RUSH: BROKERED CONVENTION Chatter on Rise

www.RushLimbaugh.com ^ | January 20, 2012 | Rush Limbaugh

[Yosemitest]

Brokered Convention Chatter on Rise
January 20, 2012

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me tell you, I mentioned this yesterday, I mentioned this some time ago.
There are rumblings in the Republican establishment of a brokered convention now.
There is unsettledness and disquietedness in the conservative establishment, quote, unquote, in the Republican establishment, quote, unquote.

Both camps have prominent people who are unhappy with the way all of this is shaking out.
And they talked about it on Scarborough's show today on PMSNBC.
For the conservative establishment it's Newt.
"Oh, no, we don't want Newt. We gotta do something about Newt."
For the Republican establishment, they're getting a little queasy about Romney.
I think the term is brittle.
That's the term Scarborough used, that the establishment is concerned about what a brittle candidate Romney is proving to be.
It's said to be scaring the Republican establishment.
It's something I said back on January 11th, the day before my birthday.
There was a Jonah Goldberg columnz in which he mentioned the possibility of a brokered convention,
but according to Scarborough, top conservative leaders, the Republican establishment, want to keep Newt in the race
so they can get a brokered convention where they can pick the nominee.



Now, the Republican elite is notZ conservatives.
There are two different establishments that we're dealing with here, I think, the conservative establishment, the Republican establishment.
There is some overlap.
But the scuttlebutt is -- and it was on the "Morning Joke" show today -- the scuttlebutt is keep Newt in this.
Keep everybody in this.
Don't let this nomination get decided in Florida.
Keep it going 'cause nobody's happy right now.
I wonder how many of you, "Yeah, yeah," agree with that premise, "Yeah, yeah."
This is something unsettled, something not quite right here.
So there's that scuttlebutt.

Then we had the Marianne Gingrich interview last night on Nightline, and what a thud.
It was a dud. And I asked a lot of people to watch this and share with me their feedback, and beyond the clip that ABC aired yesterday...

this is why they didn't air any more clips than what they gave is there wasn't anything.
I think it was kind of pathetic. I actually felt a little sorry for her.
She's being exploited, I think probably willingly, if there's such a thing.
But there wasn't any bombshells.
There was nothing new that came out of this thing last night.
So the fallout, the damage, no news.
I don't think there's gonna be anything any more damaging to Newt than there was yesterday when it all happened, when it all came out.

Right-Click on the photo below and open in a new window to watch the Fox News video, or go to RushLimbaugh.com's Brokered Convention Chatter on Rise and watch it at the bottom of his article.

Reagan's 1976 Republican Convention Speech
Jan 31, 2011 - 7:25 - Ronald Reagan addresses crowd after narrowly losing nomination to Gerald Ford

Ronald Reagan ran against Gerald Ford for the 1976 Republican Presidential nomination, and lost a close race.
At the close of the convention, President Ford asked Governor Reagan to make some impromptu remarks.
Transcript of Reagan's 1976 Republican Convention Center Remarks, August 19, 1976

Thank you very much. Mr. President, Mrs. Ford, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Vice President to be,
the distinguished guests here, and you, ladies and gentlemen:

I am going to say fellow Republicans here, but also those who are watching from a distance,
all of those millions of Democrats and Independents who I know are looking for a cause around which to rally
and which I believe we can give them.

Mr. President, before you arrived tonight, these wonderful people here, when we came in, gave Nancy and myself a welcome.
That, plus this, and plus your kindness and generosity in honoring us by bringing us down here
will give us a memory that will live in our hearts forever.

Watching on television these last few nights,
and I have seen you also with the warmth that you greeted Nancy,
and you also filled my heart with joy when you did that.

May I just say some words.
There are cynics who say that a party platform is something that no one bothers to read
and it doesn't very often amount to much.

Whether it is different this time than it has ever been before,
I believe the Republican Party has a platform that is a banner of bold, unmistakable colors, with no pastel shades.

We have just heard a call to arms based on that platform,
and a call to us to really be successful in communicating
and reveal to the American people the difference between this platform and the platform of the opposing party,
which is nothing but a revamp and a reissue and a running of a late, late show
of the thing that we have been hearing from them for the last 40 years.

