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March 10, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:07
March 10, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, the Limbo Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
As always, a thrill and delight to be with you.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, Lrushbow at EIB net.com.
By the way, I want to play, I want to play over my head here after Soundbite Number 8, Ed.
I want to answer one question that was asked to me by Susan from Gross Point, Michigan about conservatives who voted for McCain.
And I want to say up front here that this explanation that you are about to hear is one of these that will be ripe for taking out of context by my friends on the right to once again smear my meaning.
Here goes.
I said just before the previous hour concluded.
I don't hold it against any conservative who voted against McCain.
Remember now going into the election last November we had choice.
You vote for Obama, you vote for McCain.
If you vote for McCain, theoretically you stop the mad dash liberalism that we would get with Obama.
However, if if if you vote for McCain, then you can kiss conservatism goodbye as we've always known it, because he wasn't it.
And you say, okay, the way to win elections for the Republican Party is to become like Democrats.
That's the options that we face.
Okay, do we Republicans want to become like Democrats?
Do we want to throw Ronald Reagan overboard?
The era of Reagan's over, and just to win elections, do we do what Democrats do just so we can win?
And I I'm I at Infinnedum I said, what have we gained as a Republican Party or as a conservative movement if we have to have liberals among us as liberals to win, not converted, not Reagan Democrats, not newly convinced conservatives.
we've lost now what people will say here let me interrupt myself and predict something What people will say is that what I just said, well, see, see, Limbaugh is putting his own ideas in front of the country.
Limbaugh is hoping conservatism loses rather than win with a governing coalition or blah blah.
Not at all.
Because you see, ladies and gentlemen, to me, conservatism is America.
Our founding is we conservatives are conservatives because we can trace roots back not just to our great philosophers, but also to our founders.
So I don't begrudge any conservative who voted against McCain because right now we have the opportunity, the greatest that we've had since the 80s, the 70s, with Jim McCarter and Ronald Reagan.
We have the greatest opportunity to contrast American conservatism with American liberalism.
And if we've got leaders, elected leaders who will eventually stand up and proudly proclaim what conservatism is and how it is best for America, then we can reclaim it.
We can reclaim the country as conservatives for the good of the country, for the good of the people.
Because we love people and we want the best for people and we want everyone to succeed.
We do not want wards of the state.
We do not want a nation of victims.
We do not want a nation of people who have no hope.
We don't want a nation of people who are willing to sacrifice their liberty and independence to depend on somebody else or a government for crumbs.
That will not continue a great country, will not give us a great country.
It will not prepare a country that your children and grandchildren will want to live in.
Thank you.
So it's a, you know, for me, it's not a dicey question at all.
It's it's it's it's it's very simple.
I was uh simply, you know, we've got Obama, and we see what he's doing, and we see how fast he's trying to do it, and we have the antidote, which is not Obama light.
It's not Democrat Party light, it is conservatism.
And now with this whole I hope he fails comment.
Voila.
Remember, I said when I first made this back on January 16th, I said, I hope the drive-by media plays this every day, day in and day out.
I hope he fails.
I hope he fails.
They have done it.
They have granted my request.
Because it has opened up the whole question and the debate on just what the role of a president is.
He's not a king.
The president is not the country.
We have checks and balances designed to make sure that a president fails when he should.
You can see it in the founding documents, you can see it in the separation of powers, the division of powers, the Federalist Pers.
If we wanted to conflate the president and the government, then we would have a king.
We don't have a king, but we have a cult going on right now.
But all this is good.
Had McCain won.
I don't know what the congressional differences would be, but uh we we would have a watered down conservatism that would be in no shape to assert itself and still we'd be back where we were largely with Bush in several instances where conservatives had to take a back seat to party loyalty, given all of the assaults that were made against President Bush and so forth.
We'd have cap and trade with Senator McCain.
We'd have national health care.
We would have uh we wouldn't have this giant stimulus porculus bill.
We'd have more campaign finance reform.
We we would have McCain going uh, you know, full bore on global warming and all that according to liberal democrat agenda.
Because we had a man who was eager to cross the aisle and work with the other side.
So my philosophy is here, it is what it is, and we have to make the most of it and realize what an opportunity this is.
And we delay the opportunity every time we water down our beliefs by saying, Well, I don't know, great guy, what a great family.
His policies are disastrous, but oh man, does he look good?
What a great guy!
Have you seen the family?
Oh, the family policies are kind of wrecked for years.
What a great guy, so likable.
And until that approval number comes down, and we can do it, we can drive the approval number down, and that's what they know, and they're scared to death of that happening.
