Posted on 02/27/2017 12:57:25 PM PST by Kaslin
RUSH: Hey, did you see Trump took my advice and is not gonna go to the White House Correspondents Dinner? I advised him not to go back on February 3rd and probably on occasions prior to that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is a big week for America and for Trump. Trump has this big speech tomorrow night, the equivalent of a State of the Union speech. They dont actually call it that. Trump hasnt been president long enough to deliver an actual State of the Union.
So its gonna incorporate the parts of the State of the Union where the agenda is laid out, and, you know, the media right now is asking questions: Will there be any breaks in decorum? Will the Democrats walk out? Will there be major protests? Will the Democrats in the House chamber shout and attempt to prevent Trump from speaking? All of these things.
Frankly, I hope so. I really hope so, folks. I hope the left continues. You can say what you want about the ability of the left to grab media attention because the left is the media and the media is the left. And the media likes to portray whatevers going on with the left as the norm. But it isnt. And this stuff that the left is engaging in is repulsive and reprehensible, and its repulsing people. But youre never going to hear that reported. You are never gonna hear that take on things. Youre going to hear just the exact opposite. And this is where you naturally are gonna start worrying about Trump. I know some people are. They ask me.
My gosh, Rush, how can anybody bear up under this? These daily countless assaults on Trump and his people and I dont think, folks, you need to worry about anything. Its all there in The Art of the Deal. Donald Trump is one of the most public and transparent politicians (which now he is) that weve ever had. This man, during his campaign, mentioned his agenda over and over and over again, lengthy, specifically. He didnt hide any of it. He was wide out in the open with it. He got elected on that basis, which is why he has a mandate.
Now that hes in the White House, he only knows one speed, and thats full speed ahead. The way Trump works, if you remember a couple things that weve talked about on prior occasions from the book The Art of the Deal, you all remember that one of the big take-aways is that Trumps advice is ask for three times what you want so that youve got room to compromise and come back. But the second part of this that doesnt get a whole lot of attention is because I dont think most in the media have ever taken the time to read it, and when do you pull back?
At what point do you start negotiating or compromising or whatever? Because you always do in any negotiation. And with Trump you dont do that until the very end. You dont show one sense, you dont give one indication that youre not serious about your demands or your desires in the first month, in the first six months, you dont dare. You dont give any sign whatsoever that youre gonna pull back.
And let me ask you, theres another thing that happens with Trump. Whenever hes criticized about something, what does he do? All during the campaign, he doubles down on whatever it is that upsets people. So he constantly uses the term fake news. And the media has a cow. The media has kittens. They have conniptions. They run around. What does he do? He doubles down on it and tells them that to their face.
And the next thing he does is instruct his press secretary on a gaggle (imitating Trump), You know what? Dont let CNN, the New York Times, Politico and BuzzFeed, just dont let em in. And they have another cow. All the while they are expecting that the pressure that they are putting on Trump, that this intense criticism, that this never-ending browbeating is gonna cause Trump to break. But whats happening? Trump is doubling down and tripling down.
Well, now it comes time for Trump to present the outlines of his budget tomorrow night. He gave some indications of it today in a short speech to the nations governors. The annual Governors Conference is in Washington, and Trump was not watching the Epidemic Awards last night because the Governors Ball was last night. So Trump had the governors show up at the White House today and he gives them little introductory comments on his upcoming budget, talked some things about Obamacare, how bad it is.
He said (paraphrasing), You know, the smart thing to do politically is just do nothing. Just let this thing collapse cause it already is. Its already imploding. Just let it collapse. Stand aside and let this thing go belly up. And he said, In two years the Democrats are gonna be coming to us begging us to do something. He said, But we cant do that because that would harm people. That would hurt the people. And were not gonna put our political aspirations ahead of the American people.
Now, I have one slight disagreement. I think with Republicans in power and if Obamacare implodes, I probably think the Republicans are gonna get the blame for it. I dont think people are gonna go back, Yeah, man, if Obama hadnt done that in 2010. And theres nothing conspiratorial here. Its just peoples historical perspective doesnt go back very far. So if your health care plan implodes on you in 2018, and whos in office now? Well, Republicans and Trump. Who gets blamed? So I dont think you can rely on the fact that the Democrats will get blamed in Trumps political scenario, how this would all play out.
But it was fascinating. You know, there are a bunch of Democrat governors there are not that many, but there are some only five Democrat governors actually run their states with a Democrat legislature. Its actually only four. In one state theres a tie stop and think about that. In 50 states, the Democrats only have total executive and legislative control in four of them. But there are also a lot of governors we talked about this philosophically last week when Trump decided to cancel Obamas executive orders on transgenders in bathrooms, and what did he do with that? He sent it back to the states. He said this is not a federal issue.
