{"id":26730,"date":"2011-05-19T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:00:26","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-02-19T10:38:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T15:38:57","slug":"america_s_anchorman_reviews_the_larry_craig_happy_feet_scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2011\/05\/19\/america_s_anchorman_reviews_the_larry_craig_happy_feet_scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Anchorman Reviews the Larry Craig “Happy Feet” Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"
RUSH: You know, folks, I was so hoping when I was in Hawaii last week that when Larry Craig announced he was quitting the Senate, that instead he had come to the microphone and said, ‘I am announcing today that I intend to switch parties and become a Democrat.\u2019<\/p>\n

(Playing of Happy Feet.)<\/p>\n

I guess we can call this the bathroom stall update theme, Paolo Conte on the vocal portrayal here. Let\u2019s go to the sound bites. The real point about this, I think, has been missed and that\u2019s because, of course, I have been gone. Since I am back, I will make the real point. I want to review some audio sound bites of this first, a montage. The Drive-By Media just loved talking about the details of gay bathroom sex when there wasn\u2019t any gay bathroom sex.<\/p>\n

LOTHIAN: It\u2019s not the primary function of public parks, restrooms and rest areas, but for men in search of anonymous same-sex partners, they are popular destinations.<\/p>\n

TWEKSBURY: A thrill to the hunt, to the excitement of sex in a public place.<\/p>\n

PINSKY: People can genuinely get up and say, ‘I\u2019m not gay, but I\u2019m still one of these people that have sex with men.\u2019<\/p>\n

KING: They\u2019re not gay, but they have sex with men?<\/p>\n

KELLY: Tapping a foot, which apparently, this is lingo.<\/p>\n

CARVILLE: He\u2019s not gay, but he\u2019s a man having sex with a man.<\/p>\n

SHUSTER: (Reading transcript) ‘Craig tapped his toes several times and moved his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. Craig moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot, which was within my stall area.\u2019<\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: This man used leg signals, hand signals.<\/p>\n

CARLSON: I have been bothered in men\u2019s rooms.<\/p>\n

ATKINSON: He peered through the crack of the door and used hand signals to indicate he wanted sex.<\/p>\n

KING: Why men\u2019s rooms?<\/p>\n

RUSH: (Laughing.) That\u2019s Larry King, ‘Why men\u2019s rooms?\u2019 That\u2019s where the men are, Larry. Don\u2019t make me laugh. Folks, I came back here, I don\u2019t know how you do it, but I caught a cold in Hawaii. I caught a cold last Wednesday. I thought I was over it on the airplane coming home on Saturday night, Sunday, and I woke up yesterday worse than ever. ‘Oh, my God, this can\u2019t be!\u2019 How do you catch a cold in Hawaii? Every time I go away and play golf I get one of these things, AT&T, Pebble Beach, last November, really bad. I missed a couple workdays because of that one. That was almost ‘let\u2019s go to the hospital\u2019 time. Anyway, that\u2019s the montage. So Larry Craig, we got all the details of gay bathroom sex of which there was none in this scandal. Let\u2019s go to Senator Craig himself. This is August 28th. This is in Boise, Idaho. He held a press conference, a portion of his comments here.<\/p>\n

CRAIG: While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct at the Minneapolis airport or anywhere else, I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in hopes of making it go away. Let me be clear. I am not gay. I never have been gay.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right, so the Republicans threw Larry Craig under the bus, and you know who was driving the bus, Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n

ROMNEY: I think we\u2019ve all heard the story about Bill Clinton and the fact that he let us down in his personal conduct with a White House intern, and that strikes me as another one of these extraordinary acts of falling short of what America would expect of elected officials, particularly one who should be held to a higher standard.<\/p>\n

RUSH: This is a guy that was supporting Mitt Romney. Just throw him under the bus like that. This is pandering. This is pandering to the Christian right. This is pandering to values voters out there. It insults them to go this way. Tom DeLay was on PMSNBC last Thursday, and he had this exchange with the reporterette Contessa Brewer. Basically, she said to start it off, ‘The Republicans have also had a very strong message about morals,\u2019 and this is where I want to take this. But DeLay will set it up here. Contessa Brewer, the reason I\u2019m going to play this bite is because she is going to make the point that I\u2019m going to expand upon after this bite is played. She said, ‘The Republicans have also had a very strong message about morals. They like to announce they take the moral high road on many issues yet earlier you had Republican David Vitter who was linked to a prostitution ring and last year you had Mark Foley, Bob Ney and you, yourself, still facing charges of money laundering and conspiring to launder money. So the question is, if you\u2019re going announce you take the moral high road, do you have to stop living in glass houses?\u2019<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, Contessa, you\u2019ve just exhibited the double standard in the media.<\/p>\n

