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Dec. 27, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:49
December 27, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #2
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The first hour of the program, I expressed some dissatisfaction with the field of candidates that are being offered up to Republican voters in the presidential race this year.
I remember 08.
The 2008 primary campaign was excruciating.
John McCain was the guy that was always on the other side.
He was the guy that would go on Chris Matthews' program and kind of roll his eyes about people like me and people like Rush and people like you.
The problem was none of the other candidates was strong enough to beat him.
Mike Huckabee had his flaws.
He had the record of raising taxes in Arkansas.
Mitt Romney never closed the deal.
Fred Thompson was probably the most consistently conservative candidate that was running, but he couldn't enthuse anyone.
He seemed like he was running almost on autopilot.
And McCain got the nomination.
And after he got it, everybody said it's 1996 all over again.
It's just like when we were stuck with Dole.
And it was like that.
True, McCain ran a fairly conservative general election campaign, and he did excite conservatives when he chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate.
And also true, he probably would have would have won had the housing meltdown not led to the credit crisis in the middle of that campaign.
All of that is true.
Nonetheless, the Republican candidate for president in 08, as was the case in 96, as was the case in 88, as was the case in 92, and some even argue in 00 and 04 wasn't someone who was within mainstream conservatism.
Let me tell you where I'm coming from.
I'm from Wisconsin.
We're a regular old swing state in the Midwest.
We're about half Democrat, half Republican.
Our elections are always close.
Right now, my state has hit the triple crown of Republicans.
The governor of my state is a Republican named Scott Walker.
The reason why you saw my state in the news the entire year is because unions and Democratic activists, the George Soros crowd has been trying to stop him from governing my state.
He's governed in a common sense conservative fashion.
He's addressed the overspending that we've had in our state.
He's a decent, solid guy.
He's an outstanding governor.
He has stood up to special interests and has refused to back down.
And the reforms that he's put in place are working spectacularly well right now.
My state's also the home to Paul Riot, who I believe is right now the ideological leader of the Republican Party.
When President Obama has tried to take him on when they've had those one-on-ones, he's gotten the better of him each time.
Paul Ryan knows every issue inside and out.
He's the one Republican who was willing to stand up and say to all of his colleagues, we've got to come up with an alternative on entitlements.
It's not enough to simply say that we're spending too much money.
We have to find a way to get ourselves out of this mess without destroying the social safety debt.
He did that.
We have a brand new senator from my state Wisconsin who two years ago was running a business in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a manufacturer.
He decided, because he was so infuriated by Obamacare that it was time for him to give up running his business and run for the United States Senate.
His name was Ron Johnson.
He toppled an 18-year incumbent in Russ Feingold.
In only his first year in the United States Senate, he became the guy who has tried to position himself as the conscience of the Republicans in the United States Senate.
He's the one who said we're not just going to roll over and accept an increase in the debt limit.
We have to press for spending cuts now.
He ran for a position in party leadership a couple of weeks ago on Hurt and didn't win.
Unheard of for someone in his first year in the Senate.
Those are all people who are outstanding individuals, they're core conservatives.
They all came from my state.
So I just don't understand why we can't find somebody who can run for president of the United States, who the majority of American conservatives can say this person is the one who ought to win.
This person represents me, my beliefs, and my values.
For most people, the fallback probably is Romney because he comes close enough.
People are looking, however, for something better than Romney.
And I'm telling you, as you look at those candidates, almost all of them come up woefully short.
Ron Paul's not a conservative.
He's conservative on economic issues, and he's off the reservation on everything else.
Newt Gingrich has spoken on the liberal side of issues on almost everything that's mattered the last several years.
What you don't want to do is trash these people so badly that the nominee can't beat Obama.
But even worse is to choose as the alternative for Barack Obama in this election, somebody who isn't really an alternative or is not up to the presidency, or that the American people would never elect.
1800-28282 is the phone number.
Let's go now to uh John f John from somewhere, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Um what I wanted to say was okay, uh, you're talking about why Romney can't close the deal.
Mm-hmm.
And uh well, I think it's part of because he uh, you know, there's a lot of negativism in talk radio about him.
But another thing though, so I don't think the party runs strong candidates in a year that they think they're gonna lose the election anyway.
Which explains McCain and uh uh Dole.
Well, the party doesn't run candidates.
Candidates have to run, and that's what's happened, you know, this time around.
The field we have is the field that is chosen to run.
I mentioned Paul Ryan a moment ago.
