The Newt of the '80s Wouldn't Get Tangled Up in This Mandate Mess

RUSH: Newt Gingrich has racked up a huge bill at Tiffany, the jeweler, $500,000. Our ever attentive media is on the case. Frankly, folks, do I care what a former politician and his wife do with their money, or what a current politician is doing with mine? I, frankly, couldn't care less that Gingrich has a $500,000 bill at Tiffany. More power to him. If his wife likes stuff at Tiffany, and Newt wants to buy stuff from Tiffany for his wife and has an account there, so be it. Should I care about Newt and his wife's jewelry purchases or should I care that Obama sat in a bigoted church for 20 years and probably did hear what was being said? Should we care about the lies and distortions being told to us by this regime about our financial circumstance?

Newt has an account with Tiffany, so what? You know what the point of this is? Rich Republicans. It's the same old template out there, and the takedowns of Newt yesterday, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, with a huge hit piece on Newt. A lot of people are pointing out that nobody on the Republican side is rallying to Newt's defense here.

RUSH: Now we move on to the Newt sound bites. Last night on Greta on the Fox News Channel, she spoke with Newt. At the start of the interview she played a sound bite of me, which I said, "I'm not going to justify this. The attack on Paul Ryan, the support for a mandate in health care. Folks, don't ask me to explain this. There is no explanation for it. First off, it cuts Paul Ryan off at the knees. It supports the Obama administration in the lawsuits the 26 states have filed over the mandate. I guess way back in 1993 Newt supported an individual mandate that everybody should buy insurance. I am befuddled as anybody else is." Greta then says: "I go out of the country for a week and I come back and you have blown up the Republican party. What happened?"

GINGRICH: In Rush's case he had two things. One of them was just plain wrong. I do not support a mandate. I am opposed to Obamacare. I am in support of the 26 attorney generals who have filed suit. The Center for Health Transformation that I helped found has been actively opposed to Obamacare for two and a half years. That was a clip from 1993 when in fact the conservative position was to have individual insurance in opposition to Hillarycare.

RUSH: All right, now, he's confusing two things. I was simply saying that all the way back to 1993 Newt had come out in favor of an individual mandate, suggesting that his statement Sunday with David Gregory was not new, that he supports an individual mandate. Now, he said in the sound bite here that I was just plain wrong, that Newt did not support an individual mandate. You heard him say this, you heard him say it, right? Newt just said, "In Rush's case, he had two things. One of them was just plain wrong. I don't support a mandate." Okay, let's go back to Sunday, Meet the Depressed with David Gregory, who says, "Back in 1993 on this program you said, 'I am for people, exactly like automobile insurance, individuals having health insurance and being required to have it, and I'm prepared to vote for a voucher system that will give individuals on a sliding scale a government subsidy so to ensure that everyone as individuals has health insurance.' What you advocate there is precisely what Obama did with his health care legislation, is it not?" That was the question from Gregory. Here's the answer.

GINGRICH: I believe all of us -- and this is gonna be a big debate -- I believe all of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care. I've said consistently, we ought to have some requirement you either have health insurance or you post a bond or in some way you indicate you're gonna be held accountable. RUSH: I don't know what I got wrong. Are we slicing this too thin here? I don't know what I got wrong. He's come out with a mandate, and he has, by the way, apologized to Ryan. The next bite, Van Susteren continued the discussion. After he said that I was wrong, he then continued with this.

GINGRICH: I made a mistake, and I called Paul Ryan today, who is a very close personal friend, and I said that. The fact is that I have supported what Ryan's tried to do in the budget. The fact is that my newsletter strongly praised the budget when he brought it out, and the budget vote is one that I'm happy to say I would have voted for, I will defend, and I'd be glad to answer any Democrat who attempts to distort what I said. Those words were inaccurate and unfortunate and I'm prepared to stand up and when I make a mistake, and I'm going to on occasion, I want to stand up and share with the American people, "That was a mistake."

RUSH: Okay. So he called Ryan. Ryan accepted the apology. Now, I'm trying to figure out what I got wrong. In June of 2007, op-ed in the Des Moines Register, Newt wrote, "Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it and expect others to pay for their care when they need it. An individual mandate," he added, "should be applied when the larger health care system has been fundamentally changed." In his book, Real Change, Newt wrote, "Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage, or if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond. Meanwhile, we should provide tax credits or subsidized private insurance for the poor."

So look, here's the thing. This is really tough 'cause I have so much admiration for Newt Gingrich. People probably don't remember this, but I have to tell you, back in the 1980s, I was laboring away in Kansas City. I had just left the Kansas City Royals after five years there. I had figured out that corporate life wasn't for me. I couldn't fit into those kinds of rigorous, structural environments. But it was probably the best five years I'd ever spent. It was the first five years of my working career outside of radio and I met people I otherwise wouldn't have met. I learned that highly structured business models just weren't for me.

