Posted on 05/21/2009 4:28:44 PM PDT by GOP_Lady
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
On Today's Show... |
|||||
|
|||||
|
Terms of Use | Privacy Statement | Copyright & Trademark Notice | Unsubscribe
The Rush Limbaugh Show® Premiere Radio Networks © All Rights Reserved, 2009. Premiere Radio Networks, Inc. 15260 Ventura Blvd. Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
|
To be added or removed from the "Rush In A Hurry" Ping List, FReepmail GOP_Lady.
RUSH: It has been a fascinating morning, ladies and gentlemen, dueling national security speeches by Fidel -- uh, Barack Obama. We got Castroed! We got Castroed by Fidel -- uh, Barack Obama. He just kept going and going and going. I have never seen President Obama as defensive as he was today. Greetings, my friends. The former titular head of the Republican Party Rush Limbaugh at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Our telephone number if you want to join us today, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
So I've been watching some of the commentary after we had Obama speak, and, folks, I felt like I was watching a Castro speech. It just went on and on and on and on and on and on and on. It was defensive as it could have been. I've never seen Obama this defensive. And I watched Cheney. And I watched some of the commentary afterwards, and the libs, the libs on all these cable networks are just foaming at the mouth over Cheney. Lawrence O'Donnell, the learned leftist who was a writer and consultant for The West Wing TV show, said Cheney's speech was as sleaziest speech since Spiro Agnew. Bob Beckel, our old buddy on Fox News I think has gone out and bought some shirts with larger collars because he gets so agitated on there, his neck swells up, looks like he's gonna just burst out of the shirt collar. These leftists are fit to be tied, and I'm thinking about the American people watching this stuff, I mean, you had two clear presentations here on national security, and nobody that I heard commenting on Cheney was angry about anything, commenting on Obama, was angry about anything, and I'm not going to be angry, just doing some analysis. But, boy these libs, these libs commenting after Cheney, are just foaming at the mouth.
The rage and anger is palpable. And as I've always believed, I think one of the reasons why is that Cheney is effective. Cheney gets results. There's a poll out from CNN. His approval numbers are up. Cheney's numbers are up eight points since last week, since he started going public defending the Bush administration and defending the United States of America. I really thought that President Obama today was defensive. I keep saying this, I know, but I want to drill it home. One thing you can say about Club Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay, this is his exclusively. When you get to the US economy and the bailout, say, of the automobile companies and TARP, you know, Obama and his supporters could say that a lot of that started before he took office. So it's going to be tougher to tie economic results to Obama for a while although we're going to succeed in doing it. But Guantanamo Bay is a hundred percent Obama. Two days after he takes office he announced he's going to close it, he doesn't have any plan for closing it, his own party says no, we're not going to pay for that, no, we're not going to have to terrorists released into the United States said Dingy Harry. The Obama White House said, well, it was a hasty decision. They are really not coordinated on this.
The White House yesterday says, "Our announcement to close Guantanamo was a hasty decision." Obama comes out there today defiant as hell, hell's bells, I'm closing the place. It was almost as though he was a lawyer, the perspective that I saw him adopt was as a lawyer making the case for terrorists and having access to the US court system, not making the case for terrorists and their actions, don't misunderstand me here, but he almost sounded as one who had to speak up in defense of the terrorists and their legal rights and how those legal rights had been bastardized and destroyed by the previous administration. I have never heard a president in a speech use the word "I" more than Obama did today, and I have never heard a president in a speech use the term "previous administration" more than Obama did today. Now, why was he defensive? I think I know. I know the personality type. Barack Obama has accomplished nothing. Barack Obama is where he is because of his perceived brain power. He's perceived to be smart and brilliant, a great speaker, but what's he ever done but organize a bunch of election fraud experts over at ACORN and pal around with some dubious characters. One of his best friends is a terrorist, in fact, Bill Ayers.
So he goes off to Harvard, he goes to Chicago law, he goes off to all these places, and gets rave reviews for his intellect and so forth. All of his adult life is spent in academia where nobody's challenged, nobody's challenged in academia. If the students challenge, it's the students that have a problem. Then he's out there organizing the ACORN election fraud experts, and he's out there teaching Saul Alinsky's book to them, Rules for Radicals. And now he's in government. He's in the Senate, now he's the president of the United States. And I think this guy is intolerant of challenge. I think his attitude, I think his essence is, don't challenge me, sort of a miniature messianic complex. You know, I say it and that's it, you don't challenge me. Well, he's being challenged, he's being challenged by Cheney, hence he has to go out and make this speech today. He in this speech repeated what he said yesterday. He said, "Make no mistake, let me be clear. I will not endanger US national security in any decision I make." Well, why do you have to say that unless there's some doubt about it, unless you think somebody has raised credible doubt about your intentions regarding national security? Why would you go out and have to make that clear?
You cannot win wars with apologies. One of the things that Cheney said in his speech is, when terrorists see us divided, debating whether they should have constitutional rights, they don't stand back and reassess their opinion of us and say, "You know what, maybe we're wrong about the United States." What they see is weakness. Obama was all over the notion that Guantanamo Bay led to the creation and recruitment of more terrorists, ignoring the fact that we were repeatedly attacked by terrorists long before Guantanamo Bay was opened as a terrorist prison, ignoring the fact that, as Andy McCarthy pointed out to me in an e-mail, the number one terrorist recruitment tool is a successful terror attack. And there has not been a successful terrorist attack on the United States since 9/11, eight years, and the terrorists, we could say, suffered a defeat in Iraq. Then we have the story out of New York that these four guys who were converted to Islam while in US prisons -- see, here's another thing. Obama wants to bring all these people from Guantanamo Bay to prisons in the United States. He made the case, hey, we got terrorists here. We got Ramzi Yousef. We've got the blind sheik. We've got all these people in our prisons, and our prisons are safe; they're not escaping, they're not getting out.
Well, these four guys were blithering idiots. I mean, they bought faulty, fake bombs from FBI informants but they were going to blow up a Jewish synagogue, a temple and some other things in New York. They got nabbed, and they were all converted to Islam in United States prisons. So he's making the case he's going to bring all these prisoners here, and Guantanamo is somehow immoral and unjust. But it was all so much on the defensive that it was stunning to watch for me. Because normally you see Obama as confident and self-assured and the chin up as he gazes out over the audience -- over it, not at it -- gazes out over the audience. There weren't a whole lot of applause lines in his speech. And he took after waterboarding, he made it plain -- we've got the sound bites. I don't know if I'm going to waste your time with them. Do you want to hear them, Snerdley? Do you really? Yeah, see, he wants to hear my reaction. Well, I guess that's true. Most everybody wants to hear my reaction more than the sound bites themselves, probably true, especially now that I am the former titular head of the GOP.
But he went on the warpath here on waterboarding. They said it's torture. We're not going to torture. We've lost our moral values; we've lost our values, blah, blah, blah, blah. The methods of enhanced interrogations have been released by Obama. Obama has released to the terrorist community around the world our techniques, those memos. He has not released the content of the answers nor the results of the interrogation. Now, the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others, just so you remember, folks, led to the successful obstruction of an attack on the city of Los Angeles. Every one of you in Los Angeles should know that had Barack Obama been president the last eight years, your city would have suffered a terrorist attack. Waterboarding saved an attack on Los Angeles. Now, if you're in Los Angeles, you can feel guilty or you can feel grateful. By using Obama's professed techniques and not using waterboarding and other things that he hit hard today, rest assured we would not have gotten the information that allowed us to thwart a terror attack on Los Angeles.
Make no mistake about it, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launching missiles that can reach Israel, they're ramping up their nukes.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I must confess, and let me be clear, these kinds of Obama speeches are getting old to me. And I frankly think the economy is crashing because of speeches like this. But as to the Obama speech itself, ultimately every speech Obama makes is about him, and this one was no exception. And that's because his followers all have a personal emotional investment in Obama. Obama knows it; he's got to fuel it. But I am here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that only a charismatic demagogue -- highly skilled in the low art of political seduction -- would try to weave his personal story, talking about his two communist parents (that both abandoned him, by the way) into a discussion on national security.
