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Jan. 10, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:32
January 10, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3
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And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plan, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
A thrill and a delight to have you with us.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbaugh at eibnet.com.
We've only had time for one phone call today, and I can't guarantee however many more it's continuing to unfold here.
Now, the one caller that we had, a woman, was upset with me for being too negative when I'm not doing anything.
I mean, I'm not negative, simply reporting what's going on.
Folks, I realize this is serious out there, and at some point I may have to issue a fatwa to stop this.
If I sense it's really getting out of hand, of course I'll take action.
I'll stand up and I'll just tell everybody here involved, cut this out and get serious.
And I don't want to bleed on any of you.
It's unbecoming.
But you don't know what being surrounded by negativism is.
I am surrounded by you.
I mean, it takes a concerted effort on my part every day to avoid it, to not be affected by it.
I can't tell you the amount of pessimism that's out there over this and a number of other things.
And so I know how you feel about this.
I know you're worried about the negative aspects of it.
But I just want to tell you that you are not alone.
We've got more Newt soundbites here.
You're going to have to hear this.
This happened this afternoon on Fox with Megan Kelly.
Let's see.
Yeah, it was Megan Kelly.
It's American Live.
She's interviewing Newt.
Somebody's 25 and 26 here, 27, I think.
And maybe, yeah, 25, 26, 27.
Megan Kelly said, isn't to Newt, isn't our financial system, isn't our free enterprise system set up to speak to profits?
And not so much fairness?
I mean, isn't that what people go into business for?
This is the essence of her question, profits?
There has to be some sense of everybody's in the same boat.
And I think, again, as I said, he's going to have to explain why would Bain have taken $180 million out of a company and then have it go bankrupt?
And to what extent did they have some obligation to the workers?
Because remember, there are a lot of people who made that $180 million.
It wasn't just six rich guys at the top.
And yet somehow they walked off from their fiduciary obligation to the people who had made the money for them.
Folks, things happen.
Sometimes they happen for a reason.
Now, one of the things that you have to say that is happening here is whether he intends it or not, we're finding out some things about Newt that we didn't know.
Finding out that he looks at these rich guys, six rich guys they have on obligation.
He sounds like Elizabeth Warren.
Elizabeth Warren, this Harvard professor who is running for Scott Brown's Senate seat in Massachusetts, who had the disparaging comments for the nameless factory owner who said, you didn't make it on your own.
You couldn't have done it without us.
We paved your roads and we built your distribution system and it was our taxes that did it.
You didn't do anything on your own.
Nobody ever does anything on their own.
We did it for you, and you can't ignore us.
So Newt, I guarantee you, Newt, you go back to the 80s and the 90s when Newt's speaker and trying to run the Conservative Opportunity Society in-house.
This, you never heard stuff come out of Newt's mouth like this.
I never have.
So in that regard, it's serving a purpose.
Kelly then said, well, the Club for Growth has come out against you on this.
They called your criticism of Romney on the main issue disgusting.
He said, Newt Gingrich should apologize for his attacks on free markets.
He should apologize to Governor Romney.
If we identify capitalism with rich guys looting companies, we're going to have a very hard time protecting it.
I am totally committed to capitalism.
I am totally committed to Main Street.
I am totally committed to people's right to start companies.
I'm committed to their right to fail.
But I think it has to be fair.
It has to be out in the open.
This is why you have this underlying anger about the financial class.
Because people look over and they go, wait a second, how come I lost my mortgage and you stayed a millionaire?
How come I lost all my savings and you stayed a millionaire?
Hell, no, no, no.
If anything, they're saying, how come I lost my mortgage and Fannie Mae paid you a million dollars?
I mean, it works both ways here.
I don't understand why the Occupy Wall Street people are protesting Newt.
They're singing from the same hymnal on this.
I mean, this is right out of the New York Times.
Newt is parroting what the New York Times is writing about Romney and the six rich guys taking over.
But if we identify capitalism with rich guys looting companies.
Folks, it is clear here, to me anyway, what's really going on.
This is not a campaign for the presidency.
That's not what this is anymore.
This is payback time.
This is Newt.
He just, it drove him nuts that series of ads, the Romney Super PAC ran against him in Iowa, and this is the result of it.
That's why we are where we are.
No, no, no.
I'm not making excuses.
I'm just explaining.
I'm not defending anybody.
I just think this is very unfortunate.
This is not the kind of stuff that you want said by Republicans.
