Posted on 05/04/2009 4:17:09 PM PDT by GOP_Lady
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I'm going to start here at the top of these sound bites with Jeb Bush again here. Jeb is the focus because of the newspaper headlines, but it's not just Jeb. There is a whole movement in the Republican Party that does want you to forget Ronald Reagan. Snerdley asked me during the break... What was your question to me? How can...? Yeah. "How can they be so blind to ignore what the Republican Party's successes were with Reagan?" They're not blind. They are threatened. The simplest way to understand the recalcitrant Republicans and conservatives who seem obsessed with "forgetting the past" and "letting go" of this so-called nostalgia, is these are people that are threatened with that.
They're threatened that somebody might surface, or maybe has, that can advance and articulate the issues that would lead to landslide victory. Folks, there are two issues that are at present responsible for this divide in the Republican Party: abortion -- and it has been for a long time. I'll never forget this. I started this program 1988. Shortly after that, Republicans for Pro-Choice; Roger Stone's wife at the time, was leading that movement, and they tried to make big noise at the Republican convention in Houston in 1992. I have faced it personally. A bunch of liberal, moderate Republicans asking me, "What are you going to do about the Christians? They listen to you" -- and, of course, immigration.
Those would it issues are dividing the Republican Party. And here you have the most liberal, far-out radical liberal president and Democrat Party ever, at least in any of our lifetimes -- and as I said last week, the opportunity to contrast the Republican Party and conservatism with what Obama is doing is great. It's easy! It's profound. Fifty-eight million people voted against Barack Obama. Can you imagine? We would have won this race if we would have had a candidate who could mobilize a couple or three million more. It was just that simple. Fifty-eight million people vote against Obama. That number would have been enough to defeat every successful candidate in history except Bush in '04. Fifty-eight million people were with us, the Republicans running the worst, weakest, least conservative guy we coulda nominated.
Imagine if we had a Reagan type. Imagine if we had had a passionate, articulate conservative running in '06. It would be a whole different ballgame. So what's happening? Well, we've got the most leftist, radical regime running this country in our lifetimes. The Republican Party is out there essentially giving headlines that we need to forget our past. We need to forget the era of our greatest success! In fact, don't even look at it as forgetting Reagan. Era of Reagan is over with. Those were two landslide victories that produced an economic boom lasted for 25 years. The Republicans are fanning out across the country sending the message that we need to forget that rather than contrasting themselves -- which would be so easy and such a winning preparation, especially when you look at vote totals at the House and Senate anyway.
The Republicans can't stop anything. I mean, they can't get more powerless than they are. Their apparent desire, their drive to regain power here is to become more like Democrats and liberals -- and I'll tell you what that's about. That's about abortion and immigration. If they could, if these Republicans that we're talking about could wave a magic wand and remove from the party two groups of people, they would do it (snapping fingers) in a heartbeat. And that's those of you who are pro-life and those of you who are anti-illegal immigration. If they could get rid of you, they'd be happy. You're the reason they're not happy. You're the reason they want to forget the past. You're the reason they want to go back and not learn from the blueprint that showed us how to win two landslide elections -- or forget presidency. Look at what happened in 1994 with the Republican, quote, unquote, "takeover of Congress," the House of Representatives?
I mean, that didn't happen by moving to the middle. And I'll tell you something else. I want to go through a little bit of a timeline here. For the last six years, the Democrat Party said no to everything. The Republican Party today is being labeled as a "no," the party of "no." For the last seven years of Bush's eight years, the Democrats said "no" to everything, and that was called "a great strategy to regain power." And frankly it was. They contrasted themselves. They didn't look at what won in 2000 and 2004 and say, "We need to be more like Bush," did they? Did they do that? No! They said, "We've gotta draw a contrast. We've gotta move even farther left," which they did; and then they got this slick salesman, Obama, who can read the teleprompter really well to sort of marginalize the radicalism of what they're talking about.
Obama doesn't look like a radical. He doesn't even sound like one, unless you know how to listen. So the Democrats said "no" to everything. It was a great strategy to regain power. When Republicans say "no" to everything, they're just "the party of no." When Republicans threatened majority rule, 51 votes, that was called -- remember that? -- the nuclear option. The Democrats said, "The House is majority Republican. The Senate is majority Republican. The White House is Republican." What did they start? They started chanting about the power of the minority! Now, of course, with the Democrats running everything, what are we getting from the Democrats? The Democrats are saying, "You know, you Republicans need to become more like us." They know full well what they're doing.
They want to encourage the McCains of the world to go out and continue to not draw a contrast, but to muddy the water of what a Republican or conservative is. When the Democrats said "no" to the president, that was their patriotic duty because of an unjust war, with unjust lives lost. When Republicans say "no" to the president, well, it's either racist or sexist, or what have you. It's something. It's unpatriotic. The Democrat Party, the American left and the Drive-By Media are doing everything it can to urge Republicans they influence to "move to the center" to win. And the Republicans have fallen to it hook, line, and sinker. When you hear, "Well, we gotta leave that era behind. We've gotta listen, learn, and lead. We've gotta figure out what the American people want. We gotta move forward."
You're hearing them say, "We must moderate. We must become more like Democrats. We must move to the center. We've got to get rid of our conservative identity." And I'm telling you, when they say that, they mean two things: abortion and illegal immigration opposition. They've got to get rid of those two issues. The Republicans want to distance themselves from those two issues. But these people that say, "Leave the era of Reagan alone. Leave it behind," this is said by people that don't believe in conservatism. They believe in something else but they can't really explain it. But I'm just telling you: when they look at the past and see landslide presidential victories and don't want to do what it takes to do it again, that's not a refutation of Reagan. That's not saying, "Screw Reagan." That is, "We don't want those issues. We don't want to win with those issues, and we don't want a candidate that's going to win with those issues."
So they're dumping on Sarah Palin. (interruption) Well, screw the... The demographics have changed? What demographics? Wait a minute. Wait a second. Just a second. You're talking about immigration. But abortion is moving more and more in the pro-life favor in every public poll that's taken. It is clear that if you are... "But Mr. Limbaugh, you must get rid of the social issues. It's the social issue that's killing the party." When you hear somebody say that, they're saying, "Stop talking about abortion. Stop talking about it." That's why Republicans say, "I'm a fiscal conservative. I'm not a social conservative!" That means they're pro-choice and they don't want to be lumped with you Deliverance types, which is what they think of when they think of pro-lifers. They want Oprah's audience, not Rick Warren's.
The Republican Party today would be happy if they could get Oprah's audience, not Rick Warren's. They'll make a play for Rick Warren's audience, but immigration? "The demographics are changing." Okay, we're back to the philosophy of listen, learn, lead. Okay, listen, learn, lead. I think it's depending on who you listen to, who you learn from, "Yeah, we just gotta get rid of the illegal immigration! Come on! Just give them amnesty and move on. We can't be seen as racist. Our businesses need low-cost labor. The Chamber of Commerce, we're big business-type Republicans. We need low cost labor." Again, it's a social issue. "Eh, you're worried about law, illegal immigration. That's not realistic. Pro-life is not realistic. Women are going to have abortions. It's not realistic. We're killing ourselves."
This is what they think. So I don't care about the demographics. They say the demographics are changing. (interruption) What do you mean by that, it's getting younger? What do you mean, demographics? (interruption) Mmm-hmm. There's more Hispanics. Yeah, I've been hearing this, too. I've been hearing we can't win without a black vote. I've been hearing that all my life. We can't win without the black vote, can't win without the women's vote, and we've won without majorities of both for a while. Now here's a new One: "We can't win without the Hispanic vote." I guarantee you, getting Hispanic vote, the Democrats already have it if you're going to promise big government and ever increasing welfare state. We can't outdo them! I don't know.
If you have the money to buy a Rolex, why would you go walking on Fifth Avenue and buy a $60 knock-off? If you can vote for a real liberal Democrat, why vote for a Republican who says he wants to be? So in the sense of American politics today, given what I'm hearing, the Democrat Party is the real $12,000 Rolex, and we're a bunch of $60 knock-offs -- or trying to be, and trying to fool people that a knock-off is the same thing as a $12,000 real watch. But now everybody is saying, "We gotta move to the center to win," but that's not what the Democrats did to win, did they? They moved so far to the left you can barely see 'em. The Democrats moved to the radical left to win! They didn't move to the center. When they say we must move to the center, they're telling us: "Give up your identity." They're threatened by conservatism, too. The liberals are just as threatened of it whether they're Republicans or Democrats. This is not new, and I'm not even complaining.
