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May 25, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:00
May 25, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
No, I'm not happy about it, and I'm going to try to put a stop to this out there.
It's starting to irritate me here.
All this panic over this unheard of New York election yesterday.
Get a grip, folks.
I'm in a perfectly fine mood here today.
I got up.
Actually, I awoke a couple hours earlier than normal.
I'm reading a novel I'm having trouble putting down.
So I got up early.
I'm going to start reading the book.
I'm in a perfectly fine mood here.
I'm doing show prep.
Get everybody.
Come in here.
And Snerdley storms in here at 11 o'clock, fuming, smoke coming out of his ears.
Screw it to heck with it.
Let's just let Medicare go broke.
Every damn time, the media distorts it.
They lie about it.
Okay, fine.
You want Medicare to go broke?
I'm tired of seasoned citizens demanding it everybody.
Just let them go broke.
I check the email.
It's the same thing.
Over one stupid election in New York, that was as big a fraudulent election as there ever has been in terms of the substance of what was on the table.
Up to me once again to bring calm to a very panicked conservative nation here today.
And I'll do my best to add it.
Hi, I am Rush Limbo.
This is the EIB.
What?
What?
It is.
Let me put this in perspective for you.
You know, you're falling prey to this notion that what do you expect to happen when we announce a plan to reform Medicare?
You know that the Democrats are going to demagogue it.
You know that it's going to happen.
You know that the media is going to do everything they can to destroy anybody and everybody behind the plan because all they care about is winning the election.
They don't care about the country.
They don't care about the future.
They couldn't care less about that.
They care about winning the election.
Pure and simple.
If they have to lie to do it, they will.
So you get upset.
Why don't we lie?
Or why do we tackle these issues?
Why don't we just milquetoast along here and not do the heavy lifting after we win the election?
How come we always pay the price for doing the right thing?
How come we always get lied about?
How come we always get destroyed doing the right thing?
Is it not interesting?
Scott Walker takes on the public unions in Wisconsin.
He takes on the budget with cuts.
He presses a thoroughly conservative agenda.
The unions throw all they have at a Supreme Court candidate in hopes of installing their own hack.
They lose despite all of that.
But that's not evidence of a conservative message or trend or anything.
So here we have an election New York compared to what was going on in Wisconsin.
Chump change.
And the media is trying to say, that means the November elections are over.
They didn't matter.
People have changed their minds.
They don't want the Republicans anymore.
It means that what happened to Wisconsin a few short weeks ago, I guess doesn't matter.
People have changed their minds.
The Medicare thing was not even really on the ballot.
What you have to understand about this election in New York, it was a parole election in the sense, and if you don't know what we're talking about, it probably would serve me well here to inform you, a Democrat won special election for the House seat in upstate New York, Jack Kempsell's seat.
What you won't hear is that the Republicans would have won by something like 52 to 47% if there had not been a phony Tea Party candidate who siphoned off 9% of the conservative vote.
This Tea Party, and they did the same thing to Sharon Angle in Nevada.
And I know what you're saying.
Well, they did it.
They succeeded.
They pulled it off.
Yeah, but this is the district in New York.
The Tea Party guy was a Democrat National Committee stooge.
He has run for office three times before as a Democrat.
In fact, he spent all of his time in this campaign attacking the Republican candidate.
He paroded the Republican candidate.
What happened here is the Republican Tea Party voters got confused.
9% of them got confused and bought the notion that this was a genuine Tea Party candidate running in New York.
So if you want to look at it in a different way, you can say the voters actually thought they were voting for something other than what ended up happening.
But regardless, none of this is unexpected.
It boils down.
We're going to have to come to grips, folks.
We're going to have to learn.
We're going to have to, I don't know what it's going to take.
We're going to have to learn to accept the fact that no matter what happens in politics, the media is going to not be on our side, and they are going to distort it.
We are never going to get the truth about the media and things like this, and we're never going to get a fair shake.
And yet, we still win elections.
Still, November was huge.
