EIB Conversation: Ann Coulter

RUSH: As you know ladies and gentlemen we very infrequently have guests here. We do make occasions now and then. Today is one of those occasions. Ann Coulter is here, and for those of you watching on the Dittocam, we’ve got a new camera placement so that you see Ann and a view of me that seldom is ever seen, my rear. (laughing) But Ann Coulter’s new book — and I’m sure a number of you have seen her pilloried and abused on cable television for the past week. I noted, Ann, that the initial appearances, the Matt Lauers and the others basically attacking your right to breathe. ‘Who the hell are you?’ And then whenever they deigned to get into the substance of your book, you wipe ’em up, and so they forget that and then start attacking your tone, which is where we are. I’ve had time to read portions of the book, and as is always the case with Ann Coulter books, there is serious, unique substance in these books, mixed in with the irreverent humor, which is what the critics harp on and overlook on purpose, some of the substance. I want to talk to you about some of the substance in the book, and if you feel like being funny —

COULTER: Thank you. I am so honored to be here. I know you don’t have guests.

RUSH: It’s a thrill to have you here. The title of the book is Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America. Now you’re a prolific writer. You come out with a book every 18 months. Is that about right?

COULTER: Roughly.

RUSH: Okay. So where did the idea for this book — what did it start out to be? Do you do an outline? Do your books end up as you envision them when you start them?

COULTER: Not at all. I do all my own research, and suddenly, you know, you’ll find interesting things where you weren’t expecting to and you won’t find interesting things where you thought you were going to. This was going to be more on specific victims. I mean it started with authentic victims in America, the blacks. There really was slavery, there really was Jim Crow, but then you have all these pseudo-victims, fake victims glomming onto the black story, illegal immigrants, the Muslims, the gays, my favorite victim group, wealthy white women living in Scarsdale who were bored being housewives — that’s Betty Friedan victim — but then as I was writing, it was during the 2008 campaign, and of course the biggest victimizers of all are the media. They are the only attack machine, and yet they create villains, they tell these morality tales and there’s always a villain and a victim. By the way, you are a big villain in these morality tales, but of course what they’re trying to do is create an atmosphere of contempt, what they’re doing to me now, but at least I can then come on the Rush Limbaugh Show. I can’t believe you did this without a Rush Limbaugh Show for you to go on.

RUSH: (laughing) So what you mean here when you say that the victims are really the victimizers —

COULTER: Yes.

RUSH: — victims are portrayed as helpless, sorrowful, sad-sack minorities. What you’re saying is they’re really power groups?

COULTER: Yes. I mean look at the Duke lacrosse players. They were supposed to be the victimizers of this poor, single mother, of course, black woman —

RUSH: Stripper —

COULTER: — stripper —

RUSH: — dancer.

COULTER: Yes. And who was being victimized in that story? And, by the way, as I described in this book, the New York Times was holding on to the bitter end telling the stripper side of the story, which was untrue, and lying about it, but thanks to the Internet, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize biased story on the Duke lacrosse players was torn apart within hours of it being posted online. And you had one of my favorite ones, which I describe in the story, 95% world domination is not enough, it’s about how the media, the mainstream media is always claiming to be a victim of themselves, of the media, the media isn’t covering this, the media isn’t covering that, and I loved this, when the New York Times exposed the Swift program — remember, that was the government following the terrorist financing — which coincidentally, by the way, which everyone has forgotten, the New York Times wrote an editorial two weeks after the 9/11 attack basically demanding that the Bush administration start tracking terrorist financing.

RUSH: That’s right.

COULTER: So the government does it, they invite the media in to be open, tell the media what’s going on, a consortium of various international financial institutions are tracking terrorist financing, but they ask various outlets of the media, do not expose this, and, of course, the New York Times puts it on the front page.

RUSH: Right.

