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Jan. 5, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:09
January 5, 2012, Thursday, Hour #3
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Sorry, folks, everything has just gone slow motion in here on my computer and printer.
All right, finally.
Greetings and welcome back.
Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh and the EIB network.
The Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, lrushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
I just, for the record, you know, Obama with these massive defense cuts.
I was talking to Snerdley this morning.
We were watching Obama over at the Pentagon.
He went over there, big press conference.
He's got all these uniformed military people standing behind him.
And I would have just killed to know what was in their mind as he's basically announcing the, what would you call it, the paring down of the Department of Defense.
We've had defense cuts of, what did I see today, a trillion dollars aggregate cumulative since Obama took office?
We're totally out of Iraq.
We can now no longer fight two ground wars simultaneously.
Obama said that was excessive.
We don't need to be able to do that anymore.
All this predictable.
I'm thinking, you know, I just, I don't trust anybody on matters of national security who has sued states trying to protect their borders.
I mean, here's, we're supposed to trust Obama with our national security.
This guy sues Arizona over an immigration law.
He says our military is going to be fine.
We're not to worry.
How do people of Arizona feel about this?
And I wondered what was going through those uniformed military people's minds.
I would have died to know that.
They've got to stand up there and act and look supportive.
And who knows?
Maybe they are.
They could have been all political appointees of Obama.
Who knows?
I don't know who these people were.
Obama can corrupt the military as easily as any other agency of the government, any other bureaucracy.
But I was having a fantasy.
Some of these guys have got to be thinking, this is just not good for the country.
What are we going to do?
Every day, every week now, folks, this year is going to be intense.
We've just, as I mentioned, the Washington Times, Obama signaled Congress this week he is prepared to share U.S. missile defense secrets with Russia.
In the president's signing statement issued Saturday passing into law the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, Obama said restrictions aimed at protecting top secret technical data on U.S. standard missile 3 velocity burnout parameters might impinge on his constitutional foreign policy authority, so he's just going to ignore them.
U.S. officials are planning to provide Moscow with SM-3 data despite reservations from security officials who say that doing so could compromise the effectiveness of the system.
By allowing Russian weapons technicians to counter the missile, we are going to effectively give away the technology to allow the Russians to counter it.
There are also concerns that Russia could share the secret data with the Chikoms and other could share the data with rogue states plus the Chikons, rogue states like Iran and North Korea to help their missile programs defeat U.S. missile defenses.
Now, it's being said, Obama says we're able to cut the size of our army because he's made the world so much safer.
Yeah.
Well, look at the Middle East, a cradle of democracy now.
Obama, we've saved the Middle East.
We've gotten rid of all those.
Do you know that we are, oh gosh, where is it here in the stack?
We're basically what we're doing with the Taliban.
I don't want to paraphrase even myself.
This is what we're opening up.
Yep.
Yeah, we're doing something with the Taliban.
We're going to be working with the Taliban on something.
Did you know, by the way, from the Huffington in Puffington, both secret to happy marriage, don't live together.
Latest scientific research.
Obama plans to cut tens of thousands of ground troops somewhere in here.
Ah, Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay to be released in peace talks deal.
U.S. agrees in print, UK Guardian, U.S. agrees in principle to releasing top officials from Afghanistan insurgent group, the Taliban, in exchange for starting the process of negotiations.
U.S. has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Club Gitmo in return for the Afghan insurgents' agreement to open a political office for peace negotiations in Qatar.
And just like the Muslim Brotherhood, yeah, yeah, we're going to turn them over.
The Muslim Brotherhood, they're just peace-loving people.
They're going to run Egypt.
They're going to run.
You know, one of the prosecutors says, Mubarak, we need to shoot him.
Mubarak just needs to be shot.
He's on his deathbed, as it is.
So during the break at the top of the air, Snerdley and I, we went back to the kitchen where I had to go get some comfort food, some buttered popcorn-flavored jelly beans.
