RUSH: Richard in Sacramento, my adopted hometown, welcome to the program.
CALLER: Yes, Rush.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: I was draftee, I served in the infantry in Vietnam with the 173rd airborne brigade. I was wounded once, returned to the field and finished my tour. I will stand behind you, beside you, or maybe in front of you to defend you against these false comments and accusations that have been made against you in Congress. The other thing that’s got me upset is the lack of leadership from conservatives, both Democrat and Republican, in Congress to fight for their ideas. I will send a message to Senator McCain: Compromise is sometimes necessary, but how can you compromise with a person who thinks that the compromise is giving them everything they want? And let’s get some stand-up people here.
RUSH: I hear you, and you don’t know how many people in the audience are probably standing up and cheering, agreeing with you at the same time. Compromise, I’ve heard various Senators on our side say that their job is to work with Democrats to get things done, whether the Republicans are in the majority or minority. All well and good. It sounds just peachy keen and all the equivocators out there, ‘Oh, yeah, gotta work together.’ Well, that’s all fine and dandy until you get to the point of compromise on core beliefs, and on that there should never, ever, be any compromise. There’s a great example of this going on right now in the House. The Democrats secured a veto on the SCHIP expansion, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Democrats are happy as they can be that as many Republicans voted against it, because what they want to do, Richard, is they want to create TV commercials of all these Republicans who voted against health care for the children. Some of the Republicans in the House, not all, but some of them, are cowering in the corner in fear because they’re afraid this is going to work. So they’re going to try to convince a number of Republicans to join with Democrats to override the veto so they’re not saddled with this. That’s not the way to handle it. The way to handle it is to fight the Democrats on this and explain the lies that the Democrats are telling about the program, that nobody is ‘canceling’ the program. In fact, Bush wants to increase spending. He just wants to keep it a program for poor children. He doesn’t want to expand it to kids up to age 25 and families.
CALLER: They put this label to help the children and people won’t look behind that to see that, hey, it really doesn’t help them.
RUSH: It’s time to.
CALLER: It’s really counterproductive.
RUSH: That’s my point, it’s time to. It’s time to call them on their lies. It’s time to call them on all this stuff. I think if they started doing it they would have some fun at the same time. I appreciate what you’ve said. Thank you very much.