonable, and we are understanding, and you can trust us, and we'll do our best to portray our own conservatives as a bunch of kooks, just like you do. Please join us."
Well, screw that.
This coalition that Reagan built was dynamic, and it did consist of Democrats and independents and moderates,
but he didn't do it by running around acting like them or trying to make them think he was one of them. He changed their minds. He showed them a better way, and they reacted to it, and they loved it.
McCain had a news conference in Florida today on his way over to Tampa. I'm hearing that McCain's internal numbers show him down like all the other polls do. He slammed Mitt Romney today, I mean really slammed Romney on being a manager, not a leader, in business. And McCain, of course, I don't think has been in business.
Manager or leader, he doesn't know economics.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• New York Times: Editorial: Primary Choices: John McCain

• New York Times: Editorial: Primary Choices: Hillary Clinton

• AP: New York Times Endorses Clinton, McCain

• Wall Street Journal: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do - Peggy Noonan

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.

[Yosemitest]

I can't say it enough, "Thank GOD for Rush".

And I still believe Rush is cheating us out of one of the greatest Presidents this country could ever have, .... himself.

Thanks again Rush.

[Jeff Chandler]

>>I still believe Rush is cheating us out of one of the greatest Presidents this country could ever have, .... himself.<<

There isn’t an office in the land big enough to contain Rush’s ego.

[JaneNC]

Yes, El Rushbo rules.

He knows all about McCain.

Neither Rush or Glenn Beck will vote for that RINO.

[Parley Baer]

Monday’s program out to be a good one. With all the crapola the McQueeg campaign has put out over the weekend should have Rush firing with both barrels.

[the invisib1e hand]

McCain's the Democrats favorite Republican

[Islander7]

Amen! Stop worrying if the libs like you. If you are an elected official and the libs scream about you, that only means you are going the right things for the country.

[jveritas]

If Rush runs for President he will lose 50 states.

[mcjordansc]

LOL, yes Rush should run for President, because hosting a radio show certainly qualfies him for the job. People on here are so dumb sometimes.

[skinkinthegrass]

...reading..thanks, for the post. :)

[South40]

A lengthy post when all I needed was this...

[tear gas]

RUSH: These clowns don't like either Romney or Rudy because they don't like conservatives.

Can some dittohead explain to me how Rush can call Rudy a conservative?

I've suspected for some time that Rush is a closet Rudy lover. He should have endorsed Thompson.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

98.4% accuracy... I love it...

All of these idiots running are getting a government check - - EXCEPT Romney.

Fiscal conservatism?

Sounds like 98.4% accurate.

[Yosemitest]

"If Rush runs for President he will lose 50 states."

Spoken like a true believer of the Clinton Koo-lade Party.

[Signalman]

Rush, as usual is right on the money. But I sure wish he would endorse one of the candidates soon. We all know that it won’t be McCain or Huckabee. That leaves Rudy or Mitt.

[Yosemitest]

Rush doesn’t .... the media does.

[jveritas]

Yes you got me, you are very smart like Rush Limbaugh (extreme sarcasm).

[Sola Veritas]

“RUSH: These clowns don’t like either Romney or Rudy because they don’t like conservatives.”

Wait a doggone minute! I can see how some could be duped into believing that Mitt the Magic Mormon is “conservative”, however Rush is trully showing his colors when he calls Guiliani a “conservative.”

This confirms what I had recently come to realize about Limbaugh....his idea of a conservative is one that is a “fiscal” one in the way Limbaugh sees a “fiscal” conservative. He likes FAT CATS. All the social issues, he claims to be for, go right out the window. He wants what is perceives as “good for the economy” - good for the values of the country be damned for Limbaugh.

That’s it for me. I will never listen to him again. Social conservatives have been lied to for so long...I just won’t go along anymore.

[gruna]

I think it’s bizarre that anyone wouldn’t realize that Romney is a conservative.

[tear gas]

RUSH: And also in this New York Times editorial, my God, folks, the hatred, the out-and-out hatred for Rudy Giuliani in the New York Times editorial endorsing McCain and Hillary. They savage Rudy. They almost draw and quarter Rudy Giuliani, which gives me pause. If the New York Times, and we all know who they are and what their ultimate objectives and desire for the country happen to be, if they are savaging Rudy Giuliani, maybe he deserves a second look.

Yep, Rush has been a closet Rudy lover all along. LOL

Well, Rush, you went the wrong way, buddy. You should have endorsed Fred when it might have meant something. Now you may get McCain.