RUSH: Here’s Tyler in Toronto. Is that right, Toronto, California?
CALLER: Toronto Canada, Rush.
RUSH: What is it, Montana or…? Canada! Oh.
CALLER: Canada, yes.
RUSH: Snerdley thinks that the abbreviation for Canada is CA. (laughing)
CALLER: Economically booming Canada.
RUSH: I was gonna say, ‘I never heard of a Toronto, California.’ Anyway, well, welcome to you.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: Since this week everyone has been talking about George W. Bush and analyzing his book, trying to figure out what his legacy will be — which I think will probably be a good one — and since you’ve spent some time up and close and personal with him, would you say that he is part of the ruling class or a part of the country class? Because in Codevilla’s piece, which you read on air one day, he almost implied that Bush 41 and 43 may have been members of the ruling class. Would you agree with that?
RUSH: Well, it depends on how you want to define. Bush as a human being as a person is despised by the ruling class.
CALLER: That’s right, and they saw him as stupid.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Same thing happened with Reagan.
RUSH: But he has the resume. He’s got Yale, he’s got Harvard MBA. Has a got the pedigree for ruling class, but they hate him.
CALLER: That’s right. If you read his book, though, he almost holds the Ivy Leagues and the elite in some sort of contempt because I’ve always seen him trying to separate himself from them. And I think that was probably the right thing to do because I think people respect him more because he tried to distance himself from them.
RUSH: Well, he did, but… I don’t disagree with that at all, but then there are things that the president did that we would philosophically disagree with. Establishing the Medicare Part B entitlement. That’s not what we do. But we know why. The President, like Nixon, in many ways succumbed to the notion of wanting to be liked. We have OSHA because of Nixon wanting to be liked. What else do we have because of Nixon? We have the EPA because of Nixon. We have affirmative action ’cause Nixon wanted to be liked by these guys. Immigration. Now, the reason — and you may have forgotten this, but the reason — that the president was for immigration was they had a dream. Bush and Rove had a dream: They were gonna end the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party was gonna cease to exist.
They were gonna make the Republican Party the melting pot for virtually everybody. That was their objective. They were true partisans — and in that sense, they saw these potential citizens as Republicans if they got out in front of the issue. So in that sense you can question the result but might find the motive acceptable. Some of you wouldn’t. Wage and price controls? (groans) Thank you, President Nixon. We went off the gold standard. It’s all ’cause Nixon wanted to be liked by these guys. So there’s any number of things. At the end of the day, as a — as a man, as a human being, Bush is not a ruling class guy in any way, shape, manner, or form. He doesn’t have the aura, he doesn’t have the mannerisms, he doesn’t have the aristocracy gene, and he doesn’t… Yeah, he doesn’t have the number one requirement for ruling class people, and that’s disdain for the American people. That’s your admission into the ruling class. If you can’t convince the ruling class that you hold the average American in contempt, you’re never gonna be allowed in the club.