If I could just take a moment; I had an assignment the other day.
Someone asked me to write a letter for a time capsule that is going to be opened in Los Angeles a hundred years from now,
on our Tricentennial.

It sounded like an easy assignment.
They suggested I write something about the problems and the issues today.
I set out to do so, riding down the coast in an automobile, looking at the blue Pacific out on one side and the Santa Ynez Mountains on the other,
and I couldn't help but wonder if it was going to be that beautiful a hundred years from now
as it was on that summer day.

Then, as I tried to write -- let your own minds turn to that task.
You are going to write for people a hundred years from now, who know all about us.
We know nothing about them.
We don't know what kind of a world they will be living in.

And suddenly I thought to myself,
if I write of the problems, they will be the domestic problems the President spoke of here tonight;
the challenges confronting us, the erosion of freedom that has taken place under Democratic rule in this country,
the invasion of private rights, the controls and restrictions on the vitality of the great free economy that we enjoy.
These are our challenges that we must meet.

And then again, there is that challenge of which he spoke,
that we live in a world in which the great powers have poised and aimed at each other horrible missiles of destruction,
nuclear weapons that can in a matter of minutes arrive at each other's country
and destroy, virtually, the civilized world we live in.

And suddenly it dawned on me,
those who would read this letter a hundred years from now
will know whether those missiles were fired.
They will know whether we met our challenge.
Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now
will depend on what we do here.

Will they look back with appreciation and say,
"Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom,
who kept us now 100 years later free,
who kept our world from nuclear destruction"?

And if we failed,
they probably won't get to read the letter at all
because it spoke of individual freedom,
and they won't be allowed to talk of that or read of it.

This is our challenge;
and this is why here in this hall tonight, better than we have ever done before,
we have got to quit talking to each other and about each other
and go out and communicate to the world
that we may be fewer in numbers than we have ever been,
but we carry the message they are waiting for.

We must go forth from here united,
determined that what a great general said a few years ago is true:
There is no substitute for victory, Mr. President.

[no dems]

You make good points but the "brokered" candidate would have four (4) months to become well-known to the American people. Most Americans are not following the Primaries and this Election right now. Most Americans will not start paying attention until September and beyond. Everybody is not the political junkies that we FReepers are. I guarantee you that if you stood outside Wal-Mart today and asked 100 people: "Who is Rick Santorum?" or "Who is Newt Gingrich?" or "Who is Mitt Romney?" It would amaze you the number of people who would not have a friggin' clue.

[Yaelle]

I consider myself very fortunate to have been a few feet away from Reagan on election night. I was just a young apolitical girl and I didn’t appreciate it at the time but there I was in the front row.

And other strange things collided in a few more years and I made him a salad. With the Secret Service doggies behind me. I am so honored retroactively.

[Kenny Bunk]

I take it then, that you would be opposed to a brokered McCain-Dole ticket? That young fellow Mitt would be a splendid Postmaster General.

Me? Well, I am going to vote for Obama because it would be really way kool to have a two-term black President to show the world we are not prejudiced or stuck on carbon-generating fossil fuels.

[no dems]

If, by this summer, Unemployment is at 10 percent and gas is close to $5.00 a gallon, I guarantee you, his friggin’ SOTU Speech, made in January, won’t matter a hill of beans.

[usconservative]

I agree. I blame Obama on Seven of Nine.

Not quite. Not sure if you remember, but the divorce records were SEALED, neither Jack or Geri wanted them opened.

David Axelrod and his operatives (using the Chicago newspapers as their useful idiots) managed to get a CALIFORNIA judge to unseal the divorce records so the Obama Campaign could make them public.

Imagine, a court-ordered SEALED divorce record magically being opened by a CALIFORNIA judge. A DEMOCRAT California judge at that.

Now, look what's going on, on the national stage. Accusations against Santorum's wife; Gingrich's wife suddenly goes public; wild accusations about Gingrich's ethics case in the House (where Gingrich was exonerated, and the report is on Thomas); and finally the dust up around Romney's financial records and SOMEONE finding private, Cayman Island bank accounts.

We've seen this act here in Illinois before. This has David Axelrod's and Barack Hussein Obama's fingerprints all over it.

It's incredibly important for EVERYONE on this forum to KNOW and REMEMBER that up until his White House run, Barack Hussein Obama has NEVER won a contested (I should say "legitimately contested") political race.