And it can be again.
Nothing has really changed here as far as I'm concerned.
They have this election in New York, most of the nation wasn't even paying attention to.
The Democrats throw in a phony Tea Party candidate.
And somehow we've got a referendum on Paul Ryan.
Somehow we have a referendum on Medicare reform.
Somehow we have a referendum on conservatism.
I know that's what ABC Radio News is saying.
The drive-bys all over it are saying.
The real problem here, folks, is not that the Democrats and the media are saying it because they are predictable.
The Republican establishment is also saying it.
That remains our problem.
You've now got people part of the inside-the-beltway Republican ruling class elites now saying, you know, this manicure because of this election, it's too big a bite to chew at one time.
Paul Ryan shouldn't have chewed such a big.
These people are not helpful.
They are the biggest obstacle we face.
Well, it's not the biggest obstacle.
It's just the reality.
We have two opponents.
We have the media and the Democrats.
And we have Republican liberals, Republican moderates.
And I think, you know, what might have some people distressed, depressed, in a panic, as well, is there seems to be such cowardice on the Republican side, such a willingness on the Republican side to accept this phony narrative that we know the media and the Democrats are going to put out.
But this election was not about Medicare.
In fact, let me grab, we got a soundbite from Paul Ryan on this.
And I'm see if I can find it.
Okay, I'm up to number 12, but still not.
Yeah, here's the number 15.
Paul Ryan responding to the, this is on Fox and Friends this morning, and he was responding to the results and the spin in the election, New York 26 last night.
Gretchen Carlson said, how would you respond to Kathy, how do you pronounce her name?
H-O-C-H-U-L.
Have you heard her name pronounced?
I don't know how you're pronouncing it.
Hawkyel Hokul.
How would you respond to her?
She's the Democrat, to her, about the fact that she fought on the backs not of seniors, but on saving entitlements.
I guess she's against Obamacare then.
That must be she's for repealing the president's health care law because the president's health care law takes $500 billion from Medicare to spend on Obamacare.
And starting next year, it puts a panel of 15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of rationing and price controlling Medicare, which then Medicare actually tells us about 40% of Medicare providers are going to stop taking Medicare now.
What's happening here is, first of all, you had a Democrat running a Tea Party, spending a couple million dollars of his own money.
That obviously made this a difficult race.
The Medicare story here is the president and his party have decided to shamelessly demagogue this issue.
Okay, now Ryan is not giving up, and it's his head that's on the chopping block.
Paul Ryan is in the crosshairs, and he's not giving up.
Now, just to show you, nobody can tell me how to pronounce this woman's name.
That's what scant attention people were paying to this.
Dawn, did you know that there was an election in New York 26 last night?
Yesterday.
Brian, did you know?
Sturdley, did you know?
Well, you want to know something?
I didn't know.
I did not even know there was an election in New York yesterday.
Hokule, I guess.
Hokul, I'm told she pronounces her name, Hokul.
The emphasis on the first syllable.
Hokul is the winner.
I got up today, and that's why I'm doubly feeling ambushed here.
I didn't even know this election was on the ballot.
I didn't even know that was happening.
No, I'm not afraid to admit that.
This doesn't matter.
This is not relevant to the 2012 election.
She ran on a Republic on Medicare in a Republican-heavy district with a phony Tea Party guy in, siphoning 9% of, if the phony Tea Party guy is not in, she loses.
The Democrats found a wealthy fraud to run in.
But Mr. Lembaugh, doesn't that tell you that it can happen every election because your Tea Party people can be fooled by everybody that they're in the Tea Party?
That could be problematic.
But in terms of the substance of the issue, Medicare reform did not lose.
Election fraud won or trickery tomfoolery or what have you.
One more from Ryan.
Here's Steve Doocy on Fox and Friends.
What we've seen is that Democrats use the threat of your plan.
You want to fix Medicare, Medicare.
They're using that as the bogeyman to get people to vote for them.
