RUSH: Judy in Dover, Delaware, great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing? Good to speak with you again.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I’ve spoken with you before but I just wanted to make a comment about Christine O’Donnell and Mike Castle. Unfortunately, you know, Mike Castle he’s a nice man but he had a lot of town hall meetings and phone call meetings. He lost the support of Delaware. He really did. He lost the military support. We had friends that had written him as military people. I am a physician. He lost the medical society’s support. So the stars and the moon were aligned. I don’t think Christine is a bad candidate, but she’s not the best. And, unfortunately, in our state it’s like a double whammy. We lost his House seat is a Republican seat. There’s no guarantee we’ll win that. And now, unfortunately, there are so many more Democrats in our state. I mean, I think there’s 35,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. So I’m not saying that she’s, quote, unquote, ‘unelectable.’ I just think in our small state, which is primarily Democrat, it’s going to be very difficult for her to win, and I’m very disappointed in Mike Castle because he never listened or changed his tune at all.
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: And it’s a tough situation for us to be in.
RUSH: I’m just gonna tell you where we all come down on this, Judy. As you described Delaware: 35,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Fine. It’s still — the country is still — worth spending the effort to save, even the task of persuading some 35,000 Democrats that it’s their country, too, that’s endangered. It’s worth it — and if we lose it, fine. It’s better to have a genuine Marxist in the US Senate rather than a phony, pretend conservative who’s gonna vote often like a Marxist and just confuse everybody and water down the entire identification of what a conservative or what a Republican is. Obama has a negative approval rating in Delaware right now. Even with 35,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, Obama’s approval number is negative. He’s gotta higher negative than positive, in Delaware.
Now, what is so hard to think O’Donnell can’t win? Why is that rote? And why are we the ones writing it? Why are the Republicans the ones etching that in stone? Some of this makes no logical sense whatsoever. Obama’s approval in Delaware is 46%. This Senate seat was not a Republican seat to start with. This was Bite Me’s seat. If the Republicans lose this seat, they’re no worse off than they were before. If the Republicans win six or 11 Senate seats there’s no way they’re gonna be pass anything significant over a Democrat filibuster and Obama veto. You know, this is a… The dirty little secret is, it’s probably a long shot to take control of the Senate anyway, but if it’s going to happen, let it happen with the right kind of Republicans being in the majority.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, let me talk about this majority business in the Senate because there’s something very crucial to understand about this. Because of cloture — you know, needing 60 votes — a Senate majority of 51 really doesn’t mean all that much in terms of passing legislation. Now, this is key when trying to figure out why it is that the Republicans are hell-bent on getting 51 seats. ‘We want 51 seats, except if O’Donnell’s going to be the 51st seat, then we don’t want her.’ I mean, they gotta explain that to us. I mean they admit, ‘Oh, yeah, you gotta hold your nose for Castle. We need 51 seats, 51 seats!’ Okay. Now you still want 51 seats I assume, but it’s O’Donnell, so now you don’t want the 51 seats? But to have a governing majority in the Senate, you need 60, and you need 60 like-minded.
Having 51, in terms of any legislation pass is not that big a deal. There really isn’t any substantial difference in what will happen legislatively in the Senate between having it be Democrat-controlled or Republican-controlled with a razor-thin majority. Especially, especially when the Democrats will be able to count on the votes of Collins and Snowe and Castle. What good are 51 votes if a minimum of three of them are gonna vote with the Democrats all the time? Now you’re down to 48 legislative. But, but you do have your committee chairmanships. A-ha! A-ha! You do have your committee chairmanships, and when you have committee chairmanships you have power! And the majority leader gets to decide what comes to the floor.
So you get your chairmanships, you get control of the floor action out there. But 51 seats doesn’t guarantee your agenda is gonna pass. You got Snowe, you got Collins, you had Murkowski voting with the Democrats. McCain, for crying out loud, now that he won he’s probably gonna revert back to that. (impression) That’s right Limbaugh! That’s right! Crossing the aisle, that’s what I can do. That’s — that’s what I do best.’ So you have McCain, Murkowski, Snowe, Collins, Voinovich sometimes, and then Castle. So what good is your 51 majority? It doesn’t matter a hill of beans legislatively (gasp!) but you get your chairmanships. You get more control over the money and how it’s allocated and spent. Oh-ho, yes. So you see, whereas you might think these people are as interested in saving the country, changing the direction we’re going at may not be the primary reason they want to be there. The primary reason they want 51 votes is to get the chairmanships.
You’re not hearing them talk about an agenda. You know, it’s a tradeoff. Is it worth having Republican chairmanships if Obama’s going to be able to claim bipartisanship passing his agenda? If that happens the GOP brand gets further destroyed. This is why RINOs are horrible. We know that Obama wants a Republican majority in the House. He wants to be able to blame Republicans for what’s gonna go wrong the next two years, and that’s why they’re so excited to have guys like Mike Castle. Oh-ho-ho. ‘Cause Castle would vote cap and trade, he would vote for the Obama agenda, and we’d get ‘bipartisanship’ and we would water down what it means to be a Republican, and we’d lose the country. And even that, even knowing all of that — they know all it is in Washington. Even knowing all that, ‘We want our 51 seats!’