I read a Fox News article where Glen Beck interviewed Rush Limbaugh.  I decided to paste that text and respond to it here.  Thought it would be fun to do that.

PS I consider myself both Republican and Democrat and neither at the same time.  All told I tend to lean very Republican on certain issues and more left of Socalist on others.  I love myself.  You should love yourself too.

My responses will be below the comment starting like: JON:  Then contains my response.  I am making myself part of this discussion now.

Source article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,521214,00.html

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This is a rush transcript from “Glenn Beck,” May 21, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GLENN BECK, HOST: Now, we go to the former head of the Republican Party — he did step down yesterday. Mr. Rush Limbaugh is with us.

Rush, how are you, sir?

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST (via telephone): I’m fine. Hey, Glenn, how are you? Are you feeling better today, Glenn?

BECK: I am feeling a little bit better today. Thank you.

LIMBAUGH: Nyquil? How are you staying awake taking it?

BECK: I have no idea. It’s the first time I’ve tried it. It’s not a good thing.

Rush, I wanted to ask you. What is the most disturbing thing that you see coming out of Washington and of California with the grab of the rights? What do you most concerned about?

JON: They are essentially talking about this: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-webelection21-2009may21,0,7361966.story Basically Californians said no to a state budget that spent more money the state had.

LIMBAUGH: Well, I think it’s hard to single out one thing. I think it’s a cumulative thing. But, Glenn, the thing that worries me the most about is, I think, Obama’s who he is — liberal Democrat politicians and other politicians who are oriented toward acquiring power are who they are. They’ve always been who they are.

JON: This is not a “liberal democrat” problem.  This is a human problem.  Nice try.

LIMBAUGH:The question that we’re all asking is: At what point the American people decide they wanted this kind of power grab by government into the private sector or have they decided that? Did they vote for a cult-like figure based on emotion when they voted for Obama? If so, what’s it going to take for them to wake up?

JON: Some people did, in fact, vote for Obama based on his “cult status.”  Then again, I know people voted for Bush for the same reasons.  This is not new to politics when leaders exude qualities that attract people.  Often groups tend to draw people in based on “religous” ideals, like emotion instead of logic.  Wherein this isn’t always bad, its often abused.  Happens on both sides of the political spectrum.  Is this only bad when it occurs on Democrat time?

JON: Also, people decided that they wanted change and Obama would bring that change.  Obama’s “power grab” is his attempt at staving off an economic collapse.  I can see where this would be scary for traditional small government conservatives.

LIMBAUGH: I mean, the politics of this is, that with the numbers in Washington, even if the Republican Party was a unified conservative opposition in stark contrast to Obama, even if they were all unified, they don’t have the numbers to stop anything that he is doing. It’s going to be — it’s going to require the American people stopping this and you have to wonder at this stage at — where are they?

JON: In my view the normal everyday “American people” don’t get upset and irate about issues like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck.  To expect the average joe to get in a frenzy over Obama inacting change like he said he would, doesn’t seem to me to be what I would expect.

JON: I would say, the average american may be unsure about the future or the direction we are going in terms of Obama’s leadership but they are optimistic and waiting for it to shake out.  If Obama fails, he won’t get elected a second time.  I believe it to be that simple.  This is why the Republican party has failed and is dwindling, the last 8 years netted us the resulting economy.  People voted in change and are eagerly awaiting results.

LIMBAUGH: Do they want the government owning their house? Do they want the government owning the mortgage company that they deal with and the bank that they deal with? Do they want the government owning the car company that they’re going to buy their little putt-putt from?

LIMBAUGH: Until we know the answer to that, we’re not going to know just how serious this is going to get before we can make it better.

JON: I don’t think they care.  But maybe what I am saying, is that I don’t care.  I don’t own my house, the bank does.  If the government owns the bank I really don’t see how that impacts my life in a negative way.  To me its a matter of ownership and if its not me that owns it anyway, I don’t really care.

BECK: You know, I saw Barack Obama today. I think he is a — I think he’s an extraordinarily talented man — very, very shrewd, very good politician. He was giving a speech today at the National Archives. He was standing right in front of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

JON: I agree.

BECK: I think this man sees the disenfranchisement in this country and he is going to wrap himself not in the flag, he’s going to wrap himself in those documents to make himself somehow or another look like the grand protector of the Constitution — when I think we’ve shredded much of it under him just recently.

JON: I see the constitution as a “living document” that needs to protect and server the people of America.  Unsure what Beck is referring to as shredding it though.