A lot of people have wanted him to run for president.
He isn't gonna do it.
Sarah Palin was the choice of a lot of people.
She chose not to do it.
Mike Huckabee, who ran last time said I'm not up for it.
I'm not going to run.
So I I don't think it's a matter of the party choosing.
You have to have somebody who's willing to say, I am going to run.
And the field that we have is the field that chose to get into it.
Well, I think that's part of it, though.
I think the strong candidates aren't going to run in a year that they don't think they're going to win anyway.
Well, why don't you think you're going to win this time?
I just think that that's been their analysis.
That's how they've been looking at it.
Sort of like uh Well, I don't agree with it.
You know, we've got an unemployment rate of nearly nine percent.
Presidents don't get re-elected with that.
You have a president who imposed a massive national mandate that most Americans don't agree with, Obamacare.
You have a president who seems clueless on foreign policy.
You have a president who hasn't been able to lead this country out of the economic mess that we're in at all.
We have no growth, we have no growth in employment.
We have a country that feels an economic malaise.
He is as vulnerable as can be.
If ever you were going to topple an incumbent president, it would be this one.
This is Jimmy Carter all over again.
And I'll remind you that Jimmy Carter lost.
The difference was in 1980, the Republicans presented a candidate who gave America a clear alternative.
It wasn't all of this liberal loser that Carter was pushing for four for four years.
Ronald Reagan got up and campaigned as a true alternative.
And I know Republicans have been crying for the last thirty years, I want another Reagan, I want another Reagan.
who Reagan is dead.
It isn't too much to ask, however, to find somebody who's within the mainstream of the party.
And right now, I don't think that we have that.
Let's try Mary in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Mary, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Bowl.
Well, hi, it is so good to talk to you.
I'm originally from Wisconsin and I always listen to you.
Um but the I just want to point out that we're we gotta start looking at the fact that the presidential run is not the only game in town.
We've got to pay attention to the senatorial races, and we have to pay attention to the races in the House.
And when it comes down to the top tier uh with Romney and Gingrich and Ron Paul, well, Ron Paul's a lunatic.
Um, I I'm glad you said that because when when people like me say that, the Ron Paul backers get very, very upset.
But the reality is on some issues, he is out there in Fringeville.
His statements on some of these things are preposterous.
But while you're saying that we've got to look at all of These other races, Ron Paul's still in there.
He's one of the top three right now.
He might win Iowa.
And I think it's incumbent upon those of us who disagree with him on the half of the issues in which he's out there in Nutville to say so, because if Ron Paul wins a few of these primaries, or God forbid becomes the Republican nominee for president, you're talking about a disaster.
Well, he strikes me as somewhat of an isolationist, which is a very dangerous place to be.
And when it comes down to Gingrich, I don't care about his personal baggage, but I do care about his liberal stance and particularly on the global warming issue.
That is unacceptable.
Romney is he has no passion.
He goes out and he talks, but there is no passion in there.
Michelle Bachman goes out and she has passion.
That's why I like her.
I like Rick Santorum because he actually has a good deal of knowledge.
He has been in Washington, he knows what it's like, he knows what the danger is, and he has chosen to not go there.
He never did.
Um would you vote for?
If you lived in Iowa right now, who would you vote for in the caucuses?
If I lived in Iowa right now with what is available, I guess I would have to go with Romney if he would just get out there and kick a little butt.
I think what you just said, what you just said, Mary, from Colorado, is what half the Republicans in America are thinking.
What you just said, even the way you put it, I guess if I had to, I would.
You put all of that in front, and then you said Romney, and you're just trying to push Romney to be a little bit stronger or a little bit more aggressive.
Now the good news about this is if Romney is the Republican candidate, he will be running against Obama.
And there is a lot of material there to run on.
And I suspect that there would be more passion once he's running against, once he's running against Obama.
You've got Romney right now in the position in which he's running against other Republicans.
He's he he is he's not wanted to be very, very aggressive and attacking them because he thinks he's going to be the nominee, and he wants to unite the party.
When the alternative candidate is Obama, maybe Romney will become the candidate that you want him to be.
But the way that you put it, I think is the way a lot of people are feeling, in which you had a hedge and hedge and hedge and hedge and finally come to the conclusion of I guess Romney.
Thank you for the call.
Yeah, the way she said it is what the way I think a lot of us feel.
Who would I vote for if I was in Iowa?
I keep wanting Rick Perry to do better, but it hasn't happened.
