Posted on 05/23/2005 9:15:28 AM PDT by Matchett-PI
Actually Rush and Dizzy Dean have something in common. The more they both talk, the better it is for Conservatives.
"Let's see: He has an MBA and can fly a jet."
Ahhh, I am as much a fan of Rush as anyone BUT Rush does NOT have an MBA. By his own admission, he never finished college. Also, he does not fly a jet. He has a pilot to fly him.
"Howard Dean admitted being a drinker "early in the day."
It took him a few shots for breakfast to get up the courage to admit it ....
"The quote was taken out of context. Howard Dean admitted being a drinker "early in the day."" - IowaHawk
"..No doubt the transcript of the program will be posted at his web site later and I'll copy and paste it here. That will serve to correct any misquotes that were made here." - 68 posted on 05/23/2005 1:12:47 PM EDT by Matchett-PI
Here are the exact quotes from the transcript which is printed in its entirety below these excerpts:
"... Did you know in his younger days he admitted to being a binge drinker? He admitted to being one. It might be helpful if we could see his medical records, might be helpful if we could get Dean's medical records and plaster them all over CNN because we won't really know the truth about anything until we get these medical records, where have we heard this?
.. But I think we ought to demand the same sort of accountability from him as he's demanding from us. We need to see his medical records. He's admitting to having a drinking problem in his early days. He binged a lot, quit when he was 30 years old. How many brain cells did he lose? It's obvious he suffered some brain damage from all that binge drinking. You can see it on display each time he opens his mouth." ...
[end excerpts from transcript below]
Please, Dr. Dean, Keep Talking About Me
May 23, 2005
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_052305/content/thank_god_for_my_enemies.member.html
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Folks, I'm in a quandary over what to do with this Howard Dean stuff from Meet the Press yesterday. It's an old story -- the story of Howard Dean on Meet the Press yesterday. Did you know in his younger days he admitted to being a binge drinker? He admitted to being one. It might be helpful if we could see his medical records, might be helpful if we could get Dean's medical records and plaster them all over CNN because we won't really know the truth about anything until we get these medical records, where have we heard this?
And, you know, he said that he had a problem with drinking up until the time he was 30 and quit then. I dug the story out of the New York Daily News today, but this is just an old story about impersonating me snorting cocaine before an audience in Minnesota, and Russert asked him about it yesterday and he defended his actions.
The reason I think it's important to see Dean's medical records is we need to know how many brain cells he lost during his drinking binge period of his because, you know, it's incredible. I mean, you've got Dean and you've got Dingy Harry taking this party down the tubes. It is just amazing. I can't believe he's still the chairman of this party after what he said about abortion yesterday.
We've got the tape coming up that will make that point. He also admitted yesterday that the perfect Democrat is actually a socialist, Bernie Sanders. He identified Bernie Sanders as the ideal Democrat, and Bernie Sanders said, "Wait a minute. I'm not a Democrat. I'm a socialist." So he's confirmed that the Democratic Party's ideals are socialist, among all the other things that he had to say yesterday.
But about this snorting cocaine business? He can say what he wants. He can say that he was doing it in humor, and he can go out there and try to declare war on me and President Bush and Tom DeLay and tell lies if he wishes to, but it's a mystery to me. It was just a pathetic performance.
My e-mail is overflowing with people who are outraged and upset and angry about it. Folks, can I tell you the truth? Let me just tell you the truth about it: I am happy he did it. I am happy as my name comes up. I don't care where the Democrats are, whether they're in Palm Beach County, whether they're in New York, whether they're at the Democratic National Committee, I just love the way my []name comes out of their mouth when they lie about me and when they make things up.
What kind of a doctor must Howard Dean have been to lie about somebody's medical condition and confirm the lie and then say, "Well, you know, Limbaugh, he makes fun of people all over the place, but we all need to protect our ethical standards." It was just contradictory as it could be. But I don't mind it. I really don't. I think it helps. I think it helps to be portrayed by these people the way they portray me.
You know, once ago in my early career days I was told, "Be thankful for your enemies," and in this case, I couldn't have any better enemies. I couldn't have a better bunch of idiots that are trying to characterize me with lies.
