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March 13, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:52
March 13, 2009, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
I have learned how to tweak liberals everywhere.
I can do it instinctively now.
Tweak them in the media, tweak them in the and no reason to be afraid of these people, but why in the world would you be afraid of the deranged?
You know, there's there really is no reason to be afraid of them.
And there's no reason to assume they're the minority, and there's no reason to let them set all the premises and the agendas to which we respond to.
I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here, but everybody asks me, and I'm sure it's been a focal point of your convention.
Well, what do we do as conservatives?
What do we do?
How do we overcome this?
Well, the one thing, and there are many, but one thing that we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas right now.
I talked, I don't want to name any names, it's not the point, but I I talk to people about the Obama budget or the Obama porculus bill, the Obama, whatever the hell next, TARP two, whatever it's gonna be.
And they start talking to me in the terms of process and policy.
You know, and I say, stop it.
We're not this what do you mean?
Who's setting the process?
Who's setting the policy?
They are.
You want tweak it?
You want to know we've given this is philosophy, folks.
This guy, this guy, I forgot to do this guy in the in the in the focus group after Bobby Gendall said, Oh God, I didn't want to hear him talking.
Republicans or Democrats, Republicans are Democrats.
Ladies and gentlemen of the United States of America.
That's exactly what your future is about.
Who wins?
Republicans or Democrats, conservatives versus liberals.
The notion of partisanship, false premise, partisanship, let me define bipartisanship for you first.
Bipartisanship is everybody seems to go orgasmic over the concept of bipartisanship.
Don't worry, I checked with Fox, that word's okay.
They covered the Lewinsky thing, so that's my opinion.
Bipartisanship occurs only after one other result.
And that is victory.
In other words, let's say, as conservatives, liberals demand that we be bipartisan with them in Congress.
What they mean is we check our core principles at the door, come in, let them run the show, and then agree with them.
That's bipartisanship to them.
To us, bipartisanship is them being forced to agree with us after we have politically cleaned their clocks and beaten them.
And that has to be what we're focused on.
Why would any of us in this room who hold the core beliefs we believe?
Somebody tell me where is the compromise on all of this spending?
Where is the compromise on all this punishment of the achievers?
I don't know.
Where is the compromise between good and evil?
Should Jesus have cut a different deal?
Well, no, seriously, I'm from a standpoint of what we have to do, folks.
This is not about taking a policy or a process that the Democrats have put forward and fighting over it about around the edges.
We are gonna if we're if we're gonna convince the minds and hearts of the American people that what's about to happen to them is as disastrous as anything in their lives in peacetime, we're gonna have to discuss philosophy with it.
We are going to have to talk about principle.
Because our principles are not present in what's happening here.
So where the hell do we go to compromise what we believe in when our principles are not their principles are just the opposite of what is happening?
The American people, it's a tough challenge.
I'm I admit, I admit it's a tough challenge, but it's worth it.
It's worth it the way I just define bipartisanship, you can turn it around.
Liberals will stop define bipartisanship when we surrender and say, okay, we give.
We're not quitting.
We are not giving up.
There is countries too important.
We now there are certain realities we don't have the votes in Capitol Hill to stop what's gonna happen.
What we can do is slow it down.
Procedure, parliamentary procedures, slow it down and do the best we can to inform the American people of what's really on the horizon.
I know it's going to be tough.
At some point, I don't think it can happen even right now.
I mean, this is still the honeymoon period, and there's a there's a lot of uh devotion to the Obama administration.
It has nothing to do with intellect or thinking.
Uh it's it's feelings.
It's just gonna take some time for this to play out.
But I I spoke to David Keene uh interviewing for my newsletter.
I asked him about this, and he said they're gonna overreach.
Wouldn't you say they have?
I mean, I they they're gonna overreach at some point.
At some point, people are gonna realize none of this is possible.
You can't have people living in homes they don't pay for.
You can't have people driving cars they don't pay for.
I mean, you can for a while, but after a while the people paying for it are fine, screw this.
We're not putting up with it.
And you're gonna see, and you're already starting to see evidence of this, all these tea parties that are starting to bubble up out there.
Those are great.
Fabulous.
Here's the big question.
And I ask this again in the context of my first address to the nation.
You don't know how I love saying that, how excited I am about this.
This is uh aside from the bastardization of the Constitution that the Obama plans are, that TARP is not constitutional.
Aside from that, where's the evidence that the people authoring all this have ever succeeded in any similar plans before?
