CALLER: Hi, Rush. Been a longtime listener, first-time caller, public school teacher, back from Washington, DC, the most electrifyingly exciting experience of my life.
RUSH: I have gotten tons of e-mails over the weekend from people saying the same thing.
CALLER: Yes. I went with my brother, who is a retired firefighter, assistant fire chief. My first observation is the numbers. I could not see the end of the sea of people. It was a tsunami. It was like watching an erupting volcano.
RUSH: Yeah. And it was peaceful. And there were some of the funniest signs I’ve ever seen. One guy had a sign that said: ‘Doesn’t matter what this sign says, they’ll say it’s racist anyway.’ Just an absolutely fabulous sign and people were making some of the most creative signs out there. There was a picture of George Washington with a bubble like in a cartoon, with George Washington saying, ‘WTF?’ (laughing) ‘What the… is happening to our country?’ (laughing) It was fabulous. And when it was all over it was clean, just like Dan’s Bake Sale. Now, the UK press, you talk about the numbers, folks, I saw the Drive-Bys, they said ‘tens of thousands of people.’ Eventually somebody got the number pretty close to being right but the UK media saying two million. Others on the conservative side, ‘You know, it’s tough to estimate.’ You do the best you can with previous crowds and what they have said, but you look at the pictures and you try to estimate the grid, the number of people. It doesn’t matter. The place was teeming and it makes no surprise State-Controlled Media would try to diminish it.
Warren, New Jersey. Gene, hello, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. I was not only in the march, I was part of the contingent that actually led it up Pennsylvania Avenue. And anyone who sees the YouTube video will see a group of, it looks like Continental soldier reenactors with a fife and drum corps. I was one of the people that helped organize that to lead the parade, and we were supposed to meet up there at eight, but what a lot of people don’t know is that the crowd for the march were supposed to meet at Freedom Plaza at nine o’clock in the morning. The reenactors were supposed to be there at eight o’clock. I got there at 7:30. When I got there at 7:30 there was over a thousand people in the plaza.
RUSH: You mean to tell me a thousand racists showed up an hour-and-a-half early?
CALLER: I like to think of them as a thousand patriots and they just kept pouring in. Now, the parade itself, the march itself wasn’t scheduled to begin until 11:30. But by ten o’clock, there were several thousand people, and they were still pouring in. I could see them coming in from every avenue leading to Freedom Plaza, and the district police were going crazy, they didn’t know what to do, traffic was being blocked, Pennsylvania Avenue was being blocked, and —
RUSH: I know a lot of people on the ground in Washington were stunned by the size. You weren’t, and I wasn’t. I know the rage that’s bubbling up out there, and it’s real, and it’s not going away.
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RUSH: Val in Philadelphia. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, hi, Rush. It’s an honor to talk to you.
RUSH: I can understand things are probably depressed in Philadelphia today what with the injury to the quarterback Donovan McNabb.
CALLER: Well, we’ll see. It’s always a first game and we won. What I’m calling —
CALLER: You can’t laugh.
RUSH: And the coach is saying, ‘Good chance he’s going to play.’ Whew!
CALLER: That’s right. Well, we’ll see. You know, we’re always the bridesmaid, never the bride, so we’ll see what happens this year.
RUSH: I didn’t mean to introduce a downer into what was obviously a very upbeat call.
CALLER: That’s okay. We have the Phillies.
RUSH: I’m sorry for that.
CALLER: What I was calling about is this was any first protest march in Washington and I want to say I was just so uplifted by the entire experience. I was dead center on the lawn. I never heard one foul language. I never saw anything of the kind. I just saw good protesting going on. One of the signs that caught my attention, and there were numerous ones, was: ‘I am here representing people that could not make it,’ and I thought to myself: ‘There is one difference here between this protest and others. These people all vote and they are serious.’
RUSH: Well, but there’s another bigger difference. There’s another bigger difference. These kind of rallies, like the big pro-amnesty rally back in 2007 or any other Obama rally, they have to actually send out marching orders and instructions to get their people out. It’s same thing for pro-Obama health care rallies. They are staged and organized. People of their own passion do not show up. This is important to mention, I think. I think this is the most important thing to mention about Saturday, the most important thing — and that is: There was no leader who organized this. There was no charismatic leader who was speaking. There was no person out there telling you to get your tail in gear and get to Washington.