So going forward, Congressman, is what happened yesterday in New York is that a preview of coming attractions.
It's a preview of scare tactics, distortions, demagoguery to try and scare seniors to voting for them.
And the irony of it is we're the ones who are actually protecting Medicare, current benefits for current seniors.
They're the ones that pass the law that actually compromises their Medicare and allows the program to collapse.
So we have a year and a half, and I believe in a year and a half's time, the truth will get out.
The facts will be known.
Whenever I do town hall meetings and discuss this with seniors at senior centers, once they understand the facts, they want these solutions.
They want to make sure that the promise that government made them is kept, which is what we're doing, and that the program is solvent for their children and grandchildren, which is what we're doing.
That's contrast to the president's plan.
The alternative is to just do nothing and let it go broke.
Just do nothing, let it go broke, and then let people find out what they get with Democrats.
That's kind of like, you know, letting the Democrats win every election so that people finally figure out how rotten they are.
Isn't that happening?
Don't we have the epitome of how bad things can get running the show right now?
And it is galvanizing people as it did last November.
So fear-mongering one.
Fear-mongering one, not anything that's substantive on Medicare or cuts or what have you.
Again, just to reiterate, the problematic thing for me is these wishy-washy Republicans who live and die in the Beltway with media approval.
Live and die being liked by the media.
Live and die being accepted by the media.
So you'll have these people come out like they are and say, oh, Ryan bit off too big a bite here.
This is too much.
Need to go about this gradually.
And whether or not they're advancing the cause is irrelevant.
Whether they're praised by the leaders of the big clique inside the beltway is what matters to them.
Okay, now I got to take a timeout.
There's all kinds of stuff out there today, folks.
And we'll get to it as we always do.
It's going to take the entire three hours.
And by the way, this Hokul babe is a carpetbagger to boot.
She doesn't even live in the district.
And for the record, by the way, this woman attacked the $500 billion that Obama cut from Medicare.
She attacked it.
She was making Paul Ryan's case.
So in effect, you could say that it was a referendum on Obamacare because part of her campaign was to rip the $500 million cuts in Medicare that is in Obamacare.
Anyway, sit tight, my friends.
Don't doubt me.
You can invest your trust here.
You have two options.
Two options to just tune us out of hell with it to heck with it or hang in there and be tough.
Up to you, whatever you want to do.
And welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone.
Great to have you here.
800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, This New York election is another thing that you I want to say, not so much you have to understand.
Don't like speaking that way, but I will say this.
I get all kinds of emails and complaints about the media.
I don't know what to say, folks.
I don't know what to tell you.
The media is who it is.
Telling me that the media is unfair is like telling me the sun came up.
What do you want me to do about it?
They are who they are.
I'll tell you, most of what the media is trying to do here in this New York election is simply to reassure the ruling class that they have nothing to fear.
That's really what they're doing.
They're lying to themselves about what this election was.
I got headline after headline.
The New York Times, Democrat wins GOP seat, rebuke scene to Medicare.
AP, Medicare key to shocking them win the New York House race.
Hopeful signs for Democrats.
New York Times.
Politico, have Democrats cracked the code for 2012?
They're the ones that are in panic.
They're the ones that got a president with an indefensible record.
They're the ones that have a president that doesn't know how to give a toast without a teleprompter.
They're the ones that got a president sitting over there in Great Britain while the Midwest gets tornadoed to death.
They're the ones that are seriously worried.
I have told you, I've talked to people, seen the White House re-elect numbers for Obama.
They're bad.
They are the ones who are worried.
They are the ones that don't have a budget.
They are the ones who haven't taken anything seriously.
They are the ones who have nothing to advance.
All they have is lies, dirty tricks and distortions.
They're the ones who are worried about 2012.
So all of this reporting, all of this spin on this election is an effort on the part of the media to reassure themselves and the Democrat Party ruling class that everything's okay.
But look, Joanne Kloppenberg, remember this race, the Supreme Court seat, state of Wisconsin.