COULTER: Making the easiest job in the world, head of counterterrorism, Al-Qaeda, you just have to read the New York Times every morning over your coffee and you’re done. And first the New York Times defended itself, was indignant that of course Americans were hopping mad and wanted to boil the New York Times editors and reporters in oil. First the New York Times denied that it had done anything unusual, because it was also on the cover of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Well, you know, the Wall Street Journal didn’t appreciate being treated as the New York Times wing man and came out and said, yeah, we knew, but we weren’t gonna print it, and then once you told Treasury that you were gonna print it, Treasury asked us to print our own version of it so that at least the facts would be right, but the greatest thing was, Frank Rich wrote two columns in a row talking about how the New York Times, the poor little New York Times was being bullied by patriotic Americans, enraged that they were revealing secret terrorist programs and actually raised the issue of anti-Semitism. He quoted favorably Chris Matthews on Hardball saying, ‘Oh, it’s the old story, go after big ethnic New York.’

RUSH: I think we need a new name for cable news, the Sanitarium. Where are the insane people in this society? They’re working in cable news for the most part. Interesting about the warrantless wiretap situation, it’s another thing Obama is going to hold onto. In fact, the New York Times had a story yesterday reporting that some intelligence court is going to come out and say it’s entirely legal —

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: — after four years of trying to destroy Bush and any Republican, now it’s entirely legal just in time for The Messiah to have access.

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: If there’s anybody who might spy on Americans using this, it would be this incoming administration.

COULTER: Right. Right. And I agree with you on Gitmo. I’ve noticed that the mainstream media has suddenly started running articles in Newsweek, LA Times, not yet the New York Times, that are suddenly describing how dangerous the detainees are at Guantanamo.

RUSH: Exactly.

COULTER: Never heard about that for the past seven years.

RUSH: And then it will manifest itself after The One accepts the oath of office on Tuesday, and a few short days afterwards we’ll start hearing members of the administration say, ‘We didn’t know how bad it really was.’

COULTER: Right, right.

RUSH: ‘The Bush administration held out on us. It’s worse than we knew at Guantanamo. It’s worse than we knew in the economy.’

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: They’ll do what they can to continue to dump on Bush. I could see how you’re looking out over our culture and you see these groups of cultural victims who have become as minorities, majorities through intimidation —

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: — and of course Republicans are easy to intimidate these days.

COULTER: Yes.

RUSH: And the more you look into it once again you end up with a book, not largely, but significantly about the media.

COULTER: A lot of it, yes, because they are the biggest victimizers. I mean they talk about the Republican attack machine. I have a whole chapter on the Republican attack machine, because it’s one of the many imaginary phenomenon that terrifies liberals, along with global warming. The conservative media and the Republican National Committee guy I guess has them seized with terror. And I kept hearing, every time I wasn’t even trying to pay attention to what was on TV, I kept hearing, ‘What are the Republicans going to do and the Republican attack machine,’ so I looked up on Nexis how often ‘Republican attack machine,’ the phrase, has been used. More than 700 times in a one-year period.

RUSH: There isn’t one, though.

COULTER: Well, yes, that’s the point of the chapter. But, meanwhile, ‘Democrat attack machine’ has been used about seven times and there isn’t even really a Democrat attack machine. There is one attack machine, it is the media, and, for example, the Democratic National Committee coming up with the fake National Guard documents — that was CBS News — and then calling it into the Kerry campaign. It wasn’t the Obama campaign inventing the story at Sarah Palin rallies when she mentions Obama that members of the crowd were yelling, ‘Kill him.’ No, that was a member of the media. And the most striking proof of the media being the most powerful attack machine is once they jumped ship from the old golden boy Bill Clinton and the new golden boy, B. Hussein Obama came around, you see who wins.

RUSH: All right, now, I want to give you a chance, because you say ‘B. Hussein Obama’ to your average cable news host, and they freak. Now, I happen, as a highly trained broadcast specialist, I understand why you do it, but I want to hear your reason. You tell ’em why you’re doing it.

