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May 4, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:36
May 4, 2009, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
This sitcom just keeps on coming.
To a half hour ago, Timothy Geithner, well-known tax cheat, announcing the closing of loopholes.
So-called loopholes in American businesses doing business overseas.
Greetings, my friends.
Great to have you here as we kick off a solid three hours of broadcast excellence from me, Rush Limbaugh, here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone number, if you want to join us today, 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
President Obama and Tim Geithner, the tax cheat Treasury Secretary, say they want to close tax loopholes overseas.
Now, this word loophole is a loaded word.
When we talk about tax loopholes, people think, ah, a way for people to cheat.
A loophole is a law.
A tax loophole is a law.
You might say that a special interest or a lobby, like the mortgage interest deduction is a loophole.
The mortgage interest deduction is a loophole.
And someday, the government's going to close that loophole.
Every tax deduction that's in the legal code is a loophole.
Otherwise, the premise, this is so crucial to understand.
The premise is that all money is Washington's.
That's the premise that people like Obama start from.
And then they write tax law and they give deductions for this behavior or that activity or having this many kids or what have you.
But the way they look at it is they're bestowing munificence on you.
Now they've over the years created a bunch of laws that give businesses some exemptions from paying taxes twice.
If you pay taxes in America, even though you're overseas and you pay taxes to the foreign government, you get a little bit of a deduction in the United States.
A loophole, a law.
But these people, it's like Obama running down hedge funds.
He expects people to hate hedge funds as much as the left has been able to convince people to hate other institutions.
Like when he talks about hedge funds on Friday with the Chrysler bailout or bankruptcy and this sort of thing.
So nobody's cheating any here except Tim Geithner and a bunch of appointees to Obama's cabinet.
Businesses aren't cheating, but the use of the word loophole is designed to convey that they are.
So Obama wants to close these tax loopholes overseas, he says.
You mean those companies that already pay foreign income taxes should also pay U.S. taxes.
That's basically what he's saying here.
Foreign companies here are credited for the most part of taxes they pay here.
So Obama would hamper U.S. companies by taxing them twice, taxing them on top of the foreign taxes that they pay in the country where the company exists or the factory or the business enterprise exists.
So the question becomes, how is any of that going to create jobs and improve our economy?
Well, it isn't.
And it's not designed to do that.
It is clear, folks, you watch what's happening right in front of our very eyes.
And the transfer, the redistribution of wealth is well underway.
And they're making no bones about it, making no excuses of it.
They're not even trying to really hide it that much.
As I say, if you just keep in mind, one thing to understand, Obama, what he's doing, is restoring the nation's wealth to its quote-unquote rightful owners.
Let's go back to me on this program on Friday.
I made this prediction.
So here's the money question.
Did the big banks decide out of the goodness of their hearts to go along with Obama and settle for pennies on the dollar?
Or did they do it?
There's three possible reasons.
They did it out of the goodness of their hearts.
They did it because TARP money was sent to them under the table to cover their losses.
We'll never know if that's the case, but it's a good bet.
Maybe they didn't suffer losses.
Maybe the big banks didn't really.
Remember, these guys all voted for Obama.
Public consumption is everybody took a bath.
And that's what makes the deal fair.
Everybody sacrificed except the UAW, Obama's real friends.
The third possibility to explain why the big banks rolled over is they're just scared to death because the Obama administration, Treasury Department, has their future in his hands.
So of the three possibilities, goodness of their hearts, they got secret slush money under the table from TARP, or they're scared to death because the Treasury Department holds a future right in their hands.
I vote option three.
I vote that the big banks rolled over because they're scared to death because wherever I go, I don't care who I interact with.
They're scared to death of this administration.
And now we know, ladies and gentlemen, I was right.
Now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt I was right.
Option number three, they are scared to death.
My buddy Frank Beckman of WJR in Detroit interviewed one of the bankruptcy lawyers for one of the bondholders at Chrysler, one of the clients.
