RUSH: Mark in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Am I reading that right? Welcome to the program. Don’t have my glasses on so I couldn’t really read it, but I guessed and got it right.
CALLER: Yes you got it right, dittos, longtime listener, 24/7 member, and fellow talk show host inspired by you, my friend.
RUSH: Well.
CALLER: Been at it for five years on the Internet, think I’ve got the biggest show on the Internet, and I’ve got a big question for you.
RUSH: All right, ask away.
CALLER: All right. The question is this. I think the most conservative candidate that we have for president is Duncan Hunter, going through his website, listening to what he’s got on the news, his different interviews and stuff, I mean he definitely meets the conservative agenda head-on. And we’re just not hearing a lot from him. And we’re not hearing a lot from him, from you. And I’m wondering, sir, do you have any plans in the near future for interviews with him, for talking to him on the air? I mean, I did hear, you spoke about an e-mail update you got from him the other day, but other than that, it looks like the best candidate here is not getting pushed by the strongest conservative people.
RUSH: Well, here’s my answer to your question. I’m asked this a lot and historically I have not gotten involved in primaries, because if I had any of these people, and they have all asked to come on this show, and I respectfully say no, because I’d have to ask them all back. And I really don’t look at this program as a campaign vehicle during primaries. Among other things, I, frankly, Mark, I have the belief that political candidates have a duty to get noticed themselves. It’s an unfair process in terms — Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton is strictly there because she didn’t divorce her husband. In fact, she’s strictly there because she married him. If her last name weren’t Clinton, she’d be the dean of some all-girls’ school in Albania touring villages at night and doing whatever you do in a village at night, when you run an all-girls’ school. She’s just benefiting from conventional wisdom. In the case of Rudy, the reason Rudy is getting a lot of attention is the northeastern bias in the media. The northeastern bias in the media wants two northeasterners to run.
Even some of our conservative journalist friends who are headquartered and work in the northeast, in New York and Washington, are willing to overlook, in some cases, the lack of genuine conservatism in some candidates because they’re from the northeast. They have a geographical bias because of where they live. People in the northeast think it’s the heartbeat and the pulse of the country there, and the rest of the country is flyover country and all of that. So it’s tough to get out of the bottom tier. You need a really humongous debate performance, and you need an early announcement in some cases when you’re going against somebody that’s going to benefit from all the conventional wisdom, the media and others. But I sit and watch until one of them surfaces because that’s what their job is to do, not mine.