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| RUSH: Theresa in Harford County, Maryland, nice to have you on the program. Hello. CALLER: Hi, Rush. It's such a thrill to talk to you. RUSH: Thank you. CALLER: I can't even believe I'm talking to you. Rush, in 2004, the media tried to convince us that George Bush was the inevitable loser of that election because nobody liked the way the war was going. But we backed him because we followed our principles instead of the media tide. And I wanted to add my two cents to try to answer the question about what is it that's pulling so many people along with the tide and away from our conservative principles. RUSH: Go right ahead and give it a shot.  CALLER: Rush, I think it's what you've been talking about for the past few weeks, and that's ignorance. People don't pay attention year round, and they catch bits and pieces of what the media puts out there at them and they buy whatever message they're selling.
RUSH: That's right. The media is choosing our candidate. I don't disagree with you, Theresa. CALLER: People don't recognize the spirit and the ideology that's behind the candidates. They can't compare it because they just haven't been in the Rush Limbaugh school long enough. RUSH: Well, they hear the term maverick and they think rugged individual. They hear the POW story and they think great American, and who would oppose a great American? And Hillary, of course, doesn't have that kind of a résumé, and nor does Romney. When you summarize somebody, even though it's false, but when you can put forth an image in two or three words of somebody that speaks to everybody, that's the secret of what's happening here with McCain. It's not about his philosophy; it's not about his positions. People don't care. CALLER: Right. Well, I just hope the people will not worry about who they think can beat a Democrat and just vote for who they want to be the president. Who's going to carry the torch of conservatism for our country. RUSH: Believe me, for a lot of these people it is about who can win, because we're talking about party officials, people that want to be party officials, we're talking about inside-the-Beltway pundits whose measure of success is how much they influence policy. So if they fall in line behind the guy they think is going to win and essentially be running Washington, then they're going to be in on the power sharing. So, even for some of these so-called conservative guys, pundits on our side, it's not about conservatism at all. It's about their own personal desires to matter, to have some power, to have some influence, that's how they measure things. It's not really about the country. It's about them. With all these people, it is about them. And yet, in the midst of all this, those of us on talk radio are having it analyzed as though it's all about us, when our concerns are far greater than ourselves. Thank you, Theresa. Doug, Orlando, Florida, thank you for the call, sir. Appreciate your waiting. Hello. CALLER: Hello. Giga dittos. RUSH: Thank you, sir. CALLER: Listen, I hear all this talk about national defense being so important and McCain's strength, but Al-Qaeda strategy is to defeat us economically, not militarily. I mean, a president who understands how to make us economically strong is the one that, to me, serves us better on defense. Bush has done great work making us militarily strong. We have a nimble military that's inventive, able to respond where these guys are, can be offensive, but it's critical to national security, the next president knows how to keep our economy strong, able to withstand an attack like 9/11. 9/11 wasn't a military attack. It was an economic attack. RUSH: Well, it was some military to it, but it was scary they used our equipment to do it, but you're right. Let me ask you a question about the economic subject matter that you have brought up for us here. If you were to learn that a Republican presidential candidate was eager and excited to adopt the left's philosophy and strategy in dealing with the hoax of manmade global warming, what would you say of that Republican candidate? CALLER: Ouch. I mean, look out. RUSH: Well, that is Senator McCain, and he has sponsored a bill with Senator Lieberman, McCain-Lieberman or Lieberman-McCain, I don't know what it is, but it basically, ANWR, we're not going to drill there because it's pristine. It adopts almost entirely the notion that manmade global warming is happening, that we're to blame for it, and I'll tell you, if any Republican that adopts the left's belief and philosophy and strategy on the hoax of manmade global warming, it's going to wreck our economy. CALLER: And there are gathering threats to our economy around oil. I mean, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, their alliance is an economic threat to us. That's what they even talk about. RUSH: I know, but McCain's reaction to that is, "Well, I need to bone up on economics, but that doesn't matter because I'm an American, and I care about America, and it's going to be okay because I care about America." CALLER: I mean, Romney's got the know-how in the private sector to understand how the economy in America works. RUSH: Yeah, but notice something else. You know full well how many people in this country hate the private sector. They hate the boss, they hate big corporations, they hate people that make a lot of money, they're envious and jealous of them, and they somehow have bought into the benevolence of government running as many economic institutions as possible, because somehow the government is going to be fair and the private sector is only going to reward the rich, and so they don't trust somebody who has private sector experience because perception is getting screwed in the private sector. They have no concept how government running their lives really shafts them.