Joanne Kloppenberg originally won or came very close, going to have a recount, the Democrat.
She ended up losing by 7,000 votes when they found some votes in a precinct.
Oh, yeah, well, forget about that.
We're not going to report that anymore.
Yeah, forget, forget, forget.
Yeah, yeah, that didn't happen.
They just stopped telling you about it.
The entire Wisconsin scenario, huge conservative win for Governor Scott Walker and the Republicans.
They just stopped reporting it.
That has them scared to death, though.
So you have New York's 26 here, District 26, and a win.
And so it's orgasm time as they try to reassure themselves that they're not in trouble.
As they try to reassure themselves that they have nothing to fear.
They can listen to Pelosi and they can forget all about this Tea Party nonsense.
Yep.
Folks, Tea Party's finished.
Tea Party's over.
Obama's going to win with 80% of the vote.
Yep.
Yep.
That's what this means.
That's what they're telling themselves.
Don't doubt me.
What's the what?
Oh, the name of the novel I'm reading that woke me up two hours early.
It's a political thriller.
It's The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry, the Jefferson Key.
Let me tell you something, folks.
On this New York 26 business and Paul Ryan's Medicare reform in the Republican budget and this cadre of spineless mainstream Republicans that we seem to have in Washington, let me tell you what needs to happen.
Before the end of this day, if any of them are serious about it, one or more of these Republican presidential candidates needs to call a press conference and stand up for the Ryan plan.
We can't do it alone on talk radio.
We can't do it.
You are going to have to speak up.
This is a moment.
Maybe not the moment, but it is a moment.
A test.
Is there somebody in the Republican Party willing to lead?
Arthur pulled the sword out of the rock and became King Arthur.
The Republican Party rallied almost in unison behind the Paul Ryan Medicare proposal.
And now one little election, and we find out where the spines in this party are.
One little election in which the winner actually ripped Obama and criticized Obama and the Democrats for $500 billion in Medicare cuts.
The winner did that.
And they're trying to tell us this is a referendum on the Ryan Medicare proposal.
We had a fraudulent, phony Tea Party candidate siphoning nine points away from the Republican candidate.
When Ryan announced this, there was, it wasn't total, but there was a wide swathe of the Republican Party, conservative, moderate, that got behind it because everybody knows we can't afford to keep going the way we are.
So somebody took the first leadership step, Paul Ryan.
Now one election, and all of a sudden they want to abandon him.
You disagree with me on this, Snortley?
I'm just telling you, if it's worth defending when it came out, if it's worth defending when Ryan announced it, it's worth defending now.
If opposing Obama was worth it when Ryan announced his Medicare reform, it's worth opposing Obama now.
Regardless, the outcome of this election don't care what the media is doing.
This is a moment where leadership can stand up.
Now, the leader might want to stand up and say, I think the election shows that we've bitten too much off and won by the Medicare.
I would hope not.
You just heard Paul Ryan say, I'm confident in the next 15 months, the truth will get out there.
How?
We can't do it alone on talk radio, nor can he do it alone.
And he can't pull it off at town hall meetings alone.
He's not going to reach enough people.
It is true that when he speaks to seasoned citizen groups, once they hear what the truth is, they're all for it.
Because it doesn't affect them.
There's not one seasoned citizen that's affected by the Ryan plan.
The Democrats are lying about this from sunup to sundown.
And then some.
Not one Medicare recipient will be affected by the Ryan plan.
It's all down the road.
Nothing unfair about it at all.
If the party doesn't have the guts to stand up and stop this demagoguery now, the little old lady going over the cliff, yeah, I've seen the ad.
I've seen the ad, yeah.
It's a great opportunity for leadership.
Great opportunity to somebody to stand up and do something about it.
What would Netanyahu do?
Seems to be the question of the day.
What would B.B. Netanyahu do if B.B. Netanyahu was running the Republican Party, believed in the Ryan plan?
What would he do?
