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Dec. 14, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:03
December 14, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane is the award-winning thrill-packed, ever exciting, increasingly popular, growing by leaps and bounds.
Rush Limbaugh program here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you with us.
By the way, I meant to get to this yesterday, and it's that they got buried under a bunch of stacks.
On Monday of this week, played a soundbite from one of the Sunday shows, John Meekham, who used to run Newsweek and is now at Random House.
And we played the soundbite in which uh it sounded to me like Meekham was suggesting that the American people simply aren't smart enough to keep up with Obama.
Uh and Meekham called H.R. and said, You got it wrong, and we demand a correction.
I said, well, I don't know about a correction, but I'll clarify, I'll I'll read what Meekham wrote.
Uh said, I'm writing because uh Limbaugh misunderstood something I said.
When I said the oh, it was I guess he was on uh Scarborough's Monday morning show.
He said, I when I said the country wasn't commensurate with Obama's gifts, I was talking about how Obama views the world, not how the world really is.
It was in fact uh uh uh and other outside outlets that picked up the remarks interpreted them to be an unflattering take on what I think the president's mindset may be in the storm of the job.
I'm writing because I'd appreciate some sort of cur uh kind of clarification just for the record.
So Meekham is saying that when he wrote that the country wasn't commensurate with Obama's gifts, he was unflattering, the president, being unflattering.
And then he said uh uh it's his thinking the system, and really the country is not commensurate with his gifts.
What I meant to say was that Obama thinks the country is not commensurate with his gifts.
Well, regardless, I mean I remember praising Meekham.
I said, look, if if if you want to get rid of the if you want somebody else to be the Democrat nominee, this is how you do it.
He's a narcissist.
You tell him that he's bigger than the country.
He's far more talented than what this job has.
This job is chump change compared to his abilities and his um and his talents and so forth.
Yeah, right before the um right before the power outage, was we had a call.
And by the way, we're still unable to take calls.
I don't see anything up there.
And I'm phone system is dead, we still can't get it back.
Uh oh, okay.
Uh only one phone is working.
Okay, so we're basically we're unable to get any calls on the air because of the power failure.
Uh when the power failure happened, what I was talking about was um uh we had a caller said that Gingrich will mop uh Obama up during the uh debates.
And a lot of people, you know, I I remember three weeks ago, maybe a month ago, talking about this very aspect, and I remember snurdly arguing with me about this whole notion how important the debates are.
And I know what drives this.
I uh we we um I can remember myself all during the Bush years.
I would run into um people that would just constantly talk, tell me and ask me why I could support somebody so stupid.
Bush is just so dumb and he looks dumb.
It looks like deer in the headlight eyes when you've got a TV camera on him and so forth.
And a lot of people on our side got fed up with it.
They got fed up with the allegation that uh all of our candidates are stupid or they sound like Hayseed Hicks or what have you.
So none of that's ever attached to Clinton.
Uh Clinton has a southern accent, he talk like this.
Hey, good old boy and all that kind of hit astro turfing in the back of the El Camino, but nobody ever told anybody that Clinton was stupid.
Uh, but the charge was made against Bush.
The Bush White House never defended it.
So the attraction a lot of people have for Gingrich is they think that he will mop the floor with Obama in a debate.
And my only point is that I can understand this visceral desire to erase this notion that Obama is so smart when he's not, but that he sounds smart.
So we want just to um uh get some real pleasure.
We want somebody that's smarter than Obama, sounds smarter than Obama, looks smarter than Obama, and wipes the floor with Obama, regardless of what they're saying.
My only point is that on television, people don't remember what you say.
They remember what they see.
And I learned this firsthand when I hosted my own immensely popular television show.
And I'll tell you, folks, critics, audience critics of a radio show to TV show, the criticisms are entirely different.
And it was an adjustment for me.
Because I'm used to radio.
When I started my television show in 1992, I'd done nothing but radio.
And radio is a whole different ball of wax.
The way you connect with the audience on radio is much different than television, because there aren't any pictures.
So you have to paint pictures.
Radio's theater of the mind in any number of ways.
The way people listen to radio is much different than the way they watch television.
With television, you can sit there basically and use half of your sensory perception.
You can sit there and just get zoned out by what you see.
Sometimes people have television on in the background, they're not even listening or watching it, they're just listening to it.
But when they do watch it, it's what they see.
I remember when I was starting this show, people said you're gonna have to use video.
You're gonna have to use video clips, you just can't sit there and do a monologue for 20 minutes.
People aren't gonna want to watch that.
On radio, there's no choice.
There is nothing to see.
