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Sept. 30, 2015 - The Ben Shapiro Show

21:36

Ep. 3 - Cruz in the Crosshairs

Ben discusses the shameful new animating principle of the Republican Party: Ted Cruz must be stopped even if Planned Parenthood isn’t. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Folks, you would think with Planned Parenthood on the rocks, they'd be the ones in the Republican crosshairs.
	Not so fast.
	Today, Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, he's in the crosshairs.
	On Tuesday, GOP in the House, they held a hearing with the Planned Parenthood head, her name is Cecile Richards, and they excoriated her for the organization selling baby body parts to the highest bidder.
	And you had congressperson after congressperson going in front of the cameras and ripping the organization because they perform somewhere between three and 400,000 abortions every single year.
	But that wasn't really where the focus was.
	The focus was on the Republican leadership behind the scenes because they were working to fund Planned Parenthood every single dollar, every single dime, and to stop Senator Cruz from thwarting their plans.
	This was really the key to what's been going on this week.
	At the same time that the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, he's getting ready to retire, and his Republicans have been instructed to target Planned Parenthood publicly.
	Boehner has now vowed he's never going to allow any sort of government shutdown, which is amazing because, after all, Congress only has two tools to stop President Obama and the executive branch.
	One is impeachment, the other is the power of the purse.
	And if you say in advance that you're not going to actually send President Obama some sort of continuing resolution that he'll reject, Then Republicans have acquiesced to the agenda.
	They've actually given in.
	Ted Cruz says they're not going to do that.
	He tried to stop them.
	And so they decided they had to stop Ted Cruz.
	Ted Cruz has to be stopped, even if Planned Parenthood won't be.
	Meanwhile, over in the Senate, the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he was actually laughing to the media that he stopped Senator Cruz from initiating another government shutdown.
	So last week, Cruz told the media that McConnell doesn't lead in the Senate.
	Senator Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada does.
	To prove Cruz wrong, McConnell then signed on to everything that Harry Reid could possibly want, which led Cruz to take to the floor of the Senate to bash leadership.
	He said they refused to, quote, lift a finger to defend life.
	And at the same time, McConnell prevented Cruz from amending that same funding resolution, that continuing resolution to stop funding Planned Parenthood.
	Cruz said Republican leadership simply says OK to Obama.
	Why does it matter if we have a Republican or a Democrat House or Senate?
	That is the operative question.
	By the way, McConnell and Democrats shut Cruz up after one hour using procedural means so that he couldn't continue to talk about how McConnell and Republicans were caving to the Democrats.
	For the Republican establishment, the only thing that matters is maintaining control.
	And the only way to maintain control is to stop Ted Cruz from taking control, even if that means that Planned Parenthood gets funded.
	Ted Cruz has to be stopped, even if Planned Parenthood is not.
	This is a battle between the establishment and the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
	It's not even between the Republicans and Planned Parenthood, unfortunately.
	If only the Republican Party were a good vehicle for conservatism.
	It ain't.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show, and I'm Ben Shapiro.
	Alright, so today, the Republicans are feeling the fallout from what happened yesterday.
	There was a big hearing yesterday, and in that hearing, Republicans questioned Cecile Richards, who is of course the head of Planned Parenthood, and a bunch of them got up to question her about all of the various that Planned Parenthood does in order to shield where it puts its money.
	Planned Parenthood likes to claim all the time that 3% of its services are actual abortion services.
	This is not true.
	The fact is that when they label services, just so folks know, when you label services at Planned Parenthood, it's the same thing as if you walked into Staples and Staples were to say that selling office products is only 3% of their business, because the rest of their business is selling those candies at the front, or the rest of their business is you walking in and talking to the Kinko's department over in Staples. or the rest of their business is you walking in The fact is that when you label every service equally, where you make your money does not correlate with where the services go.
	So the reality is the vast majority of Planned Parenthood's money actually comes from abortion services, but that doesn't mean that all of their services are abortion.
	So just like the mafia only makes most of its money through murder and extortion, they do have legitimate businesses.
	Maybe the murder and extortion are only a tiny percentage of the services they provide, but where they make their money is in all of the lucrative illegal business.