I honestly don't know.
Maybe Romney, maybe Santorum.
I really don't know.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
We have a lot that we're going to be talking about on today's program.
I want to get into this whole payroll tax thing and what happened.
Give you a hint as to what I think.
I think Barack Obama and the Democrats put a great big hunk of cheese in a trap and Republicans went and bit that thing.
We'll talk about that.
Got a couple of other things on the presidential race that I want to share with you before we move on, however.
First, it's been fascinating watching the reaction to the news about the stuff that Ron Paul was putting in his newsletter in the 90s.
There are some people who think he ought to be given a pass on this.
And I'm sure there are some in Russia's audience who think that he's being ankle bitten here.
But the fact of the matter is that if a Democratic candidate put out something under his name, this ridiculous, you would never accept the explanations that are being offered.
Paul is saying he doesn't subscribe to these points of view, he doesn't believe in them.
He didn't write it, and he didn't know it was in there.
It was in a publication called the Ron Paul newsletter.
Now, first of all, I don't believe he didn't read it.
I don't believe that for a minute.
Unless he's the busiest man in the world that has so much reading material stacked up.
How do you not read your own Newsletter.
Even if you accept that it's ghostwritten, and even if you accept that you might have other people in the Ron Paul Empire that are doing this work, it's not like this thing was 800 pages every month.
It was like four or five paw do you not read your own newsletter?
He knew what was in there.
And rather than standing up and defending the point of view now, he's offering this Kakamami story when I didn't know that was in there.
In the meantime, our good friend Mark Stein, fellow guest host here on the Rush program.
He's uh one of the three marks that sits in for Rush.
He's the guy that talks like he's from Wisconsin.
He's got a piece in the National Review in which he's flum he's trashing Newt.
This is Mark Stein.
Perhaps the single most repellent feature of the political class that has served America so disastrously in recent decades is its shameless venality and parlaying public service into a guarantee of an eternal snout at the trough.
Newt writes best selling books about government, produces DVDs about government, sets up websites about government, but he is as foreign to genuine private sector wealth creation as any life politician.
Indeed, his endurance in Washington represents one of the worst aspects of contemporary public service that a life in politics no longer depends on anything so whimsical as the votes of the people.
So what does that leave?
Tonally, his confidence swagger is more appealing to the Republican base than Romney's uncuous awe shucks wholesomeness, just as John McCain's maverickness was more appealing than Romney last time around.
And we know how that worked out for the GOP.
The Dems are confident that this is a gift from the heavens.
The stupid party is stupid enough to put up a scowly, jowly fat guy whose name is a byword for everything from the nineties, Mr. and Mrs. Moderate don't want to revive.
Sizing up Newt Gingrich.
You know, in the end it may be that Republicans are going to turn to Mitt Romney, and it may be that he will be able to present himself as an alternative to President Obama.
The point of my discussion here, and we're going to move on in a couple of minutes, is that this thing is too important to get wrong.
And that those of us who are American conservatives who believe that there needs to be an alternative to spending and spending and spending, and that we need to have a president and an administration that are competent to run this country.
And we need to have someone who is ready to deal with the fact that countries like Iran and maybe North Korea are dangerously close to having nuclear wet weapons that threaten the world's survival, and who believe that when you got it when you have a federal debt of fifteen to sixteen trillion dollars,
that you need to change the way you are running things, and that we and and to believe that we have to have a leader who is willing to get the American people to accept the government can't do everything for them.
It is critical that we find somebody who is up to that task.
And it would be nice if somebody who you were confident was a true who was a true conservative and was able to do all of that stuff was out there and running.
Anyway, let's go to Naples, Florida, and Debbie.
Debbie, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Go ahead, Debbie.
Hello, how are you?
I'm great.
Debbie, I think that radio that you've got on has to be turned down real quick.
I have the radio down, but I'm in a store.
I had to come back in and get my daughter.
Okay, what's I what's on your mind, Debbie?
When I called, you weren't saying anything about Rick Santorum.
And uh Rick Santorum is a great conservative.
He is.
He is.
Um, and he is having a surge now when a surge is really it's really the time they have a surge.
Well, you are right about that.
All of these non-Romney candidates have had their moment.
You know, Rick Perry jumped into the race and was immediately winning.
Michelle Bachman before that was, you know, she was soaring to the top.
Then you had Herman Cain make his huge move, then it was Newt.
The only one of those non-Romney candidates that really hasn't had any kind of a surge is Rick Santorum, but you're right.