The approval number, symbolism over substance, is what the Obama team is going to use to continue keep him propped up.
Bloomberg News, the wire today, had uh most incredible column by Kevin Hassett.
He's the director of economic policy studies at AEI, the American Enterprise Institute.
He was an advisor to Senator McCain in the 2008 presidential election.
Can I share with you excerpts?
Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the war on poverty.
In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs.
Now that we have seen President Barack Obama's first year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage.
It's no wonder that markets are imploding around us.
Obama is giving us the war on business.
Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a Manchurian candidate to destroy the U.S. economy once elected.
What policies might that leader pursue?
Well, that leader might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one.
Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do would shy away from transactions altogether.
If the secretary were smooth and played rope a dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could Demand action.
Another diabolical idea for a Manchurian candidate to destroy the U.S. economy would be to significantly increase taxes on whatever firms are still standing.
That would require subterfuge since increasing taxes would be too obvious.
Our Manchurian candidate would have plenty of sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off permits.
These steps would create near-term distress.
If our Manchurian candidate leader really wanted to knock the country down for good, he would have to provide insurance against any long-run recovery.
And there are two steps to accomplish that.
One discourage innovation.
One way the economy might finally take off is for some entrepreneur to invent an amazing new product that launches something on the scale of the dot-com boom.
If you want to destroy an economy, you have to persuade those innovators not to even try.
Second, you need to initiate entitlement programs that are difficult to change once enacted.
These programs should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible.
Ideally, the government would have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for these new entitlements.
A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.
Well, let's see how Obama's plan compares with our nightmare scenario.
Treasury Secretary Geitner has been so slow to act that even liberal economist and compensator Paul Krugman is criticizing the administration for dithering.
It's gotten so bad that the in-trade prediction market now has a future on whether Geithner is gone by the end of the year.
It currently puts the chance of that at about 20%.
On the tax increase, Obama's proposed 2010 budget quite ominously signaled that he intends to end or significantly amend the U.S. practice of allowing U.S. multinationals to defer U.S. taxes on income they earn abroad.
Anyway, goes on to describe all of these Obama policies.
And then says, it's clear President Obama wants the best for the country.
That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian candidate.
So here you have an entire column by Kevin Bassett.
It may or Hassid, he may pronounce it Hasset, I don't know.
AEI, American Enterprise Institute, who sets up this brilliant piece, Obama is nothing more or could be a Manchurian candidate.
Programmed by a hypothetical enemy state to destroy the U.S. economy, then lays out how Obama's plans are very much similar to how someone would destroy the U.S. economy and then says, It's clear that President Obama wants the best for our country.
That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian candidate.
Hello, Warren Buffett.
Hello, Barton Biggs.
Hello, Jack Welch.
How do you get from this guy is no different than a Manchurian candidate programmed to destroy the U.S. economy and then say it's clear he wants the best for the economy, but he's legislating like a Manchurian candidate.
It's because approval number is high.
And you just can't say this yet.
You just can't say it.
so Might offend the king or what have you.
Anyway, the point of this, in my estimation, is that uh things are starting to shall we say, trickle up.
Uh the worm, if you will, may be starting to turn more and more people who have known all along the disaster that awaits if Obama succeeds with all this, are starting to, in their own little timid way, try to raise some red flags so the rest of us see.
They just don't have the courage yet to stand all the way up and say it's me raising the red flag.
Some in Congress are doing it on his and this is where, by the way, uh a real chance for success is starting to happen.
There's there's fallout on card check, a budget Democrats, particularly some of these new f uh uh moderate Democrats or conservative Democrats in the House, they got to get reelected here in a year and a half, a year and nine months, and they're starting to get a little concerned here.
Their constituents don't like what's happening.
The Tea Parties are effervescing out there.
Uh you've got senators who are very much concerned with this uh omnibus spending bill.
So it is not sweetness and light, and it's not smooth sailing.
Uh and the drive-bys are doing their best to cover some of that up, but the bloom is starting to come off the rose.
We've got a quick timeout.
We'll take it.
We'll be back and continue here in mere moments.
Ooh.
The uh brothers Aisley.
Fight the power.
We almost could adopt this as our theme song here.
This is fascinating.
Yesterday afternoon, PMS NBC, the New York Times edition.
They've actually got a show over there at PMSNBC called the New York Times edition.
The host of the show, John Harwood, spoke to Jeff Zelony, who is the New York Times reporter who Obama called after the interview on Air Force One to clarify this socialist business.
