RUSH: Tom in Ridgeley, West Virginia. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you very much, Rush. And dittos from a frequent listener.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: You’re right on for everything you’re saying. What a great time to be a conservative. I’d like to ask you please to stick to your guns and don’t endorse anyone in the primary, at least not anywhere near yet.
RUSH: Why are you saying that? Because you would not believe the pressure that’s on me.
CALLER: Well, yeah, but you gotta suspect the motives of the people that are doing that. There’s nothing that Obama would like more than to trim — right now he’s outnumbered10 or 12 to one ’cause you can still count Huckabee and Palin and Trump and a couple of other people who aren’t officially in it.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Okay? But he’s outnumbered10 on 15 to one, and he would like nothing better than to trim that down to one person that he can pick on and try to destroy for the next 18 months, okay? It won’t happen, but to my mind it might be best if Obama didn’t know who the last man standing was until the convention, ’cause that would really blow his mind.
RUSH: Well, he’s gonna find out before the convention.
CALLER: I know, well before that. In my opinion, each and every one of the candidates last night came up 10% in my opinion. They all did a fantastic job of making sure they focused on Obama and recognized that they —
RUSH: Exactly right.
CALLER: — on the media.
RUSH: Here you had John King, “We don’t have the money to deport 20 million illegals. No, we don’t have the money.” But he has no problem housing and feeding and educating and giving all of them health care. He has no problem with all the money we’re spending on precious liberal Democrat social policies. But we don’t have the money to deport these people.
Folks, let me tell you another reason why I have traditionally not endorsed in primaries. I mean there are always the obvious reasons, I’ve explained. But there’s something else that’s even more fundamental. It really is up to whoever the nominee is to win it. It’s not up to me to win it for ’em. It’s not up to anybody else in the media to endorse ’em and win it. It’s up to them. Well, if I would have foreseen what was gonna happen with McCain and Huckabee and Romney, ’cause I’m getting a little fed up with this BS that I didn’t endorse McCain and he won anyway. I didn’t endorse anybody. And they’re trying to say, the media, “Well, Limbaugh, he doesn’t deliver votes. Look at what happened, he was opposed to McCain.” I didn’t endorse anybody opposite McCain. If I had it would have been all over everybody’s literature.
I didn’t endorse anybody. I made it clear I opposed McCain on certain things, but I opposed others on certain things as well. I made it clear I opposed Huckabee. Huckabee was calling every week wanting to get on the program to respond to what I was saying. But maybe it’s old-fashioned; I just think it’s up to them to win it. It still holds true even now in the era of Obama. Yes, it does. It most certainly does. I do not have to pick someone. Now, that’s not to say I won’t, but I don’t have to pick somebody. You know, at this stage if I were to pick somebody, it would be me.
I got this special project coming tomorrow. It’s going to occupy a lot of time here and it’s gonna preclude me running for office. I have no desire, nothing’s changed on that. I don’t want to run for office. Besides, it’s not my job to pick the Republican nominee. That job is Colin Powell’s. Everybody knows that.
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