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March 2, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:07
March 2, 2009, Monday, Hour #3
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Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you here.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800 28282 and the email address L Rushbo at uh at EIBNet.com.
Have you found I can't f Ah, here it is, it's number 11.
Grab uh grab audio soundbite number 11.
I I want to say, folks, at the at the top of this hour, I was not going to talk about Michael Steele.
Uh I have had emails from the drive-by media.
I have had interview requests to be on television shows to talk about Michael Steele and what he said about my speech uh Saturday night he was on CNN, and I was I was going to ignore it, but I so many of you are emailing me uh asking me to respond to this, that I have changed my mind, and I'm going to do so.
Here is what has prompted all of the irritation at Michael Steele, he was uh on the D. L. Hughley show on CNN Saturday night.
And the the other voice that you'll hear of the uh other guest, the rapper Chuck D, they had this exchange about me.
Russ Limbaugh, who is the de facto leader of the Republican Party.
No, it's not.
Well, I tell you what.
I've never heard anybody to the Republican Party.
And you know what?
Then I can appreciate that, but no one will write what will actually uh uh cry down some of the things he says, like when he comes out and says that he wants the president to fail.
I understand he wants liberalism to fail.
How is that any different than what was said about George Bush during his presidency?
Let's put it in the context here.
Rush Limbaugh's an entertainer.
Rush Limbaugh, this whole thing is entertainment.
Yes, it's incendiary.
Yes, it's it's ugly.
Okay, so I am an entertainer, and I have 20 million listeners, 22 million listeners, because of my great song and dance routines here.
Uh yes, said Michael Steele, the chairman of Republican National Committee, I'm in incendiary, and yes, it's ugly.
Michael Steele, you are head of the RNC.
You were not head of the Republican Party.
Tens of millions of conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with the RNC, and right now they want nothing to do with it, and when you call them, asking them for money, they hang up on you.
I hope that changes.
I hope the RNC will get its act together.
I hope the RNC chairman will realize he's not a talking head pundit, that he is supposed to be working on the grassroots and rebuilding it and maybe doing something about our open primary system and fixing it so that Democrats do not nominate our candidates.
It's time, Mr. Steele, for you to go behind the scenes and start doing the work that you were elected to do instead of trying to be some talking head media star, which you're having tough time pulling off.
I I hope you figure out how to run a primary system.
But it seems to me that it's Michael Steele who is off to a shaky start.
My parents taught me when I was growing up that you always stood behind people who defended you.
That you you never abandoned people who stood up for you and who defended you against assault.
Michael Steele was a candidate for the Senate in Maryland.
Michael Steele was on this program.
He got airtime on this program to attempt to refute the lies being told about him by Michael J. Fox in those famous ads way back when that were also run against Jim Talent in Missouri.
I personally took time to defend Michael Steele and to rip the substance of those ads, had him on the show.
I went after Chuck Schumer when Chuck Schumer's former employee stole Michael Steele's private credit record information and released it.
When I went to Washington a couple years ago for a personal appearance for my station there, WMAL, WMAL arranged for a number of dignitaries to meet me backstage.
One of them was Michael Steele, who thanked me very much for coming to his defense.
Something's happened.
Now I'm just an entertainer, and now I'm ugly, and my Program is incendiary.
Michael Steele has been around long enough to know that the liberal media will use him by twisting what I say or by what others say.
He took the bait, he bit down hard on the bait, he launched an attack on me, even though the premise of what was said to him was false.
He took debate and he went for it.
Now, Mr. Steele, if it is your position as the chairman of the Republican National Committee, that you want a left wing Democrat president and a left wing Democrat Congress to succeed in advancing their agenda.
If it's your position that you want President Obama and Speaker Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid to succeed with their massive spending and taxing and nationalization plans, I think you have some explaining to do.
Why are you running the Republican Party?
Why do you claim you lead the Republican Party when you seem obsessed with seeing to it that President Obama succeeds?
I frankly am stunned that the chairman of the Republican National Committee endorses such an agenda.
