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Aug. 5, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:33
August 5, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
It's the fastest three hours in media, and we're back at it.
One more to go.
Already Wednesday this week.
You know that?
Hope you're having a good day, folks.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882 if you want to be on this, the Rush Limbaugh program.
And we check emails.
That's lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
And speaking of checking emails, I'm getting a lot of emails.
Hey, Rush, I got it right on that last caller.
Right on, man.
I want to hug and kiss that guy.
Right on.
American people are stupid.
I loved it.
I loved it when he said, turn off American Idol.
Yeah, and turn off all the fishing shows.
Let me address this again in a segment here where I have a little bit more time about that caller.
The key is taking back the Republican Party so that we have a political vehicle to advance the conservative movement.
The American people, by every legitimate study, is more conservative than liberal.
It's like 42% to 21 people who identify themselves, 35% independent.
More people identify themselves as conservative than anything else in this, any number of legitimate studies.
So we have to have a nominee who is conservative, who can speak conservatism, who can inspire and motivate people and make them or arouse their passion.
Somebody who can respond to left-wing arguments, somebody who's confident, somebody who has knowledge.
This is the challenge that we face in future elections.
The American people will be there if we get that candidate.
We put up a candidate like that and we will win.
That's why all the focus on this program and even the Granavan Cesarin interview, I told what the problem the Republican Party is.
That wasn't just a bash Obama interview or bash the Democrats.
The Republican Party is headed up by a bunch of country club blue-blood Rockefeller liberals and moderates that don't want any part of conservatism because they're embarrassed about the abortion issue.
They don't like social issues being part of their party.
If we put up a genuine conservative, we will win.
We're making the case for our case on this radio show every day.
Others on their radio shows and in books.
And we don't have the power right now.
And we haven't had it for some time because the Republican Party's taking a wrong turn.
So it's really kind of a mistake to just lay it all off on the American people's being dumb and stupid.
If you vote for people who claim to be one thing and turn out to be another, it's pretty smart to not vote for them again.
The American people, the conservative voter is not stupid.
The conservative voter is simply not going to vote for a fraud in his own party or her own party.
But if we sit out there, folks, what choice did we have in 2008?
What choice did we have?
A lot of people voted against Obama, not for McCain.
We didn't have anything to vote for.
There was nothing affirmative for us in that election, in that whole campaign.
You've got to have somebody to vote for.
That arouses passions.
So the choice in 2008, we had this smooth talking agent of change and hope speaking platitudes and creating a cult-like following.
And the Republican was somebody whose main selling point was he gets along with Democrats.
He can walk across the aisle, be bipartisan.
Our candidate bought the notion that the American people want the two parties to work together and put aside their differences.
McCain also promised cap and trade.
McCain also promised his own version of health care reform and immigration reform.
Where was the opportunity for conservatives to rise up and get passionate about the election in 2008?
It wasn't there.
And if the Republican Party keeps putting candidates up like that, we're cooked.
Not because the American people are stupid, because the Republican Party seeks not to win.
If we all just say, though, that the end is inevitable, if we just say the American people are stupid and they want all of this, that there is no hope, then we can't build a movement to stop this.
We can't build a movement to take back the Republican Party.
We can't take back the government and begin the process of unraveling this.
If we just say that most of the people are stupid and want this, they don't care because they got American Idol on twice a week in the winter and the spring.
Well, then what's left?
Why even stay engaged?
Why stay involved?
In the end, in the end, if people want this, they'll get it.
I don't believe the people do want this.
The polls show they don't want this.
Obama knows they don't want it.
Pelosi knows they don't want it.
Their entire strategy is based on lying to the people and ramming through their agenda before the working taxpaying people of this country know what hit them.
That's why the speed Obama may well be destroying the Democrat Party.
We will know soon enough.
The Democrat Party represents an ever-shrinking percentage of the population.
The American people are.
