All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 11, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:46
January 11, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You know, folks, it is amazing.
As I go through the news today, looking at the establishment websites, looking at the conservative establishment, media establishment websites, they're starting to have some regrets about Romney.
Really, they are.
I just took two or three examples here, but there are some creeping doubts now about Romney.
I'm the right.
I mean, not the right.
I'm in the establishment Republican side.
Anyway, greetings.
How are you?
Great to have you here.
Rush Limbaugh, middle of a week, hump day.
Great to have you at 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushball at EIBnet.com.
All right.
We're now facing, where we are is the final push.
Final push now to get Romney the nomination.
You have to say that Newt and Perry blew it the last two days.
I don't care what you think, folks, the attacks that they mounted on Romney are not defensible.
You just can't put your name to them.
All you can do is remember Bill Clinton.
He was confronted at one point about some crazy attack ads that he was running.
I don't remember specifically which ones.
And supporters in the media, do you really mean this?
I mean, you really believe this?
Clinton said, well, you know, you got to do what you've got to do.
I mean, I'm faced here with a problem.
I got to do what I got to do.
So hopefully, Perry and Newt are just doing what they think they've got to do.
Last straw, do everything.
Maybe there's some hidden reason we don't know that they're trying to demonstrate Romney's unelectability.
I don't know.
But all I do know is that you can't put your name to defending it.
I mean, they just can't do it.
Now, I want to clarify something.
There's a point that I made yesterday.
Somehow it resonated throughout the media.
I didn't know that till today because I did not have cable TV on last night.
I didn't.
I was reading.
I watched a couple of movies, but I did not have the TV on last night.
Look, no, I take it back.
One clarification.
I did turn on Fox about 7.55 because I wanted to hear O'Reilly read the email.
That's my favorite part of his show.
And O'Reilly wasn't on.
They were doing coverage from New Hampshire, and they were proclaiming Romney the victor.
It was over.
So Romney had his seven electoral votes.
Says, okay, the only thing that interests me now is how does Ron Paul finish?
That to me was the key.
Where does Ron Paul finish?
And who, because you know, anybody can vote.
You Democrat, Republican, pick up a ballot and go in there and vote.
And Rasmussen has some interesting data that I've got to double check.
But Ron Paul, the majority of people voted him for, were not Republican.
And in another poll, a percentage of Ron Paul voters who say they will vote for the Republican nominee is like 80% of Tea Party voters in New Hampshire said no matter who the Republican nominee is, they're voting for it.
The Ron Paul number is 40%.
Now, as I said, I've got to double confront.
It's ostensibly Rasmussen, and we're double-checking this, but what I know so far, or what I've been told, is that Ron Paul supporters, 40% say they would vote for the Republican nominee.
23% said they vote for Obama.
And 31% of Ron Paul voters said they would vote third party.
So the Ron Paul voters cannot be counted on.
And most of Huntsman's voters and most of Paul's voters were Democrats who walked into the New Hampshire primary, picked up a Republican ballot, also according to this polling data.
Or maybe not a majority.
I don't have it right in front of me, but it's close.
It's a very high, since I brought it up, let me see if I've got it in this particular stack.
I should have made it at the top and I did.
I'll find it.
It's something.
It's nothing that you don't know.
You know that – here we go.
This is – it's – well, it's – oh, it's the exit polling data from Fox.
And it is on political matters, do you consider yourself very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, very conservative?
If you go to Ron Paul, 33% of his voters, according to exit polls, were somewhat liberal.
24% were moderate.
Zero were very liberal.
So 57% of the voters that voted for Ron Paul were not Republican conservatives.
And that's one of the things that I wanted to see because with this big push, what is happening here, the final push now, it's on to get Romney the nomination.
Newt and Perry, with their attacks, have made it impossible to defend them.
I hate to tell you folks, but you just can't put your name to what they're out there saying, vulture capitalism and so forth.
Romney, however, wants Ron Paul to stay in.
Everybody is urging everybody else to get out of this except for Ron Paul.
