RUSH: Now, back to this Newt stuff. I got a note from Jeffrey Lord. Jeffrey Lord writes for the American Spectator, which is Bob Tyrrell's bunch. Bob Tyrrell has a devastating piece: Newt is Bill Clinton, only worse! Oh, it's devastating. This Elliott Abrams piece is devastating. And they all happen the same day. So Jeffrey Lord sais: Wait a minute now, Nancy Reagan, 1985, Goldwater Institute, after the Reagan era -- and Jeff Lord says, "Believe me, if Nancy Reagan thought for a nanosecond that Newt was anti-Reagan, she would never have been on the same platform with him." I can vouch for that. I've never seen a more protective wife of anybody than Nancy Reagan. If you in your life said one thing against Ronald Reagan, you were gone. You were banished. You were never allowed to be in the same room.
Talk to the people who knew them both and worked with them, and they'll confirm that. So Jeff Lord says (paraphrased), "Well, if all this that we're hearing yesterday's true, what the hell's Nancy Reagan doing out there giving Newt basically a huge award?" She said, "The dramatic movement of 1995," that was going on then, "is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie," her husband, "and in turn Ronnie turned the torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive." That's Nancy Reagan in 1985. Now, Jeff Lord worked in the Reagan White House.
He's posted that Elliott Abrams never said a word to him at the time about Newt, not one. And Jeff says, "Suffice to say the political office of the Reagan White House made it our job to defend Reagan from Republican members of Congress. I never heard any criticism of Newt, either, firsthand from Elliott or secondhand from anybody else," and then he posts his take on all it is at American Spectator. So what do we have here? Tyrrell says that Newt Gingrich is Bill Clinton without Clinton's charm. This is a long list of people here who have just come out both barrels blazing on the same day or within close proximity of the same day: Elliott Abrams, Bob Tyrrell, Drudge, Brit Hume of Fox News, Dr. Krauthammer, the New York Sun, the National Review, Vin Weber.
We've got the audio. I don't have it ready to play yet. It's back in the stack somewhere. I'll find it eventually, but he did say all this stuff. I just didn't know it. That's what has me stunned. My memory of Newt Gingrich is as a premiere defender of Ronald Reagan. So this stuff caught me totally by surprise. And all these people -- Elliott Abrams, Bob Tyrrell, Dr. Krauthammer -- have impeccable credentials. And then there's this. This is a post at The Corner, National Review Online. "Operation Chaos in Reverse." It's actually a front page Washington Post story. "Liberal Groups Join in Florida Ad War Against Romney -- Newt Gingrich isn't the only one trying to beat Romney in Florida.
"Several liberal groups are funding new ad campaigns in Florida, targeting the vulnerable GOP presidential candidate, part of an unusually bold effort by Democrat supporters to bolster Obama's chances in November by influencing the Republican primaries." So the Democrats are doing Operation Chaos here in Florida. The unions are running anti-Romney ads, big time, all over the state. This is an expensive media market. There are ten sizeable, significant media markets in the state of Florida. You need a lot of money to saturate this state with TV ads. And these pro-Obama people are coming in. You've got a $1 million add bye from the American Federation of State County, Municipal, Employees. That's the nation's largest public employee union. They're focusing on Romney's history as head of Bain Capital.
SEIU and Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama super PAC, have also jointly launched a Spanish-language radio campaign in Florida accusing Romney of having two faces, and they're even... Reuters has a hit piece on Marco Rubio coming tomorrow. I mean, folks, everybody involved in politics with a vested interest has opened both barrels of the shotgun and are firing at everybody. Every Republican of note and of stature is under a full-fledged assault in this state today. If you didn't know better after this Reuters piece, you would think that Marco Rubio contributed money to Adolf Hitler's campaign. That's how bad this hit piece is.
It just all over. Newt was on Univision. He was on Univision, and he was talking some weeks ago how he gave depositions in his divorce case. There weren't any depositions in his divorce case. He didn't give any depositions. His wife told the media there weren't any depositions. So everybody is scratching their heads. "Why would Newt say that all kinds of friends were available to prove to ABC? Why would he do this? Why would he tell ABC that he had all kinds of friends who could back up his claim that his wife was lying, Marianne was lying that he never did ask for an open marriage -- and then tells Univision that he had depositions in his divorce when there weren't any depositions?"
Then this grandiose stuff with the moon colony! Ha. You add all this up, it's amazing. You know, I had hopes that this campaign would go on and on and on and on all the way to the convention, and I'll tell you something that's happened. Folks, Romney's getting hit, too. Romney's doing his own version. He's got some imploding going on out there with Romneycare. There's a devastating ad that somebody's put together, pointing out that Obamacare is Romneycare. Oh, it's one of Newt's super PACs. And then there's another ad that makes the bridge, completes the bridge from Romneycare to Obamacare and does it with Romney's two advisers that went from Massachusetts to the Oval Office. The point is one guy is emerging entirely unscathed in all of this, and that's Santorum.