Left-wing labeling goes all the back to Ronald Reagan. During the election of Reagan he was labeled a "B actor." When he won the hearts and minds of the country he was labeled a great actor by some but still a B actor to the left -- and to this day, Reagan is impugned, maligned. There's revisionist history about the Reagan administration, the Reagan years, the Reagan economy. But it gets down to this: Why should we change everything we believe over a Republican candidate that many people voted against. The Bush administration was unpopular, McCain was not the answer, and yet we need more of that in order to win? It doesn't make sense. Electorally it doesn't make sense. So if it doesn't make sense, you gotta go, "Okay, well, what's their real motivation for this, then?" I'm telling you: immigration, abortion, Sarah Palin. They're threatened by all of this.
Let me take a brief time-out here. I am going to get to your phone calls el quicko here. Just got a couple, three more sound bites from the Republican tour of America.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Last night on CNN's State of the Union, they talked to Eric Cantor and Mitt Romney. John King, the host, "Congressman Cantor, as you launch this effort, the Republican listening tour, anyone who picks up TIME Magazine this week and sees the 100 most influential people will see two Republicans in that magazine. They will see Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. Is that helpful, hurtful, or indifferent?"
CANTOR: They are two individuals that have a lot of ideas, and our party should be about ideas. I know that there are some who like to make it all about personalities, but it's about ideas, it's about how we take this country forward.
RUSH: Now, this is a classic example of why I don't go on these shows. The premise of the question, the whole premise of these guys appearing -- and I understand that they made news by going out and starting a listening tour and saying the Republican Party's gotta do X or the Republican Party has to change, so they're opening the door for this kind of stuff, but I can't recall watching a television show ever like this where, after a list of influential people came out, some Democrat was asked, "Is it hurtful or harmful or whatever that Michael Moore is on the list? Is it hurtful or harmful that Tim Geithner, who cheated on his taxes, is now the Treasury secretary?" You just don't hear Democrats asked these questions, and these questions are loaded from the beginning, and they establish a premise, which is to put Republicans on the defensive. The premise of the question is that there's a defect and a flaw with Republicanism anyway.
Now, Mitt Romney was also asked the same question. "As you launch this Speak to America Tour, anybody who picks up TIME Magazine this week --" and let's face it, fewer and fewer and fewer people are picking up TIME Magazine. More and more, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, US News, they're written for other journalists. Their audience is other journalists, Drive-Bys, inside the Beltway. Okay, so TIME's 100 list is out, as though it's infallible. TIME's 100 most influential people list -- we wouldn't question anybody on this list and they've only got two Republicans, there are only two Republicans of worldwide influence, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. What do you think of that? Is it hurtful? Is it helpful? What is it? Or is it indifferent? And here's what Romney said.
ROMNEY: I think there are a lot more influential Republicans than that would suggest, but was that the issue on the most beautiful people or the most influential people, I'm not sure. If it's the most beautiful, I understand, we're not real cute.
RUSH: That's a dig at Sarah Palin. I'm sorry. It's a dig at Sarah -- most influential or most beautiful. I don't care if they dig me, folks, I'm not running for office. I'm not really competing with these people. They're trying to get votes. I've never tried to get a vote in my life.
Let's go to the phones. People have been patiently waiting. We'll start in Fairfax, Virginia. Chris, who was at this Republican tour, how are you, sir?
CALLER: I'm doing pretty good today, Rush.
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: I was at this event on Saturday, and there were a few cringe-worthy moments in it but on balance I actually came away with a different feeling than what most of the media is spinning it as. What I heard from Bush and Cantor and Romney was more that the conservative principles that the Republican Party was founded on are still relevant and still popular today and really the big issue may be more who are we going to find as the new leader --
RUSH: Really?
CALLER: -- within the --
RUSH: Now, this is important. This is important. Because I took the weekend off. I did not watch any of this stuff. I only have my audio sound bites on what I've read about it. What I've read is the opposite of what you're saying. So this is very key. You were there. What I've read is that they did not espouse conservatism, that we need somebody else, different ideas and so forth. Just the exact opposite of what you said. Is the reporting on this that off base?
CALLER: I was shocked. I was shocked yesterday when I was looking at a lot of the reporting on it. The format of it was not such and it was more a rollout of the opening of what they're going to be doing that it wasn't real issues oriented, it didn't get real in-depth into the issues, but time and time again from Bush and Romney there seemed to be a return to the idea that conservatism is more popular today, and Jeb Bush has a clip in there where quite articulately he expressed it's just a matter of finding who our new leader is going to be to convey that message and get that message out in today's environment.
RUSH: If he said that, if he said -- I agree with that.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: We had 58 million people vote against Obama. If we'd have had that guy that you say Jeb Bush was talking about, we coulda beaten Obama.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: That's what's so frustrating about all this. Conservatism is what would have won. We tried the non-conservative approach. We tried the, "Well, we'll tell our conservative base we're conservatives, but we're really going to make an appeal to moderate, middle-of-the-roaders, independents," and we got shellacked.
CALLER: And there were some cringe-worthy moments. There was one reporter there from Bloomberg that prefaced a question saying, "In 2006 the Democrats took control Congress by running pro-gun and pro-life candidates. Are you all going to start running anti-gun, pro-choice --"
RUSH: What did they say? I got ten seconds.
CALLER: That's where I cringed. The real answer should have been, Democrats won by being conservatives, so why are we gonna start acting like liberals? Instead, they kinda fell back --
RUSH: That's a great --
CALLER: -- and said, well, we want to --
RUSH: Great question. Surprised a Drive-By asked that one.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, folks, it's this simple. We do not need a listening tour. We need a teaching tour. That is what the Republican Party, or, slash, the conservative movement needs to focus on. Listening tour ain't it. Teaching tour is more apt.
Nashville, Tennessee. Dave, I'm glad you waited. You're next on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush. You know, I'm really just done with the Bush family at this point. You know, I served under Bush one in the Desert Storm, and we were bushwhacked then in the sense that he essentially gave the White House to Clinton, and then now we got bushwhacked again with Bush two in the sense that he gave the White House to Obama basically because of his -- again, I supported both Bushes on the war and their efforts to protect this country, but they just fell short on the social policy and turned into these almost liberal type of individuals, and I'm fed up listening to these individuals that sit there and constantly are telling us that we need to change, we need to --
RUSH: I got a note. See if you agree with this. I got a note from a friend today who had read the Jeb Bush headline. Now, remember, the Jeb Bush headline is, "Time to Leave Reagan Behind." That's what Jeb Bush is reported to have said.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Now, whether or not he said it is not the point. The headline said it. I had a friend send me a note reacting to that today. She said, "Oh, really? We gotta leave Reagan behind? I think it's time to leave the two Bushes behind. Can you believe the third Bush is coming along and saying we gotta leave Reagan behind after having the party ruined by two Bushes."
CALLER: Amen.
RUSH: Now, this sounds suspiciously similar to what you're saying.
CALLER: Oh, absolutely. It's like fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So we're gonna go round again with these people?
RUSH: Snerdley is in there laughing at you, but I gotta tell you -- they had fireworks here last night. They had this thing called Sun Fest down there on the waterfront. So some friends had a party, they have a balcony right there on the intercoastal, and I went and I watched it. I gotta tell you something, and it's happening more and more when I go out and talk to people. The paranoia, the conspiratorial theoretical paranoia that is out there, I got more people telling me they're looking at places to leave America and go live, places they're looking to put their money. We've always been, throughout history, every generation has its conspiracy theories and people who believe in them. It's getting a little depressing for me to hear all of this. I'm hearing from people who are looking to go out and buy a safe because they don't trust the bank, they want to just gradually withdrawing their money from their bank accounts to put it in a safe, and there's a shortage of safes, some people say, when they go to the safe store trying to buy a safe. You can't find any 45 caliber ammunition. There's been a run on it out there.
When I hear this stuff, and I'm not lumping that, by the way, with the note I got from the friend who said this is really funny, we got a Bush following two Bushes, saying forget Reagan? (laughing) I thought it was kind of funny. I'm not lumping that with the conspiracy theory stuff here. But it just tells me that with the right candidate and the right issues, this need not be happening. Some people just out there feel powerless and lost, they see Obama with no opposition, not even any verbal opposition, nobody standing up to it, nationalizing all these companies, taking over the car -- this is astounding to people. It is to me, too, by the way, don't misunderstand. I never thought, for example, I would see the headline I saw in New Hampshire: "New Hampshire House Votes to Legalize Gay Marriage." That's one thing I never thought I'd see out of New Hampshire in my lifetime. If I ever did think about the prospect of the government taking over car companies, I also had an accompanying thought, and that is the American people would rise up in angry protest and say, "No way, Jose." I don't see that. You see Obama eagerly taking over as much of the private sector as he can get his hands on. Redistributing as much wealth, targeting achievers with punishment, putting obstacles in their way, and the people to whom this is happening are scared to death. They're afraid to stand up and say anything in opposition to it.