They want Ron Paul to keep pounding away at Santorum and Newt.
They want Ron Paul to continue to get big numbers and take away any high, second, or third place finishes from Santorum or Gingrich or Perry or anybody else.
So the powers that be realize the monkey wrench that Ron Paul represents.
Ron Paul is a conservative killer.
Ron Paul kills the conservative vote, and Romney camp wants him in there, wants him to stay in, encouraging him to stay in there.
And in fact, depending on where you go, depending on what you read, who, oh, even Sarah Palin.
You know, they said, well, it'd be a big mistake to reject those Ron Paul voters.
It'd be a Republican Party be making a huge mistake to reject the Ron Paul voters.
It's got to go away.
So the effort being made here to encourage people to reach out to Ron Paul's crazy anti-defense supporters, a lot of his supporters are simply college kids who like his ideas on liberalizing drug laws.
A lot of his supporters, young college kids, who like his idea of gay rights.
You know, the young idealists who have only their own personal interests here at stake, and he's out there representing it.
Plus, there is the awareness on the part of some Ron Paul voters that he's the giant monkey wrench and they enjoy playing that role.
So, final push to get Romney.
Now, now, ladies and gentlemen, let me find this.
This is from thehill.com.
You are not going to like this.
Let me just read it to you.
It is by Jonathan Easley.
I always like to put the journalist's name to the story.
And we're going to assume that it's true.
We don't know if it is or not.
It's in the mainstream media.
On the heels of his decisive victory in a New Hampshire primary, Mitt Romney took the attacks on his private sector record used by Republican rivals and turned those attacks against President Obama.
Romney's critics have accused him of destroying jobs in order to increase profits for his investment firm Bain Capital.
But speaking today on CBS, Romney said, are you sitting down?
Romney said that what he did running Bain Capital was, are you sitting down?
If you're driving, you might want to pull off to the side of the road here.
Speaking Wednesday on CBS, Romney said that what he did with Bain Capital was no different.
Are you sitting down?
Are you paying very close attention?
Look at me.
Do I have you here?
According to thehill.com and Jonathan Easley, today on CBS, Romney said that what he did running Bain Capital was no different from what Barack Obama did bailing out the auto industry.
Thud, Kerplunk.
You've got to be kidding me.
The next paragraph is a quote from Romney.
You're still sitting down.
In the general election, comma, I will be pointing out that the president took the reins at General Motors and Chrysler.
He closed factories.
He closed dealerships.
He laid off thousands and thousands of workers.
He did it to try to save the business.
Close quote.
So thehill.com is reporting that Romney on CBS today said that what I did with Bain Capital is no different than what Obama did in taking over the auto companies.
Obama had to lay people off.
Obama had to streamline the plague to make them profitable.
So he's accepting the premise that Newt and Perry have put out there, apparently, that he has gone into these companies with a chainsaw.
And now he is using Obama and what he did at General Motors and Chrysler as, hey, the president did it.
Now, the Well, look, I know, obviously.
General Motors and Chrysler are not profitable.
And you don't, you just don't.
If you are the leader in the race, the Republican nomination, you don't come out and give tacit approval to the government takeover of General Motors and Chrysler and then compound that by saying, hey, what I did is no different to trying to save the business.
I did leave the possibility that this is not accurate.
Yes, it's in theHill.com.
I've not seen it anywhere else.
So, yes, I've held out the possibility that this for example, there was a story all day yesterday on Drudge that Newt is going to go into South Carolina and meet with the former chairman of Congressional Black Caucasians, Clyburn,
James Clyburn, whose daughter's name Mignon Clyburn, and going to have a joint press conference appearance about the housing industry, that Newt is going to meet with a Democrat, a ranking Democrat member to Congressional Black Caucasians.
So I fired that off to some people I know who are died in the wool.
Newt can't do anything wrong, supporters.
And I said, can you explain this to me?
And a few hours later, I had a reply saying, Newt says this isn't true, that he thinks the Romney people are spreading this rumor.
He's not got a meeting with Clyburn.
But it's in the state newspaper in South Carolina.
