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Sept. 13, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:27
September 13, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, I think I watched a debate last night.
Yes, I did.
Went back and forth.
The National Football League in a debate.
The first conclusion I came to, Huntsman and Ron Paul need to quit the Republican Party, join the Democrat Party, run against Obama.
I mean, this, and then, and then everything gets cleaned up.
Everything comes, starts coming into focus.
Well, I wouldn't say everything starts coming into focus.
But just get those guys out of the way, and they'd be more at home running as Democrats against Obama for the nomination.
How are you doing, folks?
Great to have you back.
Great to be back.
Here where I was born to be behind the golden EIB microphone, I, of course, America's real anchor man, a man who did know 30 years ago what I know today.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
I have to tell you, these debates are excellent.
They are entertaining.
They are eye-opening.
There's nothing's wrong with them, obviously.
I mean, some of these people are making mistakes, but that's to be expected in these circumstances.
It is really entertaining to go from person to person to person to watch it.
You know, I thought Wolf Blitz kept it moving last night.
It was last night reminded me of the first debate where there was the constant conservatism on parade.
Again, now I'm just talking overall, just the overview of this last night.
Sure, all of these candidates have flaws.
They've all got some problems they've got to overcome.
This is a Tea Party debate last night, and the questions that we got for the Tea Party made me feel like I was at home last night.
It made me feel like my country was back.
It made me feel like that I live in the old United States again.
It was an upper from any number of standpoints.
Now, I'm not looking for negatives because I know that they're going to pop up anyway.
I'm not looking for problems because I know that they're going to surface, which they did.
But these debates get better and better and better.
And each of these people has their own distinct or have their own distinct personality that surfaces and shines or doesn't.
But I just, I have, I had, I had a tough time going back to the football game.
You know, I was going, my DirecTV, there's a feature you have on DirecTV where you can watch two programs at the same time and pause them and not lose your place as you go back and forth.
And so I set that up and was doing that last night, and I found myself pausing both the football game and the debate so as not to miss anything of either one.
And I found myself spending more time with the debate at some point during the football game.
I started recording a debate at 8 o'clock when it came on, but I didn't see any of it until about 8.20 or 8.25.
So I missed the initial exchanges that Romney and Perry had on social security and stuff.
But we've got the audio sound bites of all of this.
But there were some great lines from people last, like Perry.
People are tired of spending money we don't have on programs we don't want.
Now, the thing about Perry, and I've noticed this, he seems to fade at the end of these things.
He seems to really just get tired.
Now, I don't know if he's actually getting physically tired or just bored.
Some people's attention span is just not all that great.
But after about an hour, the answers, his answers to questions slow down.
He seems to be searching word by word for the word to say.
And Newt last night, you know, Newt is one of these things.
You look at Newt Gingrich and you can't help but have the reaction, gosh, what could have been?
Honestly, folks, what could have been, I mean, Newt kept it focused last night.
Newt was like the adult in the room.
And with some of the things that he said, Perry, you know, he's got some room to grow in these debates.
This is his second debate.
He had some unpopular answers last night.
Bachman, I'll tell you, Michelle Bachman, she might have blown it today.
Well, not blown it, but she might have jumped the shark today if she'd have just left it alone on this vaccination thing from last night.
But she's now out saying that this Gardasil, the drug, now causes mental retardation.
Somebody in the audience came up to her and told her that, so she's not, and that's jumping the shark on this.
There's no evidence that the vaccine causes mental retardation.
That's shame.
But she really took it to Rick Perry on this, and Perry stands his ground on this stuff.
And just from a stupid, I try to watch this from the standpoint not of Kingmaker, which of course I am.
I watch this from the standpoint of just the entertainment factor right now.
And I have to, folks, I have to tell you that while I could nitpick and find problems with all of them, there are only two of them up there that I would have a problem with being elected president of the United States.
Only two of them.
Compared to what's going on.
Have you seen the latest news on poverty?
Does anybody doubt?
Can anybody doubt that what is happening in this country is happening on purpose?
Take a look at the Drudge Report front page record 46.2 million people below the poverty line.
22% of American children live in poverty.