COULTER: Well, it is kind of funny that we just had this huge war against an enemy named Hussein, and the Democrats are running a candidate whose middle name is Hussein. And, by the way, when we ran J. Danforth Quayle, Calvin Trillin wrote an article, I think it was in the New York Times, I’m not sure, some mainstream media, sneering at the Republicans for being so stupid to run someone with a name like that and he sounds like a banker and it fits right into the image of Republicans as the party of the rich. Well, Democrats are kind of soft on terrorism and now they’re running a candidate, well, he’s about to assume the office of the presidency, with a middle name Hussein, I might have dropped it except every time I said it, liberals would go crazy, but as I’ve said before, it would be like Republicans running in 1948 a candidate named Thomas Hitler Dewey. I think people would notice that.

RUSH: There was a couple, by the way, a couple in New Jersey I think that actually had a kid and they gave him the middle name Hitler. I just saw this yesterday.

COULTER: And I think he was taken away from them, as he should have been.

RUSH: I’ll tell you, we are going to broadcast B. Hussein Obama’s immaculate inaugural address on Tuesday, and I have instructed the broadcast engineer during the oath, both when it is given and he recites it, to bleep when he uses the name Hussein. Remember, John McCain jumped all over people in his campaign —

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: — to avoid any controversy whatsoever, we will bleep when he uses his own middle name. We’re talking with Ann Coulter about her new book, Guilty.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, Open Line Friday, with Ann Coulter and her new book, Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America. I tell you, for me this is an especially timely topic because I first became aware of this in the early nineties — well, late eighties — when I started this show. I’m in the process of attracting affiliates and so forth, and this is in the middle of the AIDS issue, the politicization of that disease —

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: — and so forth, and I, you know, would offer my opinion about it. And here came a distinct minority that was just doing everything they could to intimidate radio stations and even me from not saying what I wanted, and I ran into some news reporters about this. They said, ‘Well, we must give them voice. They are a minority and they are just trying to attain the same rights everybody else has and so forth,’ and I heard the Democrats talking about the ‘tyranny of the minority’ when the Republicans were in the majority —

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: — and now that they’re in the majority, they don’t care about the minority, but it’s amazed me how the majority has just caved.

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: I don’t care what group of victims you’re talking about, it seems the vast majority —

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: — and all victim groups are liberals.

COULTER: Yes.

RUSH: It’s a part and parcel of their political structure.

COULTER: That’s exactly right, yeah.

RUSH: Take this out of the realm of the media because your examples there are great, but it’s amazing how many cultural —

COULTER: Yes.

RUSH: — conservatives who we would define that descend from the true virtue of the founding of this country, are caving —

COULTER: Yes.

RUSH: — to the attempt to destroy that very culture.

COULTER: Well, that’s part of the reason for this book, and I describe why I think how that works in this country. It actually is sort of a nice thing about America. Americans are incredibly charitable and kindhearted people, and so when they see some liberal claiming to having mortally offended, their natural instinct is to rush in and, you know, aid the afflicted. Well, I’m trying with this book to say, ‘These are crocodile tears. Stop falling for it. I know you’re lovely, charitable people.’ Americans do look…

RUSH: It’s a political tactic.

COULTER: Yes.

RUSH: There’s nothing genuine about it.

COULTER: Yes. And there’s example after example.

RUSH: Where is it in the Constitution where you have the right not to be offended?

COULTER: Right. Well, he who is offended first wins in America.

RUSH: Right. That’s precisely it. How to stop it?

COULTER: Well, to point it out. Once people start recognizing it and chuckling at it instead of opening their wallets and their hearts — and, as I describe, Americans are the most charitable people in the universe, so I understand why it works. They love a disaster, whether it’s a tsunami — I shouldn’t say ‘love,’ but they are almost greedy to help people who are hurting from a terrorist attack, to a tsunami, to a little girl down a pipe in Texas. Americans are making sandwiches, raising money, and donating blood; and the whole country will fixate on the little girl in the pipe. So Americans are sitting ducks for the crocodile tears of the liberals.

