Gutless Republican Wonders in the U.S. Senate Don't Get It: The Democrats LOST

Rush Limbaugh ^ | December 16, 2004 | Rush Limbaugh

[Ooh-Ah]

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

The pile-on of Donald Rumsfeld continues. (story) "U.S. Senator Trent Lott does not believe that Rumsfeld should resign immediately, but he does think that Rumsfeld should be replaced sometime in the next year." What's the difference? Lott said, "I'm not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld." He mentioned this to the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce yesterday morning. "'I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers.' Rumsfeld has been criticized since a soldier asked him last week why the combat vehicles used in the war in Iraq don't have the proper armor. Both Rumsfeld and President Bush have said more vehicle armor will be shipped to Iraq. Lott said the United States needs more troops to help with the war. The country also needs a plan to leave Iraq once elections are over at the end of January. Lott doesn't think Rumsfeld is necessarily the person to carry out that plan. 'I would like to see a change in that slot in the next year or so,' Lott said. 'I'm not calling for his resignation, but I think we do need a change at some point.' On another military issue, Lott said he hopes the Base Realignment and Closure Commission will consider closing bases overseas rather than in the United States."

Well, Senator Lott why don't you take over that instead of farming this out to some blue-ribbon panel? You elected officials gutless wonders, when it comes to the tough decisions, there you go running for the tall grass. You don't want to be responsible to your constituents for closing military bases so you get a bunch of ex-congressmen and senators to come up there, chair a commission to decide which ones to do it, you pass the buck on all the heavy lifting and then you dare sit there and blow up at Donald Rumsfeld.

The fact of the matter is, Senator Lott, that Donald Rumsfeld is the first secretary of defense in a very long time to try to change the environment at the Pentagon, to retool, to shake up the bureaucracy, to build a military for future threats, et cetera, instead of relying on the same old military of the past. And this is very common, folks, when somebody comes in and starts shaking up the old guard -- and it's been that way for a long, long time -- the people getting shaken up don't like it, and they start leaking things, and they start trashing, and they start buzzing and whispering behind people's backs, and they get piled on. As a result of this, as a result of Rumsfeld's attempt to move forward and look forward he has offended many of the old bulls on Capitol Hill who claim he's not listening to people, he's not listening to his officers in the field. What Lott means is he's not listening to us in the Senate. He is listening, but he is a leader, he's not an order taker. Senators are not secretaries of defense and they are not secretaries of state and they are not presidents of the United States.