So I went back to radio, and I wanted to go back to spoken word radio. I'd been a disc jockey, and I wanted to go back to spoken word radio because that seemed to offer more freedom, a greater chance for creativity, plus, you know, I'd had my fling with playing Donny Osmond records and I was over that, past that. Cowsills and so forth, been there, done that. It was 1984 and that was a presidential campaign year. Of course, the Reverend Jackson running for office, Gary Hart(pence) running for office. The radio station I worked for, which now carries the program, gave me a commentary 'cause I could not keep my opinions out of the news. I was doing news in the afternoon, and I'd throw in my opinions, and they'd call me and say, "You can't put your opinion in the news."

"Yes, he does. All he's gotta do is raise an eyebrow. Don't tell me that Peter Jennings doesn't put his opinion in there."

"Well, we don't care about Peter Jennings. He doesn't work here. You can't put your opinion in there."

I just couldn't keep my opinion out of it. So they gave me a commentary, 90-second commentary every day, sometimes twice a day, ran in the morning and in the afternoon. During this time, Newt Gingrich was conducting special orders on the floor of the House of Representatives every night, Newt and what was called the Conservative Opportunity Society or some such thing, it was Newt and a bunch of guys, Robert Walker, Vin Weber, you know, all these guys. And, folks, I'm telling you, Newt Gingrich was the only person in Washington defending Ronald Reagan. He was excoriating, decimating Tip O'Neill and the Democrats. And back then it was as vitriolic as it is today. The hatred for Ronald Reagan and the things that were being said about him and his policies were no different than what was said about George W. Bush or is said about Newt today. And there was no question Newt Gingrich was defining conservatism, right along with Reagan, both in the social issues and cultural issues, fiscal issues. It was dramatic.

Those special orders were called the C-SPAN Revolution at the time. There was nobody in the House. The House had ceased business for the day. It got to be so effective that Tip O'Neill shut 'em down. That's when I first became familiar with Newt Gingrich, and I was desperate to talk to the guy. I leaned on the station that I worked for, it was owned by Bonneville Broadcasting, and they had some connections. So I finally had the chance to speak with Newt for a while. Back in those days, I got to tell you, Newt Gingrich was Mr. Conservative. There was not even a sign, there was no indication that there would be public service announcements with Nancy Pelosi on the couch or joint health care appearances with Hillary Clinton. And when the Republican freshman class was sworn into office in 1995 and Newt was the Speaker, folks, I gotta tell you, the potential there and the mood was so upbeat and optimistic, because that is the kind of conservative we are still looking for today. Newt was it. So all of this stuff that's happening today, this is not making me happy or comfortable. I don't understand this. I don't know what happened. I don't know what changed, but getting into these little puke fights here over who said what, when, this is not... BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, one of the reasons that everybody's all tied up in this mandate business is there are two kinds of mandates: There are state mandates -- this is what I frankly expect Newt and even Romney to fall back on. There's a state mandate such as auto insurance, but a federal mandate violates the US Constitution. Now, I'm not sure, but I think way, way back when the Heritage Foundation came out in support of some form of a mandate, and -- (interruption) yeah, they worked on Romneycare. Look, when Romneycare was first signed into law, I remember there were a lot of conservatives that were really enthused by it. I mean when Romneycare was made official in Massachusetts, there were a lot of conservatives singing its praises, precisely because it mandated that people pay for their health insurance, and this theoretically was gonna lower prices. But it never worked out.

You can mandate all day long, it's like every law you come up with, people are gonna violate it. I think both Romney and Newt are kinda tied to this mandate business because Heritage was tied to it way, way back, but they were talking state mandates at this point. But even in the auto insurance example, if you don't have a car, you don't have to buy insurance. It's not a thorough and complete analogy on this. But it's twisting everybody up here, and, of course, it's up to me to untangle all of this, which of course I shall do, happily so.

RUSH: Let me take this in some kind of chronological order here to set the table and try to untangle this web of deceit that exists on the mandate and whose idea it was originally and where we are now. Now, one thing, I want to go back to Newt Gingrich, the Conservative Opportunity Society, and those special orders on the floor of the House of Representatives. You know, I really wish that I had some tape. Maybe all of C-SPAN's archives have been digitized and made available. It's perhaps possible to find some of these things. But I mean they went on for hours, folks, they didn't just show up for five minutes and say something. Newt and his gang, and it was Bob Walker, Jack Kemp, Duncan Hunter, Connie Mack, Dick Armey, there were a bunch of them, and I gotta tell you, they were inspirational. They were the living offspring of Ronald Reagan.

