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Jan. 14, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:05
January 14, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, I know, ladies and gentlemen.
Even when I'm not present at an event, I hijack it.
I upstage it.
Greetings, my friends.
Great to have you with us.
It's Rush Limbaugh back in action behind a golden EIB microphone here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, is 800-282-2882, the email address lrushball at EIBnet.com.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I think I owe you a little bit of an apology here and an in-depth explanation.
Well, sort of an apology, but an in-depth explanation of what happened that caused a firestorm to kick off late yesterday afternoon.
Here it is in the chronological order of events.
And this has to do with my absence yesterday from behind the golden EIB microphone.
Last week, I received an invitation from President Bush to attend a farewell luncheon with just the two of us in his dining room off of the Oval Office.
I readily agreed to this.
And it was for yesterday.
And I intended to mention this to you on Monday, just to let you know that I would not be here on Tuesday.
I forgot to mention it to you on Monday.
And when I ended the program on Monday, said, see you tomorrow.
And the staff said, no, you won't.
You won't.
When the program was over, no, you won't.
So I decided to have a little fun and play a typical little radio prank.
On that day, this past Monday, Barack Obama had had a press conference in which he said he was open to any idea that worked.
And I, after having heard that and played that soundbite on this program, offered to meet with Obama at any time to present an idea that would work as opposed to his which will not work.
I mean, I was being bipartisan.
The idea here that this is hope and change, you know what change would be would be a 15% flat tax.
Real change would be revolutionary.
What Obama's offering is more of the old and the same old dating back to the 1930s.
So I offered myself up and I said, I will meet with you anytime, anywhere on a moment's notice.
So I instructed the guest host yesterday, Jason Lewis, because you were going to tune in yesterday and I wasn't going to be here and you had no idea why because I'd forgotten to tell you that I wasn't going to be here yesterday.
So the prank was Jason Lewis was going to replay the audio clip of me offering to go anywhere at any time at a moment's notice to meet with Obama to present plans that would work.
And after he played the clip of my saying that on Monday's program, he then announced that he had been informed late in the day that I was to be mysteriously absent.
He had to come in and do the program, which, of course, created the impression, understandably so in people's minds, that I had been summoned by the Messiah to come up and present ideas.
When in fact, nothing of the sort was true.
It was just a gag.
It was, you know, a radio bit.
So yesterday morning, I arise early and head to the airport and I fly up to Washington, D.C.
I get to the White House at 11 o'clock, the luncheon with the president scheduled at 12 noon, from 12 noon to 1 o'clock, because at 1.05, he's got to go to the East Room for the presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony.
I arrived at 11 o'clock as they asked me to in case the schedule was moving faster.
They don't want the president to have downtime, so if you're waiting to meet with the president, you're always there early in case his schedule changes.
They call me into the Oval Office at 1145.
We went in, had some pictures, as is always the case.
Ed Gillespie, one of the president's advisors, was there, posed for the pictures, so forth.
The president said, let's go eat.
Now, the day before, on Monday, I had been faxed to me the menu from the White House mess, and they'd asked me to choose what I wanted from the menu for lunch a day in advance.
So I looked at the menu, and I ordered salmon over rice and a side salad with some ranch dressing.
We get into the president's private dining room off the Oval Office, and in front of every place, there are three of them, and there's Ed Gillespie and the President and me.
There's a cheese and cracker tray, a substantial cheese and cracker tray that they had not told me would be there.
The president had not ordered.
He ordered lunch a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
And he told the steward, I want red jelly.
Don't give me that purple jelly.
I want red jelly.
Ed Gillespie had a salad, a large salad.
So shortly thereafter, here came my salmon.
Here came my side salad and an order of french fries that I did not order.
And the president's got his little peanut butter and jelly sandwich there.
And Gillespie's looking at his salad.
The president looks at me and says, hey, hey, Limbaugh, we don't have all that much time to eat here.
This is going to be a quick meeting.
I said, I didn't order all this, but I'm happy to have it here.
Then I got my napkin out, and I put my napkin on.