Rumsfeld is a leader. He understands that the enemy today is different and that the force structure must address it. I tell you what, it's some of these politicians who have been in Congress for decades who don't get it, if you ask me. Talk about an old boys club, the Senate. Any senator can't get anything out of that body, can't get any legislation out of there that makes any sense. A senator, to sit there and talk about anybody else not doing a good job, this is the place where half the decent legislation in this country gets bottled up. This is the place, Senator Lott, where three Democrat senators blew up and committed a potential criminal felony by releasing the details of a covert, super-secret satellite spy plan. This is a criminal felony. Criminal referrals have been handed out to these three, Jay Rockefeller, Durbin, and Ron Wyden. Now, if the Republicans in the Senate had any gonads they would be on the prowl here trying to get these guys strung up for what they did, because you want to talk about defense and you want to talk about security, take a look at what's coming out of the U.S. Senate on the Democrat side. Instead of piling on Rumsfeld, why don't you and the Senate leadership get together and realize it's the Democrats in the Senate who are the enemy, and not Rumsfeld. That it's Al-Qaeda who is the enemy, and not Rumsfeld. And just because McCain decides to fly off the cliff for personal reasons doesn't mean you have to follow him. You know, this is just absolutely absurd, all of this. I mean, what's the difference in saying, "I don't think he should resign, but I don't think he should last another year." What's the difference in this? You know, it is some of these politicians who have been in Congress for decades who don't get it. I don't know if Mississippi is still home to one of the biggest Navy shipyards, but Lott was slopping at the pork barrel for decades over that shipyard, and these people, it just burns me up. What do they think happened in this last election? It's almost like Rumsfeld won the presidency and now the Republicans don't like it and want to throw him out. He's not the president. He's the secretary of defense. And this is also I think oriented around trying to be loved by the Democrat media establishment in Washington, because Lott's had his own Strom Thurmond problem. Everybody wants to get back in the good graces when you live in Washington. That's the mind-set that's there. But, for crying out loud, if any of these guys in the Senate want to focus on some real security problems, the last place to look is Donald Rumsfeld. These three guys, Rockefeller and Ron Wyden and Durbin, that let loose not only with the details of this plan -- this was a black operation. Black means nobody knows about it. It's the highest security level you can get. It's a stealth satellite system. We all know what it is now. It was a stealth satellite system. The reason that it's going to be stealth, or was to be stealth, is because some of the satellites that we have up there, from what I'm given to understand, can be detected by radar by the Iranians and others on whom we might spy. So they can disguise what they're doing and determine when they're going to do what they're going to do at a time when the satellites are not overhead. Put a stealth satellite up there and they won't know. And one of the problems was early development and it doesn't see through clouds well, and so they thought they'd blow the whistle on this, but this is not the way to do it. They're all sworn to secrecy, they're all told what the ramifications are if they blow up secrets of some super-secret plan like this. They're members of the committee that sits on this, learns of this. This is worse than a leak. These are criminal acts, these are felonies, what these three senators did, subject to criminal referral. Criminal referrals have been sworn out by the White House on these three senators. They are fit to be tied over there. Here comes Senator Lott piling on in Biloxi yesterday on Rumsfeld. It just boggles the mind. And it's what I've always said sometimes. Sometimes, you know, we were losers for so long that when we win we don't know how to act like winners. What in the world do we want to join the other side for and say get rid of Rumsfeld? Why do we want to carry the water of the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate? It is beyond me. BREAK TRANSCRIPT National Review Online today, "The McCain-Hagel Caucus has spoken. It has no confidence in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Senator John McCain has said so explicitly, while Senator Chuck Hagel has only strongly hinted at it. Both senators have 2008 aspirations, and Republican-primary voters would do well to take early note of how they behave during a budding media frenzy directed at one of the Bush administration’s key players." That's exactly what this is, it's a media frenzy about that planted question about armor on the Humvees. That was the seed that was planted that's now given root to all of the trees of legitimacy these people are hanging on in order to rip into Rumsfeld. But this is a great point. Republicans primary voters, 2008 is four-years away, I know, but make some notes, just be able to remind yourself what certain Republicans did four years ago when it comes time to do these primaries in 2008.

"The get-Rumsfeld crowd — mostly Democrats, joined by the McCain-Hagel caucus and a few stray hawks — takes great umbrage at Rumsfeld's answer to a National Guardsman's question about an insufficient number of up-armored Humvees. Hagel intoned, 'those men and women deserved a far better answer from their secretary of Defense than a flippant comment.' But Rumsfeld wasn't being flip. One wonders whether Hagel has even taken the time to read the full transcript of the secretary's remarks. The troops gave Rumsfeld a standing ovation at the end. Is it the position of the secretary’s critics that the troops were too stupid to realize they had just been belittled?" And stood up and gave a standing O at the time they were flipped off? "The comment that has most angered Rumsfeld's detractors is his statement that you go to war with the Army you have. That may have been too frank in such a forum, but it was true. We went into Iraq with a military not yet fully transformed to adjust to 21st-century reality..." Because the bridge to the 21st century built by the Clinton administration did not include the military. So we had to end up facing "an insurgency launched in a harsh urban environment. If Rumsfeld's hawkish critics, some of whom were banging the drums for the Iraq war for years, thought that war could be responsibly fought only with an Army equipped with 8,000 up-armored Humvees, they had adequate time to make that known--" They had adequate time to make it happen because they control the budgets, and they control the troop levels.

