Previewing the Next Presidency

RUSH: We’ll go to Anacortes, Washington. This is John. Thank you, sir, and welcome.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, great to talk to you, and mega dittos from a retired Army officer.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: While I was waiting to ask my question I was just listening to you talk about Obama and all the people pulling the strings, it kind of reminded me of the Manchurian Candidate. While everybody is manipulating him the press keeps saying he’s the bravest, kindest, warmest, most wonderful human being they’ve ever known.

RUSH: I know, I’ve heard this reference to the Manchurian Candidate made before myself.

CALLER: Yeah, it’s interesting. But my question is, you were discussing letting the Republicans bypass this election, you know, what would happen if we had a Republican president, McCain, but a Democratic House and Senate, eventually no matter what happened, the blame would fall on McCain, the Republican, so why not just let the Democrats have the White House along with the House and Senate. Interesting, but inherent in that is the damage that could be done by the two branches during those four years. I mean, we could end up fighting in Iran, losing in Iran. We could end up with a terrible economy. I mean that philosophy kind of scares me, and maybe you can explain it a little bit better.

RUSH: Well, in the first place, I’ve not advocated that. I have presented two options to people and let them think about it themselves. And both options have one constant, and it’s based on current polling data, so it could change; we’re still five months away from the election and that’s a lifetime. But let’s hypothetically say that the polling data is correct and that the Democrats are going to have at least a 50-seat majority in the House and a seven-seat majority in the Senate, at the bare minimum. That means that the Democrat agenda is what’s going to pass in both houses of Congress. The Democrats have seven seats. I know you need 60 seats there, but if you’ve got seven already, they’ll be able to find three moderate Republicans to go along with them, two of them I can think of off the top of my head. So with that constant, here you have Obama as president, and let’s take a look each one individually, because I’ve analyzed what I think will happen. I think Obama and his inexperience will show and rise to the top. It’s going to be really key as to who he has running his administration, who his legislative aides are, chief of staff, the people that are going to be dealing with Congress on his behalf because he’s not up to it. He has no experience. He’s a community organizer, he’s a senator; he hasn’t crossed the aisle much, if at all. He’s got a lot of language. He has a lot of soaring language.

He has some specific proposals, but he’s basically running the liberal campaign playbook from 30 and 50 years ago. I think people like Pelosi, Harry Reid, whoever’s running the Senate, they could roll him and get what they want, because no matter who the president is and who runs Congress, there’s always a battle between the two branches. Congress thinks they ought to be president. So there would be some battles with Obama. Let’s take McCain. And, by the way, there’s another constant here. Presidents these days define their legacies as getting things done. That translates into having legislation passed. We conservatives count things not getting done as progress, if they’re going to be done by liberals. But McCain doesn’t look at it that way, looks at getting things done. If all he’s got to work with is that vast majority of Democrats in the House and in the Senate, then the Democrats still logically carry the day on the agenda. With McCain, who has shown an eagerness, a willingness and even a joyfulness in crossing the aisle and working with them.

So if a Democrat agenda, if a liberal Democrat agenda is going to dominate — not saying it’s going to win on everything — but if it dominates, does it matter who’s in the White House if the country is going to be negatively impacted by what comes out of Congress in terms of being able to stop it? McCain would be able to stop it? I don’t frankly know that he would want to because then he wouldn’t be getting things done. So in either scenario, on paper, the future looks like we’re going to take a dip. I don’t know if it means war in Iran. I do know it means massive tax increases, an expansion of government, a loss of individual liberty. Now, do we want this to happen? I haven’t directed people on how to vote here. Do you want this to happen with a Republican president?

CALLER: Do you think McCain has the wherewithal to stand in the way of any of that, or he’s going to be overridden on a veto?

RUSH: You tell me.

CALLER: Well, I suspect that he would at least try to stand up for blocking tax increases.

RUSH: Yeah, I’m sure he would. I think. See, it’s a little bit of an unknown because when Bush first announced his tax cuts, McCain was diametrically opposed. But yeah, he could oppose them. Let’s say McCain is the guy, a lot of people say, ‘Rush, this is silly, you can’t have Obama in there, we’re going to have at least two Supreme Court appointments.’ Yeah, I understand that. So let’s say, take your favorite judge out there that you think would be great on the Supreme Court, your favorite conservative judge, McCain in the White House nominates the guy, goes over to the Senate where you have the same guys: You got Patrick Leahy, you got Biden, you have Kennedy and probably a couple more on that committee, based on the election returns. You’ve got Dick Durbin, you have Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, and a couple more just like ’em, can you tell me what’s going to happen to McCain’s judicial nominees for the Supreme Court?

