By Zachary Pleat

Steyn wants Republicans to allow vote on health care reform

Regular guest host Mark Steyn got things started today by announcing that President Obama was scheduled to speak about health care and promising, “We'll try our very best not to bring that to you.” He then announced, “This is it folks,” explaining that this is the week health care reform would be enacted into law. Steyn launched into analogies to Pelosi's statement that “we stand on the doorstep of history.” He explained his fear that health care reform would pave the way to a “permanent left-of-center political culture.”

After the first break, Steyn followed Rush's tradition of ordering the GOP around on health care, demanding a pledge from all Republican candidates to repeal any reform legislation:

STEYN: So I think all Republican candidates for the Congress -- for the House and the Senate in 2010 -- ought to take a pledge to repeal this or throttle it. You know, these pledges can often be meaningless, but they do help to keep hold the political class honest. In New Hampshire, for decades now, we've had a no-tax pledge. This state has no income tax and no sales tax, and although candidates can get sort of wobbly and equivocal on that, if you make 'em take the pledge -- if you make 'em take the pledge, by and large they do stick to it.

[...]

STEYN: So a tax pledge, if you apply that to health care, the idea that every Republican candidate should pledge for the repeal of this thing, pledge not to assist in the enforcement of this thing, pledge, in fact, to give it -- to do what they can within the limits of whatever majority they have come next January to defund it, to starve it, to do their best to make it wither. Because this isn't one of those things like the Department of Education or the Environmental Standards Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, or the NEA all these other little things that were allowed to drift through and Republicans oppose them and Republicans never did anything about rolling them back. This will be one of those things that if you let it just sit out there sucking up money, expanding the bureaucracy, will eventually devour everything in sight.

Steyn devoted a portion of the next half hour to mocking the Americans with Disabilities Act due to a requirement reportedly being imposed on Detroit city workers. He then took a caller who demanded that Republicans allow a final vote on health care reform -- to “bring it.” In the end, Steyn agreed with her. Later, Steyn took another caller who agreed with this, but who feared that the Republicans “don't have the power” to stop health care reform.

Steyn: Health care reform will turn us into Greece

During the second hour, Steyn rambled about roundabouts again and opined about using a Toyota Prius to go hunting. He then moved onto Toyota's contemporary problems with its cars.

Steyn eventually got around to joining Limbaugh in criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her comments on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show about being locked into a job in order to maintain health insurance. He read from an American Thinker piece equating Pelosi's comments to Marxism.

Toward the end of the hour, Steyn had a caller who brought up that darling of the conservative grassroots, term limits for Congress. Steyn responded by reiterating a talking point he had been hitting on throughout the show, namely that passing health care reform would transform the United States into Greece “on a cosmic scale.”

During the third hour, Steyn took to criticizing the Obama administration for its foreign policy, reading from two U.K. Times articles. He then attacked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for delivering satellite phones to Chile after its earthquake:

STEYN: In Chile, where they had an earthquake, Hillary Clinton got there, she landed in Santiago, and she happened to have 25 satellite phones with her, which she handed out to various Chileans. And Chile didn't like this. Quote: “Chile wanted to be compared to Japan, not Haiti.” Unquote.

Chile is a member of the OECD, which is, you know, the rich countries' club. So it doesn't like Hillary Clinton landing and handing out satellite phones as if they're just like a basket case like Haiti.

In Chile, the earthquake actually had some infrastructure to destroy. So they don't like the way they look like Hillary Clinton landing and thinking that she's in Haiti.

Michael Burns contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.