I was getting ready to put the napkin on.
And unbeknownst to me, a corner of my napkin dipped into the bowl of ranch dressing.
The president looked at me with horror on his face.
Limbaugh, you're going to ruin your blue suit.
This is the White House.
Shape up, man.
And I didn't know what he was talking about.
He said, you've got salad dressing all over your napkin.
So just I'm sitting there, I'm laughing, and everybody's laughing.
So we went and had lunch.
It was off the record.
This was not, I mean, some of these people that have been invited up here last week and this are going in for exit interviews where the president gives them a lowdown and things that he's done, that he wants remembered and so forth.
This was a friendly thing.
It was mostly, well, it was, for all intents and purposes, all the policy stuff was all off the record.
And with 10 minutes left in lunch, the door opens and the stewards, three stewards walk in with a little chocolate birthday cake that has four candles in it, and then they're lighted.
And I'm looking at it, and there's a little chocolate microphone on the plate with the chocolate birthday cake.
And my mouth falls open and I'm just in stunned disbelief, but I'm trying to act cool.
You know, I'm trying to like, ah, this is no big deal.
This happens to me all the time.
Yeah, ranch dressing on the napkin.
I'm just, I'm trying to act cool here like this is all no big deal.
By the way, how many people would admit to you that they dip their napkin in ranch dressing at lunch at the White House?
That's how secure of myself I am.
I didn't know I had done it, but it was just funny the way, hey, Limbaugh, you're going to ruin your suit.
This is the White House, man.
Shape up.
So anyway, they put the cake in front of me.
And the president, don't blow it out yet.
He and Gillespie stand up.
They stand behind me.
Photographer comes in.
He starts snapping pictures while the president and Gillespie and the stewards sing happy birthday to me.
And I'm sitting there just choked up.
And I'm saying to myself, I just wish my parents were alive so that I could be able to show them the pictures here and to tell them about this.
And then after they finish singing happy birthday, and I'm sure that I'm beat red in the face, the president sits back down and said, well, let's have a couple of bites and we got to go because I got this Medal of Freedom.
You're coming, aren't you, Limbaugh?
And I said, yeah, I'd be honored to go in there.
So we left the dining room, went back into the Oval Office, and I just casually, Mr. President, can you tell me who all is going to be here?
Who the guest list is?
So he shouts out to his secretary to come in with the guest list.
Then the secretary brings in a list.
It's tabled together, and he starts going through the pages and said, this isn't the guest list.
This is the cabinet.
This is the families of the recipients.
I want the guest list.
A little guy comes in, and here it is.
We're standing there, all three of us looking at the president go through this list like we're looking at official policy papers.
I can't wait to see the pictures of this.
So anyway, Gillespie escorts me to the East Room, which is where the ceremony for John Howard of Australia, Alvero Uribe of Columbia, and Tony Blair is to take place.
And indeed, the place was full.
They have a center aisle for the president and the honored guests to walk down.
It's a long room, and it's set up in a wide configuration.
So I walk in, and one of the first people I see as I'm glancing around is Colin Powell.
He's in the far upper right-hand corner.
And he sees me the minute I walk in.
And I just looked at him.
And he looked at me.
And I just looked at him.
And finally, Gillespie ushers me further into the room where I say hi to Denny Hastert.
I said hi to Secretary Rumsfeld.
We had some yucks.
Ileani Rose Leighton, the congresswoman from down in Miami.
John Boehner was in there, Vice President Cheney.
And I'm laughing and yucking it all up with the people that Colin Powell says should stop listening to me while he's standing there watching all this.
They seated me next to Fred Fielding, the White House counsel.
The ceremony went for a half hour.
And at that point, I left.
I went out to the car and I began the long trek back to Dulles, which is easily 45 minutes away from downtown Washington.
So get on the airplane, have a short taxi.
We're in the air by a quarter of three.
The ceremony at the White House was at one o'clock.
We're in the air at a quarter to three.
I have the computer with me.
I fire it up.