I mean, they can't take me on the issues. They cannot. They cannot! They don't even dare discuss with me or refute any of the ideas that I put forward on this program or anywhere else I happen to put them forward. It's always character assassination and now with lies.
He did. He ran against me in 2004, every speech he closed out, "The flag doesn't belong to Rush Limbaugh! We're taking back the flag," and he's got me on the brain.
You know, the more the wacko left mentions me in this kind of context, the more I like it.
I just want you to know it doesn't bother me at all. It doesn't even make me angry, just the opposite.
I didn't even watch the show yesterday. I heard about it via e-mails and I just started smiling when I saw this, and I got the transcript, and I read everything else that he said -- not just about me, but about everything. He's still saying DeLay is going to go to jail. "Tom DeLay is going to go to jail!" He's convinced DeLay is going to go to jail. "He ought to just quit, go down to Texas, go back to Houston and get convicted--" and you gotta remember who these people claim to be.
They claim to be the tolerant ones among us. They claim to be the compassionate ones and the understanding ones.
We've got two pieces today, and I'll bet you a lot of you heard about this. There was a piece in San Francisco Chronicle yesterday from a lib who can't take it anymore. A 30-year lib who has abandoned the movement -- and it's great, because it's everything we've been saying about liberalism. He's a guy from Petaluma, California. He's a freelance writer, Keith Thompson http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTL -- and then I've got a piece from, let's see. This is Evan Sayet. http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=14715&catcode=13 I'm not sure where this comes from.
Somebody sent me this. Well, I don't know where it came from, but this guy has a blog. But another thing: "Lies only when Republicans tell them." But it's a great companion piece to this piece from the San Francisco Chronicle about the implosion of the left and how this 30-year liberal who came of age in the sixties, Berkeley and all this, can no longer tolerate it because it's moved so far beyond him that he doesn't feel comfortable being a member of the movement. So there's this to discuss and share with you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, those of you that are on hold and you want to talk about Howard Dean, I'm going to take the calls but I'm conflicted about this. I say all the time that I am not the subject of this program. I do not like making myself the subject of this program, and many of you say, "Why, you talk about yourself all the time!" Well, yes, but yes and no, ladies and gentlemen. This is a little bit of a different thing but I guess if people want to talk about it, I guess I will for a while but there are other things I want to do here because it's not the biggest thing that is out there. It's actually not new.
They get so frustrated and they're so outraged, I mean, they have spent the last year and a half, folks, trying to -- well, actually, if you look at the case of Bush they've spent the last five years trying to destroy Bush and all he's done is get more popular.
They're now trying to destroy DeLay with a political prosecution down in Texas, and trumped up ethical "charges." There aren't even any charges against DeLay, and yet they're saying he ought to go to jail and DeLay is only getting stronger as the troops rally around him, and they're trying to do the same thing to me.
You could arguably say for 15 years, you could say the last year and a half, you could say whatever period of time you want to go, and through it all, all that's happened is this program has gotten bigger; it's gotten larger, and to that, I must say I thank all of you because you've rallied around and you've stuck here, and we've all continued to grow. So their efforts have failed, and I think that the frustration at having failed -- I mean, the old Watergate model, i.e., scandal to destroy people rather than being successful in the arena of ideas, is frustrating the tarnation out of them and that's the epitome of this that was seen yesterday in Howard Dean's mindless, pathetic ranting on Meet the Press. I mean, it was embarrassing actually.
If you're a serious Democrat, that had to be an embarrassing thing. For us it's fabulous. Because it continues to indicate how we have thwarted them, we have frustrated them; we have angered them to the point that they're now letting it be known to one and all who they really are. This is who they've always been. This hate and anger, they've always held this. This contempt.
But they've always had a lot of cover and support in masking themselves as the people of compassion and tolerance and understanding, and we find that there's none of that, from the leaders, from the leaders of this party, and you've gotta say, "Why?"
Well, they know who their base is now and they've got to appeal to them for fund-raising, and so what you're hearing from people like Howard Dean and Dingy Harry and the rest of these guys is really what the mainstream kooks in the Democratic Party are putting in their mouths or asking them to say or it's by coincidence, identical.