Dramatic drop in median income.
Poverty soars the highest it's been since 1993.
Now, my point is that we know that anybody on that stage last night, other than, well, yeah, I'm going to throw Huntsman and Paul out because they're not electable anyway, not on our side.
So throw them out.
Any of the remaining people on that stage last night would be a profound improvement and so much better at chief executive than what we have now.
Santorum came on strong last night.
You know what Santorum's problem is?
No, no, no.
No, Santorum, he connects great.
Santorum connected great last night.
Santorum was fabulous.
Bachman was fabulous last night.
Perry was fabulous in the first hour, sticking to his guns.
Romney had his moments.
Santorum's problem is he lost as an incumbent 2006.
He cannot shake the unelectable tag.
You know, that's, he made Iran a big issue in 2006.
If people remember that the Iraq war was a very controversial thing, remember this was running against Bob Casey, and he's trailing, and he's running around talking about how he's praying for Bob Casey.
He had him on the program to talk about the campaign.
He was such a good, pretty good senator.
He was great in the House of Representatives in the freshman class, 1994.
He was a conservative who had won elections in blue states, Pennsylvania, a blue state, in western Pennsylvania.
And then I think he comes along and because of party protocol endorsed Spectre, stood behind Spectre.
A number of other things took place, the 2006 election as an incumbent.
He lost, and that's unfortunately put this collar around his neck with a conventional wisdom crowd that he can't win, that he's not a lie.
And that leads to another thing.
We're being told that we have a two-man race.
Who is telling us we have a two-man race?
Why do we have to settle for the fact it's a two-man race?
No, sir.
Seriously.
No.
Wait a minute.
Well, but it's not yet just a two-man.
Anything, if you look at it as a two-man race, of course, then that's all you're going to see.
But who is it that sets these narratives?
And who is it that sets these templates?
The pollsters create these mindsets.
I'm just saying right now that I, compared to what is happening in the country right now, I want to applaud Bachman for focusing on Obamacare, for crying out loud, that is the issue.
That and the economy.
And the people on that stage last night that kept it focused on health care, Obamacare, and the economy deserve plaudits, and that's Bachman and Newt.
You know, I warned them, don't get distracted on this sideshow of Social Security.
Don't do it.
Don't go there.
It's just, you're just pandering to the media.
You're doing what the media wants.
You're distracting everybody's attention.
You're not talking about Obama's vulnerabilities.
We talk about Social Security.
It's not that big a problem right now in terms of the bigger issues that we face.
And I've got the soundbite here ready to go.
Here, grab audio soundbite number five.
This is me earlier this month, September 2nd, warning everybody in the Republican Party about, because there was a newspaper story.
I forget what it was about.
Oh, I forget what the story was about, but everybody was, yay, look at it.
Don't get sidetracked by this story.
Here's what I said.
Anything that distracts our effort from the economy, jobs, higher taxes, federal regulations is not a good thing.
We've just got 14 months here, folks.
14 months to save this nation.
14 months to stop the assault on the private sector.
Over the next six, seven months or longer, you're going to see ramped up stories about gay marriage, social issues, illegal immigration, what have you, as a means of distracting the Republican presidential field from jobs, stimulus spending, higher taxes.
Lord knows what do we have?
We've got another porculus proposal that raises taxes on Social Secure or on small businesses.
Now defined anybody at $200,000 or more, which is practically every small business in this country.
I'm going to break this down number-wise as the program unfolds.
Massive, the tax increases that Obama has been dreaming about, he's proposed them again.
Now, speaking of illegal immigration in Texas, this is an albatross around Perry's neck.
He's sticking to it, but it's an albatross around his neck.
And I'm talking about the Ability of people, children of illegals, to get in-state tuition prices to go to college.
And Perry is saying, We don't care in Texas what your last name is.
Education is the way out, and we're not going to, it's rather better to do that than put people on the dole and this kind of thing.
But, you know, there was a great tweet out there.
What is the point of educating people who cannot legally be hired because they are illegal in the first place?
Well, if we're going to enforce, if one of our efforts to enforce illegal immigration is to focus on the employers and see to it that they are punished if they hire illegals, what's the point of educating the children of illegals who are not citizens?