BREWER: And how is that?<\/p>\n

DELAY: Well, you\u2019ve just listed a bunch of Republicans, but you didn\u2019t list one Democrat. I mean, the fact that William Jefferson was caught with $90,000 of marked bills in his freezer and —<\/p>\n

BREWER: But we have — congressman, pardon the interruption, but — but that is a story that we have covered over and over again. No, actually it doesn\u2019t upset me. But because the Republicans — here\u2019s the problem —<\/p>\n

DELAY: No, here\u2019s the problem —<\/p>\n

BREWER: It\u2019s the hypocrisy. If people live in glass houses, they shouldn\u2019t throw stones.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Contessa, if you\u2019ll let me finish.<\/p>\n

BREWER: Go ahead.<\/p>\n

DELAY: The problem is, the media has a double standard.<\/p>\n

RUSH: She said it, and the fascinating aspect of this to me, which I\u2019ve pointed out, I\u2019ve been pointing this out countless times on this program for many, many years, and she says, ‘It\u2019s the hypocrisy.\u2019 The left in this country, folks, has made it a point to go after the hypocrisy of conservatives and Republicans, not really the behavior. If they go after the behavior, they have to condemn the behavior on their side of the aisle. The whole point of the left is to have no standards, because if you have no standards, you can\u2019t be held to any standards. If the left established standards that it wanted to adhere to, then it would have to jettison the supporters that come from the pervert ranks of the Democrat Party, the depraved, the gutter dwellers out there, they are all Democrats, and they are Democrats because the Democrats will not judge them.<\/p>\n

Now, in the case of Larry Craig here, the impression is being left that he was forced to resign over being gay, and he wasn\u2019t. He wasn\u2019t outed. There\u2019s a blogger at the Washington Post that\u2019s all happy today because, ‘I got Craig. I outed Craig.\u2019 Was he outed? Has Larry Craig been outed? He has not been outed. In fact, he resigned because of the heat that he received for pleading to a misdemeanor for disorderly conduct. Everybody else seems to be filling in the blanks here with their own agendas. Now, remember, as I said moments ago, my friends, the aim of the left is to aim straight for the hypocrisy of conservatives and Republicans, not the behavior. In this case, they need the behavior of Larry Craig in order to hit the hypocrisy. We\u2019ve had to deal with this before. Everybody out there that I\u2019ve been watching this morning is making the argument that I made some time ago, and that is that the left\u2019s position seems to be that since they have no moral standards, they can\u2019t be held to any moral standards. Moreover, since we, on the right, do believe in moral standards, they say we must live perfect lives, which, of course, is not possible because nobody\u2019s perfect. That\u2019s what original sin is all about. Original sin exempts this. Nobody can live a perfect life.<\/p>\n

So the left seems to want to zero-in and discredit virtually everyone who exhibits a failed lifestyle regardless their values. Of course, this is nonsensical because it\u2019s not possible. That\u2019s what they\u2019re trying to do. We conservatives understand this as well. This is why we seek to limit the power of the elites, a handful of imperfect people who ride into power and want to determine what everybody can and can\u2019t do. Democrats, everything they do is perfect because there are no standards that they adhere to. There are no rights. There are no wrongs. There\u2019s no good or bad. Nothing applies to them. They are perfect. Liberalism is the standard, and it\u2019s a standard that says everything goes. But they go even further. If one or a group of people who belong to the party of family values fails to live up to a high standard, then the entire party and movement is condemned. That is the tactic they\u2019re employing here. The truth is that when they take this position on the left, they expose the idiocy of their views. The bottom line is this. We all ought not strive to be more perfect because we are imperfect. We ought not strive to be good and moral because we can\u2019t be. That\u2019s what their philosophy is. You shouldn\u2019t try to be perfect because you can\u2019t. You shouldn\u2019t try to exude any morality because you can\u2019t. What kind of philosophy is that? Therefore, if Larry Craig had been a Democrat and liberal, there would be no supposed hypocrisy because Democrats and liberals have no moral standards. If he would have changed parties, why, he\u2019d be in great shape today.<\/p>\n