CALLER: Well, they’re going to get hammered. I mean they’re just not going to get approved. It just seems like kind of futile right now to be throwing up our hands and then —

RUSH: But wait, but wait, but wait, but wait, but wait, but wait a minute. You just can’t leave the Supreme Court vacant. If they keep rejecting McCain’s nominees, he’s gotta do what? Gotta send people up that they’ll approve.

CALLER: I understand that. But it seems like rather than giving up, I mean, should we put in our B team or our C team rather than no team?

RUSH: I’m not suggesting giving up. Let me give you another element to this to think about, which is all I’ve done. You know, other than Operation Chaos, I’m not telling people how to vote. Here’s the thing. Did you hear the sound bite we played in the first hour of the program from the RNC guy, the chief of the RNC?

CALLER: Yes, I did.

RUSH: Okay, grab number two. For those of you that didn’t hear it, this will set up my next scenario that I want John here to react to. This is yesterday morning on WLS in Chicago, the Don Wade & Roma Morning Show, Don Wade says to Mike Duncan, who’s the chairman of the RNC, ‘So we have the Rush Limbaugh problem. How you gonna get Rush Limbaugh on the Republican team?’

DUNCAN: Well, obviously we hope that everyone joins the team. What I’m seeing right now is that nine out of ten Republican voters are rallying around John McCain. On the other side we’re seeing, depending on the state, but in some states as many as a third of the Democrats say they won’t vote for Barack Obama this fall. Overall it’s about 19% nationally. So we’re doing a good job of bringing independents and Democrats over to the Republican side, and they’re not doing a very good job of bringing Republicans to Barack Obama because there’s such a stark contrast. Do we want to go back to the 1960s failed ideas of higher taxes and bigger government and judges who legislate from the bench and not having a strong defense? I think the answer is no.

RUSH: This is just sad. I feel sorry for Mr. Duncan. In the first place, McCain’s not even running to have a bunch of Republicans elected with him in the Congress. I don’t see any action by the RNC to help forestall these big Democrat majorities. You just heard him say nine out of ten Republicans are on board rallying. I don’t think they’re rallying. I think there are more Republicans that are angry at McCain than are angry at Bush, to be quite honest. There are more Republicans who have more visceral anger at McCain than they do Bush. But you just heard the RNC guy say, ‘look at these Democrats, we’re attracting all these Democrats,’ so here’s the scenario. Let me set the table. McCain wins attracting Democrats as Democrats, not as converted to Republican or conservative Democrats, but as Democrats. And so then, then what do you have? Then you have these country club blue-blood gang and the Rockefeller Republicans, and they’re out there saying, ‘See, you conservatives, we don’t even need you. This is the future of the Republican Party, independents and Democrats and moderate Republicans, we don’t need you.’ And they’re going to get the wrong idea that that’s how you win.

CALLER: Well, I agree with that, and as one of the 10% as a conservative, I’m completely upset about McCain being the nominee. And I don’t even see any action, any coattail action with congressional seats around the country, anybody trying to tie himself to McCain or McCain to them, which scares me more than anything else.

RUSH: Excellent point.

CALLER: But what’s going on is the thought of leaving the White House and walking away from everything and saying you guys do your worst in four years, we’ll be back with a new team.

RUSH: Look, I have never advocated losing an election, and every time somebody calls and suggests it, look, it happens every year, it happened in ’92, ‘Rush, let’s just lose and let the country see what a rotten guy Clinton is and we’ll be back in four years.’ You can’t trust that. I’ve never advocated losing. I don’t think you win by losing. But at the same time there are some things to consider here if you’re interested in conservatism being rebuilt and being able to nominate the Republican Party once again. So it’s very convoluted, it is complicated, going to take a lot of thought by a lot of people. I told you earlier Tom Sowell said look, ‘Two of the most inadequate candidates ever. What it boils down to him is Iran and nuclear weapons and their pursuit of them, and there’s only one guy he has any hope and faith in that will stop it, and that’s McCain.’ And so that’s his decision. All the rest of it’s academic to him, there’s no difference in the two; they’re both inadequate. In fact, you know what? I would say that neither of these two candidates is running on substance. They’re both running on image. You have Obama running on the image, first black nominee. McCain’s image is war hero. If you strip that away from both guys, you strip Obama’s race away from him, you strip McCain’s war hero status away, what have we got here? Literally what do we have? And this is why people are so disappointed. Why in the hell in a country of 300 million people is this the best we can come up with, on either side?

CALLER: Well, maybe a suggestion for some shows in the future is —

RUSH: Well, go ahead, make a suggestion.

CALLER: Good. Then we can have you or your staff research all the conservatives that are running for House and Senate seats around the country and maybe rally behind them as a stopgap measure.

RUSH: Well, I haven’t researched them by names, but I’ve said that this is exactly what we need to do is focus on state, house, and local elections to start the new farm team of conservatives being built.