And then I hear that there is to be a super secret dinner at a prominent conservative's home in Washington attended by Barack Obama.
The prominent conservative host was not mentioned.
I said, oh, cool.
Wonder who this is.
Then the emails started pouring in.
Is this what you went to Washington?
Are you having dinner with Obama tonight?
And I didn't answer any of these things.
It eventually then came out that George Will was the host.
And some of the attendees were Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, David Brooks.
More comment on this as the program unfolds.
But this was Inside the Beltway conservative pundits.
And it was obvious to me that Obama's objective here is to sway what I would call establishment punditry, the inside the Beltway people.
And he's meeting with lib columnists tonight.
And it was his idea.
Apparently, it was a transitions idea.
Although I'm seeing some conflicting reports that George Will has been asking for this dinner for a couple of months since the election.
So anyway, I get home and I think, you know, it's been a fun day.
I'm recounting for people just the incredible things that happened to me yesterday.
And more and more emails come in and more and more blog sites start speculating about whether I showed up, whether I was at this dinner.
And the opinion was one of two things.
I had either sold out to go to the dinner or that Obama had indeed asked to see me because of, remember now the little prank I played at the beginning of the program on Tuesday when I said I would go anywhere at any time to help give Obama some ideas that worked.
And it went all through the night and people, it just kept building and building and building.
And finally, I get a note from, do you realize you hijacked a dinner you weren't even at?
I mean, this is almost better than a Know Your Bible contest, except that one I created and was, I didn't even know this was happening.
And when I made the, when I played the sound bite of me being willing to go to Washington or anywhere at any time, at a moment's notice, to talk with Obama about policies that work, I had no clue that there was a dinner in Washington last night at George Will's house.
Even this morning, after I had sent this story to a bunch of people to set them straight, even this morning, people were speculating on whether or not I was there.
And I wasn't there.
Here we got a little soundbite.
Just as an example, this is some KTTV Los Angeles, their Good Day LA show.
Dorothy Lucy and Steve Edwards have this exchange.
Barack had dinner last night with a bunch of Republicans.
Did he have dinner with Rush Limbaugh?
Okay, that would be crazy.
Did he?
No.
Yes, he did.
I don't think so.
Yes, he did have dinner with a bunch of Republicans.
But Rush Limbaugh said he was going to D.C. for a secret meeting.
Was he there?
What are you looking at me for?
I hear he wasn't.
Are you looking at me?
I hear he wasn't.
So here, I just, I'm heading up to Washington, D.C., and it's just, it's funny.
It's just hilarious.
Wasn't even there, and I was the focal point of having hijacked this whole thing.
So my so-called apology to all of you, I just forgot to mention on Monday that I wasn't going to be here yesterday.
And when that was pointed out to me, we decided to have this little fun prank yesterday.
It just goes to show my prescience.
It just goes to show how in touch I am.
My finger is to the pulse, even when I'm not aware of it.
Now we've got to take a brief time out.
We'll come back.
Lots of stuff in the news today.
This Geithner, the guy that's been appointed Treasury Secretary, failed to pay his taxes and his nanny's taxes?
No big deal.
Everybody's, oh, no, we need this guy so much.
We can't let these little technicalities hold.
He didn't pay his taxes.
He was audited by the IRS.
Now, one of the things about this that's curious to me, he worked at the IMF, the International Monetary Fund.
And apparently, when you work there, you're an independent contractor.
You are self-employed.
As such, there are no tax deductions.
You are paid the gross.
Thus, it is up to you to file quarterly estimates.
He didn't do this for a number of years on the basis that it just slipped his mind, that he wasn't aware of it.
Folks, the guy ran the New York Federal Reserve.
He is said to be the only guy that can run the Treasury Department to bail us out of all the problems that we're in.
And he doesn't know about, I just find this hard to believe.
I just forgot it.
The nanny thing is one thing.
I mean, that's equally as problematic.
But the thing about this that gets me is that he's getting a pass and claimed not to know he had to pay taxes on gross income.
