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March 18, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:48
March 18, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Greetings, my friends.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh and the cutting edge of societal evolution, right before your very eyes here on the EIB network.
Nice to have you with us.
By the way, Mike, 24 first, and in 26, and in the other stuff that I told you.
Yeah.
Here's the phone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbow at eibnet.com.
I asked a question earlier of those of you who were to be calling.
None of you have deigned to answer it.
It might be my fault.
I haven't asked you once I've had you on the phone.
The question was this.
Obama's speech today, does it help him secure the Democrat Party nomination, which he clearly leads, or does it hurt?
Now, there's one way to look, well, two ways to look at this.
One of the ways that it might hurt is that this, he walked into the trap today that the Clintons have been laying for him since South Carolina.
They have been trying to portray this guy as somebody who's going to only appeal to black people.
That's what Bill Clinton was talking about prior to South Carolina primary.
They went down there.
They clearly played the race card.
They were trying to divide the Democrat electorate and in the process scare white voters into voting for Hillary or at least against Obama.
So today, Obama went out there, made this great speech.
Well, I mean, Vorsak's test speech, you can make it whatever you want it to be.
But he's now trans, you know, he had been the candidate who transcended race.
Now he is the candidate of race, and race is the issue in the Democrat Party.
When really, this was never about race.
It was about the hatred of that preacher.
Here's Sally Quinn.
She had a comment on PMSNBC after the speech today.
And this is, you know, she's the wife of Ben Bradley, the editor emeritus of the Washington Post.
I thought that it was particularly courageous of him not to repudiate Jeremiah Wright as a human being and as his friend.
Jeremiah Wright is in his late 60s now.
But I thought that the most extraordinary part of it was that when you, which has always been one of Obama's major attractions to people, is that he seemed authentic, that there was a truthfulness about what he spoke, that you really believed that what he was saying was what he truly believed, and that he was looking at all sides, and again, brought everybody together.
It was a very unifying speech.
Oh, grab me the Strativarius.
Now, we're back to unity.
Brought everybody together.
Ms. Quinn, I ask a question.
If Obama is so accomplished at bringing people together, how come everybody in his immediate orbit is angry as hell?
His wife's mad.
He hadn't been able to bring his preacher together with anything.
Don't even know that he's tried.
So, yeah, it can sound all for unity and bringing everybody together, but where is the evidence?
This is what we ask.
Also, Obama himself in the speech said, we have a choice.
We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel every day and talk about them from now to the election and make the only question in his campaign, whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.
By the way, there's no question here.
Now, Obama, earlier in this speech, contrary to his earlier suggestion, Obama acknowledged in his speech today he had heard controversial remarks by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Even on his TV tour last Friday.
I never heard these things.
When I first heard these things, that's when I went into action, went into gear.
TV tour didn't work Friday night, so hence the speech today.
He went on to say, you can play these Reverend Wright speeches all day long if you want, but that's not going to get us anywhere because if we're going to continue to do that, we're going to continue to have the problem.
And I thought I heard a little bit of blackmail is too strong a word.
Just too strong a word.
But he was essentially saying here, you want to keep playing this.
Reverend Wright speeches.
You want to keep having comments by Hillary supporters.
You want to have this and that.
Or we can move on.
And we can change.
Well, I think that we need to have at least a Reverend Wright segment on this program every day so that the people of this country know full well what's going on in the church of the leading Democrat presidential candidate.
We have, let's say, General Petraeus comes and gives a report.
We are winning in America.
We are winning in Iraq.
The surge is showing some progress.
We've got a lot of work to go.
And then intercut Reverend Wright.
God beep America.
We can have somebody going a great, great quote, testament to the successes of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
This is a country run by rich white people.
Just as a reminder, the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.
Government's lied.
The government lied about Pearl Harbor.
They knew the Japanese were going to attack.
Government's lied.
We've got a paranoid group of patriots in power that now, in the interests of homeland stupidity, I mean, homeland security, the government lied about the Tuskegee experiment.
They purposely infected African American men with syphilis.
