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Nov. 5, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:35
November 5, 2010, Friday, Hour #2
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You are listening to the Rush Limbaugh program on the Excellence Broadcasting Network, and it is Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
One other thing about Ronaldus Magnus and compromise.
When Ronaldus Magnus came into office, the American economic growth rate was 1.7%.
That was the GDP.
One point seven percent.
Two years later, by 1983.
And remember that was we had a very bad, steep recession in 1982.
Now just listen to these numbers.
Gross domestic product when Ronaldus Magnus came into office 1.7% by 1983, it was 10.
That is real economic growth.
What was the centerpiece?
It was tax cuts.
And yet people still try to tell us that cutting taxes will only move the economy backwards.
But all this talk about whether or not the sun set the Bush tax cuts.
Let me tell you something, folks.
If tax increases actually grew the economy, there wouldn't be any talk whatsoever of extending the Bush tax cuts.
They'd be over.
We would have ended those Bush tax cuts years ago, and we would have raised taxes.
The Democrats want us to believe it raising taxes, raising spending is what ignites an economy.
Well, it doesn't, and we all know it, and there are many different ways you can find proof of it, but one of the ways is this.
If we had simply raised taxes when Obama came into office, why we'd be out of the problem now.
If tax cuts are bad, why not tax General Motors?
Why are we giving them an exemption on all income taxes for the foreseeable future?
Well, we know why we're trying to get their IPO price up.
We're trying to make their financial position better by letting them keep more of what they supposedly earn at General Motors.
So what's good for Obama motors ought to be good for America, but oh no, no, no, no.
No, it's not because we're really not, even now.
On the Democrat Party side of things, we're not talking about economic growth.
I don't care what what Obama says today, what he said yesterday, what he said after the election, he's not talking about economic growth.
That is not what they desire.
I don't care how it sounds.
I don't care what he says today or yesterday when he comes out, makes speeches about working together now to get the economy on track.
There are ways to do it, proven ways to do it, non-controversial ways to do it.
He's not interested.
Not happening.
And I'm not through with compromise.
Let's go back.
Uh June 18th, 2009, in Washington at the White House, the press secretary Robert Fibbs held his daily briefing, and among other things, said this.
I think we've had a debate about individual policies.
Um we had that debate in particular.
We kept score last November and uh we won.
Right.
Well, not gonna be any compromise.
We won.
Obama said the same thing early in uh 2009, in that joint lead legit leadership meeting, legislative leadership meeting that he convened at the White House.
And the Republicans in that meeting talked about maybe the possibility of cutting taxes.
No, no, no, no, I won.
You can talk about it all you want, but I won.
And the press was not urging Obama to compromise.
The press was not urging Gibbs to compromise.
The press was not urging any Democrat to compromise anyway.
You always notice it's always the Republicans, even after winning.
You know, you guys better compromise.
Because they're not happy with the victory.
It's just simple to see.
It is what it is.
But this is the kind of stuff that ends up co-opting our guys.
This relentless assault, you better compromise or you're gonna be called X. You better compromise, or we're gonna rip you over to coal.
And far too many times in the recent past, not even the recent past, our guys have succumbed to it.
Here's Barney Frank, January 28, 2009, Larry King Live, the fill-in host with John King, and he said to Barney Frank, if if you don't have Republicans and conservative Democrats on board, well, what you want to do, can you have a bipartisan Washington?
We've seen this before, but it does also say elections matter.
A different flashby one.
We now differ.
The electorate has said no, we want to go a different way, and that's what we're doing.
Uh, Did you understand that?
Kind of, but it is it still needs to be translated.
Okay, the question was if you don't have Republicans and conservative Democrats, can you have a bipartisan Washington?
Barney Frank said, we've seen this before, but but it but it does also say the elections matter.
A different, a different philosophy won.
The electorate has said no.
We want to go a different way.
That's what we're doing.
So Fibbs, Obama, Barney Frank, no compromise.
The electorate said we want to do it your way.
No compromise.
And now we've had the election.
The American people have declared that the Obama Barney Frank Fibbs way was dead wrong.
And still the media is asking of us.
Are you ready to compromise now?
