RUSH: Logan, Utah. This is John. Great to have you here with us on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Dittos. I appreciate everything that you’re saying today, and you’re exactly right. Both sides are not to blame for the root cause.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: And the House Republicans deserve a lot of credit for not caving. I’m really frustrated, though. But it’s not with the media or the House Dems because they’re doing exactly what I’d expect, and in fact I even have to say McCain is living up to my low expectations of him. The one Republican that I think deserves my ire is President Bush. I put a lot of frustration right there at his feet, because it’s not that he didn’t fail to stand up against this bill and the whole concept. In fact, I’ve heard that he sent a clear signal to the House Republicans that they need to vote ‘yes’ and he’s jumped on the Armageddon bandwagon. And it’s not just the Democrats. We are truly without a conservative leader or even what I would think a fair-minded fiscally conservative leader.
RUSH: I feel your pain, sir.
CALLER: I do not want to step aside and point specifically to the Dems and to the media. Bush I think in this particular instance — now, if he’s pandering, and it’s like the No Child Left Behind Act —
RUSH: Well, this is why a lot of Republicans are confused because they see the — you’ve gotta reserve for the president the same right you reserve for McCain and others to be who they are. I mean, he was for letting Ted Kennedy write the education bill. He was for massive amnesty immigration. He’s been for a lot of things that we weren’t particularly in favor of.
CALLER: Exactly. But if we then take the step — you’ve put out there that the Democrats wanted to hang this around the neck of the Republicans. Now, if that’s true, and we’re cynical about this, either Bush is really ignorant of the politics that’s happening on Capitol Hill —
RUSH: He’s not a partisan.
CALLER: — or, he walked right into their trap and he’s playing it. And so I have a really hard time being able to say —
RUSH: Look, I don’t pretend to be able to speak for George W. Bush.
CALLER: True.
RUSH: I’m not going to try to explain it. I’ll tell you the thing that surprises me most about President Bush.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: We’ve talked about it here, we’ve produced the evidence on our website. This man personally tried to stop the shenanigans going on at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multiple times this decade. I mean 12 to 20 times there were efforts to reregulate and to stop this. So it would seem to me that politically the president would have an opportunity to step up and say, ‘I warned everybody that this was going down, we did our best, the Democrats stopped us at every turn,’ but that’s not who he is.
CALLER: Yeah, so I guess we’re right back at —
RUSH: So all of a sudden what surprises me is, I guess he’s gone beyond the blame aspect, it’s too late to blame people, we’ve got a problem, we’ve gotta fix it. See, I disagree with that because the reason we need to focus on who’s to blame for this is because the same people that broke it now claim to be able to fix it and monitor it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s senseless to put the people in charge of this who broke it in the first place.
CALLER: See, but that’s the other part of the story in terms of the leadership that we need right now, and I guess we’re back to that same point where Bush doesn’t articulate well the things that we really need to be hearing. So, yes, I’ll buy it that he has his principles, he’s acting in harmony with his principles, but, boy, his PR machine needs a lot of work.
RUSH: Well, that’s nothing new, either.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: I do know for a fact the president refuses to be partisan. He thinks it dishonors the office. He’ll do it on the campaign trail now and then, but he will not do it while conducting official Oval Office business to a lot of people’s dismay and frustration. There’s another factor that you throw in here, and what’s he got here? October, November, December. Three and a half months left. He basically has three months left in his administration. I don’t think he thinks there’s enough time to fight — well, I don’t know. I’ve gotta stop there. Three months left, you connect the dots. It is what it is, and at this stage, the conservative leadership you’re looking for is in the House of Representatives, and they stood up and they buck their own president. You know, here’s another thing. I mean it’s just an interesting observation. The very Democrats who have made it plain they despise George W. Bush, they hate his guts and they have for eight years, they have done everything they can to tar, feather, ruin, destroy his character, his life, his presidency. And yet here they are on the same page with him on this acting like all of a sudden he’s their best friend.
I hope these guys are learning something. I’m talking about the Democrats, and the president, too. It was stated earlier on this program, and it’s true. Two presidential candidates, the one thing that they don’t get here is the degree of opposition to this among the population.