His name is Tom Lauria.
Tom Lauria said, let me tell you, it's no fun standing on this side of the fence opposing the president of the United States.
In fact, let me just say, people have asked me who I represent.
That's a moving target.
I can tell you for sure that I represent one less investor today than I represented yesterday.
One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the Chrysler deal under the threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.
That's how hard it is to stand on this side of the fence.
And Frank Beckman said, was it Perella Weinberg?
Lauria says it was Perella Weinberg.
Now, this happened in Friday, on Friday in Detroit.
It's made the news throughout the weekend.
So here's, now the White House, by the way, is denying all of this, but there's a pattern here, ladies and gentlemen, that sort of gives the lie to the denial.
I mean, this is, you know, we've referred to the situation that's going on in Washington's loan sharking, Obama loan sharking people.
Basically what happened was, as we mentioned last week, the bondholders, the investors at Chrysler were leaned on by Obama and called out personally by the name of hedge funds, and they were selfish and they were holding out for a better deal.
These people were forced to settle for 20 to 30 cents on the dollar while the UAW was made whole in the whole thing.
And the lawyer, Thomas Lauria, now says that his client was threatened with reputation ruination from the White House press corps.
There's no question that there is fear all over this country of this administration.
There's fear in American business.
There's fear in average citizens.
There's fear in every aspect that does business one way or the other with the United States government now.
I mean, the fear that the average American has always had of the IRS has now been transferred to everybody having fear of whatever branch of government they deal with.
In this case, Geithner and Treasury and President Obama.
Now, who is this lawyer, Thomas Lauria?
Thomas Lauria is the head of a bankruptcy group at White and Case, the law firm.
He is a Democrat who contributed $10,000 to the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2008.
So he voted for, he contributed to the very regime that he brought to power that is now wreaking havoc on his clients and threatening them with reputation ruination.
But because he's a Democrat and gave $10,000 to the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, he's got some credibility here, does he not?
He's got a little bit more credibility than the White House spokesman.
What did the White House spokesman say?
There's no evidence.
There's no evidence.
Well, what's Lauria?
Is he lying?
Well, he's a lawyer, Rush.
But he's also a Democrat lawyer and gave big money.
So on Friday, predicted to you exactly what was going to happen, why'd they roll over because they're scared to death.
And here's a lawyer now saying the Obama administration came to us and said, if you don't go along with this deal, we're going to ruin the reputation.
We're going to get the White House Press Corps.
Now, I imagine in the old days, in the old days, if something like this were reported, let's say President Nixon or President Reagan had promised the White House Press Corps was going to destroy an American bank or financial institution.
The press corps, when they heard about that, whether it was true or not, would be outraged.
They would be screaming to high heaven about this.
You tell me, but I haven't heard an equips.
I haven't heard the drive-bys be upset about this.
I frankly think that they could probably be used without them even knowing it.
But I also believe that they could be enlisted for a cause like this with their knowledge at the same time.
So probably flattered.
Oh, Bam wants us.
Our president wants us to help advance his agenda by destroying that hedge fund.
Oh, we'd be happy to.
Why, we'll be happy to do our patriotic duty.
Brief time out here, folks.
As the carpenters sang in 1969, we've only just begun.
It's El Rushbo meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Let's stick with the theme here.
Let's listen to what's being said about President Obama targeting hedge funds last week when he announced the Chrysler bankruptcy.
And he blamed other people for being selfish and some people being selfish and some people not willing to sacrifice.
This whole theme of sacrifice just infuriates me because sacrifice is not what builds greatness.
Sacrifice did not build America.
Shared sacrifice is nothing more than liberals and class envy and the redistribution of wealth.
That's all it is.
But it's one of those magic words.
Fairness is another magic word.
Sacrifice.
Yes, we all must sacrifice.
Why?
What's the self-interest in sacrifice?
What does sacrifice advance?
