RUSH: Dick in DuBois, Pennsylvania, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, how are you?
RUSH: I’m great. Thank you.
CALLER: It is an honor to speak to you, sir.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that.
RUSH: Well, you’re more than welcome. Thanks very much. I have a question.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: Because there are a lot of people still out there like you used to be, and they harbor hate, not just for me but President Bush, and a lot of other people. What was it that made you have this intense dislike for me when you had never listened to my program?
CALLER: I don’t know, because my parents were lifelong Democrats, so of course I thought that’s what I was, and I knew you were… You were… You know? What’s the word I’m looking for? You were a lifelong Republican, and maybe what I thought was bashing the Democrats for no reason until I listened to you, and it’s like, ‘You know, that’s true. That’s true.’
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: The more that I listened, the more I said, ‘He makes so much sense,’ you know? ‘It’s so true what this guy is saying out here,’ and I mean now, I get mad at you when you’re not on radio. It’s like, ‘Doh, he’s off today!’
RUSH: (Laughing.) Well, there’s an old entertainers’ creed, and that is you always keep the audience wanting more. Snerdley is sending me a note here and reminding me, Rick, that after the 2002 midterm elections, Tom Daschle who was then the Senate minority leader, commissioned experts, he said — a polling group — to go out, and they did a private poll of Democrats and talk radio. Daschle was so stunned by the results that he made them public. He said we found out that there are a lot of Democrats that listen to Rush Limbaugh, and some of them are changing their minds. They thought that this audience was nothing more than a choir being preached to, and it stunned them, and you’re one of those guys that they discovered exist out there. Well, thanks. I appreciate your kind words, more than you know.