It was as inspirational as anything that I've ever seen in politics. And you must understand, even though Reagan was winning landslides and having his way, he was being demonized and hated. The rhetoric was just vile, just as it is today. And these guys, Newt and the boys, would not abide it. And they were on the floor of the House every night, special orders. And there wasn't a soul in the gallery, there wasn't a soul. They were it. The only people that saw this were the C-SPAN audience. And it became known as the C-SPAN Revolution. And I remember I'm 33, 34, something like that, I'm watching this stuff and I'm saying to myself, "Reagan has to love this. Reagan has to be watching this in the White House, does Reagan know what these guys are doing? Gosh, I hope he does." I mean it was just as inspirational as anything at the time that wasn't Reagan.

They were killing the Democrats on substance. I mean what Newt was doing, in addition to all this, was illustrating and highlighting the corruption of the House Speaker at the time, Jim Wright, who affectionately became known as Fort Worthless Jim Wright on this program. Jim Wright, Speaker of the House, he was from Fort Worth, he once released a book, and to get it up to something like 200 pages there were a number of pages that had one word on them, triple-spaced, double-spaced, and the vast majority of the books were sold, bought in bulk, actually, by unions, and people never read them. I mean Jim Wright and Jim Jones, some of those Democrats of the day, Barney Frank was there, they were just excoriating Reagan. They were running down to Nicaragua, and they were sidling up to the Soviet communists down there. I mean, folks, it was a genuine war for the country, and here you had the Conservative Opportunity Society, and they were the bulwark. And remember, we were talking the House of Representatives, the Democrats owned it. Reagan never had a House majority to work with. So it was an amazing thing.

Jeff Lord who writes for the American Spectator was in the Reagan White House at the time. He was the Reagan White House liaison with the Conservative Opportunity Society. So they knew in the White House obviously what was going on, and they had a connection. But Newt didn't need anybody to write what he was saying. I mean you could tell. And nothing was written. Folks, really, there hasn't been anything like it from anybody elected to office in this country since. And I think for those of us who were alive then, maturing then, coming of age then, one of the great disappointments today is what happened to all of that. We had Reagan in the White House. We had these guys on the floor of the House during their special orders. What happened to it?

Then it all came to fruition when we won the House in 1994 and all these guys are sworn in, and they're in the leadership of the House of Representatives. And all of us familiar with what had gone on in the eighties, the special orders, we'd blown the place up with the House bank and the House post office. We had exposed that, some of the most profound corruption around on the Democrat side. And it seemed like there would be nothing stopping this conservative advance. And then, fast forward to a couple, three years ago and Newt Gingrich is among those saying the era of Reagan is over, and I can't tell you how that devastated me. The one man who was single-handedly leading a movement to defend Reagan to the American people, who understood Reaganism as much as Reagan did, the economics of it, the social issue side, cultural side. Somebody like Newt who had once been able to articulate from the heart all those things he was saying, to say that the era of Reagan was over, it did not compute with me, because it's never been over as far as I'm concerned.

It's worth reviving. It's worth emulating, reestablishing. It's a shining moment of American history in my lifetime, those eight years of Reagan, and the promise they ushered in, the reality that sprung from it. Newt was rising to power via all of this, criticizing the corruption of Jim Wright, Speaker of the House. But Jim Wright himself couldn't even hold a candle to the corruption of the Democrat Party of today. Jim Wright and the Democrats back then were chump change. Even back then, just 25, 30 years ago, the Democrats, believe me, have marched even further to the left than they were back then. So we all know what's happened, the Speaker of the House Newt, and budget battle of '95, all the promise, just didn't pan out. Let's fast forward to today where there seems to be this giant argument over the individual mandate. Back in 1993, Newt absolutely supported an individual mandate. The Heritage Foundation to this day says they are being impugned and misrepresented in terms of their advocacy for such a thing. There's a post today at the Volokh Conspiracy. Jonathan Adler has a post. This actually March 29th of a little over a year ago. The headline of this piece was: "Was the Individual Mandate a 'Republican Idea'? -- Many commentators have noted that the individual mandate is an idea that some Republican politicians and right-of-center thinkers used to support. Over the weekend the Associated Press reported that many on the right once championed an individual mandate as part of a broader health care overhaul.

"Not only does the Massachusetts health care reform championed by Mitt Romney include an individual mandate, but back in the 1990s , the Heritage Foundation and many Republican office-holders called for an individual mandate as part of a GOP alternative to the Clinton Administration’s proposed health care reforms. In 1993, for example, Heritage’s Stuart Butler testified before Congress in support of a new, 'more rational' social contract under which government would provide greater assistance to those lacking health care in return for greater individual responsibility."

Now, the Heritage Foundation -- and I think both Newt and Mitt are tied to this mandate business because, believe me, there is profound, as I've told you countless times, respect for Heritage. Heritage is the gold standard. Heritage was every bit as involved in Reaganism as Reagan was, and nothing's changed. Heritage is who they are. They're a bulwark themselves. The difference is Heritage has never written a piece, nobody at Heritage has ever said the era of Reagan is over. But this mandate business is something that Heritage is insisting to this day they were misunderstood about.