And they graduate and then they can't be hired if they are not.
It's an interesting question.
But, well, people are going to have to make a choice with Perry.
They're going to have to make a choice with everybody.
I mean, there isn't a candidate alive that doesn't have baggage.
Romney has Romney care, and he's sticking to it no matter what.
He is not going to climb down off that ladder.
He's going to continue to allow Obama to say, hey, you know what?
Romney was my model.
He's going to stick to it, try to draw differences.
Because it is assumed that the worst thing you can do is capitulate, show weakness, so you hang tough.
You stick with your principles and whatever you did at the time, you did it for the right reasons and you stand by them.
Now, Perry took on more fire.
Everybody was ganging up on Perry last night because he is the front runner in all of the polling data.
Bachman, I mean, she's clearly a little frustrated, upset that she lost the mantle, comes out of Ames winning the straw poll and now is invisible.
She said, Perry comes in and steals her thunder.
She's got to get it back.
So she made, I mean, she went for the throat on two separate occasions last night on the vaccines and also the part of the vaccine, the crony capitalism charge.
And Perry said he couldn't be bought for $5,000, but he didn't name the price.
Now, you could interpret his answer to that, that there is a price.
I hate to say that.
He said the fact that he could be bought for $5,000 is offended when his campaign raised $30 million.
And I'm thinking, well, what is the price?
The way he phrased it, he didn't mean it that way.
Don't anybody quote me here on this.
It's just between you and me, but that's I guarantee you this, and people on the left and the media could interpret it that way.
But he said, you're telling me I raised 30 million, you tell me I could be bought for five grand.
And Bachman said, well, what offends me is these young girls that had no choice in your staff?
Palin, by the way, has now joined in.
She was on Greta last night, and she's joined the beatdown on Perry for this.
You know, I knew Rick.
And when that was going on, that didn't sound like the Rick Perry I knew.
Rick Perry was not a big government guy.
When Rick Perry was mandating that vaccine, I didn't know what was going on.
It's not the Rick Perry.
So she's joining Bachman and helping out here on the crony capitalism charge.
Ron Paul finally got booed last night when he blamed us for 9-11.
And he got booed in a tea party setting.
And it was about time for that.
So all in all, folks, just from a pure enjoyment standpoint, that thing was good television last night.
Gingrich and Herman Cain.
They just, I love them.
I just, I love them.
It's, it's, Newt, as I say, what, what, what could have been?
What could have been.
Anyway, let's, that's, I'm sorry for this sort of hodgepodge stream of consciousness review, uh, but we'll start putting it all together with the news of the day, which is not good on the economy and poverty and Obama's plans and his tax increases and so forth.
So it's all coming up right before your very eyes and ears here from the Limbaugh Institute.
Don't go away.
Okay, we're back.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network.
All right, Perry goofed up by using an executive order on the gardasil.
No question, he goofed up on it instead of taking it to the Texas legislature.
He's admitted that over and over again.
I think one of the reasons that Perry gets tired is that he had all the questions.
He had to answer every question three or four times last night.
And he did it smiling.
I tell you, I would have, I'd have probably, by the third or fourth time they came at me on this, and so what more do you need to hear on this?
What more do you want to know?
There was an opt-out.
If anybody didn't want to take it, they didn't have to.
There was an opt-out.
So the next time, I'm going to have to issue another warning.
Next time, not only don't go on, don't bother with this Social Security Ponzi scheme stuff, but forget this vaccine business.
This is ending up being a giant distraction.
Now, I said that Bachman may have jumped the shark.
Just a gut feeling.
Last night on Fox, she was on with Greta after the debate.
She continued to talk about this.
It's the Merck Drug Company, and the governor's former chief of staff is the chief lobbyist for this big drug company and mandated again that every girl would have to have this particular drug.
And the problem is, it comes with some very significant consequences.
There's a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate.
She said her daughter was given that vaccine.
She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine.
There are very dangerous consequences.
It's not good enough to take, quote, a mulligan where you want a do-over, not when you have little children's lives at risk.
All right.
