RUSH: I checked the e-mail. Subject line: ‘Sarah Palin, autobiography, may rival Rush — Rush, any bets that Sarah Palin’s autobiography will surpass your book sales?’ To refresh your memory, both of my books in the early nineties — and people say, ‘Well, how come you haven’t written another one?’ ‘Cause, folks, I don’t want to. Everybody else does what I do after I do it. I had two books. They both sold two and a half million copies, hardcover; a total of nine million copies hardback and paperback, and everybody writes books. The book market is flooded out there. Plus, as I mentioned last week, I’ve gotten myself here in a very, very enviable position. I am blessed. Most people do not have the freedom that I have. I’ve gotten myself to a situation, a circumstance in life where if I don’t want to do it, I don’t have to do it. Very few people can say that, and it leads to a tremendous amount of peace of mind and leaves me to focus on things I generally love and am therefore productive at.
And I had to do a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t want to do to get there and I had to get fired six or seven times or whatever. I had to take jobs I didn’t want to take. We all pay our dues, but I finally got here and I’m sure the day will come where I want to write another book then I’ll do it. But I just haven’t had
the desire. Everybody else is doing it. Sometimes people come out two or three books a year. Now, as to Sarah Palin outselling me, I’ll tell you what’s going to be very interesting. I’ve always said, I’ve been saying for — and particularly to people on our side… I lose my temper. Well, not every time. But I have lost my temper, which I don’t like doing, when people on our side start parroting the Drive-By Media and Democrat Party version of Sarah Palin. ‘Oh, I hope — I hope she’s not our nominee. Oh, no! I mean, she’s an idiot. Why, did you see her Katie Couric interview? She needs to study up on the issues.’
For crying out loud, do you people not understand what all that means? I have been for a couple of years — well, a year, ever since McCain chose her — I have been pointing out that the Democrat Party and the media will tell us who they fear most — and they’re not afraid of Huckabee, and they’re not afraid of Mitt Romney and they’re not afraid of Rudy Giuliani. But they have gone out of their way to destroy Sarah Palin. They have gone out of their way to destroy me. The sound bite roster today is half me in the Drive-By Media yesterday. Half me! I hope Sarah Palin sells five million copies of her book. It’s going to be interesting to see just what connection she does have with the voting base, conservatives and Republicans. I hope she sells five million copies. I hope it does great. It will be interesting to see because that will just send them into an even greater tizzy on the left.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: First Ray in Livermore, California, great to have you here, sir, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, as an old bomber pilot once said, ‘You know you’re over the target when you’re taking flak,’ and as for Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, I want to congratulate you, Rush, you’re exactly where you need to be. We used to be forced to listen to the left, they used to try to ignore you and marginalize you and now you are setting the news cycle, they’re responding to you minutes after you make points on the radio, and we’re taking back the argument thanks to Rush Limbaugh, and I want to thank you, sir.
RUSH: The reason I wanted to take your call not for the praise that you just offered me because frankly I get that all the time all day, every day. I wanted to thank you because you’ve made an excellent point here that I have often — another thing that I have lamented for years, and that is, why in the world do we accept the premise on every issue that the left puts forth? Why are we even debating a health care bill? I mean it’s a bad bill. Now, the Republicans are doing the right thing here by staying away from it, but they put forth their legislation, they put forth their agenda items and of course the policy wonks involved, ‘Oh, a piece of legislation. Will there be a bill? We’ve gotta see that there’s a bill because we can’t come here and not do bills. We can’t come here and not pass a bill.’ So the Republicans generally say, ‘Well, we’ll get hold of that bill and we’ll change that bill.’ Why do we let them set the agenda? ‘Well, Rush they won the election.’ So? So what? Their agenda is damaging to the country; their agenda is dangerous; their agenda will wreck the opportunity for prosperity on the part of millions and millions and millions of Americans. Why accept that premise and start nibbling at it around the edges? Why let them set the agenda? I don’t.
Now, I’m not a Republican, in terms of I’m a conservative first, and I’m certainly not elected to anything. We shouldn’t let them set the agenda ’cause that constantly puts us on the defensive. It’s offense, offense, offense, offense. And that’s why the Sarah Palin thing was so obvious to me. There was one particular time, there were some people that started talking to me, and these are Republicans first, but they’re also conservatives, but they’re Republicans first with electoral politics on their minds, winning elections is the important thing to them. Which, of course, is not bad, but how you win them and what you’re going to do after you do so is just as important to me. And to sit there and accept the premise put forth by everybody on the left that Sarah Palin is an idiot just offended the hell out of me. She was the only one that excited anybody on the Republican side at all during the presidential ticket.
Now, the press would love to have some stupid, uh, the press would love to have some old-line moderate Republican running the show like McCain. By the way, a Rasmussen poll out today: 61% of Arizona Republicans say McCain out of touch with the party base. Well, duh. It’s an important poll for him because he’s running for reelection. Sixty-one percent of Arizona Republicans say that McCain is out of touch with the party base. Here comes Sarah Palin, she does the Katie Couric interview; she’s being made fun of on Saturday Night Live all over the place by Tina Fey. I was on Barbara Walter’s top ten personalities of the year, whatever it was last year, and Tina Fey was on the list because of her imitation of Palin. Tina Fey made the top Ten Most Fascinating People of the Year because of her impersonation of Palin. Why not put Palin in there? I mean without Palin being on the scene Tina Fey wouldn’t have had somebody to impersonate to make Barbara Walters’ top ten list. But it just really irritated me. It happened, I can’t tell you, even through the spring and summer of this year, ‘I don’t think we can have Palin, Rush,’ because everybody thinks that what the press says about somebody seals the deal. ‘Rush, the press has already destroyed her.’
No they haven’t. They’re trying to. Why are you going to let them? Don’t you understand that’s who they’re scared to death of when they go after her and they go after her children? Some of the most despicable things — the Democrats want to lecture us about civility? We had to sit here and put up with them ogling books on the assassination of Bush and producing movies about assassinating Bush. We had to sit there and listen to them trash the US military, they want to talk to us about civility? Why do we enter that debate on the defensive side? Why do we have to defend ourselves on civility? They call us an unruly mob when we’re the most polite, clean bunch of people to ever hit the public protest to come down the pike. You want to talk to us about civility, when Obama from the White House sends his union thugs out to beat people up at town hall meetings they want to talk to us about civility? They will tell us who they fear. I say this to people and it’s like a light goes off in their head. I’m talking about people on our side.
One of the most frustrating things to me to this day, despite the weakened state, despite the obvious, journalism is dead as we’ve known it, despite the fact that they’re in the tank, so many people on our side are still worried what the New York Times says. Still worried about what is on the evening news as though we gotta conquer that before we’ll ever succeed, you gotta get the New York Times to like our candidates; we gotta get the Main Street press to like our candidates. It’s never going to happen. We set ourselves up for constant failure if that becomes the way we validate ourselves. I get sick and tired of the defensive nature of this. So we have to sit here and listen to people, ‘Sarah Palin, some idiot there, Sarah Palin, her books, do you think she’ll out sell you?’ I hope so. It would be fascinating to see. Are you supporting Palin? No, I’m not endorsing anybody yet. I’m a commentator just like our president, our president’s a commentator. That’s all he is. Well, the public impersonation of Obama, he’s actually doing dastardly stuff behind the scenes where everybody is distracted by this health care debate, properly so. We ought to be focusing on it. I mean he’s taken over the student loan program. It’s been nationalized. The mortgage industry has been nationalized. By the time this guy gets through, the taxes and the wealth of 70% of the American people will be redistributed to the bottom 30%.