If you are for McCain/Feingold – campaign finance reform, you MUST hear and read Rush’s debate with Harry, a caller on Monday’s show. You will be walked step by step, through a process that will show you how you are wrong to support the bill, and the concept behind it. Now, if you think there’s no way of convincing you otherwise on your position, you owe it to yourself to read and listen to this argument. Consider it a healthy challenge to your ideas and philosophy. And if you come away with the same convictions you hold now ? I will be highly surprised.
RUSH: Back to Chicago. Harry, I’m glad you waited through the break, thanks very much.
CALLER: Yes, I just wanted to make a point about why?
RUSH: Have we successfully traced this call yet? Okay. All right. Thanks very much. I’m not convinced this call isn’t coming from Arizona or Washington. Go ahead, Harry.
CALLER: It sometimes seems like a right becomes a privilege for the privileged few, and that’s what’s happening over here. When you have the dollars, when you have the money, you can access your congressmen, your representatives in government, unlike the common man. The common man who earns an average income doesn’t have the money to contribute to a campaign so that he can see the congressman or senator. If that weren’t true, I would support what you’re saying. But the fact is, if you’ve got the money, you make the contribution, you’re going to get in and you’re going to get heard.
RUSH: Okay, Harry, if I could persuade you you’re wrong, would you admit you’re going to change your mind on this?
CALLER: If you could persuade me.
RUSH: How rich do you think the average NRA member is?
CALLER: It doesn’t matter how rich the individual is.
RUSH: Yes it does, because the NRA is not a single rich guy contributing to candidates who support gun legislation. The NRA is one of the largest consumer citizen groups in the country, and it is made up precisely of people that you described, who individually don’t have the money to call a member of congress or the senate and contribute enough to be heard – so they join the NRA where resources are pooled. And the views of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of like-minded individuals are then made into TV commercials, they’re paid for. They do pay for lobbying groups to go lobby members of congress, the NRA is nothing more than an association of average Americans doing exactly what you say can’t be done.
CALLER: Nevertheless, it’s unfair for an organization that has a tremendous amount of money.
RUSH: Why do they have the money? You’re going to the end of the equation and drawing the conclusion. They have the money because there’s an organizing principle that encourages these people to join. They give the money first because of the idea they all agree with, and that creates the pool of money from which they can then operate.
CALLER: That may be true about the NRA.
