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May 15, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:17
May 15, 2008, Thursday, Hour #2
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Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
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I am still struck by the um because she started crying.
She was she was on the verge of tears.
The woman leave from Hazlet, Michigan.
She just got a constitution out, started reading it recently, and she was just devastated over what's happened to the country.
She's a former liberal.
She became a Reagan Democrat.
This is what's happening.
And this is it's tragic.
What's happening is that all of these Democrats who were cons converted to conservatism in the 1980s are now wondering what to do.
They are questioning themselves.
And they don't see any option for president that excites them.
In fact, it's just the opposite.
This is why so many of us in conservatism are frustrated.
It's out there for the taking.
And yet our party seems intent on banishing conservatism from the Republican Party.
And make no mistake, I think that's what's I mean, the Liberals, of course, are doing this and have tried to do this forever.
I I think the sad thing now is that uh certain elements of the Republican Party are trying to do the same.
So let's move on to Senator McCain's speech today.
Highly anticipated, really highly touted.
Speech was at the Columbus Metropolitan Club, Columbus, Ohio.
Ten o'clock this morning.
Speech was embargoed.
Details not permissible to be broadcast until the speech was given.
But certain McCain favored reporters got the uh got the contents.
And so we were told, boy, this this is a revolutionary speech.
Well, this is this is this is groundbreaking.
And it was anticipation galore out there.
And uh it you'll hear portions of it here in just a second, and you you can decide for yourself.
Just to tell you about the Columbus Metropolitan Club, because this is crucial for you to understand here as we get started with audio sound bites.
From their website.
And by the way, for those of you in Columbus, it's not a criticism.
I'm just informing people who this place is because that's where McCain chose to go.
The Columbus Metropolitan Club is like NPR Live, like the office water cooler, the neighborhood coffee shop, the sports bar during a big game, the kitchen table at supper time.
It's where we look forward to seeing our family and friends to share important news, discuss it, debate it, and mull over its ramifications for ourselves, our neighbors, our community, and our world.
The Columbus Metropolitan Club stakes its 32-year reputation on being balanced, nonpartisan, diverse, and open to all perspectives throughout our programming year.
Now the reason that's important, because it would this would appear then to be the ideal John McCain audience.
Nonpartisan, balanced, diverse.
No ideological taint here to the Columbus Metropolitan Club.
Here's an overview of McCain's remarks.
He transformed himself or transported himself to 2013 for this speech.
He gave the speech in past tense, looking back to the first four years of his presidency.
Sort of like looking through a crystal ball.
He envisions...
I...
okay.
He sees a world in which the Iraq war has been won.
The Taliban threat in Afghanistan's been reduced.
The increase in actionable intelligence that the counterinsurgency produced led to the capture and death of Osama bin Laden.
He foresees a league of democracies, which has supplanted a failed United Nations.
He said the United States has had several years of robust growth, appropriations bills free of lawmakers' pet projects known as earmarks, public education improved by charter schools, health care improved by expansion of the private market, and an energy crisis stemmed through the start of construction and 20 new nuclear reactors.
Democrats are asked to serve in his administration.
He holds weekly news conferences, and like the British Prime Minister will answer questions publicly from lawmakers.
He also pledges to halt a Bush administration practice of enacting laws with accompanying signing statements that exempt the president from having to enforce parts that he finds objectionable.
McCain says I will respect the responsibilities and the Constitution and the American people have granted Congress and will, as I often have in the past, work with anyone of either party to get things done for our country.
Except, you know, I'm going to respect the Constitution except for when I have McCain Feingold type stuff I want to do, and then I'll forget the Constitution.
And will, as I often have in the past, work with anyone of either party to get things done for our country.
Well, can I give you some headlines here, folks, from the news today?
And I'm going to go back and make a point.
I remind you of a point I made previously.
Shaken Republicans look to McCain as Savior.
Soul searching Republicans are turning to an unlikely savior, one-time party heretic, and now presumptive nominee John McCain as they try to stave off an electoral disaster, stung by Democratic seizure of three staunch conservative seats in Congress.
