RUSH: Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and Jeannie. Jeannie, I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Oh, thanks, Rush. It’s a real pleasure and an honor. I’m so excited to talk to you.

RUSH: Thanks for calling. I appreciate it.

CALLER: Well, I just wanted to let you know that this pick is a home run. I couldn’t believe it. When I heard it, that’s the first thing I said, “It’s a home run.” Paul Ryan is a man of integrity. He is honest. He says he’s gonna do something, and he does it, and the best thing about him is he’s a very humble man. So when the lamestream media tries to attack him, he’s not full of himself, so he’s just gonna come back and say, “Nope, this is what’s going on, and this is how you fix it, and this is how we get America back on the right track.”

RUSH: Well, but some might say that you’re a little biased. I mean, you’re from Wisconsin.

CALLER: Well, I would just have to tell them that, look at Wisconsin. After Scott Walker got elected, for two years our media kept telling us, “He’s going to ruin this state. He’s going to ruin our schools.” And he did his reforms, it was two years before they recalled him, and guess what? Even my Democratic family goes, “Oh, my gosh, this is working,” and they voted for him. So I agree with you. I think that the media is not an excuse. What they have to do — and Paul Ryan can do it — is they have to continue to say, “Nope, we are running off the rails here, and this is how we get back on, and this is how we’re gonna do it, and America’s gonna be great again.” And that man can do it.

RUSH: It is gonna be funny to listen to them. In that sound bite we played from Obama when he was in Iowa, Council Bluffs, I think it was, when he called him a decent guy and a family man, I mean that’s an endorsement. So Obama has called Ryan a decent guy, a family man, his audience started booing, no, no, no, no, no, no. So when Obama’s PACs now set out after Ryan, and they will, you know they will, because that’s all they know how to do, they’re already doing it. I mean, I’ve got sound bites here from Candy Crowley and Axelrod, that’s all they have. And it’s a point that Ryan is making ever since Saturday. They don’t have anything. He made it last night with Bob Schieffer on CBS. They don’t have anything they could say about their record, so they have to distract. They have to use the Bain Capital stuff. They have to use “Romney killed my wife.” They have to come up with all of these personal smears and insults, and I’ll be real surprised if they’re able to make any of them stick against Paul Ryan.

You know, his wife is 40; Ryan is 42. His wife is college educated. They have a lot in common. His wife’s every bit the political thinker that he is. She chose motherhood, in her own words, she wanted to be a mother, and she is. They’ve got three kids. Well, that’s the kind of thing the Democrats have to demagogue. Oh, yeah, they’re so old fashioned, she chose motherhood? That’s not modern feminism. I mean look at the position that they’re in. I mean, you couldn’t have, as far as you folks and I are concerned, as I said, he’s the last Boy Scout. He is a traditional American man, and somehow they’re gonna try to paint that as out of touch or extreme. “Well, of course she can be a mother because Ryan is a rich Republican who’s benefited from the top knowledge of bankers.” This is the kind of stuff that they’re gonna try to hit him with, and they will. No, the media’s never going to tell the truth about Ryan’s Medicare plan, but that’s something that we know going in.

This is Mark in Fort Worth, Texas. Hey, Mark, I’m glad you called. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Dittos from this great state.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I just wanted to call and confirm what you said about Romney’s choice of Ryan in terms of this is a choice for governance. The history of nominees is they pick VP’s for a lot of different reasons, whether it’s to balance the ticket geographically, or ideologically, or try to charge up their base or whatever. This guy is a policy guy. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s done battle in the trenches with the liberal Democrats, and this is a governance choice, and I’ll tell you, he’s gonna be a great spokesman on this Medicare stuff, because the age that he is, he’s a little bit younger than I am, and for all of our adult lives we have heard Democrats say that, if you elect Republicans, they’re gonna kill Medicare and they’re gonna kill Social Security.

They’ve been saying that for 30 years. And it hasn’t happened, and the people who are targeted by that kind of line, you know, folks who are in their sixties and seventies, they’ve been hearing that since they were 30 and 40 and 50 years old. And that line doesn’t work anymore. It worked on my grandmother when she heard it. In 1980 when she heard it, she was 75 years old, first time she had ever had her Social Security and Medicare threatened. And it worked on her. But the people that that message is targeted at now have been hearing it for 30 years, and they see from experience, it doesn’t work.

RUSH: This is an excellent point. It is one that I have made. You know, we had Reagan for eight years; we had Bush for four, then Bush for eight. We’ve had the Republicans running the House. There’s been ample opportunity for Republicans to kick seniors out of their houses. It hasn’t happened. I mean ample opportunity for the Republicans to cut and eliminate Social Security. It hasn’t happened. Plenty of opportunity for Republicans to wipe out Medicare. It hasn’t happened. So people who are paying attention know full well that none of these allegations ever come true.