This is what continues to literally amaze me. Rumsfeld was not around when all these cuts took place. Rumsfeld was not around when troop force levels were reduced. But Senator McCain was, and Senator Hagel was there for part of it. And they come along after the fact and act like this is just like this intelligence snafu on the weapons of mass destruction, like they knew nothing about it, like they've been lied to, like somebody's been hoodwinking them. Somebody told these guys we were fully equipped and ready to roll and then we find out we're not. Well, they know full well what we're equipped with because they vote for it. They put the budget together. Troop levels, force levels, troop distribution, armor, weapons, transport -- the whole mess, it's in the defense budget, and the president has his own version, but it goes up there and as you've always heard it arrives DOA. And the Congress starts writing its own version of these things. And then there's generally a compromise and then they get signed into law, and everybody involved knows what's in it.

Now it's very convenient for these senators who want to act like they had no clue, and this is all one man's fault. One man's fault. And isn't it interesting, it's not the president in this case. It's not the president's fault, even though he's at the top of the chain of command, no, no, he's the commander-in-chief, no, it's Rumsfeld's fault. And I still maintain to you that one of the things that's causing Rumsfeld trouble, in addition to this comment -- when I think that comment, all it is is the vehicle that gets them there -- I think that what really bugs them about Rumsfeld is that he's shaken up the bureaucracy over at the Pentagon and he's changing the way it's always been, and he's trying to modernize it. Don't forget, too, he called us on this program about this, early 2002, there was some old antiquated but updated version of some -- forget what this thing was, but it was a conventional war troop carrier or transport or weapon, long cannon or some sort of thing -- and Rumsfeld said it makes no sense. We can't mobilize it, we can't move it around very easily. It makes no sense, we're not going to be fighting these kind of wars. And of course by opposing it he also canceled a lot of pork. He canceled the work project for some senator in some state, and something as minor as that can linger and cause grudges to form and then retribution to take place or retaliation at the appropriate time.

As the editors at National Review Online write: "Once it became clear exactly what we were facing in Iraq, the Pentagon adjusted. Such adjustments are an inevitable part of any complex and difficult military enterprise. At roughly 140,000, there are many more troops there now than were initially planned. The training of Iraqi forces has undergone changes in both its nature and volume since the end of the war, as we have realized both the importance of the training and our initial failures in its implementation. Over a year ago Pentagon task forces were set up to figure out how best to counter roadside bombs and how to rush equipment — from up-armored Humvees to night-vision goggles — to the troops in the field. In both areas our performance has steadily improved."

It was the Crusader weapon, that's what it was called, the thing that Rumsfeld was opposed to. But make no mistake, folks, as I mentioned to you earlier this week when this whole thing hit the fan, past weekend when McCain got this ball rolling, the vast majority of Rumsfeld's critics gleefully seek an opportunity to discredit the war effort. That is what they're all about, and in the process, wound the administration. Partisan politics no longer stops at the water's edge, and just because the election is over does not mean the left has gone away. In fact, they're retrenching to become even more extremist and wacko than they've always been, and this is a great sign and illustration and example of it. Let's go to New Glarus, Wisconsin, Pat, welcome to the EIB Network. Nice to have you with us.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Yeah, I think all you're seeing here is a classic separation of powers scenario. Democrats have been wiped out as a national force, and, of course, somebody's going to rush in and fill the gap. And I think what you're saying is that unhappy members of the Republican delegation in the Senate, knowing full well the president needs their support to get any policy through, is making themselves known. They're becoming the counterweight to White House policy. It's classic. What do you think?

RUSH: Well, is it classic? This is about a war in which we are engaged in to protect our national security.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: I can understand this kind of a turf battle going on over some social program or, you know, the renewal of food stamps or should we extend unemployment benefits, you know, or provide, you know, clothes for every newborn kid in America who's born into a family with less than an income of hundred thousand dollars, or whatever. But not in this circumstance. If they're really wanting to help out and manage their turf and assert their position, there are ways of doing this outside the glare of the public eye.