And we sat there, we just started laughing.
The news Obama is going to forgive mortgages, 180,000 work opportunities this summer, cut the military by tens of thousands of troops.
We just started laughing like insane people do when they reach the breaking point.
You've seen this happen.
People snap and they just hit the breaking point.
And we're sitting here laughing, and we can't believe it.
We're laughing at all of this stuff that's happening.
And oh, yeah, the recess appointments with nobody making any effort to stop this, the extra constitutional behavior, the wanton disregard, lawlessness.
Look, if you regard the Constitution as law, the president is behaving in a lawless manner.
There's no question about it.
If we had an incumbent Republican president running with the record Obama has, we would be panicking, would we not?
As Republicans, if we had a president who had done this much damage to the U.S. economy running for reelection, we would be panicking.
Now, I think that these Democrats are scared to death.
I think rank-and-file Democrats are scared to death.
They see what we see.
They see the economic destructionist.
Some of them like it because it leads to chaos and will lead to ever larger government ostensibly to fix all of this.
But they see it.
They know what we know.
They also know they have the media on their side to smooth it over.
But that's not my point.
The Republican establishment doesn't see it.
I am convinced the Democrats, they know that they've got a president that's running for reelection that they cannot go out and defend.
They have to get him re-elected some other way, but they can't go defend his record.
They don't want to appear with him on the stump.
They don't want him appearing with them at their reelection efforts.
They know.
They know how destructive Obama's been.
But the Republican establishment and the Democrat left are doing everything they can to convince us conservatives that Obama's reelection is inevitable.
And I went on Greta Van Sustran before Christmas, and she gave me the whole hour, and then they replayed it on the 29th.
And I checked email reaction to it.
And one of the, and there was a lot, but one of the things that got the most reaction, there was two or three, was when I said that the Republican establishment doesn't think Obama can be beat.
People reacted to that to me in email.
Do you really believe that?
Is that really?
Yes, they don't think Obama can be beat.
They are focused on winning the Senate.
They think he's an incumbent.
And the reason they think that he can't be beat is because they don't have the guts to run against him because he's black.
They don't want to be called a racist.
You've got McCain out there ripping Newt for using the word liar, talking about Romney.
That's right.
We're selling him boy.
We just, we don't do that in politics.
We don't call our opponents liars unless they have incontroversial proof.
See?
Okay, what they do, they call us every name in the book, but we're not going to call them anything.
So the Democrats know they've got a guy they can't defend.
They've got a guy whose record they can't defend.
The Democrats have a guy that they do not want joining them on their stage when they run for reelection.
But our own establishment is trying to convince us that Obama's reelection is inevitable.
Therefore, that's why folks, they're pushing Romney.
I know you think I'm anti-Romney.
I'm not.
They're pushing Romney because they think Romney will do the best down ballot.
Don't doubt me on this.
The Republican establishment is, they're more inclined to think Obama can't be beat than he can be, but they want the Senate.
They don't want Obama to win.
Don't misunderstand.
They just don't think he can lose.
Their idea of stopping him is winning the Senate.
Plus, that gives them their committee chairmanships, and that puts them in charge of the money.
And that's huge.
Don't discount that.
They think Romney will do a better job, give a greater opportunity to win Senate and House races because he's a moderate and will not anger the independents.
They think a conservative nominee will scare independents off, and we will lose the House and lose the Senate and lose the White House, and we will be in the wilderness.
Which I find ironic because, again, the Democrats know they've got a guy who, by all rights, cannot win reelection.
If we had a president, again, I say this to make this point, if we had a president who had done what Obama's, we wouldn't want him running for reelection.
We would be thinking we're going to lose in a landslide.
Our people think that guy can't lose.
It's the most frustrating thing.
I must take a brief time out.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll do that.
We'll continue in mere moments here on the EIB network.
Don't go away.
