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Oct. 20, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:46
October 20, 2010, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
We're going to start today with a couple of polls, uh, interesting results, and uh a sort to me anyway, a fascinating piece in the Washington Examiner by Michael Baron.
Basically, in which here's the headline to that piece, Tea Party Neophytes outshine the Democrats' old pros.
Now he's surprised by this.
He's happily surprised by it.
My question is, why is he surprised?
Why is he surprised that Tea Party Neophytes would outshine Democrat professionals?
Why is he so now that may seem like a stupid question to you, but it won't seem like a stupid question when I get around to explaining it, which will happen sooner rather than later.
Because I'm here, El Rushbaugh, starter of a million conversations, mind over chatter.
Here behind the golden EIB microphone, telephone number if you want to be on the program.
800 282-2882, the email address L Rushbo at EIBNet.com, waiting on the audio, Pat Cadell on Fox within the last half hour saying the GOP will not win as big as they could, because they are not nationalizing the elections.
They are allowing Obama to drive the national discussion and letting the Democrats turn the election into candidate versus candidate rather than issue versus issue.
Cadell, I think is channeling your host.
Channeling me.
Cadell went on to say, we're gonna have the audio of this.
Don't forget it.
Cadell went on to say that the voters are looking for what they're gonna get after the elections if they vote for the Republicans, and they aren't getting any guidance.
All they're hearing is some confusing stuff over whether or not the Republicans will actually repeal health care.
And he says that insofar as the Republicans are ahead in the polls, it's all due to the Tea Party.
It's not due to the Republicans at all.
Now you recall yesterday on this very program there was controversy that had erupted over whether or not Senators were traveling around to secret donor meetings and assuring the high-value donors, don't worry, the kooks are not running the party.
We're not gonna repeal health care, we're not gonna do any of that.
This led to a series of denials.
Congressman Darrell Issa on the program yesterday uh saying that well, he didn't actually say that he was misquoted in a piece in the news yesterday that uh we weren't really going to um uh try to reverse much of the Obama administration.
Going to be fair and open debate.
Boehner was gonna make sure that there's civil debate.
Of course, people aren't interested in civil debate or house rules, as I told Congressman Issa.
Noel Shepherd at Newsbusters today, and there's this is there's actually all over the place.
Republican Senator says the GOP will not repeal Obamacare.
A lot of media chatter about whether or not a strengthened GOP would move to repeal Obamacare pending the election results.
On Tuesday, the Davis Intelligence Group reported that Bob Corker, Republican Senator Tennessee, quote, recently told a group of high dollar GOP donors that Senate Republicans would not move to fully repeal Obama's health care law next year, according to multiple sources, who attended the event.
There are other places where Corker is been quoted as having said this.
And Corker saying, No, no, no, that everybody's misunderstood.
Judd Gregg is out there also saying we're not gonna repeal it.
We mentioned this to you yesterday.
So put this in context.
This the the corker comments, the cadell comments at Fox this morning do raise an interesting question.
That is, could this victory be bigger than it will be?
Now the polling data from Rasmussen.
Most voters oppose the re-election of anyone who voted for the health care law, who voted for the auto bailouts, who voted for the stimulus plan.
Incumbents, beware.
The major votes you've cast in Congress over the past couple years appear likely to come back and haunt you this election day.
New Rasmussen reports national telephone survey finds.
Most likely voters think their representative in Congress does not deserve re-election if he or she voted for the national health care law, the auto bailouts, or the porcupist bill.
Those votes also appear to be driving factors in the Republicans' consistent lead over Democrats in the generic congressional ballot.
Forty-three percent of all likely voters say somebody who voted for the health care law deserves to be re-elected.
50% oppose their re-election.
36% say that if their local representative voted for the taxpayer bailouts at General Motors and Chrysler, he or she deserves to be re-elected.
53% say he or she doesn't deserve to be re-elected.
Forty-one percent say their representative in Congress should be re-elected if he or she voted for the stimulus plan.
50% don't see it that way.
The partisan divide is predictable since virtually no congressional Republicans voted for any of these measures.
So Democrat voters overwhelmingly think those in Congress who voted for them should be re-elected, while Republicans feel just as strongly that they should not be.