I have to conclude that he does because he attacks me for wanting it to fail.
This isn't complicated stuff here, folks.
It's difficult to organize the defeat of Obama and the Democrat Congress in 2012.
If we want to.
It really, it's it's it's going to be difficult enough, but on one hand, it shouldn't be difficult at all.
But it's going to be really hard, Mr. Steele, if you, as the chairman of the RNC want Obama to succeed.
Where does the Republican Party go if you, who are supposed to be redesigning our primary system and helping re-establish our grassroots movement, how are we gonna how are we going to retake elective office if you want this agenda of Obama's and Pelosi's and Reed to succeed?
My uh colleagues in Talk Radio can attest to this next point.
We get press release after press release after press release from the Republican National Committee, attacking the Democrat agenda.
They send us points of refutation.
I never use them because I don't need them.
But they send out all these points of refutation about how this part of what Darry a Dingy Harry wants or Pelosi wants or is wrong, is wrong is wrong.
Why are you sending these things out, Mr. Steele?
Why is your office sending out all these talking points to defeat the Democrat agenda in Congress if your position is you want it to succeed?
And I don't understand why you're asking Republicans to donate to the Republican National Committee if their money is going to be spent furthering the agenda of Barack Obama.
If we don't want Obama and Reed and Pelosi to fail, then why does the RNC exist, Mr. Steele?
Why are you even raising money?
What do you want from us?
If I want Obama and Democrats to succeed, I suppose we should be sending the RNC donations.
You know, these people, it's a bizarre discussion to have because there's a news story on this.
On this feud now between me and Michael Steele.
And listen to this.
This is a uh a quote from who is it?
Uh uh RNC spokesman, I Alex Conant or Conant, I'm not sure how he pronounced his last name.
The feud between radio host Rush Limbaugh and Ram Emanuel makes great political theater, but it's a side side show to the important work going on in Washington.
RNC Chairman Michael Steele and elected Republicans have focused on fighting for reform and winning elections.
The Democrat problem is the American people are growing skeptical with massive government spending being pushed by congressional leaders like Pelosi.
Mr. Steele, you sounds like your so your spokesman sounds like the RNC wants them to fail to me.
You're opposing them.
You say the American people are growing weary of it, getting suspicious of it.
But it's not just Pelosi's spending, it's Obama, it's it's Obama's.
Where are your guts?
Why can't you tie Obama to these policies?
They're his.
Where are your guts?
Snurdly, they don't want me doing the dirty work because when I go out there and quote-unquote do the dirty work, they try to cut me off at the knees for doing so.
The point is, when you read that statement from Alex Conant, they're opposed to the Obama agenda too.
They're just too gutless to say so.
And they get frightened when they hear the words, I want Obama to fail.
Oh, no, no, no.
We can't be associated with that.
Yet you're sending out all these talking points designed to help people, explain to other people why the Obama agenda is wrong.
So I think it it's it's bizarre.
They put out statements in press releases damning Obama and Pelosi policies, and they object when somebody like me says he doesn't want them to succeed.
Now, if it's the purpose of the Republican National Committee to urge the success of the Obama and congressional agenda, then stop sending these press releases here.
I don't want them anymore.
I don't stop sending all these quotes and facts and figures to prove how the Obama and Pelosi agenda is full of light.
I don't want to see it anymore because you don't believe it.
Why are you even sending these things out, Mr. Steele?
It's amazing how many Republican politicians contact this show wanting on it.
It's amazing how many Republicans want to come on this show.
It's amazing how many send this show an endless number of press releases.
Their PR flax are constantly sending me press releases and points, Congressman X saying this, special interest group X saying that.
Hoping I will mention it, hoping I will promote their cause.
Why do they work so hard to be on this show?
Why are they so eager to get me to take up their cause?
I'm just an entertainer.
Ugly, incendiary, they say.
We don't discuss current issues or policies or history or economics.
So on the one hand, they they have their PR flags.
I'm not inundating me every day with this group or this congressman's doing that.
