RUSH: Montclair, Virginia, Angela, hi, great to have you with us on the program.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Great to talk to you. The public option, it throws a red flag for me because of the word ‘public.’ Have we forgotten about public housing, public schools?
RUSH: You know what? It’s a great point, and you remind me I had a story in the stack either yesterday or the day before that I didn’t get to. Some public housing project somewhere in this country, there is an infestation of bedbugs. But you’re right, public housing, look at it!
CALLER: Well, also, I would be horrified if President Obama suddenly appeared on TV and said, ‘because there’s homeless people and because greedy real estate agents want to make a profit, that all of us should move into public housing.’ I think it’s pretty much the same thing. And also, if this thing passes, will health care be chaotic in the urban areas and neglected just like the public schools? Or will people buy their homes based on public care in their area like they do now for public schools? It’s just so much that I’m thinking about here with this public option. I just couldn’t imagine it being forced on us like this.
RUSH: I appreciate your thinking, but you don’t need to go — those are all great points, don’t misunderstand, but all you need to think about when you hear ‘public option’ is lines, rationed care, meaning you won’t get what you want or need, likely, and lines, and doctors who are not being paid sufficiently to motivate them to even want to see you, and lines.
CALLER: Well, also, Rush, if you don’t mind my saying, I’m hearing more and more as we get closer to 2012, Fox News and other places are always suggesting, you know, who would you like to see run in 2012 on the GOP ticket and then they give us a list of names. Now, I don’t like that. I think they’re trying to force something down our throat and if I had my way, Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, would be the one that I would want to run. And I wish people would get off these same names over and over again and they’re picking our options for us, and I remember you talking about how we should not allow them to pick who we want to run. And some of our own people are doing it, so —
RUSH: Well, I think in the case of Fox and those presidential polls, they’re just putting names up there of people who have run before or who have stated a desire to.
CALLER: Well, they should let us fill in the blank. They shouldn’t do it. I don’t like it. But in any case, thank you, Rush, for allowing me to say my peace.
RUSH: All right, Angela, thanks much for the call. Grab audio sound bite number 20 since she brought up the public option. This is last night on CNBC and the Kudlow Report. Larry Kudlow spoke to Julian Epstein who is a Democrat strategist about whether the health care reform package will be passed in the Senate by the end of the year. Kudlow said, ‘Do you think that [Dingy] Harry can get a vote before the year-end holiday recess?’
EPSTEIN: If I were advising him I would say yes and I would tell him to try to do it. I think this is a good sell. This would be a popular bill. The reason you don’t want to wait until January or February is because it’s an election year. Any of us who have worked on Capitol Hill know that every time you get an election year, it gets much harder to get something passed.
RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. He just said here it’s a good sell, it’s a popular bill, why wouldn’t you want to do it in an election year? I mean if everybody wants it and if it’s that popular, why not put this vote off until say September of next year and really soar to a massive landslide victory in the House and Senate? Why wouldn’t you do that?