It doesn't advance anything.
You may be thinking of something else than sacrifice.
If you give up something that you don't need to somebody else who needs it, maybe you can call it sacrifice.
If you give up something you need to somebody who needs it, that's not sacrifice.
You're only setting yourself back.
Anyway, that's a sidetrack I don't mean to get into now, sometime later.
George Stephanopoulos, the roundtable on his show on ABC yesterday morning, they were talking about the White House threatening the hedge funds.
Here's Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal discussing the Chrysler deal.
In the White House, people are sort of likening the president's willingness to use the bankruptcy threat and follow through on it here to Ronald Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers to say that you show toughness, it has an effect on the immediate situation, and it has a ripple effect down the line that it makes people realize you're willing to do tough things.
The hedge funds may be even less popular than the air traffic controllers.
That's almost certainly true.
Well, they laugh about it.
Okay, so Obama can get away with this.
Again, who do they compare him to?
Reagan.
It's amazing how much the left and the Democrats compare themselves to Reagan.
And a lot of people on our side want to forget Reagan.
Jeb Bush is not one of them, by the way.
There's a headline associated with what Jeb Bush said that's miss that's not really Jeb Bush didn't say forget Reagan.
That's what that's the headline gives an erroneous flavor to that.
That's coming up here.
But in the meantime, more unpopular than the airline are the air traffic controllers.
There's a big difference.
The air traffic controllers broke the law.
The air traffic controllers were illegally against the law on strike.
And Reagan gave them a deadline: if you're going to go back to work, you're all canned.
They called his bluff and they got canned.
Now, the people that Thomas Lauria, the lawyer, represents these hedge funds, have not done anything illegal in soliciting investors to bankroll Chrysler debt.
But you see the point?
Here's Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal and the rest of the drive-bys.
Oh, it's cool.
Obama's smart.
He hopped on these hedge funds because he knows they're not popular.
That's why he used the term hedge funds.
Anybody on Wall Street today is not popular.
All you got to do is dump on them, act like you're getting even with them, and you can get away with doing anything in the minds and hearts of the American people.
Let's go back.
Last Thursday, here's Obama making his direct threat to private companies when announcing the Chrysler bankruptcy.
A group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.
They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none.
Some demanded twice the return that other lenders were getting.
I don't stand with them.
I don't stand with those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices.
Who was making sacrifices?
The government wasn't making any sacrifices.
The union didn't make any sacrifices.
The union gets 55% of the company.
Who made sacrifices here?
Maybe some Chrysler management made sacrifices, but the people that got the shaft were private sector investors.
You can never say the government sacrificed.
How can you say any element that has the power to print $10 trillion when it needs it is sacrificing anything?
And we all know one thing: the government never sacrifices, period.
Zilch, zero, not a.
Now, individual government employees may get canned, reassigned, or whatever, but government as an institution never, ever sacrifices.
The private sector did here.
These people were just holding out for a better deal, and that's what bankruptcy is for.
So Obama just loves taking these shots at the private sector.
And this is the comment that caused the lawyer Thomas Lauria to come out and say on WJR Friday in Detroit that the president was threatening his client with reputation ruination if they didn't go along.
On Squawk Books, CNBC this morning, Becky Quick talking to Warren Buffett, and she asked Warren Buffett: there's some talk out there that the bondholders, Chrysler bondholders, should accept this deal that's been pushed down their throats.
Are you sympathetic to that?
The bondholders bought a secured bond.
If I have a first mortgage on my house here and the first mortgage is for half of what the house is worth, and somebody says, I want you to take a big haircut because I've got some credit card debt someplace else, that has problems in terms of future lending.
I mean, if priorities don't mean anything, that's going to disrupt lending practices in the future.
Giving up priorities and lending, abandoning that principle, would have a whole lot of consequences.
A whole lot of bad consequences down the road.
I think it would.