This is the logic of the left, and it\u2019s studied and it is purposeful. They need this position to defend the reprobates amongst themselves. I don\u2019t need to name the reprobates. Why do they defend felons? Why are they trying to get felons the right to vote again? I have some friends in town today that went out to buy some shoes and some dresses, some ladies in town that I know. Do you know that there is not a law in this town to prevent the owner of the store from cutting a little peeping hole in a dressing room and staring at them as they take their clothes off? There\u2019s not. As long as he doesn\u2019t film anything, as long as he doesn\u2019t tape anything, take any pictures, it\u2019s okay for anybody in the store to check out these unsuspecting women anywhere in New York City. So the local council said, ‘This is not good. We need a law to stop this.\u2019 The New York Civil Liberties Union is opposing the law, saying, ‘Well, who gets to sit in judgment of who looking through a peephole is behaving in a lewd manner?\u2019<\/p>\n

So here you have a classic illusion of what we\u2019re talking about. The left simply cannot allow laws to determine what is good or bad because they need the exemption. They need to be able to support and get the support of the perverts and the winos, the reprobates of American culture. They can\u2019t do that if they come up with a political philosophy that condemns that behavior. For example, if you oppose the left\u2019s agenda and one of the items on the agenda is expanding this idiotic hate crimes agenda to homosexuals where you receive more jail time for what you think when you commit a crime, if it happens to be against a homosexual you can add jail time to it because you must have been thinking bigoted thoughts of homophobia, and that\u2019s on the left\u2019s agenda. If you oppose that and so forth, you are mean-spirited, you are a bigot and are promoting a wedge issue and deserve no pity whatsoever. It\u2019s very convenient for the left here. The point being that you are to be judged on how you support the left\u2019s agenda. If you support the left\u2019s agenda then you get away with anything and they will not condemn you. We saw this in the Clinton administration, folks. You had Bill Clinton accused of rape. He was accused of sexual abuse in the oval orifice, all these other things, and the left-wing so-called women\u2019s groups are either silent or found ways to defend him.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Robin in Las Cruces, New Mexico, welcome to the program.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I wish you\u2019d been here last week. I think it\u2019s a matter of simple arithmetic about this Larry Craig affair.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n

CALLER: It\u2019s just the power in the Senate.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. He didn\u2019t have an ‘affair.\u2019 I know what you mean, but let\u2019s not contribute to this. He did not have an affair.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Okay.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Tap the foot out there.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Larry Craig happening. Whatever excuse they can land on — and this one, this seemed to blind-side people. They couldn\u2019t think past it, and it was just an excuse. Anything to get rid of a Republican senator, and I know there\u2019s a Republican governor who will appoint a Republican, but he comes up for election soon and I think we should all send contributions to the successor, because he hasn\u2019t prepared for an election.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I think the RNC will do their best to take care of that. You make a good point that what they\u2019re doing here is simply trying to go after Republicans. And the Democrats do this because they have little confidence that they can beat Republicans at the ballot box. I tell you, they\u2019re going to go after David Vitter of Louisiana next, and Pat Leahy made the point yesterday on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace who said, ‘Look, before we get to the choice of the new attorney general, let\u2019s discuss the resignation of your colleague, Larry Craig. Senator Leahy, let me start with you. What do you do make of the case? Did he have to go?\u2019<\/p>\n

LEAHY: We have another senator who apparently, uhhh, used telephones in the Republican cloakroom to call the so-called Washington madam, uh, set up, uh, illegal activity with — with call girls. And nobody seems to be upset with that. Uh, frankly, I would think that that, as compared to a — a sting operation in a men\u2019s room in — in Minnesota, would be as serious. I mean that\u2019s a — a question that the Republican Party will have to answer.<\/p>\n

WALLACE: You\u2019re talking about Louisiana Senator David Vitter.<\/p>\n

LEAHY: Yes.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yes. Yes. Of course, he wouldn\u2019t be talking about a Democrat! A Democrat can do whatever they want and there\u2019s no problem whatsoever. Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy can make the famous waitress sandwiches at La Brasserie, and it\u2019s a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 enhancement! But we\u2019ve addressed this. This is all about hypocrisy. Howard Dean, when he was running for president, folks, I will never forget, said he was going to root out Republican hypocrisy. Now, you have to understand this is the target here. They claim to be able to discredit Republicans on the basis of hypocrisy. They can\u2019t condemn the behavior because they protect and encourage the behavior when practiced by people who support them, or by themselves. So they have to go out and target hypocrisy. Larry Craig was not caught doing anything. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor, trying to make the whole thing ‘go away.\u2019 That\u2019s what caused his downfall. So now you hear Leahy say, I want to go after David Vitter, as though there are no Democrats who have patronized call girls and madams and so forth. But, see, even if there were, that\u2019s okay because they aren\u2019t critical of it. The left does not criticize prostitutes or prostitution, and so when they visit a madam or a call girl, why, there\u2019s no hypocrisy and so there\u2019s no crime, there\u2019s no guilt, because in the land of the left, there are no standards. In fact, the more depraved you are, the more valued you are, because the more unique and different you are and the easier it will be to make you a victim! The greater pervert, the more depraved you are, the more attractive you are to the Democrat Party and the American left. Ben in Charlotte, North Carolina, you\u2019re next on the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hello. Tera iPhone dittos, Rush.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. You\u2019re on your iPhone now?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes, I am.<\/p>\n