Here's just a brief excerpt from a Heritage piece: "Yes, in the early 1990s, we, along with other prominent conservative economists, supported the idea of such a mandate. It seemed the only way to solve the 'free-rider' problem, in which individuals can, under federal law, walk into any hospital emergency room nationwide and rack up big bills at taxpayer expense. Our research in the ensuing two decades has led us to realize our initial idea was operationally ineffective and legally defective." So they abandoned the idea once they saw it implemented, and it's been implemented in Massachusetts, and we can see that it doesn't work. Heritage has admitted that it was flawed. That's from a Washington Post editorial posted back in April of 2010 by Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation.

Here's more from that piece: "For the record, we think that the law's federal mandate is unconstitutional. Our legal center, led by former attorney general Edwin Meese III, notes that Congress has no authority to force an American to buy any good or service merely as a requirement of being alive. ... Our research in the ensuing two decades has led us to realize our initial idea was operationally ineffective and legally defective. Well before Obama was elected, we dropped it." But they are still cited, Heritage is still being cited. It's a trick. It is part and parcel of the American left. Obama comes up with this unconstitutional idea. To sell it they say, "Wait, wait a minute, it was a Republican idea." Well, no. It was a Republican idea to deal with the free-riders, but then it was deemed to be ineffective and Heritage withdrew it, which nobody reports. But Romney and Gingrich hang on to it. And I think they're hanging on to it perhaps because of Heritage's original support for the idea.

Now, let's go back to Newt. Leaving aside that he absolutely supported a mandate in 1993, he did, one of those David Gregory clips that we played, Newt said, "This gonna be a very important debate. The whole notion of a mandate in health care, the whole notion of an individual mandate, this is going to be a very important debate." He said, "I believe everybody has a responsibility to pay for health care." Fine. Very conservative, personal responsibility, everybody should pay for what they get. But that's the problem in the end because we don't believe that everybody has a responsibility to pay for everybody in the country to be insured. It's not A's responsibility to make sure that B is covered. It's up to A and B to take care of it themselves, as they choose. The only collective responsibility we have is that there are no unfair restrictions that prevent someone who chooses to insure himself can do so. But those restrictions exist in Obamacare. There aren't any choices in Obamacare. There are nothing but mandates and jail terms, fines and penalties.

But it's Newt's first premise here that's killing us. Health care is not a corporate asset. We do not have a responsibility to pay for everybody else's health care, posting a bond, all that, we do not have that responsibility. Our responsibility is to ourselves. You know, some people would prefer to send their kid to a private school than pay for some mooching stranger's health insurance. You know, why have a guilty conscience about that? If we could just turn the clock back to the eighties -- and this would not be a bad thing -- and scrub all this malarkey that the era of Reagan is over, if everybody in the conservative movement could remember their roots and go back to 'em, none of these internecine battles that we're having, all of these personality conflicts and all this fight for primacy, who's the smartest guy in the room, none of this would be happening if there was simply a general adherence to genuine conservatism, which is what you get here on this program. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It never hurts to do a little history of conservatism and a little reminder. This whole notion that the era of Reagan is over -- and we all know who the people were who said it. And those very people want now to be considered the grand pooh-bahs of conservatism. Let me tell you something, folks. If the era of Reagan is over, then the era of conservatism is over. You cannot separate the two. You can't claim to be a conservative and out of the other side of your mouth say the era of Reagan is over. You just can't do it. Intellectually I don't know why there's been such a mad dash away from Reaganism. Well, I have my ideas. You know, the power of the social structure of DC, inside the Beltway, the desire to be in the clique. I understand all that. Frankly, it infuriates me and bores me at the same time.

Now, let's cut to the chase here. The only reason Barack Obama and the Democrats used the individual mandate is because they did want to massively increase taxes, to force people to pay into Obamacare. They wanted to say that they were saving money while covering everybody but forcing you to buy a health care plan that they wanted to impose on you. It was a sleazy political move to try to hide the cost of the mandate imposed by the government. If the federal government tells the states they have to offer a mandate, that's still unconstitutional. Some people are gonna say, "Well, Rush, the states can mandate it all they want." Not if Obama directs the states to do it, it's as unconstitutional as if Obama's doing it himself.

But the only reason -- and don't forget this -- the only reason Obama used that individual mandate is because they wanted to massively increase taxes to force people to pay into Obamacare. They wanted to say they were saving money, while insuring more people. That's why stupid Big Insurance went along with it. They saw 32 million new customers overnight. Those of us with brains understood there's no way mandating coverage for 32 million people that don't have it, if that's the number, is going to lower anybody's costs, nor is it going to expand coverage. This has all been a dog and pony show from the get-go. It's all been a shell game designed to distract us from the real agenda, which is to put the government in charge of every aspect of your health care, single payer, and you lose your liberty and freedom in the process.