However, according to Rance Muslim, voters not affiliated with either party also feel strongly that supporters of the health care law, the auto-bailouts, and porculus should not be returned to Congress.
These are the precious independents who also agree you voted for health care, you don't deserve to be sent back.
A vigorous post-Labor Day Democrat offensive has failed to diminish resurgent Republicans' lead among likely voters, leaving the Republicans poised for major gains in congressional elections two weeks away, according to a new Wall Street Journal NBC News poll.
The drive-bys are reporting this as a category four hurricane event.
They're terribly disturbed by this.
Exactly two weeks before election day, Republicans remain poised to make significant midterm gains across the fruited plain.
Fifty percent of likely voters preferring a Republican-controlled Congress.
It's 43% who prefer the Democrats.
What's more, Republicans appear to be benefiting from the public's pessimistic mood, as approximately 60% of registered voters think the country's on the wrong track and that the economy will get worse or stay the same in the next 12 months.
Democrat polster Peter Hart, who conducted the survey with Republican polster Bill McInterf said, election day's coming, the hurricane force has not diminished.
It's going to hit the Democrats head on.
It's hard to say that the Democrats are facing anything less than a category four hurricane.
That is from the pollster.
Hart also said that this is the lead is somewhat hollow because not all registered voters will participate, especially in midterm elections, but that the generic ballot's still strongly favoring Republicans.
Among those expressing high interest in voting in this election, Republicans hold a 13-point advantage in the generic ballot, 53 to 40.
That's unprecedented.
But it hasn't happened.
Gosh, and I don't know how long.
And among Tea Party supporters who make up 35% of all likely voters in the poll, Republicans have a whopping 84% to 10% edge.
Among 35% of voters, the Tea Party.
Now, meanwhile, there are Republican political operatives insulting the Tea Party.
Insulting Tea Party members and not being sophisticated, not having read Friedrich von Hayek.
Wonderful great people, but just not sophisticated.
Well, Carl Rove said this.
But he's not alone.
I got a note.
I got a note today from a friend.
Why would Carl be saying this, Rush?
I mean, you know Carl.
Why would he be saying this?
Why doesn't Carl learn to keep his mouth shut?
I said, Carl means to say this.
Mike Murphy, all these guys, they think this.
Not easy for me to say here, folks.
It really isn't.
But is what ought to be a euphoric period still indicates that on the Republican side there are divisions and jealousies and egos and competition.
And the simplest explanation is that the Tea Party cannot be claimed as credit by anybody.
Nobody can say I am the Tea Party.
Nobody can say I started the Tea Party.
Nobody can say I saw the Tea Party coming and I steered it.
Nobody can who makes a living generating political support, generating political donations, nobody in that business can point to the Tea Party to say I did it.
So it's a threat.
I mean, it's a genuine effervescent grassroots effort.
Nobody has any control over it.
Nobody can honestly claim any credit for it, and therefore it's it's a threat.
I could, folks, I I would give you a the greatest analogy I ever could.
I would probably end my career doing so in talking about this program in its early days.
Remember, I'll just none of the experts, and they were all very nice people, none told me it would work.
They all told me it wouldn't work.
Therefore, when it did, none of them can say they had anything to do with it.
And so there was ambivalence about it while people were happy about it at the same time.
Same thing with the Tea Party movement.
It's any time people are considered unprofessional or outside the professional realm enter somebody else's professional realm and shake it up.
You have a bit of a threat there.
And I think it's partially what's what's going on here.
Now that takes me to Michael Barone's piece.
At the Washington Examiner, Tea Party neophytes outshine the Democrat old pros.
Let me give you the pull quote.
Now, nobody, nobody, by the way, disputes, and certainly not I disputes that Barone is brilliant.
He is a genuine political analyst.
This guy writes the handbook.
After every election, precinct by precinct, telling us what happened.
I mean, his tentacles are deep into every sector of this country.
There's nobody that understands the nation.
Precinct by precinct, like Michael Barone, and he admittedly was slow to the Tea Party movement.
But now he gets it.
And he writes today about how he gets it.
And here is the pull quote.
The Tea Party movement today, like the peace movement 40 years ago, has brought many new people into politics.