RUSH: All right, now, does this relate in any way…? We go back to the 2006 elections. I think one of the reasons we have a McCain in 2008 is because we lost George Allen in 2006 —

COULTER: Yes.

RUSH: — over a word, and I think we lost the House of Representatives because of Mark Foley. It was nothing the Democrats did. The word was Macaca.

COULTER: Right. (laughing)

RUSH: What’s the truth behind this — and what did George Allen do that was wrong, in the aftermath, if anything?

COULTER: I describe this. First of all, George Allen was down in a not very wealthy area of Virginia, a rural part of town. The richest person, the most privileged person in the audience was this kid who was called Macaca. So in the audience, the most privileged individual —

RUSH: This kid’s a plant, right?

COULTER: Well, yes, he was, from the opposition —

RUSH: Yeah.

COULTER: — research, he’s as I call them the Nazi block watchers. They show up at the opponent’s campaign with their little cameras, and I think what Allen was doing was alerting these Americans in the audience, these lovely poor — not poor, but not wealthy — people that if they ask a stupid question, they were about to become YouTube celebrities. So he interrupts himself, and it’s actually a cheerful, nice thing — and also, you know, there’s this one glum kid standing in the middle frowning and filming everyone. So he introduces the kid and says, you know, in a cheerful way… Oh, and at the same time Jim Webb, George Allen’s opponent was out meeting with some Hollywood celebrities to raise money. So Allen makes a joke about that and says, ‘I want to introduce, I don’t know what your name is, Macaca. You’re here from my opponent’s campaign. Tell him what real America is like. He’s out meeting with Hollywood celebrities.’

The Washington Post ran hundreds of articles on this. I don’t know how Indian-American… Oh, the Macaca was a kid from a privileged family. He went to good schools in the wealthy suburb of Washington and Virginia. He was going to the University of Virginia. How does he become the victim in this story? He’s trying to make fun of normal Americans showing up at a campaign rally. Okay, meanwhile, flash to Allen’s opponent, Jim Webb, and you will search high and low to find any stories on this — what I think are pretty clearly viciously anti-Semitic fliers against his primary opponent, who was Jewish. I describe them in the book. It shows his opponent in caricature like something out of Al Jazeera with a big hook nose and money coming out of his pocket. He calls him ‘jobs killer’ and ‘the anti-Christ of outsourcing’? And in each picture there’s framed pictures of a dollar sign. That raises absolutely no attention.

RUSH: Right. We all know why, and that’s because the Democrats are incapable of such things and so they’re protected.

COULTER: (laughing)

RUSH: Well, no. They don’t pretend to have any standards, so they can’t violate them. They’re protected. It’s just like Geithner can get away with not paying his taxes, but you and I can’t.

COULTER: Right, right.

RUSH: Two sets of rules, liberals and everybody else. But I never heard of the word Macaca, and I was stunned to see weeks and weeks —

COULTER: (laughing) Right.

RUSH: — of exploration, in-depth investigative reporting on just what the hell a Macaca was. And I still don’t know! What is a Macaca?

COULTER: Well, they dig up some foreign language in which it means monkey, but, A, no one in the audience would have known that even if George Allen did because his mother had once lived in this country, was from some African country. Even if he knew what it meant, no one in the audience knew so it wasn’t a way of getting people to laugh and ridicule this kid. But moreover, when did Indian-Americans become of certified victim category? What did we ever do to the Indians?

RUSH: Which Indians?

COULTER: The Indians from India.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

COULTER: No, the other Indians I know what we did to — and that was the Democrats, once again, Andrew Jackson. (laughing)

RUSH: Precisely. She knows her history, folks. (laughing) Now, that’s exactly right. Now, we’ve got one minute. Where did Allen go wrong in your opinion? If you had been running his show, where did he go wrong once the onslaught began?

COULTER: Not only he, but the Republicans around him. He apologized. He should never, ever have apologized.