Santorum, nobody is saying a negative word about. He's not under assault by anybody. And we want this campaign to go on and on. There are two reasons. There are two primary reasons that we want this campaign to go on. I know a lot of people are panicked. They can't handle all this negative stuff about Republicans in the media every day, but it's going to happen. If they have to lie and make stuff up, this is going to happen. Republicans are hit every day in the media. There's no way this can be stopped. You're just gonna have to come to grips with it. There's nothing I can do, there's nothing anybody can do to stop the media assault on any Republican candidate or high-profile personality.
So it's gonna happen. What we don't want to happen... If we happen to choose a nominee after Florida, if our race is essentially over after Florida and we have our nominee -- either after Super Tuesday or right at Super Tuesday -- then guess what? Obama can start his focused negative ads on our nominee in March and run them continually through the election. If the campaign can be dragged out, no winner until right before the convention, then Obama can't focus specifically on the nominee. They have to focus on everybody that's running and it could delay him, and Obama's got a lot of money. One of the ways of equalizing the disparity in the money is to have a long, drawn-out campaign that delays Obama's focused spending anti- our nominee.
'Cause we can compete financially in a two, three-month campaign that starts in September, but we can't keep up with 'em starting in March, or it would be hard. The preferable way... The second reason is, keep this conservative debate going in the news, in the media each and every day. So as long as Obama doesn't know who specifically to destroy, he's gotta aim at everybody. That means dividing and diluting his resources. Newt's also stepped in it, too. He said that he was a Goldwater supporter when he was a Rockefeller state chair. These are the kinds of things, as you heard in the early part of the campaign, people worry about what Newt is going to say at any time, and you don't know here it's gonna come from and you don't know... (interruption) Yeah, he did say it. He said he's a Goldwater supporter. He was a Rockefeller state chair. He was a regional chair for Rockefeller. (interruption) Nelson Rockefeller. Yeah. Yeah. The Rockefeller wing of the party. Correct. Exactly right.
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RUSH: Here's some audio. And welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Tom DeLay has joined the fray. Tom DeLay is now saying Newt Gingrich is another Bill Clinton. DeLay says, (paraphrasing) "Yeah, we'd have leadership meetings almost every day and every day Newt had a new agenda. Nothing was ever organized." You know, the criticism is a lot of people say Romney doesn't believe in anything and Newt believes in everything. It just depends on the day. Now, if Romney's behind this attack, we may have to rethink our opinion of his cut 'em off at the knees talents. The question is, whoever's doing this, do you think they have the guts to do this against Obama? That's the real question. (interruption) You do? Have you seen any evidence of this? Have you seen any evidence the Republican Party's willing to go after Obama like they're going after each other? I haven't.
I hope that Elliott Abrams and Bob Tyrrell and the rest of them will have just as much fire against Obama as they do Newt. I hope that we see this same kind of focused opposition to Obama once that day comes. I really do. Snerdley says, "Oh, yeah, no doubt." Really? Where's the evidence? Where's the evidence that anybody in our party's got the guts to go after Obama the way they're going after Newt here, the way they've gone after Perry, the way some of them have gone after Romney, where's the evidence? We don't have the evidence. We have to wait and see. And I'll bet you a bunch of people in this audience, if you ask 'em to make a bet, they would bet the Republican Party doesn't have the guts to go after Democrats the way they're going after themselves. I'll just bet you. We'll find out. We'll ask 'em when I get to the phones tomorrow. Just kidding. We'll get to the phones today. Here's Romney. This is an ad and you'll hear Gingrich in this ad. This is a pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future ad.
GINGRICH: I worked with President Ronald Reagan. Worked with Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan playbook. President Reagan. Reagan. Reagan.
ANNOUNCER: Gingrich exaggerates, dropping Reagan's name 50 times. But in his diaries Reagan mentioned Gingrich only once. Reagan criticized Gingrich, saying, Newt's ideas, quote, "would cripple our defense program."
RUSH: April 11th, 1988, Gingrich on a show, host says, "Can the vice president run as Bush on the issues that provided such success for Reagan?"
GINGRICH: I don't think so at all. I think that the years of 1980-1984 are the past, and the American people are a people peculiarly addicted to the future. If George Bush runs as a continuation of Reaganism, I think he'll lose because I think on Election Day the American people, given a choice between more of eight years or something new, will vote for something new.
RUSH: So that's one of the things circulating. And this is January 13th, 2008, four years ago on This Week with George "Snuffleufagus."
