RUSH: Bill in Gallup, New Mexico, thanks for waiting. You’re next, sir. Hello.
CALLER: It’s an extreme honor to speak to you again, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: You’re a great person. Everything you say is true, and you’re the only one on God’s earth that gets out and speaks out and tells the true colors of these liberals. You know, our Republican base, it’s a crying shame that they don’t have any guts. You can’t be politically correct. I respect Trent Lott, but when they say something’s not true, he says, “Well, that’s not exactly the way it is,” trying to be nice. “My esteemed colleagues…” To heck with that! You’re in a fight, you fight to win, and you tell it the way it is, and when they tell a lie, you bring it right out on the media, but nonetheless does. It’s a shame. I’ll tell you what we should do with everybody: when they run for office and they get elected they should go to Marine Corps boot camp to toughen up a little bit, to really fight to win —
RUSH: (Laughing.) Look —
CALLER: — and then they should listen to Merle Haggard’s song, “if you’re running down our country you’re walking on the fighting side of me” and fight!
RUSH: Well, it’s a little bit more complicated than that. We’ve discussed this I don’t know how many times. You know, the Republican caucus, the Republican minority is now divided. Two-thirds of the Republicans in the House want to just go along. “Hey, the Democrats won. Let ’em do what they want to do. Let ’em have their day and shut up about it.” One-third, the younger ones in the Republican Party in the House, want to fight ’em, publicly make noise and oppose them and this sort of thing. There’s a real battle. 
Look it, I’ve been following this a lifetime, and Republicans are not made that way. Yeah, there are exceptions. Newt was one. Reagan was another. He did it in a very stylish and classy way, but he was certainly not afraid to be ideological and lead a movement, all the while he was campaigning or governing, as he was governor or president. That’s not the way it exists today. There just isn’t that orientation about them or motivation, and I don’t know all the reasons. Fear of being lambasted and lampooned in the media or what have you? I suspect it’s fear of something. Fear is usually at the root of these things. James in gleefully, South Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: (silence) Yes, hello?
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Oh. (silence) Hello, Rush. I was calling to comment about your opening segment, and (ahem) I’d like to say something about the fact that I’m very pleased with — with talking to you today. I am not a liberal. I am an independent, but —
RUSH: Same thing.
CALLER: Heh. Heh. I understand. I understand your perspective (ahem) about that. But I’m calling about that opening segment and the stats that you were presenting. I got an e-mail very similar to that, and when I saw the numbers, I thought that the numbers were — were questionable, so I went back and — and took a — a closer look at a lot of those numbers, and (ahem) the reason that I’m calling you is that — that many much the same way that the previous caller was concerned about presenting — presenting untruths, uh, when I did my research, it indicated to me that, um — that a lot of those numbers that you presented were actually incorrect.
RUSH: Such as?
CALLER: Well, the home valuation, for instance, being up over a hundred percent over the past 3-1/2 according to — to my information [?], the 169,000 in 2000, that’s six years ago, and, ahem, it hasn’t — it’s now 238,000. That’s roughly a 50% increase, but nowhere near a hundred percent. Unemployment was 4% in 2000, before the Bush administration took office. It’s 4.5% today. Labor participation rates were higher —
RUSH: Well, unemployment back in the nineties… I said in the last recent years. I think Clinton’s lowest unemployment was actually 3.8%, but you’re missing the point of all that. If you want to focus on the numbers, go right ahead. The point is the economic news is good but people don’t feel it. They don’t sense it because there’s so many unsettling things and upsetting things that are disquieting them, and when you talk about home prices, you can argue with my figures; I can argue with your figures, but the point is every one of those line items is up or down, as they should be. Inflation is down. Unemployment is down. Tax revenues are up. Tax rates are down. What’s the new direction?
CALLER: Well, now (ahem).
RUSH: If the Democrats want to change direction, what direction do they want to take us? The opposite of where we’re going in all these areas?
CALLER: Well, what I’m taking exception with is that as compared to 2000, which was the before the Bush administration took office, that that’s not the case.
RUSH: We were in the beginning of a recession in 2000! Look, you people can try here. You must remember I am the host and you are callers. We were in the first days of a recession in 2000, and the Clinton administration had totally doctored numbers from the commerce department on corporate numbers and inflation and a number of other things. Then we had 9/11 hit. We have had an amazing economic turnaround. That is the point that you don’t want to look at. All you want to do is Bush bash. You guys cannot get away from looking at Bush. I’m trying to get people to look at the country and I’m looking at the future, and the Democrats are promising a “new direction” on all these things, and what’s that new direction? What’s wrong with the direction we’ve been going since after 9/11? We’ve had a recession already started, then 9/11 hit. We have rebounded with an economic expansion that in normal times would have been heralded as one of the greats of all time!
But because Bush was in the White House, no! We can’t do that. We have to try to depress the country and make ’em think it’s soup line America. Then you want to call her and talk about how great things were in the nineties and in 2000, and then Bush came into office and totally destroyed everything. The Clinton administration, particularly the economy, was a house of cards built on a flimsy foundation. It was just starting to fall apart as he left office, as was the military, as were a number of institutions that had to be rebuilt. You people make me sick! You can’t even think about the country. You can’t even listen to comments I make and honestly react to them about the future of the country. I do happen to care about the country and the people that live in it, and I want the best for them, and all you want is for Bush to hang — and I don’t have time to talk with you people about it, anymore. Call your friends on other liberal talk shows where nobody listens and have a blast.
END TRANSCRIPT
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.