Kathy in Potomac, Maryland, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, thank you, Professor Limbaugh. I'm look forward to seeing you at the Heritage dinner tonight.
RUSH: Well, thank you very much. These speeches, when I go out and do these things, I just have to tell you, Kathy, they're always a crapshoot.
CALLER: Well --
RUSH: I don't write 'em down. In fact, when I go to these speeches these are the most pressure packed portions of my job.
CALLER: Well, Rush, you are going to have people applauding with wild abandon, and you need not be concerned.
RUSH: I am hoping --
CALLER: So enjoy yourself.
RUSH: I'm hoping I don't have to say anything, I'm hoping the applause goes 45 minutes and I say, "Thank you," and walk off. The reason these are the most pressure packed points of my career is 'cause I don't prep them. I cannot write a speech. My train of thought only happens when I'm speaking. My fingers typing, my hands writing cannot keep up with my brain.
CALLER: Well, Rush, it comes from your heart --
RUSH: It does.
CALLER: -- as well as your brain.
RUSH: It does.
CALLER: And that's why it flows so well.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: Rush, I've been trying to reach you ever since I attended the tea party across the street from the White House, and right after I share with you what I called about today, would you permit me just a moment to share one encounter from that day?
RUSH: Yeah, by all means. Feel free. Go ahead.
CALLER: All right. Well, Rush, first of all, what I called about today is I believe that what's wrong with the Republican Party is that we're allowing the Democrats to define who we are. At our core, we believe in individual freedom and our God-given right to pursue happiness. The Democrats accuse us of being hard-hearted and uncaring, as we seek equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. So, rather than thoughtfully defending who we are, in essence, we apologize to the Democrats and redefine who we are. I think that's why we're wandering in the wilderness because we spend more time reacting to the Democrats --
RUSH: Wait a second.
CALLER: -- than articulating what we stand for.
RUSH: Wait. Who is this "we" that you're talking about?
CALLER: "We" as the Republican Party. I'm sorry. I'm a member of the Republican Party, so I speak on behalf of other Republicans.
RUSH: You're talking about, for the most part, elected Republicans?
CALLER: Yes, that's right, that's right, Rush. Thank you for making that distinction.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: That's why you're the professor and I'm the student.
RUSH: I want to back you up. Can you listen to a sound bite with me?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Because this is from ABC's "Good Morning America" this morning, and Serpent Head Carville appeared with Diane Sawyer. And Diane Sawyer said to Serpent Head, now, this is just comical. She's saying to James Carville, "James, you say avoid ideological purity tests? What do you mean?"
CARVILLE: Do you want to be in a church that's chasing out heretics or do you want to be in a church that's trying to bring in converts? The Republicans are always, "He's not a real Republican," or Rush Limbaugh says good riddance to Specter and McCain and his daughter ought to go. That's not the kind of church we want to have. When a party gets political power, it tends to become arrogant and start chasing people out that it doesn't agree with. I hope that we don't do that.
RUSH: This is an attempt by James Carville to intimidate Republicans into not standing up for what they believe in, because if anybody has litmus tests, it's these guys.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: The big tent is the Republican Party, and the reason that the party is losing is precisely because it's not getting converts! Reagan got converts. When moderates and Democrats join the Republican Party, they came as converts to Reaganism, to conservatism. McCain didn't go out for converts. McCain went out and said, "I'm like you, you liberals, I'm like you, you moderates, come vote for me as you are." The Democrats are the ones that do it. Arrogant and power and litmus tests? When's the last pro-life speaker at a Democrat convention, for example? But this main point of the Carville bite is that it's an attempt to intimidate Republicans, just as you say is going on.
CALLER: Right. Now, Rush, could I just take one more moment and share with you one encounter I had on the way to the tea party?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I parked my car in a garage. The garage attendant was a man from Africa. He saw the sign that I had made, it said "Term Limits For Congress," which I think is our only hope, by the way, but he smiled at me and we got into a brief conversation, and I'll never forget what he said. He said, "If America falls asleep, you wake up and find out that only a few people at the top will have taken everything. I know how this works," he said.
RUSH: Yes. We only hear from a lot of people who have experience with totalitarian regimes who say basically the same kind of thing. They're among the most scared, people who have fled totalitarian, authoritarian regimes that are living here watching the development of one they think here, and they are the ones who are as frightened as anybody. All right, Kathy, thanks for the call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Glenn in Pensacola, Florida. Good to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Good afternoon. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: "Mega dittos," I guess I'm supposed to say.
RUSH: No, you don't have to say that. That's up to the individual caller.
CALLER: Okay. Well, I said it. In his, my point is that I think there's plenty of conservatism out there in the country. The Democrats won that election on a protest vote against Bush and the Iraq war -- and the Iraq war, mostly -- and also because I think McCain was just not a very good candidate for us. Maybe because he got the nomination for being there, because it was owed to him or something. I don't know. But I think there's plenty of conservatism out there.
RUSH: We know there's conservatism. Fifty-eight million people voted against the Bamster.
CALLER: That's right and I think if we could take anything from the Democratic playbook -- if we could take anything, or need to take anything -- is that we need to ramp up our machine. They have a relentless machine and it just pounds and pounds and pounds against conservatism --
RUSH: Well...
CALLER: -- and Republicanism, and --
RUSH: Wait, wait. They think we have one, too. I mean they do. They think we have a relentless machine that's constantly pounding them. We do, actually. Me! (laughing) Talk radio. The party doesn't trash 'em. On the Democrat side, the Democrat Party does its best to wipe out the Republican Party. Our party doesn't. But I know what you're saying. This is a constant complaint for 20 years I've been on, "When are the Republicans going to learn to fight back?" I don't even talk about it anymore because they're who they are. And the Republicans that are trying to get elected right now are not even thinking of fighting back. They're thinking, "How can they make you think they're more like Democrats?" or less like pro-lifers, or, "How can Republicans make you think they're less like the people who are opposed illegal immigration? There's nothing affirmative or positive in many of these voices.
Folks, I recently had one of my cars... I have three SUVs. I don't drive 'em. I have 'em for other uses. I don't like SUVs. Rush, you always talk SUV. Fine, I love SUVs. I love the fact that people like 'em. I just don't like driving them, I like driving a different kind of car but I got three of them. I took one of them in the shop to have a BG service, BG Products service maintenance on these cars, I wanted to find out about particularly the transmission fluid. They checked all the fluids in the vehicle in their lab because I wanted to know what condition the car was in, and they discovered, BG Products did, that my transmission fluid in one of the SUVs was contaminated to the point that there were high levels of copper, iron, and lead in the transmission.
The old transmission fluid it stopped protecting the transmission's components and it was only a matter of time before a catastrophic event will happen. I don't know how often you change your transmission fluid. I bet it's not much. I don't know how often you get it checked. In this market if you're not going to buy a new car, you certainly have to keep your current car serviced so it stays running. BG Products, brake fluid, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, lubrication fluids for your engine, you have to go to a place that uses BG Products. You don't go to an auto parts store and buy BG Products. You find the service place that does it. There's a website, BGfindashop.com. And, believe me, they will guarantee the life of your engine once you start using their products, and they work, and they are definitely an improvement. I was stunned when they told me the junk that was floating around my transmission. I actually didn't really care because it broke down I knew I won't be in it.
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President Obama and Tim Geithner, the tax cheat Treasury secretary, say they want to close tax loopholes overseas. Now, this word "loophole" is a loaded word. When we talk about tax loopholes, people think, "Ah, a way for people to cheat." A loophole is a law. A tax loophole is a law. You might say that a special interest or a lobby -- like the mortgage interest deduction is a loophole. The mortgage interest deduction is a loophole. And someday, the government's going to close that loophole. Every tax deduction that's in the legal code is a loophole. This is so crucial to understand. The premise is that all money is Washington's. That's the premise that people like Obama start from. And then they write tax law, and they give deductions for this behavior or that activity or having this many kids or what have you. But the way they look at it is they're bestowing munificence on you. Now they've over the years created a bunch of laws that give businesses some exemptions from paying taxes twice. If you pay taxes in America, even though you're overseas, and you pay taxes to the foreign government, you get a little bit of a deduction in the United States. A loophole, a law.
