RUSH: We’re gonna start in Augusta, Georgia, with Ben. Thank you for calling, sir. Great to have you. Welcome.

CALLER: Thank you very much, Rush. Thank you very much.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Good to talk to you. I just wanted to tell you Merry Christmas, and I hope you have a great holiday.

RUSH: Thank you very much. You, too, sir.

CALLER: What I wanted to tell you is, a few years ago when I was in college, everything was great. I didn’t have a job. I wasn’t paying taxes. I had grants and I took out student loans to pay for school. My parents were giving me money. Life was great. I moved away from home, and I started listening to your show about two or three months before this last election. I’d heard your show before and to be quite honest with you — and I apologize for being a little uncouth here, but — I always thought you were just a blowhard that liked to do hear yourself talk.

RUSH: Well, I do. (laughing)

CALLER: (laughing)

RUSH: If you were right as often as I am, you’d like it, too. See, I’m sorry. That makes 24-year-old women nervous. That’s threatening. I take that back. Thank you, sir, very much. I appreciate that. Why did you think I was a blowhard?

CALLER: Well, just from everything that I’d heard from people.

RUSH: Ah.

CALLER: You know, “Oh, Rush Limbaugh, he just likes to hear himself talk.”

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: “He has such farfetched ideas about the way the world works and the way the country is and he’s just crazy. He’s a right-wing nutjob.”

RUSH: Did you ever hear anybody say that Bill Clinton likes to hear himself talk? Does anybody say that about him?

CALLER: I think most… Well, not most. I think all politicians like to hear themselves talk at any given time, regardless who there. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, but they like to hear themselves talk. Now I’m part of the working class. I’m productive, paying taxes. I have a house, a new family. I just got married recently. And over these past months of listening to your show, I’ve come to realize that you’re right. You have really changed my perspective and my view of the way that this country is and the way this country is run and where it’s going.

RUSH: So you think we’re finished, too?

CALLER: I don’t think we’re finished.

RUSH: (chuckling)

CALLER: I think we’re on that slippery slope. I think we’re sliding down, and if things continue the way that they are for the next eight to ten years, we probably will be doomed.

RUSH: Well, we —

CALLER: Fortunately, we only have four more years to deal with this guy.

RUSH: Well, you’re more right than you’re wrong. A generation is usually counted as 25 years, and we’re in danger of losing a generation. If Obama succeeds in this effort to transform this country, then people who are currently in their teenage years are gonna grow up thinking that Obama and Obamaism is the answer to problems. Whether it is or not is not gonna matter. They’re going to grow up thinking that.

They’re gonna grow up thinking that at least Obama tried, at least Obama cared, at least Obama recognized and tried to fix what was wrong. And he made it fairer, and he tried to make sure that the Haves had not as much and not more than they needed and so forth. People have been facing this for a generation as it is. People are being taught this in kindergarten and grade school into elementary and so forth. They grow up thinking this stuff, and it becomes part of their being, and changing their minds becomes a very difficult thing to do. It takes a special leader to be able to change people’s minds.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Reagan had the ability, and he’s the last one who did on our side.

CALLER: And I’ll agree with you because it took a long time to change my perspective. You know, I didn’t grow up in a liberal household, either.

RUSH: You represent a failure on the part of the Democrats. They lost you somehow. How did that happen? Here you were thinking I’m a blowhard, and you never listened, but then at some point you started listening. How’d that happen?

CALLER: Actually, when I was training at my last job I would ride with my boss and all he listened to was talk radio.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: So that’s how I got started. Then I found myself listening to you on my own, and a few weeks before the election I started thinking about all the stuff that you talk about.

RUSH: See, that’s the key. That is the key: You started thinking. That is what is not happening. You started thinking on your own and critically, and at that point your intellect and native intelligence took over. Your native intelligence triumphed, and your innate common sense — that was always there — finally surfaced. It just took something to bring it out. I’m glad that this program was it. I’m really flattered, and I thank you very much, Ben, and Merry Christmas to you.

Here’s Brian, Northern California, you’re next on Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How are you doing?

RUSH: Good. Thank you.

CALLER: Mega dittos. I just want to start off saying, I’m really, really nervous. I called you once before and I didn’t really listen to you so I hope I’m gonna be a better listener this time. I liked yesterday’s show a lot. You started off the show tempering your delivery for the 24-year-old girl thing, and you had a caller that talked about the shooting being the responsibility of the mother.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: I just kind of wanted to expand upon that a little bit. We already have laws on the books that support that. If I throw a party and my kids drink alcohol or whatnot and they go out and drive afterwards, I’m responsible for it if they hurt somebody or damage property. So that’s just sort of a natural extension. It’s not a popular thing, and that was kind of what I was gonna give you props for was, it’s not… I mean, it’s a natural extension that it’s parents’ fault that this happened. We’re just not into enforcing the laws that we have on the books, like texting and driving.

RUSH: Well, we don’t want to blame individuals. In this case we don’t want to blame the mother because she ended up being killed, too. So instead we’ll blame all of us. We’ll blame the country. We’ll blame society. We’ll blame the NRA. We’ll blame any number of things. Quick, I’ve got 15 seconds. You liked the tempered approach to the 24-year-old single woman?

CALLER: It wasn’t so much that I liked it; it was that I appreciated the way that you set it up because it was a controversial subject.

RUSH: I see.

See? It worked. Well, there’s more of that when we get to the new year. We’ve barely scratched the surface on that. Don’t miss it.