But you can't distinguish now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee from the most wacko kook Democrat website. You just (interruption). Well, you know, they did. They thought he was presidential. This was the guy that was leading in the primaries for a while up until... Well, he was leading in the polling. When it actually came time to vote, guess what happened? He didn't get the votes.
Hey, you talk about releasing records? This is a guy who wouldn't even release all of his records as governor of Vermont. So very secretive and very guarded about his own privacy, but he's certainly willing to lie about others and exploit it politically. It's just not very statesman like, which, you know, you can say, "Well, Rush, you're not very statesmanlike." Yes, of course. I'm totally statesman-like but I'm not running a party, and I'm not charged with bringing a party back to viability, and I'm not charged with raising money so my party can compete. I happen to do all that anyway without being in charge and in power, but Dean can't pull it off being in charge and in power.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here's Carl in Pittsburgh as we start on the phones today. Welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. It's an honor and privilege to speak with you. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: My pleasure.
CALLER: I just want to back up a little bit and give you congratulations for not caving under the onslaught of the negative left rhetoric. A lesser person would have folded under that kind of rhetoric, and I really appreciate you standing up for your conservative values. I know that's what kind of person you are.
RUSH: You talking about Howard Dean?
CALLER: Yes, Howard Dean and the radical left.
RUSH: Well, thanks. Thanks very much. I appreciate it. Folks, I said this in the first hour of the program, and I wish I could think of a better way to say it, but not only do comments like Dean's energize me. I love when the left lies about things.
I love it when they lie because, you know, I'm of the belief, and my eternal optimism, they're imploding and so many more people each and every day see it.
The fact that Dean continues to dump me and lump me in with President Bush and Tom DeLay, I couldn't ask for more.
These guys I think are just, as I say, unable to compete with us in the arena of ideas. So their tactic, which they learned in Watergate, that they go to first, is character assassination and the attempt to destroy the credibility of people who are critics of them and who are accurate critics of them and their movement.
So the more it appears that the left wants to personally pile on [] the leaders of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, I say, "Bring it on." I think all this personal stuff, it helps. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, I welcome it for a whole host of reasons. Because of the picture it paints, because of the idea it conveys. So I don't want to talk Howard Dean out of it.
But I think we ought to demand the same sort of accountability from him as he's demanding from us. We need to see his medical records. He's admitting to having a drinking problem in his early days. He binged a lot, quit when he was 30 years old. How many brain cells did he lose? It's obvious he suffered some brain damage from all that binge drinking. You can see it on display each time he opens his mouth. He's not acting as a statesman, and there's the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party.
Wait till you hear some of the sound bites. I want to take some phone calls first because people have been patiently waiting. He has equated the Democratic Party with socialism and he said something on abortion -- I'll just wait to let you hear him say it rather than paraphrase it -- that I frankly thought would get him thrown out of the party leadership by today and would have a bunch of feminist groups up in arms over what he said about it. Brian in Ft. Lauderdale, welcome to the program, sir, nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Oh, great Maha, it's a pleasure to speak with you again.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, nice to have you on the program.
CALLER: Rush, I was sitting watching the Sunday laughter each Sunday morning, I watch the shows for entertainment, and I'm thinking, "This guy is an absolute maniac." Then I thought to myself, "He's going to destroy this party," and then I said, "Wait a minute, let me go back to my homework assignment," which is once a month, the Limbaugh Letter, and I went back to January of 2004, and, lo and behold, the headline on the Limbaugh Letter was, "Will the Democrats Survive Dr. Dean?" And I'm like, "Wow!" This maniac is here. You said this, if you think about it, 16 months ago because I'm sure it was written in December of 2003, and here basically what you had said back then is reverberating now. This guy, I feel pity for him. I mean, he's mentally disturbed!
RUSH: Like I said, I know these people like every square inch of my glorious naked body. I can predict them. I know what they're going to do, and I know what they're going to say. I mean after 16 years of being a target of theirs it's not hard to know how they act and who they are and what they're going to say and what it is that they use as persuasion, their attempts to persuade others -- and this is where they're failing big time.
