comMITTed to Romney!

Rush Limbaugh Does Not Endorse Mitt Romney…Again

Rush Limbaugh has a policy of not endorsing candidates in Primary elections and this Primary season has been no different. Rush Limbaugh has not officially endoresed any candidate for the Republican nominee for President. However, if you “read the stitches on a fastball” you can see a pattern emerging in the comments Rush makes about the various candidates.

Consider the following exchange that Rush had with a caller during his show on Dec. 12, 2007:

RUSH: Marty in Springfield, Virginia, I’m glad you called, and welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Yeah, look, you’re halfway, more than halfway through the show and you haven’t talked about the most important news to a lot of us conservatives. I mean we need you to intervene on this squabble between Romney and Huckabee. It’s escalating, and I’m afraid it’s going to tear up the Christian right coalition.

RUSH: Are you talking about Huckabee attacking Mitt’s Mormonism?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Don’t Mormons believe Jesus and the Devil were brothers?

CALLER: Yeah. I mean, come on, you know, he’s in the lead, why does he have to stoop to something like that?

RUSH: Why did he say in 2002, why did he go to George Bush and ask him to relax the Cuban embargo so that he could have a market for Arkansas rice, and then he was told, “Well, you got markets over there in Taiwan, you know, over in Asia.” “Oh, oh, okay, fine, well, then forget the embargo.”

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Those markets existed — Cuban market for rice? How am I supposed to intervene here? I’m serious, what would you like for me to do?

CALLER: Well, just tell ‘em to speak to the issues. If they’re not going to stick to the issues, why don’t you do it? I think you’re doing a pretty good job. Spell out what their position is, but say something that, you know, this doesn’t need to get ugly. This is only going to come back and bite us, you know –

RUSH: That’s not going to come back and bite us. How is it going to come back and bite us?

CALLER: No one wants to hear this negative crap that they’re associated with. I mean, what’s going to beat Hillary is, yeah, the right stand on issues, but it’s going to be a positive type of person who comes across as positive versus Hillary’s negative –

RUSH: How do you think Mitt’s dealing with this?

CALLER: Let me qualify myself. First, I am a Latter-day Saint. I’m going to go with Mitt. He wasn’t my first choice but, you know, when Gingrich bugged out, I was upset about that, and Allen got screwed by the media but I mean all things considered, whether I was LDS or not, I’m going with Romney, but I’d vote for Huckabee, but, I mean, for crying out loud, you know, I think Romney doesn’t need to be too negative. I think his ad that he just came out with is pretty straightforward, here’s the similarities, here’s the –

RUSH: Yeah, it’s not negative at all –

CALLER: I don’t really think it was. The media says it’s negative, but I don’t think it was, but I wish he wouldn’t hammer Huckabee so much. I mean, I want him to clearly delineate the issues. But Huckabee certainly goes over the line a little bit.

RUSH: It’s a campaign, and I don’t care what people say, these negative ads, they work. They just do. Now, let’s talk about Huckabee for a second here and this Lucifer and Jesus comment. Aren’t Jesus and the Devil brothers in Mormons’ belief? What I think Huckabee is — you know, Iowa is one thing, but he’s gotta take that beyond Iowa. And right now he’s at 9% in New Hampshire. He’s got a ten-point lead in Iowa and he wants to build on that. The audience he’s shooting for is the evangelical crowd in Iowa, latest numbers I saw, 48, 49% of the evangelical crowd is for Romney. I saw another poll, I think yesterday, that said 17% of evangelicals said they would never vote for a Mormon. So I think what Huckabee is trying to do is really build that lead, not just win Iowa, but have a smoking win to give him some momentum to go elsewhere, because the evangelical crowd in New Hampshire is not as big a crowd, even if he got them all, he wouldn’t move up. Romney is way ahead there. So I think he’s just trying to capitalize on the strength that he’s deriving in Iowa from the evangelicals.

It is an unfortunate comment, and Romney came back and said, yeah, these religious comments are over the top. It was what his speech was about last week, which I thought, as I said many times, I thought it was a fantastic, inspirational, and uplifting speech, and it wasn’t so much about religion as it was about religion’s ties to the founding of this country, and very, very important. I think Huckabee is showing us who he is, and he thinks this is what it takes to win, and he’s a Baptist minister, and his religion is very serious to him, too. He’s using it for all it’s worth for him, and I think I understand why. I don’t think I could stop it, either.

CALLER: Well, I don’t know. I think you could. I think you control America, and that’s good. I think at the very least, you ought to be able to control the Republican nominees. I mean, they’re all beholden to you, they wouldn’t be in power anyway.

RUSH: You may have a point, now that I think about it in that regard. You might. People don’t believe this, but my staff would believe me when I say, I walk around here with such humility, you would not believe it. They’re all laughing because they know it’s true. Okay, so, you know, I’m thinking you may have a good point here in the sense that what you’re asking for is somebody to stand up and say, “Would you guys stop acting like kids and start talking about the issues that are going to get us elected president: taxes, immigration, the future of the country and so forth, and stop all this stuff.” That’s the kind of thing you want me to say?

CALLER: You got it. We need a referee, Rush.