Let me say that again. Only a charismatic demagogue, highly skilled in the low art of political seduction, would try to weave his personal story into a speech or discussion about national security. As if Obama's personal story, misguided as it is, is the foundation for everything! And if you're a cult follower, and if you are an Obama supporter simply because of emotional investment, Obama knows that emotional investment has gotta be enforced. So he's gotta tell his personal story. How his father faced all these long odds in Kenya to go to here because this was the land of the free and the home of the brave and yada yada yada yada.
What is it all meant to do? All of this is meant to say, "Hey, I am an American and I care about America." Now, if you're having to weave your personal story into a speech on national security when you are president of the United States, you are defensive. You are having to explain to people. For some reason in his own head he thinks there are people that doubt (this is Cheney's effectiveness) his bona fides and his credentials on national security. If it appeals to Obama personally, then it should appeal to all of his followers, including the slavish Drive-By Media. This is dangerous and it is tiresome.
This low art of political seduction he practices is the height of narcissism. But I, ladies and gentlemen, believe that it's indicative of his leadership style. With Obama, everything is a tug and an appeal to popular sentiment, as opposed to substance and what it takes to keep the nation safe. Obama said today that terrorists captured on the battlefield should be given trials, full rights. Now, that's not going to play well if these people are released into various states. People in these states do not want people who have designs of blowing up people in the United States on this country's soil!
Most people find nothing wrong with keeping these people at Guantanamo Bay. Had I been a terrorist, were I a terrorist I would have been prompted to give Obama's speech a standing O today. It would have been tempting to give him a standing ovation, because essentially Barack Obama apologized to terrorists all over the world for the past eight years of the previous administration. And then he goes on. He talked in this speech about this being a nation of laws. Very convenient for him to say! He cares not a whit about the law when it comes to taking over private sector businesses and putting private sector businesses out of business. The rule of law? It is his ignoring the rule of law that permits his domestic agenda.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: President Obama today kept talking about how the practices at Guantanamo Bay and the fact that it exists as a prison acted as "a recruitment tool" for terrorists around the world, and we know that the waterboarding of three of the terrorists down there helped to prevent -- or did prevent -- an attack on Los Angeles. So a logical question for those of you in Los Angeles would be this: "How much of a recruitment advantage or tool would a successful attack on Los Angeles have been after a successful attack on New York and Washington?" If they had hit Los Angeles after New York and Washington, what about that recruitment tool? Do you think they would have been able to recruit terrorists all over the world in far greater and far more numbers than because of the existence of Gitmo?
And, by the way, they were recruiting terrorists and attacking Americans and America long before we opened Guantanamo Bay. Christian Science Monitor today with an interesting observation. Obama ran late today. Obama's speech was supposed to start at ten o'clock. Now, it's not uncharacteristic for Obama to run late, but they were 28 minutes late. "Obama took the stage nearly a half hour later than scheduled," and according to... This is Jimmy Orr at the Christian Science Monitor. "You could make the case Obama was trying to make it difficult on the networks to carry Cheney's speech afterwards, and I don't doubt that for a minute." I think it's a great observation. I think Obama was late. He didn't want the networks carrying Cheney's speech. They don't want Cheney to be heard. That's why they keep telling Cheney to shut up and go away. Let's listen to some of the great sound bites here from Vice President Cheney. Start with 37, and we'll just go in order there. This is the vice president on waterboarding. It's self-explanatory. Listen to it.
CHENEY: It is a fact that only detainees of the highest intelligence value were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation. You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists. One of them was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, who has also boasted about his beheading of Daniel Pearl. We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our country, things we didn't know about Al-Qaeda. We didn't know about Al-Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.
RUSH: Irrefutable logic, irrefutable logic. Why let them answer the questions on their time when they know what's coming next and what was coming next among other things was an attack on Los Angeles that was thwarted. One of the things that grates me -- and I have to tell you it grates me greatly -- is to hear Obama... He did this all during the campaign -- and, by the way, his speech today was just an extension of the campaign speech, his whole campaign. One of the things that constantly grates on me is how Obama talked about how Guantanamo Bay and our entire approach to terrorism somehow was a sacrifice of our values, that we had somehow lost our way, that we had lost our values, that we had not adhered to our values, that the moral beacon that was the United States disappeared in the seven years after 9/11 with Bush and Cheney in charge. Vice President Cheney dealt with that today.
CHENEY: We hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists. People who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about values. Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance. Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings. They were trying to prevent future killings. To call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What's more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe.
RUSH: This sound bite is why I made the observation earlier that the Obama speech today was essentially an apology to terrorists. Because Cheney is sitting here saying, "To call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims." And that has been the approach of the Democrats and President Obama for the last seven years: "These terrorists in Guantanamo are just innocent victims. Oh, poor people," and we have to run around in the world apologizing for all of this. So all of this talk on values that Obama professes is just empty rhetoric when compared to the substance of the success of the program to protect the country in the years after 9/11. One more. Well, not one more. Several more sound bites of Vice President Cheney. Here are his thoughts on the compromise between good and evil.
CHENEY: The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States. You must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy. When just a single clue that goes unlearned or one lead that goes un-pursued can bring on catastrophe, it's no time for splitting differences. There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people hang in the balance. (applause)
RUSH: Yeah. Right on, right on, right on, right on. One of the things that I have to observe, I found Cheney's speech to be compelling. I found Obama's speech to be extraordinarily defensive. Obviously you people are going to think I have a bias about this. If I have a bias it's toward the truth. If I have a bias it's toward love of country. If I have a bias, it's love of freedom. And there clearly are differing approaches to securing freedom and securing national security, and the current crop of people come up way short on both counts, in my opinion as an adult and as an observer. Here is Cheney commenting on Obama's hasty decision to close Guantanamo Bay.
CHENEY: On his second day in office, President Obama announced he was closing the detention facility at Guantanamo. This step came with little deliberation and no plan. Now the president says some of these terrorists should be brought to American soil for trial in our court system. Others, he says, will be shipped to third countries. But so far the United States has had little luck getting other countries to take hardened terrorists. So what happens then? On this one I find myself in complete agreement with many in the president's own party.
RUSH: (laughing) He went on to say how they don't want them out of Gitmo; they don't want to transfer them here to the United States. It was just wonderful to hear the vice president today, and a lot of people, I've checked my e-mail, are saying, "Where was this during the Bush administration? Why didn't they speak up and say this kind of thing when they were in the midst of these personal attacks and assaults?" I don't know. I can't answer it. But nevertheless it's happening now. Cheney's poll numbers are rising. Dick Cheney is getting results. For all that Obama said today, almost every national security policy from the Bush administration is being continued by Obama. Do you want me to list a couple of them for you? A couple of them are increasing troop strength in Afghanistan. We're not getting out of there.
He's holding onto the warrantless wiretap program, or warrantless searches and wiretaps of foreign terrorists. He is reserving for himself, Obama is, the right to do enhanced interrogation techniques. He said that in his speech today. He's reserving the right while ripping the previous administration. Obama, folks, I'm going to tell you something. It was never more clear to me than today. They say he's cool. He's not. He's cooled, and this guy is angry. This guy has a chip on his shoulder. He is angry that anybody dares challenge him as president on any decision he makes or any speech he makes. He's angry that anybody dares challenge him on his policies. And he has a partisan anger directed at Bush and Cheney and Republicans that he mostly manages to keep beneath the surface. But a speech like he made today that's defensive, it came roaring into plain view by everybody. We've got sound bites. I'll let you hear some of them as the program unfolds. Here are a couple more before we go to the break, Vice President Cheney explaining the "recruitment tool" theory.
CHENEY: Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a, quote, "recruitment tool" for the enemy. On this theory, by the tough questioning of killers, we have supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the president himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It's another version of that same old refrain from the left: "We brought it on ourselves."
