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Oct. 19, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
October 19, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
All right, now look, folks, I understand your frustration.
I understand totally your anger.
What I don't understand is why anybody's surprised by this.
I warned you people about this, I think it was the week before last.
Yeah, when I described for you, I had had a conversation with a ranking Republican.
Well, now it's official.
The elites in the GOP want to compromise with the Democrats, and they think that's what you want.
And it's all over the news today.
And this is, you know, here's, you get a bunch of lessons here.
Here's how to blow the greatest election opportunity you've ever had since 1894.
Here's how to blow it two weeks out.
And at the same time, here is how you form a third party, how you create the circumstances a third party would form.
And this is the problem.
The elites inside Washington, I don't care what party, Republican, Democrat, cocktail.
Doesn't matter what party.
It's the elites.
We need to break the back of the elites out there.
They had nothing to do with this grassroots movement that's a Tea Party.
Nothing whatsoever.
They have nothing to do with any victories in this election.
This is going to be very key.
All of these big-time wins that are on tap two weeks from today, the elites will have had nothing to do with it.
The elites have in fact stood in the way.
The elites have decried and pummeled all of the Tea Party people and the candidates that have arisen from this effervescent grassroots movement.
It's the elites in both parties who paved the way for Obama.
It's the elites in both parties who gave us Senator McCain.
The elites in both parties spent like liberals.
They paved the way for McCain.
They paved the way for Pelosi, for Harry Reid, and Obama.
And now they're sitting in Washington hoping to benefit from the results of an election that is in part in response to their malfeasance.
So they're sitting there.
What do you mean, snortly?
People don't know what I'm talking about.
What?
You don't think they know what I'm talking about?
Well, I'll get to it in just a second.
It's very clear.
Here's the headline.
And this is from Political.
Poll finds D.C. elites tapping to Tea Party.
That's one headline.
There is another story here about how the Republican House leaders seek to avoid the mistakes of 1994, claiming that people are going to have to realize that Republicans may have to compromise with Democrats in tackling broader problems.
So these are two stories that are out there today.
As far as I'm at the top of my stack, poll finds D.C. elites tapping the Tea Party, yet they're going to sit there and try to benefit from the victories the Tea Party is going to produce.
And here is Wall Street Journal.
GOP House leaders seek to avoid mistakes of 1994.
Don't want to shut down the government.
Don't want to have the same thing happen that happened in 1995 with the budget battle and Bill Clinton and so forth.
This is how third parties are born.
These morons have no clue how short their lease on life is.
These elites, they really don't.
They have no clue how short their lease on political life is.
They seem to think that the Tea Party is going to end on November 2nd.
They think the Tea Party is over.
And once the elections have taken place, then the elites, the Republican Party as well, are going to now take over and start to manage the victories that have been secured by virtue of the Tea Party.
What will happen is the Specters and the Charlie Christs and so forth will go ahead and they'll officially become Democrats.
Worthwhile Republicans will go to the Tea Party.
And the remaining of these insider people, like David from the David Brooks, the inside the Beltway, so-called conservative intelligentsia, the let's make a deal types who believe that crossing the aisle in compromise and moderates, that's what the American people want, then they think that's what this election will say.
They're going to be all that remains of the Republicans.
They'll go to the Hamptons or wherever, but they're going to be all that remains of the Republicans.
The Republicans could end up being a 10% party if they're not careful here.
They could end up being the third party and they could be the 10%.
Now, let's take these in order.
Andy Barr at Politico.
Washington elites have little faith that Tea Party candidates will be able to bring change.
And they say the grassroots conservatives have been the most negative in spreading their message, according to a new political poll that's released today.
Washingtonians, inside the Beltway types, the elites, the ruling class, whatever you wish to call them, involved in the political or policy process believe overwhelmingly Tea Party candidates will not be able to bring change to Washington.
Only 11% of Washington insiders polled said they thought the Tea Party could bring change compared with 77% who did not.