GINGRICH: We are at the end of the Reagan era. We're at a point in time when we're about to start redefining, as a number of people have started talking about, that we're starting to redefine the nature of the Republican Party in response to what the country needs.
RUSH: Newt was one of the early signatories to the premise "the era of Reagan is over." That's 2008. (imitating Newt) "We're at the end of the Reagan era here, in 1988. Nah, nah years of '80, '84, that's the past, American people peculiarly addicted to the future. If George Bush runs as a continuation of Reaganism, he'll lose." Newt was wrong. The stuff's out there. Last night was the first time, and I was shocked, 'cause I know everything, and I remember everything, and I had never heard that stuff before.
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RUSH: Bob Dole has gone nuclear. Bob Dole said, "Hey, hey, don't leave me out of this." Dole, National Review Online on The Corner blog: "I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late. If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.
"Gingrich served as Speaker from 1995 to 1999 and had trouble within his own party. Already in 1997 a number of House members wanted to throw him out as Speaker. But he hung on until after the 1998 elections when the writing was on the wall. His mounting ethics problems caused him to resign in early 1999. I know whereof I speak as I helped establish a line of credit of $150,000 to help Newt pay off the fine for his ethics violations. In the end, he paid the fine with money from other sources. Gingrich had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall. He loved picking a fight with Bill Clinton because he knew this would get the attention of the press. This and a myriad of other specifics helped to topple Gingrich in 1998.
"In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad. He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year. Newt would show up at the campaign headquarters with an empty ice-bucket in his hand -- that was a symbol of some sort for him -- and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it." Imagine that picture. Newt Gingrich showing up at headquarters with an empty ice bucket. (laughing) Of all the things that Bob Dole remembers to include in this piece.
"In my opinion if we want to avoid an Obama landslide in November, Republicans should nominate Governor Romney as our standard bearer. He has the requisite experience in the public and private sectors. He would be a president we could have confidence in." So it is both barrels.
Back to the audio sound bites. Nancy Reagan in Phoenix, the Goldwater Institute dinner in 1995. Number 26, 27, and 28.
NANCY: The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.
RUSH: Ronnie turned the torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress. Nancy Reagan. Now, she obviously didn't know that Newt had been out there saying, "The era of Reagan was over" in 1988. If she'd-a known that she wouldn't have said this. Here's Newt Monday night in Tampa, he's live on NBC. This is during the debate. Brian Williams said, "Mr. Speaker, you've been talking a lot about conservative principles in this campaign so far. Is that enough for you? Is that good enough to get you through here?"
GINGRICH: Look, I don't want to spend my time commenting on Mitt. I'd like to just tell you that I started -- I went to a Goldwater organizing session in 1964. I met with Ronald Reagan for the first time in 1974. I worked with Jack Kemp and Art Laffer and others to develop supply-side economics in the late seventies.
RUSH: Okay. That's from the debate Monday night. Let's go back to April 11th, 1988, a Washington news program, Newt Gingrich.
GINGRICH: I think this party in that sense is a very different party than it was, say, from the fights of the years of the Rockefeller/Goldwater process. A period in which, by the way, I was a Rockefeller state chairman in the south.
RUSH: Snerdley can't believe it. (laughing) Snerdley's mouth, his chin is on the desktop. (imitating Newt) "I tell you, I went to a Goldwater organizing session in 1964. I met with Reagan for the first time..." Both of these could be true. He could have gone to a Goldwater organizing session in '64, didn't like it, and joined the Rockefeller campaign. But it does sound like back in 1988, I'll say this -- (interruption) Well, you got a debate tonight. It's obvious they're clearing the field for Romney. Back in 1988's Newt's making it plain he was a Rockefeller Republican. And, by the way, in 1988 that was your ticket to the establishment.
Remember, folks, the Republican establishment never liked Reagan. I know I say this over and over again. He didn't like Reagan. He was Rockefeller's state chair in 1968 in the south. In 1968, he was a Rockefeller state chairman, talks about going to a Goldwater meeting in '64. Remember, now, in 1988 the establishment was happy. They couldn't wait to get rid of -- in fact, Jeff Lord at American Spectator has written about some of the things that happened when the Bush 41 people showed up and took over the West Wing. They got rid of all the Reagan stuff. I forget the specifics. But in 1988 your ticket to the top of the GOP was to sign up for being a moderate. So at least best you could say maybe Newt was practicing opportunism there.
So that's that. That's the Newt stuff. It was kinder, gentler, the Bush 41 kinder, gentler. Thousand points of light. I was number 732, if you remember. I was number 732 of the thousand points of light. I even printed a certificate. I figured out how to use Pagemaker, so I printed my own certificate. I was number 732 out of a thousand points of light.
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