Fighting for peace is like raping for virginity.
What's going on in white America, U.S. of KKKA?
Black men turning on black men.
That is fighting the wrong enemy.
You both are the primary targets in an oppressive society that sees both of you as a dangerous threat.
We cannot see how what we are doing is the same thing Al-Qaeda is doing under a different color flag.
And guess what else?
If they don't find them some weapons of mass destruction, they're going to do just like the LAP do and plant them some weapons of mass destruction.
Rushland Board, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, at a quarter past the hour, back in just a second.
Lou Rawls, you'll never find another love like mine.
This really dovetails well with the next story.
I'm sure you've seen this by now.
The new New York governor, shortly after being sworn in, spilled the beans on an affair that he had had.
And that his wife had also, his wife had had an affair too, that had some trouble in their marriage out there.
And they just wanted us all out on the table now to try to hold off any investigative I-teams out there trying to find out of the dirt.
They even stay where it days in?
Yeah, days in at Broadway and West 94th.
That's where the trysts took place.
And that's where I think where the married couple wouldn't put themselves back together at the same hotel where the affair took place, if I'm reading that right.
He said members of the Albany legislative staff often use the same hotel when they visit the city.
New York and New Jersey, politicians, this has got attention resume enhancement.
But you know what I think?
I think because it's Spitzer business, what's going to happen now is that every new installed elected official governor is going to, first thing they're going to do after the inaugural speech, he's got a list of affairs they've had, any prostitutes that they've been with, anything just to get it out there after they are inaugurated.
Now, Governor Patterson said everything's okay now because he is not, he's not seeing woman anymore.
Federal Reserve has announced moments ago they reduced the discount rate, interest rate to 75 basis points.
It's now 2.25%.
Trying to get, go buy a house.
They want you to borrow money.
White comedian Paul Shanklin, a vocal portrayal of Bill Clinton, singing love client number nine.
On the Today Show today, they had a report, little piece on how I forced the Obama speech.
I actually don't think that I did, but they do, so it's okay.
In their report here, they try to demonstrate how my criticism has removed his rock star status.
Of course, not McCain's criticism or any elected Republican, it's I, according to the Today Show, who caused this.
You will hear Senator Obama in this piece.
You will hear Pastor Wright.
You will hear white comedian Paul Shanklin as Barack Obama.
And you will hear me.
Despite a round of cable interviews last week addressing his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, questions were still dogging him about why he hadn't distanced himself further and sooner.
The caricature that's being painted of him is not accurate.
But that kind of response to condemn the message without condemning the messenger has been fodder for some critics who say the Illinois senator is trying to have it both ways.
Jeremiah was my pastor.
He was a good friend of mine.
Conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh have landed on him hard.
This guy knew and knows to this day, Obama does, exactly what Wright's all about.
Cable outlets are still playing the most incendiary of Wright's comments over and over.
Headlines over the last several days are in stark contrast to the rock star headlines of just a few weeks ago.
And of course, they lay the blame for this at the feet of old Il Rushboat.
Then last night on Neil Cavuto's show on the Fox News channel, here's a montage of a report by correspondent Douglas Kennedy on me and Operation Chaos.
Rush Limbaugh calls it Operation Chaos, and recent exit polling data suggests it may be working.
Nonetheless, it requires Limbaugh listeners to do something almost unthinkable.
They're conservative Republicans and they're voting for someone conservative Republicans are supposed to loathe.
Thanks for what you're doing.
No, it's not cooling off for Dante, nor has Babe grown wings.
It's all part of a general election strategy cooked up by the king of conservative talk.
I'm asking people to cross over and if they can stomach it.
I know it's a difficult thing to do to vote for a Clinton, but it will sustain this soap opera and it's something I think we need.
It'd be fun, too.
Exit polls now indicate the strategy may have been successful.
In Mississippi, for instance, GOP voters made up 12% of primary voters and they went for Clinton 3-1 over Obama.
A dramatic shift from previous state primaries, where it was Obama who was getting crossover votes.
And in the Texas primary, Clinton garnered 119,000 Republican votes, well over her 101,000 margin of victory.