And I'm supposed to take it and make this or that Congressman look good or this or that RNC chairman look good.
And then they do what they do.
They chicken out when I happen to articulate exactly what their agenda really is.
They don't have the guts to admit it, and I do, and I'm going further in telling you today, it's not that I want Obama to fail.
That's not it anymore.
The president is presiding over economic failure.
The president is watching it, doing nothing about it.
He's watching unemployment grow.
He's watching the stock market plummet.
He is watching people sign up for unemployment.
The president of the United States is doing nothing to stop the downward spiral of this economy.
He has no economic recovery plan.
The truth is, the President of the United States and Ram Emanuel, who remember said, crisis is too great a thing to waste.
What does that mean?
They want you suffering.
They want you miserable.
They want it worse.
They want you rejecting conservatism.
They want you rejecting capitalism.
They want you turning to them in fear and desperation and angst for an immediate fix to the problem.
They want you thinking you have no ability to fix your own problems.
They have no ability.
They think you have, and they want you to have no ability to take care of yourself.
So as the stock market now approaches minus 2800 since Obama was elected.
The statement today is to speed up the economic recovery, we're going to focus on health care.
Ask yourself how that is going to get you your next job.
One other thing.
Mr. Steele, if you want to lead the Republican Party as you say you do, then you need to run for and win the presidency.
You are chairman of the Republican National Committee.
That's right.
That is your job.
To run the Republican establishment bureaucracy and prove you can defeat Democrats and elect Republicans, to come up with a new primary system that eliminates Democrats participating in ours and choosing our candidates and getting the grassroots revved up again.
This is how you're going to be measured, not by how entertaining or cute you are on talk shows.
By the same token, I'm not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don't want to be.
I would be embarrassed to say that I'm in charge of the Republican Party in a sad sack state that it's in.
If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it's in, I would quit.
I might get out the Harikari knife because I would have presided over a failure that is embarrassing to the Republicans and conservatives who have supported it and invested in it all these years.
I certainly couldn't say I am proud of the Republican Party.
It's I am leading the Republican Party.
Right now, the Republican Party needs to be led.
And it will be.
The next Republican president is going to be the head of the party.
Last time I checked, I don't think Mr. Steele is running.
And finally, Mr. Steele, we do like to entertain people here.
The audience is very spart, sir.
They know the difference between entertainment, and they know the difference between deadly, serious issues that affect their country.
Don't underestimate the intelligence of this audience or Republicans and conservatives generally.
The biggest problem with all of you who live inside the Beltway is you look out over America and you think you see idiocy and unsophisticated people, ignorant people.
And when you're looking at liberal Democrats, largely you're correct.
But your own voters are every bit as informed, involved, engaged, and caring, if not more so than you are.
We don't care, first and foremost, about the success of the Republican Party.
We care about the United States of America and its future.
Because we cherish it and love it, and we know what it is that made it the greatest nation on earth, and we don't hear you articulating that you understand that.
Not you, not just you, Mr. Steele, but hardly anybody else in Washington, D.C. So send those fundraising requests out.
And by the way, when you send those fundraising requests out, Mr. Steele, make sure you say, we want Obama to succeed.
So people understand your compassion.
Republicans and conservatives are sick and tired of being talked down to, they're sick and tired of being lectured to.
And until you show some understanding and respect for who they are, you're gonna have a tough time rebuilding your party back after this.
Hey, pssst folks, just a little secret between us.
Don't tell anybody, all right.
This is just between us.
Don't tell the drive-bys.
The drive-by is were tuning in for that because they've been asking me for quotes on this.
So they're gonna have the way they're going to interpret, and really don't tell anybody this is between us, because I don't want this getting out beyond the show.
The way they are going to interpret what I just did in responding to Michael Steele is, oh wow, this is this is great.
This is great.
Emmanuel's strategy is working great.
The Republican Party and Limbaugh splitting apart.
There's a viewers in fighting, and they were missed the whole point.
