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http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/01/26/coordinated_avalanche_against_newt_doesn_t_match_my_memory_of_reagan_years

Coordinated Avalanche Against Newt Doesn’t Match My Memory of Reagan Years
January 26, 2012

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: How long’s it gonna be, folks, before we start seeing billboards all over, Florida, other upcoming primary states with Rick Perry on ‘em saying, “Miss me yet?” How long’s that gonna be? You remember when they had the George Bush billboards, “Miss me yet?” a couple months into the regime?

Anyway, great to have you here, folks, already Thursday, fastest week in the media. Goes even faster when one of the days you spend 12 hours, 10 hours, whatever it was, in an airplane, like I did? Great to have you here, as always, it really is a thrill and a delight. Telephone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Boy, this Newt stuff. Did you know any of this Newt stuff, Snerdley? Let’s go through the list. By the way, you should know, there’s a blog in the Washington Post. It’s called The Plum Line and it’s written by a guy named Greg Sargent, and I think he used to be at Editor and Publisher back when it was in business. He was one of the guys there when it went out of business. Very, very left-leaning. He’s got a post that includes this. “The New York Times reports today — based on unclear sourcing — that Mitt Romney has endorsed a strategy of raising doubts about Newt Gingrich’s ‘emotional stability.’” And then there are others that are raising questions here about Newt and his mendacity, his forthrightness.

It is incredible. Yeah, yeah. Well, during the CNN debate with John King, he said that he had all kinds of friends that could vouch for the fact that he had never told his wife he wanted an open marriage. And so yesterday Newt in the campaign said, (paraphrasing) “Nope, nope, there aren’t any friends. It’s just my two daughters. What I said in the debate, that wasn’t true.” But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s the front page of Drudge. Let’s give you the headlines.

Newt flashback, 1983: “Reagan Responsible for National Decay.” This is Newt saying these things.

Newt 1986: “The Reagan Administration Has Failed, Is Failing.”

Newt, 1988: “If Bush Runs as a Continuation of Reaganism, He Will Lose.” Now, of course, Bush ran as a continuation of Reaganism, and he won, and he soundly defeated the loser, Michael Dukakis.

Then here’s the story on the debate claim. “During last Thursday’s debate, when CNN moderator John King asked about Marianne Gingrich’s interview on ABC accusing Newt Gingrich of having requested an ‘open marriage,’ part of Gingrich’s crowd-pleasing answer was this charge: ‘Let me be quite clear. The story is false. Every personal friend I have who knew us in that period said the story was false. We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false. They weren’t interested because they would like to attack any Republican.’

“Now, last night, King reported on his show CNN’s John King, USA that Gingrich had spoken inaccurately when he said that friends had been offered to ABC to rebut the story. ‘Well, tonight, after persistent questioning by our staff, the Gingrich campaign concedes now Speaker Gingrich was wrong both in his debate answer and in our interview yesterday,’ King said. ‘Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond says the only people the campaign offered to ABC were the Speaker’s two daughters from his first marriage.’” So he’s out there, and he told John King during the debate, this is one of the answers that got a standing O. That he’d offered ABC a whole bunch of friends of his to rebut this point that he never said to his wife he wanted an open marriage. That turns out not to be true.

Then there is YouTube video in 1988: “Bush Won’t Win if He Runs to Continue Reaganism.” Of course, Bush 41 won in a landslide in 1988 and it was largely because the American people wanted four more years of Reagan. There are other examples of this profound criticism of Reagan. Drudge’s lead headline is, “Insider: Gingrich Repeatedly Insulted Reagan.” Now, when I saw all of this stuff — and obviously it’s a coordinated document dump here, opposition research dump. It’s obviously coordinated. And this stuff, by the way, that’s on Greg Sargent’s blog, Plum Line, that’s the thinly sourced stuff in the New York Times about Newt being emotionally unstable and Romney putting that out, that’s why Romney is not liked by the Republicans that don’t like him. It’s that kind of stuff that his campaign puts out.

If you want to know, why do these people hate Romney so much? In 2008, you recall, Huckabee and McCain hated Romney. Now they both love Romney, but back then they hated Romney. It’s because of stuff like this. He’s doing stuff like this in ads before they had any money to run their own ads. And, I’ll tell you what, the way this hit me, I told you people this before. I first heard of Newt Gingrich when he was perhaps the premiere defender of Ronald Reagan. This was in the early 1980s of course, Reagan assumed office in 1981. I was working in Kansas City. Between 1979 and 1983 I was working for the Kansas City Royals. In 1983 I left the Royals and corporate America and went back to radio. I was gonna give it one more shot because that was my passion, it’s what I loved and it’s what I did best. And I learned that corporate structures were not for me.