Now, she had scored the points in the debate, but now this comment has become a news item for Bachman today rather than what she said at the debate last night.
That's what I mean by jumping the shark.
She scored the points and should have left it there.
Anyway, we got another break here.
We're going fast, folks.
Don't go away.
And we are back on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being, should be allowed to have.
Newt Gingrich last night said, I want to shrink government to fit income, not raise income to try to catch up with government.
Newt was on his game last night.
Just in terms of substance, nobody outdoes Newt.
But Newt has, as you all know, the baggage of global warming commercials with Pelosi and healthcare commercials with Hillary and the unpredictability that that brings.
Wolf Blitzer kept talking about Obama's jobs plan, as you will hear in mere moments.
It's a tax plan, wolf.
A big, big spending, buck passing, non-stimulating, tried and failed payoff to unions.
What Obama has proposed is not a jobs plan.
And by the way, it is not designed to pass.
It is not designed to pass.
It is designed for the Republicans to oppose this thing.
It's, I mean, every tax increase Obama's ever dreamt of, wet or dry.
And he's been trying for three years to get past.
Tax increases that even the Democrat, when they ran the whole House and Senate, when he had supermajority, couldn't get past.
Same tax increases.
Wants to punish, wants to punish the people that create and produce energy for us in this country.
Wants to punish them with higher taxes.
Now, Mitt Romney, Romney, as time goes on, looks presidential.
He gets better as a debater.
I think he was better last night than he was the previous time.
But not backing away from Romney care is a mistake, going to have big problems with this.
He's got, I think Romney has an uphill climb to win Republican primaries, given the mood of the country.
Because Romney is in the position here of having to rely on mistakes made by others.
In this case, Perry.
Or Romney is going to have to rely on mistakes that he can force others to make.
Now, Perry has weaknesses, they all do, but he carries himself as a conservative.
You know what the attitude about Perry is?
Let me tell you what it is.
Right now, without taking a single phone call today, I can tell you what the attitude about Perry is.
I don't care.
In conservative Tea Party circles, I'll bet you I'm right about this.
Get off this.
This vaccine's okay.
I've heard it.
I get it.
He's admitted it was a mistake.
Okay?
And this immigration thing, fine and dandy, but I'll take Perry over Obama any day.
That's what's going around out there.
They're saying that if you're a Romney fan, that's what you're saying about Romney.
I don't care about his health care.
I'll take Romney over Obama any day.
The others on the panel need their supporters to be saying the same things about them.
Perry is not going to back down on his immigration stance.
The audience grumbles.
You can hear them.
The thing is, why does Perry appear strong when he sticks to his position on immigration?
And Romney looks weak when he sticks up for Romney Care because he does.
Have you noticed that?
Perry seems strong when he defends his positions.
Romney doesn't.
And I think that's probably because Romney Care is Obamacare, no matter how many times Romney says states' rights or laboratory or test or what have you.
Each issue is a problem for the candidate because you just can't say states' rights and expect to be forgiven for unsound and unpopular decisions or policies.
But now here's the key.
Romney and Perry both get hammered for their records as governors.
Having a record is tough.
Just ask our man-child president who's trying to pretend that he doesn't have one.
Obama is trying to pretend that he didn't have a record.
He hadn't done anything.
Problems are so bad.
He inherited all this from Bush.
It's worse than he thought.
All he's done is good stuff.
He doesn't have a record, but Perry and Romney do.
And that's why on balance, even during our candidates' worst moments, they are hands down far superior to Obama.
And this is the thing to keep in mind.
In the case of Perry and Romney, they have executive experience.
Their job records are, for the most part, stellar.
Their budgets are stellar.
They are not anti-capitalists.
And they didn't sit in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years, nor did they pall around with domestic terrorists, nor do they have a chip on their shoulders about this country.
Nor are either of them inclined to run around apologizing for this country.
Unlike Obama, both of them, and every Republican on that stage, understands the concept of American exceptionalism, believes in it, and wants to bring it back.
Every candidate on that stage, and when I say every candidate, please understand I'm throwing Ron Paul and Huntsman out because I think they're better suited on the Democrat side of this.