RUSH: That’s exactly right. See, this is, ‘Ooh, no! We’re nice people.’

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: ‘We’re not racist. We’re not any of these things you say, and I’m sure I offended you.’

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: And of course the people on the side of the attack, ‘We welcome you over.’

COULTER: Right. The moment you apologize, you have admitted that what they were attacking you for had some merit. Well, it didn’t have merit. If you ever do something wrong, fine. I’m not against apologizing. But these are always synthetic scandals; there’s always a completely phony victim. Like I say, the wealthiest person in the audience was the victim in this story.

RUSH: Exactly right. Well, I agree with you. I don’t apologize ever. It helps that I’m never wrong. It’s hard, but, I —

COULTER: Yes, you never make mistake.

RUSH: Well, no. In a political thing, an apology is a tantamount admission to the charge they’re demanding you apologize for and that’s where Allen went wrong. Brief time-out. You got a couple more minutes here?

COULTER: Yes, I do!

RUSH: Okay, Ann Coulter is the rare guest today, and we will be back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It’s Open Line Friday, El Rushbo — the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling Maha Rushie — with Ann Coulter and her new book, which I’m kind of honored we’re actually discussing what’s in the book for the first time in her week-long series of interviews rather than her tone.

COULTER: (laughing)

RUSH: The title of the book is Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America. It’s fascinating. Folks, it is a fascinating premise. This whole business of how these poor, oppressed victimized little groups are running this country, with the aid of their willing accomplices in the Drive-By Media. Now, George Soros. There are two more people I want to ask you about here. George Soros, and as you say, ‘B. Hussein Obama.’

COULTER: (laughing)

RUSH: Everybody thinks — well, not everybody. A lot of people think that we know George Soros, that he funds a bunch of 527s for Democrats and that he would spare no expense to get Hillary elected, then B. Hussein Obama or whatever, but you have a little bit more information about Soros in your book than a lot of people know and how he does what he does.

COULTER: Right. Well, first of all he does own the Democratic Party, thanks to campaign finance reform. Thank you, John McCain. Now individuals have less power. Plutocrats, like George Soros, have more power. And one of his minions said, ‘We bought it, we own it, it’s ours.’ When he switched from the Clintons to Obama, like the media, you see who wins. What I think is interesting about Soros; and Markos, whatever his name is, of Daily Kos; and Arianna Huffington are, you know, basically the three unofficial spokesmen of the Democratic Party and they all speak in foreign accents of their foreign upbringings. Can’t you wait a few generations? Let your grandkids do the America bashing, you know, not right away. You can barely understand them.

RUSH: Arianna, you need a translator.

COULTER: And George Soros!

RUSH: Yeah, him, too. I’ve never heard the Daily Kos guy speak.

COULTER: Yeah, he was brought up in someplace in Latin America. You can’t understand them. They speak in foreign accents. They represent the Democratic Party. George Soros, to show his great patriotism on 9/11 — this is all you need to know about George Soros. After the 9/11 attack, there was a big move on Wall Street to buy American because there was a fear that when the market opened the following Monday, there would be a huge stock market crash. And short sellers who bet that American stocks would go down — if there are a lot of short sellers, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because everybody is trying to not lose money by not short selling. So there was a big campaign by bond managers sending out letters to all of their investors saying, ‘There’s nothing that I think would upset a lot of terrible people more than a big stock market rally on Monday.’ Out across America, you had little old ladies and farmers and bankers and waitresses calling their banks — they’d never bought a stock before — finding out how to buy $50 worth of stock. And on Monday the stock market opens, they sing God bless America, ring the bell, and George Soros said, ‘Sell! Sell! Sell!’

RUSH: So he went short.

COULTER: Yeah.

RUSH: And upset the whole thing.

COULTER: When asked about it by Steve Kroft, he said, for one thing, he finally… Well, it’s very clear. We quote it in my book. He admitted to collaborating with the Nazis as a teenager and he said the same thing about selling America short as collaborating with the Nazis. ‘Well, if I hadn’t done it, someone else would have.’ That’s the man who runs the Democratic Party.