RUSH: It sounds awesome!<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah, I think so too.<\/p>\n

RUSH: It just sounds awesome. I hear you just fine.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Good. My point is in regards to how you and Tom DeLay are handling when asked the question, ‘Where\u2019s the double standard?\u2019 They do — I mean the media will get on William Jefferson but what they won\u2019t do is hold the entire party accountable for what William Jefferson does.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Right.<\/p>\n

CALLER: So I don\u2019t think that he summed it up nicely. When Tom DeLay was talking to her, she said but we did hold Jefferson accountable. His response should have been, ‘Yes, but did you hold the Democratic Party accountable?\u2019<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I understand that. But you, of course, are exempting me from this criticism I hope because I did make that very point in my analysis after that sound bite, not about DeLay, who should have said it; but I did point out that, what they do is they take the behavior of a Larry Craig or a Vitter or whoever and condemn the whole party for it. They condemn the whole conservative movement for it. You must have missed that.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019ll exempt you for that.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: The other thing is sometimes they bring up things that we aren\u2019t really bringing up anymore. I mean, my mother-in-law is a really liberal person.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah?<\/p>\n

CALLER: When the debates were going on, she kept commenting on, ‘Ha! All of the Republicans have been divorced! All the Republicans have been divorced.\u2019<\/p>\n

RUSH: Right.<\/p>\n

CALLER: And I\u2019m like, ‘Who\u2019s talking about divorce?\u2019 She\u2019s acting like [they are] hypocrites because they\u2019ve been divorced, as though we\u2019re the party of, you know, no divorce. They\u2019re talking about things we\u2019re not even talking about.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I know. I\u2019m forced now to go back to my brilliant monologue here following the DeLay sound bite in the first half-hour, but the point here again is that when you have a values voter base party, which the Republican Party is, I mean, the values voters vote for them, and the Christian right votes for Republicans for the most part. So when you have Republicans who fall off the moral bus, if you will, the Democrats try to say, ‘A-ha! We have hypocrisy here.\u2019 They go after the ‘hypocrisy\u2019 rather than the behavior. The Democrats do not hold themselves to any standard because they don\u2019t protect any, they don\u2019t promote any. They don\u2019t say they adhere to any. Now, the interesting thing is this. You get a lot of Republican candidates who have been divorced. Divorce has been very, very good to a lot of guys. It\u2019s made \u2019em happier. It\u2019s got \u2019em different families — and everybody fails! There\u2019s not one person that does not commit some kind of a sin. It is impossible to live a perfect life. Democrats have been trying this for I don\u2019t know how long. If you didn\u2019t serve in the military, you can\u2019t support the defense budget. If you didn\u2019t serve in the military, if you didn\u2019t sign up in \u201969 to go kill commies in Vietnam, you have no right to talk about the use of the military today because you\u2019re being a hypocrite.<\/p>\n