RUSH: Amen, and nothing could be more compelling and nothing could be more truthful. This is the essence of the Democrat Party position: "Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, that created terrorists. That made them hate us even more. It's our fault. We are to blame. We brought it on ourselves. Blame America first," and when you get one of those people as president, the blame-America-first guy then runs around the world and not only blames America, but apologizes for it. And all of this is done under the guise of enhancing the respect nations have for us around the world. It does no such thing. It just displays our weakness, and it causes people who intend us harm to laugh at us, at the sophistry and the silliness of people like Obama. Final bite. Cheney nuking it here.
CHENEY: Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values, but no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things -- and when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.
RUSH: Amen.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, we've told you all about Obama's speech, and you've heard a lot of Vice President Cheney's reaction to it today. You've heard that Barack Obama basically apologized to terrorists for the last eight years, said we're not going to do this again, we're not going to suffer moral lapses like we did. We're going to do -- blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the New York Times today has a fascinating story on page A-18: "President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a 'preventive detention' system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said. ... The two participants, outsiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was intended to be off the record, said they left the meeting dismayed. ... 'He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can't charge and detain.'"
Can I translate this for you, page A-18, the New York Times? Barack Obama wants statutory right to go out and say, "We think you're going to blow us up," and put you in prison, before you've done a thing, before you have committed one act. This is called preventive detention. So while making this speech today, he's telling human rights people yesterday in the White House in an off-the-record talk that wasn't supposed to get out, but it did get out, even though it got buried on page A-18 of the New York Times. So essentially everything Obama said today was BS and smoke and mirrors designed to defend himself and to continue to tell his personal story and to establish his bona fides and so forth and to rip the Bush administration, to rip conservatives, to rip Republicans, to rip the United States while he's out there looking for preventive detention and the need for it. Later in the article -- Jane Mayer wrote a piece about this in the New Yorker about what this might look like. And she said that White House Counsel Greg Craig was looking at whether the number of hard cases, suspects who may be difficult to convict under American legal standards of justice -- under American values -- but who may pose a threat if released might require preventive detention laws. I know we have it. It's called Guantanamo Bay, which he wants to close. That's simply closing the loop on his campaign with his leftist buddies, the unions and everything else.
Folks, I'm telling you, this is striking. It's just stunning. Greg Craig, the White House counsel, looking at whether a number of hard cases, suspects who may be difficult to convict under our legal standards -- our values -- but who may pose a threat if released might require preventive detention laws. This thinking goes beyond the Guantanamo Bay detainees. The difficulties Obama is having shutting down Guantanamo, perhaps his daily intelligence briefings must be leaving him with more hard cases than he thought. This is from the Hot Air blog. So it's just amazing. This guy says things in public that are in direct contradiction to the things he's telling people in private and to the things that he's doing -- well, you could say it's incoherent. It's not incoherent. This is studied low art of political seduction. This is convincing a bunch of Americans that he is going to be righteous and protect American values when in fact he's turning into a -- into a -- I'm having a mental block on the word 'cause I'm being restrained. But all I'm telling you is it looks incoherent because it's not at all similar what he's saying in public, what he's saying in private. What he's saying in public is designed to let him get away with what he's doing in private with nobody knowing it. In other words, he's not what he says he is, which is my whole point. Pay no attention to what he says, because it's how he says it that has gotten him to where he is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington is on television right now talking about how long the speeches were today. Obama's, I'm telling you, we got Castroed. Some people thought I said "castrated" in the first hour. I wanted to clarify this. We got Castroed. Just wandered on and on and on and on and on and on, it's about him, and him and his father and how his personal story is woven into national security. All right, people have been waiting patiently on the phones so that's what we're going to do, take a phone call. We go to Whidbey Island in Washington. Barbara, nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I'm so happy and proud to be talking to you. It's the first time I've ever called and actually gotten through.
RUSH: You're very lucky. That doesn't happen to many Americans.
CALLER: (laughing) I know.
RUSH: There are people out there been trying to get in for 20 years who haven't made it.
CALLER: (laughing) It was meant to be. And your last statement that you said, "We got Castroed, not castrated"? Well, let me just say that the only person that got castrated today was Barack Obama, and Dick Cheney had the knife. (giggles)
RUSH: You know, I just love it when women talk this way. I don't know why.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing) I don't know why, but I --
CALLER: You know, I have always been a proud American, but today for the first time I think this was Dick Cheney's finest hour because, besides you, he spoke for me. He spoke for the way I feel. He was not only compelling but he was gutsy. He wasn't defiant; he wasn't defensive. He was on the offense. And I just absolutely loved the part where he was talking about the little "man -caused disasters" and the overseas contingency plan. It was so great it happen it was like what he was saying was, "Look, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck." (chuckles) But the way he said it was just riveting. I actually started to mist up when he started to talk about 9/11 and the reasoning behind what the Bush administration did, because there's going to come a day when Obama and the liberals are going to have to stop blaming George Bush for this.
RUSH: Well, when is that day going to be?
CALLER: I hope it's soon, but --
RUSH: I know, but what's going to facilitate it? What's going to be the catalyst or the event that does it? See, I think you're wrong. I think if there's another hit, if there's another hit, guess what? All of this is to set up blaming Bush and Cheney for the next hit. Because, if you listen to Obama with this nonsense that Guantanamo Bay was a recruitment tool for Al-Qaeda terrorists, nothing could be further from the truth.
CALLER: That's true.
RUSH: They were recruiting before we opened Guantanamo Bay. We got hit by them before Guantanamo Bay. The number one recruitment tool for them is a successful attack. 9/11 itself was the giant recruitment tool. There has not been an attack on our soil since. But they're running around setting all this up so that torture and suspension of rights causes it. They're going to get away or try to get away with blaming Bush if there is another attack. It remains to be seen if they succeed with that, but I know that that's what their intent is.
CALLER: I think, actually, the blame-Bush is actually showing signs of starting to fail. I live here in Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island. We're proud host of the naval air station and we're retired Navy, and there's two islands. The island is like 47 miles long. Well, the north half of the island is pretty conservative but the south-half part of the island is very, very left wing. And there's like an underground up here. We can't... We have to be careful what we say, as to who we talk to.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: And I think that Dick Cheney today, I actually feel now, because I'm a graphic designer and photographer. So I have clients here on the island, and most of my clients right now are left-wing grants from the county, you know, the department of ecology and things like that.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
CALLER: And every time I go to one of these --
RUSH: I know the type you're talking about.
CALLER: Oh, yeah.
RUSH: They run around, "Call me! I'm looking for a grant to do this. I'm looking for a grant to do that." Why don't you go get a job?
CALLER: Exactly. Well, the thing is, is that at every one of these meetings, it is inevitable that somebody brings up the Bush administration, Dick Cheney, Guantanamo Bay.
RUSH: It's formulaic, it's formulation. Barbara, you're dealing with emotions. You're not dealing with rational thought and to react to them that way is going to be very, very frustrating. Obama, you say he thinks he's losing. I think Obama is just outraged that Cheney is out there speaking at all and challenging him. I think that's what it is. You don't challenge The Messiah! You just don't do it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, E. J. Dionne Jr. today in the Washington Post is all upset. He thinks that Cheney has successfully distracted Obama from health care and the economy and that the Obama agenda has been tripped up by the libs going after Cheney and Cheney firing back on defense and Guantanamo Bay. E. J. thinks that they're succumbing to the bait that Cheney's putting out there and distracting Obama from the truly wonderful things he has in mind for us with the economy. Of course, the Federal Reserve today as I reported earlier has reported the forecast for the US economy is worse than it was three months ago.
END TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, the teleprompter today really shafted the eloquent President Obama.
OBAMA: We have our CIA Director Leon Panetta; we have our Secretary of Defense William Gates.