	That's why the Genco Olive Oil Company in The Godfather was a front company.
	Most of their services, most of their time could have been spent selling olive oil, but when it came time to actually bring in the bucks, then it was time to sell alcohol or drugs or whatever illegal product they wanted to push that day.
	Well, not drugs, because obviously that's why The Godfather gets shot.
	But in any case, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, he was questioning Cecile Richards, and Cecile Richards was apologizing to everybody because of all these new Planned Parenthood videos that have broken.
	These Planned Parenthood videos are really interesting and shocking, and what they show is all these Planned Parenthood doctors, doctor after doctor after doctor, talking about how they had violated the law in order to sell baby body parts to research facilities.
	And by selling baby body parts to research facilities, they hope to Jack up the amount of profit that they were making.
	They'd even kill the babies in specific ways so as to maintain the baby body parts in a particular way, making it easier to sell them.
	Well, Jim Jordan, who is a high-ranking Republican, he was considered by many a possible frontrunner for the speakership of the House, if he had declared.
	Well, he asked Cecile Richards, so why are you coming here and why are you apologizing if the videos are doctored?
	Let's take a listen to Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio questioning Cecile Richards.
	Ms.
	Richards, if the videos were selectively edited, heavily edited, if this was entrapment, if this was all untrue, then why did you apologize?
	Well, Congressman, first, I think everyone has agreed they were heavily edited and that certainly I think even the perpetrator has agreed they were done undercover.
	I spoke with Dr. Nukatola, who was featured in one of the videos, and I thought it was important, in my opinion, in my opinion, in my opinion, It was inappropriate to have a clinical discussion in a non-confidential, non-clinical setting.
	What were you apologizing for?
	That she used, I think, in my judgment, it was bad judgment to have a clinical discussion in a non-clinical setting.
	I mean, the first video comes out July 14th.
	Two days later, you go and issue an apology.
	And you said this, it's unacceptable.
	I personally apologize for the tone and statements.
	Here's the question.
	Which statements were you apologizing for?
	It was really the situation that she was in, and I believe that... That's not what you said.
	Cecile Richards isn't going to answer the question, obviously.
	And you can hear from the tone of Jim Jordan's questions that he's very frustrated with her, as he ought to be, because she originally apologized after these videos came out.
	Dr. Nukatola was seen on video specifically talking about how she would Pursue certain procedures in order to maintain the baby body parts at a certain level so that they could be sold.
	I believe that Nakatola, this is the video where she talked about how she would eventually buy a Lamborghini based on the amount of profit that they would make off of these baby body parts.
	And Cecile Richards is now going out and saying that it really is just about the tone.
	It's really they were joking that they were at lunch when they did all of this.
	If they had done it in the private office, and if she had said the same things, it wouldn't have been offensive.
	And the assault on Cecile Richards, the rhetorical assault on Cecile Richards continues in this way.
	Representative Cynthia Loomis, a Republican from Wyoming, and she went after Cecile Richards.
	She says, you keep saying that 3% of your services are abortion services.
	Well, that's not where your money's coming from.
	Here is Representative Cynthia Loomis.
	Let's talk about Planned Parenthood revenue from abortions.
	If you look at the 2013 statistics that you report, abortions from revenue would have been over 86% of your non-government revenue.
	How do you explain this massive disparity between the amount of revenue you collect from abortion and the fact that you only Report 3% of your services being abortion.
	Well, I think there's two questions you've sort of mixed in there, so let me try to address both.
	One is, as we've already stated, federal money does not go for abortion, so the federal portion that we were discussing is reimbursement for preventive care services.
	I think the other, so that's why they're not, those numbers don't, aren't connected.
	How many, can you tell me how many of your affiliates receive the majority of their revenue from abortion?
	I don't know that answer.
	Could you get it for me?
	I'll talk to my team.
	Thanks.
	But I do think it's important to understand that abortion procedures are probably more expensive than some other procedures.
	And here we stop it.
	This is correct of course.
	Abortion procedures are more expensive which is why Planned Parenthood makes an enormous amount of money off the abortion procedures.
	Now Cecile Richards would later say that this was just the GOP being sexist, that Republicans were only asking her these questions because they don't like women.