Yeah, there were some e-mails and websites you could go to to find details and so forth. But people went of their own volition. They went because of their own passion. (interruption) Yes, the program observer with a question. Well, if I had given out marching orders, the event would be discredited as being illegitimate, which is why I didn’t. You think more people would show up? There’s no question, but I purposely did not stay a word about this. We had a guy call on Friday. Snerdley, you were still out sick. We had a guy call here Friday thanking me for this whole thing. I said, ‘Look, sir, you’re going on your own. I’ve never asked people to go to this thing. I haven’t even talked about it.’
I didn’t talk about it on purpose. I didn’t talk about it on purpose because I didn’t want State-Controlled Media using me to denigrate the whole thing. If I had urged people to go, then the whole process would have been called illegitimate. (interruption) Well, I know they’re — no, they’re not. They’re not saying the event was illegitimate. They’re trying to say it wasn’t as loud as it was. I know they’re trying to blame me. They’re blaming me anyway. I knew this was going to happen, but if I had actually done it — if they had tape of me, is my point. If they had tape of me actually urging people to show up, then all weekend long they’d say, ‘Well, this didn’t mean anything. This is Limbaugh’s mind-numbed robots.’ I knew I didn’t have to say anything. Look, my friends. I am a powerful, influential member of the media. If I wanted to, you know, first three sound bites of the program today in our first hour were the Drive-Bys ripping me for inspiring this thing.
One of them ripped me for being the inspiration for ’15 years.’ I am the leader and spokesman for the last 15 years. Actually it’s the last 21, but who’s counting? So I knew that was going to happen anyway. If I wanted to, I could have opened this program, taken all the credit. I could have made this about me. But this is the seminal point. It wasn’t about anybody. It wasn’t about any charismatic leader. This is so distinguishing us from the left and their mobs which are cult-like blind to Obama. You understand? You did this. It’s in your heart. This passion is genuine, bubbling up from the grassroots. It is a conservative ascendancy based on the substance and the premise: liberty versus tyranny. People don’t want tyranny. So don’t let anybody tell you this thing was not legit. It is so legit, it embarrasses everybody else.
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RUSH: Colleen in Virginia Beach, hello and welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. My husband and I went to the rally in DC and on our way home in the Metro station this young liberal guy was standing next to us, and he kept looking at this sticker I had on that said, ‘Abortion is not health care;’ and he got really angry and started arguing with me, insisting that abortion services were not going to be in any health care bill because Obama said so. He was just really adamant about it and so I finally, very calmly — I stayed very calm — and I said, ‘Well, if that’s true, why did the Democrats in the House vote against every amendment the Republicans tried to put in the bill that would specifically prohibit abortion services?’ And he told me I was being overly paranoid. So finally he just got so upset he turned away and started I guess doing research on his BlackBerry because a few minutes later he turned around and apologized and said that I was right, that it was in the House bill. He just hadn’t known that. And after that was very pleasant and actually spent the rest of the time talking about basketball with my husband. So he wanted to fight and argue and I just stayed calm and actually I just gave him some factual information.
RUSH: Wait a minute, now. This is almost unprecedented.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: I wonder where this guy went on his BlackBerry to find out what was in there.
CALLER: I don’t know. It was like five minutes and I kind of glanced over and I could see what it was and there was a lot of wording and he was going through it and going through it and going through it and he finally just turned around and apologized, and I thanked him, and said it was nice of him to apologize, and after that he was very pleasant.
RUSH: That just doesn’t happen. I was worried you might be shot like this abortion guy was.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: My gosh, I mean, that guy decided to get on the Internet via his BlackBerry and researched it and found it and said, ‘I’m sorry, it is in the House bill’?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Well, he couldn’t have called one of his buddies because his buddies the same thing. I mean, they all believe whatever Obama says. I wonder who he called. Did you ask him?
CALLER: I didn’t. He looked like he was just researching something online, but once we talked — and then after that he was willing to talk a little more and he said he had worked on health care legislation, and I said, ‘Well, did you work on the House side or the Senate side?’ And he said he had been a fellow in Senator Kennedy’s office when he was an undergraduate and then he had gone on to get his masters at NYU. And I thought, ‘Well, golly, no wonder. He’s been programmed to think government is good,’ and that the president said it’s not going to be in there and Senator Kennedy thought this was all wonderful, well, he did, too. He was 20-something, you know. Maybe 24, 25 years old.
RUSH: I’m still stammering into near speechlessness here. You were talking to a former Kennedy staffer who believed that abortion services were not covered because everybody had told him that, and then on the spur of the moment he decides to look it up and apologizes to you. I believe it happened; I just don’t believe it.