It's like Obama running down hedge funds. He expects people to hate hedge funds as much as the left has been able to convince people to hate other institutions, like when he talks about hedge funds on Friday with the Chrysler bailout, or bankruptcy and this sort of thing. Nobody's cheating anyone here except Tim Geithner and a bunch of appointees to Obama's cabinet. Businesses aren't cheating. But the use of the word "loophole" is designed to convey that they are. So Obama wants to close these tax loopholes overseas, he says, I mean those companies that already pay foreign income taxes should also pay US taxes. That's basically what he's saying here. Foreign companies here are credited, for the most part, of taxes they pay here, so Obama would hamper US companies by taxing them twice, taxing them on top of foreign taxes that they pay in the country where the company exists, or the factory or the business enterprise exists. So the question becomes how is any of that going to create jobs and improve our economy? Well, it isn't, and it's not designed to do that. It is clear, folks, you watch what's happening right in front of our very eyes, and the transfer, the redistribution of wealth is well underway and they're making no bones with it, making no excuses of it, they're not even trying to really hide it that much. As I say, just keep in mind one thing to understand about Obama, what he's doing is restoring the nation's wealth to its, quote, unquote, rightful owners.
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RUSH: Let's go to back to me on this program on Friday. I made this prediction.
RUSH ARCHIVE: So here's the money question: Did the big banks decide, out of the goodness of their hearts, to go along with Obama and settle for pennies on the dollar, or did they do it -- There's three possible reasons. They did it out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because TARP money was sent to them under the table to cover their losses. We'll never know if that's the case, but it's a good bet. Maybe they didn't suffer losses. Maybe the big banks didn't really -- remember, these guys all voted for Obama. Public consumption is everybody took a bath and that's what makes the deal fair, everybody sacrificed, except the UAW, Obama's real friends. The third possibility to explain why the big banks rolled over is they're just scared to death because the Obama administration, Treasury department, has their future in his hands. So, of the three possibilities: goodness of their hearts, they got secret slush money under the table from TARP, or they're scared to death because the Treasury department holds the future right in their hands. I vote option three. I vote that the big banks rolled over 'cause they're scared to death 'cause wherever I go, I don't care who I interact with, they're scared to death of this administration.
RUSH: And now we know, ladies and gentlemen, I was right. Now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt I was right. Option number three, they are scared to death. My buddy Frank Beckmann at WJR in Detroit interviewed one of the bankruptcy lawyers for one of the bondholders at Chrysler, one of the clients. His name is Tom Lauria. Tom Lauria said, "Let me tell you, it's no fun standing on this side of the fence, opposing the president of the United States. In fact, let me just say, people have asked me who I represent. That's a moving target. I can tell you for sure that I represent one less investor today than I represented yesterday. One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and, essence, compelled to withdraw its opposition to the Chrysler deal under the threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight. That's how hard it is to stand on this side of the fence." And Frank Beckmann said, "Was it Perella Weinberg?" Lauria says, "It was Perella Weinberg." Now, this happened on Friday in Detroit. It's made the news throughout the weekend. Now, the White House, by the way, is denying all of this.
But there's a pattern here, ladies and gentlemen, that sort of gives the lie to the denial. We've referred to the situation that's going on in Washington as loan sharking, Obama loan sharking people. Basically what happened was, as we mentioned last week, the bondholders, the investors at Chrysler were leaned on by Obama and called out personally by the name of hedge funds, and they were selfish and they were holding out for a better deal. These people were forced to settle for 20 to 30 cents on the dollar while the UAW was made whole in the whole thing, and the lawyer, Thomas Lauria, now says that his client was threatened with reputation ruination from the White House press corps. There's no question that there is fear all over this country of this administration. There's fear in American business; there's fear in average citizens; there's fear in every aspect that does business one way or the other with the United States government now. The fear that the average American has always had of the IRS has now been transferred to everybody having fear of whatever branch of government they deal with -- in this case, Geithner and Treasury and President Obama.
Now, who is this lawyer, Thomas Lauria? Thomas Lauria is the head of a bankruptcy group at White & Case, the law firm. He is a Democrat who contributed $10,000 to the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2008. He voted for, he contributed to the very regime that he brought to power that is now wreaking havoc on his clients and threatening them with reputation ruination. But because he's a Democrat and gave ten grand to the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee he's got some credibility here, does he not? He's got a little bit more credibility than the White House spokesman. What did the White House spokesman say? "There's no evidence." Well, what's Lauria? Is he lying? "Well, he's a lawyer, Rush." But he's also a Democrat lawyer and gave big money. So on Friday, I predicted to you exactly what was going to happen, why'd they roll over, because they're scared to death. And here's a lawyer now saying (paraphrasing) "The Obama administration came to us and said, 'If you don't go along with this deal we're going to ruin the reputation -- we're going to get the White House press corps.'"
Now, I imagine in the old days, if the old days, if something like this were reported, let's say President Nixon or President Reagan had promised the White House press corps was going to destroy an American bank or financial institution, the press corps, when they heard about that, whether it was true or not, would be outraged, they would be screaming to high heaven about this. You tell me, but I haven't heard any quips. I haven't heard the Drive-Bys be upset about this. I frankly think that they could probably be used without them even knowing it. But I also believe that they could be enlisted for a cause like this with their knowledge at the same time. So they're probably flattered. "Oh, Bam wants us! Our president wants us to help advance his agenda by destroying that hedge fund? Oh, we'd be happy to. Why, we'll be happy to do our patriotic duty."
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RUSH: Let's stick with the theme here. Let's listen to what's being said about President Obama targeting hedge funds last week when he announced the Chrysler bankruptcy, and he blamed other people for being selfish and some people being selfish and some people not willing to sacrifice. This whole theme of "sacrifice" just infuriates me, because sacrifice is not what builds greatness. Sacrifice did not build America. Shared sacrifice is nothing more than liberals and class envy and the redistribution of wealth. That's all it is. But it's one of those magic words. Fairness is another magic word. "Sacrifice! Yes, we all must sacrifice."
Why? What's the self-interest in sacrifice? What does sacrifice advance? What does it advance? It doesn't advance anything. You may be thinking of something else than sacrifice. If you give up something that you don't need to somebody else who needs it, maybe you can call it sacrifice. If you give up something you need to somebody who needs it, that's not sacrifice. You're only setting yourself back. Anyway, that's a sidetrack I don't mean to get into now. It's for sometime later. George Stephanopoulos, the roundtable on his show on ABC yesterday morning, they were talking about the White House threatening the hedge funds. Here's Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal discussing the Chrysler deal.
SEIB: In the White House, people are sort of liking the president's willingness to use the bankruptcy threat and follow through on it here to Ronald Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers; to say that you show toughness, it has an effect on the immediate situation, and it has a ripple effect down the line; that it makes people realize you're willing to do tough things.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The hedge funds may be even less popular than the air traffic controllers were! (cackling)
SEIB: (cackling) That's almost certainly true.
RUSH: They laugh about it. Okay, so Obama can get away with this. Again, who do they compare him to? Reagan! It's amazing how much the left and the Democrats compare themselves to Reagan, and a lot of people on our side want to forget Reagan. Jeb Bush is not one of them, by the way. There's a headline associated with what Jeb Bush said that's misleading. It's not really accurate. Jeb Bush didn't say, forget Reagan. The headline gives an erroneous flavor to that. That's coming up here. But in the meantime, more unpopular than the air traffic controllers? There's a big difference. The air traffic controllers broke the law. The air traffic controllers were illegally, against the law, on strike. And Reagan gave them a deadline: "If you don't go back to work, you're all canned."
They called his bluff and they got canned. Now, the people that Thomas Lauria, the lawyer, represents, these hedge funds, have not done anything illegal in soliciting investors to bankroll Chrysler debt. But you see the point? Here's Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal and the rest of the Drive-Bys, oh, it's cool! Obama's smart. He hopped on these hedge funds because he knows they're not popular. That's why he used the term "hedge funds." Anybody on Wall Street today is not popular. All you gotta do is dump on them, act like you're getting even with them and you can get away with doing anything in the minds and hearts of the American people. Let's go back. Last Thursday, here's Obama making his direct threat to private companies when announcing the Chrysler bankruptcy.
OBAMA: A group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer -funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none. Some demanded twice the return that other lenders were getting. I don't stand with them. I don't stand with those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices.
RUSH: Who was making sacrifices? The government wasn't making any sacrifices. The union didn't make any sacrifices. The union gets 55% of the company. Who made sacrifices here? Maybe some Chrysler management made sacrifices, but the people that got the shaft were private sector investors. You can never say the government sacrificed. How can you say any element that has the power to print $10 trillion when it needs it, is sacrificing anything? We all know one thing: the government never sacrifices, period, zilch, zero, nada. Now, individual government employees may get canned, reassigned or whatever. But government as an institution never, ever sacrifices. The private sector did here. These people, they were just holding out for a better deal, and that's what bankruptcy is for. So Obama just loooooves taking these shots at the private sector, and this is the comment that caused the lawyer, Thomas Lauria, to come out and say on WJR Friday in Detroit that the president was threatening his client with reputation ruination if they didn't go along. On Squawk Box, CNBC this morning, Becky Quick talking to Warren Buffett, and she asked Warren Buffett, "There's some talk out there that the bondholders, Chrysler bondholders, should accept this deal that's been pushed down their throats. Are you sympathetic to that?"
