RUSH: We had a drive-by caller here recently, Mr. Snerdley advised me of this during the break here at the top of the hour, and this is an excellent point. By the way, a drive-by caller is somebody who calls and they can’t stay on the line. But the caller said, ‘You know, I’m really puzzled here. Last year, for much of the year, all we heard from the Democrats and the Drive-By Media was the necessary implementation, reimplementation of the Fairness Doctrine,’ because these talk radio guys, they’ve gotten out of hand, there’s no balance out there, and we have to get fairness back into the public debate, this has to happen. Pelosi and Maurice Hinchey in New York and a number of other Democrats were talking about threatening to do it. It got so severe that Mike Pence, Republican in the House, launched legislation to have a forever ban on the reimplementation of the Fairness Doctrine. It was all because we were too powerful, and all because liberal talk radio couldn’t make a dent.
Well, the one medium that the Drive-Bys and the Democrats and the liberals don’t control, talk radio, they had to shut it up, rather than engage us in ideas. Just like political correctness, they hear something they don’t like, they shut it up rather than engage it. And the drive-by caller said, ‘Now look where we are. Now we come to January, and these same people who are just hog wallowing all over about the Fairness Doctrine now can’t wait to proclaim you, Mr. Limbaugh, irrelevant and dead, that you are dividing your party, and you are losing, that McCain is beating you, you can’t get your supporters to vote the way you want to –‘ and I have not told them which way to vote, by the way. I never have. Well, in presidential races I make it kind of obvious who I’m for and against, but in a circumstance like this, I’m not out there telling somebody go vote this way, and I’m not saying don’t do this. You have to infer that from things that you hear me say. But I haven’t said it directly, and yet they are eager to proclaim me as irrelevant, at the same time they tell me I should shut up. So I guess the caller’s point was there’s no need for the Fairness Doctrine now, is there, since I don’t count anymore. I mean, I can’t even get these Republicans to do what I want them to do. Beyond that, how about all this talk that I’m just in the tank for the GOP? Now the GOP won’t follow along — (laughter) — it’s fascinating.