Okay, so Obama slashing the defense budget by more than a trillion dollars while we're being threatened by everybody from Iran and North Korea.
That will not scare the independents off.
Okay.
Obama letting the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt and Al-Qaeda take over Libya and letting the Taliban out of Club Guidmo will not scare off the independents.
But calling Obama a liar will.
Or criticizing Obama.
That'll scare the independents off.
But Obama releasing Taliban leaders, giving Russia our military missile secrets, turning the Middle East over the Russian over the Muslim Brotherhood.
That will not scare the Independents off.
In fact, the only thing that'll ever scare the only people that can scare the Independents off are conservatives.
And the way they do it is by speaking up.
So conservatives have to shut up, otherwise, the Independents go running off to the Democrats.
The Democrats can come up with policies, Obama, that lose 2 million, 3 million jobs.
That will not scare off the independents.
This is so frustrating because this is a trap laid by the Democrats and the media and these Republican moderates, establishment types, fall right into it.
And our political consultants fall right into it, folks.
From Manchester, New Hampshire, on the day that Mitt Romney rolled out the endorsement of Senator McCain, a super PAC backing Newt Gingrich dug out an old gem and put it on the web.
This is from the New York Times blog, by the way, the caucus.
The PAC is called Winning Our Future.
The PAC posted a commercial slamming Romney by using past footage of Romney offering conflicting positions on issues like abortion, gun control, or what it means to be a Republican.
One example is Romney saying, I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, and I'm devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard.
Moments later, another clip: Romney says, You can go back to YouTube and look at what I said.
I never said I was pro-choice.
But it's the kicker to the ad that makes it significant.
I'm John McCain, and I approve this message.
So Newt is running PAC ads that are just like Romney's PAC ads against Newt in Iowa, except these ads are chronicling all of Romney's flip-flops.
And then they end up with McCain saying he approved because McCain ran these ads against Romney too.
And yet it was McCain who endorsed Romney yesterday.
So Newt is firing both barrels.
In light of that comes this next story.
John McCain from this AP, AP News, John McCain says Republicans should settle quickly on Romney and just be done with it.
McCain says Republicans need to get this thing done as quickly as possible, get into the main event.
Just two days after the first votes in the race to pick a Republican nominee, Senator McCain says it's time to wrap it up.
Let's just nominate Romney, be done with it.
Let's just move on, my friends.
Let's just move on.
Be done with it.
It's over with.
Meanwhile, Rasmussen's out with some polling data.
Santorum coming off the photo finish with Romney and the Hawkeye Caucasians now in second place.
Latest Rasmussen Reports national television survey taken the night before after the Hawkeye Caucasus shows Romney again in first place, 29%, likely Republican primary voters.
Santorum at 21%.
He was in single digits.
Santorum at 21%.
Newt Gingrich has 16%.
Ron Paul's at 12%.
And Rick Perry and John Huntsman have 4% each.
In the latest survey from Rasmussen, audio soundbites.
There have been a lot of soundbites here.
They've been building up.
We're just up to number two.
Well, we've had some interims come in.
But remember yesterday, we played a soundbite.
Steve Schmidt, the campaign consultant, the advisor to McCain, said, Limbaugh doesn't change any votes.
Limbaugh doesn't influence anybody.
I don't know why people care.
Schmidt said, I don't know why people listen.
I mean, Limbaugh's not going to change the way people vote.
This morning on Morning Joe at MSNBC, they had politico executive editor, co-founder Jim Vandehey.
And they were talking about the Republican primary, the co-host Woody Geist said, Jim Vandehey, who's the one that goes to Newton Gingrich and says, Newt, you got to get out of this race.
We're getting behind Santorum.
How does that work?
You try to get all these voices to speak with one voice about the candidate that they want to support.
So if you suddenly had a Rush Limbaugh, some of these candidates who might drop out of the race, all endorsing one candidate and pushing for one candidate, it could get the movement to coalesce.