Well, I know he didn't blame his wife like he didn't blame anybody else, but it's just some of this stuff is just unbelievable.
These are the smartest people in the world, and they get away, whether they're in Chicago or in Washington, of acting out the stupidest ways you can possibly imagine educated people act.
Jose Serrano, a Democrat congressman from New York, has proposed a series about this, a proposed amendment to the Constitution to repeal the 22nd Amendment.
Now, for those of you who voted for Obama, the 22nd Amendment is the amendment which limits the presidency to two terms of four years.
Jose Serrano, not waiting for the inauguration.
They want to eliminate the 22nd Amendment so that Obama could perhaps serve forever.
Okay, let's see here, folks.
The education nominee cannot speak proper grammar.
The Treasury nominee doesn't pay taxes.
The nominee for Secretary of State voted for a war that she opposed.
And by the way, she's out there trying to give Obama some stealth lessons.
Do you remember during the 2004 Kerry Bush campaign, Kerry kept talking about we got to do things smarter?
We have to have a smarter foreign policy.
We have to have a smarter this, smarter that.
Hillary has avoided using Obama's favorite word, bold.
Everything with Obama is going to be bold.
Hillary yesterday at her hearings.
And by the way, by the way, did you see any of the Hillary hearings?
What a love.
Here's the woman with conflict after conflict after conflict.
And 11 of the 12 Republican senator chairs were absent at one time or another.
They didn't press her on anything.
They have laid down, the Republicans have totally laid down.
It's apparent to me that they're not going to do anything of any kind that's critical or whatever until long after the inauguration, until long after things.
And even then, I don't know that they'll do it.
So she's out there saying she's going to have a smart foreign policy, incorporating her words, Kerry's word.
The nominee for Attorney General worked in the pardon office, and he didn't know anything about who was pardoned, supposedly, Eric Holder.
Hope and change.
We've got more scandals here during the transition than most presidencies have in one term.
And now we've got this, Obama's top terrorism and intelligence advisor, John Brennan, heads a firm that was cited in March for breaching sensitive files in the State Department's passport office, according to a State Department Inspector General report released in July.
The security breach, first reported by the Washington Times, then confirmed by the State Department, involved a contract employee at Brennan's firm, the Analysis Corporation, which has earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting services to federal agencies and private companies.
So, during a State Department briefing, March 21, 2008, McCormick confirmed that the contractor had accessed the passport files of presidential candidates Obama, Hillary, and McCain, and that the Inspector General had launched an investigation.
Newsmax said this was basically an attempt to cauterize the Obama file to make sure that whatever was in there was bottled up so that anything damaging didn't get out.
But his intelligence advisor was involved in the security breach.
He's got a political guy over at CIA politicizing that place.
This is going to be fun and hilarious to watch play out, folks.
And we're going to be watching every minute.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh.
Great to have you with us, the EIB network.
By the way, the environmental czar, the global warming czar that Obama has picked is Carol Browner.
She dates back to the first Clinton administration.
She married to Tom Downey, former Congress of New York, huge lefty.
She's a member of the Socialist International.
Now, the Socialist International is a giant group made up of socialist parties from countries around the world.
And she's in charge now of the environment under the Obama administration.
Mrs. Clinton said, we must use what has been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal.
She advocated a mix of diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural strategies.
Well, as though that's never been done before.
That's the definition of smart power.
We've never done anything like this before.
Smart power.
Audio soundbite time.
This is laughable.
I wasn't even here yesterday, and yet the drive-by media still obsessed with me.
Let's go to PMSNBC on hardball.
Chris Matthews talking with Democrat strategerist Steve McMahon and the Republican strategerist Todd Harris.
Now, Matthews said, Todd Harris, so are we going to go back to the two kinds of parties we had in the 60s and 70s where you're going to have two parties which are both partially centrist parties, not left-right, left-party, right party, but center-left and center-right parties.
We're going to go back to that.
On behalf of Republicans, I think that we need to be able to field centrist candidates in centrist districts, conservatives where conservatives can get elected, moderates where moderators are.
And that West.