And even if there are any drive-bys listening while I tell them the real point, they will reject it because it doesn't fit their template.
What happened starting Saturday, actually when CPAC CPAC started on Thursday, but but it called it what what culminated with my speech on Saturday at CPAC was the reawakening of a huge sleeping giant that is ready to rumble,
and that is American conservatism, which is found in the Democrat Party, it's found among independents, and it's found in the Republican Party.
More Americans live their lives as conservatives than you would believe.
They don't get their paychecks and walk down the street and say, hi, you want some of this?
They'll vote for people, do it for them.
But they're trying to raise their kids.
They're Trying to make money and say money.
They've got morality and values.
Most of them, not all, but most they may not vote that way, but they live that way.
They're awaiting to be awakened, and that awakening has started.
The pressure is on the Republican Party to be poor Democrat Party like.
And too many Republicans in Washington want to make that happen.
Well, just the opposite is going to happen.
The sleeping conservative giant has been awakened here.
It's a beautiful thing.
I think we're going to get the audio.
Um Robert Gibbs, the brightest, most competent press secretary ever, according to the drive-bys, was just asked a question about me wanting Obama to fail, and I've read a transcript of his answer, but I want to hear it.
We'll we'll get the video or the audio of that either today or sometime tomorrow.
But remember, ladies and gentlemen, I today have ratcheted it up.
It's no longer I want Obama to fail.
I mean, that's still operative.
But he is presiding over it.
The failure is happening right now, right in front of our eyes.
The American economy is failing, folks, and he's doing nothing about it because it serves his and Rahmanuel's purposes.
All right, I've got uh I got three more speech sound bites.
Let's get to one and I'll get a couple phone calls and another another bite and then a couple of phone calls.
This notion that I want the president to fail, folks, this shows you a sign of the problem we've got.
That's nothing more than common sense and to not be able to say it.
Why in the world do I want what we just described rampant government growth, indebtedness that has not be wealth that is not even being created yet is being spent?
What is in this?
What possibly is in this that any of us want to succeed?
Did the did the Democrats want the war in Iraq to fail?
Well, they certainly did.
And they not only wanted the war in Iraq to fail, they proclaimed it a failure.
There's dingy Harry Reed, raving the white flag.
This war is lost.
This war.
They called General Petraeus a liar before he even testified.
Mrs. Clinton.
Says she had to suspend, willingly suspend disbelief or whatever to listen to Petraeus.
We're in the process of winning the war.
The last thing they wanted was to win.
They hoped George Bush failed.
So where is it?
What is so strange about being honest and saying I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation.
Why would I want that to see you?
Indeed.
Indeed.
It's like I also told a group.
I'm a Steelers fan.
The Steelers with a miracle two-minute drive to go up by four points.
Last two minutes of the game, 15 seconds left.
Kurt Warner with the ball for the Cardinals near midfield.
I wanted Kurt Warner to fail.
I wanted Kurt.
Why?
How is this ruining it?
I'm pointing out that people root for other people to fail all the time.
This is far more serious than just the Super Bowl winner and loser, except for the gamblers.
This is far more important.
Country is failing in front of your face.
Our economy is failing.
Our jobs are being lost.
A year ago, where was the Dow Jones industrial average of 11,000 thirteenth?
What was it?
Its peak was 13.
We are at 6882.
Down 3,000 since Obama was elected.
And what's the solution?
Oh, healthcare.
That's what we're going to do.
I forgot.
We're going to do health care.
We're going to speed up universal health care.
That will save so much money that will inspire the economy to rebound.
Here's John in Dallas.
Nice to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
What an honor to talk to you, sir.
Thank you very much.
I'll make my points real quick.
Uh, one of the things that I think people um are just so uncomfortable with the way you're communicating, which I completely agree with you, is that during the past election, you know, these guys popped each other up, calling them honorable men and talking about how great they were and how good a friend they are, and then they turned around and called them liars.
And so what is it?
Are they honorable or are they liars?
And you're just coming straight out, and you're telling the truth.