RUSH: I want to stick to this mandate. Since this thing has come up again and it's front and center in everybody's mind, I'm gonna put on my teaching cap for just a moment here and remind everybody what this is all about. Why is Newt in hot water over supporting an individual mandate? What's the big deal? People who are just arriving at all of this might not understand, so what? In fact, what's an individual mandate? So what's so bad about that? The individual mandate was an Obama regime trick. They had to massively increase taxes to cover the mandate and everybody being covered, everybody being treated, everybody having access to the health care system.

They want to massively increase taxes to force people to pay into Obamacare, but they wanted to say that they were saving money while covering everybody, including 32 million people that were not, are not covered at the moment. They were forcing you to buy a health care plan they wanted to impose on you. It was a sleazy political move to try to hide the cost of the mandate. They were trying to tell you and us that this mandate would lower costs, that the mandate would lower premiums. Remember all of this? This was their end around single payer, because they couldn't do that out of the box. They don't have the support for that. That's where they want to get to, but they want single payer to result from it being the only remaining option for people because they've destroyed everything else.

This was their end around. The mandate was their end around single payer, forcing each of you to buy a plan that had to be approved by the federal government, forcing you to enter into a contract with an insurance company to buy it instead of taxing you directly for health insurance that the government would run. The way to understand the mandate, it's just a substitute for a tax increase, pure and simple. They knew that there was not a mood in the country that would accept a massive tax increase. But you come along and you say, "Individual mandate, everybody buy their own." Oh, yeah, that's gonna have instinctive support to it before people look into it. So instead of taxing you directly for health insurance, that the government would run, they force you to buy health insurance. This way they can claim that they aren't taxing. They can claim that they're not creating a single-payer plan, but in effect it's all of the same sort, government control over you and your decisions. They're making you buy insurance. They are forcing you to spend money. It's the same thing as them forcing you to pay taxes. To understand this, individual mandate equals tax increase. What did they think was easier to get people to accept, a tax increase or a mandate? And even that, the mandate was robustly opposed. Who's the government to tell me what I have to buy?

Now, in court, when the regime is challenged that this is not a direct tax plan, that it is an unconstitutional attempt to force people to buy what they might not want, now they're arguing that it's a tax because they say they have the power to lay taxes. This is how sleazy they are. They start off, they want more revenue to pay for all this. They know there's not the atmosphere for raising taxes. They come up with this mandate business. Then when the mandate is challenged constitutionally in a 26-state lawsuit, "No, no, no, it's a tax. We have the power to levy taxes." Perfect example of how sleazy they are.

So they say to you that they're not taxing you. They say to the court that this is nothing more than a tax on you. They say, "What's the big deal?" That is, when challenged that the government does not have the constitutional power to force you to make a private purchase under the commerce clause, the Obama regime now argues, "Okay, well, let's call it a tax, then." It's not really complicated what's happening here. It's just that some people don't want to accept it, deal with it, because it's a call to arms. There just aren't that many fighters out there anymore. A lot of litigators are being boxed in by all of this because it takes a lot to go up against the regime. A lot of people that value their careers down the road, you know, want their careers to be based in Washington.

Now, as for the constitutionality of states mandating the buying of health insurance, if the federal government -- I just want to reiterate this -- if the federal government is directing the states to force their citizens to buy health insurance, that does not get around violating the commerce clause. The federal government does not have the power to force people to buy health care, whether it tries to force it directly, or whether it tells the states that they have to force it. So the state mandate eventuates because Newt has said this is like auto insurance, and the states force you to buy auto insurance, but the analogy doesn't hold because it's not universal. If you don't have a car, if you don't drive, they can't force you to have automobile insurance.

Now, if the states do it on their own, then the individual state constitution's the issue and not the federal Constitution as is the case up there in Massachusetts. But the mandate isn't even a substitute for a tax increase. The administration's now claiming in federal courts that it is a tax increase, but they're only saying this because they have the authority to levy taxes, to raise tax. So they're just lying about this. Whatever point they get run into opposition, whatever point they get resistance, they change the story.

But make no mistake, where all this is headed is the eventual -- in 10 to 15 years, Obama has said this himself -- the eventual end of private sector health insurance companies. They simply will not be able to stay in business. No, you don't get it all at once. It's gonna take a while for this stuff to be implemented. We wouldn't accept it if it was just thrown at us all at once. But as time goes on, it doesn't make sense to stay in business, at some point it's gonna end up that the only place you can go to get health insurance will be one of these federal exchanges, i.e., single payer and that's where they're headed.

It is well known, authoritarians, totalitarians throughout history have known, controlling the health care of a society is like the IV. You go in the hospital, they put an IV in your arm, it's there in case they need to get in, in an emergency to do something else, they've already got the pathway in. Health care is the IV to total state control over a population. Hitler knew it, the Nazis. It's one of the first things that they tried. That will be the Media Tweak of the Day. Although it's nothing new. We've said it before. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Tamala in Pasadena, California. I love Pasadena. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, we know that you come out and visit us every now and then, and we've been trying to get Dr. House to give us the scoops on when you get out so we can try to get you to one of our rallies.