But as long as people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have the voice that they have in the Republican Party, and they're out there saying we need to be more conservative, we need to stick to our partners.
They're not running, Nita.
No, I know they're not running, but they're pulling the party.
All right, now, what is wrong with this?
This is a teachable moment.
There's so much wrong with this.
First place, the Republican guy.
Well, the premise of the question is, are we going to go back to the 60s and 70s where we had a center-left and a center-right party?
In the first place, this Democrat Party, there's nothing centrist about it.
It is as far-left a party as you and I have ever seen in our lifetimes.
It is a myth that there's anything centrist about it.
As we can tell by looking at how they propose to fix the economy, the assumption that they can is extreme leftist.
Back in the good old days that Matthews cites here, when we had center-left and center-right, that's when the Republicans had a measly 120 seats in the House.
They didn't even go to committee meetings.
They're out playing golf with Democrats.
Bob Michael was the Republican leader at the time from Peoria, Illinois.
And of course, Matthews of the Democrats would love to go back to the point in time where Republicans were irrelevant.
And he's close to getting that now.
But the real flaw in the premise of the question is, or the answer to the question is Steve McMahon.
Rush Limbaugh stops the GOP from moving to the center.
Where do these people get this?
Where is the GOP?
The GOP has abandoned conservatism already.
The GOP is centrist.
All of these pundits, with the exception of Krauthammer, that Obama met with last night, these are the people that suggested.
Well, George Will didn't.
He was notably on fire against McCain.
But most of these other guys that attended this thing last night, McCain was the guy.
That's the kind of candidate we need as a Republican.
We need somebody who's going to go out and look at this group and that group and pander to that group and pander to this group.
We need to go out and get people who are going to pander to the middle class, the Walmart crowd.
You know, looking at people as members of groups is a Democrat game.
It's a liberal game.
We conservatives believe in individual freedom.
We don't look at people as members of groups.
And I'm going to tell you something else, folks, as long when you look at freedom in terms of do groups of people enjoy a measure of freedom, you're not talking about real freedom.
You're talking about grievance.
You're talking about pitting one group against the other.
You're measuring whether this group has an unfair advantage over that group, whether this group's too big or too small, whether this group is too diverse or not diverse enough, whether that group is fair, unfortunate.
That's the liberal Democrat game, and the Republican Party starting to play it.
They've fallen prey to the notion that you win elections by going out and looking at people not as individuals and not seeing freedom as a universal human concept as embodied and proclaimed by our founders.
And that's why we're wandering aimlessly wherever we're wandering-the deserts, the oceans, or what have you.
The Republican Party, Mr. McMahon, wake up and look at your own city of Washington.
The Republican Party has moved to the center.
Nobody was able to stop it.
And this is the strange thing.
I don't know what these guys are complaining about.
They've got the Republican Party right where they want it.
They've got a party that's subservient.
They've got a party that's cowardly.
They have a party that's afraid to be critical of anything at any time if it has to do with Obama.
They have a party which is running around saying, We want Obama to succeed, which is tantamount to saying we want extreme liberalism to succeed.
I want to have a question for Mr. McMahon: You've got the Republican Party right where you want it.
What in the world are you unhappy about?
Now, they're unhappy about something.
And my best guess, ladies and gentlemen, would be that they understand that there are elements in the conservative movement who know the Republican Party's doomed to continual defeat as it is currently populated and structured and positioned.
And they're probably aware that there's going to be a lot of pressure brought to bear to bring the party back around to the party of Reagan when they lost, when the Democrats lost.
They don't ever want the Republican Party asserting itself as a conservative party again because that's when Democrats and liberals lose.
So what they're doing is a preemptive strike.
It's sort of like Fox just announced just now that Hamas, what is it, has agreed to unconditional ceasefire.
Now, how many unconditional ceasefires?
I would say the Republican Party has two.
But what's the difference in Hamas and the Republican Party?
We know that unconditional ceasefires in the Middle East happen when the bad guys are losing, when they're losing big.