If he's going to have his three or four five or five weeks in which he comes up as the conservative alternative to Romney, This would be the right time for it to happen.
You know, on my radio program in Milwaukee, I've been asking, why hasn't Santorum done better?
People who are looking to Herman Cain are looking to New Gingrich, why haven't they given a look to Santorum?
And he's got some negatives.
I mean, he ran for re-election in Pennsylvania.
I'll tell you that and didn't win.
Is because no one's given any time for him.
Um in the debate.
Yeah, he's been on the same debates as the rest, but you know, it's difficult.
They always put him way off on the end, so when he's piping in, it sounds like he's a guy that's not even participating in the debates.
I do think there's a chance Rick Centaurum's going to do really well in Iowa.
And if that is the case, he is in this thing.
I'm hoping he does do well because he is somebody who has a lot to offer.
As we move on here in the program, I want to emphasize that the reason that I went through all of this is that this election this time around is too important not to get right.
Mark Billing in for Rush.
Rush.
Rush.
How do you like to be the guy that decides which reality TV shows get on the air?
Those people have an incredible gift because there isn't a single one of them that I ever would have predicted.
I remember the first time I saw a bunch of guys wearing sunglasses playing poker on television.
Well, this will never last.
They're still playing poker on television.
Now you're l look at this one.
There's a show on TLC, which I don't think I'm convinced actually is a station.
But there's a network out there called TLC.
They don't call it the learning channel anymore.
It's down to TLC because there's no learning going on on the learning channel.
It's called Extreme Couponing.
It is such a hit that they have spin-offs.
There's one right now, extreme couponing all-stars.
It's a spin-off of the regular extreme couponing.
Just like Donald Trump had apprentice, and then he's got celebrity apprentice and this apprentice and that apprentice.
Well, I'm getting to that.
Extreme couponing all-stars.
They think that they've got such a hit here that they're looking for two or three or four or five other shows that they can spin off of fix.
This is a program in which people clip coupons and talk about, oh, I got this rebat on that.
To think that that would be a program that people would want to watch would have been utterly unpredictable.
But you know, when you think about it, reality television has always been a reflection of the times we are in.
Let's go back to the 80s.
I you know, people can quibble about which programs really started reality television, but when I look back at the 80s, the closest thing, and we didn't have all of the cable channels then.
You had some people had cable TV, and there were 15 extra channels on it, and that was about it.
The big one was lifestyles of the rich and famous, the Robin Leach program.
It was people's glimpse into the lives of the super wealthy.
For a while, that was really, really big.
That occurred during the era of Reagan.
It was a show about extreme prosperity at a time in which America was re-embracing prosperity.
We had just been through a really, really bad decade in the 70s.
And Reagan was giving you hope that America still had a strong economic future, that you could believe that things would be better for you.
You saw these things of great wealth, and you weren't convinced that you didn't have a chance of it at at least some of it.
Lifestyles of the rich and famous.
It was those kinds of programs that I think defined whatever past the reality TV in the 80s.
Well, then the 90s came around in Clinton.
Which shows were in ascendance then?
That's when entertainment tonight was really big.
Remember when Mary Hart became a superstar?
CNN had that show biz today.
That was the decade of Larry King when he was the most popular he ever was.
Well, that was you know, that personified Bill Clinton in his presidency.
It was a celebrity presidency.
There was a lack of seriousness to the whole thing.
You know, messing around in the White House, not having to worry about it.
That was reality television then.
Now take a look.
It was also the era in which pornography really took off, I suppose, through internet porn.
Then let's go into the zeros, the decade of Bush.
What was reality television then?
It was much more adventurous.
It was risk-taking.
It was forward-looking.
Survivor was mostly a Bush era program.
Online poker.
As boring as it is to me, its own kind of form of risk taking.
It was the breakout era for American Idol.
It was the idea that you could once again achieve success in one way or another.
Competition, almost some free market elements to it when you think about how Survivor was constructed.
Online poker is the free market.
Some rules.
American Idol, same kind of thing.
Find popularity with the Well, look at what reality television is right now.
Extreme couponing and all these shows about pawn shops.
That's what Barack Obama has given us.
We're watching programs about people desperately trying to save 45 cents on a box of macaroni and cheese.
In the 80s, we had lifestyles of the rich and famous in which we were looking at wonderful things.
Now you've got all these pawn shop programs where people are selling their stuff.
This is Obamaville.