The modus operandi for Obama/Axelrod is to CLEAR THE FIELD of all opposition for Obama.

We've seen first hand here in Illinois what "clearing the field" means. Obama/Axelrod are up to it once again.

DO NOT let this happen on the national stage this election cycle.

[Yaelle]

I guarantee you that if you stood outside Wal-Mart today and asked 100 people: “Who is Rick Santorum?” or “Who is Newt Gingrich?” or “Who is Mitt Romney?” It would amaze you the number of people who would not have a friggin’ clue.

---

You mean if you spoke perfect Spanish and could ask.

[Kenny Bunk]

.....because he refused to fight, we got that malignant jungle rot known as Obama.

McCain, in refusing to fight, merely copied GHWB's strategy of '92. He took a dive ... there's no other word for it ... to give us Clinton.

[Yosemitest]

Let me add this article:

7 Reasons Why Mitt Romney's Electability Is A Myth
Dec 27, 2011 by John Hawkins



Mitt Romney was a moderate governor in Massachusetts with an unimpressive record of governance.
He left office with an approval rating in the thirties
and his signature achievement, Romneycare, was a Hurricane Katrina style disaster for the state.
Since that's the case, it's fair to ask what a Republican who's not conservative and can't even carry his own state brings to the table for GOP primary voters.
The answer is always the same: Mitt Romney is supposed to be "the most electable" candidate.
This is a baffling argument because many people just seem to assume it's true, despite the plethora of evidence to the contrary.

1) People just don't like Mitt:

The entire GOP primary process so far has consisted of Republican voters desperately trying to find an alternative to Mitt Romney.
Doesn't it say something that GOP primary voters have, at one time or another, preferred Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and now even Ron Paul (In Iowa) to Mitt Romney?

To some people, this is a plus.
They think that if conservatives don't like Mitt Romney, that means moderates will like him.
This misunderstands how the process of attracting independent voters works in a presidential race.
While it's true the swayable moderates don't want to support a candidate they view as an extremist,
they also don't just automatically gravitate towards the most "moderate" candidate.
To the contrary, independent voters tend to be moved by the excitement of the candidate's base (See John McCain vs. Barack Obama for an example of how this works).
This is how a very conservative candidate like Ronald Reagan could win landslide victories.
He avoided being labeled an extremist as Goldwater was; yet his supporters were incredibly enthusiastic and moderates responded to it.

Let's be perfectly honest: Mitt Romney excites no one except for Mormons, political consultants, and Jennifer Rubin.
To everybody else on the right, Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama would be a "lesser of two evils" election
where we'd grudgingly back Mitt because we wouldn’t lose as badly with him in the White House as we would with Obama.
That's not the sort of thing that gets people fired up to make phone calls, canvass neighborhoods, or even put up "I heart Mitt" signs in their yards.

2) He's a proven political loser:
There's a reason Mitt Romney has been able to say that he's "not a career politician."
It's because he's not very good at politics.
He lost to Ted Kennedy in 1994.
Although he did win the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, he did it without cracking 50% of the vote.
Worse yet, he left office as the 48th most popular governor in America and would have lost if he had run again in 2006.
Then, to top that off, he failed to capture the GOP nomination in 2008.
This time around, despite having almost every advantage over what many people consider to be a weak field of candidates, Romney is still desperately struggling.
Choosing Romney as the GOP nominee after running up that sort of track record would be like promoting a first baseman hitting .225 in AAA to the majors.

3) Running weak in the southern states:
Barack Obama won North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida in 2008
and you can be sure that he will be targeting all three of those states again.
This is a problem for Romney because he would be much less likely than either Gingrich or Perry to carry any of those states.
Moderate northern Republicans have consistently performed poorly in the south and Romney won't be any exception.
That was certainly the case in 2008 when both McCain and Huckabee dominated Romney in primaries across the south.
Mitt didn't win a single primary in a southern state and although he finished second in Florida, he wasn't even competitive in North Carolina or Virginia.
Since losing any one of those states could be enough to hand the election to Obama in a close race, Mitt's weakness there is no small matter.