LIMBAUGH: Yes, a good point. I — the speeches today — his speech and Vice President Cheney’s, I had somebody e-mail me during my radio program this afternoon, who watched both speeches, that it looked like President Obama was doing the Democrat response to a presidential address by Dick Cheney, just in reverse order. Obama was very defensive. He made sure he had a hole where he had a God-like echo in front of those documents.

JON: Responding to critics is a great way to present a well thought out plan.  Cheney is a very vocal opponent of this administration, Obama offering a counterpoint is a good thing to his agenda.

LIMBAUGH: But I thought — it was eerie to me, Glenn. Here’s a man who starts out just talking about national security, starts out with his own personal story with his father, mother, immigrating to the country and all this kind of stuff — the man’s a pure, full-fledged man-child narcissist who has to make everything about him.

JON: Are you a full blown drug user because you had an addiction to oxy contin?  One thing I don’t respect about Rush is that he takes reasonable points and goes for the “personal juggular.”  It seems to me a great approach to outline your journey and how that relates to your policy building.  Is a minister a “narcissit” because he or she shares their life and how they view God in relation to a lession in a sermon?  I get you don’t like Obama but these attacks don’t make your point stronger.

LIMBAUGH: And while he is talking about protecting and defending us and so forth, the Federal Reserve yesterday came out and said the economic forecast for the rest of the year is even worse, unemployment is going to go even higher, GDP is going to drop even lower.

JON: This is one metric that doesn’t provide proof of your point.  There are many ways to read statistics and you don’t “own” the only interpretation of them.

LIMBAUGH:Nothing is getting better. Nothing that the man has done while telling everybody this is going to fix it is fixing anything.

JON: Bold statements.  Lets see what happens.  Personally id take a more optimistic approach on the future of the American people and our economy.  Certainly there are things that are happening that are good, certainly we are not out of the woods yet.

LIMBAUGH: And back to my first point, that we can pound this and we can remind people of this, but they’re going to have to experience it. I have a friend who’s got a couple of kids in college, and they bought everything that Al Gore said about global warming. And their father said, “No, no,” these facts and figures were demonstrated as overblown… (INAUDIBLE).

LIMBAUGH:It wasn’t until this winter when they were still shoveling snow in April in Kansas that they began to think, maybe this isn’t true. So, until people are personally impacted by this in a way that they tie Obama to it, it’s — he’s going to get away with the behavior that you just described.

JON: One families experience with globate climate does not mean it is not changing.  Pundits are not scientists.  The climate in my state IS changing and I notice it regularly.

BECK: You know, Rush, I’m concerned because this guy is — he is so effective at playing right into — I mean, he — what he says and what he does rarely matches up. He’s also very, very good at focus groups, finding key words and using them, but not in a way that — not enacting the things that people would want with those words.

JON: Id like some follow up here because I would love to entertain this idea.  I believe politicians are great at pandering I just am wondering what Glen is referring to here.

BECK: And now today, for the first time, apparently the White House has their own news division now to where they didn’t allow the press in to cover an event that President Obama was doing. And the White House put together a news package with the lower third and absolutely everything. The press said, “We wanted to cover it,” and they said, “Don’t worry about it, we got the package for you,” and they put the package out. Now, they’re becoming a news service as well.

JON: Certainly if this is how he paints it, this seems silly to me.

LIMBAUGH: Well, what you are describing is somebody who’s entirely phony. You are describing someone who cannot rely on who he genuinely is. And I think that’s going to eventually lead to the plummet in his popularity ratings, because, you know, the life — the reality of life at some point is going to have to intersect with the words.

JON: I get you don’t like Obama.

LIMBAUGH: Right now, you’re right: It’s not what Obama says. It is how he says it that has the magical effect on people. And until the reality of the not improving situation — we were talking today on the radio about — somebody called in and said, “When are we are going to revive the misery index?” I said, “Well, we can’t have a misery index until somebody reports the fact that there is misery.”

The Pope seems to have a magical effect on people to, does this make him bad?

LIMBAUGH: And you watch the news networks all day long, and you found it fascinating that, in fact, during the Bush years, we have reports every day through six years on how we’re heading into a recession and the economy is in a tank and people believed it even though their own lives were just fine, they thought other people were hurting.

JON: I don’t remember these news reports.

LIMBAUGH: There is no news detailing how people are suffering. We’ve got all these foreclosures, we have all this unemployment. We don’t see the hard luck stories about what people are doing to overcome this. And so, the public at large, even amidst to this bad news, doesn’t think that many people are being harmed by it, because the country is going on, we’re launching shuttles, we are — the banks are operating and you go and use your credit card and so forth.