Republican lawmakers fear a shellacking in November's general after losing control of both chambers in 2006.
The rise of McCain as their champion is not without irony.
Since McCain has quarreled with his own party for years on issues as diverse as immigration, campaign finance reform and global warming.
But it is precisely that independent streak that is drawing Republicans to his coattails, hoping he can cleanse them of the stain of grid-locked Washington, Eric Cantor.
Republican chief deputy whip in the House told reporters the McCain brand was healthier than that of his own party.
House Republican minority leader John Boehner told Fox News that with McCain at the top of the ticket, his demoralized party might spring a surprise in November.
I think we're going to do a lot better than people think, Boehner said.
And then the next story in my stack of stuff.
Republican election losses stir fall fears.
This is Adam McGurning and Carl Hulse in the New York Times.
Advisors to Mr. McCain said they thought the problems congressional Republicans were having would not translate into significant problems for Mr. McCain.
But they said it stealed their resolve to run a campaign that distinguished Mr. McCain from both Bush and Congress.
They said Mr. McCain would seek to distance himself by speaking critically of what he has described as excessive spending in Washington as well as on issues like the environment.
So Republican leaders in the House are looking at John McCain as their savior.
And John McCain's screw them and screw screw them and screw Bush.
How about my own here?
I don't need to do it.
I don't need them.
Limbo, I need none of them.
You got that?
He's going to run against both the Congress and the President.
From the Politico.com.
GOP cancer party could lose 20 more seats.
For the past 18 months, ever since the 06 elections, congressional Republicans have been like a hospital patient trying to convince visitors that he's not really all that sick.
But suddenly all that pretense is gone.
The Republican defeat in Tuesday's special election, Mississippi, deeply conservative district, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Many House GOP Operatives privately predicting that the party could easily lose up to 20 seats this fall, combined with the 30 seats the Republicans lost in 06.
That would leave the party facing a 70 vote deficit among Democrats in the House of Representatives.
70 vote deficit.
Meanwhile, back to Senator McCain, who says in his speech that he'll work with anybody, any party, to get things done.
Proving.
Illustrating my point.
When I was warning people in the primaries, what do presidents consider their legacies to be?
Getting things done.
My exact words.
And if you're running, if you happen to be elected president, well, the Democrats have a 70-seat margin in the House and a seven to eight seat margin in the Senate.
Guess who you're going to have to be working with to get things done?
And guess who it is that's very comfortable working with those very people to get things done.
Our nominee.
You might have heard people say that they have a suspicion that Senator McCain is actually embarked on a course here to attack conservatives to just rid the Republican Party of them.
And you you may be right.
You you you may have a point if that is your opinion.
All right, I've built you up enough.
I've led you up.
I have told you how great everybody said McCain's speech was, how breathlessly they awaited it.
After we get back from this obscene profit center timeout, you shall hear excerpts and our special treatment.
Stay with us.
Just got an email from somebody who was in attendance today at the Columbus Metropolitan Club.
They actually had the speech at the Columbus Convention Center.
It was supposed to be held at the Veterans Memorial, but they moved to the convention center.
And uh this uh uh s uh reporter, if you will, a member at Rushlimba.com, said that there were actually more Republicans in attendance than there were members of the uh Columbus Metropolitan Club.
Says we were seated in seats reserved for Metropolitan Club members because there were many empty seats on that side.
The only reason this is important is because we're gonna focus on the applause here.
I think this is a good indication of things.
Because it struck me as I was watching the speech that the applause was tepid.
And I said, okay, Rush, be fair about this.
Maybe the audience is far away.
Maybe the microphones are not aimed at the audience.
And then I said, no, that can't be, because at the beginning of this, during the uh introductions and so forth, the the applause was pretty loud.
So I had Cookie put together a sample montage, followed by applause, and want to compare that with the applause during the introductions.
So here is McCain being introduced to uh what what appeared to me to be raucous applause.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, and thank you for that very warm welcome.
Okay, you hear at the beginning how loud that was.
I mean, that was pretty loud.
I mean, that was sounded like a big crowd, and they were going nuts and they were revved up, which is what I expected because I had heard this thing be revved up by infobabes and Kendall anchors on some of the cable networks.