Limbaugh said today he doesn't care who wins the Democratic nomination at this point.
He just wants it to last as long as possible.
So as he says, Bill, whoever does win will end up beat up and broke.
He might get his wish on both cash.
We will see.
And it kept on going, CNN's Situation Room, Jack Cafferty's Cafferty file about Operation Chaos.
In Texas and Ohio, more than double the number of Republicans turned out to vote in those Democratic contests than in earlier ones.
And Clinton ran about even with Obama in both states.
Some loud voices within the party, like conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, have been actually urging Republican voters to go out and vote for Clinton.
Limpaugh said that Republicans should vote for Hillary Clinton, quote, if they could stomach it, unquote, to sustain the soap opera.
So here's the question: Is it a smart strategy for Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries?
Now, then later on, Cafferty read some emails, emails from panicked, kook, left-wing viewers of CNN who are fit to be tied over Operation Chaos.
Cindy writes, I had a Republican neighbor admit to voting for Senator Clinton.
Her 21-year-old son was with her.
I think it sets a bad example, and to me, it mocks the importance of voting.
Ken in Seattle, the Limbaugh Republicans, know exactly what they're doing given how much these folks hate the Clintons.
Don't you think it's odd that they're voting for Hillary and not lambasting her and Bill as usual?
They're chomping at the bit to have her as the candidate so they can come out swinging.
Can you imagine the stuff they've been sitting on and can't wait to start talking about?
Mark Rich's pardon, his ex-wife's timely contribution to the Clinton Library come to mind.
And Kathleen writes this: Most of my family are Republicans living in Texas.
Each and every one of them voted for Hillary Clinton because they think she can be beat.
That was 15 votes for Hillary because Rush Limbaugh said to do it.
So, Operation Chaos, I think it'd be safe to say that it is continuing even now and today.
And the Democrat National Committee TV at MSNBC is running a little promo here.
Just listen to this.
The G-O-P-H-R-C phenomenon.
Are Republicans voting for Clinton because they think she's easier to beat?
Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC tonight at 7.
They're promoting Matthews' show on the basis of an investigation.
Let me tell you, people at DNC TV: if you want to up the numbers on that show, put my name in the promo.
Republican Party has nothing to do with this.
Speaking of the Republican Party, do I have time to squeeze this?
I probably don't.
There's a blog at Haretz.com.
And the guy's name is Rosner, chief U.S. correspondent for Horetz.
And there was a meeting, the Washington 15 Conference, United Jewish Communities aimed at young Jewish leadership.
The candidates sent three representatives yesterday to talk to this Jewish group.
Wait till you hear what the McCain camp sent and what he said.
Okay, we are back.
Now, here's this blog, and this is published today at Haretz.com.
Obviously, an Israeli newspaper, but they've got a U.S. correspondent here.
His name is Rosner.
McCain, well, let me give you the headline, gives the whole thing away.
The location keeps changing, and the speakers might be different as well, but the goal remains the same: courting the Jewish vote.
Today, it was in Washington, the Washington 15 Conference, an event of the United Jewish communities aimed at young Jewish leadership.
The three campaigns sent their representatives as to convince these young, enthusiastic crowd that Obama Clinton McCain is the candidate they should be voting for.
For Obama, it was advisor and former ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer.
For Clinton, it was senior advisor Ann Lewis.
McCain dispatched the most senior speaker of the three, Lawrence Eagleberger.
I'll write more about the event later, but this first installment will be dedicated solely to the person speaking on behalf of McCain.
With his abrupt, grumpy style, he stole the show.
He also made some rather interesting comments.
Here is one prediction: the mouth of Eagleberger might get the candidate in some trouble.
Eagleberger was trying to have fun.
He was mocking his fellow panelist Kurtzer, sitting to the left of the others, making noises and funny, impatient faces when Ann Lewis was speaking.
But more importantly, he didn't mince his words.
In response to a question about the religious right, an important component of the Republican coalition, Lawrence Eagleberger said that it was indeed, quote, a serious problem, quote unquote, and reminded his listeners that he now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, surrounded by such people that he needs to fight.