Obama at the health care summit in Baltimore.
GOP leaders said if they couldn't work something out, the voters would decide it was right or wrong.
Obama said that's what elections are for.
Well, we've had the elections.
And the electorate said by declaration that Obama was dead wrong.
And so now we're supposed to compromise.
Mitch Daniels.
This is in the Hill.com.
Mitch Daniels, weak candidates hurt the Republican drive for the Senate.
I guess.
I guess Mitch Daniels needs some lobbying money from Trent Lott.
Republicans fell short of winning control of the Senate because of some weak candidates.
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels told the Hill we didn't.
We didn't turn up the strongest candidates.
Like compared to who?
Jerry Brown?
Dick, I'm proud of my therapies.
Bloom and Fall, we didn't put up the strongest candidates.
The Tea Party-backed Republican candidates in Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada all went down to defeat on Tuesday.
Overall Republicans gained six seats.
Mitch Daniels said he believed the parties could come together on some issues.
It's in the interest of everyone.
If we're the ones compromising, we did win.
If we're the ones caving in and giving up, but of course, the pressure will be brought to bear on all arriving Republicans.
Trent Lott and Lindsey Graham have prepared a greeting for all of them.
Listen to them, and that's how you get it done.
Wall Street Journal today, William Galston, a former domestic policy advisor to President Clinton.
Actually, I said this is from the Wall Street Journal, but he wrote at the New Republic on November the 4th.
William Gallston, former domestic policy advisor Bill Clinton, meaning he's a Democrat.
Although the share of the electorate who were independents was virtually unchanged from 2006, their behavior was very different.
In 2006, Democrats got 57% of the independent vote versus only 39% for Republicans.
In 2010, this margin was reversed.
This year, 55% of independents voted Republican.
55%.
And the Republicans didn't do anything to get it.
They just sat there.
They didn't have to do anything.
They just weren't Democrats.
55% of the precious independence.
This is where political consultants and professionals live.
The independents, the 20 to 25% of the moderate independence, the uncommitted, they're the ones that everybody spends all the money to get.
And 55% of them went Republican, 39% Democrat this year.
If independents had split their vote between the parties this year the way they did in 2006, the Republican share would have been 4.7% lower.
Now, why did they change?
Now remember, this is William Gallston, a former domestic policy advisor to President Clinton.
Why Did the independence change?
And here we reach the nub of the matter.
The ideological composition of the electorate shifted dramatically.
In 2006, those who voted were 32% conservative, 47% moderate, and 20% liberal.
In 2010, conservatives had risen to 41% of the total.
Moderates declined to 39%, while liberals remained at 20%.
And because in today's polarized politics, liberals vote almost exclusively for Democrats, and conservatives for Republicans, the ideological shift matters a lot.
This is a liberal, Mr. Golsen confirming what I have said.
There is a conservative ascendancy.
And when conservatism is approached on an ideological basis when the Republicans, in other words, appeal to voters philosophically and conservatively, uh, or ideologically as conservative, it works.
In 2010, conservatives had risen to 41%.
Liberals 20%.
Further evidence we are being governed by a minority.
And wait a minute.
We were told that the Tea Party would drive independence away.
The Trent Lotts, the Lindsey Graham Nestees, the John McCain's, I don't care who you go to in the Republican establishment, all told us that the Tea Party would drive independence away.
The Tea Party saved Lindsey Graham's bacon.
The Tea Party saved the Republican Party.
Were it not for the Tea Party, all of this that we're discussing would be academic.
The Republicans would not have won diddly squat.
And yet, and maybe precisely because of that, the Tea Party is as resented by the Republicans as voters at large are held in contempt by Democrats.
The Republicans are actually a little miffed at how they won.
When you get right down to it, they are.
How else do you explain that stupid story in the politico yesterday?
Failure.
Failure in the midst of a wipeout in the midst of an historic win.
60 House seats, six Senate seats.
Actually, 63 in the House.
Now we get a story about failure.
Republican Tea Party failure, because the Republicans did not win their precious chairmanships in the Senate.
And so what we're faced with today is a Republican establishment ticked off at how they won, and doing their best to this moment to convince everybody that the Tea Party is why they didn't win even bigger.