RUSH: William Gates is the founder and chairman of Microsoft. The secretary of defense is Robert Gates, ladies and gentlemen. So the teleprompter -- he-he-he-he-he-he -- teleprompter scored one there on the eloquent Barack Obama.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
|
| • HotAir: Video: Obama acknowledges Defense Secretary "William" Gates • AP: Which Gates? Obama Flubs Defense Chief's Name |
"Sources said the four men were arrested after a year-long investigation that began when an informant connected to a mosque in Newburgh said he knew men who wanted to buy explosives. FBI agents posing as militants sold them what they thought was 30 pounds of C-4 and a plane-downing Stinger missile. The weaponry was all phony. The men were arrested as they planted fake bombs in front of the Riverdale Temple in the Bronx and under cars parked in front of the synagogue," and they were going to use the Stinger to shoot down airplanes that were coming in and going out of Riverdale. So, Jewish-hating Muslim extremists actually do try to carry out their threats. Jewish-hating Muslim extremists actually try to carry out their threats but somehow we don't think Iran will? I mean, these guys were not broadcasting their intent. These four guys, they got caught with an informant. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is broadcasting what he intends to do, and yet President Obama appears to be getting comfortable with the idea that Iran will soon have nuclear weapons. They're launching missiles that have a range, and they're very proud of this, that can hit Israel and Europe and US bases. That's true Snerdley, yes, everybody wants to get in on the act.
Ever since I retired, resigned as the titular head of the GOP, now everybody thinks that I've lost some authority here and they could just chime in and make me say what they would say if they were hosting. Yes, okay, parts of Europe and American bases. Yes, it's a big range that Mahmoud's missiles can hit. The point is there doesn't seem to be any urgency here to stop any of this. In fact, Leon Panetta over at the CIA said there would be big trouble if Israel were to independently attack Iran. Let me tell you what's being set up here. By the way, the Drive-By Media, from what I heard yesterday, the Drive-By Media is totally misreporting the meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama. Apparently Netanyahu said nyet nyet nyet, no, no, no. It was not at all Obama, "Here's the way it's going to be, bud, and you're going to behave this way." It wasn't that way at all. Obama tried it but Netanyahu didn't go along with it.
Here's what I think the strategery of the United States defense establishment is going to be. They have to know that at some point the Israelis -- excluding the ones in Tel Aviv 'cause that's like San Francisco -- the Israelis are going to have to do something about this, because they are a nation at constant war. They can't afford to not believe Ahmadinejad, especially when Ahmadinejad is getting close to the nukes, launching test missiles, threatening to wipe them off the map, they can't afford to ignore him. And at some point if they take him out, you know, the Drive-By Media says that the American defense establishment has told Netanyahu he's gotta get permission. I think it's just the exact opposite. I think he's been told if you do it, we don't want to know. If you do it, don't tell us. We don't want to be complicit. You do it, you do it on your own. We're not going to know that you did it because then we could have stopped you and then we become a bigger target. That's the defensive posture of this administration. That's what I think is actually the operating strategery here when it comes to all this.
But now here we have the story about Jewish-hating Muslim extremists. They had taken steps to wipe out two Jewish synagogues and a jet from the sky, shocking news. See, if you listen to Obama I thought all this was just rhetoric, that none of these people really meant this, as long as we closed Guantanamo or a say we're going to that these people aren't going to care. They're going to be nicer to us, they're going to stand back and they're going to say, "Hmm, hmm, maybe we've been wrong about America." It's not how they do it. They sit back and they watch all this, and they laugh, and they see weakness. So if I'm Obama and Snerdley asked me at the top of top of the break, "You know, you've got this guy pegged. I mean, how do you do it? The minute I hear you describe Obama in the first hour of the program, I know you're right, you've got him pegged." I said, "I've worked for people like this. I've worked with people that have this kind of ego and arrogance, unchallengeability." They have not had this kind of power, but I mean I've worked with this kind of personality. Plus I know liberals, folks. I've just studied them. You know, I know what they're going to say and do before they do it. That's why I am so often able to go back to the archives of this program and say, "Here's what I said six months ago, and this just happened, didn't it?" Because I know them.
Now, if Obama had not been forced to be on the defensive making a speech here defending what he's going to do at Guantanamo Bay, his attitude to the news of the four Jewish-hating Muslim extremists who were captured in a string operation might have gone like this. Obama: "Calling this a terror plot is not going to help heal the wounds. Having Guantanamo Bay open probably caused this or led to this. Fighting in Iraq, maybe the drone missiles in Pakistan. Let's have an open heart and an open mind. We can respect each other's different points of view without condemning them. We must understand that we brought this on ourselves." There's also a countervailing view out there that this plot to blow up Jewish people in New York City happens to be politically convenient for Obama. The fact that the terrorists are homegrown, some people think, feeds right into Obama's belief that America is the true enemy, not the Muslims. I don't think this is going to fly. Obama had nothing to do with capturing any of these people. This was the New York FBI that had been tracking these people for over a year.
END TRANSCRIPT
CALLER: A pleasure to speak to you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: First of all on Obama, this is a guy that when the market tanked the first time he laughed, and someone must have told him to knock it off because it didn't look good. My husband said, "How dare that arrogant son of a gun laugh when people are losing their investments?" But to see him the way I see him is he's going to get even with us. Those of us who have worked, staved our money, retired in comfort and taught our kids that this is the way to do it, he's going to get even with us.
RUSH: Well, I don't remember him laughing.
CALLER: Ohhh, he laughed. Yes, he did.
RUSH: Well, what was the...? Give me the specifics of this.
CALLER: The first time that the market tanked.
RUSH: When?
CALLER: Shortly after he took over as president, the market fell. And it seemed like every time he spoke the market fell, and he came out and they said, "Well, what do you think about the market?" He says, "Well, I can't really worry about that, you know, because --
RUSH: Oh, okay --
CALLER: -- the market goes up and the market goes down."
RUSH: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We don't pay attention to the market --
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: -- every day in putting our policies together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CALLER: Exactly, yes.
RUSH: Okay you've nailed it. You are a sitting duck. You're a target. You're a retiree. You've got some money, and In his view, you unfairly got it. Look, I keep saying it. Repetition is sometimes necessary, however. If you want to understand economics as practiced under Obama you just have to understand his objective is return the nation's wealth to its, quote, unquote, "rightful owners," and the rightful owners are union members and the poor, the nonproducers. In his view, they've all been shafted. That's why they don't have any money. They've been shafted by the people that do have the money. You know, there's an element of this, too, folks, that is personal that I have not expressed it to you before. You may have heard it from somebody else; I don't know.
Obama, if you look -- and there have been recent stories about how his family lived way beyond its means, even before the books were published and the royalties came in, that they were second mortgaging their house and borrowing. Remember Michelle running around making speeches how hard it was to make ends meet, $10,000 for piano lessons and all that during the campaign. All of these liberals have somehow gotten away over the years with convincing people the last thing they care about is money, and I think they care about it more than anybody. All these charities, these nonprofits, they care about money as much as anybody. They just act like they don't. The nonprofits, the whole term "nonprofit" is to make you think they don't care about money, that they're into just good works.
But obviously they can't do their good works without somebody giving them money. But I think if you look at the trail you must follow to end up in some form of government service, there's no question that for the vast majority of people in it your trail takes you through Ivy League schools -- Harvard being the preferable one, then Yale, and then the rest them, Cornell, Brown. Not to leave anybody out, these are ivy leagues. But these people come out of there... They go in arrogant. They go in as we're the smartest people in the world because we got in here. They come out of there even worse. And I think they have and they hold a deep resentment for people whom they consider to be half as smart and half as educated, having much more money that they have.
So I think there's a personal element to this in addition to an ideological element of wanting to return the nation's wealth to its rightful owners. I think there's a deep-seated resentment on the left for the rich except their own rich, and I think that these people in government think tanks... Well, not so much think tanks but the bureaucracies of government who have all of this education, were making a G13 salary. Those who have it come from family wealth and inherited it, and they look around and they see Fred Slobodnik who started from nothing with a widget factory in Oshkosh, who's got what he's got.