If we want to encourage lending in this country, we don't want to say to somebody who lends and gets a secured position that that secured position doesn't mean anything.
That's right, right.
We just did.
The bondholders at Chrysler and up next General Motors are going to get the shaft the same way the bondholders at Chrysler did.
So here is the second major issue on which Obama's supporter and voter Warren Buffett now distances himself from Obama.
Warren Buffett, they're not thrilled with what Obama's doing to Chrysler's bondholders, not thrilled with anything Obama's doing.
Well, he loves Obama.
He loves Obama.
He's not thrilled with his policies, not thrilled with his economics.
But man, what a great guy.
He really loves Obama.
He's so smart.
He's so eloquent.
He's so elegant.
This is right.
If we want to encourage lending in this country, well, tell you what's going to happen.
The government's become the major lender anyway, if this is not stopped.
I mean, if Obama can push a button, and he said the other thing, that's what he wants to be able to push a button and fix all these problems.
Well, essentially, last week he's pushed a button.
He pushed a button and told these private bondholders, screw you.
You're going to have to settle on 10 to 20 cents on the dollar.
Well, who's going to with this kind of power, the government with this kind of power and intimidating presence?
Who's going to continue standard debt procedures down the road?
Major debt such as this, if the government can come in at any time and tell you what deal you had, screw it.
And of course, here's another thing to remember about sacrifice, and this is the key.
Just ask yourself a question, by the way, and be honest when I ask you this: you ask yourself.
When you hear that somebody's making a sacrifice, aren't you heartwarmed by that?
Doesn't your heart get warmed?
Don't you think we're talking about real compassion with somebody's sacrifices?
Oh, that is so wonderful.
What a sacrifice.
I can't believe the sacrifice that person.
That is so, so touching.
Okay.
The reason I want you to answer the question honestly is because we know how it works.
I mean, it's part of the language game, and it's an indication of just how easy the liberals have it in promoting redistribution, class envy, and so forth.
But when Obama, talking about different parties at a table who have to come to an agreement to make a deal happen, like the Chrysler bankruptcy, when Obama says some were willing to sacrifice and some weren't, what Obama is saying is some refuse to go along with my plan.
That hurts them.
They refuse to sacrifice.
That makes them look like the bad guys.
But in truth, sacrifice, in order to be sacrifice, must be voluntary.
If sacrifice is forced, it ain't sacrifice.
It's authoritarianism, totalitarianism, or what have you in this case.
But one thing, forced sacrifice is, is not sacrifice.
We'll be back.
We'll continue in just a sec.
And we are back at Rush Limbaugh with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
The Washington Times yesterday had the following headline, Jeb Bush, GOP, colon, time to leave Reagan behind.
Former Governor of Florida Governor Jeb Bush said Saturday it's time for the Republican Party to give up its nostalgia for the heyday of the Reagan era and look forward, even if it means stealing the winning strategy deployed by Democrats in the 2008.
What was that strategy?
What?
Oh, he's talking about conservative Democrats, not Obama.
I don't know what Obama's strategy we're supposed to steal and still be who we are.
But a lot of people are going to read this, that headline, time to leave Reagan behind.
I've listened to what Jeb said and I've read what's reported.
I don't think he actually said that.
I just think he's talking about forward thinking rather than wishing for another Ronald Reagan to come along.
We're going to have some audio soundbites of this that we'll get to here in just a second.
Jeb said you can't beat something with nothing.
And the other side has something.
I don't like it, but they have it.
And we have to be respectful and mindful of that.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
This was in Arlington, Virginia, at the National Council for a New America Town Hall meeting.
This is the one being led by McCain and Eric Cantor.
Mitt Romney is on this tour.
And they're calling this a conversation with America.
Here is a portion of what Jeb said.
My reason for being here is that I think ideas have consequences and that we ought to have a thoughtful discussion about those ideas.
