RUSH: ‘A second Republican senator signaled Wednesday she’s open to voting for sweeping health care legislation this year, putting President Barack Obama closer to a historic achievement that has eluded generations of Democratic leaders.’ It is none other than — Dadelut dadelut 
dadelut dadelut — Susan Collins of Maine. Who woulda thought this? Dare I say, ‘Women!’ Damn it.’ We have 35 seconds to bleep that comment. I’m going to poll the staff. Snerdley, do you think we should…? Dawn, should we bleep it or leave it? Leave it. Brian, what do you think? I have three votes here in Florida to leave the comments in. H.R., what do you think? We got about 20 seconds here. (interruption) Okay. I’m good. And Maimone your vote doesn’t matter because even if you vote bleep it you’re over-voted so the comment stays.
I got a unanimous vote, five-zip, leave it. So it’s in. ‘Susan Collins told the AP that the bill approved by the finance committee…’ There’s no bill here! Mitch McConnell said, by the way, this proposal will never make it to the Senate floor. The Senate will never vote on this. He issued a statement yesterday. The Senate will not vote on it. Now, that I want to see. But she said here that Finance Committee ‘needs substantial improvements to make coverage more affordable, contain costs, and protect Medicare.’ (snorts) Well, she’s admitting that none of that stuff’s in there. ‘Nevertheless, she joined her Maine GOP colleague Sen. Olympia Snowe in endorsing the goal of far-reaching changes.’ This is the we-gotta-do-something chorus. ‘We gotta do something! Why, we gotta have a bill! We gotta have a bill.’
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RUSH: Here’s Julie in Salisbury, Maryland. Great to have you on the program. Thanks for waiting. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, it’s such a pleasure to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Americans for Prosperity right coast dittos on the right coast of Maryland to you. Hey, you know, I was reflecting on Olympia Snowe’s vote yesterday on the Senate Finance Committee on the Baucus bill, and I was very disgusted at her turncoat record and what she did yesterday, but I thought later on on her comment when she said she wasn’t committed to voting on this final bill and how the Democrats basically rolled over and, you know, did away with the public option and, I mean, it’s a horrible bill, but I was wondering if maybe there was some sort of strategy on her part in getting them to neuter this bill to a degree. I was wondering what your thoughts were on that.
RUSH: I frankly hadn’t considered it. That they were using — who, the Republicans?
CALLER: No, no, no, I mean her. I had an epiphany when I started thinking about why she would say that she wouldn’t vote possibly on the final bill.
RUSH: So give herself cover for making the vote in the first place. Olympia Snowe cannot kill the public option. Olympia Snowe can’t change anything in the bill, and they’re not going to need her vote anyway!
CALLER: Well, I don’t disagree with that, but I just wondering if perhaps she was trying to water it down. I mean the Democrats are very unhappy with this particular bill and they don’t like it. It’s not what they want.
RUSH: This is all for show. There’s no real legislative language yet, Julie. This is a draft, essentially. And the real bill is going to be written with all these goodies that are not in it now. They’ll be in there. She’s trying to say, ‘Well, not if I’m around they won’t be,’ and so forth. But you could be right. This may be one of her stratagems. It would surprise me that that kind of depth exists here, but more power to her if that’s what she’s got going on.
CALLER: I also think you should be able to buy the St. Louis Rams or anything else you damn well please to if you have the money to do it, by the way.
RUSH: Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And it’s great to hear from you, Julie. Most of our callers from Maryland don’t last longer than 30 seconds because they start calling me names and we have to disconnect them.
CALLER: Well, we are a very deep blue state for sure but we’re doing our part.
RUSH: Oh, yeah.
CALLER: I’m on the right coast of Maryland. We’re on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay, which is not Baltimore.
RUSH: Well, so you’re in the Delmarva Peninsula?
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: Ah. All right. Fine.
CALLER: And, you know, we are very conservative over here, but unfortunately Baltimore leads the way and takes our voices away an awful lot. But I’m a member of Americans for Prosperity here on the eastern shore and we’re giving our congressman a little what-for on some things. That’s Kratovil. Now, if you recall, we had Gilchrist here before —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — and last year he was thrown out and Harris was the contender and lost by a very small margin to what they called a Blue Dog Democrat, which is Kratovil, who voted for the stimulus package.
RUSH: So did Snowe. You gotta keep in mind, so did Olympia Snowe.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: And she said, if my memory is correct, she said pretty much the same thing, or something similar, make sure that we clean up the rough edges of this thing and so forth. You’re a thinker and I like thinkers. So I don’t want to discourage that at all. I’m just having trouble getting my arms around the theory. Working at it.