Remember thats where I so expertly defined federalism for you. Federalism is the system whereby the states do everything except the things only the federal government can do, like a national highway system or conduct war, wage war, this kind of thing. But everything else, the sates do it. And the theory is that the people closest to any situation should be the ones dealing with it. So Trump sends it back to the states. He didnt issue an executive order claiming legal or illegal on any of this. He just said, You people in the states decide this. And a bunch of Democrat governors blew up and got mad.
Now, ask yourselves why. Why would a bunch of governors get mad that federal power had been returned to them? That ought to be causing them to jump for joy. But the answer to the question is that there are a lot of governors, mostly Democrat, who dont want to be tied to any of these controversial issues. Theyre more than happy for all of this to come down as a mandate or a directive from a distant capital, and they can tell the people in their state, Sorry. Obama said we have to open the bedrooms up to anybody. Sorry. I cant do anything about it. Take it up with Washington.
And with Obamacare we might have somewhat of a similar circumstance. You might think in these states where the Obamacare exchanges are imploding and blowing up, and you might think where insurance premiums are skyrocketing 66% and the deductibles are out of control, you might think a lot of governors would love be able to go back and arrange health care systems within their states, for their population, so that they could do it right and get reelected and show how competent they are. But a lot of governors not all by any stretch but a lot of governors like washing their hands of any responsibility here and having all of this health care stuff indeed be another mandate from a distant capital so far away that we cant do anything but abide by it.
My point here is that Trump has his work cut out for him because returning as much power as possible from Washington to the states is what liberalism and the Democrat Party stridently opposes. They want as much power, decree, command, control in Washington as they can get. Its less responsibility for them. Its much harder to do away with and get rid of it when, say, Obama is in charge of who can use bathrooms and who cant. So Trump has his work cut out for him.
Now, he mentioned in the budget that hes gonna increase defense spending and hes gonna have his stimulus to rebuild roads, bridges, airplanes, and all that, and hes not going to add to the deficit. Well, hes not gonna blow it up. And hes not gonna cut Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. So hows he gonna do this? How in the world is this possible? Well, this is going to be one of the great moments, if you ask me. How many times have you heard the establishment types, I dont care either party, media, think tankers say, I mean, you cant cut the budget anywhere but entitlements. I mean, entitlements are 65, 70% of the budget. You cant cut those by law. Thats why theyre called entitlements. You cant cut em.
And they say because of that, we really cant cut the budget. Yet here comes Trump saying hes gonna do it. Hows he gonna do it? Well, bye-bye National Endowment for the Arts. Bye-bye National Endowment for the Humanities. Say good-bye to about half of your budget, National Education Association. Say good-bye to a lot of your budget, Environmental Protection Agency. Thats how hes gonna do it. There are all kinds of bureaucracies that could be cut in half or be eliminated and people would be better off.
Because thats the administrative state, folks, and thats where all of these new regulations and laws come from that are not laws, theyre not passed by Congress, theyre just written by faceless, nameless bureaucrats in the deep state, the administrative state. They can bottle you up and they can tie you up, and nobody has the ability to get rid of them, but yet Trumps come along, What do you mean we cant cut some? Hes gonna try, and its gonna raise holy hell. You are gonna see continued squealing like stuck pigs like you havent seen it.
The thing to realize is, the squealing and the whining and the moaning and the panic and the hysteria is not going to make Donald Trump back off. Hes full speed ahead in the other direction. Look, as I have been maintaining since the campaign, Trumps biggest obstacle is really not the Democrats. They cant stop him. They dont have the numbers. The biggest challenge that Trump has is getting the Republicans in Congress and the Senate to go along with him. Remember, they do respond to this kind of mean-spirited, attack oriented media coverage. They hate it. They dont like it. Some people I know think the Republicans dont even want the responsibility of governing or leading. Theyve gotten so accustomed to just being in second place and reacting to things. It could be any number of things here.
But Ill tell you what else is happening here, too. As he laid some of this out with the governors in his speech today and as hes released little titillating, tantalizing details of the big speech tomorrow, it is very clear to me that Donald Trump is doing exactly what I suggested, what I hoped. And thats focusing on the domestic agenda.
Cause, Ill tell you something, folks. The great people of this country, theyre not all caught up in the things the medias caught in. They dont care about how all of this stuff works in Washington except to the extent of learning why nothing happens. But they dont get all caught up in the process. All they want to see is the results.
This is all theyve wanted to see since they started voting against Obama and the Democrats in 2010. They want to see some actual evidence that somebody means it when he talks about rebuilding American manufacturing and rebuilding American jobs and lowering taxes, getting rid of Obamacare. They want to see that somebody actually means this. And if Trump does this, can pull this off, the media can do whatever they want, the Russian investigation, whatever they want to make up about that, and theres no harm that can come to Trump. And he knows it. I think its illustrated that he knows it by the way hes focusing on it even now.