And they look at Fred Slobodnik as an absolute idiot, somebody they'd be embarrassed to be in the same room with. He's 25 times as financially successful as they are, and it rubs 'em wrong. I'm guessing here, but I think Obama is one of these type people. How much did community organizing pay him? It's whatever you could steal, right? Well, whatever you could siphon from whatever donations were coming in. How much did it pay? How much did being a law professor at the University of Chicago pay? It didn't. He had to get help from Tony Rezko to buy a house. He had to get his wife a-no-show job at a Chicago hospital until the book royalties came in. It's just my two cents, but usually my two cents are worth a hundred bucks. Never forget that.
END TRANSCRIPT
I listened to your show yesterday and I listened to you on Greta Van Susteren last night. You astound me at how off-base you are. To say that John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Peter King, Jeff Sessions, Haley Barbour, Kit Bond -- to name just a few -- have not been strong supporters of conservative values and have openly been defying this popular president is a lie. And I'm not used to you lying. No one in the Republican Party would consider Colin Powell one of its leaders except the elite, which you are one of. Not you or Sean or Mark are focusing are the great speech by Michael Steele the other day saying the honeymoon's over, or the fact that Boehner and Cantor have been rallying the Republicans in Congress to vote against this socialist president's agenda.
What would we do without these brave Republican conservatives? After all the lies by the media the Democrats won them an election in 2008. So just stop this nonsense of saying the Republican Party has no voice. This is crap! They have a voice in the men above you, but you do not highlight them, and you just condemn the whole party, and that is a lie. You are a huge disappointment. Shame, shame on you for not supporting the men and women standing alone in the Republican Party with no coverage from the media because the conservative talk show radio is condemning all of them and refusing to talk about their courage and the fact they are the only line of resistance to this Marxist president.
Shame, shame on you!
Linda in Princeton, New Jersey.
Now, Linda is upset with me over my analysis yesterday on this program and last night on Greta Van Susteren about the California results in which I admitted that as far as it goes, those results last night were the equivalent of a political nuclear blast. But I said, "Unless there's a Republican Party to pick up on the meaning of it and start championing and representing people all over the country like those in California who voted, it may as well not have happened." She's also upset that I've anointed Colin Powell as the titular head of the Republican Party. She probably doesn't see the irony and the humor in all that.
But, Linda, I'm not attacking any of the names you've mentioned. I've defended them constantly, Boehner and Sessions. But they don't run the Republican Party, Linda, and neither does Michael Steele. Linda, what you have to understand is that the Republican Party is now being run, not by anybody in Congress or the Senate, it's being run by people who don't like the result in California. They don't like a return to Reaganism. They don't like tax cuts as an issue. They don't like social conservatives in the party. They are the Rockefeller bluebloods. That's why I appointed Colin Powell the leader, the titular leader of the party, because that is the kind of people they are! I don't need to name names.
But there isn't a defensive single conservative that has rocketed to the top of electoral Republican politics that is leading the party. And for all the great guys we have in Congress, Linda there's nothing they can do to stop this so-called Marxist, as you say. We don't have the votes in the House. We're precariously close in the Senate and we've got several of the kind of Republicans I'm talking about in the Senate. Arlen Specter just joined the Democrats. We got Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who will more than likely vote with Democrats than Republicans on issues that matter to you and me. I was not condemning conservatism. I'm condemning the Republican Party for trying to get rid of its conservative influence. I'm glad you wrote me so I had the chance to further expound. I'll be expecting your next hate e-mail tonight.
END TRANSCRIPT
"Joe Biden reveals the bunker-like room is at the Naval Observatory in Washington, where Cheney lived for eight years and which is now home to Biden," Eleanor Clift reported, and that report stirred up a lot of frenzy about Biden giving away the secure location. He described it as a hallway with electronics equipment, TV monitors on the walls and so forth. And he then came out and corrected himself and said, no, no, no! "'What the Vice President described in his comments was not ... an underground facility, but rather, an upstairs workspace in the residence, which he understood was frequently used by Vice President Cheney and his aides,' said Biden's spokesperson Elizabeth Alexander.
"'That workspace was converted into an upstairs guestroom when the Bidens moved into the residence.'" Now, the reason this is important is because in Eleanor Clift's first report, Biden says this is the secure location. If Eleanor Clift got it correct -- I have checked this today with legal authorities. If Eleanor Clift reported it accurately, if the referenced undisclosed location was indeed classified, then I am told that Joe Biden, the vice president, may be subject to 37 United States Code section 793 which says that "such an action shall" -- not the usual "may," but "such an action SHALL" -- "be punishable by a fine or up to ten years in prison." Now, admittedly this is going to have to be fact checked, but if indeed...
The reaction to getting Biden out of town and the quick re-characterizing of what he said here -- and we know that he flaps his gums off and says the most uncontrolled, undisciplined things. But all this talk about how stupid Sarah Palin is, how risky she would be in office, and here's Biden potentially violating a federal law punishable by ten years in jail, by revealing the secret bunker where any vice president is taken. Not just Cheney, where any vice president is taken during an attack, and now, "No, no, no, no! It wasn't underground. It was upstairs bedroom." An upstairs bedroom with electronic equipment on the hallway with a steel door? It's hard to believe. So that's why, among many other things, the vice president is in the Balkans. He's being shot at over there, I understand. His plane was.
END TRANSCRIPT
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Federal Reserve. "The Federal Reserve Bank's latest forecasts for the US economy are gloomier than the ones released three months earlier with an expectation for higher unemployment and a steeper drop in economic activity. The Fed now says unemployment will be between 9.2% and 9.6%. The previous forecast was between 8.5% and 8.8%, and we're already at 8.9%." Mwah-ha-ha. Well, I'm not laughing at that. I'm laughing at their bad prediction. "They say that the GDP will drop between 1.3% and 2%. The previous estimate was 0.5% to 1.3%." So their previous high is now their low on the GDP dropped. Now, I have a question. And this is a question that's born of simple logic, ladies and gentlemen. How can economic forecasts...? Key word: "forecasts."
How can economic forecasts get gloomier after the Porkulus bill and the Earmarkulus bill were passed and the bailout of the auto companies and shakin' it to the banks and taking it to AIG and "fixing" Wall Street? How can the forecasts get worse after all of these stimulants, these stimulants -- the make-work jobs, the shovel-ready jobs, the roads and bridge repair, all the repair work on the schools, all of the new jobs that are going to be "saved and created." How in the hell can that not be happening after all that we have stimulated this economy with? We have stimulated this economy so far to the tune of a $2 trillion deficit this year and a grand total of $11 trillion in deficits over the next ten-years if this stuff doesn't change. And we were told by Barack Obama that only government -- the government was the only entity that could -- fix this problem.
Obama and Pelosi and Dingy Harry and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd said that we had all the answers, that we can borrow and spend our way out of this. In fact, that's the only thing that we could do! The only solution we had was to borrow and spend our way out of it. So they spent all the money and then some, and things are getting worse and they're forecast get worse? Okay, so let's add it up. This crowd was wrong about Iraq. They're wrong about Guantanamo Bay. They were wrong about General Petraeus. They were wrong that Americans want bigger government and higher taxes. The odds are that this bunch is wrong about the economy, too. Shouldn't, for example...?
I still cringe when I think of Obama's commencement speeches. Shouldn't college graduates be encouraged to go out and create jobs, instead of working for nonprofits? Shouldn't college graduates be encouraged to go out and work and produce and lead the next generation to prosperity so that fewer and fewer freeloaders have to run around begged for grants? In fact, with the economy in the tank, not-for-profits will be not-in-existence if Obama gets his way much longer -- and the same thing for nonprofits, if the economy keeps tanking. How can the predictions get worse? And then I want to ask you a question. Every time President Obama goes out to talk about the economy when he talks about unemployment -- and I'm serious. I want you to expect in your memory.
As you've watched him talk about unemployment or all these economic woes, do you get the sense he really cares about it? See I don't. Do you get the feel he's really concerned, or is it just platitudinous speeches establishing an image of a wonderful utopia "down the road" if we pay the price now. I don't think he really cares. It's getting worse? There are ways, by the way. "Oh, what Mr. Limbaugh would you have done differently to stop this?" I already announced it. There's a way to stop all of this right now. There's a way to bring it to a screeching halt and start the reversal toward growth -- and it's not complicated, but the problem is, it will not stimulate Barack Obama. And it won't stimulate Dingy Harry. And it won't stimulate Joe Biden. (Of course not much does.)