4) His advantages disappear in a general election:
It's actually amazing that Mitt Romney isn't lapping the whole field by 50 points because he has every advantage.
Mitt has been running for President longer than the other contenders.
He has more money and a better organization than the other candidates.
The party establishment and inside the beltway media are firmly in his corner.
That's why the other nominees have been absolutely savaged while Romney, like John McCain before him, has been allowed to skate through the primaries without receiving serious scrutiny.

Yet, every one of those advantages disappears if he becomes the nominee.
Suddenly Obama will be the more experienced candidate in the race for the presidency.
He will also have more money and a better organization than Mitt.
Moreover, in a general election, the establishment and beltway media will be aligned against Romney, not for him.
Suddenly, Romney will go from getting a free pass to being public enemy #1 for the entire mainstream media.

If you took all those advantages away from Romney in the GOP primary, he'd be fighting with Jon Huntsman to stay out of last place.
So, what happens when he's the nominee and suddenly, all the pillars that have barely kept him propped up in SECOND place so far are suddenly removed?
It may not be pretty.

5) Bain Capital:
Mitt Romney became rich working for Bain Capital.
This has been a plus for Romney in the Republican primaries where the grassroots tend to be dominated by people who love capitalism and the free market.
However, in a year when Obama will be running a populist campaign and Occupy Wall Street is demonizing the "1%," Mitt Romney will be a TAILOR MADE villain for them.
Did you know that Bain Capital gutted companies and made a lot of money, in part, by laying off a lot of poor and middle class Americans?
Do you know that Bain Capital got a federal bailout and Mitt Romney made lots of money off of it?


“The way the company was rescued was with a federal bailout of $10 million,” the ad says.
“The rest of us had to absorb the loss …
Romney? He and others made $4 million in this deal.
… Mitt Romney: Maybe he’s just against government when it helps working men and women.”

The facts of the Bain & Co. turnaround are a little more complicated,
but a Boston Globe report from 1994 confirms that Bain saw several million dollars in loans forgiven by the FDIC,
which had taken over Bain’s failed creditor, the Bank of New England.



Did you know Ted Kennedy beat Romney in 1994 by hammering Mitt relentlessly on his time at Bain Capital?
No wonder. The ads write themselves.

Imagine pictures of dilapidated, long since closed factories.
They trot out scruffy looking workers talking about how bad life has been since Mitt Romney crushed their dreams and cost them their jobs.
Then they show a clip of Mitt making his $10,000 bet and posing with money in his clothes.
All Mitt needs is a monocle and a sniveling Waylon Smithers type character to follow him around shining his shoes
to make him into the prototypical bad guy the Democrats are trying to create.

Now, the point of this isn't to say that what Mitt did at Bain Capital was dishonorable.
It certainly wasn't.
To the contrary, as a conservative, I find his work in the private sector to be just about the only thing he has going for him.
But, people should realize that in a general election, Mitt's time at Bain Capital will probably end up being somewhere between a small asset and a large liability,
depending on which side does a better job of defining it.

6) The Mormon Factor:
This is a sensitive topic; so I am going to handle it much, much more gently than Hollywood and the mainstream media will if Mitt gets the nomination.
Mormons do believe in Jesus Christ, the Mormon Church does a lot of good work, the ones I've met seem to be good people, and two of my best friends are Mormons.
That being said, Mormons are not considered to be a mainstream Christian religion in large swathes of the country.
There will be Protestants who will have deep reservations about voting a Mormon into the White House
because they'll be afraid it will help promote what they believe to be a false religion.
There have also been a number of polls that show that significant numbers of Americans won't vote for a Mormon as President.

Just look at a couple of the more recent polls and consider how much of an impact this issue could have in a close election.


The poll found 67 percent of Americans want the president to be Christian and 52 percent said they consider Mormons to be Christian.
Twenty-two percent of those polled said they don't think Mormons are Christians and 26 percent are unsure.

"I do believe they are moral people, but again there is a difference between being moral and being saved," Linda Dameron, an evangelical Republican in Independence, Mo., told the Tribune.




More than 40 percent of Americans would be uncomfortable with a Mormon as president, according to a new survey
that also suggests that as more white evangelical voters have learned White House hopeful Mitt Romney is Mormon, the less they like him.

A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute released late Monday also shows
that nearly half of white evangelical Protestant voters — a key demographic in the Republican primary race — don’t believe that Mormonism is a Christian faith,
and about two-thirds of adults say the LDS faith is somewhat or very different than their own.