Well, that, and the fact I talked about football too much.
Mr. Golston continues, the shift is part of a broader trend over the past 20 years.
Moderates have trended down as a share of the total electorate, while conservatives have gone up.
In 1992, moderates were 43% of the total electorate.
In 2006, 38%.
Today, moderates are 35% of the electorate.
And yet, they're the wonderful smartest in the room, people.
That is the ones we have to go after.
For conservatives, here are the numbers.
In 1992, 36%.
In 2006, 37%.
In 2010, 42% versus 35% moderates.
So the 2010 electorate does not represent a disproportional mobilization of conservatives.
If the 2010 electorate had perfectly reflected the voting age population, it would actually have been a bit more conservative and less moderate than was the population that showed up at the polls.
What's happening here is that independents are shifting conservative.
And who made that happen?
Who's responsible for that?
Aside from me, of course, the Tea Party.
The Tea Party is the reason, and Obama is the reason independents started voting conservative.
Regardless why There is a conservative ascendancy.
And who do you have trying to beat it down?
The Republican GOP establishment, led by Lindsey Graham and Trent Laud and whoever else you want to throw into it, using willing accomplices at the political.
Yes, I know.
It's open line Friday, and that means phone call.
So we're going to start.
Orlando is where we start with Ron.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hello, Russ.
Ditto's Russ.
Thank you for taking my call.
You bet, sir.
I'll get right to my question here.
I know we can't repeal Alcam outright, but uh the approach I've been hearing is people want to defund parts of it.
That's all they feel we can do right now, and which is fine.
Let's go ahead and do that.
Let's define what we can.
But they also might try to repeal to make a statement in this to force uh Barack Obama to veto it.
But to me, it seems a better approach would be for the Republicans to re propose a replacement bill to say, you know, here's our idea.
You know, let's have the debate we should have had.
You know, here let's find the common ground and actually put a bill together, put it out there.
And something that uh you know not talking about compromise, we're talking about common ground here.
Uh something that even the modern Dems might be able to embrace.
But now uh, we got the Democrat health care bill.
All right, we know what it is.
Correct.
Would you tell me what in it you want to compromise with?
What part of it, what part of it do you want to keep?
Well, there's things like you know, once you have your insurance that uh if you get sick, you can't be canceled.
Um, things like that.
There are some things that not necessarily what's in that bill that we want to keep, but uh we do know that there can be improvements to health care, so let's put out Yeah, but but you don't accept their premise and and look at that is the fastest way for Republicans to squander everything they've won is to start talking about, well, let's repeal and replace.
Let's just let's tinker around the margins of this thing.
We we have a pretty good framework here.
We know that health care needs to be reformed.
Let's find some things in this boondoggle that we like, like premiums going down, uh kids getting covered on their 26, all of that's a bunch of BS.
No premiums are going down.
The idea of the pre-existing condition stuff.
Let me patience, Rush, patience.
Pre-existing condition coverage is not possible.
It's not insurance, it's welfare.
The idea of requiring insurance companies to cover people, pre-existing conditions is a recipe for driving them out of business.
The whole point of the Democrat health care bill is to drive the private sector insurance and as much of private sector health care out of business as possible, so that it has no place to go other than the federal government.
There's that repeal and replace is not the thing to do.
The way to go after this, the number of things to do here is you make the Democrats defend this.
I'm hearing all kinds of people to be a waste of time to send a repeal bill up there every week.
No, won't make them defend it.
You propose a repeal bill as often as you can, have debates on the floor of the House, and make the Democrats defend it.
The American people don't want it.
Health care is a large reason why the Democrats lost, so make the Democrats go to the floor of the House every day to defend it.
I warned these blue dogs, I warned them.
If you guys vote for this, you are dead, and they're dead.
They're all gone.
Every damn one of them.
Voted for health care and had their voters reminded they voted for health care.
They are gone.
They lost.
They have subpoena power.
Bring up the bureaucrats who are going to be in charge of implement.
Bring up Sibelius and say, how are you going to implement this?
Go to page X 2010 and go to where it says, as the Secretary may determine and say, How are you going to determine?
