RUSH:  You bet, sir.

CALLER:  Hey, I have a question for you.  You’re willing, as we all are, to recognize that all of our Republican candidates have flaws.  None of them are the perfect conservative like yourself, but Romney, all these things you’re pointing out about Romney were known four years ago.  Romneycare was around four years. Romney supported TARP. Romney was the one that acted like he was against gun control, he’d been a lifetime member of the NRA, and so on and so on and so on.  So why is it that, you know, you didn’t recognize this back then and got all over Huckabee, for example, and certainly there’s things about Huckabee I disagree with, but why is it that one guy gets your wrath and the other guy gets your endorsement?

(Editors Note: Notice the subtle hint here that it is Liberals who love Huckabee)

RUSH:  Who has gotten my endorsement?

CALLER:  You said yesterday that Romney all but got your endorsement last time.  You said it.

RUSH:  But he didn’t.

CALLER:  Oh, Rush, all but getting the Rush vote —

RUSH:  You had an entirely different field in 2008 than we have here.  You had McCain. you had the Huckster.

CALLER:  Why (do) you call (him) names?  Why you call names?

RUSH:  You had Giuliani.  Are you a Huckabee guy?  ‘Cause Huckabee guys are still mad at me. Huckabee himself was mad at me over what went down in 2008.  Are you a Huckabee guy?

CALLER:  Yes, I am.  And you’re still calling him names.

RUSH:  What?  What name?

CALLER:  Huckster.  Come on, Rush.

RUSH:  Oh, come on, everybody calls him the Huckster.

CALLER:  That’s fine.  But he has his flaws.  Romney had his flaws.  But you decided to say Huckabee’s not a conservative, and Romney is.  Why is that?

RUSH:  I just said the other day that Romney’s not a conservative, either, compared to this field.

CALLER:  So if Huckabee would jump in here at the last minute, you’d eliminate him from your candidates that could beat Obama and —

RUSH:  It depends on what he would say.  I’m not gonna reject Huckabee just because he’s Huckabee.

CALLER:  Okay.  Well, he’s a big pusher of the FairTax and was back four years ago.

RUSH:  Yeah, but —

CALLER:  That’s about as conservative as you could get.

RUSH:  He got in bed with McCain back then.  That’s what ticked me off about it at all.  He got in bed with McCain last time to sabotage Romney.

CALLER:  Maybe he saw something in Romney you didn’t.

RUSH:  Doesn’t matter.  You’re asking me why I wasn’t on the Huckster’s team.  You know, he called me, too.  He was all upset, he thought I’d mischaracterized him in a number of ways, he called here, he wanted to get on the air, we got on the air, we talked to him, and he had his —

CALLER:  After the election.

RUSH:  Okay, everything was cool.

CALLER:  Okay.  I just wonder if this time around maybe you, who are always 99.8% correct —

RUSH:  Point six.

CALLER:  That number is probably going up, if you this time around would give the man a fair shake.

RUSH:  He’s not in the race.  Do you have news for us?  Is he gonna get in the race, is he gonna announce?

CALLER:  I don’t know.  I think he’s still considering it.

IS THE NEW FAIR AND BALANCED RUSH?

RUSH:  Okay.  That’s interesting.  We give everybody a fair shake here.  Everybody gets a fair shake.  I’ll tell you what, there’s one guy out there that’s showing he’s got real brains, Herman Cain, advertising on this program.  I mean that’s a guy who obviously knows how to get results.  Thanks for the call.  (interruption) Snerdley can’t believe people are still ticked at me over 2008. They’re still ticked at me in general for not endorsing somebody.  There are some people out there still blaming me for Obama being elected because I wouldn’t endorse anybody early.  Some people are still blaming me for not joining Perot.  Some people are still blaming me for killing Perot’s campaign.  Some people are mad at me for not joining the Perot campaign.  (interruption) I know he sounds like it happened yesterday.  Probably in his mind did.  He’s probably been waiting all these years to finally get through and have at it here with me. (interruption) Yeah, endorsing Clinton, yeah, that was good, too.  That was a big, big day in EIB history when I endorsed Clinton.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Okay, let’s look at it now, 2008, what do we have?  When we boiled it all down we had McCain, Romney, and Huckabee.  Those were not happy days.  And when you boil it all down, folks, you remember 2008 was pretty depressing.  We had the media out there just creating this messiah-like figure in Obama.  We had our side scared to death to even show up in his presence much less say anything about it.  We had Mark McKinnon quitting the McCain campaign the first syllable of criticism.  In addition to McCain we had Huckabee and Romney.  Huckabee got behind McCain.

I thought McCain was the weakest candidate.  Huckabee had immigration issues that I wasn’t particularly enamored of, and furlough issues.  In 2008 we still coulda won.  That’s the amazing thing.  McCain picked a conservative to run with and going into the economic crisis we were five points up in that race even with all of the media assistance.  Now, you know, you talk about there was Romneycare even in 2000.  Yeah, but there wasn’t an Obamacare in 2008, and there wasn’t somebody running around saying that Romneycare was the basis for Obamacare in 2008.  So there are all kinds of differing factors, vagaries, if you will, from campaign to campaign.                END TRANSCRIPT

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