There's none.
There is no evidence it works.
So you said, well, then how's he getting it done?
Dumb down public education, dumb down public emotions, and the ongoing this is why I think it's such a waste for a man as gifted as President Obama with the communication spills skills.
Do you know what he can wipe out the Republican Party?
He can wipe out the Republican Party if he would inspire this country to be the best it could be, but we don't have to worry about that because that's not what he wants.
He wants people in fear, angst, and crisis, fearing the worst each and every day, because that clears the decks for President Obama and his pals to come in with the answers, which are abject failures historically shown and demonstrated.
Doesn't matter.
They'll have control of it when it's all over.
And that's what they want because they think they can do it better.
They see these inequalities, these inequities that capitalism produces.
How do they try to fix it?
Do they try to elevate those at the bottom?
No, they try to tear down the people at the top.
It's not fair you're up there.
Say whack yes.
That's not what made the country great.
And no evidence of it is in play here.
John Kerry.
Served, served in Vietnam.
Stop and think of this.
And by the way, Barney Planck got involved in this too.
Northern Trust, a bank in Chicago, by the way, which holds the mortgage to the Messiah's House purchased by Tony Rezco.
Northern Trust holds the mortgage.
Northern Trust was forced, like Wells Fargo was forced to take TARP money.
The Wells Fargo CEO said they were taking it at Paulson's room and they were given a five o'clock sign it, and they weren't getting out until they did.
They wanted it spread all over the banking business.
Northern Trust was in there, they didn't want it, they took 1.6 million.
As you know, they went out, they sponsored the LA Riviera Open two weeks ago that Phil Milk Mickelson barely hung on a one.
And you're like, Phil, and uh we Find out that they hired some liberals to entertain, but it still wasn't good enough.
They hired Cheryl Crow.
They hired the uh the uh Rock Kruner Group Chicago, but they had the audacity.
Northern Trusted to entertain their clients to try to reward their best customers, to try to get new customers.
Banking's in trouble.
Northern Trust is trying to do what they always do, what all businesses do, and that is mine for new clients and reward existing good customers.
Not since they took 1.6 billion, I guess, the haughty John Kerry wrote a piece of legislation said he's getting sick and tired.
Sick and tired of his CEOs using taxpayer money to throw all these lavish parties.
And I'm saying, where do you get yours, Senator?
Our encore presentation of the Rush Limbaugh CPAC speech will continue on the EIB Network.
EIB Network.
Let me ask you a question.
Those of you watching on my first national address.
Take the take take the favorite villain you've got.
Maybe it's John Thane at Merrill Lynch because he used his own money, his company's own money, to redecorate a bathroom and an office for 1.2 million dollars.
By the way, to do that, he had to hire a contractor, they got paid.
He had to hire a designer, had to buy furniture, that's called stimulus.
And he did it.
And all of a sudden, John Thane's thrown out.
John Thane's humiliated, John Thane's in Barrett.
How dare he?
He did this a year before they took TARP money.
And all these congressmen are standing up saying this is not going to happen.
We are not going to watch these people capping executive pay while Obama tries to live like one.
That's what liberals do.
The two sets of rules, one for them, one for everybody else.
If you think that John Thane or the Northern Trust CEO, if you love them getting attacked, ask yourself the next day do you have any more money in your pocket?
Is your life any better because that guy got taken out by some haughty senator from Massachusetts?
And if you ask yourself this, you will realize your life is no better off that the Democrats and Obama are asking you to feel better simply on the basis that they're going to get revenge for you, but your life isn't going to improve.
Somebody else's is just going to be destroyed.
And they want you to be happy over that.
That's sick.
And that is not the United States of America.
Besides, as far as John Kerry's concerned, if it weren't for his varicose veins, it'd be totally colorless.
Now let's talk about the conservative movement, as it were.
We ladies and gentlemen have challenges that are part of a movement that feels it has just suffered a humiliating defeat when it's not humiliating.
This wasn't a landslide victory.
52 to what?
46.
58 million people voted against Obama.
There would have been more if we'd have had a conservative nominee.
But no, no, no, no, no.
I don't mean that.
I mean that.
I mean that in an instructive way, as a lead-in to what I'm talking about here.
No humiliating defeat here.
I can't say sometimes I get livid.
We do have an organizational problem.
We have a challenge.
We've got factions now within our own movement seeking power to dominate it.
And worst of all, to redefine it.