Now, how many of these same elites, and I put the word here in quotes, because by elite, I don't mean better than anybody.
They think they are.
They think they're smarter by elites, people who have self-appointed themselves to positions of uniqueness and specialness and unattainableness for everybody else.
They're not the best and brightest, except in their minds.
How many of these same elites thought Obama would bring change to Washington or that Nancy Pelosi would drain the swamp?
How many of these people bought Obama and are responsible in part because they bought into Obama for where we are now?
Additionally, back to the politico story, 33% of Washington elites believe that Tea Party candidates have been the most negative during the 2010 campaign.
30% said Democrats have been the most negative.
26% pointed to Republicans.
33% of Washington elites, this includes Democrats as well now.
It's not just Republican elites, believe that Tea Party candidates have been the most negative.
Well, that's outrageous.
It's foolish.
The most negative?
Don't they understand that what propels the country class and the Tea Party is love?
Optimism.
Future of the country can be saved.
It can be secured.
What's negative, what's being construed as negative, is a simple factual recitation of this administration's policies and where they've taken the country.
You cannot sound anything but negative when talking about and analyzing what Obama's done.
You can't sound anything but negative and angry when describing what needs to change.
But what is propelling the change is not negative.
It's optimistic.
It's uplifting, and it is rooted, as I like to say, in love, love of country, love of fellow man, love of community, all of these things.
You won't find this kind of love on the left.
You find contempt and disdain for the entire country, not just the people who live in it.
So this is, folks, I'm telling you, this is a godsend in one way.
I don't know what it was that propelled the political people to start taking this poll.
But if they really want to see, maybe they're trying to depress Tea Party people and ramp down the turnout.
Who knows?
It's going to do just the opposite.
It is going to increase the turnout.
What needs to happen now, you know, I saw Rove on TV this morning got a formula out there that 70% of the seats in play will be won by Republicans.
So he was going from various analysts to analyst Charlie Cook and some of the other inside the beltway types, anywhere from 99 to 193 seats in play.
Rove's theory is that 60, 68 of them, 65 of them will go Republican.
He thinks it's going to be a little bit less than that.
What needs to happen is for it to be more than that.
There aren't any moderates voting in this election.
There aren't any elites voting on the Republican side in this election.
The people voting are the people who make the country work.
The people voting are the country class.
And the greatest statement that could be made is if 100 seats go Republican and then let these elites try to tell us that that means compromise with the Democrats.
That's the second story we'll get to here in just a second.
Even though the 33% of Washington elites believe Tea Party candidates have been the most negative, even though it is obviously not true, as I say, you could make the case that it should be.
Which party has the most to be negative about?
The ruling elite in both parties like things pretty much the way they are because they're in power and they'll have momentary trades of power.
Elite Democrat X and his buddies will run the show for four years.
Elite Republican X or Y will run the show for the next four.
They'll go back and forth and they'll deal with the same lobbyists and the same special interests.
And they will continue to spread the wealth among each other.
These ruling elites are only going to get the message if it's a tsunami.
A hurricane is not going to cut it on election day.
So I know you're angry about it.
I'm seeing my email.
I know you're frustrated, but you shouldn't be surprised.
I have described for you conversations I have had with ranking elites and who think and hope that what you will realize is they really won't have that much power, that they will not control the government, that your expectations of rolling back the Ojam Obama agenda are a little bit too high.
They're not ready to roll up their sleeves and work.
A lot of you were thinking these Republicans have, you know, a 30-day plan, 60-day plan, 90-day plan, what they're going to do every day.
They muscle it up.
And no, it really, beyond the pledge, there is no day-to-day plan of action.
It's almost a wait and see.
Now, you go back and you look at Pelosi and the Democrats who are running throughout 2005 for the 2006 midterm elections.
I want to ask you, did at any point you hear anybody on the Democrat side of things suggest, you know, we're going to need to compromise.