RUSH: I just said it. All right, I just said it. They’re going to start a debate here in 20 minutes in Iowa.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: We’ll see. The Des Moines Register is doing this debate, and they’re putting out the news that this could be seismic. How can a debate at one o’clock Central time be seismic? How can anything that happens at one or two o’clock be seismic? I think you’re also suggesting, maybe, that I call them personally, that I call Huckabee personally and McCain and all these guys, and say, “Cut this crap. This is serious. What we’re facing here is serious, the future of the country, and you all know you’re far more qualified than anybody on the Democrat side to lead this country. Don’t destroy our chances by making yourselves out to be people you really aren’t.”

CALLER: Exactly. If you could do that, it would be great. If Rove is giving advice to Obama and Chris Matthews is giving advice, you can give advice to both of them, if they just stick to the issues, because seriously, it’s getting to the point now that Huckabee –

RUSH: Well, now, wait a second, Romney is sticking to the issues.

CALLER: He is.

RUSH: Even that so-called attack ad against Huckabee was about issues.

CALLER: I agree. I think he needs to say things in a positive way, but, you know, people are going to — in the general election, if Huckabee’s going to start, you know, sure it’s fine to target, you know, the fear on the part of — or even bigotry on the part of some evangelicals to get elected, but that’s going to come back and bite you if in the general election the people who are undecided say, “Yeah, that just justifies the left’s portrayal of the Christian right as being a bunch of bigots.”

RUSH: Well –

CALLER: I mean, I’m going to vote for Huckabee if he gets the nomination. But, you know, for crying out loud, you know, he’s only going to shoot himself in the foot and put us at a disadvantage if he has to stoop to some things to get nominated.

(Rush begins to sound agitated and uncomfortable with the next statement, like he really wants to say something that he knows he shouldn’t.)

RUSH: You are putting me in a really, really unfortunate position here because during primaries, you know, I do not –

CALLER: We need you, Rush.

RUSH: — take a position on specific candidates. I know you’re not asking me to do that. You’re asking me to get in there and referee this and get these guys to grow up and stop it.
CALLER: You got it.

RUSH: All right, I’ll do it. Staff all shouting on the IFB, “Thank you!” I gotta hold my fire here. Huckabee, he got the endorsement of the minuteman guy. Do you realize what Huckabee’s immigration positions have been in the past? That endorsement stunned everybody. I couldn’t figure it out. I thought I was performing a service by staying out of this because I don’t take sides against or for candidates during primaries. But believe me, this thing you said about Romney and Jesus and Lucifer, this is not the first time that statements have been made from the Huckabee campaign that you go, “What?” (interruption) See, I know, I’m not refereeing. See, this is the risk, I’m running a huge risk here. But, look, I –

CALLER: No, you’re not.

RUSH: Actually, I’m not, because I can withstand it. I am running the country.

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: You know it and I know it. All right, look, you know, Marty, I appreciate this. You have beat me upside the head in a very productive way, and I appreciate it.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush.

RUSH: All right.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m going to tell you something about this. One more thing here, before we move on, on Romney and Huckabee and Huckabee saying, “Well, doesn’t Romney believe that Jesus and the Devil were brothers?” What this does… I happen to think that Romney… Look, you can figure this out, too. Romney has to have been waiting for something like this to happen. He’s probably surprised it’s taken this long. He knows what a target his religion is. That’s why he gave the speech last week. He’s been waiting for this. It puts him on the high ground, I think. I think the way he came back and what he said is over the top. What did he say? This is “going too far.” Attacking somebody’s religion is going too far. I’ll tell you something. I mentioned this the other day. There’s a history of Democrats attacking the religion of conservatives, Christianity and evangelicals and the people who practice them. This time, it’s a Christian attacking a Mormon and so forth. But it gives Romney the high ground, temporarily. It just know he had to be waiting for this. He just had to be — and these things tend to work themselves out. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to intercede, I don’t want you to misunderstand. I’m not looking for outs.

Don’t panic.

Then again, in analyzing the Iowa Register GOP Debate, Rush lauded Governor Romney’s performance. The following is from the transcript of Dec. 13 show.

RUSH: Okay, the Keyesters are back in the debate. Alan Keyes admitted; Dennis Kucinich kicked off the Democrat debate today. Here’s an interesting answer from Romney. The Des Moines Register editor, Carolyn Washburn says, “Are there programs or situations that are so important you’d be willing to run a deficit to pay for them?”

ROMNEY: Well, we don’t have run a deficit to pay for the things that are most important because we can eliminate the things that aren’t critical. We have in the federal government 342 different economic development programs –

RUSH: Right on.

ROMNEY: — often administered by different departments.

RUSH: Right on.

ROMNEY: We don’t need 342.

RUSH: Right on.

ROMNEY: We have 40 different programs for workforce training.

RUSH: Right on.

ROMNEY: There are probably five or six that are really working and a lot that are not working terribly well.

RUSH: Right on.

ROMNEY: We can get rid of some of those. We have 13 different programs to prevent teenage pregnancy –

RUSH: Right on.

ROMNEY: — they’re obviously not working real well, and we could probably cut it down to one or two that are making a difference.

RUSH: I love this answer. We don’t have to run the deficit to pay for the things that are most important, we can eliminate the things that aren’t critical, all the redundancy that we have in these social programs.

Romney’s conservatism is getting noticed and even those, like Rush, who try to remain neutral cannot conceal that they are warming considerably to the idea of a Romney nomination.

Share on Facebook

Share This