I mean, even the establishment Republicans don't go after conservatives this way.
And here is one final bite.
Megan Kelly says to Newt, what is your goal in New Hampshire?
The goal of New Hampshire is to have done well enough, which I think we already have, frankly.
If you look at the energy level we have, you look at the size of our crowds, you look at the level of news coverage, we're doing just fine.
My real goal was to make sure that Romney did not win here by a big enough margin to develop real momentum.
Right.
So that's it.
My purpose here is Romney.
I've taken out Romney.
You could almost say that Newt is going parot.
You know, people, when Perot got involved in 1992, everybody was saying, what the heck is this?
Where did this word parot come from?
And I found out.
Do you remember, Snurdy?
You remember the story?
Yeah, but why do you, it was get Bush.
Exactly.
I'll tell you what happened.
If you have forgotten us, here's what happened.
Ross Perot was a huge supporter of the military, always has been, loves them.
At some point in the Reagan years, the administration wanted to investigate claims that there were American POWs in North Vietnam.
But it was long after the war was over, and they needed private sector funds to do this.
So from what I was told, the Reagan White House dispatched George H.W. Bush to go to Perot and explain what they wanted, what they needed, and they asked for Perot to help fund the potential rescue mission.
And Perot was willing to.
But he said he wanted to go.
He wanted to be part of it.
He wanted to be on the front lines.
And they said, oh, no, no, no, you can't.
Nobody can know you're, but no, no, no, you can't have any role in this.
And a couple of other things.
And Perot felt, what's the word?
Slighted, betrayed, what happened.
Because that was after the, they told him after they got the money that he wasn't going to be able to be involved in it in any way.
And from what I was told, it was by somebody in the inner circle of Bush, that that led to the desire of Perot to wage payback.
And that's why when I learned that, that's why I've felt all along that Perot never really wanted to win that campaign.
He just wanted to deny it.
He just wanted to deny the reelection of George H.W. Bush, 1992.
And so you might say that Newton now has adopted the Perot stance because he just said it.
I'm going to make sure that Romney didn't come out of New Hampshire with any momentum whatsoever.
And he's using language that the left uses, and he's attempting to make hay with this, dredge up and have long-lasting negatives attach to Romney.
This is what's so unsettling about this in the same way the left would say it.
You really, you could after all these bites, you say, I'm Barack Obama, and I approve of this message.
I got to take a break.
I promise we come back, and it's going to be your turn.
We'll get some.
I know you're chomping at the bit here, folks.
Welcome back.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh.
Talent on loan from God.
Okay, I promised phones.
Here's Ernest in Westbrook, Maine.
Thank you for waiting and welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
I really appreciate it.
You bet, sir.
I want to call just to voice my support for Rick Perry.
Of all people, unfortunately, he's way down the polls, but I think he's the only alpha male in the race.
I think I wish he'd just go positive on himself.
I can't stand these pink-flip comments that make me sick, but he's, you know, I just think he could advertise himself as what he is, a pilot and a patriot, the leader of the 13th largest economy in the world.
And you know what?
He's not going to run a campaign like Romney or Gingrich because they're both going to run campaigns like McCain did.
Well, I have to step in here.
I'm not trying to disappoint you, but Perry is running an identical campaign against Romney that Gingrich is.
It's making me sick, but I wish it'd just change.
I wish you'd just go positive on yourself.
He's saying, I'll suggest they're just vultures.
He's talking about Bain, Romney.
You know what?
They don't get it.
They're vultures sitting out there in a tree limb waiting for a company to get sick.
And they swoop in, they eat the carcass, and they leave with that, and they leave the skeleton.
Well, my point on that is, and I think everybody thinks whatever that movie was, whether it was Wall Street or whatever, with Gordon Gecko and Charlie Chen, you know, where they in the movie where Gordon Gecko was the big investor.
Greed is good.
Yeah, it's Wall Street.
But the thing is, making a zillion dollars, there's nothing wrong with that.
It's lying.
It's being dishonest.
You know, they convinced the company in that movie to sign on.
Wait a minute.
We're talking about a movie.
Yeah, I'm telling you, because that's what people think.
That's what people think about Wall Street, is what they saw in the movies.
And the truth is, is that people think that these corporate raiders lie to these people to get them to sell their company.
And as in this movie, they come in and they lie.
The people go ahead and sign the contract, and then they got the company.
And that's why, why do you think the reason is?
What is the main reason why most companies are purchased this way?
They're investments.
It's like.