RUSH: -- that surgically implanted my cochlear implant, brought my hearing back, yeah.

CALLER: He and his wife are just salt of the earth, and what he's done for our military and that from the sixties, brilliant, brilliant man, so thank you for making a good choice, and --

CALLER: -- from beautiful Pasadena. I just have to say, what an honor it is to talk to you, and my mom is freaking out right now because she knows I'm on this show and --

RUSH: Why aren't you freaking out? It's always my grandmother loves you or my son loves you, but it's never the person. Why aren't you freaking out?

CALLER: However, I want to be able to be put together enough to talk to you, and after all I am a Tea Party leader, and we are all about excitement and channeling that for our people. So trust me, when I get off the phone with you, I'm gonna make a whole bunch of phone calls and by the end of the day there's gonna be about 5,000 Tea Party folks in Pasadena that are gonna be fired up for you, Rush.

CALLER: Thank you so much, and I don't want to take too much time 'cause I know there's a lot of people that have a lot of great things to say, but as a Tea Party leader out here in this area, I think what has been kind of lacking has been this real conservative dialogue and a true elevation of our conservative principles. And, you know, of course I'm disheartened to hear what Speaker Gingrich -- I personally know him. I was on a phone call with him and many other Tea Party leaders yesterday morning so that we could vocalize kind of our issues with his comments on Sunday, and, you know, I gotta say, Rush, he is one of the few true GOP leaders that has actually reached out to us. And there are a hundred plus of us that have personal stories where he waived his speaking fees to come out and support us, help us do fundraisers, teach us about canvassing our neighborhoods when our local GOP would not, because there was already a division between GOP and Tea Party from the long-term GOP folks.

CALLER: And there will continue to be, but we're fighters because we believe in the Constitution, Rush. We believe that man has an innate button, if you will, in our DNA that God put in there that we love freedom.

CALLER: That's exactly right. And I watched a movie recently called The Way Home, and it was about these men that were thrown into the Soviet gulag in 1939, and they walked 4,000 miles for freedom. When is the last time somebody walked 4,000 miles to go to a communist country or a socialist state? It just doesn't happen. And what I want to see, what all of the people that I represent want to see is we want to see the elevation of the true conservative dialogue. And I don't care if Newt slips up. I don't care if Sarah slips up. I don't care if anybody slips up. As long as they are in the fight. What we are looking for, me as a mom, as a 12th generation descendant of Captain Myles Standish, I want a champion --

RUSH: All right, exactly. That's what we all want. We all want somebody who is going to be courageously conservative and unafraid of it and will be unbashful in discussing it, and we don't want people who are gonna moderate or modify their conservatism for the audience. "Okay, I'm talking to a group of Hispanics and I gotta dial it back." No, you don't dial it back for anybody. "I'm talking to a group of women." No, you don't dial it back for women. "I'm talking to the media." No, you don't dial it back. Conservatism is what it is. You're proud of it. You're eager to articulate it, fearlessly so, and with a lot of pride. I totally agree with you. That's what we all want. That's what we all want. What we don't understand is why people who call themselves conservatives are afraid to be it. That's what we don't understand. And that's why you people the Tea Party are really valuable. As long as you do not waver from your demand that that's what it's gonna take for your support, no matter if it takes five elections, if you don't waver from that, then you will eventually get it. No doubt about it. Tamala, thanks for the call. Appreciate it.

Diane in Santa Barbara, as we stay in California. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Hey, I hate to say this, but first of all I love that you defend people like Gingrich and stuff, but in some ways this morning I feel like you're kind of shaming those who are picking apart what he's saying and stuff like that.

RUSH: I do not know how you are hearing that. I honestly don't know how. I am shaming those who were picking apart... uh... I am a master communicator. You have just --

RUSH: Well, but I haven't failed. But in your mind I have. All I did was go back and describe for you the original Newt Gingrich was a hundred percent conservative through and through. That's not defending his statements of today. In fact, Newt said that I got a couple things wrong. I played his sound bites proving that I didn't get it wrong.

CALLER: Well, we need more people picking apart, 'cause that's the mistake the media made with Obama is, you know, oh, wait, can't ask him this, can't ask him that, but, you know, I just want to encourage more of that in the media.

RUSH: Wait a minute. What is it you want to encourage more of? Picking apart Newt?

RUSH: Where have you been? Look, I'm struggling here. I started the program calling Newt out when he claimed that I was misrepresenting him. Now, I said some nice things about Newt from where he was back in -- in fact, I got a note from Newt here, I got an e-mail at a quarter of one, an hour ago, a little over an hour ago. I can't read it to you now because of time constraints.