So I share with you this Hill.com story with the proviso that it might not be true.
But there it is.
Okay.
Now, Romney, ladies and gentlemen, to be clear, Romney has said this before.
He was on Bill O'Reilly's show that's on the Fox News channel 8 o'clock on December the 20th.
And Romney said on that show, the president has had one experience overseeing an enterprise, a couple of enterprises, General Motors and Chrysler.
What did he do?
He closed factories.
He laid off people.
He didn't do it personally, but his people did.
Why did he do it?
Because he wanted to save the enterprise.
He wants to make it profitable so it can survive.
Romney's comments came as scrutiny intensified over companies controlled by Bain Capitals.
It was back in December 20th.
So he said this, and his point is, obviously, that, well, look, Obama's using taxpayer dollars.
I'm using private sector dollars and so forth.
The problem with it is, and the AP, by the way, is saying that the new line of defense is part of an effort by Romney to shield himself against criticism that as a partner in the equity firm Bain Capital that they slashed tens of thousands of jobs.
So the thinking is, I know what the thinking is.
The thinking is, hey, look at me.
I'm no different to what Obama did.
And you love Obama.
You don't criticize Obama for doing this.
So you can't criticize me for doing it.
We did the same thing.
Sorry, that I'm not a politician, and I don't measure things I say in a political context.
I just don't.
That's why I don't run for office.
I couldn't do what these people do.
I don't know how you say, you've just accepted the premise of the newt and parry criticism.
You've just accepted the premise with this comment to CBS today.
And you're trying to blunt the criticism and say, well, I got no different than Obama.
Mitt, would you take over General Motors in Chrysler if you were president?
Is that what you're saying?
And by the way, who the hell says that Obama is trying to save the companies?
Who the hell says that Obama cares about profitability?
That's not why Obama took over those companies.
If anybody remembers, it was the Romneys that owned those companies that got the shaft, the bondholders.
The bondholders who had the first dibs on any bankruptcy or payoff or payback anything that was made whole to General Motors, the bondholders who have more say so than stockholders were told by Obama to get the hell out of here.
You're greedy.
It's people like you that have caused this country to end up being so unfair.
I'm giving this company to the unions.
And the reason that I'm saving this company is to save pensions and healthcare benefits, and so I can market a stupid ass car that nobody wants.
I don't care about profit.
I do not, folks, I do not understand what is so hard to understand about this.
Why in the world would anybody seeking the Republican presidential nomination try to shield themselves from criticism by hiding behind Obama?
Now, this is where I don't get it politically.
This is where I, and maybe the political experts have looked at this, okay, this is the best way to handle it.
And maybe the consultants are saying they love Obama.
They've not ripped Obama for taking over General Motor.
They've not ripped Obama for people who lost their jobs.
They've not ripped Obama for people who lost their investments.
So they're not going to rip you.
Really?
Okay, anyway, the idea that Barack Obama took over General Motors and Chrysler for any benevolent reasons or any capitalistic reasons is simply absurd, ladies and gentlemen.
Obama wanted to save the UAW's pension fund.
I'll tell you what else he wanted to do.
And let us never forget this.
Barack Obama thinks this country has been inherently unfair since its founding.
Barack Obama thinks that this is a country that was assembled by and governed by the 1% white power brokers from the get-go, and they have had stewardship over this country and they have slanted everything.
They have built everything.
They have scheduled everything.
They have arranged everything so that they are the primary financial beneficiaries of the United States of America.
The 1% Barack Obama believes that the founders and the white majority of this country, since its founding, have been inherently unfair, have screwed everybody else, have taken everything for themselves, and then sent our own sons and daughters around the world to war to protect their own personal spoils.
This is what he believes.
And so when General Motors is going belly up, he looks at General Motors and not something to say profitability.
Saving General Motors in Chrysler is not saving General Motors in Chrysler.
It's turning it over to the people who should rightly have it because they made it.
It's Elizabeth Warren.
The workers should own General Motors.
They're the ones that made it.
The people have been fired and laid off and subject to puny little union contracts.