Now, Harwood, with the obligatory ignorance, so rampant in the drive-by media, says in his question to Zellony.
I think it's obviously a little silly, the charge that Obama's a socialist.
But I I I wonder, Jeff, uh, the fact that Obama wasn't able to laugh it off.
Hey, if it's not a serious charge, Harwood, why wasn't he able to laugh it off?
Anyway, the fact that he wasn't able to laugh it off that he called you back later, does that mean the White House thinks that they're getting hurt by this socialism stuff?
It's clear that the White House is a little sensitive to some of these charges or some of these suggestions that he is a socialist.
He used this as an opportunity to uh lash out to directly at his predecessor and other folks like Rush Limbaugh without using his name directly.
Whoa, Obama with talking to me.
Obama wanted to get to me when he thought, you know what, I better call a New York Times back.
Uh explain that socialism business.
New York Times admitting Obama has me on the brain.
And now let's go back to me, February 16th.
Myself speaking here on my show.
It ain't gonna be long before we go back to Amnesty.
And it isn't gonna be long before we start, you know, doing a number of I'll bet you by this summer Obama comes back for another stimulus package after they do TARP two sometime in March.
Mark my words.
That's the way this is gonna happen.
Remember, FDR didn't spend enough soon enough.
That's what they said.
FDR's mistake we didn't spin enough soon enough.
I predicted a comeback for porculus two.
Last night CNN Anderson Cooper 360.
Anderson spoke with former Clinton advisor David Rodham Gurgen about Obama and the company, the economy, and Cooper said, David, what do you think?
You think he's gonna ultimately have to ask for more?
I think the son of stimulus is on its way.
It's gonna be here sooner than we think.
My bet is we're going to see a second stimulus much sooner than we thought.
Now I could gloat, and uh I could I could go.
But that would be beneath me, my friends, because I, of course, am a man of great humility.
But you might also be saying, gosh, Rush, how do you know these things?
Friends, it's not hard.
I I would I would love to tell you that um it takes a superior intellect and a tireless amount of work and true devotion to be able to be this prophetic and prescient, but it takes none of that.
All it takes is an honest willingness to admit what you know about liberalism.
All it requires is for you to understand what liberalism is.
And the best way to understand what liberalism is is to listen to liberals.
And after you listen to liberals, then study what they've done.
And there are two things above all else, and there are many.
But there are two umbrellas under which all the other things happen tax and spend.
And cut defense.
So you get three umbrellas.
Tax, spend, cut defense.
Everything else happens under those three umbrellas.
It was a no brainer there's going to be a second stimulus.
And now David Rodham Gergen tells us it's so.
Back to the phone.
Oh, oh, you gotta hear this.
Britt Hume.
When was this?
Britt Hume on uh I guess it's last night on the Fox News Channel special report with with the with Brett Bear.
Britt Hume is on there as uh as a as a panelist, and this is what he had to say about David Rodham Gurgen.
CNN's David Gergen, the former Clinton knight, long regarded as the absolute symbol of Washington conventional wisdom.
The absolute symbol of Washington conventional wisdom.
What that means is there's not an original syllable that comes out of the mouth of David Rodham Gergen.
That's one of the most artful cuts.
I don't even know, and I'm I'm not gonna say that that that um uh Mr. Hume was doing that actually because I'm I'm sure Gergen's a friend of his, but that's just one of those things he's the the the absolute symbol of conventional wisdom, conventional wisdom's groupthink.
Now, nothing admirable about conventional wisdom.
I, of course, want nothing to do with conventional wisdom.
I resist the tug of popular sentiment.
Beverly in East Texas.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
East Texas blessings to you, Mr. Limbaugh.
Thank you very much.
From a military mother of two.
I'm wondering, sir, if I might shift your focus from the war on economy to the war that we are also fighting on another front.
Might I do that, sir?
You mean the war that Joe Biden says we're losing?
Yes, sir, and the war in Afghanistan.
That on Saturday our president said we aren't winning, which I would assume our enemies assume that that means we're losing as we now hear more from Iran, North Korea, and all the other bullies that are lining up.
I want to speak on behalf of military families.
We have two children serving.
My husband served in Vietnam, and he also survived under Jimmy Carter, despite five riffs, and the hippies spitting on him.
But but we have a son who serves.
He's he's he's uh been over eight or nine times.
He's home right now in Florida.
We saw him last week celebrate his 30th birthday with him.
He went over right after the election and was there through Christmas.
And um, you know, the military honors is commander in chief, and they're not going to speak a word of dishonor because that's their character, not his.
