RUSH: Southampton, New York, Bill, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. And thank you for what you do for us.
RUSH: I appreciate that, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Okay, what I really want, Rush, for our side is to have somebody in the Oval Office who is gonna be a street fighter for us, not the class president; and that’s why I have a problem with Romney in addition to not being sure of how conservative he really is. He has all the right answers, he has all the politics down, but does he really understand how angry and upset — as you have so well articulated over the last couple of years, how mad — we really are and how much we’ve yearned for action to turn this ship of state around?
RUSH: You said “ship” with a P, right?
CALLER: Ship. With a P, yes, sir.
RUSH: Whew!
CALLER: I just don’t see Mitt Romney as being that guy that’s going to grab hold of it. He’s gonna do the typical political —
RUSH: I want to play a sound bite, Bill, I want to play a quick 14 second sound bite and get your reaction to it. It’s Charles Krauthammer last night on The O’Reilly Factor, and the question: “I really think the press intimidates Romney and some of the others.”
KRAUTHAMMER: He simply doesn’t have … the capacity to explain … with some color and sort of force conservative ideas. He’s a businessman. He — you know, he looks like he’s chairing a meeting of the board.
RUSH: Charles Krauthammer says that Romney does… I wonder when he figured this out. You —
CALLER: Look at this debate in South Carolina, Rush. I mean, the people will, as you indicated… I mean, they were all over any… Any time there was a major, pointed conservative concept or principle enunciated, the crowd went wild.
RUSH: Yep. Yep. And Krauthammer says that Romney can’t do that, that Romney just doesn’t have it in him. Now… (groans) Good Lord, I don’t know. Why don’t they figure that out?
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RUSH: Now, a lot of people agree with the previous caller: We want a street fighter in there, and a guy talked about the audience and the standing ovation for Newt on the Monday night debate. Folks, Newt was not street fighting Monday night. He was inspiring and uplifting. He wasn’t attacking anything. This might have been a subtle difference to you, but Newt was not street fighting. You might think so, but the things that he said, the things that he said that brought people out of their chairs inspired and uplifted. I gotta take a break. I wish I had more time to develop this. Actually, I do have more time. It’s gonna be six minutes from now so don’t go anywhere.
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RUSH: Dick in Hockessin, Delaware, it’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Real pleasure to be here today, Rush. I’ve been listening to you since 1989 in Sacramento, California. So thanks very much for taking my call.
RUSH: I appreciate that, sir.
CALLER: The reason I’m calling is I’m getting pretty fed up with this constant bashing of Mitt Romney, and it seems no matter what the guy does, there’s always somebody out there with a snippet or something to put down whatever he’s done. I don’t care what it is.
RUSH: Well, now, wait a minute. Newt’s getting pretty slammed here by Romney.
CALLER: Well, I understand that. All’s fair in love and war, and in politics, and I agree with Sarah Palin that all of these candidates should be vetted. But, for instance, if Newt Gingrich changes his mind — and I was an avid supporter of Newt. But if Newt Gingrich changes his mind on global warming and he wrote about it and talked about it for five years, sat on the bench with Nancy Pelosi, he makes one statement and it goes away; almost goes away. He was censured and lost by over 300 votes to 26. Nobody brings that up. He paid a $300,000 fine; nobody brings that up. But if Romney says one wrong word…
RUSH: Wait a minute, now. Now, hold it. They brought every bit of that up in Romney’s ads in Iowa. That’s what took Newt out of the Iowa caucus.
CALLER: Well, what I’m talking about, Rush — and this does not apply to you, ’cause, like I said, I listen to you almost three hours every day, and you’re the only one that brings up the good points of Mitt, for instance, when he gave a away his inheritance. I wonder how many…? I betcha Newt Gingrich or none of those others did that same thing. He’s been married for 42 years, seven kids (not three times) and all the rest of this stuff. He turned the Olympics around. Then he was the governor — and is he perfect? No. Absolutely not. I’d be the first to admit that. And then when I hear a guy like Krauthammer say that he isn’t tough enough or he isn’t boisterous enough? We don’t need that. We need somebody that’s gonna go in there and do the job.
RUSH: Well, Krauthammer said that he can’t articulate conservatism, that he’s a businessman; he doesn’t know conservatism. A previous caller said we need a street fighter, and I understand how you mighta gotten the two confused, but believe me: Mitt is dishing it out every bit as much as he’s getting it. That’s one of the things going on in this campaign a lot of people don’t like, but it’s happening.