But because of that, I've always found that radio listeners pay far greater attention.
If you're if if if you got a talented broadcaster, highly trained broadcast specialist who understands radio, then you can create a connection that's unbreakable, magnetic, because the listener has to devote 100% of the hearing perception in order to get it.
A talk show, for example, will never be background, if it's any good.
But music radio will be elevator music, musak, uh you have radio on music, you walk around and do other things, talk radio, you don't, you are totally devoted to it.
On television, it's not the case.
People remember what they see.
I can remember countless times doing what I thought was just a powerful, wonderful, really great, penetrating, unarguable monologue.
And I can at the end of the program and check email or just talk to people.
I was stunned how people didn't get that at all.
I thought it was okay and good, but it was they didn't see it nearly the way I did.
Because I'm not I wasn't concerned with what things looked like, but a television audience has no choice.
So I would literally get more comments on my ties than on what I had said.
There were a couple of exceptions.
The Bill Clinton Ron Brown memorial video where he's walking along with uh this preacher from Pennsylvania and I forget it, Tony Campolo, walking along and they're laughing and they're telling jokes, and Clinton spots the camera and in less than a full step, starts faking crying.
And we ran it over and over and over again, but then again, that was something visual.
And people remembered that and wanted and never got tired of seeing it.
Tony Campolo never got the joke.
He kept laughing and telling jokes while Clinton's wiping fake tears from his eyes.
I remember when I was in Sacramento, there was a um a local TV info babe Anchorette, who was hired to do a weekend talk show on KFBK.
And she was stunned after just two weeks, she went to the grocery store, people that heard her on the radio would tell her how brilliant they thought she was, Or what the great points that she was.
They commented to her about what they heard her say.
And she had never gotten it on television.
What she got was reactions to her wardrobe or her appearance, so forth.
So this is a long way of saying if you think that getting somebody that can out debate Obama, and there, I don't know, may not be more than two.
Obama may not do more than one.
I mean, it would be extraordinary if there were three of them.
But normally there's one or two, sometimes three, but Obama may not go for the full boat.
For this very reason.
It's going to depend on who the nominee is.
Look at Kennedy Nixon.
Look at the debate of 1960.
People that heard that debate on the radio thought it was a Nixon slam dunk.
People that watched that debate saw a sweaty Nixon had sweat all over his lip, underneath his nose, looked nervous.
Whoever dressed him as black and white, he looked totally gray.
Kennedy with a darker suit, I believe, looked vibrant and so forth.
People that watched the debate, it wasn't even a contest.
But in most cases, in the age of television, the better looking candidate always wins.
Regardless what they say.
There are exceptions, obviously, of course, to everything.
But I'm just I'm just suggesting don't get caught up too much in this notion of supporting somebody because you think they might mop the floor with Obama in a debate.
I know you'd love to see it.
We all would.
But it's not that big a determining factor.
I got to take a break.
We got our phones back now, right?
Cool.
So we had our power outage about 40 minutes ago, and it looks like we've uh put everything back together.
Now I'm gonna put in some requisitions here for some UPS.
I can't believe.
Well, I mean individual UPS.
I think the UPS and my computer needs to be on a UPS, for example.
Like it is at home.
Uh well, we have power outages at home twice a week.
I mean, it happens here.
And I got a generator home, but I TV, my computer never go down.
UPS is the first thing in the line.
At any rate, a brief time out, ladies and gentlemen, your highly trained broadcast specialist, El Rushball, back after this.
No, the uh the league is concerned that somebody's gonna get killed.
That's what this is.
No, the fuck I'm having a conversation here with somebody that is not over as the commercial break ends.
Um somebody asked me about the suspension of James Harrison of the Steelers.
First time that a player has been suspended for a tackle in a game since forget who it was that body slammed Jim McMahon of the Bears, but it's back in the back in the 80s.
But I'm I'm gonna tell you something, folks, uh very briefly, but if this I maybe this probably should spend more time on this at some point, maybe on open line Friday.
But I visit a lot of football websites, as you know, and I have taken to reading some of the comments from readers of these websites, and I am struck uh by a number of things.
A the coarseness uh and the the overall what I think is just general cultural decline, manners.
It's just it's just an endless parade of human debris on these things.
But there's also an endless parade of liberals on these things, and this whole notion about helmet to helmet hits and the game's true.
I'm gonna tell you what's gonna, I'm gonna make a prediction for you.
I and the the league is going after this Harrison business in helmet to helmet hits because they are genuinely afraid somebody's going to get killed on the field.
They're general if Carson Palmer, a couple of years ago at a quarterback symposium said the same thing.