‘Where were you when it was time to kill commies? You\u2019ll be glad to send other people\u2019s kids off to kill people but you wouldn\u2019t go do it yourself, so you shut up!\u2019 This is because the left cannot beat us in the arena of ideas, folks. They have to shut us up either by discrediting who we are or blaming us for being hypocrites and so forth, and what they hope to do here, in the long run, is, ‘Okay, here\u2019s somebody who\u2019s divorced, so he can\u2019t talk about gay marriage. Why, I know some of the most healthy and loving relationships among gay people and here\u2019s a divorced Republican. He shouldn\u2019t be allowed to comment,\u2019 and that\u2019s how it works. See, the thing to understand about this… It may sound a bit extreme, but to understand this, the left must by definition have no standards so it can\u2019t be accused of violating them. Now, just because somebody makes a mistake in life does not mean they don\u2019t know the difference between right and wrong. It does not disqualify them from being able to tell other people what\u2019s right and wrong. We\u2019ve got fewer and fewer people willing to say what\u2019s right and wrong because they\u2019re attacked as intolerant, as bigots, as prejudiced people. If somebody says to you I think we must teach more tolerance in the schools. Really? How about teaching more math and more history? Tolerance is simply respect, and it used to be taught at home. To give up whole class periods to teach ‘tolerance\u2019 is nothing more than a liberal trick to make sure that people do not judge and do not condemn behavior which in the old days automatically would have been, because we all know what\u2019s right and wrong. It doesn\u2019t mean we all live perfect lives because we can\u2019t, but we all know. But more and more of us have been intimidated into not saying what\u2019s right and wrong and not being judgmental because we\u2019re going to face all kinds of hell directed towards us personally.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Tom in Boise, Idaho. I\u2019m glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the program.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you, sir.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019m just calling about the Larry Craig issue. I live here in Boise, and, you know, I agree with you about the media trying to point out, you know, Republicans\u2019 hypocrisy and all that, but I think you\u2019re wrong about why the Republicans threw Craig under the bus. It wasn\u2019t so much the gay issue —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Oh, I know why they threw him under the bus? What do you mean I\u2019m wrong about why they threw him under the bus?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Why did they throw him under the bus?<\/p>\n

CALLER: It wasn\u2019t so much about the gay issue. It was about him lying to us and about the whole way he handled the situation. You know, he just showed incredibly poor judgment in the whole way he handled it, trying to cover it up and not tell anyone. He didn\u2019t even tell his wife about it.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah?<\/p>\n

CALLER: He didn\u2019t tell his staff.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah?<\/p>\n

CALLER: He didn\u2019t hire a lawyer.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Right.<\/p>\n

CALLER: He thinks he can just brush it under the rug. And, you know, around here, Republicans were already upset with him about how he voted on the amnesty bill, and already weren\u2019t going to support him for that reason.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Right, right, right, right.<\/p>\n

CALLER: This is just icing on the cake.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So to speak.<\/p>\n

CALLER: So the gay thing had little to do with it. It was a horrible lack of judgment on his part and the way he lied to us.<\/p>\n

RUSH: That may be, from your standpoint, but I guarantee you for the Republicans in Washington, it was not that at all. It may have been a minor factor in this thing. Believe me, it was the solicitation of sex charge in a bathroom, the toe-tapping, the foot-tapping. You know, Republicans just have a tendency to be gutless, and this was one of the shining examples of it. They jumped and made all these decisions right before they found out what had really gone on here. It\u2019s all because they\u2019re afraid of being called hypocrites and so forth, and some Republicans are going to say, ‘No, Rush, you are wrong. We stand up for moral values. We are going to make sure of it. We can\u2019t afford to back people who do not stand up for the morality and the lifestyle that we promote and so forth.\u2019 Yeah, I understand all that but at the same time, folks, you can\u2019t sit there and just let the Democrat Party pick you apart. I know it\u2019s a fine line (sigh) but in this kind of battle, in this war, there are certain factors here that have to be weighed.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Larry Craig was forced out, folks, because the Republicans are scared. The Republicans have been told they can\u2019t win the next election. They have been told that they have no chance and that they\u2019re going to lose even more seats. The Republicans accept the labels that liberals apply to them, and they refuse to stand and fight. Now, the most logical way for the Republicans to have responded to Patrick Leahy and other Senate Democrats on Larry Craig was to say this: ‘You know, Senator Leahy, when you leaked to NBC News and were forced to resign from the Intel Committee, we didn\u2019t call for your resignation from the Senate. When Barney Frank knew of a male prostitution ring being run from his townhouse, he didn\u2019t resign. When Harry Reid was involved in sleazy land deals, several of them in Nevada, he didn\u2019t resign from the Senate. So who are you to lecture anybody about any of this? You people have committed far more grievous acts of indecency than Larry Craig committed here by tapping his foot in a bathroom.\u2019<\/p>\n

