RUSH: Metro Detroit, this is Michael, great to have you, sir. Welcome.
CALLER: (silence)
RUSH: Michael?
CALLER: Rush?
RUSH: Yeah, hi. How are you, Michael?
CALLER: Oh, man, I don’t believe it! (laughing) Great. Hey, dittos to that first caller from Houston. That was awesome, and dittos to you. Happy birthday, white trash cake dittos.
RUSH: Thanks very much, sir. Appreciate that.
CALLER: This goes back to your comment in the first hour about ownership of the economy and six months.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: This is amusing, frustrating, and it strikes a nerve with me. Last week our governor here in the state of Michigan was on local television, and, Rush —
RUSH: Go ahead. You can’t just say ‘the governor.’ You can’t assume everybody knows who Jennifer Granholm is. We gotta mention her name.
CALLER: There you go. You can’t get a straight answer out of her in regard to the economy without her blaming George Bush policies.
RUSH: Right. Exactly.
CALLER: This goes on constantly, and I hope somebody from her office hears this because we’re tired of hearing about this, and I guess my question, my comment is, at what point — and here I’m talking about state government — but at what point do the politicians take ownership of their economy?
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: How long can you keep pointing the finger at the president? It just never stops.
RUSH: Well, wait a minute. We gotta have realistic expectations here. In terms of Democrat politicians taking ownership of economic mistakes: never. No, no. Like Bush did a press conference today and he owned up to some mistakes, you know, just a farewell thing, and it’s amazing the Drive-Bys.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: We’ve got some of this, too. The Drive-Bys said this was the real George Bush that we know, and they love him. They thought it was just fabulous. ‘This is the real Bush. He was sensitive. He was funny. He was warm,’ blah, blah. But your point about Jennifer Granholm is exactly right, and I would put it this way, phrase it this way. Just like Krauthammer thinks in six months that Obama is going to own the economy, the American people are not going to care about his policies. They’re going to look at economic numbers and are going to say, ‘Pfft!’ It’s wishful thinking. I hope Krauthammer is right, but Jennifer Granholm has gotten away with running that state into the ground and she still got reelected. You say you hope her office is listening? Her office is laughing themselves silly because there are still enough people in Michigan that are electing her. Now, Michigan’s also got a people drain. I’ve got a story here in the Stack that Michigan is, I think, one of the stop four states in the country of people migrating out of it, and a large part of it is because of the economics of the situation. She’s been the tax increaser, the tax raiser —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — and so forth, but yeah, the state’s mostly Democrat so she can dump on Bush and get away with it.
CALLER: Well, here’s what’s interesting. Even the local reporter finally asked her, after she had made this comment — again, we’ve been hearing about this for so long. He said, ‘Governor, you’ve been in office for seven years. What policies have you enacted? What changes have you enacted to steer us in the right direction?’ and it goes back to the same thing: the George Bush policies.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: It’s like, you just sit there and you want to bang your head on the wall. It’s like, ‘Stop it. Just stop it!’
RUSH: You know, if I were Granholm, I would have answered that question a different way: ‘At least I’m not in jail like the mayor of Detroit is.’
CALLER: Oh, don’t bring that up. Don’t go there. Oh.
RUSH: ‘You people are asking too much. Your standards are too high here. I’ve done a remarkable thing here.’ (laughing)
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Well, look, why can…? He is in jail, right?
CALLER: Yeah, he’s in jail.
RUSH: All right. See, in some circles it is racist to mention that Kwame Kilpatrick is in jail. But he is. By the way, speaking of Michigan and Detroit, our affiliate there WJR radio is gonna broadcast the automotive roundtable on their website, WJR.com. It’s going to originate in their studio and be heard throughout the ABC Radio Network tomorrow night. I wanted to mention this to you because they’re right in the thick of things here with the auto bailout, and WJR is the community leader in Detroit. So it’s on their website. It will be all over the ABC network tomorrow night, automotive roundtable. Just go to WJR.com and you’ll get all the details.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me clarify something about the special network-wide broadcasts on ABC Radio Network tomorrow night. WJR in Detroit, it’s a live two-hour broadcast. It will be on the ABC Radio networks, and they’re going to have Rick Wagoner of General Motors, Nardelli from Chrysler, Mulally from Ford will be there, and they’re also going to have Gettelfinger from the United Auto Workers and Annette Sykora. It’s a two-hour special.
Paul W. Smith will be moderating, and you can check it out at WJR.com.