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Here’s Shirley in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Big time dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I’ve made an observation. It seems to me that Mitt Romney has taken everything that has been thrown at him, and I don’t hear any whining. And I think that is a good characteristic, a good trait for our next president.
RUSH: So you’re in the tank for Romney?
CALLER: No, I’m not. I have not made up my mind, but he certainly has impressed me in that regard. Some of the other candidates have not quite met that mark.
RUSH: Yeah, I know, some of them act pretty personally peeved —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — that anybody would dare attack them.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: And you’re right, he hadn’t whined, I have to give you that. You can’t say that about some of the others. Perry hasn’t whined. Perry has not whined. He just keeps smiling. Rick Perry, the guy makes me laugh, he just keeps smiling out there no matter what. When he’s trying to viciously cut somebody to pieces or when he’s answering a question, he just smiles. Anyway, Shirley, that’s a good point, it’s a good observation.
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RUSH: Joan in Kingman, Arizona. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. Thank you for taking my call. Rush, I cringe when I hear people say they primarily support Romney because he’s a successful businessman and they perceive that’s what our sick economy needs. Jimmy Carter was a successful businessman and financially independent, and I’m old enough to remember what he did to our economy. I just want to say that being a successful businessman and being a good president don’t necessarily equate. Ronald Reagan wasn’t a businessman, and Governor Scott Walker has very limited business experience, and look what they’ve done.
RUSH: Right. And look at all of the big successful businessmen who are commie bastards.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: All these leftists, look at Obama’s jobs council, all these clowns that agree that central planning is the way. Can you imagine the chairman of General Electric agreeing to chair a government panel or committee on job creation?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: What in the world does the government have to teach GE about hiring people? I think all of this is absurd. You make a good point. You really do. Jimmy Carter, he was a successful businessman, he ran a Grade B peanut farm in Georgia.
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RUSH: Marcus in Omaha, glad you waited, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. I’m very appreciative of you taking my call this afternoon. Piggybacking on your comment a few minutes ago about how we’re looking for a candidate that echoes the conservative principles that you share with us on the radio —
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: — I mean, a Michele Bachmann supporter and clearly disappointed that she’s not in the race. So as I’m looking at Santorum, Gingrich, and Perry, watching many of the debates, I am — as you’ve been talking about — drawn to Gingrich when he’s on his game plan, when he’s speaking and echoing the kind of things that you talk about on the radio. However, as you mentioned (I think it was yesterday) that there is that Eisenhower part of his brain that needs to be lobotomized.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I remember I think it was Dick Armey on your program years ago, passed along some uncomplimentary comments about Newt, and for the first time made me aware of that half of his brain, I suppose. My question to you is similar to the comments you’ve made about Romney, how he needs to be pushed to the right. If Gingrich is the nominee, is it possible to keep him on the reservation — and if so, how? Not only during the general election campaign, more importantly, in office. Can he be kept in the conservative game plan, or is he always gonna wander off like that? Is there a way to keep him on message?
RUSH: Well, not that I know of, for anybody that’s not a thoroughbred conservative. I don’t know how do you have a constant bit of pressure. Not from here.
CALLER: Like could he surround himself? Is there any way to surround himself with the kind of personalities that can keep him on the reservation — again, if I can use that phrase?
RUSH: I don’t know if it’s so much a matter of that with Newt as it is a matter of circumstances in which he finds himself. When he is lone wolfing it, he’s okay. When he decides to go committee and branch out, that’s when the other half of the brain kicks in, and the ideas start gurgling forth with no editing on ’em, and you never know when it’s going to happen.
CALLER: Yeah, and that’s obviously the thing that makes people like myself uneasy. I mean, we’re clearly drawn to the performance like he gave Monday night, and like you said, we thirst to hear that kind of message —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — but we’ve got that nagging reservation that he’s again, during the general campaign or in office he’s wander off the revelation and we go, “Oh, my gosh! This isn’t what we voted for.”
RUSH: There’s always going to be — I don’t care who it is, there’s always going to be — the temptation in Washington to seek the favor of the leftist media. It’s always gonna be there, no matter who it is. I can only think of one exception, and that’s Reagan. It’s the rule rather than the exception.