RUSH: Kelly in Columbus, Georgia, you’re next. I’m glad you waited.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I’m a Christian hayseed hick with a gun rack in back of the truck.
RUSH: (Laughing.) I love you, man.
CALLER: Rush, last week on the Fourth of July I was watching The History Channel, and they had these documentaries about the Founding Fathers. Very interesting. But I was watching it and I became very disconcerted because I realized there is nobody in today’s government, especially on our side of the aisle that we can emulate the way we did Founding Fathers. I mean, you yourself say if you want to know what’s happened in government today, follow the money. Is that what these people did? Did they follow the money, or did they do what they think is right? Help me out.
RUSH: You’re talking about the founders?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Oh, well, it depends. Some of them gave up everything to sign the Declaration of Independence. But they were wealthy. A lot of founders were very wealthy men. That’s always true. But, look, your main point is — the founders, by the way, are always going to have mythological characteristics about them. Any great human being in the past is always going to be amplified and become mythological. They put their pants on one leg at a time just like Hillary does. But they were truly great, and they risked everything, and they stood fast — and they, by the way, in many cases went against public opinion. There weren’t really public opinion polls, but there were several, quote, unquote, ‘Americans’ that didn’t want to fight for independence. There’s always going to be a contingent of anti-war that don’t want the violence and so forth and so on. The more important thing is, where are today’s statesmen on either side of the aisle? (sigh) It depends on how you define statesman, but I know what you mean.
CALLER: I was a child of Reagan. He was the first president that he really remember, at the last of the Cold War back in the eighties. He was the first president I ever saw in person. I just thought the man walked on water, and my parents did, too. Now I’ve even seen my parents in their golden years, turn against the Republican Party and for what we stand for. It really makes for some difficult Thanksgiving dinners, if you know what I mean, because I still sit with ’em.
RUSH: Yeah. Don’t you hate when Thanksgiving gets ruined with arguments in your family about things? That never happens, other than Thanksgiving and Christmas, either.
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: The sad fact today, folks, is that the real statesmen in our society are on talk radio. They’re not out to get votes. We don’t have to be worried about fundraising. There’s so much out there. I’m not making excuses for them, but I think… How to best state this? It’s not really a lack of statesmanship that you are noticing. If we had a number of true-blue, really dedicated, well-spoken, articulate conservatives who were making the case for it every day and doing it from a position of offense and strength and courage, conviction and optimism, then you’d think you found a statesman, and that’s why you think there’s a statesman-like void is because you don’t hear the things that you believe in your heart to be true, the things that define your existence. You don’t hear them replicated. You don’t hear them being spoken in the mouths of leaders. What you see are people that are surrendering and running for the tall grass, trying to avoid controversy, for whatever reason: the next election, bad press coverage, or what have you. In that sense, yeah, they’re not statesmen.
But I’m going to be interviewing a guy after the program today, Jeff Sessions, senator from Alabama, for the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter. There’s a statesman. This guy was tough as nails, unbending, unwavering, and carrying the water in the US Senate against the immigration bill. So in that instance, he’s a hero. He’s a true statesman. He doesn’t get a lot of national press precisely because of the positions he takes. He gets ridiculed, but it didn’t cause him to back down, and he didn’t take any of the guff that he was given and others in the Republican Party were given during the debate. He stood up for the American people when they were attacked and insulted as not having read the bill or being racists or bigots or what have you. Now, one of the reasons is Jeff Sessions was nominated from a federal judgeship during the Reagan years — and the Democrats destroyed him, and they did it on the basis is a typical southern segregationist, when it was the Democrats that were all that! They destroyed his nomination. He did not get confirmed to the federal judiciary. So he went around them and ran for the US Senate, and now he’s on the Judiciary Committee, and he’s a strong voice there. We need more of them.