Yeah, I think the Wall Street Journal has this exactly right, Schnerdley Obama.
And he's talking about NATO maybe waging military action against Libya, but not us.
Not us, because Obama's hands are tied by virtue of his own moral constraints that he's placed on himself and us.
Yeah, well, not only we in NATO, we are NATO, but NATO's initials are NATO.
They're not USA.
Remember here, it's about appearances that are there.
We'll get to that here in just a second.
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
You might be interested in this.
The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit, monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion.
This, according to preliminary numbers, the CBO released this morning.
$223 billion for the month of February.
Let's go back.
October 5th of 2007.
This is the Wall Street Journal.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated Friday the U.S. budget deficit for fiscal year 2007 was about $161 billion or 1.2% of gross domestic product.
May I put these numbers in context for you?
The federal budget deficit for the year in 2007 was $161 billion.
The federal deficit for the month of February this year was $223 billion.
So a monthly deficit is $72 billion more than the annual deficit in 2007.
Unbelievable.
Who knew a monthly deficit bigger than an annual deficit four years ago, 2007.
I just, that's jaw-dropping.
$223 billion deficit in one month, last month, $161 billion for the whole year in 2007.
According to the Associated Press, pump prices have jumped an average of 39 cents a gallon since the Libyan uprising began in mid-February.
This has forced motorists to pay an additional $146 million per day for using the same amount of fuel.
And they still can't sell any volts, by the way.
Now, how come the regime is not cracking down on those evil oil speculators?
There hadn't been nearly enough disruption to justify this kind of an increase.
Libya doesn't even supply that much in the oil market, just some of the highest-end stuff, the light sweet crude.
The point is, this is not because of Gaddafi.
This is not because of Libya.
I'm not saying what it is, but they're trying to slough it off on Obama, on Gaddafi.
Our young president, why he's doing his damnedest, he's doing his, but he has nothing to do with this.
The Saudis have upped their production to make up for whatever's been lost in Libya.
So it's not Gaddafi's fault.
So how come Obama's not cracking down on those evil oil speculators?
He must like it.
Well, we know he likes it.
He said $4 a gallon gasoline, it wasn't bothering him at all.
What bothered him was how fast we got there.
Plain as day.
Now, on this question of mine, I realize, folks, and I am a media figure.
And I know there's a huge difference in acquiring an audience and getting votes.
It's a huge, huge difference.
For example, in just one area, just one example.
A politician will not get the votes of people who don't like him.
I will have no problem getting people to listen to me who don't like me.
In fact, I have to keep giving them reasons.
There are some people who listen precisely because they hate, precisely because they don't like.
Yeah, you got to keep fueling that.
I don't have to work at it.
That's just who they are.
But a politician can't survive like that.
I live in Litteralville.
And I know the population of Litteralville is not much.
There aren't a whole lot of people who live there, but I do.
And so my view on things is call it as I see it.
What this really boils down to is: do we call Obama a socialist or not?
In a presidential campaign, do we tell the American people we are up against an avowed socialist?
We have somebody who is doing his level best to make this country no different from any of the Western European social democracies.
Sweden, the UK, France, that's what we're headed for here.
We got somebody who wants to preside over America's decline.
There's no question that that's happening.
But I don't think there are going to be too many, if any, Republican presidential candidates are going to want to get anywhere near saying that.
They're going to want to keep it focused strictly on policy.
My problem is this.
If we can't straightforwardly address who Obama is and what he wants, it's sort of like a doctor trying to treat the symptoms of a disease without diagnosing the disease itself.
Not comparing Obama to a disease.
This is just a metaphor here.
You go to the doctor and you've got something really wrong, and the doctor says, well, you've got the best we can figure out here.
Life as you know it, you've got about a year.
Well, what's wrong with me?
Well, that doesn't matter.
I don't want to go there.
I don't want to describe what this disease is, and I don't want to tell you how it operates, and I don't want to tell you what its purpose is.
I just want to say, you've got it.
Oh, okay.
If Obama's opponents don't try to explain what Obama really thinks about America and what he really wants for our country, and this is what I was trying to say earlier with my curiosity, then we'd have to assume, well, he's just overcome by bad luck or coincidences.
Or he's just, you know, incompetent or just wrong.
Problem is, as the caller said earlier, by the time this campaign runs around, we're going to have a three-year record here, a three-year record on doubling down on what's wrong.
Okay, first stimulus didn't create private sector jobs.
Okay, we'll do another one.
With all this spending, we now have monthly deficits larger than annual deficits used to be as recently as 2007.
Obviously, the policy isn't working, but he's keeping right on with it.
Why?