But the league is genuinely worried that's gonna happen.
These guys get bigger and faster, the size of the field doesn't change.
Uh and there's a lot of cultural stuff going on here as well.
And if that were to ever happen, somebody were to get killed and die in the game, not in the hospital later, to die in the game.
You I'm gonna make a prediction to you.
Even without that, it's not going to be long before the wusses, the new castrati in our society are going to suggest that football be banned.
That tackle football.
No, I'm not kidding.
Now I'm dead serious.
Not next year or the year after that.
I'm just telling you it's coming.
I see this is just like when the S SUV went back when the uh the uh Sierra Club said we've got to start targeting and get rid of the SUV, it's polluter.
Same thing here.
I'm I'm convinced that there's gonna be a bunch of do-gooders are gonna suggest banning the game as it's played because it is too dangerous.
If you just we're trending in that direction everywhere else in our culture, and it's going to happen.
And once the proposal is made, and and the league is falling right in line with this, by the way, I think the league is making that possible.
And when I read some of the comments, some of these blogs that I read, uh, it's amazing what a bunch of sheeple uh there are regarding this.
This twenty-five years ago, this kind of stuff happened on the field, just like everything else in our culture, uh nothing in the 50s, leave it to beaver was never as great and and uh peaceful, painless, and idyllic as people's memories make it.
But there were things about the past that were worth preserving that aren't being preserved.
We have a genuine cultural rot taking place and a uh an overtaking of our culture of being chicken and a new castrati sort.
I'm just telling you, it's gonna happen.
Somebody is going to propose banning football as it's played.
Whether that thing the league fears or not happens.
And it may even be a member of the media that suggests it.
If that if that happens, uh the well, you know, it'd be too late for ratings, but if if if that happens, that's that's that would change things in ways that people can't even imagine.
All right, look, grab a phone call here because we got our phones back.
Joyce in Pittsburgh, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, and Steeler did us to you too, Mr. Thank you very much.
Something was bothering me listening to you know, both yourself and other commentators talking about how the Republican Party is being warned against going after Obama.
We had that same problem in the 2008 election.
McCain wouldn't go after him, wouldn't attack Reverend Wright, wouldn't attack Bill Ayers.
Where did it get us?
Sarah Palin wanted to go after him with a heartbeat.
She was she was ready.
Yeah.
And where did it get us?
We need someone that's not afraid to go after.
We need a Michelle Bachman or a Rick Shantorum haven't, Betsy.
Well, I think with that kind of zealous reaction, bring him down.
Um, you your complaint needs to be registered with the Republican establishment.
I mean, McCain wouldn't even say Obama's middle name.
I'm gonna tell you, fear is the biggest killer that's out there, and the Republican Party runs around in fear, and they run around in a constant mode of defense, and like I've been saying this week, nobody ever won anything defending it.
No, I mean we've got we've got to take it to them.
And that's the that's the final.
I know that's what the vote came was going after.
Well, but look at you uh remember it was just last week where Yahoo News somehow got an invitation to a conference call.
The Republican National Committee was having with a polling group, I think the Torrence Group, and they were seeking advice on how best to go after Obama.
And this uh the the Torrence group, the polling group said, don't attack Obama personally.
He's personally very well liked.
In fact, people even feel sorry for him.
But where this really stems, where this really comes from is the idea that every election is won by whichever party gets a majority of the precious undecided, the independents.
Here's the rule of thumb.
Forty percent of people vote automatically vote Democrat.
Forty percent of the people who vote automatically vote Republicans.
So both parties figure by default they're gonna have their base.
By default, they're basically gonna vote for them.
They contest the 20%.
Now the consultants who live, this is their life.
They make their living advising candidates.
And they all sell themselves on the basis that they know how best to get a majority of the independents.
And so year after year, cycle after cycle, candidates who turn over their campaigns to these experts, the consultants believe it.
Romney said so.
Romney said it yesterday.
We played the soundbite.
Now this is all fine and dandy, except if you don't shore up your base, if you don't get all of your assumed base, your 40%, then you can get all the independence, and you are still up a tree.
And the the fastest way to lose the Republican base is to insult them, to take them for granted, or to um make it sound as though uh you really aren't one of them.
And I think I think there's a big danger here.
And the Republicans, you know, your your specific complaint, your Republicans have been told over and over, they believe it.
That criticizing Obama, the independents don't like it, they hate it, and they're gonna make tracks fast to the Democrat candidate.
And they believe it.
That's why McCain wouldn't criticize him.
It's maddening because it's so wrong.
But that's what they believe.
