RUSH: Here is Brooks in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, great to have you on the EIB Network, sir, hello.

CALLER: I am stoked, Rush, I haven’t talked to you since I started my degree in college, and now I’m driving back today, got to hear your whole show, so you made my day by getting me on.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. Appreciate that.

CALLER: Well, I have a quick question about economics and the debate and the election going on, and then I was just curious to ask you something about Steve Jobs, since you got me interested in him. But the question about the economic thing is, do you think if there was a real bad turn in our economy over the next year, that this would help Obama by scaring people back to him just to keep the status quo, or would it —

RUSH: No. No.

CALLER: — help Romney or would it help maybe somebody who’s not doing very well in the polls right now? Would it help Romney, Obama, or somebody else?

RUSH: It would hurt Obama and that would be the only factor you’d need to know. As to who it would help specifically, if there’s another dip, we’re gonna be close to the Republican nominee, will help whoever that is. An economy that slips further into an abyss is not gonna help Obama. They’re gonna try to play it your way, they’ll try to say, “Look, it’s worse than we thought and it’s gonna take us a little longer than we thought, but the last thing we want to do is change horses in the middle of the stream ’cause, look, we’re just now starting to show progress here in unemployment.” No matter how bad the news is they will say that there are signs of success and they’ll find some area of the economy where they can say their stimulus package is working and they’ll go the “we can’t change horses in the middle of the stream” route.

CALLER: And, Rush, before I go can I ask you about Steve Jobs?

RUSH: Quickly.

CALLER: Okay. I saw someone saying the other day that they thought that now that he had passed away, that Apple would be a little more open with their — this person called it paranoia about keeping a closed system on everything and being all locked down ’cause Steve Jobs evidently, I started reading his biography after you recommended it, and he was, you know, a little paranoid about that. Do you think they’ll open the gates a little bit?

RUSH: Too soon to tell. Too soon. I really don’t know yet. It’s just impossible to know what the new CEO is gonna want to do to put his stamp on the company. Way too soon to tell. But it’s an interesting question.