So Obama just, no, it's exactly what he did.
General Motors, I'm going to see to it that the rightful owners, the 99%, the schlubs who've been raped and taken advantage of their company now, I'm giving it to them.
I'm bailing them out.
I don't care about profitability.
And to run around and to compare your own private sector business to that, Lord help us.
I have no choice.
That's all I've got.
I got sound bites and it's all me.
So I started to say a couple things here, but I got sidetracked by this Romney.
By the way, I'm going to get sidetracked again here.
All this having been said, Romney gave what may be the best speech ever, last night's acceptance speech, or victory speech.
It may have been the best speeches ever given.
Somebody needs to put a pair of comforting hands on the shoulders and a gentle shake and say, let me remind you who Obama is.
Let me tell you who your opponent is and what he's doing and how you are nothing like him and you don't want to be seen as anything like him.
But that's not my job, men.
Oh, yeah, I know.
Obama's not just a nice guy who's in over his head.
Obama has a plan.
Obama's plan is based on his inherent belief that this country was immorally and illegitimately founded by a very small minority of white Europeans who screwed everybody else since the founding to get all the money and all the goodies.
And it's about time that the scales are made even.
And that's what's going on here.
And that's why the president is lawless.
And that's why there is no prosecution of the Black Panthers for voter intimidation because it's not possible for a minority to intimidate the white majority.
It's not possible.
It's always been the other way around.
This is just payback.
This is how does it feel time?
That's how he sees himself, pure and simple.
He doesn't see himself as a capitalist reformer saving a stupid automobile company.
He sees this as an opportunity to take it away from the people who founded it and give it to the people he thinks have a moral right to it because somehow they have been taken advantage of, used, exploited, paid unfairly, what have you.
It's socialist.
Look, a couple other things here.
Ladies and gentlemen, before we get to the, I've got these soundbites and they're all me.
I started to say I didn't watch cable news last night, so I didn't find out until I got here this morning to a show prep how I blew up cable news last night.
I got the sound bites now.
And you know, I do not like making this program about me, but I've got the first 10 or 12 soundbites.
Is that what even Steve Schmidt's praising me, who just last week said I don't influence anything?
And now back to praise.
It's schizophrenia out there.
But I started to say something, and I want to clarify because of what happened on cable news last night that blew it up.
I touched on a point yesterday about Newt, and I said Newt is pulling a Perot.
And in that analysis, I made the point that Perot didn't really want to win the White House, that he had as his primary objective, sabotaging George H.W. Bush.
And I told you what the reasons were, as they had been explained to me.
And I said that I think what's going on here is that Newt is so ticked off over the negative ad campaign that Romney Super PAC ran against him in Iowa.
And right now, he is solely focused on taking Romney out, making sure that Romney doesn't win this thing or has a very hard road to it.
I did not mean to say, and I'm sorry if you inferred from that, that I don't think Newt wants to win.
I don't believe that.
I think he wants to win.
I think he's in it to win, but I think he's now got an equal, co-equal motivator, and that is to stick it to Romney as Romney stuck it to him.
When I said that Newt's reminder or behavior reminded me of Perot, I just meant to suggest that he's now also motivated by a desire to get even with Romney.
And lo and behold, right here in the Wall Street Journal today, nearly all negative spending by super PACs in the presidential campaign over the past week has gone toward opposing Newt Gingrich.
96% of negative super PAC spending has targeted Newt.
96% of it.
For example, in Iowa, according to the Wall Street Journal, here is how negative spending by super PACs looked over just the past week.
Not throughout the whole month leading up to the Hawkeye Caucasus, but just last week, $89, almost $90,000 negative spending on Newt, $1,500 negative spending on Romney, $1,200 negative spending on Santorum, and $1,100 negative spending on Ron Paul.
$90,000 of the $90,000, like $95,000 spent negative ads on Newt, and Newt thinks it's all lies.
And like I said yesterday, if you, most of us, I can, but you can't.
You can't relate to having millions of dollars arrayed against you on television when you don't have a dime with people saying things that you don't think are true.