Well, but isn't it because they're distressed?
Yeah, they were going down anyway.
They were sinking.
All right.
They're going down anyway.
In many cases, they are saved.
Some cases, they're not.
But in many cases, they are saved.
Now, here we are.
We're talking about a movie made by a deep anti-American thinker called Oliver Stone.
And we are suggesting the guy that made Wall Street.
And he also made the sequel, which is Gordon Gecko gets out of jail and goes back, and his daughter hates him.
Big plot twist.
But I know they did that to the nuclear industry with the China syndrome, Jane Fonda, and so forth.
I know the power of movies and so forth.
Our point here is we really don't need Perry and Romney.
Are Perry and Newt piling on like this?
I hope that I just want him to.
I just want, I really like Perry.
I think he's got guts.
I noticed that he's taking the hardest shots from himself, but he hasn't gotten rocked back on his heels.
And I just think, I don't think he has the baggage that some of these other guys have, you know, that's going to get eviscerated in the campaign.
But I did want to give one word of advice to all the candidates, or at least make a statement, and that would be: making the other guy look bad doesn't make you look good.
And another comment.
Well, but see, sometimes that's not the point.
Negative ads work.
That's why they're used.
They don't always work.
This, I don't know, we'll find out tonight and next week in South Carolina.
We'll find out if this is working.
We'll find out if Newt's ploy actually harms Romney.
We'll find out.
But Romney and his ploy did.
People remember Newt was leading in Iowa.
And Romney's ads took him down to single digits, fifth place.
I'm not making excuses for Newt, but imagine you've got a million-plus dollars lined up against you over a two-week period when you don't have any money.
And what you think is being said about you is a pack full of lies.
You're going to react to it.
That's where we are.
Appreciate the call.
This is Ernest No.
Wayne, Charlotte, North Carolina.
You're next.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hot.
Yes, sir.
That's where I am, sir.
I am livid with you today.
And it's the first time I've ever been livid with you in over 20 years, Rush.
You know, you're negatively painting Speaker Gingrich when you just perfectly delineated my whole point, or at least part of it.
At what point, sir, Newt Gingrich came into this campaign with a campaign of ideas, positive ideas, criticisms of the Obama administration and only criticisms of the Obama administration.
When you said earlier with that other caller who was tired of the negativity in the campaign, said, well, some people have been being positive, the only person, sir, the only person who created a positive agenda in the campaign and in the debates was Speaker Gingrich.
He refused to attack other people.
He always said everybody on this platform would be better than what we have in the White House.
That was the tone he set.
It wasn't until Mitt Romney and it wasn't until Ron Paul came out with the attack dogs.
At what point, how many millions of dollars need to be spent broadcasting lies against you until you're able and allowed to defend yourself?
What in the world are you disagreeing?
I have said all of this.
I've said all of this all day long.
I've got to take a break.
So you hang on.
You got time to hang on to the break?
Yes, sir.
I knew you would.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Great to have you here on the one and only EIB Network, America's real anchor man and truth detector and Doctor of Democracy.
Back now to Wayne in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Wayne, thank you for holding on during the break.
My pleasure, sir.
Now, I have, I'm going to tell you something.
I have said everything that you made a point of saying right before the break.
I have pointed out precisely why this is happening.
And I explained to everybody that this is because of what Romney did to Newt.
And I even asked, what would you do if you were faced with millions of dollars in attacks when you didn't have any dollars and it happened in two weeks and you were the front?
What would you do?
It's beyond that, sir.
It is beyond.
It's not because he didn't have any bailout.
I have practiced remarkable restraint in face of these newt soundbites.
These ads that Newt's running are more negative than anything I've seen in a long time on the Republican side.
Look, you're now trying to cast Newt to be a spoiler, you know, and you give historic references that he's a spoiler like Perot was.
You know, that's just nonsense.
Newt has come up with, he's been working for years to develop strategies and ideas.
And why can't he be allowed to bring his ideas to the table without being ripped apart personally by his fellow Republicans?
The whole idea was supposed to be to compare ideas, to compare concepts on how we can improve this government, how we can answer the Obama administration abandonment of the Constitution and abandonment of capitalism.
And you want to cast Gingrich as the villain here.
I did.
You vilified him for his talking about Bain Capital.
Well, why is that not legitimate?
Because Romney is using Bain Capital to bolster his record of job creation.
Well, if that's why he's doing it, then the job creation that Bain Capital achieved, not after he left, which was what Romney wants to take credit for, but while he was still there, should be fair game.