Well, Constitution doesn't need to be redefined, conservative intellectuals.
The Declaration of Independence does not be needed to be redefined, and neither does conservatism.
Conservatism is what it is, and it is forever.
It's not something you can bend and shape and flake and form.
I for the purposes of this occasion, I'm not going to mention any names.
Uh people watching my first address to the nation might be curious what I'm talking about.
They will find out in two courses, trust me on this.
I cringed.
It might have been 2007, late 2007, or something I'm doing 2008.
But a couple of prominent conservative, what beltway establishment media types began to write on the concept That the era of Reagan is over.
And that we needed to adapt our appeal.
Because after all, what's important in politics is winning elections.
And so we have to understand that the American people, they want big government.
We just have to find a way to tell them we're no longer opposed to that.
We will come up with our own version of it that is wiser and smarter, but we've got to go get the Walmart voter.
And we've got to get the Hispanic voter.
And we've got to get the recalcitrant independent women.
And I'm listening to this.
And I am just apoplectic.
The era of Reagan is over.
When the hell do you ever hear a Democrat say the era of FDR is over?
You never hear it.
Not only that, the president of the United States today, alternate days, thinks he's FDR, thinks he's Abraham Lincoln, and sometimes, like Tuesday night thinks he's Ronald Reagan.
We have our own movement has members trying to throw Reagan out while the Democrats know they can't accomplish what they want unless they appeal to Reagan voters.
We have got to stamp this out within this movement because it will tear us apart.
It will guarantee we lose elections.
We have to.
It's not even, it's a no-brainer.
It's not even something to me.
How do you get rid of Reagan from conservative?
The blueprint for landslide conservative victory is right there.
Why in the hell the so-called smartest people in our room want to chuck it?
I ha I know exactly why.
It's because they're embarrassed of some of the people who call themselves conservatives.
These people in New York, Washington cocktail elitists, and they get made fun of when the next NASCAR races on TV and their cocktail party buds come up to him.
Can't believe those people are in your party.
You know, and so it it'd be easy to throw them overboard so as to maintain these cocktail party beltway New York City uh inside the beltway media relationships.
But I tell you, this notion that Reaganism is dead, that conservatism needs to be refined.
Let's take a look at this.
I opened my remarks tonight by telling the people watching on Fox who we conservatives are.
When I look out at you in this audience, I don't see a Walmart voter, and I don't see a black, and I don't see a woman, and I don't see a Hispanic.
I see human beings who happen to be fortunate enough to be the luckiest people on earth.
You are Americans.
I don't make the decision that we've got to figure out policies to get the Walmart voter upst we've got most of them already, is the bottom line.
We conservatism is a universal set of core principles, and you don't check principles at the door.
Uh this is a battle that we're gonna have.
And there's a there are egos involved here too.
There is a uh, you know, when the situation like ours exists, there are people who want to lead it.
They want to redefine it.
Their egos are such that they want to be the next ex, whoever it is.
Uh, and so there will be different factions lining up to um to try to define what conservatism is and beware of those different factions who seek as part of their attempt to redefine conservatism as making sure the liberals like us, making sure the media likes us.
They never will as long as we remain conservatives.
They can't possibly like us.
They are our enemy in a political arena of ideas.
They're our enemy.
They think we need to be defeated.
Why do you think?
For those of you watching at home, my first address to the nation.
I'm sure you paid close enough that you knew that at one time Senator McCain was the favorite Republican of all the cable news networks and the Sunday shows.
And they would just, I mean, their tongues would be on the floor, the media people when they knew that McCain was, and they would treat McCain as the greatest guy in the world.
Did you at home wonder why?
You were told it's because he was moderate.
He was not uh strict, he was not uh he was not an uh authoritarian, was able to walk to the other side of the aisle.
He was able to get along with the enemy, and everybody wants love and bipartisanship.
That's not why they invited Senator McCain.
They invited Senator McCain because he happened to be the loudest at criticizing his own president and his own party, and that's what they want is people from our side who and there will be factions in our movement, folks, who are going to make an effort to say we have to we have to grow.
We can't stay stale, I think I heard the term used the other day.
Nothing stale about freedom.
There's nothing stale about liberty.
There's nothing stale about fighting for it.
Nothing stale whatsoever.
Freedom.
Freedom is the natural yearning of the human spirit as we were endowed by our Creator.
And the United States of America is the place in the world where that yearning flourishes, where freedom is expected because it's part of the way we're created.