And from the conservative side, it's time for us to listen first, to learn a little bit, to upgrade our message a little bit, to not be nostalgic about the past, because, you know, things do ebb and flow, and it's nice to remember the good old days when the good guys, if you're a conservative, were in power.
If you're a liberal, to remember nostalgically when they were in power.
None of that matters right now.
What we need to do is to listen, to learn, and then there will be a new generation of leaders that will lead.
Listen, learn, lead.
Now, this is interesting to me on a number of levels.
One thing that, as you know, and I've said this countless times on this program, I'm weary of the same people who drove us to this point telling us what we have to do now.
I'm not including Jeb in that.
Jeb was not part of the campaign last year.
Leave Jeb out of this for a second.
I'm going to talk about Jeb here in just a second.
But everybody else on his bus tour, for the most part, is responsible for where we are.
We did it their way in 2008.
We did it with the candidate and approach that they thought would work.
Pandering.
We got to listen to the American people.
I maintain that when a politician says we have to listen to the American people and learn, we are pandering.
We're not leading.
You simply listen to what people say they want and then come up with a series of policies that give them what they want.
What if what they want is destructive to the country?
What if what the people want is destructive to your own party?
What if what the people want is something they don't even really understand?
Where is leadership in this equation?
Listen, learn, lead after you've listened.
So did Eisenhower run take a poll of all the troops designed to invade D-Day?
Did he listen to them?
To learn what their concerns were and then come up with the plan?
I mean, this is not how this generally works.
Now, when Jeb says they have something and Democrats have something and we don't, we do have something.
We have conservatism.
Conservatism is timeless.
Conservatism is freedom, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
Conservatism is the nation's founding.
I'll speak for myself.
And I can probably speak for a couple of other people who are on the same page with me.
The nostalgia is not for Ronald Reagan to come back to life.
The nostalgia is not for Ronald Reagan himself to have his campaign study, have people emulate him.
It's not that at all.
And it's not really nostalgia.
Nobody wants to bring the 20s back.
Nobody wants to bring back the roaring 20s, the 30s, the whatever.
Nobody wants to bring that back.
Of course, everybody lives in the present.
I especially live in the present and the future.
What's missing in the Republican Party is what Reagan was, not the cult personality figure, but his beliefs.
What's missing is a candidate that can articulate conservatism, pure and simple.
And so when you have a policy that's listen, learn, and lead, the lead is irrelevant.
It's just, you're not leading people anywhere.
You're pandering to them.
You know, conservatism is all about ideas.
It's not about people.
Conservatism isn't about personalities.
If Jeb wants to run around and say that they've got something and we don't have anything, meaning the Democrats got something, we have to admit it.
If we don't have something, it's the fault of the people that Jeb is meeting with in Arlington, Virginia, not conservatives and not conservatism and not the grassroots.
I have to laugh, Spectre and all these people talking about how far right the party's moving?
It's the exact opposite.
This party has muddled its identity to the point that they have to do this tour to come up with a new brand.
They have to rebrand the Republican.
Why?
Because in many places, you can't distinguish it from the Democrat Party on several key core issues.
So this battle has been joined, and it's going to continue.
Believe me, Jeb may be on the fence on this.
As I read the story, I don't actually see him say the words, leave Reagan behind.
They're saying that when he says this nostalgia, we can't go back to that.
But I'll tell you what, whether Jeb is saying it or not, and we've discussed this countless times on this program, there are people in the quote-unquote conservative movement or in the Republican Party who sure as hell want to leave Reagan behind.
Everything Reagan stood for, the man policies, and everything else.
And it is a battle.
It's an internecine battle that is going to go on in the Republic.
Hell, let me tell you a story.
I didn't have a chance to get into this.
You know, last Tuesday, I went out to Los Angeles to the Milken Institute to participate in that political forum.
And before we went out on stage, they served dinner to all of the speakers and some hangers on in there.
I didn't eat because of the wonderful diet.
I'm now 42 pounds, by the way.