JON: I read these reports all the time.  I go to news.google.com and read local news as well.  I recommend Limbaugh to those sources.  Also, talking to normal people helps.  I find that a good way to get a pulse of how things are, at least in my community anyway.

LIMBAUGH: So, I don’t know — we’re looking at this as an opposition party very early on in this man’s term as he barely passed 100 days now. And patience is something that we’re going to have to muster and understand who we’re dealing with here.

JON: Sure.

LIMBAUGH:I do disagree with you on one thing: I know he’s got a very eloquent speaking ability, very talented and so forth, but I think with the right political candidate, Glenn, in 2008, he could have been — he could have been defeated.

JON: Superman was not running for elected office as a Republican.  He could have beaten Obama.  Batman as well.

BECK: Oh, I think — yes…

LIMBAUGH: I don’t think there’s any reason to be afraid here. There is no reason to be intimidated. He’s just a man who puts his pants on one leg at a time like Hillary does. There’s no reason to get all intimated and think all is lost.

JON: I see no reason to be afraid of running against Obama if your are a qualified canidate that can beat his policies and convince America you are better.

BECK: Yes, I don’t — I don’t — I don’t disagree with you on that, Rush. I think the problem with the last election was — America had to choose between two progressives. I mean, any man who says Teddy Roosevelt is his — is his idol and answers questions that way John McCain does — John McCain is a progressive.

JON: Agreed.  McCain is a great senator and all told a very moderate Republican.  I thought he was the best Republican candiate and was happy he was selected.

BECK: The problem with the Republican Party is not that it is — it’s too conservative; the problem with the Republican Party is it doesn’t even know what it is — except progressive light. It’s got to be for small government — small government. And right now, I haven’t seen that. Have you seen a turning point with the Republicans at all that they understand that?

JON: The Republican party is going to keep dwindling if it doesn’t enact change in itself because modern thought and society is changing.  Pandering to religious groups is no longer going to be the winning Republican strategy.  Many “new Republicans” are adopting more progressive policies, like supporting Gay marriage and I believe this is the right approach.

LIMBAUGH: No. And, you know, you were talking to California and the vote at the top of the program. This is why I officially resigned yesterday as titular head of the Republican Party. I didn’t seek the job and it was anointed to me — I was given the job by the Obama White House and the media.

JON: Cool.

LIMBAUGH: The Republican Party, conservative intellectuals — Republican Party intellectuals and blue-blood, country club Rockefeller types — for the last year and a half, two years, have been trying to reorganize the party under the premise that the era of Reagan is over when it comes to tax cuts: “No, no, no, we’re not old. The tax cuts don’t relate to what’s happening in 2009. And plus, we got to get rid of these social conservatives. We got to get rid of the social issues. We’re never going to win elections.”

JON: I bet in your circles this is discussed often.  I have no idea because I don’t run in these circles.

LIMBAUGH: The truth is that the country club, blue-blood Rockefeller types never won anything. It was the Reagan coalition — all these people the Republican Party is trying to kick out that finally was able to win landslide elections. The blue print is there, the Republican Party is rejecting it.

JON: I don’t spend enough time in the Republican party to know whom they are “kicking out.”

LIMBAUGH:This vote in California yesterday, it was — you described it accurately — even the low turnout, it was still a nuclear blast, political nuclear blast, and it sends a message to politicians. OK. Here’s a way to contrast yourself with Obama. He’s spending. We’re in debt $11 trillion. Here is a way — people are fed up. They know what the future holds for their children or grandchildren.

JON: People didn’t like the budget in California and they smacked it down.  Dunno if I would make it about more than that or not.

LIMBAUGH:But Glenn, if there isn’t a Republican Party that is willing to pick up the action and what happened in California yesterday and run with it, then it may as well not have happened.

JON: This won’t win the Republican party its base back.  Offering a better way that the Democrats will and I promise you the tried and true Republican “lower taxes” mantra will not work.  It will not work because you will further bankrupt the Government and no large segments of the population seems to be clammering for that now.  Save the tea parties, but I believe that to a relatively small section of the population that is very loud.  And as they should be, its their right.

BECK: You’re exactly right. There’s — right now, I — you know what? Rush, when people say, “You know, what can I do?”

JON: Vote for the change you demand.  Require your canidates to live up to what they say they will do.

BECK: I can’t tell you of a person that I could look in the eye — well, maybe a couple of people that I think are Republicans that are serving — that I know would say, “We’re going to do what Reagan wanted to do. We’re going to cut all of these — all of these departments of education — we’re just cutting them. They’re too big. It’s too bloated. That’s not what this government was supposed to be.”