I know some of you out there are very upset with me because you think I\u2019m being tolerant of the activity of Larry Craig, and that we can\u2019t have these kinds of people in our party, we certainly can\u2019t have elected officials this way, and I understand you\u2019re angry with me about this. I\u2019m telling you something, this double standard that exists and the cowardice and the fear that the Republicans exhibit is not comforting, not with an election a little over a year away. The presidential campaign is going to be brutal, and it can\u2019t be filled with defensiveness. People are going to have to stand up and fight for what they believe. There are ways of dealing with what these Democrats have said. You\u2019ve got Barney Frank; you\u2019ve got Gerry Studds; you\u2019ve got Harry Reid; you\u2019ve got Dianne Feinstein in an area that wasn\u2019t even looked into about steering money from her committee in the Senate to businesses that her husband benefits from. Not to mention Leahy, who leaked when he was on the intelligence committee and was forced to resign. If anyone ever convicted of any crime should resign from the Senate, why is Ted Kennedy still there?<\/p>\n

I went to Wikipedia, it\u2019s everybody\u2019s favorite authority, right? ‘Kennedy entered a plea of guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. He received a sentence of two months in jail, which was suspended. The sentence was notable in that the statute for the crime provided only for mandatory jail time and not the discretion of a suspended sentence. An Edgartown grand jury later reopened the investigation but did not return an indictment.\u2019 Well, Craig pled guilty to a misdemeanor as well. But Kennedy pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after causing an injury. Now, I suppose if he had done so in a men\u2019s room, the liberals would have demanded his resignation, right? By the same token, what was Larry Craig\u2019s mistake? Larry Craig\u2019s mistake was not tapping his foot in the Oval Office. If he was tapping his foot in the Oval Office he\u2019d still be in the Senate. But he had to go to a men\u2019s room in the Minneapolis airport.<\/p>\n

Now, the Ted Kennedy thing occurred in Martha\u2019s Vineyard which makes it totally different, right? So when Republicans simply sit there when the likes of Leahy and others make these statements and hold themselves out as the epitome of morality and virtue and get all defensive, ‘We don\u2019t want to offend Senator Leahy. We don\u2019t want to offend Senator Reid. We don\u2019t want to offend our values voters,\u2019 and so forth and so on. This is not to condone Larry Craig\u2019s behavior, whatever it was or was not, folks. It is time to realize here that these people who are demanding all of these resignations and saying that they\u2019re going to go after David Vitter should have been long gone from the US Senate for things far worse than what either Vitter or Craig are alleged to have done; and yet they get to sit there and act as the moral judge? Sorry. Doesn\u2019t fly with me. I don\u2019t care whether Larry Craig\u2019s a reprobate or not. It doesn\u2019t matter in this case. It\u2019s the people who are telling me and my party how we must comport ourselves when they couldn\u2019t walk in our shadows. You can sit there and you can play holier-than-thou on this morality stuff but if you\u2019re looking for perfection in elected officials, if you\u2019re looking for people who are never going to fall off the wagon, never going to walk something other than a straight line, then you\u2019re going to be looking forever.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: David in Atlanta, thank you for waiting. You\u2019re on the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: 1986 dittos, Rush.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. Great to have you here.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019ve been listening since the Sacramento days on KFBK. I wish I was still there. Hey, I wanted to comment on the whole Larry Craig thing, and I agree with you partially that it\u2019s been overwrought and that, you know, really jammed in, blown out of proportion. You know, it was a misdemeanor that he pled guilty to. Nothing else was necessarily proven and so on. But I don\u2019t necessarily agree that the Republicans overreacted and threw him under the bus. You know, I really think he got thrown out of the bus more than anything else, but —<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, Mitt Romney ran over him after throwing him out of the bus.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, that\u2019s true. That\u2019s true. Mitt Romney did pretty much completely dismiss him, yeah. At the same time, though, I have to think that, we are the party of the higher standard. Yes, everybody falls, you know, everybody sins, and, you know, as a Christian I believe in that very, very strongly and firmly, uh, but we have to maintain enough of the double standards, necessarily that the Democrats have done as well.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I understand that, but what did Craig do?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, in this case, not necessarily much, but at the same time, you know, if somebody gets themselves caught with their hand caught in the cookie jar or whatever they\u2019re doing, it\u2019s probably up to them to kind of say, ‘You know what?\u2019<\/p>\n

RUSH: But see, there was no hand in the cookie jar here. There was a toe-tapping in a men\u2019s room stall in a bathroom with an undercover cop on the other side of the stall.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes, it seems pretty clear, though, Rush, that what he was doing he knew what he was doing, that it wasn\u2019t a mistake — and we don\u2019t know that. We can\u2019t prove that. It\u2019s really of [sic] a word of one against the other. At the same time, though, you go back to the Mark Foley thing and how Republican, the Senate [sic–House] leadership handled the Mark Foley thing and they swept it under the rug as well as they could. Denny Hastert, you know, he refused to do anything about it and looked into it [sic], and then look what happened there? And, you know, I don\u2019t know if you can say that lost us the election, but it was certainly a huge deal.<\/p>\n