248 pounds total and 42 pounds lost in what, this is 53 days.
It'll be eight weeks Wednesday.
So I wasn't eating, but there were some people in the room.
And apparently the people that have been there have been there all week.
I just flew in for the event and flew home.
And one of the people, doesn't matter who took me aside and said, Rush, I have to tell you about this reception we went to last night here in Beverly Hills.
Oh, really?
Was it fun?
Hell, it was quite telling, Rush.
It was very, very informative.
It was 75% liberal Republicans, 75% very, very wealthy Republicans who said this party has no prayer until it gets rid of the pro-life issue.
There's no prayer.
It isn't going to win a thing.
It's not going to get our money.
And I'm going to tell you, it was not news.
This is history repeating itself.
I have told you how many times.
The same thing happened to me in 1994 at a party one summer out in the Hamptons, where the same kind of people came up to me and jabbed me with a finger in the chest.
So, what are you going to do about the Christians?
Liberal Republicans and Northeastern guys, Republican Party isn't going to go anywhere.
And this conversation happened at dinner, and I said to one of the panel participants, I said, yeah, Ronald Reagan won two landslides.
I don't think he was pro-choice.
And the participants said, well, he wasn't really identified big time as pro-life.
Are you kidding?
You may not have thought so, but the people voting for him did.
It was not something Reagan hid.
It was not something he swept under the rug.
There's just, I do think that the abortion issue is one of the centerpieces that is resulting in this fracture, both in the conservative movement and in the Republican Party, because there just are a lot of liberal Republicans who just don't want the issue to be part for a whole host of reasons.
A, they do think it's a guaranteed loser, which it's not.
Look at public polling data, and you'll see that public polling on abortion on demand is lower than it's ever, well, not ever been lower in the last, than it's been in 10 years.
But beyond all that, it's embarrassment, too.
It's, you know, you go to the Republican convention and you've got the delegation from South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, West Virginia, and now pro-life is out there.
And the Northeastern people just, because they get laughed at and made fun of by their liberal Democrat buddies when they get home and resume the cocktail party circuit.
So that's, you know, social concerns are clearly part of it as well.
But the bottom line here, ladies and gentlemen, conservatism is about ideas.
Leaving Ronald Reagan behind, if somebody says leave Reagan behind, that's it's to miss the point because nobody here wants Reagan again.
Just conservatism is what has been left behind.
And the courage to articulate it, which has many of us mystified because it's the blueprint.
It's the blueprint for landslide victory.
And everybody knows this.
So it's the blueprint, yet why in the Republican Party and the conservative movement are so many people opposed to it.
Abortion.
I guarantee you.
I guarantee you that abortion and whether you be pro-life or pro-choice is one of the unspoken.
It's the elephant in the room.
And everybody's dancing around because nobody wants to say it publicly.
Like they'll come up to me Tuesday night at dinner before the forum and they will say that to me as though it's my responsibility to fix it.
But when we get outstage and actually on the panel, it won't come up.
Nobody will bring it up.
It ain't one dealt with behind the scenes.
It's fast.
Now, I'm not lumping Jeb Bush in here with any of this.
I'm moving on from there.
We've got a couple more sound bites from the Listening to America tour that the Republicans engaged in.
Your phone calls are coming up, but I have to take an obscene profit timeout right now.
Sit tight.
We will be right back.
I have a story here, folks, in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
It's from October, sorry, January 19th of this year, one day before the Messiah was immaculated.
And here's a quote.
I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas over a pretty long chunk of time over the last 10 or 15 years.
In the sense they were challenging conventional wisdom.
He was talking about Ronald Reagan.
Obama himself said Reagan and the Republican Party have been the party of ideas.
He said this a number of times during the campaign.
And they invoke Reagan constantly, the left does, and they use him a lot.
Our side wants to throw him away.
So let me just explain, when you see anybody, I don't care who it is, a headline writer or a Republican, a blogger, I don't care who it is, when somebody says, got to leave Reagan behind, the era of Reagan is over.