RUSH: You know, folks, we take a backseat to nobody here when it comes to picking people apart. We are the leaders in that. We were the only people who were picking Obama apart, for example. We pick everybody apart. Sometimes we put 'em back together again, but we still pick 'em apart. And we are second to none in that regard. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Audio sound bites. This mandate business. People have been all over the board on this. Obama was against the individual mandate during the presidential campaign in 2008 because Hillary was for it. February 5th, 2008, CNN's American Morning, at a discussion about health care and mandatory health insurance, this is what Obama said on CNN.

OBAMA: If a mandate was a solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house. The reason they don't have a house is they don't have the money. And so our focus has been on reducing costs, making it available. I am confident that if people have a chance to buy high quality health care that is affordable, they will do so, and that's what our plan does, and nobody disputes that.

RUSH: So Obama is opposing a mandate that is now part of Obamacare. He opposed it as a means of differentiating himself from Hillary, who was for it. So my point on this is, once again, why believe anything that comes out of Obama's mouth, honestly? Why? A, he's a liberal, and we know that liberals lie.

This is Newt in 1983, April 20th, 1983, Washington, on the House floor. This is during a debate on freezing the development of nuclear weapons. Oh, yeah, the nuclear freeze. Yeah, that was a big liberal Democrat issue in the eighties. It was one of the many ways, avenues they were attempting to oppose Reagan. Here's Newt on the House floor April 20th, 1983.

GINGRICH: There is a very great likelihood that the KGB embassy detachment in Nicaragua is involved in Central America, that the Soviet brigade in Cuba does have meaning and that there is a real linkage between, for example last week's anti-Israel PLO meeting in Nicaragua and this debate on nuclear freeze. And as John McCloy said to President Reagan "all things are connected together on the planet." I would hope that our colleagues would have looked over the weekend at the debate on the freeze and recognize that we are in grave danger of committing this nation to a policy which would guarantee obsolete weapons by the early 1990’s. This is indeed a dangerous step and I think the weekend’s behavior on the part of Nicaragua and the Soviet Union should only remind us how truly dangerous the world is.

RUSH: Oh, man, I get goose bumps here, folks, when I think back to what was going on then, the Contra battles in Nicaragua. You had Daniel Ortega running the Sandinistas. Snerdley, were you old enough paying attention? I have to tell you, folks, this was before I moved to Sacramento. I moved in 1984, and that's only important because that's where my career that led to this program began. But we had the Democrats in the House aligning themselves with the Sandinistas, the communist regime. You had Daniel Ortega who would come to New York and Peter, Paul, and Mary, honest to God, would take him on shopping sprees on Madison and Fifth Avenue. Yeah, buying sunglasses, absolutely right, buying sunglasses. And this guy would -- after the Democrats in the House would oppose aid to the Contras. Ortega one time got on a plane, flew to the Soviet Union to celebrate, and so the Democrats, there was a guy, there was a Democrat liaison, his name was George Miller, he's still a member of Congress, I think from Martinez, California, somewhere in the Bay Area. Miller was the point man. He was the liaison.

Jim Wright, Jim Jones, who left the House to run the American Stock Exchange, he was from Oklahoma, they sent Miller down there to slap Ortega's hand. How dare you embarrass us this way? These are bad optics. You can't accept the victory we give you and go fly off to the Soviet Union for $500 million. Bob Torricelli wrote a letter to Daniel Ortega, dear commandante, warning him about the evils of Ronald Reagan. It's like Ted Kennedy -- we learned this after the fall of the Soviet Union -- Ted Kennedy had actually gone to the Soviet Union, talked to the KGB and others to warn them of Ronald Reagan. We've been playing for keeps for a long time here. And that's why a lot of us, folks, just will never intellectually understand how it is that there is a major Republican establishment that does not look at the Democrat Party as a threat to this country, not just a political opponent that you face every four years in a presidential race and every two years in congressional races.

I think that really does explain the differences that exist. The inside-the-Beltway Republican elites simply don't agree with us about the threat posed to the country as founded by today's Democrats, as led by Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm. And, by the way, Daniel Ortega is in power in Nicaragua even as we speak, and he is surrounded by other communist countries. He is a blood brother of Hugo Chavez. In other words, in South America, the era of Reagan really is over, thanks to the Democrats.

By the way, as a side note, I happened to see that the Venezuelan economy grew by four and a half percent. The public sector grew by the high fours. The private sector grew by the low threes. It averaged out to something like a four and a half percent growth rate. So even that nutcase socialist can grow an economy. Even while he's nationalizing things. Our guy can't figure it out.

Oh, by the way, folks, I don't know if you've figured this out, if you're paying attention to the housing market, you might want to consider a possibility. Might want to consider that one of the real objectives of the regime is to just do away with the concept of home ownership. And I think when you hear the regime talking about eliminating the deduction for home mortgage interest, when you hear other urban policies that they come up with, when you hear them talking very, very, very softly now, but you hear them talking about the advantages of renting, I think there is an attack on the premise of home ownership.