And what we see happening is we military families are in great despair right now.
And I'm wondering if you can give us some words of encouragement, because we're not through with this war.
Um my son said one day, uh, we're fighting a war while America's at the mall or the movies.
Uh I most definitely can give you words of encouragement.
Well, I would certainly appreciate that.
Uh I'll tell you what my first words of encouragement would be in response to your legitimate concerns.
When you when when the commander in chief and the man in waiting, which in this case is plugs Biden, when they're both out there saying we're losing.
Yes, sir.
You have to wonder what is their motivation?
Is their motivation to inspire the troops?
Is there a motivation to set the stage for our withdrawal?
Because we can't win.
You know, Beverly, it looks to me like the foreign policy of this administration is to make friends with every enemy, or as many as possible, and to spit on our friends.
Yes, sir.
And it's you you have okay, why do this?
Well, I I think some of this is cultural.
I I think some in the Obama administration reject the traditions and institutions that have defined this country's greatness both domestically and in the arena foreign policy, and they've got chips on their shoulders for whatever reason, and they're just gonna, you know, for example.
We've looked at the Palestinians and Hamas and the and Hezbollah, we've looked at too long as the enemy.
We need to change our thinking.
We need to try to make them our friends.
Obama said we need to reach and get this.
If you no folks out to the Taliban, I know what you're getting ready to do.
If you if you want real sophistry, this is scary, incompetent sophistry.
You're exactly right, Beverly.
We need to reach out to moderate members of the Taliban like we did the Shia in Ira.
There are no moderate Taliban.
There are no moderate Al Qaeda.
They are either dead or alive, but they are not moderate.
And we've got a guy who wants to attach U.S. political labels to extreme radical thug terrorist murderers.
It is outrageous.
Yes, there's no such thing as a moderate Taliban.
He acts like he's one American idol, not the presidency.
But this could get my son and daughter ch killed.
And yet, and he'd even let those pictures go on the TV, he says.
We we feel that we have been so abandoned, but we serve because we love this country, Mr. We all know that.
And I this is this is these would be my words of encouragement to you.
I know the U.S. military is beholden to its commander in chief.
Yes, sir.
But the U.S. military um, its mission is victory.
Yes, sir.
And its commanding officers on the ground, as long as they're not handcuffed by mission planning from Washington.
As long as they're not handcuffed by cuts in their budgets and things that they need.
U.S. military can defeat whoever they're pitted against.
Yes, sir.
I agree.
I believe that.
There's no and there's and there's I don't think I don't think there's any doubt that that is the objective of every individual on the ground in Afghanistan.
They can't publicly, and they would never do so, go against the commander-in-chief, but it's if the commander-in-chief's just another obstacle in terms of what he's saying, not his orders, in terms of what he's saying in this kind of thing.
If it if it's a the the look at the U.S. military in both Afghanistan and Iraq, for the first time in many of our lives, underwent and triumphed over one of the most concentrated efforts to demoralize them that has ever been undertaken by their own country.
Yes, sir, by the Democrat Congress.
Yes, sir, you're right.
I called every one of them, too.
I want you to know that.
Wasn't just the Democrat Congress.
It was the Democrat Party.
It was voters, average citizens who vote Democrat, proclaiming victory was impossible.
The war is already lost.
And yet the men and women on the ground in the surge in Iraq prevailed.
They overcame it all.
But it was it was striking for all of us.
And it was hurtful, and it also made our blood boil to see the attempt to demoralize and dispirit members of our military by elements in our own country.
That we had not seen before in such a concentrated way.
There'd been pockets of, you know, Vietnam after a while.
But from the moment this war started, the Democrats sought to use it as a political wedge.
It took us a while to get there in Vietnam after bungling from Washington, the Johnson administration.
Look, this country wouldn't be what it is without families like you.
This country wouldn't be what it is without your your offspring, your children volunteering for this.
And the people of this country are never ever going to forget, I don't care who's running this town, running this country, uh, that's the kind of thing that will cause a backlash because this president has said we need to send more troops over there.
Now, Obama did not specifically say we want to have a meeting with the Taliban.
He said we need to reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, just like we did in Iraq to gang up on Muki's boys.
Mukta al Sadr.
But that that is just, again.
I'll tell you what's what's really frustrating about that.
Is that kind of irresponsible rhetoric, whether he means it or not, if he means it, it's a double bad whammy.
If he's just saying it, as a politician would, because he knows or thinks that most Americans are squishy and would do anything to avoid conflict, and simply say, well, there are moderates in all of our enemies.