And Lord, if I didn't think this, I'd be playing golf somewhere, probably New Zealand.
The American people are, at their core, liberty-loving, competitive, innovative, and independent.
And this is precisely why the Democrat Party, from Pelosi to Reed to Obama to Rahm Emanuel, to the public sector union bosses, have to lie about what they're doing.
They have to lie that they're saving jobs when they're not.
They have to lie that they're giving tax cuts when they haven't.
They have to lie about all the new jobs with cap and trade.
They have to lie about deficits.
They have to lie about what they're actually trying to do with health care.
The reason they have to lie is because the American people do not agree with them and do not want this, and we are seeing evidence of it.
What we have to hope for is that this passion lasts.
The Democrat Party is a very narrow, ideological bunch of radicals.
They are led by people who spend their every waking moment conspiring against the public and lying because that's the only way they can advance.
And so, as I said earlier, we get the latest round of this.
We get attacked the insurance companies, attack the attendees at town hall meetings, make all these wildly irresponsible arguments, promises about government health care.
I could go on.
The conservative movement is going to have to rally and unify and take back the Republican Party.
The conservative movement's also going to have to understand one thing in dealing with Barack Obama and the Democrat Party at large.
You can say this about Clinton, too.
Vladimir Lenin Believed as a totalitarian, as a dictator, as an authoritarian, as a politician, that there was no truth.
That words were just tools.
So the facts never, ever got in the way.
Just had to come up with the right words, the right tools to overcome the things that got in your way.
The conservative movement is going to have to understand that the power of fact, the power of truth alone up against a strategy of deceit and fraud is not enough by itself to overpower it.
While facts are being presented, the truth about the opposition must also be presented.
Facts of policy, facts of ideology.
But whoever runs for office has got to have the guts to stand up and say the Democrat Party is lying to you.
Nancy Pelosi is lying to you.
Or they're not telling you the truth.
And people know this.
It's going to be easier and easier to do because it'll be something that people already agree with.
You won't have to persuade them they're being lied to.
You won't have to persuade people out of work that the economy is improving.
You won't have to persuade people that Obama's lying about that.
But you will have to say it.
Because to the other side, there is no truth.
There are no facts.
We are, as conservatives folks, we are really people who are intellectually applied to our beliefs.
They're emotionally applied, and their emotional objective is to manipulate your emotions.
They don't want to deal with facts.
They don't want to deal with truth.
They want to create their own using words as a tool or as tools.
But we're very intellectually active.
We have to be.
Understanding the American founding, understanding how conservatism works, it's an intellectual application, a daily one.
And even though people say, well, Russia, conservatism is so wonderful, how come the Reagan years didn't teach everybody?
Because every day during the Reagan years and every day since the Reagan years, the Leninists in this country have been lying to you about what happened.
They lie and deceive every day.
They have cronies in the media who repeat the lies, do not report what they're doing.
They simply repeat the lies.
So on the one hand, you've got the life you lived, the experiences you had, versus a deluge of lies about it.
So my father, when I stayed out too late as a teenager, he says, son, you thought you were having fun, but you weren't.
And I said, what the hell does that mean?
Because I just got, I had a great time.
You thought you were having fun, but you weren't.
You thought you did great in the 80s, and you thought you did great in the 90s.
Well, no, they wanted you to think that in the 90s because they were in charge.
Remember, they tried to convince you we were in a recession when unemployment was 4.7% just two years ago.
Hell, just one year ago.
And they try to convince you that we had never lost more soldiers in a war than the 3,000 in Iraq.
Have you noticed, speaking of that, by the way, that there is no discussion in state-controlled media about the debacle taking place in Afghanistan.
Our military leaders, they say we need twice the number of troops.
The Brits are saying our strategy is a mess.
Now, if George W. Bush was still president, that's all we would be hearing to cover up the bad economic news.
Or, let's take it back.
If Bush were president, that's all we'd be hearing about all with lies about how great the economy is.