And if he's liquidating companies and taking all the money out and leaving entire towns unemployed, that should be fair.
That's not what happened.
It happened in two of the over 100 buyouts that Bain Capital was involved in.
During Romney's tenure.
And it happens to be the same two things that the New York Times are writing about in trying to take out Romney.
Where do I fit into this anyway in terms of I'm trying to do what I can here to maintain a field here where ideas are discussed.
But at some point, this has devolved to where it is.
I've tried today to explain to people why.
Well, I don't think you can blame Speaker Gingrich for defending himself.
And when 45% of all television ads in Iowa over the month of December were anti-Gingrich ads, mostly from Romney's PAC and also from Ron Paul's PAC.
When that's the case, at what point, how many candidates do we have then?
Bachman was still in the race then.
We had a lot of candidates.
45% of all aired television ads in Iowa were attacking Gingrich.
At what point do you say, you know what?
I wanted to, you know, I didn't want to answer these charges.
I didn't want to devolve the campaign into this.
But at some point, I have a reputation to uphold.
At some point, I'm going to defend my ideas and my ability to express them.
Romney had the money.
Newt was in second place.
Why is this so amazing?
This is what happens in politics.
Well, it should be happening after the convention, not before.
You know, we should be able to express ideas.
And if Mitt Romney can't expect to win by exchanging ideas and comparing his record fairly, then he doesn't deserve the nomination.
Well.
But you know what, Rush?
Why the attacks from the right?
These attacks are coming from the right.
Newt is not sounding like a conservative when he's making these attacks.
He's not giving people reason to vote for him.
But you're not.
Not because of what I'm saying.
I'm practicing restraint.
Do you realize how many people in this audience are livid when they hear these newt bites?
They think it's what Obama says.
This is what Chuck Schumer says.
This is what Harry Reid says about us.
And there you go again.
No, I'm telling you what.
I'm telling you.
I'm telling you what.
In order to have Obama telling him at the end of his commercials.
Come on, Rush.
I'm just helping people translate.
Yeah, well, obviously with a very broad brush, and I think unfairly, and that's not like you.
But like a caller earlier in the day, I still love you, Rush.
I think you'll do it.
Who do you think I'm for in this race?
Can you tell?
I can't really tell, but I think you'd be very happy with Mitt Romney.
I think you'd be very dissatisfied with Newt, because otherwise I can't explain why you're unfairly attacking him today.
And you're trying to couch it by saying you're just explaining.
You're doing more than that.
You know that.
I think more than anything here, I'm defending conservatism.
And I'm defending capitalism.
Capitalism is under assault here in the Republican Party.
I'm telling you, I don't care how much you love Newt.
That is not good because capitalism being under assault in the Republican Party is not going to help us at all.
It's what Michael Moore does.
Michael Moore makes his career attacking capitalism.
We don't need to do that on our side.
Job creation is a fair concept.
It's a fair topic.
Who defines fair?
What is fair job creation?
Who sits in judgment of that?
Job creation is fair to talk about.
And when Romney talks about job creation, his record on job creation, he talks about being capital.
Now, he wants to take credit for jobs created at Bain way after he left.
He was created yesterday.
He hasn't been there.
But he wants to take credit for all those jobs.
But the jobs that he actually threw away, the jobs that he took huge profits for, and then lost, he doesn't want to take the blame for.
That's not fair, suddenly.
Well, it should all be fair.
All this fair business.
That's another thing.
There's no enforcement mechanism for fair.
No, you're right.
But it should be fair to bring up.
And, you know, I'm bringing it up with you.
You are.
And it's fairness fair.
You are bringing it up with me.
We should be able to talk about it.
And if Romney would take that plastic perma smile off of his face and actually answer some of the questions, he'd be better off as a candidate.
Plastic karma smile off his face.
I love it.
Plastic perma smile.
I know you think he's a perma smile.
I know you think he's a Ken Dahl.
Well, I do.
I really do.
Because I don't think he has any core beliefs other than, you know, beliefs whatever guide him in his trips of life.
I'm worried that we're looking at Richard Nixon, too.
Richard Nixon II.
I'm worried that we're looking.
I've got a moderate here.
There's no question.
But Newt is taking himself out by doing it.
I'm telling you, he's not helping himself here.
Well, and you're not helping him to help himself either.
Let me tell you.
Well, but that's not my job.
What do you want me to do?