You're calling it like it is.
You know, Obama is a socialist.
We want him to fail because of his policies.
Has nothing to do with him or his family life or whatever.
He's just a socialist.
So call him like a socialist.
Speaking of, you know, this this is a uh another good point.
We throw the word socialist around and we assume that people know what it means.
Would you, there's no right or wrong answer.
I just want to would you tell me what you think socialism is?
Socialism is the government's gonna take care of everything.
That's in a nutshell to me.
Well, but yeah, that's true, but to some people, we have to admit that sounds pretty good right now, because they think the private sector's failed them.
That's what Obama's trying to impress upon them.
There are there are three primary definitions of socialism.
It is a political theory advocating state ownership of industry, and we see it starting to happen to banks, automobile companies.
It is an economic system based on state ownership of capital, meaning money.
The state owns the money.
Now, no money is theirs.
They don't have a dime until they either print it or confiscate it from the people that produce it.
But they're now operating under the procedure that all money is theirs, and you're only going to end up with uh whatever they decide is enough for you.
Now, here are some variations on the definition of socialism.
Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, meaning the government in charge of all food, the government in charge of banks, the government in charge of energy.
And you need to ask yourself, given who government is today, it's majority democrat, you have to look and see, well, when they've run things, uh, have they succeeded?
Is there any evidence to suggest that they know what they're doing?
No.
In fact, they gave us the subprime crisis.
They have given us a permanent underclass of people in poverty in this country.
The Democrat Party has done this.
Another definition, a system of society or group living in which there's no private property.
A system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.
Number three, a stage of society in Marxist theory, transitional between capitalism and communism, and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.
So you think that if uh Obama and his boys get total control, that they're gonna be fair.
Everybody's gonna be the same, and outcomes will be equal.
Wrong.
Their buddies are gonna do fine.
Their buddies won't even have to pay taxes like they don't have to now.
But you're not gonna do so well.
So those are the basic tenets of socialism.
We throw it around, but I don't think a lot of people take it more than government in charge every day.
I mean, government being in charge of things is bad.
All right, there's another soundbite we have here.
It is number 22, Mr. Broadcast Engineer.
My friends, I know.
I know what's going on.
I know it's I know what's going on.
We're in the um we're in the aspects here of uh an historic presidency.
I know that.
But let me be honest again.
I got over the historical aspects of this in November.
President Obama is our president.
President Obama stands for certain things.
I don't care.
He could be a Martian.
He he could be, he he could be from Michigan.
I don't matter to me what his race is.
It doesn't matter.
He's liberal is what matters to me.
And his articulated, his articulated plans scare me.
Now I understand, okay, we can't say we want the president to fail.
Mr. Limbaugh, that's like faying.
This is the voice of the new Castrati, by the way, guys that have lost their guts.
You can't you can't say, Mr. Limbaugh, that you want the president to fail, because that's like saying you want the country to fail.
No, it's the opposite.
I want the country to survive.
I want the country to succeed.
Right alright, right on.
Now, when you listen to that...
Another caveat.
USA!
When you listen to that, and then you turn on your drive-by media later, and you hear them saying, Rush once Obama to fail, you have to ask yourself, how in the world can they get that from what I said?
And they all watched it.
They all watched it.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, imagine that you are me and you have this big speech coming up.
You know, I don't write speeches.
When I sit down and write, this is because I've had so many years of speaking extemporaneously that that's when I am the most creative.
When I wrote my books, I actually dictated them.
When I sit at a keyboard, I my brain freezes.
I get all caught up in the keystrokes, and if I make a mistake, I correct it, I don't wait and just keep going.
And I lose my train of thought.
I never lose my train of thought when speaking.
But I do jot down one or two line items that will inspire perhaps 20 minutes of discussion.
Because all the although the purpose of those lines is just to unlock the brain.
However, for this speech, I did write two paragraphs.
And it's interesting.
I was I was uh getting a little nervous.
I never get nervous for a speech, but I was getting a little nervous.
I'll remember these two paragraphs.