	She was on MSNBC, and she thought that it was necessary to explain that the reason that she was interrupted so much is because Republicans hate women or some such nonsense.
	This, of course, is the line.
	whenever it comes to abortion, the lie is that Republicans must hate women because they oppose abortion, which is asinine given that when you're talking about sex-selective abortion, typically people abort babies who are girls.
	They don't typically abort babies who are boys.
	It's pretty rare, actually, worldwide for people to purposefully abort on a sex-selective basis to only abort boys.
	They typically do that for girls.
	This is certainly true in China, which is why you have such a mismatch between the number of men and the number of women in China, because all of the girls got aborted before they were born.
	By the way, Cecile Richards in this same segment, she actually would go on to say that she supported sex-selective abortions.
	Abortion for any reason, according to her, is totally fine, but apparently the GOP is sexist.
	Here's Cecile Richards appearing on MSNBC explaining that everybody was just being sexist and mean to her, especially, presumably, Cynthia Loomis, who actually is a woman.
	One of the things that Republican members of Congress really did badger you about today was your salary, and And Democrats on the panel sort of sprung to your defense, said that it was sexist of them to go after you for that, since they never do the same for male CEOs, for example.
	Do you share their take on it?
	Do you think that's what was going on there?
	I don't really know.
	I mean, I do think some of the comments were pretty sexist.
	But actually, I think it was because they didn't have anything else to talk about.
	Oh, okay.
	So they had nothing else to talk about, which is why they talked about her salary, which, by the way, is well in excess of $300,000 a year for running an organization that is a mass abortion clinic.
	It's all about sexism, and this has become the party line now.
	Jerry Connolly, who's a Democrat from Virginia, he also said this.
	He said that the GOP is sexist as well.
	He actually said this during the hearing.
	He said that the GOP was sexist, which is why the hearings were taking place in the first place.
	place here is Representative Jerry Connolly of Virginia.
	I hope every American woman is watching today's hearing.
	Oh, no you don't.
	Because just the visuals, as well as the audios, tell you a lot.
	My colleagues like to say, there's no war on women.
	Look at how you've been treated as a witness.
	Oh.
	Intimidation.
	Talking over, interrupting, cutting off sentences, criticizing you because of your salary.
	How dare you?
	Who do you think you are?
	Okay, we don't have to listen to Monopoly Man anymore.
	But this is how these hearings usually go.
	The way that they usually go is that you have somebody on one side going after the witness, somebody on the other side coming out in defense of the witness, because this is what our government has become.
	And the Democrats are, of course, a paid Contributor to the Planned Parenthood Fund.
	I mean, it really isn't the reverse.
	It's not that Democrats get paid by Planned Parenthood, it's really that Democrats pay Planned Parenthood, and then they go out and they use the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, millions and millions of dollars every single year, in order to get Democrats elected.
	Now here is the big problem.
	Here's the big problem for Republicans.
	The same Republicans who are out there bashing Planned Parenthood and saying that this is all perfectly legitimate, this entire investigation is perfectly legitimate, when it comes time to actually defund Planned Parenthood, then all of a sudden their courage goes completely out the window.
	When it comes time for them to sit down and finally say, no, enough, we're done here.
	Then all of a sudden, the courage is gone.
	All of a sudden, we're done here.
	We're going to sign over a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.
	And there are all these Republicans, supposed conservatives, establishment Republicans, who do this routine.
	Where they suggest that the great Republican success story would be to continue to fund the government, and then to use issues like this in order to run for electoral office.
	The idea being that all we can really do here is just whine about things until we win.
	It's the Donald Trump strategy.
	Trump says, we whine until we win.
	Well, according to Republicans, we all have to whine until we win, until we will continue to sign over funding to President Obama, because who knows?
	The government shutdown could go really badly, the media would get very upset, the media would get super duper angry, and then what would happen?
	Republicans would lose seat.
	Okay, there's a problem with this.
	Government shutdowns don't hurt Republicans because when it comes to government shutdowns, Democrats are the ones who want the government to run.
	Republicans are supposed to be the people standing in favor of a small government.