Whatever Dean did on TV yesterday, he did not persuade one so-called independent or so-called moderate to join the Democratic Party. There's no way that's going to happen. Dr. Dean does not represent growth of the Democratic Party. He's stunting the growth and reversing it. He does not represent anything that's inspiring or anything that's motivating.
He represents a deep seething rage, hatred, and anger, and it just comes out of his mouth each time he opens his mouth, particularly when he starts talking about people. "I hate Republicans," he says. "I hate Republicans," and Russert said, "What do you mean you 'hate' Republicans?"
"Well, I don't hate them individually. I just hate what they're doing to America." Well, who are the Republicans today? What do they stand for? The Republicans are the only ones that are coming up with any ideas to advance the country: Social Security reform, freedom for regions of the world's spawning terrorists that want to kill Americans, and who is it that the Democrats are siding with today?
The Democrats are siding with people who oppose this country because they so hate George W. Bush that the enemies of this country are their enemies.
Now, you can disagree with me all you want, but when you hear them say, "We need to let the French and the Germans and the UN in on our sovereignty and our foreign policy," and when they oppose freedom and mock the elections in Iraq, what are we to conclude? I mean, it's obvious. All I'm telling you is this is not the stuff that inspires people. It's not the stuff that makes you say, "Yeah! I want to get on that train," or, "Yeah, I want to get on that wagon! Hey, I want to be on that team."
You know, people don't want to live their lives every day with this much focused hatred and rage. They just don't. Most people don't want to live that way, but the current crop of leaders in the Democratic Party apparently does.
They enjoy it. They seem to energize themselves with their hate and their rage. They seem to actually get invigorated by it, and folks it's not pretty. It's not a pretty sight to see; it's not pleasant to listen to.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, now I want to play... well, I got three sound bites on what he said about me, but let me play just this first one here before we go to the break. It may be enough. Russert said, "In January, you mentioned that, quote, 'I hate Republicans,' what they stand for, good and evil. We are the good.' In March you said, 'Republicans are brain dead.' You mentioned you're a physician -- and this is April. 'Dean draws howls of laughter by mimicking a drug snorting Rush Limbaugh.' Is it appropriate for a physician to mock somebody who's gone into therapy for drug addiction?"
DEAN: The Rush Limbaugh comment was one that I made about Rush Limbaugh. The problem is not that these folks have problems. They do, and they have problems in the case of a drug addiction, that's a medical problem and I respect those who clearly in my profession who are trying to overcome their problems. The problem is, it is galling to Democrats, 48% of us who did not support the president, it is galling to be lectured to about moral values by folks who have their own problems. Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values, by people who have their own moral shortcomings -- and I don't think we ought to be lectured to by Republicans who have got all these problems themselves. Rush Limbaugh has made a career of belittling other people and making jokes about President Clinton, about Mrs. Clinton and others. I don't think he's in any position to do that.
[] RUSH: Next time you make this statement, don't forget to include that I have made a career of making fun of Ted Kennedy, too. You left his name out there, Howard. Now, you want to talk about moral values and hypocrisy.
Ted Kennedy. Need I say more? Ted Kennedy. If your view on this is correct, Howard, Ted Kennedy has no right to talk about social justice, women's rights, or anything of the sort that has to do with the morality.
Bill Clinton doesn't either. Bill Clinton has no right. Bill Clinton blamed me for the Oklahoma City bombing. Bill Clinton and the left have tried to besmirch me for a whole bunch of things and it's done nothing but help. That's why I encourage it and that's why I embrace it.
But there is a larger point here. Have you noticed that the Democrats are now trying to criminalize hypocrisy?
Hypocrisy is essentially a crime to Howard Dean. I should go to jail because I'm a hypocrite. That's what a lot of the leftists think.
I should get in trouble because I'm a hypocrite. I don't know that hypocrisy is a crime, and now Dean is saying that people who have their own moral failings have no right to talk about morality anywhere else.
Well, that would disqualify everybody, Dr. Dean. There's not a human being alive that hasn't had a moral or ethical failing -- and by your statement, nobody is qualified.