Anyway, it's sort of a moot question because I've answered it myself by saying that you can pretty much guarantee that we're not going to have a campaign where the president's ideology is referenced to as a socialist.
This isn't going to happen.
Mark my words.
Now, it's a Libyan business.
This Wall Street Journal piece.
This is interesting, too, because this fits, strangely enough, with what we're describing, what we're talking about here.
The op-ed, it's actually an editorial from March the 6th, yesterday, a Wall Street Journal, Obama's Libyan Abdication.
And here's how the piece ends.
We suspect the real reason for Obama's passivity in Libya is more ideological than practical.
He and his White House team believe that any U.S. action will somehow be tainted if it isn't wrapped in U.N. or pan-Arab approval.
They have internalized their own critique of the Bush administration to such a degree that they are paralyzed to act even against a dictator as reviled and bloodstained as Gaddafi.
And even though it would not require the deployment of U.S. troops, in other words, the journal here is saying that Obama's hamstrung because of the way they've criticized the Bush administration.
Bush went into Iraq, and it was a horrible mistake, and Bush went into Afghanistan.
It was a horrible mistake.
And all that never-ending year after year after year of criticism of Iraq has now handcuffed Obama.
He can't do anything that might appear Bushian or Bush-like.
Well, Clinton didn't have the UN when he went to Kosovo, but he had NATO.
That was a NATO operation.
Pure and simple.
NATO, UN, whatever.
It does not equal USA.
Remember, Bush did not have either.
Bush didn't have NATO, did not have the UN at all when he went into Iraq.
Tried and tried and tried and tried and tried.
He went in.
He tried to put together a coalition.
He was undercut.
Remember Dominique DeVinipan and some of the brilliant wizards of SMART during all of those UN hearings, Security Council meetings and so forth.
Anyway, the journal's right.
Obama, the Democrats have so ripped Bush and by extension America for what they did in Iraq that they really can't now go on and do anything in Libya and have any credibility.
You might be saying, what about Cairo and Mubarak?
Well, that's a little different.
It really didn't have to do anything there.
The mob was taking care of things.
The Muslim Brotherhood was on the march.
All Obama had to do is get out in front of it and say that he was inspiring them.
But we didn't have to send anybody in there.
Here's the way the journal op-ed piece closes.
Mr. Obama will not lead the world.
And this is the key.
Mr. Obama won't lead the world because he truly seems to believe that American leadership is morally suspect.
Damn straight.
Now, I'm sorry.
As a resident of Litteralville, when I read that, my reaction is, why does he think that?
I'm sorry.
I don't care if I'm one out of 100 Americans.
I still have that reaction.
Why does he think U.S. leadership is morally suspect?
The answer to that, folks, is key as far as I'm concerned.
If the U.S. is morally suspect here, it's morally suspect everywhere.
If we got a guy running the country who thinks the country is morally suspect, then don't we all understand how that is going to animate every damn one of his policies, domestic and international.
But if Mr. Obama thinks George W. Bush was unpopular in the Arab world, he should contemplate the standing of America and the world reputation of Obama if Gaddafi and his sons slaughter their way back to power.
In other words, if Obama thinks Bush was hated over there, he better ask himself how he's going to be viewed if Gaddafi isn't able to genocide himself back to power in Libya.
He's going to have to wrap himself in the flag.
Well, you know, we don't have the moral authority.
We're the United States of America, and it's not our place anymore.
He said this.
He said the American consumer is no longer going to lead the world economy.
But we can't point any of that.
It's just too offensive.
We're going to say his policies are wrong.
Why?
If we are so morally suspect we can't take on Gaddafi, God help us.
We've got a leader who is going to put us lower on the morality ladder than Muammar Gaddafi.
Somebody help me.
He's waiting for somebody else to take the lead because he doesn't think we have any moral superiority over Gaddafi.
Good grief.
A couple of quick soundbites.
Scott Walker this afternoon, Madison, Wisconsin, a press conference, talk about a letter he received from Democrat Senator Mark Miller asking to meet in the DMZ alone on the Wisconsin-Illinois border.
As late as this weekend, yesterday, I authorized two members of my administration to travel as a South Beloy to go across the state line to do exactly what Senator Miller is asking for in this letter to be done in the future.
We did yesterday.
We actually did this.
Again, we didn't put out a press release because we're serious about getting this done on behalf of the people of the state.
People talk about negotiate.
We've been doing it for days.
He then continued with this.
The problem is we have a handful of senators who are interested in doing this, but we have Senator Miller, who time and time again allows his caucus to stand in the way of the progress coming forward.
