RUSH: This is Deborah in Topeka. Nice to have you. You’re second today on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello. How are you?
RUSH: I’m fine.
CALLER: Well, at this point, I wish I was running for office. I listened to that debate last night and there was nothing from either candidate. I was so mad at McCain on points. When Obama says we’re going to raise taxes, 95% of you, we’re going to do the wealthy and we’re going to do Big Business. People, without Big Business in this country, we have nothing. We have got to support Big Business. What are we all going to do? Are we all going to go to McDonald’s and get jobs flipping burgers? The wealthy and Big Business are who create jobs in this country. They have the money to go and do it. What happens when they get taxed higher? They’re going to leave. That’s what’s been happening the last 20 years. It has been cheaper to do business in other countries. The last ten years, we lost —
RUSH: That’s right. We already have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, 35%.
CALLER: In the world, and everybody go look to the Internet, just type in corporate tax rates, you will see that America, it’s exactly what Rush said, our corporate tax rate is ridiculous. I had a business for 12 years. Out of that 12 years, I paid 30% taxes, one year I didn’t because I had a client that owed me $70,000, I didn’t pay any taxes, one year. Wal-Mart, they pay 37.4% in tax in 2007. Go look this stuff up. I’m not making this stuff up. These are facts. Go look it up. This is America. We have to encourage businesses to come back to America. If we tax them, they’re just going to send more jobs overseas. China is offering to companies, and they have offered to some companies no tax, come over here, you don’t pay any taxes.
RUSH: You’re absolutely right about this. Why do you think Obama doesn’t get this, or does he get it? Why does he want to make his enemies list include American business, large and small, and wealthy people? Why are they his enemies?
CALLER: They’re not his enemies. What he’s saying, and Americans are smart, hopefully they’ll get this. He is trying to appeal to a mass quantity of people. The majority of people are middle-class people, and what he’s saying is what’s going to get the vote. He’s telling you, ‘Go against the wealthy people,’ because it’s appealing on your emotions.
RUSH: Exactly right. It’s the class envy card. The thing I always try to tell people about this, Deborah — you’re very smart, by the way, you’re very brilliant. Great caller. I always tell people, okay, you’re middle class or whatever, you don’t make as much money as you think you should be making, a lot of people make more, and you hear that those people that make more than you are getting a tax increase. You go, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, soak ’em.’ Okay, they get their taxes increase. Has your life changed any? Do you have any more money in your back pocket? You gonna go buy a new car because they got a tax increase? It doesn’t change your life a bit other than if you’re happy in a schadenfreude sort of way that your neighbor is getting stuck with a bigger tax bill. I think you raise some excellent points. I’m outta time here, Deborah. I gotta run, but thank you so much for the call.
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RUSH: Boynton Beach, Florida, this is Edward. Nice to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: The reason I called is because I feel McCain has really been blowing the debates, both of them. In both debates, Obama started trying to track all the current-day problems back to eight years of Bush administration. And I thought when he did that, McCain should have gotten up there and said, ‘This isn’t tracked back to eight years of Bush administration. This is tracked back to President Carter and President Clinton and Democratic Congresses that forced the banks to make risky loans to people that couldn’t pay for them.’
RUSH: Yeah. You and I and the rest of the Republican Party, the conservative movement, agree a hundred percent, and watch this stuff and say, ‘Okay, it’s up to us. We’re going to have to be the ones to secure victory for him. We’re going to drag him across the finish line and then take on the other challenges that that presents.’ You know, one step at a time here. We can do it. That’s the way it’s going to have to be done. I’m going to splay to you so you can no longer be frustrated, why McCain does not do that. I mean, Obama handed him a slow pitch, softball, hanging curve.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: All he has to say, ‘I’m sorry, Senator Obama, but the roots of this particular crisis are in fraudulent mortgage lending started and suggesting by Jimmy Carter, expanded by Bill Clinton, implemented by Jamie Gorelick. You have two advisors who implemented these loans at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.’ He could have just knocked it out of the ballpark. He won’t do it, and I’m going to tell you why very simply.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: So that you don’t get frustrated anymore, because it’s going to keep happening for the rest of the campaign. McCain is going to get hanging curveball after hang curveball and he’s going to strike out. John McCain believes that the key for him to win the election is in the undecided moderates — the independents, moderates, all these people — who have not declared who they’re for, the great undecideds, and the theory goes that they’re all moderates. Now, by moderate, I mean people who do not make up their minds because they think it’s offensive to have an opinion about anything. This is the theory, and I think it’s all wet and wrong. But McCain believes it. The theory is that moderates get offended by ‘partisanship.’ So McCain does not want to be partisan and offend them, ’cause that’s who he’s seeking the votes of. Now, here’s where this theory is so flawed, it’s embarrassing anybody accepts it. It is a myth, and it’s one of these theories that’s been alive in American politics put forth by Democrats and put forth by the media to get conservatives to shut up. It is designed to scare people like McCain into not saying what he knows is the truth because he believes he will offend these precious moderates, and what will they then do? What will they do? You tell me, Edward. What will the moderates do if McCain offends them by being partisan? What will they do?