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RUSH: Now, I’ve been thinking about that woman we had from the Delmarva Peninsula, from the right coast of Maryland, who had her theory that Olympia Snowe voted ‘yes’ on the Baucus bill to get her way because there’s some things that are not in it now, like public option, ha-ha, things that are not in it now get put in, she can take her vote away. So I’ve been thinking about this. And the way I have sliced and diced this there are three possibilities here to explain Olympia Snowe’s vote. And, by the way, I think it’s important to point out that Olympia Snowe is not related to the great jazz singer Phoebe Snow. I don’t want any confusion on that. You see, her ‘yes’ vote was not needed. The final count was 14-9. If she had voted ‘no,’ the final committee vote would have been 13-10, no difference. All it did was make the State-Controlled Media rewrite their facts scripts from the White House. They can no longer say not one Republican voted for it. They’ll probably say something stupid like, ‘Oooh, it’s bipartisan now,’ which they’re doing. They will say bipartisan with a straight face. They got one Republican vote. In fact, I got a headline somewhere in here: ‘Obama Gets His Bipartisan,’ whatever the hell it is. I can predict these people a mile away.
Now, the obvious storyline here is that Olympia Snowe sold out the Republican Party but there are three, as I figured them out here, three totally different motives worth considering. She actually believed what she said. Remember, she thought that the stimulus bill was going to create jobs. So it’s possible she actually believed what she said. The second explanation, her 15 minutes of fame. Up to the vote she was the queen bee, the go-to Republican, the spot that Arlen Specter used to fill, but Arlen at least has had the courage to admit he was a Democrat all along. Now she’s just the one of a hundred senators, from Maine, who not one in a thousand could name. She got her 15 minutes, Olympia Snowe, Olympia Snowe, Olympia Snowe, and trust me, folks, as one in media, I know how people crave the camera, I know how they crave attention. That’s something about our culture that saddens me. That’s given us Twitter; that’s given us Facebook; it’s given us MySpace. Next website is going to be ‘My Ass, look at it, here it is, from all kinds of different angles.’ I mean people will give up every element of their privacy for a little bit of fame. I can see the possibility of Olympia Snowe here just wanting her 15 minutes of fame.
And the third possibility, and this is where I’m going to give props to the woman who called from the Delmarva Peninsula. And this is my hope, by the way. I’m still having trouble getting my arms around this, but wait for it. The third possibility is — dadelut dadelut dadelut — she is a brilliant strategist, sharper than Carville, more ruthless than Rahm Emanuel, and more devious than George Soros. I know, Snerdley, it’s tough to accept that. The depth question concerns me here, but this is a possibility. She voted ‘yes’ to make the left more of a laughingstock. They now have five health piles of paper. They got five victories for liberals, five documents, not any of them doing anything the president says he wants, not any of them reforming health care by the classical definition of making things better. Five victories here, not even meaningful enough to be called Pyrrhic victories. If objective voters ever looked at the needed reforms in health care, how little each these five bills do, they’d never turn left again. Reality didn’t sink in after the first four piles but now we have five piles, five piles of dots and blank lines and fill-in-the-numbers. Connect the dots. Maybe she did. I don’t know. Maybe the caller was right. Maybe the theory is give herself some power to make sure the bill is what they promised her it is going to be. I’m using all benefit of the doubt here.
Tony, Lake Orion, Michigan, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, you’re a great American.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Jennifer Granholm here in the wonderful state of Michigan with the largest unemployment rate in the nation is looking to pass a bill through the senate, goes this week, a three percent tax for doctors and any medical person overseen by a doctor, being PAs or certified nurses of anesthesia, for a three percent tax. Is this constitutional and how will this benefit keeping jobs here in Michigan?
RUSH: Well, I don’t know, you’d have to ask Jennifer Granholm, she’s the architect of job loss, with doing exactly this kind of thing. Did you say a three percent tax for doctors?
CALLER: She tried for five. They got three right now going to the Senate this week.
RUSH: For doctors or any person overseen by a doctor —
CALLER: That’s right —
RUSH: — certified anesthesia, three percent tax.
CALLER: Three percent tax. That’s correct. I think your listeners need to be aware here in Michigan and we need to contact our senators and not allow something like this ’cause this cannot possibly help the economy here in Michigan.
RUSH: Well, you know that, and I know that. The architect of this disaster has just lit another stick of dynamite.
CALLER: It’s scary here, sir.
RUSH: I know. It is. Well, I talk to people in Detroit. They describe it as devastation.
CALLER: We’re on a downward spiral and we don’t see a ray of light quite yet.
RUSH: You know, Jay Leno went in there and did a couple free concerts. How did that work out? He went in to lift the mood of people. Did it work?
CALLER: Well, I had a job, so I couldn’t make it down there.
RUSH: Oh, that’s right, the unemployed are the ones that went.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: All right. Well, I’m thinking, my mind is racing here about what could we do. Thanks for the call out there, Tony, I appreciate it.