RUSH: See, now, I\u2019m glad you brought up Foley, because I\u2019ll tell you I think the Democrats\u2019 war room screwed this up, and I think some heads are going to roll. This Larry Craig thing should have happened a year from now. They\u2019ve wasted it. What\u2019s it doing happening now? This is something… You know, the Foley thing, that they held that in the bank for a year and a half, and they used it earlier than they wanted to because the polls were showing Republicans were going to hold onto the House, so they had to go to the mat and they had to use the Foley thing. They had that in abeyance. The Republicans had maybe not done the right thing with what they had known way back when and so forth, but look, if we adhere to this notion that we have the moral high ground, then we had better expect — and if we\u2019re going to sit there and let people like Patrick Leahy and Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd and Harry Reid, if we\u2019re going to let them be the moral arbiters of the US Senate and who\u2019s fit to hold office in Washington DC, then we may as well fold up shop, on the basis that we can\u2019t field a team that will be morally untouchable. I know this is a tough one, folks, but the future of the country is at stake here, I think. This is the liberals do everything they can to gain control. Look at what they\u2019re already talking about doing if they win! They\u2019re going to control as much of your life as possible. I\u2019m starting to sound like a broken record on this.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Steve in Springfield, Oregon, thank you for calling, sir, I appreciate your patience.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hey buddy, mega dittos from — (muttering)<\/p>\n

RUSH: (Muttering.)<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hello?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yes.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Anyway, we\u2019re right next to Idaho, I know that because I studied the old-fashioned geography and I just wanted to say that you\u2019re wrong on the Larry Craig thing.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I don\u2019t want that kind of guy in my party, you know, and I don\u2019t want a guy who\u2019s going to try to pick up a guy in a men\u2019s room in an airport and I don\u2019t want a guy in the White House who\u2019s going to try to sodomize an intern in the Oval Office. I just don\u2019t want it.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah. Well, I understand that, and I totally agree with you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Okay. Well, you\u2019re mocking members of the Republican Party that were talking about hypocrisy, and I agree with everything that those leaders in the Republican Party said. You were repeating them in a mocking manner.<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, no, no. To me this is a matter of the people on the left dictating who among us gets to serve who\u2019s fit to hold office. That\u2019s what bothers me about this. I think the Republicans reacted a little too quickly in throwing the guy overboard because he didn\u2019t pick anybody up in the bathroom.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Oh, man, you know how hard it is to — he wasn\u2019t toe tapping, man, he was playing footsie, you know, and that bathroom isn\u2019t like the first one you come to. It\u2019s a well-known bathroom, you gotta go out of your way to get to it. I\u2019m sorry, dude, he did it, and that press conference where he says, ‘I\u2019m not gay,\u2019 that reminded me of President Clinton saying, ‘I didn\u2019t have sex with that woman.\u2019<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019m glad he lost the seat. He should have been gone.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I agree with that. What\u2019s wrong with being gay?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Nothing, but —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Exactly right. If he is, he should have proudly come out and said so.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I guess there\u2019s nothing wrong with sodomizing the intern, either —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Really make the Republicans mad then.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Should have admitted it and Craig should have admitted it. I don\u2019t like that kind of hypocrisy. I\u2019m not sure I want, you know, a guy like that, you know, in charge of making laws about our penal system, you know. I don\u2019t think he should have held onto his seat, or anybody else\u2019s.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I got news for you. The guys that are making laws about the penal system and every other system out there are probably just as much reprobate as Craig is in their own way. The idea that we got people clean and pure as the wind-driven snow up there is a myth.<\/p>\n