BUFFETT: The bondholders bought a secure bond. If I have a first mortgage on my house here, and, eh, the first mortgage is for half of what the house is worth and somebody says, "I want you to take a big haircut because I've got some credit card debt someplace else," it has problems in terms of future lending. I mean, if priorities don't mean anything, that's going to disrupt lending practices in the future. Give up the priorities in lending, abandoning that principle, would have a whole lot of consequences.
QUICK: A whole lot of bad consequences down the road.
BUFFETT: I think it would. If we want to encourage lending in this country, we don't want to say to somebody who lends and gets a secured position that that secured position doesn't mean anything.
RUSH: Ha-ha! Right! We just did. The bondholders at Chrysler -- and up next, General Motors. They're going to get the shaft the same way the bondholders at Chrysler did. So here's the second major issue on which Obama supporter and voter, Warren Buffett, now distances himself from Obama, Warren Buffett there is not thrilled with what Obama's doing to Chrysler's bondholders, not thrilled with anything Obama is doing, but he loves Obama! He loves Obama. Not thrilled with his policies, not thrilled with his economics, but, man, what a great guy! He really loves Obama. He's so smart. He's so eloquent. He's so elegant. This is right: "If we want to encourage lending in this country..." I'll tell you what's going to happen. The government's become the major lender anyway, if this is not stopped.
I mean, if Obama can push a button -- and he said the other day, that he wants to be able to push a button and push all these problems. Well, essentially last week he's pushed a button. He pushed a button and told these private bondholders, "Screw you! You're going to have to settle on ten to 20 cents on the dollar." Well, who's going to...? With this kind of power, the government with this kind of power and intimidating presence... Who's going to continue standard debt procedures down the road, major debt such as this, if the government can come in at any time and tell you, "That deal you had? Screw it," and of course here's another thing to remember about sacrifice. And this is the key. Ask yourself a question, by the way -- and honest about this when you ask yourself. When you hear that somebody's making a sacrifice, aren't you heart warmed by that?
Doesn't your heart get warm? Don't you think we're talking about real compassion when somebody sacrifices? "Oh, that is so wonderful! What a sacrifice! I can't believe the sacrifice that person made. That is so, so touching." Okay. The reason I want you to answer the question honestly is because we know how it works. I mean, it's part of the language game, and it's an indication of just how easy the liberals have it in promoting redistribution, class envy, and so forth. But when Obama, talking about different parties at a table who have to come to an agreement to make a deal happen like the Chrysler bankruptcy -- when Obama says some were willing to sacrifice and some weren't -- what Obama is saying is: "Some refuse to go along with my plan that hurts 'em. They refuse to sacrifice." That makes them look like the bad guys. But in truth, sacrifice, in order to be "sacrifice," must be voluntary. If sacrifice is forced, it ain't sacrifice. It's authoritarianism, totalitarianism, or what have you, in this case. But one thing forced sacrifice is, is not sacrifice.
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RUSH: Susan in Toledo, Ohio. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I just wanted to make a comment on the Chrysler bond debacle, and also I have an idea for your teaching tour. The first thing I wanted to say was, the SEC is going after Ken Lewis at Bank of America for not the telling his shareholders that Paulson brought pressure to bear on him to buy Merrill, and I wanted to know if the SEC is going to go after Vikram Pandit of Citi and the gentleman of Chase -- who escapes my mind now -- for not telling their shareholders that the Obama administration put pressure on them to take the lower price?
RUSH: Wait a minute. I've lost track here. Are you talking about the Chrysler deal?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: The SEC had nothing to do with this.
CALLER: They're going after Ken Lewis and saying to him that he should have told them that there was pressure brought to bear on him by Paulson to buy Merrill.
RUSH: Who's saying that Ken Lewis should do what? When you say "they," who is "they"?
CALLER: No. I'm wanting to know if the SEC is going to go question Vikram Pandit from Citi and the gentleman that's the head of Chase because those banks that got TARP money -- I think there was three or four that I read, got like a hundred billion dollars in TARP money and -- the administration is trying to say that they did not use that influence in making them take down their bond price on Chrysler.
RUSH: Oh, okay. What you're confusing me with here is Ken Lewis and Citibank and Pandit because I don't know what that's gotta do with Chrysler.
CALLER: Because Citi and Chase had bonds with Chrysler, and they brought their price down to what the Obama administration wanted, and the Obama administration is trying to say that they did not use their influence because those banks have TARP money.
RUSH: (sigh) There is one hedge fund, and I'm having a mental block of the name of it, that held out.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: And the Obama administration, according to the lawyer for this hedge fund, said, "We're going to unleash the power of the White House press corps to ruin your reputation," on that one hedge fund. So the hedge fund buckled.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: That hedge fund held about $6.9 billion in debt that was debt for Chrysler that was the result of individuals investing in that hedge fund who were taking a risk on buying Chrysler debt. Now, the other bondholders did not put up a fight. Are you say they didn't put up a fight because they got TARP money?
CALLER: Yes, they got... Citi, Chase, and there was one or two other banks. Together, they got a total of a hundred billion dollars and in the Bloomberg article that I read the Obama administration came out and said that they did not use pressure, because those banks got TARP money, for those banks to bring down the price that they were asking.
RUSH: Okay. All right. I addressed this on Friday, and I said there were three possible ways that this could have happened. One is that there was some TARP money under the table that was able to used by some of these bondholders that they really weren't out anything because they were being bailed out under the table. Nobody knew about it. The other reason was they did it out of the goodness of their heart to save Chrysler and all, and the third reason was that they're scared to death of the government. I think the answer in the case of all three -- be it Citi or whoever -- is they're afraid of the government, whether they got TARP money or not. Not everybody did. The hedge fund did not.
CALLER: But you have to remember that last year, when Bank of America bought Merrill, Ken Lewis said that Paulson and Bernanke brought pressure to bear on him to buy that, that he had to buy it. And the SEC is now investigating him and saying, "Why didn't you come to us and tell us that pressure was being brought to bear? Why didn't you tell your shareholders?" So at the same time, my question is, is the SEC going to go to those other banks and say --
RUSH: No.
CALLER: -- "Was pressure brought to bear?"
RUSH: No. The SEC is the Obama administration. It's not going to... A lot of these banks wish they never took the TARP money. A lot of these banks want to give it back. The Obama administration is refusing to take it. Many of the banks -- with Paulson, in the original TARP conference -- were not let out of the room until five o'clock in the afternoon unless they had signed. Wells Fargo was one of them. They did not need TARP money. They were all made to take it. Anyway, look, I appreciate the call, Susan.
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SCHULTZ: Rush Limbaugh in particular -- is is... There's so much hate there, and it -- and it fuels people who want to be angry, who just want to hate. And certainly right now, in our country there's so little product -- productive, umm, outcome from that. We could talk about this as human beings. When I'm angry, what I'm all worked up, I am not my best self. Heh! I... My vision is affected in terms of how I see things; my opinions are distorted by my rage. Um, I -- I -- I don't think it's ever a good idea to try to just fuel rage in people.
RUSH: Now, what she's reacting to here, as we'll learn in the next sound bite, is she thinks that it was hate-filled rage that made me say I wanted Obama to fail. That's Connie Schultz of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and it's paramount-ly obvious, manifestly obvious that she's never listened to this program. There's no hate on this program. There's no rage on this program. But it's typical. She's a journalist. She's supposedly among the best and brightest, some of the most informed people, one of the most informed people out there. She's blithering-ly ignorant when it comes to this program. "It's just so much hate. So much hate!" So Scully said, "Well, do you think Rush...?" Because Scully knows me. I mean, I've run into Scully a lot of places and one thing I know: Scully would never say I'm a hateful person. "You think Rush Limbaugh's a hateful person?"
SCHULTZ: If you're going to encourage people to be hateful, you are hateful. I've had a little experience with Rush Limbaugh fans recently because I wrote a column about -- um, he had claimed he wanted to know how -- huh, huh -- why women don't like him. You know, a lot of women in this country care about the outcome of this country, and they don't like it when he says he wants Barack Obama to fail. To me, that's unconscionable right now! When you talk about the consequences of if the president fails and what he's trying to do to save this country, Think of the consequences. Really? Really! Do you want that? So yes. I would say that's hateful.
