RUSH: Okay, to the phones. Dave in Indianapolis, thank you for waiting, sir. You’re next, hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s an honor.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: I first want to tell you that I would bet the late and great William F. Buckley Jr. is smiling down on you right now.
RUSH: Well, thank you very much, sir. That would be an honor, if so.
CALLER: Well, it should be. And then secondly before I get to my point, you and I are the same age. I took up golf 13 years ago, we have a similar handicap, and I’m looking forward to you and Hank Haney.
RUSH: You know, we start filming that later this month. I’ve got two episodes — well, two episodes. I’ve got two sessions to tapes later this month somewhere here in Florida and then early September over in Hawaii.
CALLER: Well, I’m sure you’re going to have a ball.
RUSH: Well, it is going to be a blast. I’m looking forward to it, too.
CALLER: Here’s what I want to share. My wife Sue and I had the honor a couple of weeks ago of having lunch with Congressman Mike Pence.
RUSH: Oh, yes.
CALLER: He’s a wonderful conservative from our state as you know.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: And I shared two things with him that I want to share with you. The first is hyperbole, the second is factual, but the hyperbole is I said to him, ‘You know, 18 months ago if you, Sarah, or Mitt Romney –or the great governor from Indiana, Mitch Daniels — had been elected president, we would without question be approaching a million jobs a month being created. Not ‘created and saved’ but created this year.’ I really believe that, but the second thing are facts that can be checked out. The Republicans are terrible at communication. I would love, if I were setting up the PR for them, to let them use Bush as who they’re going against this year. Because I’ll tell you, here’s what I would point out.
First of all, Bush left with a $459 billion annual deficit, not $1.5 trillion. Secondly, he left $300 billion of the 700 billion TARP fund for the discretion of this president to spend or not spend. Just a matter of days ago I heard the president say that he inherited a $1.5 trillion deficit. He didn’t. He created that. Now, the one reason that the Democrats have to — and I mean they don’t have to — make sure that they do not turn back the tax cuts from 2001 is because the middle class would learn just how much Bush helped them. The person who’s making $75,000 a year today, with a mortgage and two children — married and two children — they’re paying zero in federal income taxes. If he turned back the tax cuts to before Bush and the Tax Reform Act of 2001, they wouldn’t go back to about $3200 a year in federal income taxes.
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: So really what the Republicans do poorly is sell the idea that they are for the middle class. The Democrats have painted into this picture that they are not for the middle class and they really are.
RUSH: Well, again, this is one of these cans of worms that happens, I can guarantee you, once a week: ‘Why don’t the Republicans do this?’ or ‘Here’s what the Republicans ought to do.’ I can’t explain why they don’t have the attitude that you do about this. Well, I can, but frankly it’s a broken record. I think they just don’t believe it themselves, and they don’t believe anybody is gonna believe ’em.
CALLER: Well, I’ll tell you —
RUSH: A lot of these Republicans are not big on Reaganomics. Not Mike Pence and not the guys you’re talking about, but some of the Republican leaders, they don’t believe it themselves. They don’t believe this middle-class tax cut stuff works.
CALLER: Well, my father was a conservative Democrat, and that’s an oxymoron today. He wouldn’t be today. I’ve never been involved in politics until supporting Denny Fishburn who’s running for Marion County sheriff, a wonderful conservative Christian. But I can tell you just from being a voter all of my life, ‘conservative’ comes first to me and the word Republican second, but those two are synonymous. At least the ideals of the platform are synonymous. You’re fighting upstream to be a Democrat and try to be conservative.
RUSH: I know. We’re on the same page, but ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ are not synonymous with way too many Republicans.
CALLER: No, you’re right, but at least the platform stands for that. And I’ll tell you, Mitch Daniels made a wonderful point this year, and he got kind of criticized by a lot of national people for it. But he said the next president should forget about — and he didn’t say just not have anything to do with it, but should forget about — the abortion issue and the gay rights issue and concentrate on the fiscal issue that’s standing in front of us.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And, boy, a person like him just absolutely understands what has to be done in that regard.
RUSH: Well, that’s… (laughing) That’s easier said than done.
CALLER: That’s true.
RUSH: That’s not going to unite the Republican Party. I’m just telling you right now: Doing that is not gonna work.