But once he started speaking, though, the applause was tepid, and that's why I became curious, okay.
Who is this bunch in there?
Columbus Metropolitan Club.
If they're a bunch of moderates and independents and they don't have any point of view, they should have been going bonkers in there.
If they were Republicans, they should have been going bonkers in there.
So here's a here's a little montage of the opening remarks.
Our southern border is now secure.
Putting the choice of health care into the hands of American families rather than exclusively with the government or employers.
I often have in the past work with anyone of either party to get things done for our country.
Now let's listen to Cut 1 again, the introduction.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And thank you for that very warm welcome.
Okay.
Is there a difference?
Now, it one thing I have to point out.
Those of you listening on radio as opposed to the website.
Your super heterodyne receivers are receiving a compressed signal.
So something AM does.
FM, you're you're not going to hear this as much.
But AM, it's just by nature of the beast, compresses the signal so that low volume sounds as loud as high volume.
Uh this was done back in the 60s during the uh days of AM radio when people drove convertibles around and had their Motown tunes playing, and they wanted to be able to be heard over the wind and all the other.
Those songs back in the 60s when they were compressed and they were pumped and they were just I mean, you could hear them suck that low volume up.
It was just, I still listen to music that way today, because that's why I got conditioned to it.
Uh we have our flamethrower in there, our little our little compressor that does this magically.
So you may not be able to tell the difference is the point.
Your radio station may be compressing this to the point that a low volume doesn't sound any different than a high volume or the loud volume.
Believe me, uh we're not compressed here in the studio, so it's it's it's demonstrably that way.
Here, let's listen again.
Start at cut one, and then we'll play cut two, and we'll do this bam bam uh smack dab in a row.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, and thank you for that very warm welcome.
Our southern border is now secure.
Putting the choice of health care into the hands of American families rather than exclusively with the government or employers.
I often have in the past.
Work with anyone of either party to get things done for our country.
Okay, when I'm listening to the speech, I feel like I'm watching a golf tournament.
And I want to watch it the polite applause of the gallery when some goofball golfer taps in for bogey.
So we went out, we actually got some applause from a golf tournament on TV of a goofball golfer tapping in for bogey.
Okay, so let's listen to that again and then go back to Soundbite 2, the montage, and see if I'm right that the applause that McCain got today at Columbus was akin to that that a golfer would get at a golf tournament, tapping in for bogey.
The southern border is now secure.
Putting the choice of health care into the hands of American families rather than exclusively with the government or employers.
I often have in the past.
Work with anyone of either party to get things done for our country.
And once again, the golfer tapping in for bogey.
That's why I want to know who was in the audience here at the Columbia Metropolitan Club.
Now, this is Senator McCain from the speech saying that he will end the uncivil brawl in Washington.
For too long now, Washington has been consumed by a hyperpartisanship that treats every serious challenge facing us as an opportunity to trade insults, disparage each other's motives, and fight about the next election.
Americans are sick of it, and they have every right to be.
They're sick of the politics of selfishness, stalemate, and delay.
Their patience is at an end for politicians who value ambition over principle and for partisanship that is less a contest of ideals than an uncivil brawl for the spoils of power.
Well, then why are you running?
Why do we even have elections?
Let's just have the League of Women Voters decide.
Why do we even have elections in it?
Why are we going to contest anything?
If the differences between the parties and the candidates and principles are mindless and worthless, let's just have some independent group.
let's have the ACLU name the president.
What is this people are sick of the politics of selfishness?
I asked you people in this audience yesterday.
The next time you hear a politician describe himself or the drive-bys.
Describe a politician as a maverick.
Independent, I want you to think selfish.
Elections are about big things.
It doesn't mean other things won't come up they have since the beginning of our Republic.
The reason is because elections matter.
More on this when we come back.
Don't go away, folks.
I know.
Thanks and welcome back.
Well, California has followed in the footsteps of Massachusetts landmark decision from the California Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage.
It is all the rage on the uh on the cable nets now.
We'll have details of discussion of this as the program unfolds further today.