They'd tell us how bad it is.
We have to send an ex-president over to North Korea to apologize to Kim Jong-il to get a couple of Al Gore journalists out of there.
Hillary Clinton goes out and says, hey, it was a totally private visit.
Now, that's not possible.
You don't have an ex-president decide on his own to hop a plane over to Pyongyang, get off the plane, go meet with the pot-bellied dictator and get the journalists freed.
And Hillary said, well, the only thing she said that was truthful about us, she didn't talk to him while he was there, meaning her husband.
But now you got the Clintons back in the news cycle taking credit for all these wonderful things.
Hillary's over in Kenya kissing Obama's grandfather's grave and talking about whatever corruption she's finding over there.
Just a bunch of total BS.
It's all just a bunch of BS.
There is no truth.
And to the extent that they think you believe in truth, you are the target.
You have to be disabused of that notion.
Quick time out.
We'll be right back.
Allow me now, ladies and gentlemen, to illustrate that which I have been saying today.
President Obama, this is from MSNBC.com, state-controlled media.
President Barack Obama brought his latest prescription for recovery to the Elkhart, Indiana area, economically ravaged northern Indiana, promising Wednesday to unleash prosperity for everybody, not just some.
They lie.
They use words in your comfort zone.
They use words that comprise and make up your experience.
They use words based on your conservative core values.
In the middle of 2 million jobs being lost, of massive debt being run up, of a health care plan that will destroy individual liberty and freedom, this man has the audacity to say to people living in an area where the unemployment rate's about 18%, he promised to unleash prosperity for everybody, not just some.
While he is personally, via his policies, destroying it.
Obama told a gathering of community that the federal government would distribute $2.4 billion in 48 taxpayer grants to create next-generation electric cars and recreational vehicles.
The grants will be divided among 25 states.
That's unleashing prosperity for everybody.
$2.4 billion in grants to create electric cars and RVs.
That's unleashing prosperity for everybody.
If Obama were truthful, what he would say is, my health care plan is going to remove your private insurer.
You will have to join the government plan.
We are going to have counselors for you after you pass a certain age to counsel you on your end of care, which will lead to your end of life.
If he were honest, he would say our stimulus plan will not create any jobs.
Only 4% of it's been spent, and most of it has gone to the states to help them with their deficits.
Our stimulus plan never was about creating jobs.
Our stimulus plan was about stimulating my party.
Obama can't say that.
He has to say, in the midst of destroying the greatest economy in the history of human civilization, that he's going to unleash prosperity for everybody, not just some.
He hasn't the power to unleash prosperity for everybody, not just some.
Prosperity has to be earned.
He cannot grant it.
He cannot promise it.
A couple soundbites from this soiree today.
Here's the first.
The Elkhart area has experienced the second greatest increase in the rate of unemployment in the country, up 10 points in a year.
It's an astonishing statistic.
And there have been times where nearly one in five people in this area have been looking for work.
You've seen factories close and your sons and daughters move away in searches of jobs and opportunity.
So this is more than an economic crisis.
This goes to the heart and soul of a community.
Our ability to recover and to prosper as a nation depends on what happens in communities just like this one.
The battle for America's future will be fought and won in places like Elkhart and Detroit and Goshen and Pittsburgh in cities and towns across the Midwest and across the country that have been the backbone of America.
I don't know where to start.
He's talking to people in a community that have no hope because the backbone of their community is a vehicle he intends to disallow down the road, unnecessarily.
Yeah, they've seen factories close.
They've seen people move away in searches of jobs and opportunity, all during his administration.
And not just during, but because of his administration.
But he promised to unleash prosperity for everybody, not just some.
So words are the tools to make you not believe the actions that are actually happening to you.
Simply using words he knows people want to hear.
Back in a sec.
One more Obama audio soundbite from this afternoon in the Elkhart, Indiana area.
We won't just rescue the economy, but we're going to rebuild it stronger than before.