RUSH: So really, it's... (sigh) She's just so ignorant, it is almost not worthy of comment. But I will comment. (sigh) In the first place, she didn't get that the women's summit was a joke (it was satire) because liberals can't laugh these days. There's nothing funny to them, particularly if you challenge political correctness. Obama failing, Ms. Schultz... I do not want President Obama being the CEO of Chrysler or the UAW being the CEO of Chrysler. I do not want Wall Street "cut down so-to-size." Obama succeeding, to me, precisely means America failing as we've known it. I do not want America to fail. I love America. I want America to survive, which is why I want Obama to fail because Obama is promised to go "remake America."
Well, he doesn't have that constitutional authority. There's nothing in the Constitution giving the executive branch the right to remake America; to rewrite, to redo the Constitution. Suffering fools, it's just getting harder and harder and harder as I grow -- especially in fields of endeavor where you think there's going to be at least an average IQ. Maybe she doesn't have an IQ of three figures. Maybe she can't crack 100 on an IQ test. But for crying out loud, even with an IQ of 90 -- with just some little bit of critical thinking ability -- you ought to be able to understand and analyze what "I want Obama to fail" means. Does she not have the ability to ask herself, did she want George Bush to fail in Iraq? Did the Democrats want George Bush to fail?
What about the consequences to America if Bush had failed in Iraq, Connie? Sadly, it's a waste of time. Her next column will be on how I "hatefully" responded to her and ginned up all kinds of "hate mail" to her as a result of my playing her sound bites. Well, she's right. TIME Magazine, the top 100 most influential, I'm number one in the arts and entertainers category. H.R. just said, "How can you be an entertainer and be hateful?" I mean, even Don Rickles is loved, even though he's a great insulter. How can you be hateful and be an entertainer? Let's see. Yeah. Connie, you know, I'm going to be speaking before a thousand people at the Heritage Foundation tonight. Do you think all of them said, "Hey, honey, Limbaugh is in town tonight! Let's go listen to some hate"? You think that's why they're showing up, Connie? Ditz.
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CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos from myself, and I know my Uncle Bob is sending them out to you as well.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: First of all, I know you have your nicknames for our president, and I like to call him MacBama and Lady MacBama along with the three weird sisters: Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi. But my point is, I think to move the conservative party forward, we need to be problem solvers rather than ideologues, without compromising our ideals. For example: the stem cell research controversy. We've got one side saying nothing at all, and the other side saying, "Dead embryos," or "thrown out embryos." But cord blood, harvested cord blood is so rich in stem cells that... I haven't heard anyone put that on the table as an option. I mean I had two kids, I just had one again back in September, and, you know, that cord blood went nowhere. And people spend, you know, thousands of dollars, to have it harvested for future use and whatever. So why couldn't somebody have given me a piece of paper and I could have signed away my cord blood so that it could have been used for scientific research?
RUSH: Where was...? You're asking, "Why didn't somebody at the hospital do this?"
CALLER: Well, I'm just saying: Why hasn't that been on the table?
RUSH: Well... (sigh)
CALLER: It's as if embryos or nothing. Just like it's either you're either pro-abortion or you're pro-life and there's nothing about it.
RUSH: Wait, wait. Don't throw abortion in there. Don't, don't --
CALLER: No, no, no. That's a different -- that's a totally different topic.
RUSH: Well, no but see, it's really not. See, it's really not. You're upset with absolutes because a lot of people don't like clear-cut right and wrong. It makes 'em uncomfortable. But I guaran-damn-tee you life is filled with absolutes, very clear right and wrong. Now, you start talking about cord blood. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be offended, but I am, 'cause we talk about cord blood, adult stem cells, alternative to embryonic stem cells on this program all the time. The reason why you weren't presented it is because there are people who do believe in absolutes, who only want embryonic stem cells used, even though there is no record of any success! They want embryonic used because it's a political issue. So we have to fight absolutes, and you don't fight absolutes with lukewarm water.
You don't fight efforts to destroy the American culture and the American political system and the Constitution with lukewarm water. Now, granted, absolutes may offend people. They may make 'em feel uncomfortable and so forth. Well, damn it, it's about time left-wing absolutes made 'em feel uncomfortable! It's about time destroying the US economy and nationalizing it made 'em feel uncomfortable instead of comfortable. Now, as to why hospitals didn't tell you about cord blood and so forth? Guess who's running the health care system for the most part? The US government! And Barack Obama and the US government are big believers in embryonic stem cells, primarily because they get mucho bucks -- bucco bucks and contributions -- from people who believe in it. The embryonic stem cell argument has as its unspoken purpose to further the issue of abortion.
You have to abort kids to get embryos! Is there are successful stem cell applications from, like you say, cord blood -- and adult stem cells. Do you know what a bone marrow transplant is? A bone marrow transplant is adult stem cells. Bone marrow transplants are working miracles in prolonging the life people who come down with various forms of the blood cancers. Not embryonic. Adult stem cells, via bone marrow transplants. So absolutes exist for a reason. How do you negotiate between victory and defeat? Where do you go? Where's the middle ground with victory and defeat? Where's the middle ground with good and evil? Where's the middle ground with right and wrong? Where is it? Right and wrong are pretty absolute and they're pretty well defined. Ideology is education. Ideology is rooted in solving problems.
Ideology -- well, conservative ideology -- is rooted in freedom and prosperity for the maximum number of people possible. And therefore conservatism as an ideology is about solving problems. It is about fighting people who want to do just the opposite: take away your freedom. What you were basically were encountering was a lack of freedom, because a bunch of absolutists don't want you being informed about cord blood or adult stem cells. You were dealing with absolutists when they insisted on embryonic stem cells. You think the absolutists can be persuaded. You think the absolutists on the left could be persuaded if we just weren't so absolute. This is like saying, "Well, Rush, if we just closed down Guantanamo Bay, the terrorists won't attack us anymore." Wrong, if we closed Guantanamo Bay and start beating ourselves up over what we do to catch people that killed 3,000 of us they're going to laugh at us and kill 3,000 more of us thinking it's going to be easier.
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RUSH: Washington Times yesterday had the following headline: "Jeb Bush, GOP: Time to Leave Reagan Behind -- Jeb Bush said Saturday that it's time for the Republican Party to give up its 'nostalgia' for the heyday of the Reagan era and look forward, even if it means stealing the winning strategy deployed by Democrats in the 2008 election." What was that strategy? (interruption) What? Be conservative? Oh, he's talking about conservative Democrats, not Obama. I don't know what Obama strategy we're supposed to steal and still be who we are. But a lot of people are gonna read this, that headline, "Time to leave Reagan behind."
I've listened to what Jeb said, and I've read what's reported. I don't think he actually said that. I just think he's talking about forward-thinking rather than wishing for another Ronald Reagan to come along. We've got some audio sound bites of this that we'll get to here in just a second. Jeb said, "You can't beat something with nothing. And the other side has something. I don't like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that." Let's go to the audio sound bites. This was in Arlington, Virginia, at the National Council for a New America town hall meeting. This is the one being led by McCain and Eric Cantor. Mitt Romney is on this tour, and they're calling this "A Conversation with America." Here is a portion of what Jeb said.
JEB BUSH: My reason for being here is that I think ideas have consequences and we that ought to have a thoughtful discussion about those ideas. And from the conservative side, it's time for us to listen first, to learn a little bit, to upgrade our message a little bit, to not be nostalgic about the past -- because, you know, things do ebb and flow, and it's nice to remember the good old days when the good guys, if you're a conservative, were in power. If you're a liberal, you remember nostalgically when they were in power. None of that matters right now. What we need to do is to listen, to learn, and then there will be a new generation of leaders that will lead. Listen, learn, lead.
RUSH: Now, this is interesting to me on a number of levels. One thing that -- as you know and I've said this countless times on this program. I'm weary of the same people who drove us to this point, telling us what we have to do now. I'm not including Jeb in that. Jeb was not part of the campaign last year. Leave Jeb outta this for a second. I'm going to talk about Jeb here in just a second. But everybody else on this bus tour for the most part is responsible for where we are. We did it their way in 2008. We did it with the candidate and approach that they thought would work: pandering. "We gotta listen to the American people." I maintain when a politician says, "We have to listen to the American people and learn," we are pandering. We're not leading.
You simply listen to what people say they want and then come up with a series of policies that give them what they want. What if what they want is destructive to the country? What if what the people want is destructive to your own party? What if what the people want is something they don't even really understand? Where is leadership in this equation? Listen, learn, lead. After you've listened and after... So did Eisenhower run and take a poll of all the troops designed to invade D-Day? Did he listen to them? To learn what their concerns were and then come up with the plan? I mean, this is not how this generally works. Now, when Jeb says they have something, the Democrats have something and we don't...
