RUSH: Michael in Charleston, South Carolina, thank you for waiting. You’re next on the program today.
CALLER: Hey, Rush! Yeah, let’s start the poll right now. I disapprove of Madam Speaker. Forgive my passion, but I find it ludicrous for the Democrats to say that they support the troops but they’re going to base their votes on whether to fund them or not on whether they get a place to store their peanuts. Give me a break! Let’s just say, ‘Where’s the integrity? You either support the troops based on your core beliefs or you don’t. Don’t tell me that you’re going to vote one way or the other —
RUSH: You know what?
CALLER: — because you’re —
RUSH: Time-out. I have to tell you, I think they’ve dropped the ‘support the troops’ business. I don’t think they’re even trying to make that statement much anymore.
CALLER: They just want the funds for domestic spending, that’s all!
RUSH: No, no, no. They tried that all last year, but you don’t hear ’em say that anymore. You don’t hear ’em make a big point out of ‘supporting the troops’ when they say they want the withdrawal date to start March 31, 2008. They’ll throw it in as, ‘We need to do this to make the troops safer.’
CALLER: You know, Rush, the reason I take this so personally is because my son-in-law, Sgt. Buddy J. Hughie, was killed in Afghanistan on the 19th of February of this year, and it just grates on me to have the Democrats, with their podium that they have to just spew all the discontent and the hatred and the rot. Don’t tell me that you support these guys! If you want to save money, just call back the medics and the surgeons and stuff, then you’ll save money on treating them and then a whole bunch more will die just like you save money from the VA! Give me a break. Don’t tell me that you support the troops and then want to give the Taliban and Iraqis and give the enemies a time of when we’re going to withdraw.
RUSH: You know what the root of your anger is?
CALLER: Yes, I know. I’ve got a dead son-in-law and a twenty-three-year-old daughter that’s a widow, and four-month-old grandson that’s not going to have a father. I’m incensed that she gives us the minimum wage increase, instead of doing something about the incursions across the borders.
RUSH: In addition to that, the real reason that you are fit to be tied is because all of what you said translates to is, and what you know, is that the people you’re talking about here want defeat, and that’s what frosts you.
CALLER: It is.
RUSH: That’s what you hear, and when they say they ‘support the troops,’ your intelligence tells you to be angered and outraged because you know they’re lying to you about that, because they want these troops humiliated. They want troops defeated. They want this whole thing to be a giant embarrassment, and they are (at the same time) trying to massage this with occasional statements that they support the troops. You’ve got a deceased son-in-law.
CALLER: It’s about them feeling good about themselves. They want to feel good about themselves.
RUSH: Of course it’s about themselves! They’re the biggest narcissists in the world. With all liberals, it’s about them.
CALLER: ‘Look at me. I’m claiming my (unintelligible)! I’m doing a good job, so pat me on the back! Look at me, I’m the first woman speaker, aren’t I all that and a bag of chips?’
RUSH: Look, Michael, what you should know is that they create a number of alternative realities in which they then live, and they believe people like you are so few that they’re not running a political risk with any of this. They believe that the vast majority of the American people want us to lose in Iraq. They believe that they want the troops out of there and the Iraq war over ASAP, regardless the outcome because they believe it, and they have such an arrogance and a condescension that they assume that whatever they think is what everybody else thinks too — and then they go about trying to make that happen, if they have sober moments when they realize they’re living in an alternative reality. Look, I share your anger and your outrage, and I totally understand it. Believe me, one of the things that I think they’ve calculated (they look at numbers), and this country’s changed in a number of ways, say, since World War II and Vietnam.
I saw a figure the other day, and I’m trying just to remember this off the top of my head. The population of the country is, give or take, adult population, 300 million, somewhere around there, and I think what I saw was that the number of military families is two million. Now, you’re in that group, and the Democrats will look at that and say, ‘Two million military families versus, what? Well, we’ll go with the bigger group.’ There’s no sense of honor and there’s no sense of trying to appeal to you. You’re a minority in terms of numbers, and you’re not the future, where they’re concerned — and you, I think, instinctively understand all this. Your outrage and anger is completely understandable, and it’s also indicative of so many. You don’t have an outlet for it, and you’re looking for leadership throughout the country to express the outrage that you feel and you’re not getting it. You’re not seeing it anywhere, and that just makes you even more frustrated. I’m glad you called here to vent a little bit, because you’re among friends here, and people are sympathetic to what you and your family have gone through. Feel free to call any time.