Now, there are a lot of people out there who are looking to defend the status quo.
There are those who want to seek political advantage.
They want to oppose these efforts.
Some of them caused the problems that we got now in the first place, and then suddenly they're blaming other folks for it.
They don't want to be constructive.
They don't want to be constructive.
They just want to get in the usual political fights back and forth.
And sometimes that's fed by all the cable chatter on the media.
So here's a man who says there are a lot of people out there who are looking to defend the status quo.
Let me tell you who's defending the status quo.
Barack Obama's defending the status quo.
Status quo is a shrinking, contracting economy.
There is no expansion.
There is no rescue.
There is no recovery.
There is no prosperity.
All by design.
Nobody's standing up for this.
None of his political opponents are saying, this is what we want.
He is saying this is what we want.
He is saying this is what we're going to have.
It is Barack Obama, who is a partisan politician from morning until night, 24-7.
Barack Obama's party is running TV ads, impugning decent Americans for showing up and protesting his socialized medicine plan.
Typical argument, straw dog here.
There are people that want this.
People that want this.
We're going to not just rescue the economy, we're going to rebuild it stronger.
Where?
When are you going to start?
Do you even know how to do it?
Do you even want an economy stronger than we've ever had?
It's my contention if he did, he wouldn't be doing what he's doing.
A lot of people out there looking to defend the status quo.
The only people I see defending it are you, Biden, Larry Summers, that idiot Orzag.
Who else went out there, Romer?
The people I see defending this mess is you.
The people defending this mess, Harry Reid.
The people defending this mess, the union bosses.
The people defending this mess are the tort lawyers.
The people defending this mess are its architects.
The people defending this mess are the people who have made it.
Have you heard one Republican stand up and say, this is what we want?
We've got to stop Obama because we want it right now.
There are people who don't want their health care to get worse.
They want to preserve it.
That's why they're showing up in droves.
Peter in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
You're next as we go back to the phones.
Hello, sir.
Hi, Rush.
I just want to make a quick point because I'm talking on the cell phone while I'm driving, which is not a great idea.
Everything you're saying about trying to make the Republican Party a venue or a platform for conservative ideas is absolutely correct as far as it goes.
But it has to go farther, and that is we have to be able to outspend our opponents.
It seems to me that the main reason why Barack Obama won his election was that he was able to spend more than anybody else.
John McCain just couldn't keep up.
Yeah, well, let me tell you something.
In most election cycles, when the Republican Party has a conservative candidate, fundraising is not even a contest.
The Democrats can't compete.
I don't blame.
Again, look, why should conservatives have sent the Republican Party money in that last campaign?
I know I didn't.
Yeah, that's just the point I wanted to make, Rush.
And I think it's got to be out there that there are practical and physical measures we have to take to win this back.
Well, of course, money is the mother's milk politics.
That goes without saying.
But I think the money will be there if somebody shows up to arouse the passions of people.
I mentioned an article earlier in the program, and I want to get to it.
It's from the Politico and the title 2010, Fight for Fickle Kids.
Do you hate your cell phone provider?
So change it.
Is your husband bothering you?
So walk out.
Rabbi got you down, switch religions.
Why not?
These days, it seems like everyone else is throwing off the chains of the past, too.
Thanks to the internet, proliferating consumer choices, and a dramatic shift in American culture, voters and consumers are more impatient and more fickle than ever before.
They are less beholden to old attachments, more willing to make dramatic changes in lifestyle and preferences, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
An emerging group of political practitioners and social scientists is examining the trend and finding that loyalty is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
And when I read this, I'm going to keep going.
It made me, it reminded me once again of the loyalty that you all have for this radio show.
Because that loyalty has not become a thing of the past.
It's something I treasure and appreciate and acknowledge to myself each and every day.