And now I think the public has finally seen in the past 24 hours, firsthand, the frustration that we have felt for days in the sense that they were misled by the statements that Senator Miller made last night to a national media outlet when he said that the Senate was going to come back.
And now today is reversing course on that.
I think that's indicative of the fact that now Senator Miller is misleading the public, just like he misled us, and just like apparently he seems to be misleading many members of his own caucus.
I love this guy.
He's not standing down, poll data notwithstanding, he is not standing down.
Also in his presser, Walker said he was going to release all of his communications with the Democrats.
That ought to be revealing he is going to release all of his communications.
Be right back.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel confirms the average Milwaukee public schools teacher salary and benefit.
Total compensation is $101,000 a year.
$59,500 in salary, $41,591 in benefits.
A television package out there of over 100,000.
Average Milwaukee public screws teacher.
Compensation, Bismarck, North Dakota.
Hi, Bob.
I'm glad you called.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Rush, pleasure.
I just wanted to get your comments.
Yesterday, when I saw Senator John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, on, I believe it was Fake the Nation, and all of a sudden he's a big hawk on attacking Libya.
I just was interested in your comments on that.
John Kerry, the haughty John Kerry served in Vietnam, was hawkish on Libya.
Yes.
Fake the Nation.
Did you miss it?
Yeah, I must.
I've got to be honest.
I could pull the usual host answer.
Yeah, I watched it.
I thought Kerry was blah, blah, blah.
I didn't see it.
I missed it.
We don't have any sound bites from it.
And I don't know.
Had I seen it, I wouldn't have cared what Kerry said.
That's kind of what I thought, too.
But I was hoping you had seen it because, boy, he wants to start dropping the bombs right now, the D-bombs.
Right now, Rush.
He's always been hawkish.
It's really strange about Senator Kerry.
He's been hawkish about the strangest things.
He has at one time wanted us to invade Haiti and to restore Aristide.
I think you can gauge the hawkishness of Senator Kerry based on which party occupies the White House.
And if it's a Democrat in the White House, he's pretty hawkish on things.
That's all poll-driven anyway.
Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Hello, Ray.
Great to have you on the program.
Hey, Rush.
It's good to talk to you.
You bet.
Listen, I had a thought about what you were asking about.
You pretty much answered it, I think, in your last monologue about this whole Obama, what he believes and stuff, and how we should approach it.
But I think the real basic question is: you know, should the next nominee ask what Obama's core values are?
Because, you know, we certainly didn't ask it in the last election.
And it seems to me that, you know, what a person believes in their heart and their soul is what they do.
Wait, you just hit on something.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
You've just helped me here.
We know all of this stuff.
See, this is the key.
The question is not what.
We know.
We know that he has said to his buddies he wants a single-payer national health care.
We know he wants to put traditional energy sources out of business.
We know that he views the American private sector as a culprit.
We know all this.
The question is: how much of it do we actually say?
Here's my thought on that, Rush, if you will.
I would say that if a nominee, they don't have to be yelling and screaming about it, but if they ask the question, if they say, what does, you know, we know this guy believes these things.
They are going to be asked the question.
Look at Michelle Obama.
I'm sorry, Michelle Bachman on Meet the Press yesterday was asked, you're going to back off of this gangster business.
No, I'm not going to bank off of it.
There are enough Republicans who've said X, Y, and Z. Whoever the nominee is, is going to be, do you agree with what X said that Obama is Y is?
They're going to be asked this.
No, what I mean is, if the Republican nominees don't ask the public or the core, they don't bring up that this guy's core values are such because we know people by what they do, then to me, that says that that nominee doesn't deserve the presidency.
If they're going to be, if they're going to be, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
talking here about what's the bread the best strategy for winning what what is the best way to go about winning this thing that's the umbrella under which i'm asking all of these uh questions i appreciate the call ray we'll be right back look at snurdley if you were running for the republican nomination this year wouldn't you think you had a chance
I mean, everybody acknowledges this is one of the weakest fields Republican it is.
It is kind of strange.
Here we've got the single greatest opportunity we've ever had to contrast ourselves with that which we oppose and we got one of the weakest fields.
Everybody knows this.
Everybody knows this.
Everybody you talk to I can't mention any names.
I've talked to a bunch of people last week.
They all tell me the weakest field.
I had one.
I had one guy yeah, I want one one.
Uh, what's my term here?
Um, ranking Republican tell me it's the weakest field ever, but it doesn't matter, because the election is going to be about Obama and all we got to do is get his negatives on Obamacare back up to 60, 70 percent, and it doesn't matter who our nominee is.
Well, that's what's.
What's what?
One of the ranking Republicans told me doesn't matter who the nominee is, all because it's going to be it's going to be a referendum on Obama.