What are you going to do?
Make them defend this.
Every day.
The campaign, the election for 2012 starts now.
You make Obama defend it.
We don't compromise with these people on their debacle.
We make them defend it so that they lose in a landslide two years from now.
Okay, I'm I'm going to respond even more to the caller.
Why don't we uh pick out the good things we like about and compromise with it, replace the stuff we don't want to wait?
The government simply has.
I'm talking premise here now.
The government has no right to tell insurance companies who to cover and how.
The government has no right to demand of us as individuals that we buy insurance.
They don't have the right.
We're going to litigate that.
That is a constitutional question.
The parts of this bill are unconstitutional.
They don't have any right to tell insurance companies who to cover and how, pre-existing conditions.
Look at this.
Even the AARP is going to have to jack up their pre their insurance rates for their employees.
AARP raises costs for employees' insurance plan.
AARP's endorsement helped secure passage of Obama's health care overhaul.
And now the seasoned citizens lobby is telling its own employees that their insurance costs will rise partly as a result of the law.
In an email to employees, the AARP says health care premiums will increase by 8% to 13% next year.
Well, what was all this malarkey about everybody's premiums reduced $2,500 that Obama said?
AARP employee health care premiums up by 8 to 13% next year because of rapidly rising medical costs.
Well, now how's how's that hope and change working out for you?
It's not the rapid rising medical costs.
It is Obamacare.
It's the administrative cost that is causing premiums to go up.
You know how I know this?
I know this.
Doctors, hospitals, drug companies are not getting more money.
That's not why premiums are going up.
That's not why costs are going up.
They're not getting rich.
Administrative costs are going up due to government regulations and Obamacare.
Now, the AARP adds that it's changing co-payments and deductibles to avoid a 40% tax on high cost health plans that takes effect in 2018 under the law.
This is a bunch that supported this crazy scheme.
The changing co-payments and the duct deductibles are being, well, they're changing their co-payments and deductibles to avoid a 40% tax increase on high cost health plans.
The Cadillac plans.
They're going to pay more because they can.
It's not fair.
They should have better insurance coverage, so they're going to pay through the nose for it.
Crying out loud here.
Ask them how long.
Ask the AARP how long they're going to be able to sell their Medicare Advantage plans.
So subpoena power, that's that's where the Republicans have a gold mine here.
Bring every bureaucrat involved in this up there and explain himself.
Well, how did you arrive at this before you wrote the bill?
What does this mean in the bill?
You know, as it was it was your own speaker said we have to pass this before we know what's in it.
Okay, it's passed.
Would you explain to us here on the committee exactly why this provision is here and how does it work and what's its objective?
You can have an effective government shutdown just by having these people come up and explain the health care bill.
You couldn't explain this in two years if you tried.
But you could get a head start on it.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's a great, great um uh Pete James Taranto at at the uh uh best of the web today, Wall Street Journal.
Some excellent quotes from history.
We are always told that the smartest people in the world are in Washington, the smartest people in the world in Washington are liberal Democrats, the pundits there, uh they're the best in the brightest.
And they're always wrong.
Here are three things, three examples of what I'm talking about.
Perfect examples of how leftist political pundits should never be trusted.
James Carville wrote a book, 40 More Years How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.
It was published in May of 2009.
James Carville wrote, among other things.
Republicans have no hope of making serious inroads into Democrat advantages in 2010, or likely in 2012 and 2014 and so on.
It's time to call TOD on the GOP.
TOD stands for time of death.
In May of 2009, James Carville.
How the Democrats will rule the next generation.
This book was about how the Democrats will be in power for 40 years and how the Republicans have no hope.
In 2010, 2012, 2014, and beyond.
In April of 2009, political analyst Stuart Rothenburg, another anointed one, another of the ruling class, smartest guy in the world, best at what he does.
Noted that a trio of Republicans have raised the possibility of the Republicans winning back the House of Representatives in 2010.
About that idea, Stuart Rothenberg wrote that idea's lunacy.
It ought to be put to rest immediately.
None of these three Republicans actually predicted that Republicans would gain the 40 seats that they need for a majority, but all three held out hope that it's possible, but it isn't.