They're moderate.
Just reach out.
If he thinks that'll keep his approval numbers up, that could be the reason.
Either way, it is irresponsible and it is incompetent and it is unforgivable to portray the the Taliban or it's the same thing as portraying Al-Qaeda.
Let's find a moderate bin Laden.
It's just it's irresponsible.
At the least, it's irresponsible and incompetent at the best.
Well, there is no best at the worst.
So Beverly, uh, you and your family, you're the backbone of America.
Nobody's gonna forget you.
And they're not gonna forget their duty.
They won't forget their objective.
Brief timeout.
Thank you for the call.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
What is a moderate Taliban, a moderate Taliban, but only saw your head halfway off.
And that's who Obama wants to reach out.
This is not about reaching out to moderate Taliban.
It's about reaching out to squishy Americans.
Obama's trying to marginalize everybody by identifying the squishes in a people that he can roll as moderates and getting them on his side, Republicans, Democrats, and so forth and so on.
And this is just rhetoric, moderate Taliban.
Besides that, Obama's not being honest with you when he says we can reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban like we reached out to the Sunnis.
The Sunni uprising against Muki's boys, Obama refused to credit the United States, either our diplomacy or our military for that.
He was so wedded to the notion of American failure in Iraq.
If I sound angry about it, I am.
He was so wedded to the notion of American failure, he could not see it within himself to credit any aspect of American military strategy or diplomacy for the Sunni uprising.
And now all of a sudden, he wants to replicate that great American policy with his reach out.
The moderate Taliban.
By the way, um just cross the wires.
The five detainees at Club Gitmo, the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, charged with plotting the 9-11 attacks.
Those five detainees have filed a document expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting responsibility for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.
The New York Times says today, to us, these are not accusations.
To us, they are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor.
Well, cool.
Why don't we let them out?
Why don't we release them so they can do it again?
Isn't that our outreach there?
Gotta share this email with you, Rush.
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Just one more reason why I love you, El Rushbo.
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You are going to lose your hard drive.
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Reed in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Hi, and welcome to the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Rush, thank you for your uh production staff bringing uh some of those nuggets of truth that the liberals really never get to hear from Charlie Rose and CNN and Mika Zhezywski.
People like that, they hear the stuff it got.
No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
No, no.
You know, it's it's Mika Brzezinski, not Zozhinski.
I'm sorry, I thought it wasn't.
They're very sensitive about the pronunciation of her name.
And if you can't say it the way it's properly pronounced in Poland, which is Bziozinski, then it's Brzezinski works.
The soundbites last night from Barton Biggs, the ultimate bear of all time when he came out of hibernation on Charlie Rose.
It's priceless.
But the the nugget at the end, Rush, I was wondering if you heard it where he broke down to a 50-50 coin flip.
Charlie Rose asked him how this would work out, and he said it's 50-50.
50 chance it goes good, and 30% chance we're in the doldrums like Japan for nine to twelve years, and twenty percent chance it's catastrophe.
Nice.
But don't worry, Rush.
He followed uh that interview up with David Chu, the new energy secretary who talked about cap and trade and how it was going to help us out.
Cap and trade's a disaster.
Thank you, you know.
I you're welcome.
I did not see the entire interview with Barton Biggs, but that's even better.
Grab Barton Biggs.
I wish what numbers Barton Biggs.
What number we got time is tight.
What's the number?
What's the number of Barton Biggs?
Uh, we're not gonna run out of the Barton Biggs.
Uh Barton Biggs, number three.
Do we have yes, audio soundbite number three, Barton Biggs.
You ready?
Let it rip.
I voted for Obama.
I'm a fan of Obama, but I think that his tax program has really affected the market.
And so I'd like to see him back off from raising the capital gains tax to 20%, the dividend tax to 20%, and send a different signal.
Don't tax the real entrepreneurial long-term investment part of the economy.
The redistribution is part of his social agenda has bothered the market a lot.
And so he ought to step back a little bit from Yeah, I love the guy.
I voted for the guy.
He's gonna destroy us, though.
There's a 20% chance that this plan will lead to catastrophe.
But I love the guy.
Is it wrong for one man to love another man?
Because I voted for Obama and I love Obama Brilliance at 20%.
Oh God help us oh no.
We're gonna do open line Friday on Wednesday tomorrow, since tomorrow is Friday for me.
I'm gonna be off Thursday and Friday.
You can gut it up one day, snerdly.
He hates open line Friday.
It's a screener challenge.
I think it'd be easy.
But we'll see you tomorrow, folks.
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