When you put it down there word for word, it's constricting to me.
Because when you put it down word for word, okay, you better say it word for word.
And it's just it was a it was a difficult thing.
So I was playing around with this thing uh Friday night.
That's when I started working on the speech.
Because I always wait till the last minute.
The last bit of news is made before I go out and do a speech.
And as I was preparing this outline, it ended up being three pages of outline stuff.
I was saving it, it was it was a mail document.
I don't use word processing uh for this, I just use a mail doc because I it's my most prominently used uh program.
And there's a where I can save things as a draft.
And I hit the delete button with about the first page and a half done.
Now I had been saving it as a draft as I went along, but the last time I had saved it was before the first page was halfway done.
And it wasn't backed up, the whole thing wasn't backed up, and I had to recreate it from memory in a mood of anger and frustration.
So even I, somebody totally computer literate, I can lose data.
Imagine if this are my whole hard drive.
And people are losing their whole hard drives, and you can you can avoid any of this happening to you, all of your pictures, whatever, Carbonite.com.
I continue to get all these great email testimonials from people.
In fact, one guy sent a note that his 70-year-old dad refused to do it, he didn't believe any of this, thought it was disgonnause his external hard drive, thought it was too complicated, didn't believe it, finally he saw his son using it, and he's now a happy carbonite customer.
Carbonite.com backs up your whole hard drive or whatever portion of it you want.
Every time you're connected to the internet, you don't even see it happening.
Carbonite.com offer code rush.
Here's the parting message, uh, part of the parting message from my speech Saturday at CPAC at the Omnishorum in Washington.
So as you leave here, and as as as you leave here, optimism, confidence, not guilt.
It's not worth it.
There's nothing to be guilty about.
Don't treat people as children.
Respect their intelligence.
Realize that there's a way to persuade people.
Sometimes the worst way to get in their face and point of finger.
Set up a set of circumstances where the conclusion's obvious.
Let them think they came up with the idea themselves.
Then they'll think they're smart that they figured it out.
Who cares how you persuade them?
The fact that they can be persuaded is factually correct.
It's possible.
The main thing to do here, stop thinking that we are a minority.
Stop thinking.
Stop thinking that it is being in the minority that liberates you.
It is your beliefs, it is your core principles, it is your confidence that liberates you.
It is not being in the minority.
We, in fact, for those of you watching my first national address, you're still hanging in there.
Um we really are not that happy about being a minority, and we're out to change it.
Now, before we go to the break, uh, I want to acknowledge the death of Paul Harvey, uh, who died at age 90.
I first met Paul Harvey in Chicago in uh the early 90s when I was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame there, met him and his wife Angel.
And at that induction ceremony, it was when Sally Jesse Raphael hijacked the thing and convinced him to let her introduce me and present me, and she objected to my being uh inducted to the Hall of Fame, and it outraged Paul Harvey.
And uh I I you know I was in awe to be in his presence.
He was exactly as you would expect him to be.
He was totally refined and urbane and dignified, a very serious man, and loved radio.
It was the it was he was one of the probably the best ambassador radio has ever had.
And the following two days following this um incident at the Radio Hall of Fame, Paul Harvey just tore Sally Jesse Raphael to shreds, not by name, and uh did a did a piece on me being the best at what I do.
He was not envious of anybody else in the business, he was supportive of everybody in it, he was not jealous of anybody that was in the business.
He started the year I was born, started his career in 1951, the year I was born.
And he is the large reason why the whole concept of AM radio and talk formats as they exist today is even possible.
Because he was the pioneer, and he took his share of arrows as well.
So rest in peace, Paul Harvey, the greatest ambassador and perhaps performer in the history of radio.
You notice that the uh savings rate is at an all-time high.
Yeah, that's what they say they wanted all these years.
The American savings rate.
People are not saving, they're spending too much.
Now they're upset that the savings rate's so high, they're choking off economic recovery.
Why are people saving their money, President Obama?
Because they fear they might lose it otherwise.
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