A lot of people, hey, Rush should have known, but Newt should have known.
It's politics and ain't being back.
He knows.
Still doesn't mean it doesn't tick him off when you think people are lying about you.
I'm just offering for you an explanation.
Newt hasn't had a super PAC until the day before yesterday.
They've just started to spend.
And full disclosure, I was told yesterday, I'm always asked, not told, Newt has bought significant advertising time on this program for the remainder of this week and the next week.
And I was, are you okay with it?
I said, sure.
Don't mind.
What?
I'm going to object to that?
Well, we just, you know, the listeners might think that, no, no, no, no.
It's a commercial time.
Anybody can buy time here that can afford it.
Well, if Obama wanted to buy everything, we'd probably take it.
Pay up.
It'd have to be pay up front.
Pay in advance.
But we'd probably take it.
That depends.
This audience is smart enough to weed through this stuff.
I don't think I have to sit here and shield the audience and liars and cheats and thieves.
They know them.
I have no problem with that.
I don't think this audience is a bunch of idiots.
Have the greatest respect in the world for the intelligence.
That's why I do the program the way I do.
So, anyway, I've got these soundbites.
I'm going to play some, but I'm waiting a while so as not to make this show about me.
Let's go to the, I was the news.
Yeah, but that's over.
That news cycle is over.
I'm not the news now.
I think the audience probably has heard it in due course.
In the meantime, I want to grab a phone call.
And we're going to start in Duluth, Minnesota.
Chad, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, thanks, Rush.
Megan Dittos from the liberal bastion of Northern Minnesota.
Thank you very much.
You know, I was listening, and, you know, you told me to pull over when Romney made his little comment about Obama and failing out GMO.
That's the same thing he was saying.
You know, I started thinking about it, and, you know, to read in between the lines, I think he already thinks he has the nomination.
I think he is kind of doing a preemptive strike on Obama, so he can't use that same angle on him.
Well, let me see if I understand what you're saying.
You think that Romney is doing a preemptive strike on Obama so he can't use that same angle on him?
Yes.
Okay, that's pretty much what I said.
Maybe that the political advisors are saying, Newt, or rather, I'm saying, Mitt, go ahead and say you're no different to Obama because the press is not ripping Obama for that.
The press is praising Obama for every aspect of General Motors, taking it over, laying people off, making it profitable.
So how can they criticize you for doing exactly what they praise Mitt for?
And the answer to that is they are the media.
That's how they can do it.
Makes sense.
Well, except since when did we ever neuter the media?
And what the hell is this playing defense stuff?
Sorry, don't get me started here.
Here's the bite.
Chad, I only hope you're right.
I will hope.
I've got the bite now.
This is so that the Hill got it right.
The Hill.com got her.
So here it is.
Are you sitting down?
CBS morning show.
Charlie Rose, interviewing Mitt Romney.
Charlie Rose said clearly, you know, the outlines of what they want to say about your tenure at Bain Capital are clear.
You were a destructive force.
Be able to make that stick?
Can you defend that?
Not only in the primaries, but in the general.
Can they make it stick that you're a destructive force?
Well, of course, they tried the same line here in New Hampshire, and it fell extraordinarily flat.
People here in the state know that in the work that I had, we started a number of businesses, invested in many others, and that overall created tens of thousands of jobs.
So I'm pretty proud of that record.
By the way, in the general election, I'll be pointing out that the president took the reins of General Motors and Chrysler, closed factories, closed dealerships, laid off thousands and thousands of workers.
He did it to try and save the business.
We also had on occasion to do things that are tough to try and save a business.
I'm going to go to Washington and cut it down to size.
Washington is simply too big.
Okay.
So said it there.
Do exactly what Obama did, taking over General Motors in Chrysler.
And I'm sure the thinking, there's no, I think Chad here, Chad Lee from Duluth, is exactly right.
I think that they think they're inoculating themselves.
This is how to blunt the, well, Obama did it.
And it's based on the fact that the media loves Obama.
We'll never criticize Obama for this.