RUSH: ‘B. Hussein Obama,’ again, as you refer to him, everybody knows that… Well, again, I think anyone listening to this program knows that in his race for the US Senate in 2004. It was ’04, right?

COULTER: I think that’s right.

RUSH: Yeah.

COULTER: He’s only been a Senator for what, six or seven minutes?

RUSH: Yeah, that’s right, because Roland Burris — moving on up — will only have two years in the Senate. Right.

COULTER: (laughing)

RUSH: So the media helped Obama get private divorce files of one opponent, but there were two —

COULTER: There were two.

RUSH: That’s been one of Obama’s modus operandis is to clear the playing field.

COULTER: Yep.

RUSH: So there is nobody you have to beat.

COULTER: I mean, this is the power of the media and why they are running the Democrats rather than the Democrats running the media. Obama and other liberal Democrats can always stand up and give magnanimous speeches about how, ‘I would never go after my opponent’s family.’ Well, of course! You don’t have to. You’ve got the media doing it for you, and so both times, first with Obama’s primary opponent — who was way ahead in the polls, he was very wealthy, he was going to win the primary, and so the media go in and get his sealed divorce records unsealed. And, by the way, speaking as a lawyer, I don’t understand the point of sealing records if all that has to happen is for the media to say, ‘We think they’d be interesting. Can you get them unsealed them for us?’ and get them unsealed.

RUSH: It’s Chicago.

COULTER: Well, then California, the case of Jack Ryan, a stunning Republican candidate, and this is another example of why you and I may be the last Republicans in name only because the actual Republican Party completely dumped a magnificent candidate, Jack Ryan, once again, luckily for Obama, his opponent was divorced. And so the media fly out to California, they get his divorce records, actually the custody records in this case unsealed. There is a highly implausible claim in the divorce records from his ex-wife, a member of Star Trek Voyager. He accused her of having an affair and she responded, ‘The only reason I had an affair was because he took me to sex clubs in New York, Paris, and I think New Orleans.’ So once again we have a Republican sex scandal that doesn’t involve anyone having sex!

RUSH: (laughing)

COULTER: He was accused of propositioning his own wife — and, by the way, then when Obama’s running against Sarah Palin I noticed once again Obama has a tough, formidable opponent (which John McCain was not) so someone’s divorce records would have to be unsealed. Of course, Sarah Palin wasn’t divorced so it wasn’t her divorce records, reporters fly into Alaska. They unseal the divorce records of Todd Palin’s business partner, with whom Sarah Palin was accused of having an affair. Alas, she was not.

RUSH: This traces back to Chicago and Illinois politics. What’s the media…? Local and national, what’s their really attraction to Obama? Is it race?

COULTER: Part of it, definitely is. For one thing, the media is more left wing than probably the average of the Democratic Party, even elected officials.

RUSH: That would be tough to be.

COULTER: Well, and certainly people who call themselves Democrat. The media is very, very left wing. You have with Obama, the most left-wing president we’ve ever had. So they liked that he’s — at least what he said he’s going to do, but we hope that he has been lying to Daily Kos. And also there is the fact that he’s black. Because as I point out, when it mattered — during slavery, during the civil rights battles — the Democratic Party was on the wrong side. So, you know, 40 years later they want a do-over which is why they’re constantly creating fake racial hoaxes in this country so now they can finally come out and take a stand against racism, at the precise moment when no one is defending racism. So thanks, Democrats.

RUSH: Now, speaking of all this, Obama will be immaculated on Tuesday.

COULTER: (laughing)

RUSH: The Republican Party to a person is out saying, ‘We hope had he succeeds. We want the new, young president to succeed.’ What do you think’s going to happen? Let’s go current events here. I know you didn’t touch this in the book, but what do you think is going to happen in the Obama administration?