We're going to have a Republican in the White House for two more years, George W. Bush.
We're going to have to, you know, to get what we want, we're going to have to compromise with the Republicans.
Did you hear Pelosi or Hoyer or Chris Van Holland or any Democrat talking about compromising with Bush or compromising with the Republicans when they took over?
No.
You didn't.
All that was on their mind was wiping Republicans out, Bush included.
Why in the world are our inside-the-beltway ruling elites all of a sudden now obsessed with the notion that we must compromise?
And then they have the gall to say that that's what you really want.
You really want compromise on the big things to get things done.
That would be the worst.
Gridlock is an option here that's good.
But compromise with these people?
On what basis?
For what reason?
Within the realm of sanity, where is there room for any compromise with Marxism or socialism or liberalism?
Where is the compromise with evil?
In the context of right and wrong, how do you compromise with wrong?
And it's wrong.
It's been proven wrong worldwide.
It's been proven wrong in just over a year and a half in this country.
Why do you want to compromise with it?
Well, because you want to hold on to your ruling status.
And if you're a ruling class Republican, I guess what you know is that ruling class Democrats head the click.
They run the show.
And your acceptance and admittance and participation in the inside the beltway ruling class is dependent on them liking you.
And that requires you to go ahead and be subservient to them.
If you're a ruling class Republican, if you're a ruling class Republican, you want to be accepted in the big D.C. click, you have to accept the premise that you are forever going to be a member of the minority.
So that's where we are.
Tsunami, two weeks from today.
No compromise.
Compromise with what is destroying the country will only slow the destruction.
And what needs to happen is it needs to be stopped.
And then in time, turned around and reversed.
Quick time out.
Back after this.
Don't go away.
Hey, we're back.
It's a political poll that we are discussing the elites and their attitudes about the Tea Party and the upcoming election.
And here's a little takeaway, a cutout from this poll.
The general public seems less worried that divided government would grind Washington to a halt.
Now, and that is news to these people.
The general public, not the ruling class, not the D.C. elites, also seems less worried that divided government would grind Washington to a halt.
The general public would, in fact, welcome that.
We're not talking government shutdown.
Who in the world is?
Who's out there talking about government shutdown?
Gridlock is not the same as government shutdown.
But I'll tell you, we're getting to the point here where the less government does, the better off we are.
Do we not have enough laws?
Do we not have enough legislation?
Where is it written that a party's success is defined by the legislation it conceives and passes?
Why is that considered energetic?
The general public would, in fact, welcome the change.
It's better than being ground up by the government.
Now, voter turnout, ladies and gentlemen, as you well know, voter turnout in part is being driven by the realization that our presence and voices at town hall meetings and rallies is not seen as a sign of robust, healthy political discourse.
Let's be honest.
Even Republicans on the elite side look at these town halls and while they welcome all the attention, they're secretly, oh my God, a bunch of kooks are showing up here.
These rallies and town halls and all the things that happen in Washington, these giant turnouts of 500,000 people, that's not seen as a positive.
That's not seen as a sign of robust and healthy political discourse.
The people who show up at these town halls and these rallies instead are seen as misunderstanding the role of Washington and how the country operates.
And so we have to be humored.
They have to treat us as though, yeah, we hear you and we understand you.
The message of Obama, Pelosi, Dingy Harry has been shut up and sit down.
We know what's best for you, frightened, fuzzy-thinking rubes.
And many in the Republican Party look at the same message.
And we've gotten a message.
So on November 2nd, it's be our turn to deliver a message.
Message is you're fired, you failed, you greedy, authoritarian, elitist snobs.
You got us in this mess.
We have a leftist ruling class presiding over a center-right country, and the results of their rulings have been an utter disaster, politically, culturally, financially.
It's a disaster.
We are witnessing it.
We're living it.
It is being forced on us.
And there's an unhealthy friction here.
You can't deny that it exists.