And many with a sharper political, many with sharper political instincts than their detractors in the press have been able to understand.
Now, this, my friends, is a profundity.
Particularly coming from Michael Baron.
Let me read this to you again.
The Tea Party movement today has brought many people into politics and many with sharper political instincts than their detractors in the press and in politics have been able to understand.
Spent their life in it.
They stake their reputations on understanding it better than anybody else.
Over here, the neophytes take the word out of the headline.
You, the grassroots, the ordinary people who accomplish extraordinary things every day.
All of a sudden, you have become engaged.
It's really not all of a sudden it's taken place over years and years and years.
Now your political instincts are sharper than all pros.
This is one reason why the pros are sorted down on the Tea Party and people in general.
But my question is, I'll answer this after the break.
Why was Michael Barone so surprised at this?
Why why did why did it take him so long to arrive at this conclusion?
Here's another quote, as on so many points I think the mainstream media has gotten nearly upside down.
What strikes me, this is this Barone writing.
What strikes me about so-called Tea Party candidates, those with little or no political experience, who have won Republican nominations by opposing Obama Democrats' vast expansion of government, is not that some of them are bumblers, but that so many of them seem to have terrific political instincts.
Michael Barone is struck by that.
He's struck by the fact that Tea Party candidates, he's being complimentary here, don't misunderstand now.
He's struck by the fact that people with little or no political experience who've won nominations by opposing the Obama Democrats' expansion of government is that so many of them seem to have terrific political instincts.
Now to me, there's an obvious question.
Why are you so struck by it?
Let me take a break and I'll explain what I mean when we come back after our first obscene profit timeout here on the EIB network.
All right, stand by audio sound by number 47.
That's Pat Cadell on Fox today.
Let me read to you again here on this is Michael Barone today, Washington Examiner.
Neophytes in the Tea Party outshining the Democrats all pros.
It's a complimentary piece.
I don't want anybody calling Barone and Sam Rippingham, it's not what I'm doing here.
But this to me is an is an illustration.
Well, I don't know of what, but to me it's big.
As on so many points, I think the mainstream media's gotten it nearly upside down.
What strikes me, Barone says, about so-called Tea Party candidates, is not that some of them are bumblers, but that so many of them seem to have terrific political instincts.
Now, Michael, we love you.
But why does this strike you?
These are normal people.
These are the people who make the country work.
These are normal people with normal concerns.
It's instinctive that they would resonate with people.
But here's here's my my big question.
For years, Michael Barone and Charles Crowdhammer and Bill Crystal, and you name it, have been on television analyzing political events.
For who?
Who is their audience?
Who watches Fox News?
A bunch of bumbling neophytes.
Why is it so strange to think that people who have been listening to your analysis and reading your books would have learned from it?
Barone's not a neophyte.
He's an educator.
He's an analyst educator.
The Tea Party people have been sitting out there learning, listening, reading, absorbing, reacting, and finally are fed up with the way professionals in politics are taking the country.
And so they, in some instances, have risen of, I'm going to get in a game here.
And because they have been involved and been in the game as quote-unquote customers, for lack of a better word, why is it surprising that they would have sharpened instincts?
I mean, I I've been at this for 23 years, and I am not surprised that people in this audience are not neophytes.
I've been at this for 23 years.
I am not surprised that you have sharp political instincts.
If I were surprised that you have sharp political instincts, I'd have to question my own job, my own job performance and my own worth.
So who do these guys analyzing the news and writing these books think their audiences are?
Who do you think the audience is?
Why are they so surprised that so many ordinary Americans have heard their analysis over the many years, been influenced by it?
Why?
Why waste time going on television and writing books, commenting, analyzing?
If you believe no one in the audience is going to learn from you or gain any insight.
So I don't understand how you can be struck by the idea that your audience understands you.
When your express purpose has been to inform people.
We would all agree that Barone's political instincts are sharp as hell.
So when he shares them and people pick up on it, shouldn't theirs improve?
So it's always amazed me.
Who do these people on television doing their commentary?
They think their audiences.
I know when Chuck Todd's on TV, his audience is Bob Schiefer and Brian Williams, and other people in the news business.
But people on Fox know their audience is the American population.
Why so shocked that they have instincts?
Let me rephrase.