However it's said, it is said by Republican politicians who don't believe in conservatism.
Pure and simple.
They don't believe in conservatism.
They believe in something else.
They can't explain what they believe in, but they believe in something else.
So they run around and say, we must listen.
What do we got to do?
We got to listen, learn, and lead.
So they don't know what they believe.
All they know is, and I'm telling you that the elephant in the room is abortion, pro-life, and that just the fact that these people hate that it's a political issue, that is an issue that has defined the Republican Party.
They wish it would go away.
They don't care about it one way or the other.
These people are not conservatives.
When they say Reagan's finished, leave Reagan alone, Reagan era behind, it's over, whatever.
These are people that don't believe in conservatism.
They don't know what they do believe in.
So what they say is we need to reform conservatism.
We need to redefine conservatism.
We need to rebrand it.
No, no, no, no.
It's timeless.
It's timeless.
It's a way people live their lives.
It's the basis on which the country was founded.
Here's more audio soundbites from the National Council for a New America Town Hall meeting.
There was an unidentified guy in the audience, and he had this exchange with Jeb Bush.
Kind of to disagree with what you said, Governor Bush, I really think the past is important.
Isn't it surprising that Barack Obama was elected and he goes around apologizing in every country he goes to when people are spoon-fed years in high school and college of anti-American history?
I mean, quite honestly, I think people learn more from listening to Rush Limbaugh show than they do in high school and college.
The context that I was talking about the past was really candidates running for office that have kind of a nostalgic view of the world.
That's a perilous thing.
And I think to President Obama, candidate Obama's credit, he waged a 2008 campaign that was relevant for people's aspirations, whether you agreed with him or not.
It was not a look back.
It was a look forward.
And so our ideas need to be forward-looking and relevant.
I felt like there was a lot of nostalgia for the good old days in the messaging.
And, you know, it's great, but it doesn't draw people towards your cost.
Who in the world is he talking about?
Where was the nostalgia in our campaign for the good old days?
And where was the old, good old days messaging in our campaign?
Well, I don't think he is talking about McCain.
No.
Something else you have to understand, these people hate Palin, too.
They despise Sarah Palin.
They fear Sarah Palin.
They don't like her either.
She's, according to them, she's embarrassing.
And McCain said, I was there with Ronald Reagan.
But it was a pretender.
McCain didn't pull it off of the conviction.
I mean, no Reagan voter ever understood or ever was made to believe that McCain was, too.
No Reagan voter ever believed McCain was a Reaganite.
I think, and look, there are a couple more soundbites coming up, time constraints here, but a lot of this is aimed at Sarah Palin.
When you strip all the talk, it's a Reagan era is over, and we've got to stop all this nostalgia and stuff.
Clearly, in last year's campaign, the most prominent, articulate voice for standard, run-of-the-mill, good old-fashioned American conservatism was Sarah Palin.
Now, everybody on this Speak to America tour has presidential perspirations.
Mitt Romney's out there.
He wants to be president again.
Jeb may someday.
Eric Cantor, some of the others, McCain, I don't think he does, but you never know.
So this is an early campaign event, 2012 presidential campaign, primary campaign, with everybody there but Sarah Palin.
So if you talk about who looked back in the past, I disagree with Jeb again.
Obama looked back to the past every time he made a speech.
He ripped it to shreds and then promised something brand new, hope and change without any specifics whatsoever.
This need to praise Obama, too, that kind of leaves me a little wanting, but I've got to take a break.
Time is flying here.
You know, the first hour of this program is over, essentially, folks.
Did you know that?
And Jeb, I have to also respectfully, again, disagree about this notion that Obama didn't campaign in the past.
He campaigned as the new FDR.
He campaigned as Abraham Lincoln.
Now, you might say he was just citing personalities, but people had to look back and remember something about those people in order to associate Obama with them.
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