Here's the difference. This is the point. I haven't met all of my own expectations in life. I've had failures. I've made mistakes, but it doesn't mean I don't know the difference between right and wrong.
I know the difference between right and wrong. We all do. Some of us block it out; some of us suppress it, but we all know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, good and evil.
I question the Democrats may not be able to recognize evil these days, where it exists. But we all have a little inner voice. We all do, and it's always talking to us. Some of us hear it. Some of us ignore it. Some of us listen to it; some of us pay attention only part of the time.
But despite each of our moral failings, we all know the difference between right and wrong -- and Mr. Dean, Governor Dean, I may have had some failings in my life just as you have, but it doesn't mean that what's right and what's wrong changes.
What's right and what's wrong is consistent.
That's the problem that liberals have. Right and wrong is always a moving target based on who they are at the moment and where they are at the moment, and right and wrong to them is a big giant gray area -- and the reason he doesn't like me calling anybody else on right and wrong is because he knows I'm right.
It bugs him that I get away with it. It bugs him that you people have not abandoned this program in droves.
It bugs him that a thousand people show up to support Tom DeLay.
It bugs the hell out of them that George Bush is elected the second time in a veritable landslide.
It bugs them because they think all of us are lying, cheating hypocrites, and that should disqualify us. The fact of the matter is, nobody is perfect.
Right and wrong don't change based on who it is discussing them simply because of their own failings or achievements.
You can look at it either way, so just because anyone -- and Dr. Dean, you have your own failings, your own admitted failings, and now you resort to lying. I never snorted cocaine in my life, and he knows it. But he says he was just joking. Well, fine. This is the league we all play in, folks.
I don't respond to all these things said about me because I do say things about other people. It's the big leagues. Take it. It's what happens. It's the field on which we're all playing.
But this business about hypocrisy is an attempt to escape judgment by the Democrats, by claiming once again that there are no people qualified to make judgments on them because they're all hypocrites. Well, I know what right and wrong is regardless what I do from time to time, and so does everybody else, and just because I may have had my failings or anyone else may have, doesn't mean that when we recognize right and wrong for what they are and we're disqualified.
Right and wrong are what they are, and we all know when people are in the right or doing something wrong, and we all know that Dr. Dean is terribly wrong about the things he's saying and said yesterday on Meet the Press -- and whether I've had failings or have been wrong in the past, I mean, using his thinking, nobody who's made a mistake could ever talk about facts. Nobody who has made an error. In his thinking, Newsweek needs to fold. Newsweek needs to go out of business. We can't believe them. They're hypocrites, or worse.
That's Dr. Dean's theory in action, all because they can't stand the light of attention focused on them. I welcome it. I have no problem with it.
I don't mind being defined by this bunch of enemies. In fact, they may be, my friends.
END TRANSCRIPT
[]
Read the Articles...
(NYDN: Dean won't DeLay his attacks on GOPer)
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/story/312190p-267073c.html
(San Francisco Chronicle: Leaving the left - Keith Thompson)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTL
(NewsMax: Howard Dean's Hypocrisy Exposed)
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/5/22/220215.shtml
(NewsMax: Tim Russert Rips Howard Dean Apart)
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/5/22/220215.shtml
(ChronWatch: Lies? Only When Republicans Tell them, Right?)
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=14715&catcode=13
bttt
He thinks, therefore You are. :) It's pointless to argue with something defending it's favorite celebrity.
What’s in Howard Dean’s Secret Vermont Files?
By Michael Isikoff Newsweek
Dec. 8, [2003?]issue - As investigative reporters and “oppo” researchers flock to Vermont to dig into Howard Dean’s past, they have run into a roadblock. A large chunk of Dean’s records as governor are locked in a remote state warehousethe result of an aggressive legal strategy designed in part to protect Dean from political attacks.
Dean who has blasted the Bush administration for excessive secrecy candidly acknowledged that politics was a major reason for locking up his own files when he left office last January. He told Vermont Public Radio he was putting a 10-year seal on many of his official papers four years longer than previous Vermont governors because of “future political considerations... We didn’t want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time.”