	Republicans are supposed to stand in favor of a government that only provides specified services And that is only there to do certain things.
	So the idea the government shuts down unless it does the things we want it to do, that's perfectly in line with Republican thinking.
	And if Republicans continue to say the government can't shut down, we'll even fund Planned Parenthood to prevent the government from shutting down, it looks like sexism to attack Cecile Richards and Planned Parenthood.
	If you're not willing to man up, if you're not willing to grow a set, then you shouldn't be surprised when everybody assumes that you're just being a jerk to attack Planned Parenthood and Cecile Richards.
	You know how far this has gone now with the Republicans?
	Here's how far this has gone with the Republicans.
	This is from The Hill today.
	is urging Speaker John Boehner to go big in his last month on Capitol Hill.
	Lamenting the congressional dysfunction that's left undone the people's work, Hoyer pointed to a series of proposals deemed must-pass by the end of the year, including new highway funding, reauthorization of export-import, and a long-term budget deal.
	He says he wants Boehner to tackle as many of these items as possible before stepping out of Congress October 30th.
	Steine Hoyer, he said, I'm hopeful that as Speaker Boehner serves out the last month of his term in the Congress of the United States, he will work with his Republican colleagues and with his Democratic colleagues to effect some progress on important things we need to be doing.
	How bad is the establishment Republican Party, in other words?
	The House Minority Whip, one of the Democratic leaders in the House, is now calling on the Speaker of the House to do what he wants him to do.
	So in other words, conservatives, the people who voted John Boehner into office, the people who fund John Boehner, the people who want John Boehner to be Speaker of the House until he betrayed them, the people who want more Republicans in office, those people are telling John Boehner to slow down.
	And Steny Hoyer, the Democrat, is telling John Boehner to speed up.
	And who is John Boehner listening to?
	He's listening to Steny Hoyer.
	He's listening to the Democrat.
	And attacking Ted Cruz, by the way.
	Last Sunday, John Boehner, tool that he is, drunken, ridiculous human being that he is, John Boehner went on the Sunday shows and he called Ted Cruz a jackass.
	Ted Cruz is the jackass.
	Ted Cruz is the jackass because he says that President Obama should be forced to put his money where his mouth is and veto legislation funding the government if he wants to save Planned Parenthood.
	But John Boehner says that Cruz is the jackass.
	Meanwhile, Meanwhile, John Boehner is the guy who's basically getting ousted from his position.
	But before he leaves, he's going to make sure that the government continues to be funded in line with President Obama's spending priorities.
	Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is going to Politico and chortling over Ted Cruz being unable to shut down the government.
	Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who's the number three Senate Republican, one of McConnell's deputies, he said about Ted Cruz, they stopped Ted Cruz from speaking and shutting down the government, he said, Let's focus in on that last line for one second.
	He's got a different endgame than we do.
	There are things we have to do here.
	We've got to fund the government every year.
	Let's focus in on that last line for one second.
	We've got to fund the government every year.
	Question, why?
	Why?
	Turns out that government spending is mandatory.
	80% of government spending is mandatory.
	Whenever there's a government shutdown, the government continues to operate at 80% of what it normally operates at.
	So why do you have to fund the government every year?
	Why is that a top priority for Republicans?
	And if it is a top priority for Republicans to keep the government funded at current rates, or maybe slightly below, then they're just Democrats alight.
	When you have Mitch McConnell going out there and ripping—seriously, folks, when you have Mitch McConnell ripping Ted Cruz harder than he rips President Obama or Planned Parenthood, you know that the Republican Party is not a good vehicle.
	You want to know why Donald Trump is succeeding, folks?
	The reason Donald Trump is succeeding today and will continue to succeed—and if it's not him, it'll be Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina or Ted Cruz—is because people hate the Republican Party, and they should.
	It's been a terrible vehicle for conservatives.
	You want to know why Bernie Sanders, an open socialist, is running inside the Democratic Party?
	The answer is that Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, is running inside the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party is the party of the left, and the Republican Party is the party of the center-left.
	And the fact that Ted Cruz is being seen as the enemy by people like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, that you got- When was the last time that John Boehner called President Obama a jackass?