Now, this is not to slight Mr. Rosner.
I don't have a full quote here.
The only quote is a serious problem.
I don't have the full statement of Eagleberger saying it.
The implication of the way this is written is that Eagleberger clearly admitted to the Jewish group that he was speaking to that the Christian right was indeed a serious problem.
Now, Mr. Rosner continues: one would think that this is not exactly what McCain needs while he's trying to win over his party base.
But Eagleberger calmed these young Jews by promising that McCain will not change his ways to please anybody.
And he did not forget to take a swipe at Rush Limbaugh, and not for the first time, even while forgetting or pretending to forget his name.
This is funny.
Excuse me.
I just wanted to pass this on because I have seen this nowhere else except at Haretz.com on their blog.
And I don't care what he said about me.
I would expect him to say it about me.
He's got to be consistent, keep saying this stuff about me, to run out there.
If he actually, if Eagleberger actually, and Eagleberger, he said some things earlier and I fired back, so I can understand Eagleberger taking shots at me.
I don't care.
But if Eagleberger's really ripping on the Christian right to this group, thinking it's not going to get reported, that's not wise.
That's not wise.
Charlotte, North Carolina, Joe, I'm glad you waited as we go back to the phones.
You're next here on the EIB network.
Hello.
Rush, you just don't know how great it is to talk to you after all these years of listening to you.
How are you doing today, sir?
All right, sir.
Thanks very much for that.
Hey, bear with me as I try to go from the beginning to the end of this because I think I listened to every word of the speech today.
And I think what the bottom line of what Obama did today was he may have dealt a serious blow to Operation Chaos.
He could have gone a number of ways, but what he chose to do, instead of this post-racial image that he's portrayed, he threw a bone to Jesse and Al Sharfton.
He got down for the struggle today.
And I think what he did by doing that was dealt not only a serious blow to Operation Chaos.
And what I mean by that, I don't think it's necessary anymore.
I think he dug a hole today that he can't get out of.
Really?
So you think this has hurt him in terms of his quest for superdelegates to win the nomination?
Well, you may, you know, I was chopping it to bit to answer the question that you posed at the end of the first hour because not only has he probably bothered a lot of the white racists within the Democratic Party, but we've been told over and over again by the talking heads and the drive-bys that so many white males that are independents or straddling that sense were going to vote for him.
And I got to tell you, I just, I think he probably put an end to that today.
Well, let's just cut to the chase here.
You got to remember, we got people in Rio Linda listening.
What you're saying is this speech today might have lost him the support of some white liberals who had tended to vote for it.
That's correct.
Because he's now down for the struggle with the likes of Sharpton and Jackson, and he's made sure that the racial movement of the left will be no different with his leadership than anybody else's.
I'm going to predict that when Pennsylvania happens, we will see it.
He's gone.
I think he'll be able to get it.
He can't be gone.
No, no, no, what you don't understand.
He can't be gone after Pennsylvania.
Neither can she.
Neither of these two can win this with pledge delegates even throughout the whole process, which I think ends in Puerto Rico on June 7th.
Mathematically, you're absolutely right, Rush.
Oops.
Oops, we lost, ladies and gentlemen, we lost the caller.
So he obviously thinks that the superdelegates are going to be unhappy with this and give him an excuse to go against Obama.
Too soon to say about all that.
But I do think that he did inadvertently walk into the trap the Clintons have been trying to set for him since South Carolina.
In fact, let's see.
Here, grab number 11, and then we've got 12 and 13.
Yes.
This is Obama last night on the news hour with Jim Millara.
Glenn Eiffel is filling in, and she said, you know, you talk about polarizing the electorate.
I wonder if you worry that the debate that we're in now, including the standoffs over what's going to happen to the delegates and what's going to happen to you and Senator Clinton and all these other issues.
I wonder if you worry that's going to alienate a lot of these new energized voters who have been brought to the campaign for both of you.