Steve Schmidt, McCain Consolidus, says nobody listens to Limbaugh.
Jim Vandehey Politico said, if Limbaugh would choose somebody, that's what you said here.
If Limbaugh would go to these guys, say, okay, it's Santorum, everybody get out, then that's what it would take.
Just playing you what you say.
The political guy says, I have that influence.
The Republican guy says, I don't.
On the record with Greta Fox last night, Rick Klein, ABC News, The Note.
They played a clip of me saying this idea that Obama is helped by this ongoing Republican race is poppycuck.
I said yesterday, County, they said that the Republicans continuing the primary fight helps Obama.
I said, that's crazy.
And Greta asked Rick Klein about that last night.
I think the White House would rather see a prolonged fight, but I think that Rush has a very good point there.
During 2008, when Romney and Obama were going at it, no one thought that would be good for future President Obama.
Ended up making a difference.
It allowed President Obama to build a grassroots organization.
More than that, I think it made him a better candidate.
And I think that's likely to happen now with Republicans.
The Republican candidate will almost certainly emerge stronger from this nomination process because they're going to be better.
There's nothing that's going to be said about the eventual Republican nominee that President Obama and his allies aren't going to say and be meaner about.
Look, here's real simple.
The conventional wisdom is that the Republican primary fight ought to just stop because the longer it goes, it helps Obama.
That's bull.
Remember, Hillary and Obama, he meant to say Hillary and Obama, not Romney and Obama.
Hillary and Obama went on through June.
Went on through June.
Operation Chaos.
It went on through June.
The Democrats want this over too.
They want Romney.
That Democrats, Obama, the media, they want this over.
They want Romney.
But Klein was saying, Russia's right.
The longer this goes on, it helps the Republicans.
They get their message out longer.
They have the debate longer.
More people get to know them.
It's a win-win to have this go on.
What was the most important point I made on the program yesterday?
You remember?
I even said to a caller, it was the most important point I made on the radio yesterday.
It was my proper definition of what big government means to Santorum.
They came out and tried to hit Santorum as a big government, people on our side.
And I had to put that in perspective, and I did.
And from the strangest quarter, from the strangest media quarter, a very unlikely suspect agreed with me.
Mark McKinnon, co-founder of no labels.
Mark McKinnon, who ran all of George W. Bush's media in 2000 and 2004.
He was on the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell on PMS, NBC, last night.
And they played a clip of me saying that the big government that Santorum supports is a government that protects by enforcing the law, the right to life, the border, immigration.
Strong government, not a redistributionist government, not a high-tax big government.
O'Donnell said, can your pals, Mark, in the Romney campaign, find a way to make that big government Republican thing stick on Santorum, especially when he has big defenders like Limbaugh working for him.
I think it's going to be hard.
Santorum is a clear conservative who's got a very long record and a consistent record with conservatives.
So I think that line of attack is going to be difficult.
And I think it's going to be tough for Gingrich to go after him.
I don't think that Romney's attacks on Santorum as big government, although it's the last oppophile that they've got and they've been through them all.
So they're going to drop it and they'll put a ton of weight behind it.
It ain't going to work because big government means high-tax redistribution, government control of everything.
That's not what Santorum is.
He's not a big government guy in that way.
It was a very important distinction I made yesterday.
Here's McKinnon.
I like the question here.
O'Donnell said, can your pals in the Romney campaign?
So one of Romney's pals here is Mark McKinnon of no labels.
He's a moderate.
And I'll leave it there.
I'll leave it there.
Connect the dots thyself.
Here is Santorum himself, by the way.
Britwood, New Hampshire, town hall meeting, Q ⁇ A. Audience members said, they're already calling you a big government conservative.
I don't believe that, but they're saying it.
How are you going to make government smaller?
The people who call me a big government guy are libertarians.
And that's fine.