I want to go back to McCain's speech.
I want to remind all of you that when you listen to some of this, like the soundbites earlier, we're looking at McCain's speaking in 2013, he's looking back and he's recounting the successes of his administration.
That was everything in the past tense.
Then at other points in the speech, uh he he was explaining to people, now he knows that this is not just going to happen because he says so.
He's not but the Congress, the Democrats are gonna have to roll over and play dead for all of this.
For any of this to happen, here's one more sound but one more, we get two more soundbites from the speech this morning in Columbus from Senator McCain.
I will ask Democrats to serve in my administration.
My administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability.
I will hold weekly press conferences.
I will regularly brief the American people on the progress of our policies have made and the setbacks we have encountered.
When we make errors, I'll confess them readily and explain what we intend to do to correct them.
I'll ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions and address criticism.
Much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.
For crying out loud, we don't have a parliamentary system here.
There's something called separation of powers.
Uh as I said before, why even have elections if you're not going to contest them, if you're not going to get partisan, if you're if you're not going to make them about big ideas.
Elections are about big things.
If we all agreed on how we wanted our government to operate, then we'd be living somewhere that doesn't exist, Senator.
And if we didn't have partisanship, but instead some kind of third way, then we wouldn't have democracy either.
Because we wouldn't need democracy if we didn't have partisanship.
Or partisan, there would be no reason that we'd all agree on everything.
There would there would be no need for I mean, this is utopian.
This whole thing came off as simply utopian.
Now, I'll tell you, he's going to be lauded for speaking this way.
Some of the drive-bys are gonna eat this up because he's campaigning as a Democrat.
He's gonna be lauded for speaking in this way, speaking in this tone because our country's moving in the wrong wrong direction to the left.
The government is massive.
It's growing every day.
Liberty's threatened, and more so every day.
So the leftists want nothing more than a quiet discussion over matters of agreement, which accept their premises about government.
And it seems like the primary purpose of Republican Party these days is to accept the premise that the left puts forth and then to sit down and have a reasonable discussion about it.
We try to tweak it a little bit and say we stopped it.
Or we put our conservative imprimatur on it.
This is the campaign Senator McCain apparently wants to give the leftists.
But some of us, and I count myself proudly among you, are not willing to go along so willingly.
We aren't willing to self-censor the substance or the tone of our remarks.
Because we are not wrong.
And to shut up Just in order to get along so that we have partisanship, and for partisanship to, by the way, be misrepresented this way.
And for campaigns to be misrepresented the way they have been presented here misleading and it's a disservice.
I'm sure many of you agree with me that there's a cause for alarm over the future of the country.
You don't rouse your fellow citizens by whispering sweet nothings in their ears.
We have a party, ladies and gentlemen.
We have a political party that is trying to deny you of as much of your hard-earned income as they can, and you fight back.
When one party fights to deny you your way of life, you fight back.
When one party fights to weaken the military and lose a war, you fight back.
Now, Senator McCain likes to compare himself to Teddy Roosevelt and uh Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan.
What makes them unique, even if you don't agree with everything they did or they said, is that they were virulent partisans.
Roosevelt, Lincoln, Reagan were partisans.
They understood the threat and who was threatening, and they confronted them and they fought them.
Lincoln didn't look for common ground with a slave owners, did he?
Somebody want to tell me where the common ground was with slave owners.
Where's the common ground with evil?
Tell me where the common ground with evil at Abraham Lincoln is that he sought.
Teddy Roosevelt didn't look for common ground with the Barbary Pirates.
Ronald Reagan didn't look for common ground with Gorbachev and the Communists.
And they sure as hell didn't accept the premises and the conditions of debate or action demanded by the Democrat Party.
They never did.
Especially Reagan and Lincoln.
The country, folks, is not strengthened when both parties share the belief that the federal government should hold dominion over individuals.
How does that strengthen the country?
Is that what we're supposed to agree to now in order to have bipartisanship?
Furthermore, now that Senator McCain has secured the Republican nomination with the help of Democrats and Independents.
He is in effect running for the Democrat Party nomination.
He's running for Democrat votes.