There are no signs of a dramatic rebound for the Republicans.
The chance of Republicans winning control of either chamber in the 2010 midterm elections is zero.
Not close to zero, not slight or small, but zero.
Big changes in the House require a political wave.
You can cherry-pick your way to a five-or eight-seat gain, but to win dozens of seats, the party needs a wave.
Recruiting better candidates, running better campaigns will not produce anything like what took place in 1980 or 1994, 2006, or 2008, when waves resulted in huge gains for one party.
The current political environment actually minimizes the chance of a near-term wave developing.
The problem for Republicans is that they aren't yet in the position, and they won't be in one by November of next year to run on a pure message of change or on pent-up demand for change.
Waves are built on dissatisfaction and frustration, and there is little in national survey data that suggests most voters are upset with Obama's performance or the performance of his party.
That was written in May or April of 2009.
Now these men, Rothenberg, Carville, they are highly respected.
They are sought after.
They are esteemed elites.
They are paid lots of money to write this stuff.
They are paid lots of money to speak this stuff.
They appear with lectures.
They make speeches.
They write books.
They grant interviews.
They command large sums of money to predict the political landscape.
They are hired by business interests to tell them what the future political landscape will be so that business interests can make appropriate investments and decisions on what government policy will be and how it will affect their business.
They're paid a lot of money.
And they don't know what they're talking about.
And you know why they don't know what they're talking about?
Because they are first and foremost liberals, and they allow their liberalism and their ideology and their partisanship and their bias to affect their analysis of things.
So they're liberal Democrats.
They're looking at Obama and they see a Messiah and they see Grant Park on election night, and they see, my God, this has never happened.
Why we're we're we've never seen this before.
We're gonna clean our ticket.
Black guy's gonna lower the C's.
The Republicans don't have a prayer.
Because they were unable to see one flaw in Obama.
They were unable to see that people would eventually rebel against Obama policy.
But I wasn't.
I was totally able to see it.
Not only was I able to see it, I feared it.
I was afraid it would happen.
That's why I said I hope he fails.
I was trying to warn everybody of the doom and gloom that we were headed for.
I was trying to warn everybody of the destruction represented by Obama policy and Democrat Party policy.
And I'm not treated as the smartest guy in the room.
I'm not thought of as a highly paid, respected opinion elite leader.
No, no, no, I'm a flamethrowing bomb maker.
I'm a troublemaker.
I'm in these people's parlance.
I'm not talking about the way you look at me.
People who are wrong always categorize me as not knowing what I'm talking about.
And all we got to do is go back and look at what they wrote and what they said.
Here's another one.
Former Enron advisor Paul Krugman and noted New York Times propagandist.
Lots of buzz about the possibility that 2010 will be another 1994 with the triumphant conservative majority sweeping back into its rightful place of power.
And of course, anything's possible, but the signs really don't point to that.
I mean, here in my home state, it's looking increasingly likely that Corzine will beat Christie.
And while some of that reflects Christie's various personal issues, plus Corzin's willingness to bring out the brass knuckles.
As we say in New Jersey, you've got a problem with that.
It also, I think, reflects the fact that Christie cannot explain what he would do differently.
These days the Republicans are the party of no ideas, and it shows.
This is Paul Krugman, highly paid Nobel prize winner.
New York Times columnist.
The year after Barack Obama was elected president, Sam Tannenhouse, editor of the New York Times Book Review, came out with a book of his own.
It was called A Death of Conservatism.
These are perfect examples of how noted elitist political pundits put their ideology into their reasoning and therefore become unable to see reality.
They're unable to see what they don't want to see.
What they don't want to see, they then proclaim to be impossible to occur.
And I bet we could find many, many more who were just as adamant that what happened on Tuesday had no chance of happening a year ago, a year and a half ago.
And yet they remain highly thought of.
They remain respected.
Their opinions are eagerly waited for.
People have their tongues dragging the floor, waiting for the next utterance of James Carville.
What will Stu Rothenburg say tomorrow about 2012?
They rely on the fact that nobody's going to go back and recall what they said.
They rely on the fact nobody's going to go back and look at what they said and remind anybody of just how off-base they were.