If you want to be a libertarian and you don't believe in really any size or structure of government to speak of, that's fine.
That's not, in my opinion, the founding principles of our country.
That's not how our Constitution was laid out.
The government does, in fact, have certain powers and obligations.
For example, national security.
And it's not just building a wall around America and trying to defend us from attack and keeping everything here.
So there is a difference.
And so I defend myself in saying I am a Reagan conservative.
Exactly right, folks.
This big government thing is not going to work.
And it's an indication that it is a negative for anybody to be big government to try and tack that onto Santorum.
But we conservatives have to admit that we want an active government defending the law, protecting the unborn, defending the border, helping to preserve the culture.
We don't want a government that robs from people and gives to others.
We don't want a high-tax bloated government of omnipotent power.
Calabash, North Carolina.
Hi, John.
Glad you waited.
You're next on the program.
It's wonderful to have you here.
Hi.
It's great to be on.
Rush.
How are you?
Very well.
Thank you, sir.
Good.
I want to talk to you about the HASP or the HARP 1 program that I had gone through.
I went through, I had ended up getting laid off and through the recession and everything else.
I went through the program just like I was instructed to.
It was all a big smokescreen.
It wasn't anything that was anything that ended up working out.
I went through all the red tape for a year.
They called me up a year after I had started the process.
And then one guy had told me on one day, he said, yep, you're all set.
You're all approved because my credit's great.
Everything else is great.
I did everything the way I was supposed to do through the mortgage system.
And then the next day, another gentleman from Chase calls me up and says, oh, the guy that talked to you yesterday was mistaken.
You didn't approve for the program.
I was fit to be tied.
My wife and I, my wife said, don't take anything for sure until you get something writing.
She was right.
Well, you know, it's a good story, and it's instructive.
And because of that, a lot of people think that this second attempt at mortgage aid will also go by the wayside.
There's a big difference, though, in HAARP 2 and what you tried to do.
Right.
And that is, you don't need any qualifications.
All you have to do is be three months current.
Now, I still think you're still going to have to go deal with a bunch of bureaucrats.
And that right there can open up all kinds of problems.
I think what's really going on here is it's like in your case, Obama didn't care whether you got any mortgage assistance.
All he wanted out of this was big news that he had made it possible, that he cared, that he was making it possible.
Whether it actually happened for anybody was inconsequential because he knew that the media was not going to report on whether the program worked or not.
And if they ever did, it'd be so far down the line people forgot about it.
Same thing with this.
Meanwhile, you took it seriously.
Why?
The government's got a plan to help me with my mortgage.
You go in there, you get caught up in this bureaucratic mess.
You get told two or three different stories.
At the end of the day, nothing happens.
You get lied to.
You misled.
Absolutely.
But Obama, after all that, still got credit for caring and compassion and trying to help you, which is all he wants.
I think he's going to do the same thing in this next program.
That's exactly right.
Just to get the election process going and looking great.
And then it's going to happen again.
The smoke screen's up again.
I mean, I don't think this man likes any American no matter what color he is.
He's just, the whole left-hand side is just, it's dragging this country down.
And I don't know what else we can do about it besides things like this, talking on the radio, telling people what they should be really listening to.
But they get the liberal media pushing them and sending them.
I've always thought, and I may be naive and simplistic, but I've always thought, that's why I do what I do, frankly.
I've always thought that the ultimate victory over all of this is the most informed and the greatest number of the most informed people possible.
And we're up against long odds because the education system's against us.
The rest of the media is against us, but we're still in there.
And I think that's why I wanted my staff to conduct this little test of sending emails to their conservative friends about this mortgage plan just to see the reaction.
Because my guess is that most people are going to look at it and take it entirely personal and think, wow, this is cool.
They're not going to see the extra constitutionality of it, the illegality of it, the tax consequences of it, the cost to them of it.
They're just going to see, wow, my mortgage is going to come in on 500 bucks a month and Obama's going to do that.