	President Obama signed the worst Iran deal in the history of the United States.
	President Obama has pushed forward Obamacare with zero Republican votes.
	John Boehner never called him a jackass, but Ted Cruz is a jackass for wanting to defund all of this.
	Now I gotta tell you folks, I personally, I personally was not a fan of Ted Cruz's shutdown strategy over Obamacare back a couple of years ago.
	I thought that it was likely to end disastrously, problematically because he didn't have enough allies.
	But you know what?
	I gotta say, maybe I was wrong.
	Maybe I was wrong because Cruz at least was trying to hold his own party's feet to the fire.
	McConnell and company?
	They just won't do it.
	It's absolutely pathetic.
	It is pathetic.
	And meanwhile, you got Rand Paul out there, and you got Marco Rubio out there ripping Trump and ripping Cruz and saying that Cruz doesn't know what he's doing.
	Rand Paul came out yesterday, and he said that Ted Cruz is done in the Senate, that basically his influence is finished.
	By the way, Ted Cruz will be in the Senate as long as he wants to be in the Senate.
	He's from Texas.
	Okay, no one is going to get rid of Ted Cruz in Texas.
	Rand Paul is going to run in a very contested Senate race, and he may very well lose that race, which is why Rand Paul is probably going to drop out of the presidential race pretty soon.
	But the battle lines are being drawn right here, and people are saying that it's grandstanding by Cruz, this is all just pyrotechnics, it's all for the presidential race.
	So here's the question.
	If Ted Cruz is doing this to win Republican primaries, if the goal here for Ted Cruz is to please the base to win Republican primaries, why isn't the rest of the Republican Party following Ted Cruz to please the Republican base?
	Why are they seeking to please Steny Hoyer and the Democrats and Barack Obama and the Democrats and all of this hypocrisy in which they go out and they rip on Planned Parenthood?
	All of this ridiculous nonsense where they go out and they yell at Cecile Richards, or they go out and they question them.
	They go out and they say that Planned Parenthood is a great evil and they're complicit in a great moral evil, and then they go ahead and they sign the check.
	John Boehner's name is on every check that President Obama's name is on to Planned Parenthood.
	They are co-signatories of those checks.
	So John Boehner doesn't claim to—he doesn't get to claim that he's anti-Planned Parenthood.
	He doesn't get to claim that he is staunchly pro-life when he continues to sign those checks because he's too cowardly to shut down the government.
	And it wouldn't even be him shutting down the government.
	This is the role of Congress.
	The role of Congress is to regulate the purse strings.
	And if Congress won't do it, President Obama will get to do what he wants.
	We now live in an elected dictatorship.
	So, look, I'm glad that the Republicans are having these hearings on Planned Parenthood.
	And if the executive branch rules, we're all done here.
	There's nothing else to see.
	We get to vote once every four years, and off-year elections don't matter because the president will do precisely what he wants to do.
	So, look, I'm glad that the Republicans are having these hearings on Planned Parenthood.
	I just want to see some actual effect.
	All I want to see is something beyond "elect us and we'll do something." Guess what?
	Electing you?
	We did it.
	And you're not doing anything.
	So why would we continue to spend our money and our time electing you?
	How about you do something now?
	How about you stand tall?
	And if you stand tall, I don't think Republicans will lose from a government shutdown.
	In fact, President Clinton shifted from the guy who proposed Obamacare originally back in 1992 to the guy who signed welfare reform after Newt Gingrich shut down the government.
	Bob Dole, who was the Senate Majority Leader in 1996 during the government shutdown, he wanted to run for president.
	And Bob Dole did run for president, and as you remember, he got his ass kicked.
	Royally.
	Bob Dole got destroyed.
	And he's a footnote in history.
	I'll tell you what's not a footnote in history.
	That move that Clinton made to the right because of the government shutdown.
	Democrats fear government shutdowns.
	Democrats require government spending in order to grease the wheels of their machinery.
	Republicans don't.
	Republicans don't.
	And if Republicans fail to recognize this, if they play the Democrat game where the government has to be open in order for everybody to be happy, they don't have the moral credibility to come out against organizations, evil organizations, like Planned Parenthood.

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