COULTER: I think you are right, from what you were saying in the first part of your program, and I hope he succeeds in the sense that, if he succeeds, that means he was totally lying to the New York Times and, you know, Code Pink. That means he was lying to them, and he will have to govern like a conservative. I suspect he may be doing what you were talking about in your program. Backing down from closing Gitmo, which is, you know, renamed Obamaville, backing down from pulling out of Iraq, not raising taxes on, quote, the rich, i.e., people who work for a living. Because if he doesn’t he’s going to be another Jimmy Carter and it’s going to be a four-year term, so he gets elected as you say, as the cult figure. They’re all getting on the comment. But then for him to succeed I mean in his heart he’s a liberal so I don’t know where the liberalism is going to come out. Maybe it will be things like abortion and gay marriage —

RUSH: Oh, no question. No question.

COULTER: — taxes, the economy will collapse.

RUSH: Abortion, gay marriage, same-sex marriage —

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: Well, and there’s a third element to this, and I’m having a mental block, but there are three pillars to the cultural overhaul that they want to engage in. Look, the guy is a full-fledged leftist.

COULTER: Right. Right.

RUSH: He’s just a full-fledged leftist, but he won’t be able to get away with getting what he wants if he talks that way. That’s why these cabinet members are moderate figureheads. We all know that Bill Ayers will provide primary advice on education. They could never put him in the cabinet.

COULTER: (laughing) Right. And that does show the victory, by the way — (snorts) I mean I’d like more of a substantive victory, but the victory — of conservative ideas in America. Even Obama runs on tax cuts. I mean, he says he’s going to give tax cuts to everyone, including people who don’t pay taxes, which was a little suspicious to some of us. I think that’s called welfare. But he doesn’t run saying, ‘I’m going to raise taxes and raise welfare benefits.’ He says, ‘I’m cutting taxes.’

RUSH: Well, he’s still saying some dangerous things, though. Government is the only element that can fix the economy —

COULTER: Yes.

RUSH: — and all these sorts of things, so it’s going to be interesting to see. He’s going to have no opposition.

COULTER: Right.

RUSH: Republicans are bending over forwards. They’re bending over backwards and grabbing the ankles.

COULTER: And blaming you. I knew it was your fault that John McCain lost. (laughing)

RUSH: Well, Colin Powell blamed me. He said the Republicans need to stop listening to me, which they did a long time ago. Who was it? It was Chris Matthews on Hardball last night who said — or, no, it was Steve McMahon, you know, one of these Ken doll —

COULTER: Oh, yeah.

RUSH: — inside-the-Beltway Democrat strategerists. And he said, ‘The problem with the Republican Party is that Rush Limbaugh is dragging them to the right.’

COULTER: If only! (laughing)

RUSH: Well, look, your book has been out, what?

COULTER: One week.

RUSH: One week, and you’re debuting at number two on the New York Times.

COULTER: Number one on Book Scan.

RUSH: Number one on Book Scan. Well, after this we’ll take care of those number twos and number threes and all that.

COULTER: (laughing)

RUSH: I wish you the best. You are a prolific writer, and you have a lot of admirers out there because you don’t take the guff, and you do not allow yourself to be manipulated or intimidated by these people, and you say to some of these people who interview you what a lot of Republican conservative voters wish their elected officials would say. Plus you make people laugh, and there’s nothing wrong with that, especially now.

COULTER: Thank you, Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH: Great that you came by. Good luck with the book. Do you have an idea for your next one? Do you work that far in advance?

COULTER: Not exactly. A few ideas. I have to say when I was writing this I kept thinking, ‘This could be the encyclopedia Britannica. I can’t put it all in.’ But I think George Will told me, Shelley said, the poet, ‘A poem is never finished. It’s abandoned,’ and that’s what I always end up doing with the books because I can think of 17 more chapters in this book.

RUSH: Well, put ’em in the paperback.

COULTER: Yeah. (giggles)

RUSH: All right. Ann Coulter.