Now, in the case of certain seasoned citizens, the way it works is, if that’s all they’ve got, if that Social Security check is all they’ve got, or if their Medicare is all they’ve got, and some Democrat comes along and says somebody’s gonna take it away from ’em, in an understandable way, they can’t risk it, especially if they’re not day-to-day involved, informed. If that’s all they’ve got, they can’t risk not voting for the guy who says he’s gonna save it for ’em. The Democrat. That’s how it’s always worked.

But what you say is true. Now we got 30 years of actual life experience where none of this ever happens. In fact, what we now face is the hard, cold reality that nobody’s gonna have to cut them. They will not survive on their own if we don’t reverse the direction Obama’s taking this country. It’s not a question of cutting them. It’s a question of the whole country imploding. It’s a question of the whole country defaulting. It’s a question of the whole country not having the money for anything. If we don’t stop the direction we’re going, by attrition, these things are going to run out of money.

Now, the current national debt is $16 trillion. Obama’s budget, which has not secured one vote, projects that it will be $26 trillion in ten years. And his budget assumes tax increases on the rich. Sorry, folks. We can’t sustain that. That’s not doable. We can’t survive that. But the Democrats have nothing else, Mark, as you know. So they’re gonna keep launching these threats and making these allegations. And that’s why I think the Ryan choice is good, because there’s somebody on the ticket now who can refute this.

He can do it ideologically, factually, policy-wize, any way it needs to be refuted. I’ll tell you something else about this pick. You made me think about something. Vice presidential choices, for the most part, are made because of some assistance they bring to the election of the nominee, such as a state. Maybe the vice president can help the nominee win a state and secure that state’s electoral votes. Well, the conventional wisdom is the Republicans don’t have a prayer of winning Wisconsin.

So if you look and expose yourself to the pessimists on our side about the pick of Ryan, you will read that Ryan brings nothing. “He doesn’t bring a state. He didn’t bring any electoral votes. He doesn’t help with women. He doesn’t help with this group, doesn’t help with that group. It’s a wasted pick.” This is from people who look at all of this through the traditional lens of political conventional wisdom. Romney has gone outside that in making this pick, and I think it’s commendable.

And, as you said, he’s made, in addition to everything else, a governance pick. Now, I happen to think that Wisconsin is in play. I happen to think we can win Wisconsin. Paul Ryan and Scott Walker are best buddies. Scott Walker, the governor, was said not to have a chance. There were two recalls — one for the Senate, one for Walker — and they both lost. I think the Republicans can win Wisconsin. And if they do, guess what else happens?

Romney wins the White House if they win Wisconsin.

“That’s so out of the realm of possibility, there’s no way. Wisconsin is the California of the Upper Midwest. There’s no way the Republicans can win Wisconsin!” I don’t believe that. But, again, I have to stress, folks: I don’t hang around political people, and I don’t think the way they do. I know that the presidential election is 50 state elections, and I know that in the polling, you get swing states, and you get states where the electoral votes are already committed.

We already know California and New York, for example, automatically, gotta give them to Obama. I know that. I concede that. But I don’t only look at all of this that way. I think the entire dynamic involved here involves much more. I could be a Pollyanna. I could be whistling Dixie. I could be so naive about all this that you’d be better advised not to listen to me on it. Who knows? But I happen to pay very little attention to polls right now. I don’t let them get me down or up.

I don’t think it matters right now.

The election is not today.

I don’t believe, like conventional wisdom says, that if the election were today, Romney would lose. I don’t believe that. I’m not a pessimist. I’m not prepared right now to concede anything, ’cause it really hasn’t even begun. There are all kinds of fireworks left to happen here. There are some odds-makers out there, for example. They’re saying the odds of Romney winning Wisconsin are three to one. The political conventional wisdom is he doesn’t have a prayer of winning Wisconsin, even with Ryan.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: How come we never hear that the Ryan budget is a “bipartisan” budget? It’s the Ryan-Wyden Budget. Ron Wyden, far-left liberal guy from Oregon, co-sponsored it. Ron Wyden, Democrat senator. The Ryan budget was approved with over 200 votes in the House of Representatives. It’s Obama’s budget that’s never gotten even a single vote! The Ryan budget is bipartisan. I thought “bipartisanship” was what everybody wanted, and yet they never mentioned that Ryan’s plan is bipartisan.

He wrote it with Democrat Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.

We never hear that.

How come the media is not piling all over this poor guy, Wyden, for cutting Medicare, for gutting Medicare? A Democrat senator is a partner in crime here. That never gets mentioned. (Bunch of media jerks.) Folks, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s only gonna get worse. And if you think that our success can only happen when the media starts agreeing with us, forget it. It ain’t gonna happen.