CALLER: No, we don\u2019t. All right, buddy. Well, that\u2019s pretty much all I wanted to say.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay. I appreciate your call, Steve. Thanks so much, buddy, it\u2019s great to have you out there, especially in Oregon. It\u2019s a lonely place for Republicans to be. I\u2019m glad you\u2019re with us.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I\u2019m going to take another stab at this Larry Craig business. The police report does not say that Larry Craig ‘played footsie\u2019 in the bathroom at the Minneapolis airport. If he had played footsie, I assume the prosecution wouldn\u2019t have signed a deal for a misdemeanor. Anyway, that\u2019s not the point. Here\u2019s the point. A standard has not been made and met with the resigning of Larry Craig. Look, can I go through some recent history for you to try to illustrate for you what my problem with this is? Larry Craig was the latest to go for what seem like rational reasons: ‘Oh, he played footsie in the bathroom? He\u2019s soliciting male sex? We can\u2019t have that! He\u2019s gotta go. Get him outta there!\u2019 Alberto Gonzales? He split the scene after Republicans pushed him and joined with the Democrats. This is for what seemed like rational reasons. ‘Why, he was incompetent! Why, he was involved in the US attorney firings.\u2019 There was no crime! No crime was ever committed by Gonzales, but it seemed rational. ‘Rush, he had to go,\u2019 and the Republicans joined the Democrats in pushing him out the door. Rumsfeld? Rumsfeld went. That was supposed to fix things. ‘Yeah, if we get rid of Rumsfeld and give the libs what they want, man, they\u2019ll turn around and support us on Iraq.\u2019 Right. Gingrich? DeLay? They resigned for what at the time seemed like rational reasons, and Republicans joined in on that, too. ‘Yeah, you guys really gotta go. You\u2019re embarrassing us here. Newt, you\u2019re having an affair. DeLay, you got yourself indicted out there. You got a go. You\u2019re making it look bad for us. Kick \u2019em out!\u2019<\/p>\n

We have Bob Livingston resigned after it was revealed that he\u2019d had an affair, and lots of Republicans thought that was a good idea. ‘Yeah, Bob, you gotta get out of there. We\u2019re trying to nail Clinton on this stuff and it doesn\u2019t look good if you\u2019re in there. You gotta get out of there. You go, Bob. Make it look good, very helpful.\u2019 Then Mark Foley. Mark Foley was ousted before the November election with Republican support and that was supposed to fix things. Do you detect a pattern here, ladies and gentlemen? Every so often, Republicans quit! They\u2019re forced to resign with other Republicans joining in, pushing them out the door. During this same period, may I cite for you the name of Congressman William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana), who is still a member of Congress? I don\u2019t recall if he\u2019s able to hold onto his committee position, but whatever. There are plenty of other examples of this kind of behavior. You don\u2019t see any Democrats pushing each other out the door. You don\u2019t see them leaving of their own volition. You see them defended. I know what you\u2019re saying. ‘But, Rush, we don\u2019t want people like that in our party.\u2019 I understand that, but there\u2019s a trend, folks, and every time we get rid of one of these people we\u2019re supposed to reap the rewards. Republicans are showing the world that we are not going to tolerate this kind of ‘reprobate-ness\u2019 in our party. We\u2019re not going to put up with it! We\u2019re going to clean it out because we are the party of values and standards and so forth and so on. (laughing) Meanwhile, we lost the House last November. We lost the Senate, and it looks worse for the coming November. But, forget it, folks, because I — as has been pointed out by several callers today — have totally lost touch on this issue and have no idea what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I\u2019m going to try one more time here with Larry Craig, ladies and gentlemen. If you want to talk about standards and morality… I\u2019ve got people calling this show accusing Larry Craig of crimes that he didn\u2019t commit and accusing him of conduct that he didn\u2019t commit. I mean, everybody talks about Craig cut a deal. How about the prosecutors cut a deal? If they had him on lewd and lascivious behavior, why did they cut a deal to something that\u2019s less than that? I\u2019ve been through this, folks. I have been through this. You people out there are falling for Democrat talking points. If they had such a strong case, why did they cut a deal with Craig? We keep hearing that he cut the deal. Well, local officials had to sign the deal. If his conduct was lewd and if he did, in fact, solicit sex in a public place, why not throw the book at him? Why not? That\u2019s what you do when you have someone dead to rights and you seek to prove a point and deter certain conduct. If you don\u2019t want that kind of stuff going in your bathroom, and you\u2019re an airport cop in Minnesota, and you don\u2019t want this stuff going on and you found it, you throw the book at the person that did it, and you send a message. But they didn\u2019t do that. Another thing, folks. This is not about the Republican Party. Some of you callers are insisting this is about the Republican Party. You\u2019re falling for Democrat talking points. You are acting defensive, and you\u2019re trying to maintain a high moral standard for yourself. You\u2019re making it about you personally, when in fact you\u2019re sitting around and you\u2019re watching Democrats decide to pick off any of our guys they want, and you\u2019re helping \u2019em!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: You know, folks, I was so hoping when I was in Hawaii last week that when Larry Craig announced he was quitting the Senate, that instead he had come to the microphone and said, ‘I am announcing today that I intend to switch parties and become a Democrat.\u2019 (Playing of Happy Feet.) 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