And I mean that.
They really ought to quit the Republican primaries and go over and challenge Obama.
It'd be far more interesting and they'd be far more at home what they're doing.
In either case, do you have warmth or even a lightness in their personalities?
Herman Kane.
Now, people call here and say, why don't you talk about Herman Kaine?
I'll talk about Herman Kaine.
Herman Kaine last night was on fire.
When it came to the EPA, the candidates were asked, what would you do to clean things?
He cited the EPA.
And you know what he said he would do?
He would appoint EPA victims to run it.
That is a fabulous idea.
Herman Cain would form a panel of Environmental Protection Agency victims to suggest ways to reform the EPA.
Boy, you could do that all the way down the line.
Victims of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or victims of the U.S. Forest Service or victims of any other Obama bureaucracy.
Let them come in and tell you what's wrong with it and let them have a role in reforming it.
And Blitzer had this question, what would you bring to the White House?
Kane said, I'd bring a sense of humor to the White House because America's too uptight.
No question on Fast and Furious last night.
No question on Bank of America letting 40,000 people go.
Romney is worried that Ponzi scheme scares seniors, but he's not worried that Romney care scares Republicans.
Now, I'm going to tell you something.
In a comparison of those two, Romney Care scares Republicans far more than Ponzi scheme scares senior citizens.
This is where political instincts come into play.
Romney's defending the indefensible, which is Romney care.
And he is attacking the concept of reforming Social Security because he's saying, don't even bring it up.
We can't win elections by talking about Social Security.
This is, by the way, I continue to stress here.
This is not a pro Perry comment right now.
I'm not, I haven't endorsed anybody.
Don't want anybody to misunderstand here.
I just think that Romney needs to step back and look at these issues through a conservative lens.
There's no political opportunity in taking on positions that sound a lot like what opportunistic Democrats would say.
Not in a Republican primary.
Now, Romney's not that.
But that's the vibe that he's putting out right now.
Anytime you start doing anything, it looks like you're pandering to the media.
You're running the risk here of turning off Republican primary voters.
Reform programs that are structured to fail are not good programs.
We need to end programs that are hostile to individual liberty, and this is something every Republican ought to be able to agree with on that stage and in these debates.
Look at the clock.
Let me get a phone call in here.
Before I take another brief obscene profit timeout, we've got Vinny.
Vinny in Queens.
Vinny, are you in New York 9?
Do you vote in that district?
No, no, I live in Long Island.
I wish I could vote in New York 9, but that's going to be some race to watch.
That really is.
I've got so much to say about that race, but I've got to wait till it's over.
Well, let me say what I have to say, and that's this.
You know, I like Michelle Bachman, but quite frankly, she sounded shrill last night.
This is before what you just said about her talking to someone claiming that this drug causes mental illness.
She sounded a lot like a Democrat by pushing the words innocent and children over and over and over again.
A part of the problem we have in politics is people are afraid to say, hey, I was wrong.
Rick Perry as much as said that to a degree.
The guy basically came out and said, yeah, I would have done it differently.
I'm sorry I did it that way.
But she went after him over and over again.
And I thought it was kind of unnecessary, and I thought it cheapened her status, quite frankly, as a contender.
And I do like her.
But I think, and by the way, Vinny, put yourself in her shoes.
Here she comes out of the Iowa straw poll, and she's the winner.
Perry's not in the race yet.
Perry announces.
And by the way, I, El Rushbo, predicted this.
I said, if he announces, he's going to shake everything up.
And it did.
He announces, and all of a sudden, even before his first debate appearance, he's in a top tier.
And he's taken her place.
She's got one chance here in her mind, I'm sure, to recapture the energy that she had going into the straw poll and winning it in Iowa.
And that's what last night was all about.
You just think she did it the wrong way.
Well, I really think, you know, I'm an adherent to Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment, thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.
That's impossible in a primary.
No, no, let me finish.
I know you're right.
It is impossible.
And they should go after each other, but not, we shouldn't sound like Chuck Schumer going after each other.
We should make our point and we should go on to the next issue.
Now, like you said, Perry has a big problem with immigration.