Look, there's no doubt that it'd be great if we had already wrapped up this nomination and we could have a nice, clean, clear debate with John McCain at this stage.
But, you know, as we travel all across the country, we've seen huge surges in Democratic turnout.
We've seen independents and Republicans who are disenchanted, in some cases, opting for a Democratic ballot.
That's how he's interpreting Operation Chaos.
A bunch of Republicans disaffected with Republicans crossing aisles to vote for Democrats.
Now, here's Bill Clinton.
This is last night.
He was on the record with Greta Van Susterin.
By the way, Clinton's outside here.
She said, you know, the party almost seems held hostage with the idea of Iowa and New Hampshire go first a little bit.
The people in Florida who are Democrats, even somebody who might have lived in Iowa and moved to Florida, suddenly finds their vote might not count.
Republicans were smarter, but they knew they had no intention of playing games with Florida and writing it off from the beginning.
We got a little carried away.
Our party did, I think, on that.
We just need to not do something dumb here that looks like we're ignoring one of the most difficult states in the Union, Michigan.
It's hard to find a state in America that's suffered more than Michigan in this decade economically.
And we certainly can't blow away one of the states that is most emblematic of the future we're trying to build for all Americans in Florida.
Well, it might be too late.
It looks like a do-over in Michigan is very unlikely.
That news hit just prior to the program's start today.
And, of course, Florida, they're not going to do it.
So they did screw up.
But Bill, you guys screwed us.
You didn't think you'd need these states because after Super Tuesday, you thought you would be coronated.
It hasn't worked out that way.
Greta Van Susteren then said, well, race, this sensitive issue that nobody wants to talk about.
That's wrong.
Greta, we've had this conference.
This is another thing about Obama's speech today.
We've been having this conversation on race my whole adult life and longer than that.
The idea that we have not been having a discussion on race in this country is absurd.
Greatness says, really, race, this is a sensitive issue.
Nobody wants to talk about it.
We're all very careful about it.
But now we have the issue of Senator Obama's minister who has now rejected what he has had to say.
But is race an issue, President Clinton.
In every election, identity is a powerful pull.
People tend to vote for people they identify with.
I had two women lawyers stop me when I was home briefly.
And I took my dog out for a walk.
One came up to me with her 14-year-old son.
I would say she was in her mid and late 40s.
The other was in her mid-30s, I would say.
And both of them said, you tell Hillary to hang in there.
We're for her.
They identify with her.
And I think for African Americans who've been voting for decades for white candidates, they think they got an African-American candidate with a legitimate chance to be nominated and elected.
The most important thing is just to let it play itself out.
I think it's great.
Even Puerto Rico gets to vote.
Let all the states vote and let it matter and then see where we are at the end.
Yeah.
Okay, quick timeout.
We will be back, folks.
Don't go away.
The EIB network returns right after this.
Okay, as you know, Florida and Michigan have said no must.
It doesn't look like either of them are going to have do-overs.
Michigan, the latest to say so today.
Florida, a little earlier.
They can't agree on a plan in Florida.
They want to do the mail-in thing.
Look, Democrats know how easy it is for them to cheat.
And under normal circumstances, a mail thing would be even easier.
So they don't want to do that.
Now, Chuck Todd at DNC-TV posted yesterday morning the campaign's response to the no vote in Florida.
And the Obama campaign said, well, we hope that all parties can agree on a fair seating of the Florida delegates so that Florida can participate in a convention.
And we look forward to working with the Florida Democrat Party and competing vigorously in the state so that Barack Obama can put Florida back into the Democrat column in November from the Clinton campaign.
Today's announcement brings us no closer to counting the votes of nearly 1.7 million people who voted in January.
We hope the Obama campaign shares our belief that Florida's voters must be counted and cannot be disenfranchised.
Hey, Hillary, you know as well as I do that Obama doesn't want those people to count any more than he did, but he's not worried about it.
It wouldn't make any difference if they did.
But you remember last week, Hillary went out there and apologized during the Ferraro apology.
She also apologized for Clinton injecting race.
Didn't sit well with Clinton.