We do have something. We have conservatism. Conservatism is timeless. Conservatism is freedom. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Conservative is the nation's founding. I'll speak for myself -- and I can probably speak for a couple of other people who are on the same page with me. The nostalgia is not for Ronald Reagan to come back to life. The nostalgia is not for Ronald Reagan himself to have his campaign studied and people emulate him. It's not that at all, and it's not really nostalgia. Nobody wants to bring the twenties back. Nobody wants to bring back the Roaring Twenties, thirties, whatever. Nobody wants to bring that back. Of course everybody lives in the present. I especially live in the present and the future.
What's missing in the Republican Party is what Reagan was, not the cult personality figure, but his beliefs. What's missing is a candidate that can articulate conservatism, pure and simple. So when you have a policy that's "listen, learn, and lead;" the "lead" is irrelevant. It's just you're not leading people anywhere; you're pandering to them. You know, conservatism is all about ideas! It's not about people. Conservatism isn't about personalities. If Jeb wants to run around and say that they've got something and we don't have anything, meaning the Democrats have something, and we have to admit it. If we don't have something, it's the fault of the people that Jeb is meeting with in Arlington, Virginia.
Not conservatives, and not conservatism, and not the grassroots. I have to laugh at Specter and all these people talking about how far right the party is moving. It's the exact opposite. This party has muddled its identity to the point that they have to do this tour to come up with a new brand. A new brand? You have to rebrand the Republican Party. Why? Because in many places you can't distinguish it from the Democrat Party, on several key, core issues. So this battle is been joined and it's going to continue. Believe me, Jeb may be on the fence on this. As I read the story I don't actually see him say the words "leave Reagan behind." They're saying that when he says this nostalgia, we can't be back to that.
But, I'll tell you what, whether Jeb is saying it or not -- and we've discussed this countless time on this program. There are people in the, quote, unquote, conservative movement or in the Republican Party who sure as hell want to leave Reagan behind. Everything Reagan stood for, the man, policies, and everything else. And it is a battle. It's an internecine battle that is going to go on in the Republican Party. Hell, let me tell you a story. I haven't had a chance to get into this. You know, last Tuesday I went out to Los Angeles to the Milken Institute to participate in that political forum -- and before we went out on stage, they served dinner to all of the speakers and some hangers-on in there. I didn't eat because of the wonderful diet I'm on. (I'm now down 42 pounds, by the way, 248 pounds total, and 42 pounds lost in 53 days. It will be eight weeks Wednesday.) So I wasn't eating but there were some people in the room, and apparently the people that had been there, had been there all week.
I just flew in for the event and flew home, and one of the people, doesn't matter who, took me aside and said, "Rush, I have to tell you about this reception that we went to last night here in Beverly Hills."
"Oh, really, was it fun?"
"Well, it was quite telling, Rush. It was very, very informative."
"It was 75% liberal Republicans --75 % very, very wealthy Republicans -- who said this party has no prayer until it gets rid of the pro-life issue. It has no prayer. It isn't going to win a thing. It's not going to get our money.."
And I gotta tell you, it was not news. This is history repeating itself. I have told you how many times, the same thing happened to me in 1994, at a party one summer out in The Hamptons, where the same kind of people came up to me and jabbed me with a finger in the chest and said, "What are you going to do about the Christians?" Liberal Republicans, Northeastern guys, said the Republican Party isn't going to go anywhere. This conversation happened at dinner, and I said to one of the panel participants, I said, "Yeah, Ronald Reagan won two landslides. I don't think he was pro-choice," and the participant said, "Well, he wasn't really identified big time as pro-life." "Are you kidding? You may not have thought so, but the people voting for him did." It was not something Reagan hid. It was not something he swept under the rug.
There's just... I do think that the abortion issue is one of the centerpieces that is resulting in this fracture, both in the conservative movement and in the Republican Party because there just are a lot of liberal Republicans who just don't want the issue to be part of the party for a host of reasons. A, they do think it's a guaranteed loser, which it's not. Look at public polling data, and you'll see that public polling on abortion-on-demand is lower than it's ever... Well, not ever been, but lower than it's been in ten years. But beyond all that, it's embarrassment, too. You know, you go to the Republican convention and you've got the delegation from South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, West Virginia, and all pro-lifers out there.
The Northeastern people (gagging), 'cause they get laughed at and made fun of by their liberal Democrat buddies when they get home and resume the cocktail party circuit. So social concerns are clearly part of it as well. But the bottom line here, ladies and gentlemen: conservatism's about ideas. Leaving Ronald Reagan behind? If somebody says leave Reagan behind, it's to miss the point because nobody here wants Reagan again. Conservatism is what has been left behind, and the courage to articulate it, which has many of us mystified because it's the blueprint. It's the blueprint for landslide victory, and everybody knows this. So it's the blueprint, yet why, in the Republican Party and the conservative movement, are so many people opposed to it?
Abortion. I guarantee you. I guarantee you that abortion, and whether you be pro-life or pro-choice, is one of the unspoken issues. It's the elephant in the room, and everybody is dancing around it because nobody wants to say it publicly. They'll come up to me Tuesday night at dinner before the forum and they will say that to me, as though it's my responsibility to fix it. But when we get on stage and actually on the panel, it won't come up. Nobody will bring it up. They want it dealt with behind the scenes. It's fascinating. I'm not lumping Jeb Bush in here with any of this. I'm moving on from there. We've got a couple more sound bites from the Listening to America Tour that the Republicans engaged in.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have a story here, folks, in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. It's from a year and a day before The Messiah was immaculated. And here's the quote from Obama: "I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas over a pretty long chunk of time there, over the last 10-15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom." He was talking about Ronald Reagan. Obama himself said Reagan and the Republican Party have been the party of ideas. He said this a number of times during the campaign, and they invoke Reagan constantly, the left does, and they use him a lot. Our side wants to throw him away. So let me just explain, when you see anybody, I don't care who it is, a headline writer or a Republican, a blogger, I don't care who it is, when somebody says you gotta leave Reagan behind, the era of Reagan is over, however it's said, it is said by Republican politicians who don't believe in conservatism, pure and simple. They don't believe in conservatism, they believe in something else. They can't explain what they believe in, but they believe in something else.
So they run around and say we must listen, what we gotta do, we gotta listen, learn, and lead. So they don't know what they believe. I'm telling you that the elephant in the room is abortion, pro-life, and just the fact that these people hate that it's a political issue, that is an issue that has defined the Republican Party. They wish it would go away. They don't care about it one way or the other. These people are not conservatives when they say Reagan's finished, leave Reagan alone, Reagan era behind, it's over, whatever. These are people that don't believe in conservatism. They don't know what they do believe in so what they say is we need to reform conservatism. We need to redefine conservatism; we need to rebrand it. No, no, no, no. It's timeless. It's timeless. It's the way people live their lives. It's the basis on which the country was founded. Here are more audio sound bites from the National Council for a New America town hall meeting. There was an unidentified guy in the audience, and he had this exchange with Jeb Bush.
MAN: Kind of have to disagree with what you said, Governor Bush. I really think the past is important. It is surprising that Barack Obama was elected and he goes around apologizing in every country he goes to when people are spoon-fed years in high school and college of anti-American history. I mean, quite honestly I think people learn more from listening to Rush Limbaugh's show than they do in high school and college.
JEB: The context that I was talking about the past was really candidates running for office that have kind of a nostalgic view of the world. That's a perilous thing. And I think to President Obama, candidate Obama's credit, he waged a 2008 campaign that was relevant for people's aspirations, whether you agreed with him or not, it was not a look back, it was a look forward, and so our ideas need to be forward looking and relevant. I felt like there was a lot of nostalgia for the good old days in the messaging and, you know, it's great, but it doesn't draw people towards your cause.
RUSH: Who in the world's he talking about? Where was the nostalgia in our campaign for the good old days? And where was the good old days messaging in our campaign? Well, I don't think he is talking about McCain. No. Something else you have to understand, these people hate Palin, too. They despise Sarah Palin. They don't like her, either. According to them, she's embarrassing. McCain said, "I was there with Ronald Reagan." McCain didn't pull it off with any conviction. I mean no Reagan voter ever understood or ever was made to believe that McCain was, too. No Reagan voter ever believed McCain was a Reaganite. Look, there are a couple more sound bites coming up, time constraints here, but a lot of this is aimed at Sarah Palin. When you strip all the talk, it's Reagan era is over and we gotta stop all it is nostalgia and stuff, clearly in last year's campaign, the most prominent, articulate voice for standard run-of-the-mill good old-fashioned American conservatism was Sarah Palin.