Say, screw you, Romney, you SOB, you GDP, whatever.
What do you want me to say?
That was good enough.
I'll use that as a soundback.
All right, there you go.
Okay, I got to run.
We'll take a brief.
You can translate GDP yourselves, folks.
Don't go away.
And we're back.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Let me try to splain this in another way.
And I don't even know that I'm letting you in on a little secret here.
I have quoted a great column by Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal about Romney.
I've mentioned this a number of times.
It has appeared that the establishment wants Romney.
And Romney's been leading in every poll.
And don't get mad at me for saying that he's the presumptive nominee.
That's the case that everybody's been trying to make, and that's what the polling data has all showed.
Okay, so you deal with what you got.
Henninger's column was about the fact that Romney was going to have to be pushed to the right if he was going to get there.
That his natural inclination is not conservatism.
Despite what he says, his natural inclination, his core is not that he's going to have to be pushed toward conservatism.
I don't mind Gingrich attacking Romney.
I am not defending Romney.
What we have known, what we have said, is that Mint Romney needs to be pushed to the right.
He needs to be made a little bit more conservative to run as a conservative, to campaign as a conservative, which the elites do not want him to do.
Newt is not pushing Romney to the right.
Newt is coming at him from the left.
We're seeing Newt now running to the left of Romney.
That's what's going on.
That's what's so mind-boggling about this.
In a conservative Republican primary, we got Romney and Perry, too, running to the left of Romney.
Gingrich and Perry running to the left of Romney.
Now, since when do Republicans hate capitalism?
When did that start?
I don't hate capitalism.
Now, I know we've got some squishy moderates and some establishment types in our party that are afraid to defend it.
And we've got some squishy types who are afraid to even defend the whole profit motive and concept.
And frankly, I have no patience for them.
But we as Republicans, we as conservatives do not hate capitalism.
We don't oppose capitalism.
And we do not want to talk about capitalism the way the left does.
And we're certainly not going to push our candidates to the right in the process of coming at them from the left like this.
We're pushing them to the left.
Now, in the case of Romney, Romney supported TARP and says he supports capitalism.
Those two don't go together.
So it's tough to find anybody here who's got clean hands.
Who of these candidates would you say has obvious conservative core beliefs?
Isn't it true, folks?
Isn't it true that when we look at the field of those remaining, that the full-fledged pedal of the metal conservative isn't there?
They've all got one degree or another or a series of degrees of flaws.
They all, in one way or another, end up thinking that using government to advance their policy is a good idea.
We don't think that.
So what are we left with?
We don't have the ideal conservative here.
So whatever we, we've got to, whoever's going to win this thing has got to be pushed to the right.
And has got to be reminded that if they win this thing, it's because that's how they did it.
And they're going to pay a huge price if they abandon it after they're elected.
You deal with what you have.
It's like Rumsfeld said, you go to the army with the army you've got, and they raked him over to Kohl's for that, but that's, he had no choice.
Same thing here.
So who has clean hands?
I mean, that's the issue here when looking for a candidate.
This is the big issue.
Who's got clean hands?
Nobody wants to say it.
Romney people out preaching capitalism now and their supporters would never say Santorum deserves another look, even though he opposed TARP.
I mean, there's hypocrisy all around.
I wouldn't have voted for TARP, but I would not have attacked Romney over Bain.
So what does that leave?
Will the Romney supporters answer that?
Nobody's got clean hands here, but whoever ends up with this is going to have to have won it by being pushed to the right.
And you're going to have to admit with me here, folks, past couple days, that's not happening.
What's Romney supposed to do to defend these?
He's got to move left if he's going to defend himself from this stuff.
That's not what we want.
So there's hypocrisy everywhere in this campaign.
There is hypocrisy all around.
Like, I would not have voted for TARP, but Romney did.
Practically everybody else did too.
Santorum was opposed to it, though.
I, at the same time, I would not have attacked Romney over Bain.
So who does that leave?
Will the Romney supporters have an answer for that?
Bottom line is this, folks.
The Republican nominee, whoever it is, is only going to win the general election by being conservative.
You know it, and I know it.
The Republican establishment does not know it.
The Republican establishment is going to have to be pushed to the right.
Whoever the Republican nominee is, is going to have to be pushed to the right in the campaign if we are to win.
We are not going to win when we say things about ourselves that the Democrats are also saying.
There will be no difference.
Since when do Republicans hate capitalism?
We don't.
And we're not going to start now.
Not on my watch.
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