RUSH: I did get a note from Newt about a quarter of one. Forty-five minutes into the program. “Dear Rush: My sister was just listening to you and said that you were saying nice things about my past conservatism. Well, just for the record and for the present and the future, I oppose cap and trade. I testified against it. I helped defeat it. I oppose Obamacare. I’ve spent three years opposing it. This week’s stories are just wrong. I work with Paul Ryan. He and I are working together on his Medicare ideas. If you read what I actually said Sunday, it had no reference to the Ryan budget, which I would have voted for and have publicly praised.”
Okay, but people thought he was talking about the Ryan budget because he referred to the Ryan budget and the Medicare fix as right-wing social engineering, and he disagreed with that as much as he does left-wing social engineering, and he called Ryan to apologize, which Ryan accepted.
“I said that we should communicate with the American people until we and they have developed a better Medicare program which they support us in passing and implementing. And please tell your audience, I am for zero capital gains, 12 and a half percent corporate tax rate, abolishing the death tax, 100% expensing to write off all new equipment in one year, replacing the EPA with a totally new environmental solutions agency, repealing Sarbanes-Oxley, having a contract in 2012 with a Tenth Amendment enforcement act which would take huge amounts of power out of Washington. Which of these are not conservative? Newt.”
He didn’t say global warming in here, Snerdley, and he didn’t say the era of Reagan is over in here. He’s taking the occasion here, he sent me a note to explain, elucidate his positions, in an attempt here to establish his conservatism. So I’m just sharing with you a note. Like I told you, what got all this started was — and Cookie’s searching the archives, the C-SPAN archives from the eighties, the special orders. I really want people to hear some of that. They went on for a number of months, the special orders. It’s gonna be tough to cherry-pick this stuff and turn it into one minute, two minute audio sound bites.
I know he did the couch with Pelosi and the health care with Hillary and so forth. He’s explained the reason for those things. By the way, if you want to throw things into the mix, remember, he was Speaker when Clinton was elected, and they did joint public appearances at places. But nobody had a problem with that, ’cause then he was fighting Clinton. At any rate, he heard what was going on and he responded with this note, and it’s obvious that he is attempting to burnish conservative credentials with people who think that he is not as conservative as he used to be.
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