But moving on beyond the theory here that loyalty is becoming, rapidly becoming a thing of the past, the 2010 election cycle may well be dominated by a fight for the fickle kids, the people that loyalty is not very deep and they'll switch on a dime.
Democrat pollster Peter Hart offers up a raft of stats to back up the trend, which is spreading beyond the young to every age group.
He says his polling shows that Americans over 65 are more willing to get a divorce today than ever before.
Even after a near lifetime of being married to the same person, college students are more willing to transfer to a new scroll.
And he said more than 40% of Americans will change their religion at least once in their life, throwing off generations of core beliefs for something new and appealing.
And then he gives some examples of people here and their loyalty that is changing.
And here's the last couple paragraphs.
All of this has dramatic implications for Barack Obama, who may find over time that his legions of followers were easier to gather than they are to keep.
We see Democrats with quite a large lead in party affiliation, said the pollster Hart.
That used to be good for a generation.
Now it's just good for an election cycle.
Loyalty is something that is totally in the past.
By the way, Mr. Hart, again, the generic ballot has the Republicans up seven points over the Democrats.
There are more people that identify themselves as conservatives than liberals and than Independents.
It's been the rule for a while.
If since the Republicans don't produce a candidate, it doesn't matter.
What's this question, Snerdly?
Wait a second.
They can't hear you.
Snerdley wants me to explain why my audience is so loyal to me.
And the answer is because I'm loyal to them.
I do not change.
I am not fickle.
Yes, I can be counted on.
The Republican Party cannot be counted on.
It's a crapshoot with every candidate they put up there.
No matter how much I'm attacked, I don't back down.
I don't change.
I don't run away, and I don't get afraid.
Plus, I'm honest with the audience.
I do not mislead.
I do not tell them things I don't believe just to get ratings.
I don't do any of the phony tricks that media people do.
They're loyal because I'm loyal to them.
I don't disrespect them.
I don't think they're idiots.
I don't think the audience is stupid.
I don't think they're people to be manipulated.
I don't think they're people to be lied to.
So There is no fickleness.
The audience is still growing after 21 years.
Okay, I got to take a brief time out here, folks.
I just noticed the clock.
We'll do that.
Come back in just a second before you know it.
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Homeowners insurance, car insurance, health insurance, we have all that.
A lot of times we hate even buying it because we know and hope we never have to use it.
But when you need it, you're happy.
You have it.
You need to think the same way about the data that's on your computer hard drive because more and more people are putting important, irreplaceable things.
And the problem is that everybody's computer hard drive is going to suffer some damage at some point, or it's going to just totally crash, or somebody's going to steal it, or somebody too talkative on the airplane is going to spill their peanuts and coke in it.
Something is going to happen.
You're going to lose all the pictures.
And if you put relevant, important documents, if you don't have a way to get them back, then you're screwed.
I mean, you've got a big problem.
It's inevitable someday it's going to happen.
It happens to everybody.
But there's a way, my friends, to avoid this torture, and that is Carbonite online backup.
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Be proactive.
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John in Crofton, Maryland.
Great to have you here, sir.
Welcome.
How are you doing, Rush?
Pretty good, sir.
You're always upbeat on everything, even when things are looking dark.
But I just wanted to talk about somebody that works for the Wall Street Journal, is on in the morning on all the drive-in shows.
Name is Patrice Secur.
She was on this morning.
She comes on every half hour, I guess, or every hour.
And she was talking about, hey, look at the Dow, over $9,300.
Wow, you know, isn't everything all rosy all of a sudden?
And the NASDAQ is up, and everything was put on a positive light was put on everything.
However, from 2001 to 2009, when Bush was there, the market could go up 100 points, 200 points in a day, and she wouldn't even mention it.
She mentioned some new iPod that was coming out.
So I always nicknamed her the Tokyo Rose of Wall Street.
But what a change in bragging about the market going up from in the 8s now to 9,000s.
And like everybody is profiting by that.