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RUSH: All right, Mark, Sacramento, my adopted hometown. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Good to talk to you again.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I was wondering if you could compare the Bush presidency to what you anticipate the McCain presidency would be should he win.
RUSH: Well, that would be tough to do. Actually it wouldn't be tough to do, be pretty easy. Here's the thing that I've learned about the Bush presidency that I think would be consistent with the McCain presidency, and that is, if we have another president who is going to spend most of his time reaching out to Democrats in order to get legislation passed and thereby -- we know he's gonna: McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Feingold, McCain-Lieberman, McCain whatever, he will continue to do this as president, he's going to reach out to Democrats. He's going to enjoy doing it. This is how he will get even with Republicans for what they did to him in South Carolina in 2000. So what's going to happen, you're going to have a Republican Congress that's effectively going to be neutered because when you're president, you are the leader of your party. Republicans in Congress, they got all kinds of tarred and feathered in the November elections because they didn't do enough for spending, they didn't do enough for small government, but their own president proposed a brand-new entitlement. What are they supposed to do, oppose him? That's political suicide. So the same thing would happen with McCain. You'd have conservative Republicans in the House and some in the Senate having to go along simply out of party loyalty and you'd be mad, and you'd be blaming the conservatives for selling out and not bucking up when in fact the problem would be a non-conservative president.
CALLER: But isn't that the same as what we got now?
RUSH: I've said as much. I said Bush is conservative on certain things but he's not a conservative, and he's not leading a movement. He's not leading an ideological movement. He's good on cuts, which McCain opposed, and he's been good on the war, national security and so forth. But he signed every spending bill that came across the desk. It probably would be pretty close in too many ways.
CALLER: That's what I thought. Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: All right. Appreciate it. Rick in Augusta, Kansas, you're next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, how are you today?
RUSH: Fine, sir.
CALLER: Certified dittohead here, average man, working man. My question is, I'd like to know, McCain's economic -- he bragged about how he killed the tanker deal for Boeing. I'd just like to know the delays over the past five years and the jobs lost because if he was mad because he was not included in it, and some of his district did not get to work, how many jobs and the cost accumulated on to what the aircraft is going to cost now, today, can he economically tell us or is Mitt Romney the man we need to do that?
RUSH: Yeah, but the larger issue here, I mean that's an excellent question, but the way to look at it, at least the way I look at it is moving forward or looking forward, and say, okay, there's an example, Senator McCain says, I don't really understand economics, I don't care about it that much, he did say he's upset that it was reported. He was upset that it got brought up to him in a debate by Tim Russert, but then you say, okay, what in his campaign is he talking about now that would give us pause economically? And one of the big things is siding with the Democrats on this manmade global warming hoax. The economic disaster of adopting what Algore and the rest of those people want to do to this economy is difficult to describe. That is a disaster that would be absolutely difficult to describe. It would be so bad if they got everything that they wanted.
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 RUSH: My reaction when I saw it was good grief, good grief. I have a couple quotes here from Ronaldus Magnus, first one is from 1975. Some of you might want to needlepoint these on your pillows. "I don't know about you," said Reagan in 1975, "but I'm impatient with those Republicans who, after the last election, rushed into print saying we must broaden the base of our party, when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents."
I would suggest to you that that's exactly what's happening now. Republicans want to fuzz up and blur the differences between ourselves and the liberal Democrats. Second Reagan quote, 1976: "Don't give up your ideals, don't compromise, don't turn to expediency -- and don't, for heaven's sake, having seen the inner workings of the watch -- don't get cynical."
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