Here’s Laura in Erie, Pennsylvania. Laura, it’s great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Oh, mega optimistic dittos to you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Thank you for all your wonderful work, and especially supporting our troops —
RUSH: I appreciate it.
CALLER: — all over the world, especially in Iraq.
RUSH: Thank you so much.
CALLER: My comment is, I’ve been listening to the candidates, and I think you’re being a little bit hard on Mr. Barack Obama right now. As I see it, he is model, especially to the black population, of what a traditional marriage looks like — and he called on people in the church on the Reverend Martin Luther King holiday, he called on blacks to have fathers in the lives of their children. That is huge because that’s almost him advocating conservative principles, and if you look at all of the social ills, marriage — if they brought that back into their community, things like poverty, things like STDs, crime from children growing up without fathers, all of that might be greatly reduced. So I think we need to have a little bit of hope for Mr. Obama to, you know, come around to the conservative —
RUSH: (sigh)
CALLER: — values which you espouse, and I think he might get it one day. So I just wanted you to consider that as you talk about, you know, the candidates.
RUSH: Okay. Let me say something here.
CALLER: Yes?
RUSH: In the first place, I was simply analyzing Senator Obama’s answer to the question about what he would do as president if we got hit during that debate, two big cities, and his answer was sorely inadequate. Number two. Back when I hosted my television show, we had videotape constantly from Jesse Jackson saying the same thing. He would go to schools, he would go to meetings, and he would tell these young black men, ‘Stay home. Be responsible. Raise your kids.’ The Million Man March of Minister Farrakhan was about the same thing. But Jesse Jackson only says it to very small groups. It’s not part of his national agenda. A lot of people have been saying this. You can find Dr. Sowell — who I’ve quoted, and we’re going to be interviewing him in the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter, by the way. (He has a couple of great new books out, by the way.) But the point is that Barack’s not the first to say this. Now, you might think he’s going to have more impact because of his stature as a candidate?
CALLER: Yes. Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. I think he could convince a lot of people if he becomes aware that that conservative value is very worthwhile.
RUSH: It may be. It would be great if that happened. I have to tell you it would be great if that happened. But I read to you today the fourth story in the Drive-By Media, this from the UK Times about how he’s not authentic enough because he doesn’t have credibility with the civil rights blacks, the African-Americans have roots, slavery down for the struggle and all that, and the reason — and this is an echo of that piece in the LA Times that called him ‘Obama the ‘Magic Negro” is because blacks distrust him because he’s got so much white support.
CALLER: Well, what he can say is what’s good for whites is good for blacks and that we need to come together and see what the root cause of all these issues are. He wants to end poverty, and then come forward with the plan of implementing those good conservative values.
RUSH: Right. But he’s not a conservative. Now, please. Look at his voting record. He’s not a conservative.
CALLER: I’m hoping you will convert him, is what I’m saying.
RUSH: You’re hoping I will?
CALLER: Yes. You and others that have the facts and the evidence on what the social ills are about and how we can come to a point —
RUSH: I would love nothing more than that for what you suggest and hope for to actually happen. The problem is, liberalism doesn’t want it fixed. Liberalism needs to be the daddy. Liberalism needs to be the go-to source for people in distress. Liberalism… Look, it’s liberal programs that created all the circumstances that you have described.