a really microcosm of not just rush limbaugh being a jerk. limbaugh being a jerk is par for the course but as he acts as this ideological enforcer. i will tell you as the former president of the conservative independent women s forum i had several dealings with rush limbaugh. i m having a very hard time sort of understanding the rush that i met in private versus the person that we have been hearing about on the radio over the last week. i will tell you that, you know in all fairness to him, we had couple of dinners where we honored, for example, nancy brinker of the susan komen foundation. we honored condoleezza rice who i have great admiration and in both of those instances he actually underwrote those dinners completely. several hundred thousand dollars out of his own pocket so that this was a man who i i came to know also in private dinners that i have had with him as being quiet, as being very generous and as someone that no one would call an enemy of women. but that being
there were times when my capacity as president of independent women s forum i may get a phone call from someone who said rush limbaugh is upset, for example, that i can t verify this because i was not in on the conversations but told limbaugh was upset or says you can t be trusted because you said something positive about president obama. assuming that to be the case in the kind of job that i had at that period of time, it makes you feel uncomfortable because you feel can you is it possible to say how you really feel about an issue? do you have to tow the line because this very person in the conservative movement disagrees with you? i opted to remain true to myself and felt, quite frankly, a lot of other people in washington do, too, if you say the democrat does something wonderful you will say it. if the democrat does something stupid you will say and it same thing with republicans. there are many people that feel pressure to tow the line and say exactly whatever rush limbaugh say
not only in the south. it is in the north as well. you must remember in 65 voting rights act, it also included new york. before i left new york yesterday, we were dealing with questions of the redistricting, what will happen to the harlem district, for example. this has been a national problem. when you combine that as you said the voter i.d. laws we are marching about today and all of this week, it is a real critical point in where we are dealing with how will the concentrated black vote demonstrate itself both locally with congressional fights and then nationally, where you are going to have a disproportionate amount disqualified from voting if they don t have the proper state i.d. or if they were depending on long-term early voting which has now been shortened in some states, ending sunday voting. so that s why we are marching this week because this is the first time in 47 years since the voting rights act that we have
would have thought that we would have gone from the economy, for example, to talking about aspirin between the knees. but my question to you really is michael stek michael steele aspirin between the knees? my question is how do we square forward, how do we square this notion of the delegate count versus the important importance of perception and who has the momentum? for so many talk that former governor mitt romney has so much momentum because he won the washington caucuses over the weekend and that will happen help him in ohio. does it make a difference at all? well, you know, it does to a certain degree. but the problem that romney has, he won washington with 38%. so you know, it then you go to michigan and but for the interesting tinkering of after
the fact, very much like we saw in iowa, of with the delegates, that was a split decision. so that was a good example of romney winning the popular vote but the the delegates were awarded on a congressional district basis which meant that, you know, santorum won more congressional districts. the reality of it is that, you know, this process will lend itself to people sort of second-guessing it and looking at it but i think the congressman s point and point that was mr. weed s point when you get to the actual allegation of delegates which won t happen until you get to the convention you will get a better sense of where they are. you have caucuses that will be running and not have primaries until late spring, early summer. so this notion of who has the number, unless you have a runaway train in terms of someone taking all the numbers, this is going to stay close for quite some time. chairman steele, the question that we talked about getting other voices out there, one of those