JON: Why is one of the first thing we cut education?  Republicans tend to cut this first and I think it should be cut last.  Keep up the old thinking though, I don’t think you are going to be as successful with it as you have been in the past.  Regan is actually dead and for the most part the only one talking about him are Republican talking heads.

BECK: And I’ll tell you, they keep making the argument that if you vote for a conservative — oh, well, we’re going to round up, you know, all of the unwed mothers and throw them in furnaces or whatever it is. That’s not what this movement is about, at all. You’re right on the social aspect. What this movement is about is they are destroying our children’s future.

JON: Some would say the last 8 years have been destroying Americas future.  Funny how when your party perspective switches so do your demons.

BECK: Look, I don’t care what you do in your own bedroom. You — we won’t have a bedroom left anymore. We’re all going to be living in Hooverville or Obamaville if we don’t stop the spending.

JON: Whatever.

(LAUGHTER)

JON: It was actually pretty funny.

LIMBAUGH: Yes. It really — I say that the way to go about this, I think, the one thing that’s never going to go out of style in this country, the one thing that distinguishes the human beings who live in this country versus the human beings in all time — throughout human history of the rest of the world — is freedom.

JON: Totally.  Though, dunno, I think maybe there are SOME other people in the world that, you know, care about freedom as much as we do.  Just a… you know, thought I had and all.

LIMBAUGH:The reason we’re the greatest country in the history of humanity in less than 300 years is simply freedom — the freedom and ability of human beings to maximize potential, desire — was granted by virtue of our founding documents to people born in this country.

JON: We both agree here.

LIMBAUGH:What’s happening with this expansion of government and the incursion in the private sector by the federal government is loss of liberty.

JON: I simply don’t see this to be the case.  I can still do the same things I used to now that Obama is elected to office.  I can still buy a gun, picked the whitehouse, buy shit at the store, go to church where i will, stay married to my wife, drink lots of beer, not have soldiers garrisoned in my house during wartime, not be locked up in prison for no reason and more.  I am also not paying more in taxes.

LIMBAUGH: So, the way back here is to remind people of what made this country great. What is their birthright? What is the natural yearning of their spirit?

JON: I don’t want you defining for me what my natural spirit yearnings are.  Defining for pepole what rights we have is a great pastime though, pray continue.

LIMBAUGH: The human spirit is freedom, not to be confined, not to be treated like sheep, not to go along with a tug of popular culture, but being independent, being self-reliant and promote your own self-interests which helps everybody in your family and your neighborhood. Freedom is the key here. But I think, you know, I don’t mean to trash conservatives in Washington when I talk about Republicans. I’m talking about…

BECK: Republicans.

JON: I don’t see how Democrats should be excluded from this.  Republicans are not the sole proprietor of freedom.

LIMBAUGH: …the rest of the Republicans to talk about — somebody is going to surface at some point.

BECK: Yes.

LIMBAUGH: I mean, it will. It just — it hasn’t happened now. And the thing California just represents is a great opportunity for somebody to seize it…

JON: I await politicians with great ideas.  I hope they surface to guys, different perspectives are a great thing.

BECK: You know, Rush…

LIMBAUGH: …who is a Republican in electoral politics and run with this. And this — that thing in California, people are tired of losing their freedoms, paying higher taxes to fund a bloated, inefficient, wasteful government that’s not getting anything done by people who are elected for it. The only responsibility that the people of California have for this mess is that they keep electing the people that make it.

JON: Governor Schwarzenegger’s entire campaign was as you ascribe.  I believe he is trying his hardest to make this happen.  This is not as simple as you make it and right now compromises are being made to ensure California has a government.  Simply stating they must do what you require is easier than making it happen and I believe if it were that simple it would have been done already.  Pundits never do the REAL WORK of fixing problems they just comment on them.  And when your job is point out “the suck” your way will be simple because you don’t have to do it.  When in reality, things are not always that simple and fixing them is actually a very hard job.  Coming up with theories is cool, doing something to fix it is different.

BECK: Rush, will you — help me out on this, because you always get thrown under the bus, that — well, you know, where were you when George Bush was spending, et cetera, et cetera.

BECK: Address — because I — I have to tell you, the Republican Party doesn’t get it. You just said, echoed again what I was saying about the progressive Republicans. George Bush, this compassionate conservative movement has got to die a violent death.

JON: Compassion is never a weakness.  I wish the Republican party would be more compassionate.

JON: This is taking too long and all told I am 90% through the article.  Sorry for the typos, I am limited on time.  This was fun.