There's a reason that the pawn shop show is a hit now.
There's a reason the couponing program show is a hit now.
People have to do all of these things.
They don't see any economic hope.
They don't see a brighter day ahead.
They're trying to survive by coupotting.
People are watching these things in droves.
This is what leads me to the payroll tax.
There have been a lot of things said.
Russia's talked about it.
Other commentators have talked about it.
About this whole thing that occurred this month between the Senate Republicans, the White House, and the House Republicans.
I don't have a problem with the decision by the House Republicans to cave in on this.
Because this was a game that was set up for them to lose.
This whole thing was a trap.
First of all, Republicans need to understand.
Every year at Christmas time, the Democrats are going to throw out an issue that makes them look like Scrooge.
This has been going back to the 90s.
Remember the Newsweek art and Newsweek cover story on Gingrich, the Gingrich that stole Christmas?
I think that was on the government shutdown or one of those or one of those deals.
They always bring one of these things out around Christmas to try to make Republicans look bad.
So they find this one tax cut, if that's what you want to call it, that they support.
The payroll tax cut.
Now we all know the arguments against this reduction in the payroll tax cut.
One way or another, it does shortchange the Social Security Fund.
Secondly, there's no economic growth that comes out of a reduction in the payroll tax.
It's not enough money to cause anyone to change any financial planning.
It's not enough money to make any business say, gee, I'm going to go out and hire a lot of workers.
Nobody's going to expand their business operations.
No one's going to take risk.
No investment's going to occur.
Nothing permanent is going to change because of the cut in the payroll tax.
Of all the tax cuts that are out there, it is the one that has the least value.
It probably isn't even a tax cut.
The Democrats are the ones who have always told us that the payroll tax is actually your contribution into Social Security and Medicare.
So it isn't that big of a deal.
It's not that important.
Of all the taxes that you could find to reduce, it's the least important one.
True.
Also, the Republican position was, if there can be a principled one in this whole debate, that if you're going to do it, at least do it for an entire year.
This business of two months.
How do you have a two-month tax cut?
It's terrible for small businesses.
It's terrible for the people who do payroll planning to set up the programs to decide what you're going to be deducting from employee paychecks.
You can't just cobble that together and expect that they're going to change it every couple of months because we have a federal government that can't figure out what the tax rate is for Social Security and Medicare is absurd.
I know all of that.
The Republican position was principled.
They said that if we're going to do it, we should do it for an entire year so that people can at least know what this thing's going to be like.
They also itemized or suggested that there be budget cuts that deal with the lost income for the federal government.
They were on the right side, and they did pass their one year plan.
But all of that is irrelevant.
Because the media was never going to play this as anything other than the Republicans are killing the reduction in the payroll tax.
You're going to have less money coming out of your paycheck come January 1st because the Republicans won't pass this plan.
Whenever both sides say they want to do something, and it doesn't get done.
It is always going to be blamed on the Republicans that it didn't get done.
You can go all the way back to the 90s when Clinton ruled Gingrich on the shutdown of the government.
There was no agreement, so therefore government operations, some of them had to be suspended.
That was the Republicans' fault.
The Republicans shut down the government that's been that's been stated as a truth ever since.
In fact, there was no agreement.
Why wasn't the the onus on Clinton to agree with the congressional plan?
The same thing here.
The House passed a one-year extension of the payroll tax.
The Senate passed a measly two-month extension.
But because they didn't agree on this, it was the Republicans' fault.
The point that I'm making is they were right on the issue.
But the whole thing was a trap that was laid.
President Obama and the Democrats have to change the subject.
The subject is that we have had no economic recovery to speak of.
The most optimistic number on what the growth rate was in 2011 is less than 2%.
That's coming out of a recession.
The unemployment rate is still around 9%.
Actual joblessness is up.
The only reduction in unemployment has occurred because of people giving up and not trying to find work anymore.
We have a federal budget deficit that is exploding every year.
We're running at a rate of one and a half trillion a year.
The national debt now is a r is pushing 16 trillion dollars.
And their answer for all of that is to raise taxes, raise taxes, raise taxes, raise taxes on the rich.
That's not a winning argument.
So they had to come up with something else, so they invented this whole payroll tax reduction, try to make the Republicans look like the bad guys.
It's a phony issue.
And rather than play it on their terms...
Getting it off the table and getting the focus back on the mess that this administration is presiding over is the thing that needs to be done.
