Posted on 06/10/2004 6:55:24 PM PDT by wagglebee
RUSH: Lady Thatcher, who, I have to tell you, I've not divulged a whole lot of my relationship with Lady Thatcher simply because of privacy, but a bunch of us were out in Vail, I don't know...probably five or six years ago. Out there playing golf, and the host and hostess also had Lady Thatcher and Sir Dennis, her husband, were out there. We had a great six or seven days, were taking gondolas up to mountaintops to have dinner and so forth. You know, when you're with Lady Thatcher, it's almost every dinner and every post-dinner and every evening is discussion. It's talk. You can't avoid it -- and of course who would want to! Who would want to avoid it? It was just indescribably unbelievable. But one day I was going out to play golf with the host, and Lady Thatcher said, "Well, you know, I want to get out of the house." So we suggested, "Well, why don't you go to the golf course with us?" and this is a golf course called Eagle Springs, nickname for it is "Ego" Springs because of the membership.
It's out in Eagle, and it's probably not fort from Cordillera, where the Kobe Bryant incident took place. Cordillera is right up on the hill. Frank Gifford and Kathie Lee have a house up there. They did. Anyway, Lady Thatcher chose to ride on my golf cart and it was amazing. (laughing) She's wearing a dress. She always wears a dress. She was wearing a dress, dressed like she was going to dinner. She always does. She never dresses down. Even had a sun hat on, and you should have seen the looks that we got. We took a tour of the golf course before we started playing, just to drive. It;s very hilly. There's some gorgeous vistas out there. It's in the Rockies, obviously, and as we would zoom by on the cart path, all these golfers getting ready to tee off or on the greens as they were waiting to putt, they would look over and they would see. (Laughing) Of course everybody knew who she was, couldn't believe it.
Here was Lady Thatcher being, you know, motored around a golf course on a golf cart driven by me, and we're stopping, and we have a caravan. There's actually two golf courts. We're stopping. The course is being explained to her, and the surroundings, the countryside. And there were often talks about Ronald Reagan. She was insistent, as I wrote in this piece for National Review. (not online) She commanded me. She commanded me never to let people forget, and that's the way she spoke, by the way. She commanded, when she spoke to you; you were being commanded, and she commanded me never to ever, ever let the history of the fall of the Soviet Union being rewritten. "Don't ever let anybody believe that Mikhail Gorbachev made it happen. Don't ever believe." She said. "If you have to go beyond Reagan, throw me and the Pope in there, but if it weren't for Reagan, and if it weren't for morality and if it weren't for faith in God, and if it weren't for American might, and if it weren't for the willingness to use it, and if it weren't for SDI, there would still be a Soviet Union. If it hadn't been for people who were willing to face the consequences of beating them and realizing they could be beaten."
She was forever insistent on this, and she was more educated on our Founding Fathers than 95% of our population. She thinks they were some of the greatest human beings who ever lived. She thinks this is the greatest country that's ever been. Now, naturally she's prejudiced. Our Founding Fathers were all Brits (laughing) which she doesn't hesitate to remind people in these conversations. When I saw her, and she had a stroke earlier this year, and there's been some misreporting about her condition, and as you saw yesterday she's not in nearly as bad a shape as the press reports had indicative. She recorded her – I think it's a seven-minute – eulogy. She recorded it in February, and it will be played on tape. She insisted on coming to the United States for this, and Bill Frist, Senator Bill Frist escorted her to the casket, and she didn't need to say anything. This is again about the images that were presented to the world last night have done more to revitalize the people's faith in this country, in their own country, than anybody's words could do right now. She came. She strode purposefully. She paused. She lingered. She curtsied.
Did you notice that she curtsied before she left? She held her head high and proud, and she wouldn't have missed this. It was one of her objectives and goals, and she will be one of the few guests at the burial at sundown at Simi Valley out at the library on Friday. But it was good to see her, have all these memories popping back. She's just a remarkable person. Even today her lucidness and her fluency with things that's happening, that are happening around the world, you're talking about a person with rock solid principles. You're never surprised. Well, you're surprised by her in terms of her intellect. She thinks of things that nobody else does, but they're always rock solid in line with what her principles are. So she turns your lights on. The second thing, and I'd forgotten this, I read Bill Buckley's reminisce on Reagan at National Review Online. He was asked a question in this piece. It was a question and answer piece. The question, "Did you know he was sick before it was announced?" and Buckley said, "Yeah, and I'll tell you how I know," and he told a story, and I had forgotten this had happened.
It was 1994 and I got a call from Mr. Buckley. That's like the Pope calling me. He said, "Would you come over? I have something I want to talk to you about." So I said, "Yeah." He said, "What kind of cigars you like?" I said, "Ashton Virgin Sun." He said, "Okay." So I went over, he had had a box of cigars waiting for me. He said, "Look, we got an idea. Brent Bozell, Media Research Center, thinks it's time we do a surprise tribute to President Reagan in Washington, so the people of Washington can attend, and we want to do it at RFK Stadium and you're the only guy that we think that could actually fill this up. Remember, it's a surprise, so we can't say that Reagan is going to be there. He can fill it, but other than that we need to have the place filled."
I said, "You're asking me? I think it will work. I think it will be done. I will do it in a second and I guarantee you it will be sold out, no question," and Bill said, "Okay, only thing I got to do is check with Nancy," and he called Nancy, and she said, "Nah, Ronnie..." This is a quote, and Buckley wrote it in the piece, "Ronnie is just not up to it," and it was at that point. Buckley knew. He'd taped two Firing Lines with him earlier. He knew he wasn't as sharp. He writes this, too, and that's when -- this was six months before the Alzheimer's letter to the nation was publicized and written by the president. It was then that he realized that things were not right, because otherwise he says this would have just been another night out for the Reagans and they would have otherwise loved to do it. I'd forgotten that had happened, and that would have been huge had the timing of that been a little earlier, been able to do that. That would have been huge.
FYI
Sadly, he had no natural consituency when he supported the liberation of Iraq.
The Tories saw an opportunity to criticize him and the left, naturally appeasers with only their own pettiness in mind, criticize him as well.
bttt
Thanks Maggie!
Ping!
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