I loved it when the Soviet Union went down, the wall went down, and the liberals in our country said, you know, they may not be ready for freedom over there.
Um pressed here for Yeah, see, liberals will gladly tell you who can have freedom and who can't.
And that's what this piece, the pieces of legislation is all about, folks.
Freedom, liberty, economic prosperity are all entwined here.
We're gonna have to, as a conservative movement, understand that our job, after we come to an agreement among ourselves, which shouldn't be hard, but it's gonna be difficult because the people who think they're smarter than everybody else are gonna be out there forging alliances with people that try to make themselves look like the new power brokers, and they will become the spokesman, by the way.
Uh, by the way, explain that to you.
This is a funny story.
Show you how I can hijack a news cycle even by doing nothing.
The Tuesday before the inauguration, President Bush invited me to the Oval Office for lunch.
And it was uh on and off the record, some of the conversations, and he uh he brought out interesting at the end of it, my birthday had been the day before.
He brought out a chocolate birthday cake and microphone and stood beside me with uh Ed Gillespie and sang happy birthday, and the White House photographer taking pictures.
It was just wish my parents were alive.
I just it's it is the my parents wouldn't believe my life.
You know, they came, they came out of Great Depression.
They didn't think this was possible for somebody who did not go to college, and even for people who did, they didn't think this was possible.
Life has changed so much for the better in this country.
That's why I cringe when I see what is in store.
So as I'm flying home from lunch, I'm watching television, and I see that the word has leaked out that Obama is hosting a dinner with conservative media pundits at the home of George Will.
And I said, wonder who these people are.
In the media, one of them's gonna have to leak it.
Sure as heck, one did.
Now, we all know who were there.
They were and let's see.
I don't I can't remember all the names, so I don't want to mention any, but let me tell you what Obama's purpose.
Does anybody really think that Barack Obama had dinner with a bunch of conservatives hoping they would change his mind?
Hell no.
His purpose, and his purpose really wasn't to change theirs.
His purpose was to anoint them as conservative spokesmen.
These are the people that Obama's willing to break bread with.
These these happen that people, some of the people there happen to be the people who think the era of Reagan is over, who believe that conservatism needs to be redefined.
Of course, Obama would try to lure them in.
Well, all of a sudden, I um I land, I get home about five o'clock, and my email is jammed with uh with questions from reporters.
Are you?
Is that why you took the day off today?
Is that why you're not on the air?
Is that why you are you going to dinner with Obama?
By the way, I left out a crucial part of the story.
I had fur this this was uh was this a Monday kit that this I this was Monday.
No, it was a Tuesday.
And I had forgotten to tell my audience I was going to miss the next day.
And I signed off my show saying, I'll see you tomorrow.
And that's the last thing I said.
And I staff reminded me, no, you're not going to be here tomorrow.
Oh, Jesus.
And came up with a plan.
That the guest host the next day would say I was called out of town to Washington at midnight the night before.
So just an innocent little trick on the radio audience.
Everybody picked that up and thinks I'm invited to the Obama.
So those people that were invited to it got less coverage than I did, and I didn't even know about it.
So it was fun.
Conservatives are naturally happy.
We seek happiness, we pursue it.
It's part of who we are.
So what can you do?
Live your life.
I s I swear, folks, you do not know.
In just the everyday life that you live in your neighborhoods, your homes, or the favorite word, this administration, your communities.
Remember the root word there is commune.
Um be happy.
Live your life according to your values, your principles, knowing that you're gonna fail.
I mean, not every do no human being is perfect, you're gonna make mistakes, but live your life.
You never you will you'll be stunned at how many people you may you impress.
Uh don't be afraid to tell children that they're wrong.
They don't know what you do, they simply haven't lived long enough.
It's not their fault, but they're being fed a bunch of garbage in school, and don't be afraid to tell them that they're wrong.
Joe Biden, again, uh ladies and gentlemen, is watching the CBS.
When did you start here?
Thursday?
Yeah.
Uh you might have seen this.
I had the days run together.
It might have been Wednesday, but Biden was on the CBS early show.
And he was asked, they did a the the anchorette.
Sorry, I'm trying to change my ways.
I've been doing women's summit programs so not to offend women.
Uh the anchor.
Maggie Rodriguez when I got some man on a street questions.
And one guy, woman, I think, question for Biden.
What is in the stimulus package for small business?
Well, Biden was clearly stumped because there isn't anything in the stimulus package small business.