CALLER: Well, Obama’s partisan, too. I mean —
RUSH: That’s the point! We’re told that they will run to the Democrat Party. They will run to the Democrat Party if McCain offends them. Now, tell me, is the Democrat Party, is Barack Obama, are they partisan?
CALLER: That’s what causes the whole problem in the first place. He tries to blame everything on the eight years of Bush, and that’s not true.
RUSH: It’s worse than that. They wanted to lose in Iraq. They are responsible for the financial crisis. They called General Petraeus a liar! To say that the Democrat Party and, the American left is all sweetness and light? See, folks, do you understand how illogical it is for us to believe the notion that we’ve got this great group of moderates out there? I’ll tell you who they really are. They’re a bunch of stuck-on-themselves, conceited, arrogant elites who think they’re smarter than everybody else because the pollsters and all both campaigns always focus on the undecideds. These elites sit out there, and they think they have the election results in their hands. And, of course, they play it up. I don’t know how many of these people Frank Luntz gets that claims they’re moderates, but I know damn well that you’re not going to get on the Frank Luntz Show if you’re decided.
Frank Luntz only gets focus groups of undecided people. Well, how do you…? Everybody wants to be on TV, right, including these dummkopf moderates, they love to get on TV and tell everybody (’cause they’re smarter than anybody else) what happened in the debate. I watch these people and I get embarrassed. I say, ‘Please, tell me you’re not registered.’ Some of the stupidest people I’ve ever seen are these undecideds who show up at these focus groups. They’ve got their little dials and they’re doing all this tweaking with these graphs. Have you seen the way CNN does this? On the high definition screen? Did you watch that? (scoffs) They’ve got all of their analysts grading the debate as it’s going? And then they’ve got some meter down there underneath going up and down — Democrat, Republican –, as each candidate’s speaking. You guys, you get nauseous watching the graph.
‘God, I’m going to throw up if it keeps going up and down like this. Where’s the Pepto-Bismol?’ So anyway, we’re told that this select group of, what, 20%, 18%, whatever it is every election — the great undecideds, the great moderates — they’re the ones who are open-minded and don’t make up their minds until they’ve heard everything. Let me ask you if you’re undecided, what you are waiting for? What the hell do you not know that you think you’re going to learn in the next three weeks? Some of you may not know yet the full extent of Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. What do you want to know? What do you not know, clods? ‘Rush, do you really think you ought to be insulting your audience?’ I’m not insulting the audience. I’m trying to spur these people to get some gonads. Grow a pair!