Now, I'm told that the Speaker of the House John Boehner just tweeted: Republican Path to Prosperity Preserves and Protects Medicare for retirees and future generations, leaves it completely unchanged for those 55 and over.
Boehner also tweeted, Washington Democrats' budget lets Medicare go bankrupt.
Newt Gingrich is defending Ryan's plan now, I'm told.
Somebody sees an opportunity here, as do I.
But folks, I am telling you, look how unsure Obama is.
He doesn't even dare to speak to audiences in the United States now.
He has to go to Europe to find an audience with grown-ups.
And look what he loves hanging around with monarchs.
He really envies the queen.
He hopes to be that someday.
He's got to learn how to do a toast.
You've seen that?
That's hilarious.
And now, if that had been Bush, well, you know what they'd be doing.
With media today, couldn't the queen have bailed him out?
Couldn't the queen have picked up her glass and clinked his at the time?
Couldn't she at least have done that?
Let me ask you, you people in the media, if you're the queen and you have been disrespected by this man and his wife since the day they took office, what the hell would you do?
Is everybody supposed to grow up and be bigger just to make sure it goes okay for Obama?
The Queen has been known to do this.
I don't remember the exact story, and it may even be legend, but story out there that the queen is somebody having dinner in her presence, and the guy was just botching every protocol.
And it got so bad, the queen started his following his lead just to be classy and not have him be embarrassed and so forth.
So to me, he said, couldn't she look at his, he's just floundering out there.
Somebody didn't brief him properly.
Somebody didn't brief him properly.
Or what?
Or maybe he didn't understand the playbook, or he said to hell with it.
I don't know.
But regardless, couldn't she have bailed him out?
It is so, so, so bad.
He was so poorly briefed.
You really have to see this.
And you have to look at it two or three times.
The first thing you look at is the queen.
And you note the queen, fully aware of the gaffe that's taking place here.
I mean, you do not offer the queen your glass until the music's over.
You don't pick up your glass and offer the queen your glass for toast till the music's over.
He had no teleprompter because you can't put one in there.
So he's got note cards and they're on the table, and they're away where he has to lean over to read every other word of the toast.
He blows the word vitality at the beginning.
He pauses because he's unsure of himself, and the band, for whatever reason, starts playing.
My take when I looked at it, I said, Well, this is like the Academy Awards where some recipients going on and on too long, and they give them the hook.
So he starts and he continues to give the toast while the band is playing God Save the Queen.
He finally figures out he should stop that.
It's totally botched.
Here is the audio of that Buckingham Palace yesterday in London.
Ladies and gentlemen, please stand with me and raise your glasses as I propose a toast.
To Her Majesty the Queen, for the vitality of the special relationship between our peoples and, in the words of Shakespeare, to this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, to the Queen.
At that point, he gave up.
Yeah, the Queen's looking dumbfounded, not looking at him.
He's offering her the glass.
She doesn't, she doesn't.
Finally, it goes on a little longer, and he says again to the queen, and they clink glasses and so forth.
Now, here's the media montage.
Of course, now, if Bush had done this, it would have been portrayed as a horrible breach of protocol and an international incident.
But with Obama, it's everybody else's fault but his.
The orchestra mistakenly played the British national anthem, God Save the Queen, before the president was done.
He forged on undeterred.
Interrupting the president's toast.
Shakespeare.
Music over his words.
The Queen.
The band started up.
Band started up before he was finished with his toast.
The band struck up the national anthem.
The special moment turned awkward when the orchestra started playing God Save the Queen while the president was still toasting.
Poor Obama, I don't think he knew what to do.
Somebody in the president's protocol staff clearly didn't brief him well enough.
She kind of left him hanging.
It would have killed her.
She really did.
She could have just said, heck with the protocol.
I'll clink your glass.
See, Queen botched it.
Queen should have understood what's going on.
Obama was poorly, poorly briefed.
I'm tired of people making excuses for these people.
It's everybody else's fault about the Obamas, the worldly, sophisticated Obamas.