And it all is rooted in the bias and arrogance, conceit of liberalism.
We'll be right back.
You know, maybe uh, ladies and gentlemen, there is an alternative explanation.
Maybe we just aren't smart enough to understand the intricacies of thought uh put forth by uh Messrs.
Carville Krugman and uh and Rothenberg.
Maybe we're just too stupid to understand what these brilliant liberal minds were really saying with their nuanced predictions that the Republicans had no chance whatsoever of winning in 2010.
But I doubt it.
The point is they're wrong.
Liberalism is a lie.
One of the reasons I am constantly urging Republicans to fight philosophically and ideologically.
We had we had a guy on the phone yesterday, we didn't get to him.
He was gonna say, Rush, the mistake you always make after elections like this is you think the people voted ideologically.
You think that they voted because conservatism.
No, I don't think that I wish it were true.
I'm the guy who said the reason the Republicans ended up messing up in '94 is because they stopped teaching conservative.
They stopped articulating it.
Marco Rubio never does.
Marco Rubio wins because he articulates Conservatives.
There's Rothenberg up there on MSNBC right now.
I wonder what he's talking about.
Oh, 2012 courting swing voters.
How to go out and do it.
I can't see what he's saying here, but he's explaining how to go out there and um uh uh within 2012.
We're monitoring it.
We're rolling tape.
We'll see what he has to say.
Now, I now I know that what happened yesterday, I've got to read this guy uh the former domestic policy advisor for Clinton.
We know that more independents are identifying themselves as conservatives.
There's a reason for this.
There is more conservatism being explained every day in America here and throughout the new media.
There is an increase in people understanding things ideologically.
It needs to continue.
You can't deny it.
If people are gonna go out there and do polls of the independents and say, are you a conservative leaning, liberal leaning?
If the number of them that say they're conservative leaning doubles, then there's something going on.
Now, I'm not under the illusion that people who voted for Obama loved liberalism, and two years later have discovered it's a lie.
They need to learn that so that they don't make the mistake of voting Obama again.
This is the thing the Republican Party needs to do, and it won't do it because it doesn't want to be known as a conservative party.
What's really going on here, folks, and keep this between us.
I don't want you to tell Trent Lott this, and I don't want you to pass this on to Lindsey Graham.
A number of you people have called here and said, Rush, we need to go third party.
No, nope, no, always no, no, no.
We're going to turn the Republican Party into one without actually forming one.
We don't need a third party, but we're effectively going to make it one.
Still gonna be the Republican Party.
The current GOP establishment does not want to be known as a Conservative Party because conservatives are laughed at, made fun of, and uh and thought of as Hicks and Hayseeds by the ruling class Democrats.
Ruling class Republicans are happy to be losers as long as the ruling class Democrats will let them into the ruling class.
Their entree into the ruling class in Washington is as losers.
Oh, they'll get the White House every four years now and then, but at the end of the day, they are losers.
And they're happy.
Lindsey Graham's perfectly happy to be in the ruling class as a loser.
Lindsey Graham will be, you know, he was he was elected as a freshman in 1994 in the House.
He was in that freshman class.
And he was one of the House managers in the Clinton impeachment.
And that's what did it it.
That's what did it with the the treatment that the House managers got on that impeachment of Clinton, that's why he's gone a 180 and become effectively a uh uh a boot-licking Republican, boot-looking liberal Republican.
So what needs to happen is people need to be educated to understand that no matter what an Obama says about lowering the sea levels, no matter what an Obama says about unity and working together and getting rid of the partisan divide, it's not true.
He's a liberal and liberals lie.
The more people are educated to know, not to believe, but to know that liberals lie and that liberalism fails, that it does not work, that liberalism harms them.
The greater the odds liberals will lose.
So what I want to affect is, yeah, I know two years ago liberals they didn't elect uh uh Obama because he was a liberal, and they didn't vote against him because he's a liberal, but that needs to start happening.
Yeah, I'm gonna explain this in more detail when we come back when I have more time and have to ramrod it into 25 or 30 seconds, because we did have a call about the it was gonna challenge me.
Well, you think conservatism won yesterday, but it didn't.
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