McCain Will Choose His Own VP

RUSH: Marty in Centreville, Virginia, glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. You ran through the list of problems everyone has, and you said the problem for your loyal listeners is that we’re waiting for directions from you.

RUSH: No. No, no, no. I said that I’m only on three hours a day and that’s not enough time really to go through and decipher all of the events that happen. But that doesn’t mean that you’re getting orders from me.

CALLER: Well, maybe not, but, I mean, I’m disappointed it’s been a couple weeks already since Super Tuesday and I’m still waiting for you to make McCain more palatable to us by taking up a crusade to get a decent running mate for him. I mean, why aren’t you hammering him the name Fred Thompson or Thad Cochran, Jim DeMint or somebody you can support?

RUSH: Because I’m — in fact, Mike, disregard what I said about sound bites. I want you to grab 10 and 11 in response to Marty here. Marty, I don’t think that it is my — what’s the word? — I don’t think I have any say-so in who McCain chooses as his vice presidential nominee. It’s his choice. It’s not mine.

CALLER: Can’t be serious.

RUSH: I’m dead serious! I did suggest a great one would be Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. But I don’t think it’s my purview to demand of McCain that he choose a particular vice presidential candidate. That’s not what I view myself sitting here doing.

CALLER: If you don’t intervene we’re going to get stuck with the Huckster, and that’s going to make it stink so bad —

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: that most of us are not going to be able to hold our nose and pull the lever, Rush.

RUSH: I don’t think he’s going to choose Huckabee. Especially, the longer Huckabee stays in this without getting out, I don’t see that happening. Look, if what McCain has learned in the campaign so far is that he won the Republican vote in blue states where he’s not going to win the popular vote, he lost the Republican vote in Southern states, where he’s going to need the Republican vote. He lost those states to Huckabee. I think that he’s going to need a conservative governor of some kind. I’ll tell you who the front-runner — and this is just conventional wisdom right now, I have no inside information on this, obviously — but there obviously are a lot of people pushing the governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, because his name is being featured as the guy at the top of the list. He is a governor, he is a governor of a blue state, McCain could use it. He is considered an independent conservative Republican in a lot of people’s eyes. Also, Mark Sanford in South Carolina is being considered, but others say no. Haley Barbour is being considered, others say no, he’s got a lobbying problem, McCain can’t have that. But I don’t —

CALLER: It’s gotta be somebody from the South. I mean, when’s the last time — I think it’s, what, Eisenhower-Nixon? — before there was ever a ticket without somebody in the South that won.

RUSH: Yeah, I know. But this seems to be the year of, you know, blowing traditions all through the water. It does in a whole lot of ways. But, you know, I don’t know how to explain this. I could not sit here and say — I just can’t see myself sitting here and saying, ‘Senator McCain, you have got to put X on the ticket.’ You don’t know Senator McCain. Senator McCain is going to do what Senator McCain — he’s 70 years old. His job is not to satisfy one person. He’s got to be who he is. And I’m content to let him be who he is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yesterday on CNN’s Late Edition with the Wolf Blitzer, he interviewed governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. They had this exchange.

BLITZER: Rush Limbaugh, who’s no great fan of John McCain’s, as you well know, he is a big fan of yours. He said this on February 8th: ‘I’m going to give you a name that would make me jump for joy, Bobby Jindal. I did an interview with Bobby Jindal. He is the next Ronald Reagan, if he doesn’t change.’ He was throwing out your name as a potential vice presidential running mate for John McCain. Now, what do you think about that?

JINDAL: Well, first, I’m obviously extremely flattered. Whenever anybody puts your name in that kind of context, it’s flattering, it was very nice of Rush to do that. The reality is, I’ve got the job I want. I’ve got an incredible opportunity in Louisiana. We’ve got an historic opportunity to change our state. The storms caused massive destruction, but we had challenges before the storms. We had challenges in health care, in our economy, in our roads, we had challenges throughout our state. We now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix our state.

RUSH: (laughing) You can interpret that any number of ways. I will leave it to you. Blitzer then said, ‘Well, what if McCain asked you?’

JINDAL: He’s not going to ask me.

BLITZER: How do you know?

JINDAL: Look, he’s not going to ask me, but — no. My focus is on Louisiana. I’ve been elected. I’ve told the people of Louisiana, this is our chance to fix our state, and I mean that. I don’t think we’ll get this chance again in our lifetimes, so it is my responsibility to work with the legislature and the voters.

RUSH: He’s just in his first year, and he does want to complete these promises, these challenges that lie before him and that he said he was uniquely qualified to fix in Louisiana. And his election was revolutionary. They had not had somebody this conservative in charge of the state in I-don’t-know-how-long. And we interviewed him for The Limbaugh Letter late last year, and we put that interview up on RushLimbaugh.com last week, so people could read this and find out what all the hubbub was about. It will still be up there in the archives. I forget what day it was. I’ll find Koko, I don’t remember what day we put it up there, but the last five days are available. So all of last week, Monday through Friday, will be available. I think we did it one day last week, didn’t we? One day last week. So we’ll figure out which day it was and direct you to it again. [Link is below.]