1-800-282-2882 is the official EIB phone number.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
This is an unserious presidential administration that is playing politics rather than pursuing economic policy.
They don't know how to get us out of the mess that we're in.
I think they thought stimulus was going to work.
So they're stuck trying to win re-election in the middle of an economy that is at best sluggish, and at worst not recovering at all.
So they go and they create this thing, the payroll tax, and they try to set up a trap for Republicans, and they're going to set it up again at the end of February.
There's a reason why they want a two-month extension.
The Democrats could have just as easily passed a one-year extension.
The same one that the Republicans in the House were willing to give them.
They don't want to extend it for a year.
They say this is the tax break that we're in favor of for the little guy.
Well, then why don't they do it for more than two months?
Because they want to bring it up every two months all the way through 2012 so they can keep saying, see, the Republicans are trying to stop you from getting this.
It is ridiculous public policy.
It's a game that's being aimed at the media so that they can make the case that the Republicans are trying to stop giving them this tax break.
They lay the whole thing out as a trap.
The average American, what, 40 dollars a month that they save?
They want Republicans to get up and poo-poo it is only $40.
So they can turn around and say, see?
This Republican who wants a tax break for millionaires, he doesn't think that $40 a month is important to you.
It's all garbage.
It's a phony issue.
It's one they are concocting in order to try to steal the tax issue away from Republicans.
We have to make major changes in our tax code.
We are taxing Americans to the point that capital is running away from our country.
You're not going to get any real economic growth until businesses think that they can keep more of their money.
You need Americans to be able to go out and spend real money if you want to have activity in the economy.
All of that needs to happen.
And that's a strong and compelling argument for the Republicans to make in 2012.
And the Democrats know it.
So they come up with this tax cut that they claim that they like, and they then dictate the terms under which it has to be approved.
And if the Republicans don't accept those terms, they say, say the Republicans don't want you to have this.
My strategy would be to understand that they've got home field advantage on this one.
Home field is the news media.
Every single time that you can't get Republicans and Democrats to agree on something, it is the Republicans that are going to get the blame.
So rather than play their game, I think you've got to be willing to simply pass what they're putting on here.
Because what they're doing is trying to get the Republicans to do exactly what they were trying to do.
Crowdhammer in the Washington Post came up with some comments on this.
He said the House Republicans' initial rejection of this two-month extension was therefore correct on principle and on policy, but this was absolutely the wrong place, the wrong time to plant the flag.
Once Senate Republicans overwhelmingly backed the temporary extension, that part of the fight was lost.
Opposing it became kamikaze politics.
The Democrats set a trap and the Republicans walked right into it.
By rejecting an ostensibly bipartisan compromise, the Republican House was portrayed as obstructionist and even worse, heartless, willing to raise taxes on the middle class while resolutely opposing any tax increases on the rich.
So am I suggesting that the Republicans needed a cave to the Democrats?
No.
They've done a pretty good job on issues like cap and trade, standing up to the administration.
They did a pretty good job during the extension of the debt ceiling, getting at least the pretext of some spending cuts in there.
They haven't rolled over to him.
But I don't think you want to make the major fight of 2012, an election year, this, because it isn't important enough.
And it's one that makes the Republicans look bad.
It is designed to fool and deceive.
It is designed to create the false impression that the Democrats are actually the tax cutters.
Rather than falling for this trap, they need to get the subject back where it belongs.
The fact that right now in this country, the actual unemployment rate is 9%, the real unemployment rate is over 20%, and people are turning on their televisions to learn how to save money by clipping coupons and how to sell their lifelong possessions at pawn shops.
I'm Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
The one thing that the Republican presidential debates have done, which is good, is you've had Republican candidates laying out their plans to produce growth in the economy.
Whether you agreed with Herman Keane's 999 plan or not, he was throwing it out there as a way to create economic growth.
Mitt Romney's talked about growth and job creation.
That part of the Republican presidential race has been good.
In the meantime, what are you getting right now from the guy who is the president and the party that controls the United States Senate?
There has been nothing to try to invigorate the economy.
All they've come up with is keeping the payroll tax where it is right now.
That's all they have.
They have nothing to offer on this.
They realize that they are highly vulnerable.
How does President Obama say, reelect me with my 9% unemployment rate and 1.5% growth?
He can't.
They need to change the subject and claim that the Republican Party doesn't care about the little guy, so they invent this phony issue and they're going to hang it out there every two months trying to get the Republicans to bite.
And I'm saying they better not bite.
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