These same people had stocks and mutual funds in their 401ks and their pension funds and their own private investment and everything lost, you know, anywhere between, well, up to 50, maybe more, 50% in the last 52 weeks, in the last year.
I saw Money magazine, a latest issue.
It was touting U.S. Deal, and it showed its 52-week result.
And it was down 78%.
Now, maybe that's a good buy right now.
But what about somebody that lost 78% and doesn't have any more money to invest in the market?
What we're dealing with here is CNN beat this babe to it.
CNN's been touting the recession is over via the stock market for a couple of weeks now, telling people that their opener 401ks and their prosperity is way up when, as you say, it's still down from what it was.
And by the way, it's down 30 points today on the jobs news.
It's not at 9,300.
It's 9,290 right now, not the split hairs.
But this is just state-controlled media in concert with Rahm Emanuel of the White House.
Hey, economy, stock market's coming back.
We're rescuing the prosperity for everybody.
Yip, yip, yip, yep, yahoo.
Except we got to get this soundbite out of the archives.
It was Axelrod himself, old Mr. Astraturf, who when the market was plunging earlier this year, we don't look at the stock market.
It has no effect on our policy.
No effect at all on the way we're formulating policy.
Obama himself said, stock market, that's just like a daily tracking poll.
You get caught up in daily tracking polls.
It can take you off your gay.
We don't pay attention.
Stock market in terms of how well the economy is.
But stock market, that's Wall Street.
That doesn't think about Main Street.
Now all of a sudden the 180, about which you are totally right.
It's just state-run media propaganda, pure and sense, pure and simple.
Whatever, whatever they can do to tell you that what you see is not real.
It's going to be a tough sell.
I mean, they've demonized everybody on Wall Street.
And now they're pointing to Wall Street success and saying, you got to see that's happening out there.
And it means the economy's coming back.
Your question ought to be, for who?
I want my economy back.
I told you, you told me to hate these Wall Street people.
Now you're citing them as somebody I should follow.
People think the bailouts were going to go to them, not the Wall Street execs and so forth and so on.
That's just why I say eventually in the end, all this is going to come crashing down on these people because the fact of people's economic existence is so powerful now that the words, the tools that they're all using to disabuse you of what you know isn't powerful enough.
John in West Island, New York.
I got about a minute, but I wanted to get to you.
Hello, sir.
Megan Ditto's rush.
Thank you for keeping hope alive for borrowing a phrase from the opposition.
Look, you know, the Democrats have it so easy.
All they do is they get to propose stupid legislation after stupid legislation, billions and billions and billions of dollars.
And as conservatives, you know, all our guys can say is no, that's not your role.
No, it's too much money.
No, you're going to run up to debt.
And that's just not, you know, as sexy as the job the Democrats do.
So if this thing reverses in 2010, you know, will the Republicans have the intestinal fortitude to reverse, you know, talk, cap and trade if it gets passed, you know, so on and so on.
I just got to know.
I got to believe there's some hope out there.
There is, but this is, go back to what I said earlier.
It depends on which GOP wins.
If it's a GOP with conservative policies, conservative foundations, yeah.
And if you people are willing to go in there and rip this stuff apart, it's been done before.
It's been done in 1994 with the Republicans when they won the House.
Yes, it can be done.
Still the United States of America.
And if you want to think that the end is inevitable, then of course nothing will get done.
Got to take a break.
Sit tight.
We'll come back and wrap it up after this.
Let's see.
Do we have time?
Yeah, grab number 33.
Here's David Axelrod from February the 12th of this year.
Well, it can drive a White House.
It may not drive ours.
We try and keep our heads about us and pursue what we think is the appropriate strategy, and that's what we're going to do here.
He was asked the following question.
Would you agree one day drop in the market, one day story can drive the news, drive the White House?
Now, it can drive a White House.
It may not drive ours.
Stock market, track it.
We don't pay much attention to it.
See you tomorrow, folks.
Can't wait.
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