He is trying to out Democrat Barack Obama.
Isn't it interesting that Barack Obama claims to be the uniter.
Yet he doesn't give an inch on his ideological views.
He doesn't give one inch.
He hasn't practiced the art of compromise as a senator in Washington.
He's not practicing the so-called great art of compromise.
The politics compromise is a crock anyway, as it's currently constituted, because it's always our side ends up compromising and giving things up.
But isn't it interesting?
Obama is the uniter.
Obama is the Messiah.
And he is as partisan as any Democrat in Washington.
And our nominee is running around saying it's time to end partisanship.
Because it's just about selfishness and pointless bickering, and that we're all fringe.
And we all want to do what's right for our country.
No, we don't.
I think Senator McCain's going to have trouble defining who he is because he's trying to become all things to most people.
He doesn't really have a consistent worldview.
He doesn't have a reasoned approach to governance, which is why he can reject national health care, but embrace global warming while and while embracing global warming, talking about ending earmarks and having tax cuts.
And getting rid of big government.
Yep, we've got to get a rid of big government.
Then we're going to do global warming plan, which is one of the fastest, surest ways to government growth to come down the pike in a while.
I don't think he expects to have any coattails either.
He's not seeking to have any coattails.
He's out there running on his own.
He's got a New York Times today says the McCain guy is going to run against Bush, going to run against Congress.
Running as a maverick, running as an independent.
He's not running as the head of a team.
His entire strategy is to make sure the quarterback gets protected.
The rest of you guys can blow out your ACLs.
But you got to protect the quarterback.
One more soundbite from Senator McCain's speech.
And let's see, this is.
Well, this is this is this is how he plans to end partisanship.
I'm not interested in partisanship that serves no other purpose than to gain a temporary advantage over our opponents.
This mindless, paralyzing rancor, must come to an end.
We belong to different parties, not different countries.
We're rivals for the same power, but we're also compatriots.
We're fellow Americans.
And that shared distinction means more to me than any other association.
I intend to prove myself worthy of the office of our country and of your respect.
I won't judge myself by how many elections I've won.
I won't spend one hour of my presidency worrying more about my re-election than keeping my promises to the American people.
There's a time to campaign and a time to govern.
If I'm elected president, the era of the permanent campaign will end.
The era of problem solving will begin.
And there's an ad.
The McCain campaign has uh I'm look at folks, I'm tapped out here.
This is tough enough as it is.
You want to add your own commentary to this?
You can do that.
We go to the phones.
They put together an ad here.
Uh and and this the geniuses here that do not want to attack Obama.
This is what they have uh come up with.
They they accept the liberal premise the country's gone to hell in a handbasket, and then tell the American people to wait for a number of years for McCain to fix it.
The year 2013.
The Middle East stabilized.
Nuclear terror threat reduced.
Border security strengthened.
Energy independence advanced.
Wasteful spending reformed.
Health care choice delivered.
Economic confidence restored.
The year, 2013.
The President, John McCain.
I'm John McCain, and I approve this message.
So that's the ad that encompasses, and this is supposed to go forward today from McCain's speech.
Now it's gets it's got everything.
McCain's gonna fix everything.
This is the kind of speech that liberals give you.
This is the kind of speech that total dictators tell you, everything's just gonna be fine with me.
I'm gonna fix it all.
This is not how you get elected.
You have an agenda, two or three things, maybe four, and you keep pounding those things.
And then when you get into office, you branch out if you have to after you get some of those things done.
The only thing not in that commercial that I've I think it's just an accident.
Uh that they left it out, Mr. Snerdley.
Conservative movement dead.
Uh except Limbaugh's hanging on.
And we're dealing with that.
Just be patient.
Okay, so people say Rush, well, it's easy to sit here and be critical of uh Senator McCain's speech and a Republicans and how what would you happen to do?
Well, I'll take a stab at it.
We come back.
Brief time out, get your phone calls as well.
Do not go away.
Okay, what should a Republicans do about this?
Republicans in Congress, uh, Republican senators running for re-election.
What should they do?
You know, the uh the stories in the snack of stuff today do not show promise.