When the Israelis are on the verge of wiping out Hamas, here come the rockets from Lebanon, trying to distract, and those are from the Hezbo's, the gazookas in Hamas.
You know, they're making these homemade rockets now and they're firing.
They're in deep trouble.
So, okay, they wave the white flag and they say we have an unconditional ceasefire.
And all that happens during the unconditional ceasefire is that they rearm.
And the Iranian mullahs try to get more armaments and bodies into Gaza for the gazookas to use.
This is common.
It's time-honored.
And yet, the best and brightest among us in the smart power State Department and elsewhere think that they have, and the United Nations, whoa, look at it.
Look at what we've done here.
Look at us.
Why?
We have brokered an unconditional ceasefire.
How many unconditional ceasefires have there been in the past 50 years in Israel's history?
Bin Laden, Bin Laden today, new tape or yesterday, calls for a jihad against Israel.
Excuse me, hasn't there been a jihad against Israel for decades?
And bin Laden calls for a jihad against Israel?
And guess what?
In many sectors of the mainstream media, in many sectors of the liberal intelligentsia in this country, including the media, even after our sworn enemy, Bin Laden, architect of 9-11, comes out and suggests, swears out a jihad on Israel, Israel remains the problem.
In the eyes of many leftists in this country, Israel remains the problem.
Bin Laden inadvertently co-opts a segment of the American left which opposes Israel.
Okay, so we've got a ceasefire.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo.
Unconditional ceasefire.
Not a surrender, unconditional ceasefire.
This means that the gazookas get time to reload if the Israelis accept this.
In the case of the Republicans, we have an unconditional ceasefire, too.
But I don't see any evidence they're trying to reload.
Ha!
Rush Limbaugh meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
You know, Clinton nominees stepped down for far less than what Timothy Geithner did.
I mean, you remember Zoe Beard.
She had a nanny problem.
She hadn't paid taxes.
And Kimba Wood, the judge in New York, she would nominate it for something.
Maybe AG, not sure.
She stepped down because they had ethical problems.
They had not paid taxes.
Geithner not only didn't pay his taxes or the nanny's taxes, he didn't pay his for a while.
But he's too big to fail.
Hard to believe that Bill Clinton could have a more ethical administration than anybody else, including Barack Obama.
Stop and think of that.
I mean, they threw Richardson under the bus inside of five minutes.
But Timothy Geithner, they must save because he's the only guy who can bring us out of our press, the only guy that can run the bailout.
By the way, remember when Joe Biden said it was patriotic to pay taxes?
Does that mean that Timothy Geithner is unpatriotic?
I mean, we need to ask these questions, ladies and gentlemen, because if we don't, who else will?
This is Randy, Billings, Montana, where it has to be freezing.
Hello, sir.
Oh, it's not too cold here yet, but it was very awesome to be talking to you, Rush.
I just wanted to talk about yesterday.
That was messed up because I spent all day listening to your show and hearing about everything that was going to be happening.
And I spent all night just trying to imagine what happened there, what was said, if he was even listening to you.
And I'm a truck driver, so I had to make sure that I was here in time for your show to start because I did not want to miss a minute of it.
And bam.
Let me, see, this is a great example.
I'm both happy and sad you fell for it.
But let me ask you a question.
Seriously, this is, you know, one of the things we do on this program, and the root of the gag, of course, was we illustrate absurdity by being absurd.
I think it's patently absurd that Barack Obama would ever ask for a meeting with me.
It is not absurd that he would ask for a meeting with the guys he asked for a meeting with.
No, no, I think, no, wait, hear me out on this.
Barack Obama is a committed leftist, some would say a socialist.
Now, I have just one question.
Do you think that Barack Obama, the most merciful, the Lord Barack Obama, the Messiah, is actually interested in having his mind changed by people?
No.
All right.
So then, what's the purpose of this dinner last night?
Well, I thought that maybe he might have stepped down off of his throne a little bit to actually listen to what is common.
Why?
Why?
Why do you think I would convene a meeting with liberal bloggers hoping they might enlighten me or change my mind?