In 2010 between the ruling class and the country class, compromise is not the solution here.
Either they end up on our page or we find people who do end up on our page.
Because at the end of the day, there are more of us than there are of them.
And more and more of us are becoming fully engaged in the process of putting public servants in their place.
We've been pummeled.
We have been beaten up by liberalism for far too long.
It's time to strike back.
And the first blow delivered on November 2nd.
We only get this chance once every two years.
This is an opportunity that cannot and will not be wasted.
Compromise?
No, that's not how this gets fixed.
I guess I better intro the show.
I haven't done that yet.
Hi, folks.
Rush Limbaugh here.
This is the EIB network.
Great to have you with us.
And we will get to your phone calls as always.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882.
Email address, LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
The second story, to go along, you don't trust the political story, a bunch of libs.
Story about how the inside the Beltway Republican elites don't really like the Tea Party and so forth.
You think it may be a setup?
Okay.
Well, there's a second story.
Wall Street Journal, Naftani Ben-David is the author.
Republican House leaders seek to avoid mistakes of 1994.
Republicans on the campaign trail are bashing the president and his agenda.
Some are vowing to shut down Washington if they don't get their way.
Behind the scenes, key party members are talking a different game.
I don't know anybody who is talking about shutting down the government.
In fact, if there's any story to be suspicious of, it's this journal story.
The whole story assumes that the premise that the worst thing for the country is the federal government gets shut down again.
That's the premise of this story.
Oh, no, no, no, no, the Tea Party, all these radicals, they might come in and they might redo the shutdown of 1995.
Oh, and that's when Clinton cleaned a newts clock.
I don't hear anybody talking about shutting down the government.
In fact, that's not what most people thought then, and it's not what they think now.
There are a lot worse things than shutting down the government.
You know what one thing is?
One thing worse than shutting down the government is the government continuing on like it is now.
This just can't be sustained.
This is what the people who live and breathe and work every day in this country understand.
And by the way, can I make another observation?
Isn't essentially the government shut down now?
The Democrats did not pass a budget.
We do not have a budget.
The fiscal year began October 1st.
There's no budget.
They didn't want to debate a budget because they didn't want the details of their thinking to further negatively affect the election.
So the government essentially shut down now.
How in the world are we functioning?
By all rights, we shouldn't be.
We don't have any spending authorizations.
But yet, the government goes on.
Why, my friends, how can this be?
I'll tell you who's not thinking clearly.
You know, these people inside the Beltway, the ruling class, they think we aren't thinking clearly.
And we don't have the sophistication to think clearly.
It's the politicians who aren't thinking clearly.
Abraham Lincoln.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.
Well, draw the analogies to today.
What, Snirdly?
What are you freaking out?
he's talking about.
If you don't calm down in there, I'm going to have to suspend you because it's becoming a distraction.
It's not worth it.
All right.
It's not worth it.
Not worth getting all exercised over there.
You know in five seconds whether they got it or not.
You getting frustrated that they are not understanding what I'm saying?
That happens to a lot of people.
But they eventually catch up because this is just plain old common sense.
So here, here's more of the story.
Remember, the premise of this whole thing is that the Wall Street Journal article premise is that the worst thing could happen is the government be shut down.
And again, I don't know anybody who's suggesting it be shut down.
To repeat, isn't it essentially shut down now?
We don't have a budget.
And it's still operating.
A number of House Republicans, including some, who are likely to be in the leadership, are pushing a post-election strategy aimed at securing concrete legislation with the goal of showing they can translate general principles into specific action.
Among the ideas is to bring a series of bills to the floor as often as once a week designed to cut spending in some way.
Longer term, Republican leaders say they recognize they may have to compromise with Democrats in tackling broader problems.
If they recapture the House, Republicans say they are wary of following the example of the class of 1994, which shut down the government in a standoff with Bill Clinton in 1995.