All these candidates have their problem.
Okay, and by the way, why does he look fatigued at the end of the beginning of the second hour?
Because if you were Rick Perry and you realize every question from the moderator and every candidate's gunning for you, you'd look fatigued too, because he knows what's coming.
He knows if the guy ties his shoelace the wrong way, they're going to make an issue out of it.
And I understand that's part of the process, but to me, that's why he kind of peters out in the second hour because the guy spends all his time saying the same thing over and over and defending himself.
Yeah.
Well, that's the way I feel about it.
And let me promise again, I like Bachman.
I do.
I just thought she went a little overboard last night with that whole child vaccination thing.
Okay.
I really do.
Venny, I appreciate the call, as always.
Meantime, a brief obscene profit break here at the EIB Southern Command, and we'll be right back.
And we're back.
Great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh.
And the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
By the way, you might be interested in knowing as of 1235 this afternoon, 15 minutes ago, not one Democrat has stepped forward to file Obama's bill in the House of Representatives.
The bill, the American Jobs Act, is still not a bill.
It has not been filed.
Not one Democrat stepped forward to file it.
It has not been introduced.
So I don't know what's up with that.
There doesn't seem to be...
Now, I do know what's up with it.
I'll tell you exactly what's up with it.
There's no intention for this thing to pass.
There's no intention of this thing to pass.
Obama knows it's no way it's going to pass.
He's going to have trouble getting a number of Democrat votes on this with all these tax increases.
This is to set up the fact, as we've said repeatedly, that the Republicans are obstructing, that the Republicans want a political victory, Obama, over Obama at the expense of the country.
That they are doing anything they can to defeat Obama.
They don't care what happens to the country.
Of course, the truth of the matter is they're trying to save the country.
As we all are.
Now, the media, folks, let's move on to Obama's.
We'll get more of your phone calls.
In fact, tell you what, let's stick with it just for the rest of this hour.
It's not much.
And people want to weigh in on my comments and others about the debate.
Let's grab another one.
This is Mike, San Antonio, Texas.
Welcome, sir.
I'm glad you waited.
Hey, Megaditto has been listening to you for as far back as I can remember.
Well, I appreciate that, sir.
Don't ever retire.
Don't ever retire.
Okay, so I wanted to talk with you about the education of foreign nationals.
In the border communities in Texas, they have spurred the economy on the border cities.
What's happening is they built factories on the Mexican side and factories on the U.S. side.
And the companies that build those factories, it's an assistance to them that gives them confidence that the engineers and the other people in the factories, you know, have a U.S.-based education, a quantifiable, you know, intrinsic understanding of what level of education and the skill set those people on the market have.
Let's cut to the chase on this, because time is going.
Are you saying that there's a tacit agreement between Governor Perry and various business to go ahead and educate these kids and then ship them across the border to American-made company factories where they can get jobs or businesses, engineers, after being educated?
The factories are in Mexico.
I'm sorry.
Factories across the border, across the Rio Grande.
And so that the governor of Texas is a willing participant in this plan.
I think it existed prior to his becoming governor.
It was when I was in college, which was long before he was as governor.
But I know that that has spurred the economy on the border.
There's no question about that.
What is spurring the economy on the border?
You mean in Mexico side or our side?
No, our side.
What happens is they build, they pay the Mexican workers a lower wage than they have to in the United States.
Right.
And so those workers, even though the rate that they earn in Mexico is still good money, like for instance, Levi's had factories in Juarez, Mexico.
So they'd do most of the assembly.
They'd finish the Levi's genes in El Paso and save money for Levi's and also have the factory there in El Paso and be able to work both sides.
So this is why they're spending the money to educate the children?
That's how it started.
That's how it started.
I can't speak to the rest of it, but I know there are good aspects to it.
Well, see, this is another illustration.
Any governor of Texas is going to have this kind of baggage, if you want to look at it as baggage, is going to have this kind of thing when it comes to immigration.
Any governor of Texas is going to have it.
I think this is why I got to take a break here.
I have no choice.
Rick Perry in South Carolina asked about his position on gun control.
Said, I'm actually for gun control.
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