CALLER: Well, but this isn't really a partisan battle. I mean, it is and it isn't. It's not Republican versus Democrat.

RUSH: Make no mistake, it most certainly is a partisan battle. You say the Democrats have lost, they've lost their power base. That's exactly my point. So why do we have Republicans trying to sound like them?

CALLER: Well, again, you know, it's just the way the Constitution is set up. The Constitution is set up in such a way as to avoid concentrating power in the hands of any one person.

RUSH: I understand all that, but this is not a concentration-of-power issue, this is an opportunistic move based on an apparent weakness of the secretary of defense. The thing about it is that if the Republicans in the Senate want to, you know, assert their independence, fine and dandy. I would just prefer that they not sound like Democrats when they do it, and I would prefer that they not articulate the same things Democrats would say were the Democrats running the Senate. Right now you can't tell the difference. And that's the thing about it that is irritating. Plus the fact that I don't think Rumsfeld is half as bad as these people think. I think this is a straw dog. I think this is nothing more than a bunch of selfish Republicans trying to position themselves for presidential runs in '08. They're trying to outmaneuver Rudy Giuliani, take example of his weakness because of his association with Bernard love 'em and leave 'em Kerik. And then you have, you know, other factors going on at the same time, but what it all boils down to, what it looks like, what it adds up to here is members of the president's own party apparently in revolt and demanding that one of his cabinet members be forced out. The president is the one guy that counts in this, and the indications are that he's firmly and solidly behind Rumsfeld, which is good. But I mean there's the whole lot going on here that's selfish. There's some people trying to reassert themselves for their own careers. There's some people that are taking this occasion, the circumstance in which we find ourselves at war, and exploiting it for their own personal gain, it just is unseemly to me.

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[lainde]

bump for ref.

[conservativecorner]

The senate is a worthless country club run by RINOpublicans, and the 3 dim-o-crats should go to jail for disclosing a black project. Rummy didn't create the problems that the military now faces. It was congress that allowed the military to be decimated during Bubba's 8 years, yet they are now trying to pin this on the Sec.. UNFRIGGIN REAL!!

[discipler]

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm thankful that Rush has zeroed in on Lott and others for being soft.

[Mo1]

FYI Ping

[Mo1]

People in leadership hesitate to come out much against McCain because of the war stuff. But that's a mistake to give him so much leverage. He goes against too many conservative issues.

I will honor and respect McCain's service in our military and the years he spent as a POW

However, his years as a Senator suck ..

[Ed_in_NJ]

Sellout Senator Vacant Lott demonstrated during the sham i42 trial that he was gutless and not deserving of his office.

The others are thinking ahead to 2008 and not wanting to do anything to limit their opportunities (jumping on the 'popular' side of things).

Rats are corrupt and disabled to the point that pubbies figure they don't have to listen to the masses -- one more reason we need a strong third party.

[OXENinFLA]

Thanks MO1

---

OING..

[Bahbah]

"In speaking out against Rumsfield, they are in effect questioning our Commander in Chiefs judgement...."

That, I believe, is the point of all of this Rummy-bashing. I do not think the President will listen to any of this bunkum.

[BigSkyFreeper]

This was Rush at his absolute best. This was the best monologue I had heard in a long time.

[Cedar]

My dad spent 3 years as a soldier overseas during WWII. I honor his service too.

And I'd much rather have my dad up in Washington voting on issues rather than McCain. I KNOW my dad would side with conservatives 100% of the time.

I still say McCain gets too much prominence in the GOP. Seems to me he is the one who causes a good deal of trouble for the GOP.

[Tarl]

Anyone who saw McCain responding to questions on our countries security and defense during the 2000 Republican debates realizes he is a poor choice indeed for President of this great country. He is impulsive in his speech, rhetoric which is reckless and dangerous when it comes to foreign policy.