Let me try this a different different different direction, different way.
If I were Michael Baron, and if I were Charles Krauthammer, and I were Bill Kristol, or Carl Rove, or any of these people have been on television and in newspapers for years, writing, analyzing, pointing out essentially a conservative point of view, I would be proud.
I'd be popping buttons with pride over the Tea Party.
Where did these it's it's kind of like give you a remind you of a story?
First time I'm on nightline.
My dad thinks I'm a total failure because I didn't go to college.
In his world, coming out of Great Depression, if you didn't get a degree, you had no hope.
Nobody would ever talk to you about hiring you, and if they ever did, it wouldn't be anything to do, anything other shine shoes.
So the first time I'm on nightline, debating Al Gore on the environment, first commercial break, he turns to my mother, he's totally perplexed.
He does not have the slightest idea how any of this happened.
He turns to my mother, he said, Millie, where did he learn all this?
And she looked at him and said, From you, silly.
So where are the Tea Party people learning?
Where are they where are they getting these instincts?
I'm not saying that they're not self-starters, but they are involved.
They have been reading Krauthammer and George Will and Carl Rove, and they've been watching them on television, and they make sense to them.
In that sense, these people are all educators.
This is why the whole notion that the Tea Party is a bunch of neophyte, yeah, in the in the context of professional versus amateur, I guess, you could look at it that way.
But for crying out loud, we're talking about issues that people live every day.
It is, I would argue, professionals who blurred what the purpose of politics is all about here.
It is professionals.
Like I told you, you know, Mike Murphy, one of these political guys, writing on a ricochet He was all upset.
Christine O'Donnell got the nomination in in Delaware.
So he's okay, you guys, you do think I'm sitting here in a Washington cocktail party circuit, you think you're smarter than I am, you go in there, you go in there, and you run our campaign, you show me how to do it.
Instead of, all right, why can't I take what I've learned and help out here?
Why that why feel threatened by all of this?
Well, it goes back to the professional versus amateur aspect of it, and the fact that in the case of Tea Party, there's not one person that can claim credit for it.
The you know the the person, if there is a singular individual who could, and this is even a stretch, it'd be Rick Santelli of CNBC, who went on and started talking about Tea Parties and so forth early on in the Obama years, but he didn't do anything to organize that, he just gave voice to a groundswell of public opinion already existed, he validated it.
So nobody in the professional realm here can embrace this and say, yeah, yeah, I saw this coming and I did it.
These people are the result of me.
But in in the final analysis, they almost could.
They've been on Fox's 1997 doing commentary and analysis, who do they think has been watching?
They have been writing their columns in newspapers.
Who do they think has been reading?
Uh better question, why are they doing all of this?
If they don't want an educated, informed audience, why are they doing it?
For the money.
For the recognition inside the beltway, why are they doing it?
No, Mr. Snerdley, I am not making a mountain out of a molehill.
I'm focusing on this because we're talking about the future of the United States of America as it was founded.
We're not talking the ordinary give and take, chump change day-to-day of politics as usual.
The issues that are on the table here are crucial.
This election is crucial.
What's going to happen after the election is as crucial.
And therefore, that's why people are paying attention.
Is Corker really saying that they have no desire to overturn or repeal health care?
Corker's out there now vehemently demand denying it.
He's denying it every which way.
So human events, Connie Hare just published a piece, Corker's denying it.
Mitch McConnell's office is denying it all over the place, that they are not saying this.
They are not saying to their that there are no private donor meetings.
They're not saying that they're not going to repeal health care, that this is his false attribution.
Well, the reason why there's so much attention being paid to this is because what happens after the election is crucial.
Because the issues here are crucial.
To the voting public, it's not about who's chairman of a committee.
And it's not about, okay, who's going to be in charge of passing out the spoils now?
The people inside the beltway, okay, it's our turn.
It's our buddies who are going to get the defense contracts.
It's our buddies who are going to get the grants.
It's that that's politics as usual.
Who's in charge of the money and who disperses it and who gets it?
Well, that's, you know, pork earmarks, small percentage of the giant transfers I'm talking about don't matter to people right now.
Saving the country is what matters.
And the pros don't seem to understand the degree of concern, sincerity, and severity that the American people attach to all this.