Back in just a second.
I am dead serious about this, Sturdley.
There's no I read these blogs, and I'll tell you where we're headed here.
These people, the left trying to take the risk out of everything.
That's where this is rooted.
Risk is just it's too risky.
And playing football is going to end up being too risky.
They're doing studies on uh what players are like at age 40, 50, how many of them are dying and all this from probably head injuries.
But there's no scientific evidence that that's the reason, but they're all making these assumptions that playing football kills you 20 years earlier than your lifespan in the national football.
I'm just telling you that these these panty wastes uh who want to try to take the risk out of everything in life, are gonna focus on football at some point and they're gonna they're gonna try to get it banned.
Well, the players, the players take the field knowing all this can happen.
They're willing to take the risk.
But now they're being told that they don't know what's good for them.
They're the last people that we should listen to.
They get their bell rung and they want to go back in, they don't want to lose their jobs, but no, we need independent neurologists on the sidelines that are not related to the team, not paid for the we need independent neurology on the sideline to make sure somebody hasn't suffered a concussion and can't go back in, uh, can't be put back in by a coach that doesn't care if he injures a player for love.
All this kind of stuff.
I guarantee you I've sensed this.
I know who I'm talking about, I know who the liberals are, I know I uh how they want to control things and take the risk out of everything in life.
And under the premise that nobody will ever die.
Guaranteed.
Who's next?
Mark and oh, by by the way, from Mitt Romney.
I just sent the video clip up to Cookie.
Romney is sharpening his warning.
So the New York Times.
And in fact, the headline, Romney warns of nominating Zany Gingrich.
Mitt Romney sharpening his warning to Republicans about the consequences of nominating Newt Gingrich, declaring in an interview today, Zany is not what we need in a president.
Zaney is great in a campaign.
Zaney is great on talk radio.
Zany is great in print.
It makes for fun reading, Romney told the New York Times.
In terms of a president, we need a leader, and a leader needs to be someone who can bring Americans together.
We don't need Zany.
Zaney, yep, Zany is great in a campaign.
Zany is great on talk radio, it's great in print, makes fun reading, but it's not good in a president.
We don't need Zany in a president.
No, that's that's Romney.
And the New York Times, of course, gleeful to report this.
Mark in Pennington, New Jersey.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Great to have you here, sir.
Hi.
Hey, Rush, how are you?
Very well.
Thanks very much.
Yeah, my point is real quick is that I'm one who's supporting Newt right now, but I'm waiting for Rick Perry to show up.
Well, you know, a lot of people are.
Um the uh uh it's it's been learned, uh discovered that Perry had back surgery not long before he entered the campaign, and that it affected him in the debates, that it was distracting, that he was in a lot of pain.
They it's it's not Perry making a big deal out of this.
Somehow it's it's been he's not offering it up as an excuse, and it's not being widely reported at that point, but there are a lot of people.
There are a lot of people.
And as I tell you, by the way, as this Newt and Romney thing disintegrates, and that's what's happening.
It's deteriorating.
It is.
And we're learning all kinds of things.
What's the what's the Newt has uh uh came out today, and I'd forgotten this, that at one point had said wonderful things about Andy Stern in a book.
And Andy Stern, S-E-I-U union, who wrote the piece in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago on how great China is.
Newt Gingrich wrote praising the forward thinking of a guy like Andy, really Andy Stern just loved him.
Newt Gingrich did that, did just like he sat on the couch with Pelosi.
Newt Gingrich wrote favor Andy Stern of the SEIU.
I'm not making it up.
Yeah, I've got it here in the stack somewhere.
Um and and the uh yeah, absolutely did.
And so but it and we have the soundbite from Romney, but I'm not a partisan Republican, I'm a moderate.
And I guarantee you what's happened.
There are a lot of people who hope somebody like Rick Perry comes back alive, or hoping that something happens to the Hawkeye Cawkeye that would launch Santorum or Bachman.
I guarantee you this guy on is a lot of people saying the same thing, either about one of the three, and there's also a lot of fear that Ron Paul's gonna come here doing a lot of fear he's gonna win Iowa on the basis that he's out there saying he wants to cut a trillion dollars from the budget, and people are ignoring the tinfoil hat foreign policy this guy's talking about.
They're ignoring that for now.
So I'm my only but this is nowhere near over.
I I know the polls make it look like it's two-man race, but it isn't yet.
We have not had a single vote cast.
It was it was in Newt's book, Real Chance for our change from the world that fails to the world that works.
Gingrich praised Andy Stern.
It was uh what the date of the book is.