It won't stimulate Chris Dodd or Barney Frank. What has to happen here, folks, is you gotta turn the American people loose. You have got to remove on them the burdensome regulations and taxes that they face, employment taxes, investment taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes. Reduce that, not increase them. You stop talking about nationalized health care in the midst of a giant economic downturn. You stop talking about all of these plans to nationalize this business and that business. And you turn the American people loose. It's the American people that make the US economy, not a bunch of politicians and arrogant egghead elites central planning things in Washington, DC.
Get this. You know, the cap-and-trade program -- the-cap-and tax program -- is called the Waxman-Markey bill. And this is horrible. You know, after you get through with Obama "fixing" the car business and this new $1300 additional cost per car which is going to be much more than that by the time 2016 comes around -- and don't think you're going to save money on gasoline because you're using less, 'cause they're just going to have to raise the gas tax. The government never does with less. You're walking into tax increases if you do everything they tell you to do. You're just taking dead aim right into tax increase after tax increase -- and this cap and trade is even worse.
What it will do to your utility bill every month is double what's going to happen to the price of your little putt-putt car, your clown car that you're going to be forced to drive in. "Today, in anticipation of Friday's House Energy and Commerce Committee vote on the Waxman-Markey legislation," cap-and-tax, "the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) released a new study that determines the potential economic impacts of the federal cap-and-[tax] system outlined in the bill. Compiled by CRA International, the analysis determines that by 2030 the law would: reduce national GDP roughly $350 billion below the baseline level; cut net employment by 2.5 million jobs (even after accounting for new 'green' jobs); and reduce earnings for the average U.S. worker by $390 per year."
This is the National Black Chamber of Commerce coming out against Obama's cap and tax. And while the Fed's reporting all these horrible forecasts for economic activity and unemployment, at the same time, "Some Federal Reserve officials are open to raising the amounts of mortgage and Treasury securities that will be purchased beyond the $1.75 trillion they've already committed to buying, according to minutes from the Fed's April meeting. Officials, meanwhile, projected an even deeper recession than they expected," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They want to buy even more mortgage and Treasury securities.
Now, you're supposed to look at this and say, "Oh, goody! Oh, goody! Oh, goody! They're going to secure it and they're going to take care of it. They're going to back it up." Let me tell you, is the housing business doing well right now? Who's been in charge of fixing it? Whatever these people in Washington tell you they're going to fix, is it worse? It is worse. Is it forecast to get worse? It is forecast to get worse! The housing market is forecast to get even worse than it is now, that we're nowhere near the bottom. But the Wizards of Smart, they're the ones fixing all this by buying up ever more of the private sector.
END TRANSCRIPT
VAN SUSTEREN: Rush Limbaugh joins us live. Rush, nice to have you join us, and it's certainly nice to have you because it's unexpected. Tell me what your thoughts are on California.
RUSH (via telephone): Well, I wanted to... You know, I saw that you very kindly played some sterling video from my program today, and I saw your follow-up discussion with Steve Moore, and I didn't want to leave anybody confused. I agree totally with what Steve said, that this was the equivalent of a political nuclear blast that happened in California. My only point is that without a viable Republican Party that's willing to take up what happened out there and advance as a key agenda of their platform the concept of cutting taxes and reducing as much of this debt as possible, it may as well not have happened.
The Republican Party today is led by people who think that the tax cut item idea, as part of their agenda, has seen its better days. It's old-fashioned. It's not relevant anymore, just like they don't think Reagan is relevant. People say the era of Reagan is over. So you have these people in California -- and Steve Moore is right -- all over the country, people are scared. They are fed up. They are outraged not just over the spending but over the federal government taking over privately owned businesses unconstitutionally with nobody stopping them. Everybody is saying, "When am I going to be next? When's Obama going to decide that he doesn't like what I'm doing and take it over?"
And they don't see anybody standing up and opposing this. They don't see the Republican Party standing up and stopping it. So my only point is that when you live in a high-tech state like New York or California, you can move to another state that maybe has more favorable living conditions and tax policy. But you can't escape -- you can't get away from -- the long hand of the federal government, and federalism is the key premise of our existence, here. Separation of power, the division of power between federal government and the constituent in the states. And the stimulus package. Obama is telling the states what they have to do to get the money, and that they have to take the money. But you can't escape the long arm of the federal government.
So if Obama decides, after spending $10 trillion that we don't have, that he wants to bail California out -- what is another $21 billion? Big whoop. The way that will happen is that the people in California and the other 49 states will see their federal taxes go up to bailout California despite the vote that happened yesterday. Now, the only way this can be prevented is if the Republican Party decides, "You know what? We have a great issue here in which we can contrast ourselves with the modern-day radicalism of the Democrat Party," but I don't see them doing it. So until the people in California who voted yesterday and elsewhere around the country have people to vote for who will do for them what the voters in California did, it's irrelevant.
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, what does the Republican Party today stand for? If you were to describe the Republican Party, what is it?
RUSH: What is the Republican Party? Well, the Republican Party is a mess right now. I think it's made up of so many different factions, and this happens when parties lose. But the party traditionally has always been what I call a country club, blue-blood, Rockefeller party -- and they never won anything! I mean, they were happy to be participants in big government and power in Washington, but on the losing side. When they had 135 or 140 seats in the House of Representatives, eh, that was just fine. Republicans were sometimes not even allowed to go into committee meetings when Democrats ran the show. Remember, the Democrats ran the House of Representatives for 40 years.
But, Greta, the big issue here that is keeping the Republican Party from unifying is the blue bloods. The country club types, the Northeastern, Rockefeller types never did like Ronald Reagan. They never did like that brand of conservatism, because it contained the element of the "social issues," which is translated as "abortion." And the country club blue blooders in the Northeast and other parts of the country are embarrassed to be members of the same party as the pro-life Southerners who they think are a bunch of hayseed hicks -- and their liberal buddies make fun of them at cocktail parties and give them grief, and their wives nag them about abortion and so forth. So the modern-day Republican party, the blue bloods, are trying to recapture it, and they really want to get rid of the social plank that has ensured victory for the Republican Party.
So it is a mess right now. Then you have the conservative movement, which is also fractured. It's not what it was when Reagan led it or when William Buckley was defining it. The conservative movement -- you have people who want to redefine conservatism now, which I don't think you can. Conservativism is rooted in freedom. I don't know if that ever goes out of style. But these things happen when people lose, when parties lose. And it's going to take a candidate, a single figure -- I don't know who it is -- that will rise out of all this muck and coalesce people around the issues that contrast with all that Obamaism is, and I think once enough people get fed up, this will happen. It's going to end up positive. Right now, we are still waiting for it to happen.
VAN SUSTEREN: Why did the American people go so heavily Democratic? I mean, there was a huge shift in this country. They have got the House, they have got the Senate, and they have the White House. There must have been something attractive that the Democratic Party offered them.
RUSH: Well, if you look at the last couple of polls that I have seen where the so-called generic congressional ballot, where they go and they ask people, "If the election were held today, who would you vote for, for Congress?" without mentioning a candidate's name, it's tied, Republicans and Democrats. And I saw something the other day where as many people today identify themselves as Republicans as identified themselves as Democrats. You know about the Pew poll, and you guys at Fox even had a poll which shows that a majority of Americans for the first time in a long time are against the pro-choice position. They are pro-life. So I don't buy the fact that people are majority Democrat.
I think this last election, you had eight years of media pounding on the Bush administration. The Bush administration was not defending itself as forcefully or as often as it should have, not singing its praises, not -- certainly economically, not -- talking about the good things. Plus, you know, the Republicans today are kind of hamstrung, because the Bush administration did go wild in spending. And so Republicans today, they think in Washington if they start talking about reducing spending, they are opening themselves up to charges of hypocrisy. But Bush never did anything like what's happening with Obama. Then you add the whole aspect of the cult-like appeal of Obama. I mean, you look at polls and people are really beginning to not like his policies, but they love him.