Top top Republicans contend that passing legislation, or at least making a good faith effort to do so, will earn them more credibility with voters than refusing to waver from their principles.
You believe this?
This is what it says.
I'm simply reading to you what the article says.
It is mind-boggling.
Top Republicans contend that passing legislation, or at least making a good faith effort to do so, will earn them more credibility with voters.
Who is it that's leading the revolt against all of this now?
It is these precious independents and moderates that everybody claims so desperately to want.
Every election cycle.
Again, I tell you, folks, the third parties are born.
This is how the Republican Party is going to make of itself a minority third party if it isn't careful.
Now, let's look at this analogy 2010 to 1994.
1994, Americans were not out of work.
Their government wasn't bankrupt.
The health care system was not being dismantled.
Oh, it was being tried.
Clinton was trying to dismantle it, but nobody was in favor of it.
Americans were not flooding town hall meetings.
In fact, in 1994, there were just a couple of people who predicted the election outcome.
Most prominent among them was Robert Novak.
But there weren't very many similarities to 1994 and 2010, and there aren't any.
There was no Tea Party movement back then.
There weren't a whole lot of political protest rallies numbering in the millions.
They had not produced an organic grassroots movement like the Tea Party that could, if double-crossed, create a conservative political party, would bring an abrupt end to the GOP.
That was not possible in 1994.
The lessons of 1994 may not be the lessons of today.
In 2010, today, the Tea Party's goal is to convince politicians to represent the people of the country and not the ruling class.
If the results, if that results in conservatives dominating the Republican Party and representing the people they serve in the Republican Party will stay intact, which has long been the expressed objective here for conservatism and conservatives to simply wrest back control of the Republican Party from the moderates, the country club blueblutters, the ruling class elites in our party.
The mistake of 2010 would be Republicans winning a majority in the House and Senate and then compromising.
When do the Democrats ever talk of compromise?
If the American people want compromise, where the hell is it taking place?
The Democrats never talk of compromise.
Compromise and bipartisanship are code words for abandoning your fiscal and social values.
And that's why Republicans lost in 2004 and 2008, because they were seen to have lost their social and fiscal values.
Most of the voters in 1994, while they were informed, They were not nearly as informed in 1994 as they are today.
The technology simply wasn't as widespread and advanced as it is today.
For the most part, the internet existed, but not in its current form.
Fox News had not started until 1997 or six, I forget which.
Basically, in 1994, it was this program, and there were a smattering of other conservative radio talk shows kicking up.
In 1988, when this program started, this was it.
In 1988, and I know that sounds like Jurassic Park to some of you was 22, 23 years ago.
1988, there was only one cable news channel, CNN, and it ruled the roost on cable.
You had ABC, NBC, CBS, they dominated.
CNN was an upstart.
People watched it during breaking news emergencies.
As far as anything conservative in national media, it was this show.
That was it, nationally.
By 1994, there had been some new startups in the so-called new media, but the blogs weren't there yet.
All these websites weren't there yet.
Dead Tree magazines still ruled the roost.
There were some budding young conservative radio talk shows, but nothing like exists today.
1988 gave birth to a transition the historians down the line will correctly and properly recognize as a tsunami.
So these comparisons, these elite Republicans, what is this?
Comparing 2010 to 1994 and fearing a government shutdown?
There's another.
There is not a Newt Gingrich in the mix right now and there's not a tom Delay in them.
Nothing against them, but they're not in the mix here.
You've got an entirely different group of people.
You had the American Spectator, you had the National Review.
Uh, that was in 1994.
The Drudge report was there, but it was an email delivered thing was not a website.
The Drudge report came in form of an email.
In fact, you know, the Drudge Report knew that I was going to decide to quit my television show.
Before I did, I mean, I knew in my mind I was going to not gonna renew for a whole bunch of reasons and i'd mentioned it to a couple of people.
And I got an email from the Drudge Report and it was there and I didn't even know who the Drudge Report was.