You should also keep in mind that if Mitt Romney gets the nomination, Hollywood and the mainstream media will conduct a vicious, months’ long hate campaign against the Mormon Church.
They will take every opportunity to make Mormons look weird, racist, kooky, scary, and different.
Would this be a decisive factor?
I'd like to say no, but by the time all is said and done, it's very easy to see Romney potentially losing hundreds of thousands of votes across the country because of his religion.

7) He's a flip-flopper.
Maybe my memory is failing me, but didn’t George Bush beat John Kerry's brains in with the "flip flopper" charge back in 2004?
So now, just eight years later, the GOP is going to run someone that even our own side agrees is a flip-flopper right out of the gate?
Romney doesn't even handle the charge well.
When Brett Baier at Fox pointed out the obvious, Romney's response was to get huffy and deny that he was flip flopping,
which is kind of like Lady Gaga denying that she likes to get attention.
If Mitt can't even handle run-of-the-mill questions from FOX NEWS about his flip flopping,
what makes anyone think he can deal with the rest of the press in a general election?

There are a lot of issues with trying to run a candidate who doesn't seem to have any core principles.
It makes it impossible for his supporters to get excited about him because you can't fall in love with a weathervane.
Even worse, since politicians tend to be such liars anyway and you know Romney has no firm beliefs, it's very easy for everyone to assume the worst.
Democrats will feel that Romney will be a right wing death-beast.
Republicans will think that Romney will screw them over.
Independents won't know what to believe, which will make the hundreds of millions that Obama will spend on attack ads particularly effective.
Ronald Reagan famously said the GOP needed "a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors."
That's particularly relevant when it comes to Mitt Romney who has proven to be a pasty grey pile of formless mush.

[SaraJohnson]

I keep repeating that Rinos do not mind being the permanent minority of the one-party international socialist camp. They did it for forty years until people like Reagan and Newt came along and turned their world up-side down.

Their only political enemy is conservatives. They have stood by while the Department of Homland inSecurity has classified conservatives as domestic terrorists. They attack only conservatives - never liberals - their friends across the aisle.

[philman_36]

Imagine, the Democrat Party making a scandal out of a married man, Jack Ryan, having sex with his own wife.
On, BTW, nice twist there. The problem wasn't with him "having sex with his own wife", it was him having sex with his own wife in an open and public setting.

And to use your own words...To deny these FACTS is to deny reality.

[philman_36]

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Speaking of "facts"...read my last reply to you.
A Boy Scout you have not.

[usconservative]

On, BTW, nice twist there. The problem wasn't with him "having sex with his own wife", it was him having sex with his own wife in an open and public setting.

By all means, you're free to believe the sensationalist, trumped-up bullshit you read in the liberal, lamestream media in Chicago and attempt to cite it as "fact." You go right on ahead.....

[Jim Noble]

[muawiyah]

Uhhh, it's difficult to overlook the fact that MOST OF US never go to sex clubs ~ wouldn't even know where to find one.

Ryan knew, and went, repeatedly.

[usconservative]

The problem wasn't with him "having sex with his own wife", it was him having sex with his own wife in an open and public setting.

Right, his own wife. HIS OWN WIFE. Not a girlfried, mistress, hooker, whatever. HIS OWN WIFE. And so-called Conservatives LIKE YOU allowed that to be turned into a scandal?

Please. Again, you're free to believe that which the liberal lamestream media force-feeds you about the "open and public setting" bullshit.

Go right on ahead. All yours.

[usconservative]

Put the liberal Chicago newspaper down, and step away .....

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

Our Republic has survived many brokered conventions.

[muawiyah]

H. Ross Perot was also a candidate.

At one time we could still find otherwise Conservative Freepers who'd admit to having voted for Perot.

Now they don't admit it, but they still express opinions about how Bush lost that race.

BTW, I didn't vote for Clinton, nor for Perot.

[Elsie]

Now, the Republican elite is notZ conservatives.

WHOA!!

At first glance I thought this said:

Now, the Republican elite ZOTS conservatives.

[muawiyah]

That $5 billion the Democrat machine just stole from the state will probably give them quite a formidable war chest for the campaign.