I have seen I can't tell you how many stories in the past couple of weeks about the hassles of owning a home and the ease of renting. Who needs the hassle? It's easier to rent. When a roof springs a leak, call the landlord. No need to worry about it, who wants that? You got time for other things. There is a move. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: St. Louis, up next is Thomas. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: I understand we do have a national insurance program. It's called flood insurance. And for some reason the government cannot mandate that. So people can continue to live and farm and recreate, and if they get the insurance 30 days before a flood, we'll bail 'em out. Even after the flood we'll come and bail 'em out. But if we got a national flood insurance, why not mandate it?

RUSH: You know, I kind of like the thinking here. People on the Mississippi know that it's over, let 'em go out and buy insurance right now if they don't have to it.

RUSH: Excellent thinking out there. Way to go, Thomas. I'm glad you called. Thanks very much. I like to hear examples of thinking, the way people think in this audience, I really do.

RUSH: Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Hi, Jim. It's great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: And that's considered compassionate, but Paul Ryan's plan, which gives everybody $15,000 to buy their own insurance is considered throwing Grandma to the street and killing people.

RUSH: Well, of course, Paul Ryan, his plan does not create one change for anybody 55 years of age or older, so it's impossible to throw Grandma under the bus and kill her. The only people that are gonna do that would be the Obama death panels. Paul Ryan and his Medicare reform plan do nothing, change nothing with current enrollees in the program age 55 and up. Zilch, zero, nada. Unaffected. Why do you think they support it? They support it in droves.

bttt

4/11/07

Newt /Kerry Debate
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1815962/posts?page=22#22

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Newt Gingrich Out-Greens Al Gore?
http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080103.html

5/12/2011

To access the hot links below, go to http://www.climatedepot.com/

UK Guardian: Newt ‘put on defensive’ after Climate Depot ‘demanded he apologize for appearing in Gore ad’ — Gingrich’s presidential bid ‘clouded by his belief in climate change’

UK Guardian excerpt: ‘Now Climate Depot, the website run by a former aide to the arch-denier, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, is trying to force Gingrich to issue a public apology. The web site sent out an email blast on Gingrich’s ideological transgressions on cap-and-trade on Wednesday and demanded: ‘Will Gingrich recant and apologize for appearing in the ad with Pelosi?’

Background on Newt Gingrich’s climate views:

Climate Depot Roundup on Newt Gingrich: ‘Al Gore hiding under a Phil Donahue wig’ — Prof. empties ‘barf bag’ after watching Newt & Nancy - Newt Urges ‘solution’ to Global Warming!

‘Poor Newt. The preemptive spanks came early and hard’ — Climate Depot’s Morano ‘emailed a blistering missive [on Gingrich] to everyone in his rolodex’

Flashback 2007: Newt supported cap-and-trade: ‘I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system... that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support’

Gingrich Announces Doomed Campaign

‘Newt Gingrich’s environmentalism problem’

Newt Gingrich on why he sat on sofa with Pelosi in Gore ad: ‘My point is conservatives ought to be prepared to stand on the same stage and offer a conservative solution’ - ‘Unlike Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich makes no apologies about his past advocacy on climate change’

Climate Depot Response to Newt: ‘Please spare us the explanations for your gullibility and poor political calculations. What ‘solution’ does anyone need to ‘offer’ to the alleged problem Gore presents? Please stop trying to spin your low IQ moment with Pelosi and Gore — it is embarrassing’

Bravo! Anti-green group derides Gingrich’s likely ‘Democratic’ presidential bid: Newt is ‘Al Gore hiding under a Phil Donahue wig’

Watch Video Now! Pelosi-Newt Climate Ad for Gore: ‘Why Newt Gingrich Will Not Be Elected President — Professor reacts to ad by ‘throwing out my quite full barf bag’ — Skeptical Prof. Unloads: ‘Newt -you’re dead to me. You won’t get my vote. Period. Go ask Nancy to vote for you. Good luck and good riddance!’

Will Gingrich recant and apologize for the Pelosi Climate ad?

Flashback 2007: Sen. John Kerry and Gingrich Hugging Trees — & (Almost) Each Other — Gingrich folds like pup tent in alleged ‘debate’ on AGW — ‘Positions himself as a tree-hugging green’

Wash. Post: ‘Before Sen. John Kerry got a word in, Gingrich conceded that global warming is real, that humans have contributed to it and that ‘we should address it very actively.’ Gingrich held up Kerry’s new book, and called it ‘a very interesting read.’ — Kerry gushed: ‘I frankly appreciate the candor.’

Newt’s Candidacy, D.O.A.? Pelosi’s Buddy - The Big Green, Big Ethanol, Big Spending, Big Govt Republican — ‘Newt Gingrich is literally unfit for office, specially the Oval Office. He is the wrong man, at the wrong time’

How Herman Cain Killed Hillarycare

Posted Thursday, January 13, 2011 2:39 PM | By David Weigel
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2011/01/13/how-herman-cain-killed-hillarycare.aspx

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