At the end of the day, this newly discovered sophistication is being struck by it.
I'd be proud.
Otherwise, I'd ask myself, who am I talking to?
You know, on election night, I'm Michael Barone, I'm doing all this analysis.
Here's what's happening in a 44th precinct of Indiana's subgroup 3A.
I mean, that's how deeply involved.
Why is he doing it?
Who's he trying to inform?
And then when people watching this learn from it, get energized by it, want to get involved in it.
Why the shock?
Let me try again.
You are a math teacher.
You're trying to teach Anestas Mikoyan a simple algebraic formula.
And for weeks, Anestas can't get it.
He's trying, but can't get it and finally he gets it and the world opens up.
And you think mission accomplished.
Why would you be surprised Anestas Mikkoyan figured out the equation when you've been teaching it to him or trying to for weeks?
What are you shouting at me, Snerdley?
What are you shouting?
Okay.
All right.
Snerdley is saying that they don't teach, that they do play by play.
They're doing play by playing, not teaching.
Snurdley's, see, is so loyal.
Snurdley's afraid, I am I'm leaving myself out of the teacher equation.
I'm not leaving myself out of the teacher equation, Snurdley.
And they're they're doing more than play by play.
They are doing commentary and analysis, and they are expanding people's thoughts.
They're expanding people's brain vision, if you will.
So I don't understand why the shock and surprise that an audience listening to you would become smarter.
More informed, more educated.
And it's important because this Tea Party, forget pro versus amateur.
It's real versus phony.
It's the people who make the country work versus the people who live off the people who make the country work.
And the people who live off the people who make the country work are trying to tell everybody else they're the smartest ones and the prov producers, the people from whom wealth is taken to be transferred are the neophytes.
It's not the case.
Now here's Pat Cadell.
Let me get to this.
This is Pat Cadell on Fox happening news channel happening now this morning.
Talking to co-host Jenna Lee, who said, tell us what it is, because sometimes when we're watching all these different negative ads coming out, you hear a lot of debates.
Tough to know exactly what each party stands for.
The president, though, is out there making what Corsik's do everywhere on it, but he is stirring it up, and he's getting a lot of attention.
The Republicans have failed to have a national, this is a national election, to have a referendum.
They failed it on health care.
They have failed it on the stimulus.
They have no national message.
They're fighting World War I in the trenches.
And what they're doing is it's drawing more and more attention to what the Democrats want to wage this campaign on, candidate versus candidate.
The Republican victory is going to be very short-lived.
And it's due almost entirely right now to the Tea Parties.
Now, in fairness here, uh, ladies and gentlemen, you can always say it could have been better.
No matter how something ends, you can always be said we could have won more, whether it's true or not.
But the conservatives know what has to be done.
This is a voter-led revolution.
Whether the Republicans are providing uh a national referendum or not, the voters are.
In every poll you look at, we just had it, Rasmussen, a clear majority.
Anybody who voted for health care does not deserve to be re-elected.
Anybody voted for the porcupist bill does not deserve to be re-elected.
Clear majority.
Anyone who voted uh to take over General Motors and Chrysler does not deserve to be re-elected.
So while the Republicans may not be nationalizing the election, the voters already have.
The voters are ahead of the party.
The conservatives of America are ahead.
And they are determining what's going to happen here in this election.
And that's why what happens after it is crucial, not for you and me, although it is crucial for the people who win.
Do they want to win again?
Now, the Democrats are succeeding here in making this candidate versus candidate, Christine O'Donnell versus Coons is one example, the way they're continuing to this day to distort this whole separation church and state stuff that happened in that debate yesterday in Delaware at Widener Law School.
And even the dunces at the View and elsewhere in state control media are also exhibiting and illustrating their their pure idiocy and ignorance by suggesting O'Donnell doesn't know what she's talking about.
They firmly believe separation church and state is in the Constitution when it is not.
But where they've been educated, who they hung around with, people who are just as ignorant as they are, and just as arrogant in their ignorance as the people who have been teaching them and informing them.
So yeah, you can always say it could be better.
You always could have done more.
There is phone calls yesterday and what we're going to experience today.
There is some, you talk about instincts, Baron talks about instincts, political instincts being sharper than the pros.