New York Times, Bill Clinton struck back yesterday at critics who have suggested his remarks in South Carolina were racially insensitive.
In an interview shown on CNN, Clinton said the widespread interpretation of his remarks comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson was a total myth and a mugging.
I think that's been pretty well established.
Clinton says he was mugged.
Mr. Clinton's responses came as public opinion polls showed damage to his reputation.
His negatives are almost as high, at 45%.
Hillary's at 49.
His negatives are almost as high as hers now.
And this was supposed to be when they were rewriting all this great legacy stuff.
Jean in Tehachapi, California, I'm glad that you waited.
You're next on the program.
How are you?
Well, Rush, I hope I'm really nervous because I've never made a call before.
But I was so mad when I heard that speech this morning that I know my blood pressure is about to go through the roof because I know what prejudice is.
I'm an American Indian.
My grandfather was a Cherokee Indian, and my grandmother was white, which I never knew them.
Your grandmother was white?
Yes, she was an Indian.
And she married my grandfather, and they both died in their 20s.
They were real young.
Well, you realize then that because you're probably a victim, and you probably are savage and a racist, too, because Obama said today that we are what we are, and we are who we come from, and we are who we've known.
I mean, you have this Indian background and so forth.
According to Obama, I mean, that's how we must look at you.
Rush, my mother died a couple of years ago.
She was 91.
And her, she had two sisters and a brother, and their mother died in childbirth, and they put her, my great aunt hated the Indians.
She was prejudiced.
She put them on a train and sent them to Shillocka Indian School until she ran away and married my dad.
So I know what prejudice is, but I mean, I love my country.
We've never dwelt on it.
It's history.
You know, it's history.
You know, I've never seen that.
And we've moved on from it.
We've moved on.
This is what Obama's speech about his speech made you mad today, right?
Yes, it's history.
Get over it.
You know, my great aunt that sent them away to school before she died told me she was ashamed of what she did.
But they had Indian blood.
But she said, I was wrong.
And it's none of us.
I'm sitting here looking at a proposed bill from Congress about my mother was going to get $3,000.
I have my grandfather's roll number.
She got, from what I remember, around $60 and said more to follow.
She never got any more money.
But did this eat at us?
No, it's history.
We tried to get everything out of grandma that she could tell us about our grandparents because I didn't know them.
But I don't hate our government for it or my great aunt for it.
Amen.
It's history.
Well, see, I'm glad you called.
I'm glad you waited, Gene, because this is one of the points I was trying to make.
One of these soundbites that we played that's being portrayed as one of the great unifying aspects of the speech actually is a recipe for everybody is really not an individual.
They are who they are based on people they've never known that might be in their family, people they've hung around with, except Reverend Wright.
If you've hung around him, you're not going to adopt any of what he says.
But everybody else around, he trashed his own grandmother as a racist and said, this is who I am.
No, just because your grandmother was a racist doesn't mean that you were Barack.
See, this is how they do it.
This is how this little trick is played.
As I said at that portion of the program, those of us in our mid-50s and even older, you start talking about parents and grandparents.
I mean, you're going to go back to periods in this country where there was a lot different attitude, racial attitudes, more racism than there is now.
And so guilt by association.
We're back to that.
By the way, by the way, I found last night there was such legislation in Chicago here in Illinois.
It was 1998.
I couldn't find it under the name of Guilt by Association Act, and I could not find any quotes of Obama to explain why he voted against it.
But it was a piece of legislation that would have penalized people on parole hanging around other people that have been involved in the criminal elements of our society.
So there was legislation.
Obama did, and he was one of three people that voted against it.
I just couldn't find it under the name of the caller gave to us yesterday, nor could I find any statement from Obama about why he supported it.
It was 10 years ago.
Quick time out.
We'll be right back.
New Quinnipiac University poll, Pennsylvania's Hillary has expanded her lead over Obama 53 to 41.
In the latest poll, also, the split between black and white voters has grown in Pennsylvania.
Gotta go, folks.
See you tomorrow.
Already Wednesday tomorrow, too.
Looking forward to it.
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