He seems to be, I mean, God save the Queen.
I mean, it's a national anthem.
You shut up.
He seems to be unaware that it is standard practice to pipe down and stand at attention when a national anthem is being played.
He was the last guy to put his glass down.
He was the only guy his glass up.
He put his glass down, finally figured it out, and stood at the quasi attention.
Toasts to the queen by tradition are brief and to the point.
And nobody gives speeches.
To Her Majesty the Queen and you sit down and you.
I don't know.
In fact, I don't even think it was the fault of the orchestra because traditionally, toasts to the queen are very short and they're not much more involved than to the queen.
That's it.
I think the band profit, okay, that's a toast.
Let's get it in gear here, Lester.
That was kind of funny to watch.
Mr. Limbaugh, do you really take pride in the embarrassment of the U.S. chief executive?
Hell yes.
Damn straight I do.
And we're back.
It's Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, ensconced firmly here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Chris Chicola, National Review Online, the corner blog, political pundits will say that the Republican candidate for Congress, New York 26, lost because of Medicare.
They're wrong.
This election was more of a referendum on a candidate's ability to defend freedom than anything else.
In New York 26, the Republican Party nominated a fairly conservative establishment Republican in Jane Corwin.
But an ex-Democrat named Jack Davis, running as a Tea Party candidate, siphoned votes from the Republican.
The reason wasn't because Davis is obviously more conservative or because Corwin's not sufficiently conservative.
It's because Corwin did a terrible job articulating the free market message.
And Davis consistently demagogued the important issue of trade.
Now, this is a fundamental point.
And there's one thing everybody better remember.
Every elected Republican seeking reelection November 12 better remember one thing.
The November elections of 2010 were not about you.
Nobody voted for you.
They voted against Democrats.
You cannot expect to go into a campaign such as New York 26 and not have a message and expect to win simply because your opponent's a Democrat, especially when the Democrats are desperate and they're going to bring in a ringer, a fraudulent Tea Party guy to siphon Republican votes.
You better have, Chicola's point is very, you better have a conservative message.
It better be conservative.
That's what wins.
Just take a look at Wisconsin.
It wins every time it's tried, folks.
And that sends chills down the spines of Republicans as well in Washington.
If any Republican running for office in 2012 cannot articulate, defend, explain conservative principles, they're going to lose.
November 2010 was unique.
That was an anti-Democrat, anti-Obama vote.
And it could be on the national presidential level, could be the same thing in 2012, depending on the economy.
When you start getting in these local congressional races and so forth, it's going to matter who you are, what you stand for.
And you better not be bashful and you'd better not be afraid of being conservative.
And you better not be afraid of saying so, and you better be able to say so.
That's not, see, I'm not worried here because conservatism didn't get beat here.
Here's Mark and Buffalo.
Great to have you in the program, sir.
Hi.
Rush, a great, great thrill to talk to you.
I know that Snerdley can verify much of what I'm telling you.
He's got some roots in this area, so I won't take up much of your time.
Just wanted to tell you that the seat became available because, as you may remember, Chris Lee gave up the seat when he was found to have posted semi-closed pictures of himself on the Zoom.
Right, I've got 30 seconds.
I didn't read the clock.
Can you do it in 30 seconds?
Right, right.
The candidate that was presented was not a strong Republican.
The Tea Party candidate was obviously not a Tea Party candidate.
And the Democrat was a serious Dem.
What ended up happening was the Republican ran a very poor musak kind of campaign and assumed that she was going to win because it's a fairly Republican district.
Exactly.
And no reason to sig my neck out.
No reason to really say, I got this in the bag.
Country hates the Democrats.
No reason for me to make myself a target.
All right, that kind of, I'm really reining it in here, folks.
Isn't going to cut it.
If you are a Republican running for office in 2012 and you are a conservative, be proud of it.
Don't be bashful.
Be able to defend conservatism.
Be able to articulate it.
Do it with energy, affection, excitement.
It'll carry you.
There's really no mystery here.
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