And they criticize Romney.
It makes them hypocrites.
That's obviously what the thinking here is.
Okay, quick timeout, my friends.
I'll rush ball half my brain tied behind my back just to be fair about things.
No, no, no, no, no.
Just to clarify, my angst or my disquietedness here with Romney is not that he seeks to defend himself from getting rid of losing propositions at companies in order to save them.
I'm not, I know that's got to happen.
I'm not, my, my, my, my concern here is that capitalism's under assault.
Barack Obama's not a capitalist.
Barack Obama and Romney did not do what they do for the same reasons, for the same objective, same things.
And I just think there is, if you're going to wade into this pool of defending the way you save a business, you're not government.
I just think that there's a better way of doing this educationally, informatively, than tying yourself to Obama.
It's not that I think Romney's going to take over car companies as president.
That's not what my fear here is.
I think in order to win this, Obama is going to have to be properly defined as what he is and what he intends for this country.
And his takeover of General Motors was not benevolent.
There was nothing about the takeover of General Motors that was oriented toward saving it.
He doesn't care whether it runs at a profit.
Government does not have to make a profit running anything.
I give you the vault.
They don't care.
The vault ends up costing $250,000 per car.
We have all the subsidies, everything else.
They don't care.
They don't have to show a profit.
On the other hand, as I said, Romney's speech last night's acceptance speech was one of the best that he's given.
We have three sound bites to illustrate.
Here's the first.
President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial.
And in the last few days, we've seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him.
This is such a mistake for our party and for our nation.
The country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy.
We have to offer an alternative vision.
I stand ready to lead us down a different path where we're lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success.
Radon, Radon, Radon.
Here's second soundbite.
Our campaign is about more than replacing a president.
It's about saving the soul of America.
This election is a choice between two very different destinies.
President Obama wants to fundamentally transform America.
We want to restore America to the founding principles that made this country great.
He wants to turn America into a European-style social welfare state.
We want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity.
It's I guess that's acceptable.
Turn it into a European-style social welfare state.
That's descriptive enough.
I think it's far more hideous than that, but I know they're not going to go there.
They're not going to explain this the way I would.
So I've got to learn to eat that sandwich.
And here's the final soundbite.
This president is making the federal government bigger, burdensome, and bloated.
I will make the federal government simpler, smaller, and smarter.
He raised the national debt.
I will cut, cap, and balance the federal budget.
This president has enacted job-killing regulations.
I'll eliminate them.
He lost our AAA credit rating.
I'll restore it.
He passed Obamacare.
I'll repeal it.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
Now, what Romney should have said, I'm still struggling with this here, folks.
What Romney should have said is, you call what I did layoffs?
I was trying to save jobs.
I was trying to save companies.
Look at what Obama did at General Motors.
Those jobs went overseas to the CHICOMs.
Look at how he's laying off 80,000 soldiers.
And this is the point.
Is Obama trying to save the Pentagon by laying off 80,000 soldiers?
No, ladies and gentlemen, quite the opposite.
There's nothing, there's not a single thing that is common between we as conservatives and Barack Obama, not a single thing.
In the areas of economics and substance, there's not a single thing.
Now, the Democrats may talk about the fact, yeah, we need to streamline the Pentagon lean and mean, so we're going to lay off 80,000 soldiers.
That's not why they're laying off 80,000 soldiers.
They are cutting that money to spend it elsewhere to buy more votes.
They are doing it to cut the military down to size because they think the U.S. military has been the focus of evil in this world.
The colonialism and imperialism are rooted in the U.S. military.
And it's not just Obama, that's the Democrats from as long as I've been alive.
Well, since JFK, be back after this.
Oh, I have not forgotten.
I still have right here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
I have a stack of a couple of stories.
The establishment now a little nervous.
Now that it appears Romney's nomination is imminent.
A little nervous.
And, well, they think it is imminent.
All this record setting nobody's ever won New Hampshire and Iowa together since 76.
Plus, yes, soundbites featuring me.
It's about time for them.
▲
Export Selection