And this has got Republicans bamboozled, too, because they have got nobody that people love as a personality -- and even if they did, the media would go out and destroy that person, or try to. So what is going to have to happen here is all of the things that Obama is doing -- he's just barely past 100 days -- are going to have a dramatic impact on people, so all that people like me are telling them will actually be happening rather than something they'll just have to believe. The Chrysler dealers are a great example of finding out exactly what Barack Obama as president meant to them. I'll bet many of them voted for him, but now he is putting 3,300 of them out of business, many of them successful. So it's going to take time for this damage to affect as many people personally as possible, and you will see them flee the Democrat Party as quickly as they can.
VAN SUSTEREN: If there is no sort of single Republican leader out there, does the responsibility thus fall on Michael Steele's shoulders because he is head of the Republican National Committee? And what is his challenge, and can he do it?
RUSH: Well, that is not the job of the RNC chairman. The pressure on Steele is sort of compounded because there isn't -- right now -- an identifiable, single Republican person candidate that everybody is focusing on as the next hope. The RNC chairman or the DNC chairman is really not the boss of the party. It's whoever gets the presidential nomination in 2012 that's going to be the leader of the Republican Party. That's just politics. That's the way it is -- and that person, we may know who it is, we may not. The list is large. But it's going to be bloody, because the Republican Party, as I said, they cringe at people like Sarah Palin. They cringe at the tea parties. Our own party has blue-blood members that look at this California vote yesterday and say, "Oh no! We are trying to get rid of tax cuts! That's too Reagan. That's too old-fashioned. People want big government."
Colin Powell. He is a guy who says a couple of weeks ago: the Republican Party, the country wants bigger government; they want to pay more taxes -- and then California shows just the opposite. The Republican Party is made up of a lot of people like Colin Powell who also wanted to vote for Obama but did not. But he did. So it is fascinating to me to watch all of this and chronicle it, because I think there's an opportunity here to literally contrast ourselves. I think the Democrats are so damn vulnerable, Greta, with what they are doing and destroying individual liberty and prosperity. They are doing great damage to the middle class out there who dreams the American dream, and it is getting harder. It's going to be almost impossible to achieve if Obama accomplishes everything he wants. When they'll figure it out is when the "revolt" or "revolution" will begin.
VAN SUSTEREN: Where does former vice president Dick Cheney sort of fit into this whole formula in terms of the Republican Party? Does he help them right now, or hurt them as he speaks out?
RUSH: Well, now, see, that is a great question. This is why you are number one at ten o'clock. Dick Cheney gets results! Dick Cheney, the past two weeks, has been out saying, "This country is less safe with Obama and his policy. Club Gitmo? Fine," and guess what? Every foreign-policy decision that was the Bush-Cheney foreign policy fundamental war on terror is being adopted by the Obama administration! They are going to keep Guantanamo Bay open. They are not going to release prisoners into this country or into prisons here. Dick Cheney gets results. And you've got Republicans. I saw on your network some hack GOP "strategist" yesterday afternoon or the day before, saying, "Dick Cheney is the wrong messenger for our party today, and there are some others who are the wrong messenger." For crying out loud, he's the only one who is speaking out in opposition to what Obama is doing -- and he's getting results! So I don't think... You miss the point if you people think Cheney is on the outs and is causing problems. He is getting results, and he is showing the way. He has got courage and guts. God bless him.
VAN SUSTEREN: Rush, as always, thank you very much for joining us.
RUSH: You bet, Greta. Thank you so much, and I always enjoy being with you.
VAN SUSTEREN: And I love it, and I especially love being surprised by the call. Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: You bet.
END TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I'm fine. Hey, Glenn, how are you? You feeling better today?
GLENN: I am feeling a little bit better today. Thank you.
RUSH: Nyquil? How do you stay awake taking that stuff?
GLENN: I have no idea. It's the first time I've tried it. It's not a good thing. Rush, I wanted to ask you: What is the most disturbing thing that you see coming out of Washington and of California with the grab of the rights? What are you most concerned about?
RUSH: Well, I think it's hard to single out one thing. I think it's a cumulative thing. But, Glenn, the thing that worries me the most about it is I think... Obama is who he is. Liberal Democrat politicians and other politicians who are oriented toward acquiring power are who they are. They've always been who they are. The question that we're all asking is: At what point the American people decide they wanted this kind of power grab by government into the private sector, or have they decided that? Did they vote for a cult-like figure based on emotion when they voted for Obama? If so, what's it gonna take for them to wake up?
I mean, the politics of this is that with the numbers in Washington, even if the Republican Party was a unified conservative opposition in stark contrast to Obama -- even if they were all unified -- they don't have the numbers to stop anything that he's doing. It's going to require the American people stopping this. And you have to wonder at this stage, where are they? Do they want the government owning their house? Do they want the government owning the mortgage company that they deal with and the bank that they deal with? Do they want the government owning the car company that they're going to buy their little putt-putt from? Until we know the answer to that, we're not going to know just how serious this is gonna get before we can make it better.
GLENN: You know, I saw Barack Obama today. I think he's -- I think he's an extraordinarily talented man, very, very shrewd, very good politician. He was giving a speech today at the National Archives. He was standing right in front of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I think this man sees the disenfranchisement in this country, and he's going to wrap himself -- not in the flag. He's going to wrap himself in those documents to make himself, somehow or another, look like the grand protector of the Constitution, when I think we've shredded much of it under him just recently.
RUSH: Yeah. Good point. (laughs) The speeches today, his speech and Vice President Cheney's. I had somebody e-mail me during my radio program this afternoon who watched both speeches, and said it looked like President Obama was doing the Democrat response to a presidential address by Dick Cheney, just in reverse order.
GLENN: (chuckling)
RUSH: Obama was very defensive. He made sure he had a hall where he had the godlike echo in front of those documents. But I thought it was eerie. It was eerie to me, Glenn. Here's a man who starts out... He's talking about national security, and starts out with his own personal story with his father, mother, emigrate in the country and all this other stuff. And the man's a pure, full-fledged, man-child narcissist who has to make everything about him. And while he's talking about protecting us and defending us and so forth, the Federal Reserve yesterday came out and said the economic forecast for the rest of the year is even worse. Unemployment is going to go even higher. GDP is going to drop even lower.
Nothing is getting better! Nothing that the man has done, while telling everybody, "This is going to fix it," is fixing anything. And, back to my first point: We can pound this and we can remind people of this, but they're going to have to experience it. I have a friend who has a couple kids in college, and they bought everything that Algore said about global warming. And their father said, "No, no, no, no, no." He gave them facts, figures to illustrate it as an overblown scientific hoax. It wasn't until this winter when they were still shoveling snow in April in Kansas that they began to think, "Hmmm! Maybe this isn't true." So until people are personally impacted by this in a way that they tie Obama to it, he's going to get away with the behavior that you just described.
GLENN: You know, Rush, I'm concerned because this guy is... He is so effective at playing right into -- I mean, he... What he says and what he does rarely matches up. He's also very, very good at focus groups, finding keywords and using them, but not in a way that -- not -- not -- not enacting the things that people would want with those words. And now today, for the first time, apparently the White House has their own news division now to where they didn't allow the press in to cover an event that President Obama was doing, and the White House put together a news package with the lower third and absolutely everything. The press said, "We wanted to cover it," and they said, "Don't worry about it. We've got the package for you," and they put the package out. Now they're becoming a news service as well!
RUSH: Well, what you're describing is somebody who's entirely phony. You're describing somebody who cannot rely on who he genuinely is -- and I think that's going to eventually lead to the plummet in his popularity ratings. Because, you know, the life, the reality of life at some point is going to have to intersect with the words. Right now, you're right. It's not what Obama says; it is how he says it that has the magical effect --
GLENN: Yeah.