It's that simple.
We get his negatives up.
He didn't have a prayer, okay?
Well, it still takes me back to my question, how do you get the negatives up?
If if if if that if, that is the acting or animating philosophy or policy theory, whatever.
Okay, how do we get his negatives up?
How do you do it?
We already had a shellacking in november because of Obamacare.
How do we?
How do we?
How do we keep getting them up, the negatives?
Uh, audio soundbite time.
We've got.
You know I mentioned Jim Dermott here that the Democrats they never handcuff themselves in describing us Democrats, never handcuff themselves in talking about our motivations as they see it.
I mean they're dead wrong too.
They engage in the politics of personal destruction and we're told it never hurts them.
Let me go through this one more time.
I for those of you new to the program, one of the things I have always had a big problem with.
All my life, all my adult life, all of all of the life i've had during this program, i've heard people say, look, we can't.
We can't be personal criticizing Clinton, can't be personal criticizing Obama, can we?
Because rush, if we do, that's just going to send these independents.
They just want us to get along.
They want independence, want people to get along, they want to cross the aisle, want us to work together.
If we start getting critical, it's going to be independence is going to run right back to the Democrats.
You're right, the most negative, mean spirited, combative political party in my lifetime, these precious independents are going to retreat into the mouth of the most mean-spirited bunch of people ever, because we might be critical of Obama, or.
I've never understood that, and all it was.
All it's ever been is a trick put forth by the Democrats and the media to get us to shut up.
Look at it, the Democrats are never personal when it comes to criticizing Sarah Palin, are they?
Why though, they're they never get mean when they're talking about Sarah Palin, do they?
Oh, no, that's how we're supposed to behave, right?
Rush, we're never going to win.
We're never going to win.
Look at if, can you imagine two Democrats sitting around saying, we're never going to win if we keep talking about Palin the way we're talking about her?
Of course not.
Here's Baghdad Jim McDermott.
This is yesterday afternoon on Fox News channel.
There was a discussion about the economy in the 2012 election.
And the anchorette was Shannon Bream.
She said, there's a lot going on on Capitol Hill trying to find some way forward in funding the rest of the current fiscal year.
You made comments that Republicans are okay with creating chaos.
They actually don't want the economy to shape up because they can use it to defeat the president 2012.
You really think that's what's going on with your colleagues?
Absolutely.
The goal is to bring down the president.
Now, they want to do it by creating a situation in which the economy does not recover.
We've got evidence this week that things are getting better, but the Republicans continue to talk about cutting spending and deregulating.
He then says, well, those are serious allegations to make.
You honestly believe the Republican members of Congress would rather turn the economy upside down than fix it?
The cuts that they made the other day in the House bill were the most irresponsible piece of legislation I have seen in 40 years of my experience in government.
They made wild cuts that would cut programs that really the American people expect to be effective.
American people want clean air.
They want clean water.
These guys say, let's wipe out the EPA.
Now, that simply is not good government.
It is just whacking for the sake of whacking.
So we're back to the Republicans want dirty hair and dirty water.
We're back to that.
The Democrats are whacking and making their free to do.
And they never stop to ask themselves, you know, I think we're going to hurt ourselves if we go on these guys that way.
So we do.
I mean, we handcuff ourselves.
There's no question.
Speaking of Obama's core values and all that, this soundbite, grant number 33, this one remains one of my all-time favorite soundbites in the history of the program.
It is Charlie Rose and Tom Broko.
It's right around election time.
I mean, it's within days of the 2008 election, and it's on Charlie Rose's PBS show.
I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is.
No, I don't know how he really sees where China is.
We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.
I don't really know.
And do we know anything about the people who are advising them?
You know, it's an interesting question.
He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational speeches.
I don't know what books he's read.
What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?
There's a lot about him we don't know.
Well, there you have it.
Two of the most well-informed people in the world in their own minds admit they don't know a thing about Obama.
Well, there's the question, do they know now?
Do they know that that's from November 11th of 2000?
It's after the election.
That's a fine time to tell us now, Lucille.
November.
Yeah, but now he's moving to the center.
So how do they, but center of what?
Because they don't know where he started from.
I wonder if they today know what he's all about, if they know what the university is thinking is.
Okay, so they're admitting they don't know.
So, okay, let's come.
Let's tell them.
No, no, Rush.
I mean, we can't do that.
That's just going to make them not like us.
Always, though, they do already like us.
It was the Friday before the election, I think.
Yeah, Zach, it was October 31st and October 31st.
It was the Friday before the election when they made that little soundbite happen.
Back to the phones here on the EIB network.
This is John in Chicago.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Unpaid Colorado's from Chicago, right?