“Most of the records are open,” said Dean spokeswoman Tricia Enright, adding there is “absolutely not” a “smoking gun” in those for which Dean has claimed “executive privilege.” Still, Dean’s efforts to keep official papers secret appear unusually extensive.
Late last year, NEWSWEEK has learned, Dean’s chief counsel sent a directive to all state agencies ordering them to cull their files and remove all correspondence that bore Dean’s name and ship them to the governor’s office to be reviewed for “privilege” claims. This removed a “significant number of records” from state files, said Michael McShane, an assistant Vermont attorney general.
The battle over Dean’s records began last year when three Vermont newspapers took him to court after being denied access to his official schedule. Reporters were trying to track Dean’s out-of-state political trips.
State lawyers argued that release of the schedule could jeopardize his safety and that the governor’s office was not a public “agency” covered by state open-records lawtwo notions rejected by the Vermont Supreme Court. (The court ultimately ruled that those portions of the schedule related to his political trips had to be released, but those relating to state policy could be redacted.)
Then last January, Dean’s chief counsel David Rocchio negotiated a sweeping agreement that resulted in about 140 boxes of Dean records containing several hundred thousand pages of documents being locked up for 10 years at a state archive in Middlesex, said Greg Sanford, the state archivist. The sealed papers include Dean’s correspondence with advisers on, among other matters, Vermont’s “civil unions” law and a state agency that critics charged was used to grant tax credits to Dean’s favored firms.
Rocchio said the sealing agreement was driven by “legitimate” policy concerns, but also by, he later acknowledged, political factors. “All you have to do is look at what [Dean’s opponents] are doing with the existing records,” he said. “They’re distorting his record.”
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3606100/
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Dean looks back, dryly
Sunday, November 2nd, 2003
For his soon-to-be-published campaign manifesto, "Winning Back America," Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean takes a confessional approach. He describes his privileged preppie upbringing, his youthful drunken behavior and his occasional adventures in petty theft.
"Although I was born in New York and went to school in the city until I was 13," writes the former Vermont governor, who recently claimed to be a farmer, "I really grew up in East Hampton. ... Once in a while, we'd sneak a potato or two out of a farmer's field, just to say we'd done it."
Dean notes that he attended the posh St. George's School in Newport, R.I., "an incredibly beautiful setting, up on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean."
Dean also reminisces about his fraught relationship with alcohol - a narrative that parallels the experience of fellow Eastern Establishment scion George W. Bush, a graduate of Phillips Andover Academy.
"Once we were 18, we could indulge in lazy days of 'Baseball and Ballantine,'" Dean writes. "We'd buy some beer and put it in a garbage can of ice and play softball all day long. If you hit somebody's beer with a batted ball, it was an automatic out."
After he got married, "I quit drinking," he writes. "When I drank, I would drink a lot and do outrageous things, and then I wouldn't drink again for a while. I realized that what was very funny when you're 18 is not very funny when you're 30. I had a terrible hangover after my bachelor party, which didn't help. So I quit. Drinking served no useful purpose in my life, and I just got tired of it. I haven't had a drink in over 22 years."
Dean spokesman Jay Carson said that while his candidate violently disagrees with Bush on most things, "He agrees with him that his younger days were his younger days - and he's going to leave it at that."
I guess those prep-school guys stick together.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/133177p-118729c.html
30-Year Veteran of the Left-Wing Divorces Liberal Elite
May 23, 2005
[]BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Time to go to the phones. We're honored. Keith Thompson, who wrote the piece
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTLI just shared with you, is on the line from Petaluma, California. Keith, welcome to the program.
[] THOMPSON: Well, it's great to be here, and I must say it's great to be back. You probably don't recall, but 13 years ago, 1992, I was on your show, because when I'm not writing incendiary essays I sometimes do political impressions. I do an impression of Ted Kennedy and I also do one of first President Bush, and I told Johnny Donovan -- who was with your show at the time and still may be -- and he had me record some bits, and you played them on the air at that time. So it's interesting to be back in a whole different capacity.
RUSH: Let me tell you something. I don't remember specifically but I have to tell you when I saw the name Keith Thompson, I said, "This name rings a bell. I couldn't place it, but now I can."