Now, everybody on this Speak to America tour has presidential perspirations. Mitt Romney is out there. He wants to be president again. Jeb may someday. Eric Cantor, some of the others, McCain, I don't think he does, but you never know. So this is an early campaign event, 2012, presidential campaign, primary campaign with everybody there but Sarah Palin. If you're going to talk about who looked back in the past, I disagree with Jeb again. Obama looked back to the past every time he made a speech. He ripped it to shreds and then promised something brand-new. Hope and change without any specifics whatsoever. This need to praise Obama, too, that kind of leaves me a little wanting.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
| • Washington Times: Jeb Bush, GOP: Time to Leave Reagan Behind |
Now, this is a quote that got some attention. To me, it was worth a lot 'cause I think these people inadvertently slip up and tell us what they really think and therefore what their policies are really going to be. I think another time she was honest was when she said it was the first time she was proud of her country, because her husband was nominated to be president. Well, that tells me she's been angry. I think Michelle (My Belle) is an angry woman. I think Barack himself is angry, and they spent their whole lives in anger, and that anger has been fueled by people like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. All that stuff mattered to me. So there's Michelle (My Belle) telling people in Zanesville, Ohio, where the unemployment rate was sky-high, don't leave here, stay and become nurses, work for other people. Let's jump forward to the New York Times Magazine interview this weekend. Barack Obama says Wall Street will play a less dominant role in the economy because he doesn't like the leveraging and the risk taking that's become so common. And here's what he said.
"The changes in the role of Wall Street and the huge profits that came from that risk-taking could mean other adjustments as well." Quote, Obama: "That means that more talent, more resources will be going to other sectors of the economy. I actually think that's healthy. We don't want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader. We want some of them to go into engineering, and we want some of them to be going into computer design." So when you couple these things together, here is Barack Obama saying, I'm going to make sure Wall Street plays a less dominant role, what he's saying is the private sector is going to play a less dominant role. I'm going to cut 'em off. I'm going to chop off some heads. I'm going to downsize Wall Street. They've done it with pay caps, caps on bonuses and so forth and so on, and now he's going to try, by hook or by crook, to get people who go to Ivy League schools and elsewhere not to take their degrees and go to Wall Street but rather computer science or engineering.
Now, you don't have to read between the lines here. This is exactly what it appears to be: A command and control economy. Obama said he wishes he could put a button and fix that. Well, he's just pushed a button here. He's pushed a button, he's gonna to cut Wall Street down to size. "The Obama administration is trying to restore more regulations on the financial sector to avoid some of the risk-taking that helped cause the current economic problems. 'Wall Street will remain a big, important part of our economy, just as it was in the '70s and the '80s,' he said. 'It just won't be half of our economy.'" Is Wall Street half of our economy? Who's got that stat? Even if -- just speaking hypothetically here, accepting his point -- even if Wall Street's half the economy, it's good news that he's gonna whack half the economy? The government's going to be the dominant player. The government is occupying and directing the private sector. The government is right now occupying Chrysler; they're going to occupy General Motors. No predictions needed because this is happening. Next he's going to occupy Wall Street. Wall Street got so big because so many individuals wanted in. Individuals using what? Liberty and freedom. There was no conspiracy to explain why Wall Street got big. People wanted to go there. It turns out now too many to please Obama.
"Obama said he expects that government efforts to fix the economy will cause long-term changes." No kidding. "'What I think will change, what I think was an aberration, was a situation where corporate profits in the financial sector were such a heavy part of our overall profitability over the last decade,' he said." Now, remember, these were publicly traded companies we're talking about. Individuals invested in publicly traded companies, which created these profits, and people became very prosperous. You know, profits are the mother's milk of politics. Without politics, you don't have a whole lot of donations to people like Barack Obama. This is one way people make money, in the stock market, and he doesn't like it.
"Obama said he's confident that people will regain trust and confidence in the financial system, but he believes it will take time. 'I think it's important to understand that some of that wealth was illusory in the first place,' he said." Some of the wealth was illusory. Really? So according to Obama, you didn't really lose anything when your 401(k) was cut in half. You haven't lost anything because the value of your 401(k) was illusory, it was artificial, it wasn't real. So you really haven't lost anything. If you have a stock portfolio that's down 40%, you really haven't lost anything, because you really never were up 40% because what you've lost, you never had, it was illusory, it was on paper only. Now, if we're going to apply this as a way of assigning value to things, then how in the hell can we say the US government has any value when it's trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in debt?
You want to talk about illusory value, Social Security. Illusory value, Medicare; illusory value, the war on poverty, illusory value? The wealth on Wall Street was real! It was made by individual citizens investing either as members of a group, mutual fund or what have you, or individually in securities and equities. It was real. Otherwise, the losses wouldn't bother anybody. This is striking to listen to this. The wealth was illusory. Well, if the wealth was illusory, Mr. Obama, why are you so against it? What bothers you about people's wealth if it's really not wealth, if it's really just illusory? This is what I talked about at CPAC. This is Barack Obama remaking America in his image. This is Barack Obama taking this country, restructuring it in a way he thinks is fair, returning the nation's wealth to its, quote, unquote, rightful owners.
END TRANSCRIPT
CALLER: Thank you. It's an honor to speak to you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I've been a fan since the beginning of your show and I told all my friends and family, "You would not believe this guy on the radio, he agrees with me, I can't believe it."
RUSH: That's exactly the way to tell 'em, too.
CALLER: And my dad became absolutely your biggest fan. I have no doubt that he was a bigger fan than your own mother. He planned his day around your show and started buying Snapple by the case --
RUSH: Good man.
CALLER: And even took my mom to Ruth Chris for her birthday.
RUSH: Good man, good man.
CALLER: He died in 1995 and when I went to get his things from the medical examiner, it was completely unexpected, the first thing that fell out of the envelope was his driver's license, and the tears just started coursing down my cheeks. All the staff people came running over to comfort me, and then I started chuckling, and they looked at me as if I was some sort of weirdo or freak or psychotic or plain a little touched in the head. And they asked me what I was laughing at, and I said, "This picture was taken between 9:06 and noon." Dad lived in California, and they said, "How do you know that?" And I said, "The wire that you see going from his pocket to his ear is a transistor radio in his pocket, and earphone in his ear, he had taken his final driver's license test and had his picture made all while listening to the Rush Limbaugh show."
RUSH: Well, you know, I'm glad you have such fond memories of your dad being associated with listening to this program.
CALLER: Oh, you became an honorary member of the family. Mom and I grieved with you when you lost your hearing, rejoiced with you with your cochlear implant, and prayed with you through rehab.
RUSH: Thank you. Thank you.
CALLER: Anyway. What I was calling about is, as I watched President Obama micromanage all of these companies, because they've taken TARP money and saying it's to protect the taxpayers' money, I think about government funded health care, not even government run health care, but even government funded health care, what's going to stop him from micromanaging everything in our lives? Because everything we do arguably affects our health: how much we sleep, where we eat, where we work, how many kids we have --
RUSH: Nothing.
CALLER: -- everything.
RUSH: That's the objective. You're right. Grab audio sound bite number 20. This is Jan Schakowsky, this from April. This was around Friday. I didn't get to it Friday, but this is Illinois Congressperson Jan Schakowsky.
SCHAKOWSKY: And next to me was a guy from the insurance company who then argued against the public health insurance option, saying it wouldn't let private insurance compete, that a public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and -- (cheers and applause) My single pickup was, he was right. The man was right. I -- I -- here's what I told him. I said, "Excuse me, sir, the goal of health care reform is not to protect the private health insurance industry." (cheers and applause) And I am so confident in the superiority of a public health care option that I think he has every reason to be frightened.
RUSH: Here is a congresswoman from Illinois, Jan Schakowsky, basically saying we are going to get rid of private insurance and the private health care industry in toto, we're going to do it. So yeah, you wait till they start micromanaging how much your doctor can get charged and what illnesses you're going to get treated for, what's covered. It's not going to be pretty.
END TRANSCRIPT
Gee golly Rush! You’ve done nothing but be a reporter for twenty plus years. Long on rhetoric but short on action.
Rush Bump!!! Go Rush!!!
"A political party cannot be all things to all people.
It must represent certain fundamental beliefs
which must not be compromised to political expediency
or simply to swell its numbers."
-- President Ronald Reagan
"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party
over to the traitors in the battle just ended.
We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged
to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support.
Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates
wouldn’t make any sense at all.""
-- President Ronald Reagan
hey...get a room, or better yet, reach out and touch somebody
This ditz is also “Socialist Sherrod” Brown’s wife, he being a Senator from Ohio. Check his campaign to see how kind he was to his opponent (not alleging anything, just curious).
Oh, that’s right. She’s my rat Senator’s wife (who prior was my rat Congressman). Thank you for reminding me.
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