You people, you've called here.
You've written me emails, you instinctively know that the Republicans are still kind of cowering in the corner here.
Don't want to make any waves.
Shut up, get out of the way, let it happen.
You want more.
You want an agenda, articulate.
You want your agenda.
We are going to repeal health care.
We're going to do everything we can if we don't, if we can't override a veto, it's not an excuse not to try.
We're going to make the case that it's stupid, Damaging and should not become the law of the land.
That's what is desired.
That's the big lesson of 1994.
Stop teaching.
After the election, everybody assumed, hey, country's gone our way.
They're going to understand everything we do.
Nope, you got to keep teaching.
You have to keep explaining.
And on this point, I have to give Cadell some kudos.
You better tell people what's wrong with this health care bill while you do what you can to stop its implementation.
If you rest on your laurels, say, hey, you know, don't expect us to do anything here because we can't override a veto.
They're going to cut it.
Not with the people who are going to turn out in droves who represent this conservative ascendancy at the ballot box in a couple weeks.
They are going to expect an equal passion to save the country as the people voting for them showed up at the polling booth with passion.
If they don't see the passion, if they see cowardice, lack of interest, or a focus on the traditional inside washing the way it works, we're going to be fair, we're going to be civil, we're going to have over to house rules, and going to fly.
It's not what it's about this time.
Okay, let me take a break.
I could keep going here, my friends, as you can hear.
But I must take it's another Ebscene EIB Profit Center timeout.
Back before you know it.
Sorry about that, folks.
Waiting for the printer.
Some days I feel like it's 1839 here.
Rush Limbaugh back and the excellence in broadcasting network.
And I want to take you back to this program on February 19th of 2009.
Because all of the intelligentsia expressing shock being struck by the political instincts of Tea Party people being sharper than those of the Democrat professionals.
From my website, February 19, 2009.
The headline we put on the website that day the pulse of revolution has begun.
I got it, but the first day, my point.
I understood what was happening here the first day.
This is only three days after I said I hope he fails.
No, that's a month less.
January 16th, I said I hope he fails.
That's before he's in immaculate.
Could it be, I said, ladies and gentlemen, could it be the pulse of the revolution began today, perhaps even yesterday in Mesa, Arizona?
What's apparent to me, ladies and gentlemen, your loyal devoted host is that President Obama cannot kill the spirit of America.
It cannot be silenced.
It's great to be with you as we kick off another three hours of broadcast excellence from the Limbaugh Institute.
That is how I opened the program after Rick Santelli went on CNBC and started talking about the Tea Party movement, and there was an immediate national reaction to it.
People organizing even that day and the next day.
So my point is I was able to spot it.
But I'm not sequestered inside Washington my whole life.
Now to be official and on the record, Jeff Lord, the American Spectator blog, McConnell Corker, we will move to repeal Obamacare.
By the way, we've heard from um Mitch McConnell's office too.
The emails here posted from McConnell's office, sent to Jeff Lord, HR has received them here as well.
And this is um uh Mr. Stewart, Don Stewart is McConnell's communications director.
We will move to repeal Obamacare.
This is what McConnell's office is sending out.
And Stewart, in his email, say, look, I mean, he already voted to repeal it.
It we're on the there aren't any secret donor meetings going on.
So these denials are posted at American Spectator, we're we're receiving them too.
Now, if if Corker and McDonnell, McConnell are not saying this.
If if if all of this is made up, there's got to be some very sophisticated Democrat dirty trick going on here.
The website where this is all being reported is called a Davis Intelligence Group, and and also at uh uh the the corker quote is from labor unionreport.com.
Calls itself the source for news and views for today's labor unions, but they're citing the Davis Intelligence Group.
So, this is two or three days in a row here.
This stuff is going on, and there are official denials coming from the offices of Senator Corker and Senator McConnell.
We'll be right back.
Hey folks, I have an email here from someone that I don't have time to read it to you now, but I will.
We start the next hour.
And the subject line of this email.
Oh, for goodness sake, why are you talking about Barone?
Why don't you just admit that you are the one teaching everybody?
What are you giving him all the credit for?
Okay, so that's just the subject line.
I think Snurgley wrote this.
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