THOMPSON: That Keith Thompson. (laughter)
RUSH: Pardon me?
THOMPSON: THAT Keith Thompson.
RUSH: Yeah, exactly. How long has this piece of yours been in the works? It sounds like it didn't happen overnight.
[]
THOMPSON: No, it did not happen overnight. And, you know, I've got -- by the way, you'll be interested to hear that I've gotten lots of response. But you know something? I have gotten a significant number of e-mails, over 200 from people in the Bay Area who describe themselves as progressives, as liberals, and even on the left, who said, "You have spoken for me. You've put words to something. Look, I still don't agree with Bush on the following issues, but I cannot abide this any longer myself," and I only gotten a handful of really negative stuff from what I call "the psychiatric wing of the party," the really crazy types. But I tell you, I don't mean to say that I'm a pied piper, I just had my ear to the ground and I'm []looking to my own heart and I've been feeling this for some time. One person wrote me and said, "Gee, you know, you felt that about Ronald Reagan back in the eighties about the Soviet Union. How come it took you this long?" and I thought about it. I wrote him back and I said, "Have you ever had one of those experiences where, you know, when you take the garbage out on a Thursday morning -- they're going to pick up the garbage on a Thursday morning -- you set the garbage in a plastic bag on the inside of the door Wednesday night intending to take it out? Well, I forgot to take it out for about ten years," which is to say these thoughts had been ruminating and marinating, and truly it was a pivotal point for me. It all came together when I saw after the Iraq elections the people on Fox News and CNN, on your show and all the other, and mainstream -- you know, NBC, CBS, all of them. The people cheering for the Iraqis were conservative.
RUSH: Yeah.
[]
THOMPSON: The people who were looking for -- spinning marvelous variety of excuses about why democracy is still likely, could very well fail, Nancy Pelosi, Lynn Woolsey, my congresswoman here in California, Ted Kennedy, so-called legitimate mainstream liberals putting forth remarkably well thought out scenarios about how it could fail, and I said, "What is going on?"
RUSH: How they wanted it to fail, Keith.
THOMPSON: Oh, wanted it to fail, absolutely correct.
RUSH: They wanted it to fail.
THOMPSON: They needed it because they need -- the line I felt strongest about was, "They wanted democracy to fail more than they loved freedom," or they wanted George Bush to fail. There's a mania. I mean, you know it well. You deal with it every day. There has not been this mania in the country against a president since Nixon, and I gotta tell you, that includes Bill Clinton. I supported Bill Clinton. He was kind of the last straw for me -- and I know he took a lot of hard-core stuff from the right, but I'll tell you, nothing like Nixon and Bush have received from the left.
[] RUSH: I got one minute here before I have to take a break. Where do you think the left is headed?
THOMPSON: I think it's a historical defunct dead end. I think, you know [a] scientist said, science precedes "funeral by funeral," and that's a way of saying when people who can't change don't change they die off. It sounds Machiavellian, but I think there's a new generation of young people, they read books like South Park Conservatives. They're not buying it anymore.
RUSH: Well, we'll see. It's clearly a point of view that you've written about that has not yet reached the leadership of the Democratic Party.
THOMPSON: No, I don't mean to say that. They're going to hold on, and there are some good people that call themselves liberals. When I call myself a liberal I mean it in the sense of liberal democracy. If you read Bobby Kennedy's speech in 1966 in South Africa, it reads like something you'd give or Bill Bennett would give.
RUSH: Well, the same thing with Hubert Humphrey talking about "family values" back in the sixties, and that's the thing that amazed me, and it's what your piece is really all about and that is the liberals of today-- Well, let's put it this way: JFK, were he to be alive today thinking as he thought when he was alive, would not have a home in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Keith, I gotta run but it's great to hear from you. A great piece, and thanks for the call.
END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Articles...
(San Francisco Chronicle: Leaving the left - Keith Thompson)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTL
(Welcome to the Web home of writer Keith Thompson)
http://www.thompsonatlarge.com/work6.htm
Shoulda airbrushed a lower hairline while at it!
"Hi, I'm cereal."
"Hi Cereal, I'm Howard Scream."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.