RUSH: Englewood, Florida. Tom, you’re up first as we go to the phones. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
CALLER: Welcome yourself! (laughing) Hey, thank you very much for your description of American exceptionalism. That’s one of the best I have ever heard.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: My statement was I was watching Fox News this morning, and Ed Rendell was on there giving his ideas of what’s gonna happen and what’s not gonna happen.
RUSH: What did he say, that the American voters are gonna steal the election?
CALLER: No. He said that, while it’s time for us now to all get our heads together and solve these problems, they wouldn’t talk to us as conservatives two years ago but now they want to all compromise, you know?
RUSH: Yeah. See when you see stuff like this, you say this is not part of any conspiracy. This is desperation time. When Fast Eddie Rendell says, ‘All right, it’s time for us to put our heads together now and solve these problems,’ A, we’re admitting Obama hasn’t solved anything; and B, Eddie Rendell is saying, ‘Look, we’re gonna be nonfactors, but please include us. Please include us. Let’s put our heads together.’ But Tom here is right. For two years… I mean, look, it was Obama who told Boehner and the Republicans, ‘Don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh. That’s not how things get done in Washington.’ Republicans couldn’t stop anything. Obama could have had Republican support on health care if he’d done just a couple of minor little things. He didn’t want it, he didn’t want it. So now we’re supposed to put our heads together to solve the problems. Compromise. Folks, somebody tell me where we compromise with the people who are destroying our economy. Where do you compromise with that? Only destroy half of it?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m reminded that I did offer compromise with Obama. Remember my Wall Street Journal op-ed in which I suggested compromise with Obama on the stimulus package? Koko, go back and find that and relink to it. (interruption) Well, I wrote it. You can put up the text if you want. It ran in the Wall Street Journal, you can put on my website for certain. But this was in 2009, and I suggested, ‘All right, look, you want compromise? Give me 43% of your $1 stimulus or 47%, whatever percentage McCain got. You take the rest and you do with it what you want and I’ll do with mine what I want and then at the end of a year we’ll compare.’ I did offer compromise! The compromise, though, included my principles and my core beliefs and my philosophy and my ideology, not his.
I didn’t incorporate any of his into mine. I said, ‘Go ahead. You do what you want to do and I’ll do mine side by side.’ Of course it was rejected. It might… Koko, get that and print it out to me at my printer. It might serve the audience well. Since we’ve reviewed the CPAC speech today, it might do well to review and reread that op-ed that I wrote for the Wall Street Journal.