Thank you, sir, very much.
I believe the next conservative presidential candidate has to do something that is going to be very difficult to pull off, and that is he's going to have to separate the person Barack Obama, who a lot of people identify with in this country, from the leftist ideology that is ruining this country.
And it's going to be difficult to pull off, but in essence, I think he says Barack Obama loves a version of America, but that version is a big government version of America.
And what made America great was free economics, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion.
And we must have a dismantling of Washington, D.C. so that the rest of the country can thrive.
And the only way to do that is to re-emphasize those basic core freedoms that Barack Obama believes are subservient to a big, overarching, all-intrusive government that will destroy what made America great.
All right.
So you basically coming down on the side of just keep it focused on policy.
No, keep it on philosophical.
Here's my problem, Rush.
The next Republican or conservative is not just running against Barack.
He's running against David Gregory, CBS, NBC.
And any criticism can be viewed as personal.
What I'm saying is attack his hard-left ideology and his philosophy and give examples from his policies that show what that is.
But it has to be done so that it is not viewed as mean.
Ronald Reagan was perfect at this.
He wasn't mean toward Jimmy Carter personally, but he was deft at pointing out the destructive path that he led America down in the 1970s.
That's why I think it's going to take a master politician to pull this off.
Well, you know, there's a lot of stuff people think about Reagan.
If you go back and you listen to Reagan talk about leftists, Democrats, you will hear a guy who was brutal in his honesty about who they are and what their objectives are.
Absolutely.
He didn't categorize these people as just a bunch of misguided naivete idealists.
Well, I agree with you, but he wasn't viewed as being a personally mean person.
And that's why I said it's going to take a very deft politician to pull this off.
Now, interesting.
He wasn't viewed as mean.
Though, is it mean to say Obama's a socialist?
Just ask if there's no trick question here.
You're not a paid actor.
Is it mean?
Is it getting too personal to say he's socialist?
No, I think what you do is you publish his own thoughts, his own work.
You put it up on the big screen and you say, I don't just call the man a socialist.
Here's why I believe he is a socialist.
And then you say, you know, you dreams of our fathers, whatever the book was.
You pull out the quotes, and then you say he's quoted in 2004 being a single-payer advocate, and this is just a transition to get us there.
I think that's how you do it.
Rather than say somehow he's a mean guy, you know, he loves his family, blah, blah, blah.
But the point is, he has said some very Marxist or neo-Marxist things in his life.
I personally think he was brought up as a Marxist.
I would believe he was just a softcore socialist.
He may have mitigated his views somewhat, but he's pretty hardcore left.
I think you and I would agree with that.
But I think there are words, there are speeches, there are policies that point out that his vision of America, his version of America, is a hardcore left version that will lead to the destruction of what this country is.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, wait just a second.
Once you do that, once you say that Obama's policies are leading to the destruction of America, then here comes your aforementioned David Gregory and Bob Schieffer saying, are you saying that the president is trying to destroy America?
What you.
Here's my answer to that.
He's trying to destroy what made America great, and he wants to reestablish.
Wait a second, then why would President Obama want to destroy American greatness, sir?
Because to him, a free country is not what made America great.
He believes that an all-intrusive federal government will right every wrong, will make everything good, will make America great again.
And that is precisely the wrong thing.
So the next presidential candidate needs to be like Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin and address head-on David Gregory, who is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Obama administration and challenge him right back.
Well, mouthpiece, stenographer.
Yeah.
True.
But I'm just, these guys are all going to be trying to get the aforementioned nominee to get into this.
I addressed this at CPAC.
And it might be wise to go for tomorrow to get these excerpts from my CPAC speech a couple years ago.
Because I actually, with that speech at CPAC, started a debate, principle versus policy.
And I remember making the big case for principle.
And I remember that audience standing up and cheering.
And, you know, a lot of our conservative intelligentsia was appalled.
They were horrified.
Because we have people, you know, everybody's out there getting all tied up.
They're policy wonks.
And they were asked if they wanted Obama to fail, like I wanted him to fail.
And I was out there pushing principle, principle.
All we had to do was stand on principle, and every question that anybody could ask us has an answer that's about us and what we believe.
Anyway, I'll have Cookie tear that apart.
I'll show you what I'm talking about with those excerpts from the CPAC speech tomorrow.
Folks, don't remember Ronaldos Magnus, or don't forget, Ronaldos Magnus called the enemy the evil empire.
He did not pussyfoot around.
And don't forget, as amiable, friendly, good-natured as Reagan was, they made him out to be a mean hater.
They did everything they could.
So no matter what the truth is, they're going to accuse us of being things we're not anyway.