But even during those last two years, of course, I’m in my private time which there wasn’t a lot of when you work for a professional baseball team, 18-hour days, during home stands and so forth. But, nevertheless, I was as immersed in politics then as I am now. What’s funny is nobody at the Royals knew it because nobody ever talked about it. All you did was talk baseball there. If you talked about anything other than what was in the sports page, there was something wrong with you. So nobody I worked with had any idea that I had any interest whatsoever or knowledge whatsoever in politics. But I’m watching this stuff and what happened was, the moment Reagan’s inaugurated, the Democrats, the media, it was as vicious an assault on a human being, on a Republican, as there is today.

Now, those of you who were not paying attention back then — or who were too young to pay attention — don’t doubt me, it was vicious. And Reagan did not have a media on his side. It was the three networks and CNN and the newspapers. There was no talk radio. There were no blogs, of course. There wasn’t the Internet. There was no alternative media. Reagan had National Review. That was his lone ally in the media, William Buckley’s National Review. That was it. And early on in the Reagan years, does the name David Stockman ring a bell? David Stockman, the first budget director for Reagan, within the first year goes rogue and says Reaganomics won’t work, can’t work, it was bad.

It was a total back stab. That’s where the name “trickle down” actually got created I think, and became standard vernacular in the popular lexicon. That, and supply-side. And I remember the stories about Reagan taking Stockman to the woodshed. That’s a quote from the story. That’s how it was described, to get his mind right. But that unleashed a torrent from Tip O’Neill, from every Democrat, I mean all these people. Reagan lied, Bush was right, it is voodoo economics, oh, this is horrible. We were in a great recession at the time here. The Democrats loved what Stockman did, and the guy who self-appointed himself to stop all this was Newt. And that’s where I first heard of him.

Newt Gingrich and Bob Walker and a couple of others that were members of what was called the Conservative Opportunity Society, I don’t know that it had been named as such yet, but it was a bunch of young, relatively new members of the House on the Republican side who were conservatives. They had special orders every night. Once the House had finished its official business, as long as somebody shows up on the floor of the House to speak, the cameras on C-SPAN stay on. It didn’t matter that nobody else was in the House chamber. They stayed on until the last person left the floor. And Newt and his guys were in there five hours a night. They were rotating, each of them would speak for an hour. They would yield to each other. They would interrupt themselves for questions and so forth. But the cameras only were focused on the well. You never knew that there was no audience there, except there was never any applause. You never knew that the House chamber was empty, unless you knew what the special orders were.

And this went on for years. And it’s where I heard of Newt Gingrich. And Newt had appointed himself the personal defender of Ronald Reagan and had appointed himself the singular person with his buddies to counter all of what he thought were the lies of the day being spouted by the media and the Democrats. Then I leave the Royals and I get back into radio. And I decide that I want to get this guy Gingrich on the air to have a chat with, and it was difficult. Couldn’t do it. The requests that Gingrich were getting were overwhelming; he wasn’t really interested in doing a lot of them. He didn’t really have a whole lot of time.

The station I was working on was owned by the Mormon church, Bonneville Broadcasting. It turned out that somebody inside Bonneville Broadcasting unearthed a contact that was able to get to Newt, and I got an interview with him for about 20 or 25 minutes. I don’t remember anything about the interview. These are just little details here to spice up the story. But this went on for years. These special orders went on for years, and it wasn’t just the defense of Reagan. Newt Gingrich was ripping the Speaker of the House at the time, Tip O’Neill; and when Tip left and “Fort Worthless” Jim Wright came in, the assault continued.

It was everything you wish was happening today, is all I can tell you. It was everything you wish the entire Republican Party was doing today. It was led by Newt Gingrich, and what was he doing? He was defending Reagan. Now, all of this stuff that hit Drudge and everywhere else last night about Newt telling everybody the country goes to hell if they continue Reaganism and that Newt insulted Reagan and that the Reagan administration failed and Iran-Contra... I never heard any of that. I started doing this particular program in Sacramento in 1984, and I was just as immersed in national politics then as I am now, and I could honestly tell you this.

I’m not denying it happened, don’t misunderstand. I’m just telling you, because it did happen. I’ve got the audio; the YouTube video is out there. Newt did say this stuff. I just don’t remember it. I don’t remember anybody in 1988 telling George Bush, “You’re gonna lose big if you just continue Reagan,” because the whole Republican Party strategy was to fool Republicans into thinking that that’s what Bush was gonna do. Their whole strategy was to tell the Republicans, “Okay, I’m going to.” I remember George Bush at that New Orleans convention. His theme was, “I’m gonna complete my mission,” and it was based off the fact he had been shot down in World War II.

They had the video of him being rescued at sea after his plane was shot down. He had to parachute out of his plane to be shot down. Great hero story. “Complete my mission.” It was all intertwined with continuing what had happened after Reagan, economically. Now, you people know that I am blessed with a pretty good memory. And I don’t remember Newt Gingrich in the 1980s — I’m not denying it happened. I’m just telling you, this stuff was a total shock to me last night when I learned that Newt had said this stuff. (interruption) I don’t know. Well, we’ve got the audio and we’ll listen to it and see whether it was off the cuff or what, ‘cause Newt does... (interruption)