Don’t be afraid to tell people what you really think, and don’t tell us that if the Republican candidate happens to get partisan, that that’s it; you can’t handle partisanship and mean-spiritedness, and you’re going to run to the Democrats, who own the definition of mean-spirited and extremism? So this whole notion of going out and getting the moderate independents is a fraud. McCain has gotten totally caught up in this myth. So the long way around this, Edward, my man, the reason McCain is not even going to take a swing at these hanging curveballs is because he believes that if he does, these moderates are going to go running right to the Democrats and Obama. I know it’s silly, but that’s what he believes, and that’s how it’s going to be. That’s why (ahem), as I say, it’s going to be up to us if…
Well, it is, folks. I’m not being braggadocios here. I’m not even being egotistical. I said yesterday, I did a little monologue: Senator McCain, you owe the country you love to tell the truth about the people who seek to change the country you love. You owe it to us! You’re the nominee. You owe it to us to defend this great country as it currently exists to prevent it from being redesigned. But I don’t think that even enters the thought process, and I don’t know about the people — you know, his campaign aides — running his campaign. I’d have no idea who gets close to him and who has any influence over him or not, but I’m just telling you: Don’t expect him to take swings at these things. Now, also know this. I will issue a caveat. I know that Senator McCain believes that the last 72 hours determine the election. Now, that apparently, I was told this to prepare myself for fireworks in the last 72 hours. Frankly, I’m worn out with all these expectations being built up. Like I said earlier — and, Edward, Boynton Beach, this goes for you. If you would be a happier American and more motivated and inspired to vote by not watching next week’s debate, then don’t watch it. If all it’s going to do is depress you and make you mad, throw your hands in the air and say, ‘Hell, I should I should be running.’ Don’t watch it. I will. I will tell you what, if anything, out of the ordinary you missed. Here’s Amber in Canton, Michigan. Amber, you’re on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Fine, dandy, thank you.
CALLER: I just want to say thank you to you. I’m not giving up, and every day I get a call from my sister saying, ‘We’re doomed. We’re doomed,’ but I know, I know in my heart that the Americans aren’t stupid people, and they’re not going to elect somebody so far left that will destroy our country.
RUSH: I want you to be prepared. There are plenty of stupid people, and they are going to vote for Obama.
CALLER: Yeah, but I have two points to make. I believe, too, that even though the Democrats out there are saying, ‘I’m going to vote for Obama,’ I believe once they get to that booth, they’re going to change their mind. Because they aren’t as far left as he is.
RUSH: Hmph.
CALLER: Secondly, I feel that, you know, McCain always talks about his strategy with war and da-da-da, you never show your hand. I feel in the next couple weeks he is going to come on and he’s going to come with fire, and I’m telling you, he’s going to come on strong, and he’s just not showing us his hand yet, and I just gotta believe that he’s going to.
RUSH: I don’t want to tell you, Amber, that you are experiencing a triumph of emotion over common sense in expecting these fireworks from Senator McCain — and I hope you’re right — but I don’t want you to be disappointed if they don’t happen.
CALLER: I know. But we do have Sarah Palin, too, and remember, she is that firestorm.
RUSH: Well, now, see, that’s a good point. I forgot to throw that into my analysis in answer to the guy from Boynton Beach. One of the reasons Palin is there is so that she can go be the firebrand and do what she’s doing, which allows McCain to go out there and stroke the independents and the moderates.
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RUSH: Eldon in Alliance, Nebraska, great to have you, Eldon.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Dittos from the Nebraska panhandle.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: What I want to say, I can’t understand this — you’ve been talking about how they think the moderates will go left if we get partisan. Ronald Reagan took both elections and he was never not partisan. And the reason he wasn’t is because he fundamentally disagreed with everything that liberals stand for. And that’s why we elect these people to office, is to represent our beliefs. Why should someone give up 75% of their strong moral convictions to be bipartisan?
RUSH: I don’t know. Look, you people are going to start making me mad here. I’ve dealt with this. I’ve come to grips with what the reality is. Now you’re making me relive it again ’cause all these questions make perfect sense. There is no way I can explain this. Like I said last week, it was a day I was frustrated last week, someone said, ‘Can you explain the McCain camp?’ I said, ‘No, I cannot explain the McCain campaign.’ If I had to write my doctoral thesis on it I’d have to promise the prof to flunk me because I couldn’t — there’s nobody that can explain this, other than the way I just tried to.
CALLER: Ronald Reagan called them on the carpet every time he addressed the American public.
RUSH: I know this, Eldon, I know this. Now you’re really starting to get me agitated here like a Chicago street organizer, because the Republican Party throughout our last primary system was trying to wrest control of this party away from the people that loved Ronald Reagan and voted for him. They want country club blue-blood moderates in charge of the party, and if they get that, then it’s going to be sewer city for the Republican Party for quite a while.