But what he said was Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union is the union leader who probably best understands the challenge of the world market and the need to make American union members productive in the face of world competition.
Sadly, he is a distinct minority among union leaders.
Newt wrote that about Andy Stern, who is a communist.
Newt wrote in his book, this is a classic.
Say classic, it's it's it's it's like Romney saying, oh yeah, world's getting warmer, and oh yeah, I believe people are responsible for it.
That's what I mean.
Maybe disintegrating or deteriorating is the wrong term to describe what's happening.
But both these guys, Romney and Newt are being flushed out in the course of the campaign here.
That's why I said yesterday, Santorum, Bachman, Perry are all out there, and a lot of people are hoping that one of them second chance uh catches fire.
Was the it was the same book where Newt said that FDR was one of the greatest American presidents.
Now, one thing about this Andy Stern business.
Uh Newt's aides have made it clear that Newt now realizes he got the wrong impression about Stern.
And that he disagrees with him very strongly.
Now that's what they're saying.
Newt didn't realize he just he was he was he got fooled.
He was uh he got the wrong impression about Stern.
Stern could have lied to him totally when they met, but it's still a problem.
It's I know it's still a problem.
Why you sit on the couch of close?
This is a problem that uh that that Newt always has.
And it's this book, the book came out in 2009.
It's this book that he said FDR was the greatest president of the 20th century.
And Reagan was president in the 20th century.
Ronald Reagan was also president at the 20th century.
But he says FDR, the greatest president.
Maybe ever.
I I'm I'm not sure of the characterization.
Certainly the uh 20th century.
So and then Mitt's out there doing here.
Here we got the we got the Mitt quote.
We got it rolling.
We got the audio now.
This is the interview uh in the New York Times when Mitch's talking about Zany.
Zany is not what we need in a president.
Uh Zany is great in a campaign.
Uh it's great on uh on talk radio, it's great in the print.
It makes for fun reading.
Um, but in terms of a president, we need a leader.
And a leader needs to be someone who can bring Americans together.
Yeah.
So there you have Zany great on talk radio.
A little a swipe there, wouldn't you say?
A little swipe it talk, a little swipe it print.
I think he threw the print in just so he wasn't being uh accused of focusing only on talk radio.
Here's uh here's Randy, Dallas.
Randy, great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
Um long time listener.
I actually started listening to you when I was riding around with my granddad.
Thank you, sir.
Um, we we just moved to Dallas.
Um my wife had looked for a job for probably seven months and finally a job opened up.
Probably not thanks to Obama, but um just looking at the candidates that we have today.
Um, I mean it I I'm 30, 32 years old.
Um I feel like you know, Romney is kind of like the the counselor that you can never you know, you can never get an answer and it's always your fault.
And you know, it he doesn't he seems like he's doing it for the better of you and not for the better of the country, is the way he comes off to me.
And then we have Gingrich that he just seems like he's you know, whatever way, like he takes his finger out and licks it and waits for the breeze to determine his answer.
You think Newt's a populist report.
That's I mean at first when I first watched the debates, I really like Gingrich.
You know, he had an answer for everything, but then the more research I've done, the the more it looks like it it really depends on which way the the winds blow on that day depends on which way he goes.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you're just you're describing a uh uh uh populist.
Um describes him as Zany.
I want to know, by the way, who on talk radio is Zany.
Who who is who's he who is he talking about?
Who is Zany on Talk Radio?
Clowns are Zany.
Uh anyway, I got I'm a little surprised at this.
I got an email from some about a couple of them actually.
What do you mean blueberry tea?
Whoever heard of that.
That's the point.
That's the point.
We precise we have something that is totally unique here.
And it is incredible.
Wait, you have to taste it.
I uh I'm surprised that some people think blueberry and tea is a weird combo.
You won't when you taste this.
It oh, day antioxidants.
That's that's for the new Castrati to worry about.
I'm just look at this.
Look at the bottle there.
I mean, it just and it's it's always as filled with I'm showing it on the ditto cam here.
But folks, I'm telling you, that you you you will not believe this.
I'm genuinely excited about it.
I genuinely can't wait for people to get this, taste it, and have the feedback on it.
You will you you open, you unscrew the top, the aroma.
You think blueberry muffin batter is in this box.
It is just indescribably fantastic.
You'll see.
I am not.
I am not jamming or ripping on Newt.
I'm simply saying what's out there.
Uh people, this is why I don't endorse people early.
Really don't.
By the way, um, just heard the news that the Seattle school system might bring back junk food.
They say they have to because they're losing so much money.
I'll have more details on this tomorrow.
We got a lot to do.
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