RUSH: -- on people, and until the reality of the not-improving situation... We were talking today on the radio about this. Somebody called and said, "When are we going to revive the misery index?" I said, "Well, we can't have the misery index until somebody reports the fact that there's misery." You can watch the news networks all day long and you can... I found it fascinating that back during the Bush years we had reports every day for six years on how, "We're heading into a recession. The economy is in the tank," and people believed it. Even though their own lives were just fine, they thought other people were hurting. There is no news detailing how people are suffering.
GLENN: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: We've got all these foreclosures; we have all this unemployment. We don't see the hard-luck stories about what people are doing to overcome this. And so the public at large, even in the midst of this bad news, doesn't think that many people are being harmed by it 'cause the country's going on. We're launching shuttles. The banks are operating, you can go use your credit card and so forth. So I don't know. We're looking at this as an opposition party very early on in this man's term; it's just barely past a hundred days now. And patience is something that we're just all going to have to muster and understand who we're dealing with here. I do disagree with you on one thing. I know he's got a very eloquent speaking ability, very talented and so forth, but I think with the right political candidate, Glenn, in 2008 he could have been defeated.
GLENN: Oh, I agree.
RUSH: I don't think there's --
GLENN: Yes.
RUSH: I don't think there's any reason to be afraid here; there's no reason to be intimidated. He's just a man, puts his pants on one leg at a time like Hillary does. It's no reason to get all intimidated and think all is lost.
GLENN: Yeah, I don't disagree with you on that, Rush. I think the problem with the last election was, America had to choose between two "progressives." I mean, any man who says Teddy Roosevelt was -- is his -- is his idol and answers questions the way John McCain does... John McCain is a progressive. The problem with the Republican Party is not that it's -- it's -- it is too conservative. The problem with the Republican Party is, it doesn't even know what it is except Progressive Lite. It's gotta be for small government, small government. And right now, I haven't seen that. Have you seen a turning point with the Republicans at all, that they understand that?
RUSH: No. And you were talking about California and the vote at the top of the program. This is why I officially resigned yesterday as the titular head of the Republican Party. I didn't seek the job. It was anointed to me. I was given the job by the Obama White House and the media. The Republican Party, conservative intellectuals, Republican Party intellectuals and blue-blood country club Rockefeller types, for the last year-and-a-half, two years, have been trying to reorganize the party under the premise that the era of Reagan is over when it comes to tax cuts. "No, no, no, that's old. Tax cuts don't relate to what's happening in 2009. And plus, we gotta get rid of these social conservatives. We gotta get rid of the social issues. We're never going to win elections." The truth is that the country club blue-blood Rockefeller types never won anything. It was the Reagan coalition, all these people the Republican Party is trying to kick out that finally was able to win landslide elections. The blueprint's there; the Republican Party is rejecting it. This vote in California yesterday, you described it accurately. Even though the low turnout, it was still a nuclear blast, a political nuclear blast. And it sends a message to politicians, okay, here's a way to contrast yourself with Obama. He's spending -- we're in debt $11 trillion. The people are fed up. They know what the future holds for their children and grandchildren. But, Glenn, if there isn't a Republican Party that is willing to pick up the action of what happened in California and run with it, then it may as well not have happened.
GLENN: You're exactly right. You know what, Rush, when people say, "What can I do?" I can't tell you of a person that I could look in the eye -- well, maybe a couple people -- that I think are Republicans that are serving that I know would say, "We're going to do what Reagan wanted to do. We're gonna cut all of these departments of education, we're just cutting them. It's too big, it's too bloated. That's not what this government was supposed to be." And I tell you, they keep making the argument that if you vote for a conservative, oh, well, we're going to round up all of the unwed mothers and throw them in furnaces or whatever it is. That's not what this movement is about at all. You're right on the social aspect. What this movement is about is they are destroying our children's future. Look, I don't care what you do in your own bedroom. We won't have a bedroom left anymore, we're all going to be living in Hooverville or Obamaville if we don't stop this spending.
RUSH: (laughing) Yeah, the way to go about this, I think, the one thing that's never going to go out of style in this country, the one thing that distinguished the human beings that live in this country versus the human beings in all time, throughout human history and the rest of the world, is freedom. The reason we're the greatest country in the history of humanity in less than 300 years, is freedom, the freedom and the ability of human beings to maximize potential, desire, was granted by virtue of our founding documents to people born in this country. And what's happening with this expansion of government and the incursion in the private sector by the federal government is loss of liberty. So the way back here is to remind people of what made the country great, what is their birthright, what is the natural yearning of their spirit, the human spirit's freedom, not to be confined, not to be treated like sheep, not to go along with the tug of popular culture, to be independent, be self-reliant, promote your own self-interests, which helps everybody in your family, in your neighborhood. Freedom is the key here. I don't mean to trash conservatives in Washington when I talk about Republicans. I'm talking about --
GLENN: Republicans?
RUSH: -- elected Republicans you talked about. Somebody's going to surface at some point.
GLENN: Yeah.
RUSH: It hasn't happened now. The thing in California just represents a great opportunity for somebody to seize it --
GLENN: Rush --
RUSH: -- who is in Republican electoral politics and run with this. And that thing in California, it's all about people are tired of losing their freedom, paying higher taxes to fund a bloated, inefficient, wasteful government that's not getting anything done, that people are elected for. The only responsibility the people of California have for this mess is that they keep electing the people that make it.
GLENN: Rush, help me out on this, 'cause you always get thrown under the bus, well, you know, where were you when George Bush was spending, et cetera, et cetera. I have to tell you, the Republican Party doesn't get it. You just said, echoed again, what I was saying about the progressive Republicans, George Bush, this compassionate conservative movement has got to die a violent death.
RUSH: Yeah. Glenn, let me tell you something. Personally, I don't mind people asking me that question, where were you with all the spending? I remember -- I don't want to mention any names -- I was getting phone calls from people in the White House angry because I was opposed to every attempt they made to do amnesty. I was opposed to the Medicare expansion.
GLENN: Yep.
RUSH: I had Tom DeLay call me mad as he could be: "What do you mean? This is good. We're getting the private sector." I said, "No, it's an entitlement and Republicans don't do that." I wasn't alone in complaining about some of the spending, but the elected Republicans -- here's the problem with it, when you're a Republican and your president is a Republican, you have to go along with him. If you break from him, then you've got party disunity and so forth. The Republicans in the House, I think they were in a no-win situation with some of the spending the Bush administration was doing in opposing it, because they're charged with carrying his agenda forward. Delay, to this day, thinks the Medicare entitlement is a great thing. I don't mean to be critical of him, but I don't think that's that big an obstacle to overcome. Even with all the Bush spending, Obama has obliterated whatever the Bush spending was. To say that we didn't oppose Bush even though we did on spending disqualifies us from opposing this outrage is nonsense. Too many Republicans are allowing themselves to be intimidated and silenced by a dominant media culture and a Washington political class that wants to achieve just that.
GLENN: Rush, I can't thank you enough for being on the program. I appreciate it, sir. You are a legend. It was an honor to write your most influential piece in TIME Magazine. I thank you. We'll talk again.
END TRANSCRIPT
Well, they're singing a different tune now! It's all a diabolical plot by Darth Cheney and the VRWC to derail The Messiah from his domestic agenda! LOL! The putz's know Cheney's winning the debate and that Zero has no plan and now the American people are finding out too!
Thanks GOPLady. I missed Rush today and your post is terrific.
Thank you for all your hard work keeping us informed.
It seems that Rush is everywhere these days, guesting on so many shows.
I am so pleased with Dick Cheney. He is standing up to the plate and hitting them out of the ballpark. He has the Gravitas, the b***s and the authority to be heard. And people are listening.
I LOVE doing this for EVERYONE here!
MR. CHENEY IS THE MAN!
Cheney scored a safety. 2 points.
“0bama is where he is because of his perceived brain power. He’s perceived to be smart and brilliant, a great speaker, but what’s he ever done but organize a bunch of election fraud experts over at ACORN and pal around with some dubious characters?”
Even ‘Chauncey The Gardener’ is smarter than this mope.
Brilliant? LOL!
(Snagged from Michelle Malkin's site a couple months ago.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