And if I did that, what would you think?
You wouldn't.
I don't even have to think about that.
I know.
Of course not.
There's nobody that is a liberal that could change your mind, Rush.
Do you think that Vladimir Lenin, if he could have, would have had a meeting with Ronaldos Magnus, hoping that Reagan could change his mind on communism?
The key word is hope.
So the reason I'm putting the question to you this way is to ask every one of you to consider what the motive was last night.
The way the drive-bys are spinning this is that Obama is open-minded, that Obama is willing to listen to any idea that works, just like he said on Monday.
Well, I've studied Obama's life, and believe me, Obama is committed to what he believes in, and he doesn't change his mind on things.
Now, he might want people to think that he vacillates.
Now, this is all a PR game.
You have to understand the Obama administration is a giant public relations stunt, meaning what we see, what we hear, is supposed to cloud and confuse us when we see what he does.
I would urge everybody to ignore what they say, ignore what the PR press coverage is, and look at what they do.
Now, in that context, Obama gets a meeting, gets a luncheon or dinner rather last night at George Will's house, and he's got Rich Lowry, National Review, Krauthammer, and these other guys.
Now, David Brooks and Bill Kristola, some of the people at the meeting last night, as you and I will know, have been leading the charge that the era of Reagan is dead, that the era of Reagan is over.
Some of the people at that dinner last night have been suggesting that the Republican Party needs to become more like the Democrats.
We need to go out and get the immigration vote, the illegal immigration vote.
We need to look at people as groups.
We need to get the middle-class vote, the Walmart vote, and we got the candidate they wanted that we went down to flames with.
Is it any wonder of all the conservatives that Obama could have reached out to, he's talking to these guys?
The only two people in that group last night that I would say might have held the line would be Krauthammer and George Will.
But who knows?
But here's what I think this was about last night.
And I'll guarantee you, folks, on our side, I will guarantee you there are so many establishment conservatives.
And we refer to them on this program, sometimes not by name, but people who've gone off the beaten.
But the people that think that Reaganism is over, the era of Reagan is over.
And there are a lot of our side in the media inside the Beltway who believe that.
These people are referred to as establishment media.
There's establishment media, which is the drive-bys, and the left pundits and the conservative pundits inside the Beltway, the establishment media.
And then there's the new media, the blogs, talk radio, Fox News, that are not inside the Beltway.
They're the new kids on the block.
They're the ones that don't have any stature in the eyes of the elites.
So is it any wonder who Obama chose to have dinner with?
See, what I think this was about last night is Barack Obama trying to choose who conservative spokesmen and leaders are.
Now, you might be saying, well, Rush, how can he do that?
Well, he's the president-elect, and he's historic, and he has just given these people who dined with him last night an audience.
Now, it was all off the record, but it'll leak out because the people that were there will talk.
It'll leak out in dribbles, and Obama intends it to.
I don't care that it happened.
Don't misunderstand here, folks.
I'm not complaining at all that it happened.
I just don't buy this notion that Obama was generally interested in what these people had to say.
I think the whole point of this was Obama to weave his magic and convince these people of him that he's not what their instincts may have told him.
I think this is, it works the other way around.
I don't think Obama was seeking their ideas.
I think it's just the other way around.
He's seeking to define who conservative spokesmen are in terms of influencing people and so forth.
This is all about the beltway and the establishment media.
And again, I mean, the people, with a couple of exceptions, that met with Obama last night, they've already gone over to the other side by claiming the era of Reaganism is dead.
That means the era of conservatism is dead.
So I don't know what Obama really could have learned from him because he already thinks that.
And I don't think Obama wanted to learn anything.
I think this is all PR smoke and mirrors, that he's interested in ideas that'll work.
He knows what happened in FDR.
He knows what the real game plan here is, and that's the increased power for eternity of the Democrat Party and himself.
Snirdley says it would be brilliant of Obama to ask for some time with me.
He won't do it.
He won't do it, folks.
And there's one reason why Obama will not seek a meeting with me.
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