I'm for that.
I'm for that.
And that's what Obama's counting on.
And look at the position we're in now in trying to educate people about it.
We're the Scrooge's, which makes it doubly tough to inform them, but it does not deter.
Does not deter.
I can do Scrooge as well as Scrooge could.
No, I don't think I'm going to go this year.
I was, the last time I was in Denver for a football game was the AFC Championship game in 2000, well, 2005 season, 2006.
Steelers versus the Broncos.
That was the year the Steelers came from the number six seed, the first time that a six seed had gone all the way to the Super Bowl.
I think it was the first time.
Yeah.
Steelers, every game, every playoff game was on the road, and the Broncos had prepared for the Indianapolis Colts.
Steelers' game the previous week was against the Colts, and everybody figured that Peyton Manning Colts were cream of Steelers.
And I happened to be a guest in Pat Boland's suite, the owner of the Broncos.
I went with a friend of mine from Hawaii, Mike Hartland, his wife Sandy, affectionately known as Agesia.
And yeah, it's a long story, but it's affectionately known as the geishas.
Anyway, we went to dinner the night before, and Bolin's suite is loaded, of course, with Broncos fans.
I am the only guy in there.
Well, Ron Woodson was in there.
Rod Woodson, working for the NFL Network, was in there, and Terrell Davis was in there.
But I was the only full-fledged Steelers, and I had to button my lip and shut up in there.
And I'll never forget the first play was about a 25-yard out to Nate Washington, Rothlessberger to Nate Washington, who hadn't caught three passes all year.
And everybody in that suite said, who is this guy?
He was number 85.
Now players for the Tennessee Titans.
So the Steelers came out in a game that the Broncos really were not even prepared for the Steelers.
They thought they'd be facing the Colts.
And they're throwing to these wide receivers that are not the top tier to start the game.
And I just got the feel in the first quarter that the Steelers are going to win this game, just got the sense in there that it was going to happen.
They were marching up and down the field.
Jake Plummer was a quarterback of the Broncos at the time.
And it just wasn't, and they were totally discombobulated in Denver, again, because the Steelers were the last team they thought they were ever going to.
They've been studying the Colts for weeks, getting ready for this game.
So in the third quarter, just after halftime, the Steelers downed a punt on like the one foot line.
And I just, I forgot myself and I started crying, yeah.
I was the only guy in the place, about 100 people in there cheering.
And every face turned to look at me.
Mr. Bolin's secretary was literally shooting daggers at me.
They take this stuff very seriously.
I mean, it's a fraternity, but they take this very seriously.
So Hartley and I, we took leave.
I went outside a couple of minutes.
The Lebanese cooled down because I think some people were upset that a Steelers fan was in there.
I mean, this was the AFC championship game.
But this game, the Steelers' offense, Rothesburger's hurt.
The Steelers' most valuable player that they voted is a wide receiver, Antonio Brown, hasn't scored a touchdown since December 6th or something.
Now, the Steelers' defense, they're pretty full strength.
And the Broncos aren't scoring points either.
But I just don't think this is going to be the slam-dunk Steelers win everybody thinks it is.
I just don't.
We'll see.
So, and by the way, Sterdley, just so you know, the Steelers can break a tie with the Cowboys for most playoff wins with their 34th.
Cowboys and Steelers are tied 33 playoff wins throughout whatever level of the playoffs.
Steelers win, and they will.
It's just not going to be the slam dunk everybody thinks.
They'll go up by one over the Cowboys, 34, 33 playoff wins.
As always, folks, it's more fun than practically anything being here with you for these three hours.
And it's always, usually, sometimes sad when it's over.
But there's always tomorrow.
In 21 hours, we'll be back.
And it's open line Friday tomorrow, too, with the first NFL playoff weekend coming up.
So lots to do tomorrow if we're all still sane by then.
We'll look forward to seeing you then.
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