Soul searching Republicans turning to an unlikely savior, John McCain, as they try to stave off an electoral disaster.
This guy's gonna be running against his own party, and they hope he's not even going to try for coattails, and they hope that that Seneca's his brand is better than the House Republican brand is, that they somehow will benefit when in the New York Times a McCaid aide says he's gonna run against Bush and Congress.
You know, I believe in going on offense, offense, offense, offense, and I believe in being proactive, and I believe in not accepting the premise of the left.
I don't believe in playing defense even when you're in the minority.
I mean, they're looking now at a loss, a total difference of 70 seats in the House of current projections by experts are right.
The Democrats can have a 70-seat majority.
When we took over the House in 1994, we won 52 seats.
This is this is not incidental.
This is this is quite quite substantial, this difference that might result here.
The first thing the Republicans have to do is rally their voters.
They have to rally the troops, and they've got to figure out.
They can obviously see that the troops are not rallied.
They've got to be able to see this with the lack of money they're collecting.
They obviously can hear programs like this, read letters to the editor.
I'm sure uh communications from uh the public to various congressmen and senators are sending them the message.
See, the first thing you have to do is rally the troops.
After you do that, then you make a case to the undecided.
And it's time to take the gloves off where the Democrats are concerned.
There have been no accomplishments, none since the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in 2006.
They did not end the war.
They did not end earmarks, they did not increase our energy supplies, they didn't lower the price of anything.
They didn't honor their own pago.
They did not end the name calling in the negativity.
They didn't increase homeland security, and in fact, they did everything they could to decrease it.
In addition to making the case for yourself and your own principles, you got to go after them.
And you have to tell the truth about them.
And they're out there, all these mad cap promises that they made after winning in 06, and they haven't delivered on any well minimum wage, sorry.
With all their talk and all their slogans and all their barber stri sand, their signature triumph was raising the minimum wage.
And wasn't that a triumph for the ages, as though that had never been done before?
During these same two years, the vilified president of the United States changed the dynamics in Iraq with a Petraeus strategy.
Not just the surge, but the strategy, and even the left is now learning, they're not admitting it, that military success is leading to political success.
What Republicans are going to have to do is to be unafraid in reminding people of the overall consistent failures of liberalism.
And then stand up for who they are.
Stand up for conservatism.
And they can do it by reciting principle, they can do it by reciting American exceptionalism, they can come up with an agenda of items if they wish to talk about they want to get done.
And you can go through this any number of things.
The thing is you can't pal too many of these in there like McCain's done because it's just it's going to sound impossible, and you put too many in, you can't focus on any of them.
The American people want leadership.
Both parties, independents, Republicans, moderates, conservatives, Republicans, everybody wants leadership, and there isn't any.
And this market, there is a vacuum, and it's just waiting for somebody to move in with leadership, to speak with authority, to not care what anybody thinks about it, to advance an agenda that is pro-America, based on American exceptionalism and the U.S. Constitution and basic human rights.
You start talking about freedom, start talking about liberty, those are two words I do not hear in any campaign running for the White House this year.
I don't hear it in Hillary's campaign, I don't hear it in Obama's, I don't hear it in McCain's.
Freedom, liberty, the expansion of same.
Talk about how the United States is not responsible for the destruction of the planet.
The United States is the answer to the world's problems.
Do not fall in with this stupid hoax of global warming, which is nothing more than an attempt to advance liberalism and socialism and big government.
As we've discussed, I'm blue in the face on this.
Stand up and reject all these premises.
Say you've had enough.
Even if it means means breaking with the so-called direction of your party.
You Republicans of elected office, I would submit your party doesn't have a direction.
There's somebody out there waiting to give it one.
Senator McCain is not giving the Republican Party a direction.
He is not giving it an identity.
He is trying to change all of that.
And that's another problem that we have.
There's a vacuum waiting to be filled.
All it takes is guts and courage and instinctive conservatism.
This shouldn't even take any homework to figure out what to say.
It ought to be in your hearts.
One exciting busy broadcast hour to go, ladies and gentlemen.
A brief time out here at the top.
And we'll get right back to it.
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