So what Biden said, honest to God.
What Biden said was, well, if there's a bridge to your small business, we're going to make sure that bridge stays open so that you can get to your small business and your customers can get honest.
I I kid you not.
Now, of course, the media today is a bunch of hacks, so they're out there as PR agents, they're starting to get a little embarrassed because so then Maggie Rodriguez says, Well, uh, Senator Biden, there's a website that answers all these questions.
Um, what what is the name of the website?
And Biden says, I don't I don't know, and he looks off stage.
Does somebody have the website number?
I realize those of you watching at home during my first address to the nation, you have never heard liberal democrats be made fun of in this way.
Get used to it.
Russia's CPAC speech continues after this on the EIB Network.
EIB Network.
Two other things, and then we'll get out of here contractually over time.
Uh the president's stimulus package, the TARP, the whatever, the budget relies on one thing for its success.
Well, aside from authoritarian government power, it it relies on the complacency of the American people.
It relies on their belief that they can convince the American people that there's such a crisis that the only government, the only entity that can fix it's government, as Obama has said.
So they get complacent and they sit around and and they uh and they wait.
See, this is something liberals will never understand about the United States of America, and it's right under their noses, right in front of their faces.
We are a competitive people.
We strive, enough of us do to be the best.
We strive to win.
We strive to avoid defeat.
Enough of us still do.
Don't believe otherwise.
The liberals have made efforts to shut that aspect of our nature down.
Wherever you live, I am certain that you, when you were a child or your kids today in youth sports, are told not to keep score.
Because the losers, it's just not fair.
It'd be humiliated, especially if one girls' basketball team can defeat another one a hundred and nothing.
Let's let's just and let's let's fire the coach who put that game together.
That's just it's so unfair.
So let's not keep score.
Well, here's the dirty little secret.
The kids are keeping score.
You know they are.
They don't want to lose.
They know what winning and losing is.
They're saying to themselves, well, why go out there and put on the pads and play football or T ball if the objective here is to not keep score?
Why?
So they're keeping score, and they get in a car with mom and dad and they tell mom and dad, yeah, we kicked their butts tonight.
Wait a minute, I thought you weren't keeping score.
Well, they weren't officially, but they keep score.
We are a competitive people.
Adults are doing the same thing.
It didn't take long for people to get fired up when they figured out that they're going to be paying mortgages for people who should never have been lent money in the first place for the bogus excuse of maintaining property values in a neighborhood.
Uh this is something that you know the complacency of the American people is something they're going to rely on, along with their authoritarian efforts to control it, but they will not succeed at this.
Because we're not quitters, we don't acquiesce, we're not going to give up the American dream and watch idly while it is restructured and transformed.
As I say, we want the best happiness for everybody.
Now, about my still to me mysteriously controversial comment that I hope President Obama fails.
I was watching the Super Bowl.
And as you know, I love the Pittsburgh Steelers.
They have this.
So they have they have this miraculous scoring drive that puts them up by four.
Fifteen seconds left, Kurt Warner on the field for the Cardinals, and I sure as heck want you to know I hope he failed.
I did not want the Cardinals to win.
I wanted Warner to make the biggest fool of himself possible.
I wanted a sack.
I wanted anything, I wanted the Steelers to win.
I wanted to win.
I wanted the Cardinals to fail.
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 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 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 a white flag, this war has lost.
This war.
They called General Petraeus a liar before he even testified.
Mrs. Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton.
Said 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 succeed Now let me add a caveat.
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 like doesn'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 thaying.
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.
Russia's CPAC speech continues after this on the EIB Network.
EIB Network I want I want the country to survive as we have known it, as you and I were raised in it, is what I mean.
Now, I have been called, and I can take it.
Look, pioneers take the arrows.
I don't mind what anybody says about me.
Any time ever, it doesn't, I don't have time for it.
I don't give other people the power to offend me, and you shouldn't either, by the wasted time being offended.
So as you leave here, 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 just get in their face and point a finger.
Set up a set of circumstances where the conclusion is 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.
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, if you're still hanging in there.
Um we really not that happy about being a minority, and we're out to change it.
Now I've gone over my allotted time by an hour.
I want to thank all of you so much for everything that you um have meant to me and my family.
Thank you.
In my life.
See, no, well, it's I understand it's mutual, and I I hear people.
You have you have you have made my heart grow so much that it barely fits in my chest cavity here tonight.
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