Now there's nobody to demonize, not one single person to demonize in 2010, as there was in 1994.
That person was Gingrich.
evidence of this is that they've been trying to demonize all kinds of people me Boehner Eric Cantor you name it The mistake of 2010 would be Republicans winning a majority after this uprising from the Tea Party from the grassroots and suggesting that what's indicated is compromise with the Democrats
Any Republican who puts working with Democrats ahead of working for the American people is going to suffer the same fate as today's blue dog Democrats become an extinct species.
I mean, if the Democrats are so interested in compromise, how come they're letting their blue dogs go over the cliff and die in the political sense?
We're the Democrats compromising with anybody anyway.
Haven't we been this route?
Haven't we been down the McCain route?
The ruling class gave us what we have now.
Both parties, ruling class elites, gave us the Colin Powells, the models of decorum, the very essence of what a Republican should be.
You want to know how to screw up the 2010 elections?
This.
Stories like this throw cold water on the enthusiasm of voters who've spent the past two years putting their faith in non-Democrats.
Voter turnout for Republicans is at record levels because there is a hope that Republican politicians received a Tea Party message.
We demand that government spending be slashed across-the-board tax cuts, Obamacare repealed, the private sector unleashed, federalism restored, the borders restored, Washington defanged and defunded.
That's the agenda.
That is what's given rise to this grassroots movement called the Tea Party, which is not a party, it's a force.
So now two weeks out, we get two stories, one in the Politico and one in the Wall Street Journal, and both of them have as their, I think, express intention to throw exactly that cold water on all of you.
To suppress your turnout.
Do not fall for this.
Let it work the other way.
Let it backfire.
Let this result in 100 Democrats losing their jobs.
Ladies and gentlemen, there actually is a third story now.
Foxnews.com, some Republican House leaders push compromise.
Republicans on the campaign trailer bashing the president and his agenda.
Some are vowing to shut down Washington if they don't get their way.
Behind the scenes.
Wait a minute.
This sounds like Fox News is simply reprinting the Wall Street Journal piece.
Starts the exact same way.
Anyway, a lot of people, I read the email, rush, rush.
You have to wonder if these compromise stories are plants in a liberal media.
The journal is, of course, on the news pages pretty leftward, changing a bit under Murdoch, but not the editorial page yet.
The Fox story is the Wall Street Journal reprinted.
They don't say that.
So there's only two stories out.
But the Fox News slash Wall Street Journal piece says Republican House leaders are pushing compromise.
Now, I'm looking for quote marks here, and I don't see any.
Daryl Issa is quoted.
It's pretty clear the American people expect us to use the existing gridlock to create compromise and advance their agenda.
They want us to come together with the administration after we agree to disagree.
So there is a Republican.
Now, it's interesting.
Here is Isa or Issa.
I'm not sure how he pronounces it.
I go back and forth on it.
There's two S's in it.
Everybody's looking to him to lead the investigations into the Obama regime.
Everybody's looking to him as the point man for throwing these subpoenas out.
And it's ISA here talking about compromise.
Pretty clear the American people expect us to use the existing gridlock to create compromise and advance their agenda.
How does that work?
How does compromising with the Democrats advance our agenda?
That's what he means with their agenda, not the Democrats.
He means the American people.
He said the American people want us to come together with the administration after we agree to disagree.
How do you do that?
What does this even mean?
Come together with the administration after we agree to disagree.
It's typical inside the beltway elitist double talk.
This is not at all what people expect the result to be of this massive turnout and overwhelming electoral victory.
No compromise with Obama.
It's simply stop him.
Nothing more complicated than that.
But I warned you week before last, I've talked to a number of ranking Republicans, and they say, Rush, you got to tell them we're not going to have that much control.
We're not going to have that kind of power.
We'll be back.
I'm going to get to your phone calls in the next hour.
I promise the lesson of 1994 is not a government shutdown.
I know and I've told you what the lesson of 1994 is.
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