Rush Limbaugh? The king of self aggrandizement...
Now crawl back under your rock.
“Hey noobie!”
Big fan? Me too... but he is full of himself.
Don’t let 2016 fool you... foot and knee surgery and an impending election led me here...
That you Rush?
Quoting yourself again?
Well you are a noobie. BTW I don’t listen to Rush, or any radio talk show, and haven’t for years.
I would like to focus on this snippet because I had a very similar situation in my workplace some years ago:
...Theyre more than happy for all of this to come down as a mandate or a directive from a distant capital, and they can tell the people in their state, Sorry. Obama said we have to open the bedrooms up to anybody. Sorry. I cant do anything about it. Take it up with Washington.
Back in the 1990s, I worked for a company that had their national headquarters in Florida but branches all across the country. It was setup as a "command-and-control" structure in which corporate (St. Pete) dictated the way that all the branches would operate. So all the branch managers across the country (of which I was one) would basically be receiving a constant flood of memos and SOPs from St. Pete and then our main job would be disseminating them to the employees and ensuring that all directives were carried out to the letter.
What this effectively did was make the branch managers no better than a glorified clerk. Whenever the employees would gripe or complain about a policy, the manager would simply shrug and say "Sorry, that's the corporate policy. Take it up with them" Then the employee would have to call HR and complain to them. Which they only rarely bothered to do. And this setup suited most of the managers just fine. They were able to avoid confrontation and more importantly, they were removed from having to justify the policies they were tasked to carry out. And if their branch did not perform up to par, they could always point the finger back at corporate and say that they ran their operation the way they were directed to. Further, it was the regional managers that were held responsible for the financial results so there were never any consequences to the local branch managers for poor fiscal performance.
Then we got a new CEO and one of his major initiatives was to put more responsibility on the individual branch managers. Managers were given much more latitude to set policy and operating procedures in their branches but on the flip side, they were held to very aggressive goals on revenue growth and operating profit margins. Regional managers were now called Regional VPs and their number was reduced from 12 to 4 across the nation (one of which I ultimately became).
This was not well received by most managers. Within two years, more than half of them "washed out". For once they were asked to perform as leaders and were held accountable for their own results, the real managers were quickly separated from the glorified clerks who were content to be pencil-pushing, report-filing glorified clerks with no real responsibility.
So if this is the approach Trump is taking - shifting more responsibility to the states - I see this as an excellent development.
“Well you are a noobie. BTW I dont listen to Rush, or any radio talk show”
The A$$wipes brothers down at the VFW call me noobie too. It’s just a thang. When I’m am out and about I usually listen to Prager or Ingraham... or a cassette of old timey fiddle, such as Melvin Wine and such...
In Virginia we actually get radio signal... my sister lives south of Cooksville... hell I can’t even get cell phone down in them parts when I’m fixing her tractors and mending fences out at her place it’s just flat out remote.
“took my advice...”
bloviating much?
That may or may not be true. But I read every word of Rush's analysis with great interest (and I think he's right).
And I could barely get through your sentence fragment. That's because yours was a trite thought, an irrelevant thought, and also a humorless thought.
Self-aggrandizement is Rush's shtick. Like all shticks, it has an element of truth. But his contribution to conservative thought and unity has been pivotal to modern American political history. And it's true to our history: Rush is a Federalist, and even better, he teaches millions of people, young and old, that our birthright, is Federalism--where the States are forced to compete with each other to attract Americans, and therefore are forced to offer them liberty and opportunity.
Rush, I love you bro, but you've got the biggest ego I have ever seen.
Little tip: The world does not revolve around you, nor do the people of planet Earth hang on your every word.
We know it's (just partly) a schtick, but it's annoying, even to long time listeners like me. I used to be amused by it, but now I think it just takes away from his overall product.
“Self-aggrandizement is Rush’s shtick. Like all shticks, it has an element of truth”
And by Rush’s admission he would concur!
True!
And the "talent on loan from God" thing is true, but beside the point. He's balanced, and he cuts to the heart of things. Those things are more valuable than talent.
Well, Trump did not “take” Rush’s advice. They both see the same forces and situations, though. Both have gut takes on their opposition so they agree on a lot.
I think I like you and welcome to FR
Excellent point
“Now, I have one slight disagreement. I think with Republicans in power and if Obamacare implodes, I probably think the Republicans are gonna get the blame for it.”
I don’t listen to radio any longer but I think Rush is dead on the money here. For a time I had a home office job calling people about legislative initiatives and I was amazed that some people in 2012 were actually saying that anything that was not perfect about Obamacare was the fault of Republicans even though it was passed without a single Republican vote. To put it plainly logic has nothing to do with the way that at least half of America sees things.
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