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Jan. 31, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:13
January 31, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Okay, we're back.
Broadcast Excellence Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Southern Command.
But remember, as long as I'm here, it doesn't matter where he is.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
I mentioned Michelle Malkin has endorsed Rick Santorum.
Here are some excerpts.
He didn't cave when Chicken Littles in Washington invoked a manufactured crisis in 2008.
So clearly, Michelle Maulkin believes the economic news of 2008 was made up or exaggerated.
Manufactured crisis.
Go back and look, Nina, not even all that TARP money has been spent, even now.
And of course, it was pitched to us.
You got to do this or the world economy collapses in 24 hours.
I'll never forget it.
They took McCain off the campaign trail.
They set Obama up as the number one problem solver in the White House at a meeting.
McCain was leading at the polls at that time.
She says he didn't cave when Chicken Littles in Washington invoked a manufacture crisis 2008.
He didn't follow the pro-bailout GOP crowd, including Romney and Gingrich.
Santorum did not have to obfuscate or rationalize his position then or now like Rick Perry and Herman Cain did.
He also opposed the automobile bailout, Freddie and Fanny bailout, the Porcubus bills.
Santorum opposed individual health care mandates clearly and forcefully as far back as his 1994 Senate run.
He's launched the most cogent, forceful fusillade against both Romney and Gingrich for their muddied pro-individual health care mandate waters.
He voted against cap and trade in 2003.
He voted yes to drilling and end war.
And unlike Romney and Gingrich, Santorum has never dabbled with eco-radicals like John Holdren, Al Gore, and Nancy Pelosi.
And he hasn't written any contracts with the Earth.
Santorum is an eloquent spokesperson for the culture of life.
He's been savaged and ridiculed by leftist elites for upholding traditional family values, not just in word, but in deed.
She also has praise for his views on illegal immigration, border security, national defense.
She also cites the fact that he became a big government Republican and is one of the reasons why he lost his re-election bid in 26.
But then he was following George W. Bush.
So she cites some of his negatives, but that's just a little smidgen of Michelle Mawkins' reasoning behind her endorsement of Rick Santorum.
Santorum is the least dirty by now.
He hadn't been dirtied by the other two, but he's been sitting at 10 to 12% in the polls.
If he were up threatening Romney, believe you me, they would be going after him, the super PACs and all the other stuff.
Now, I got people shouting at, wait a minute, she's a splitter, she's a splitter.
She's splitting the conservative vote by voting for Santorum.
You know, there's schools of newts out there saying Santorum ought to get out.
And Santorum saying, no, you go first.
So now the people say, okay, if one of the two got out, where do their supporters go?
Now, the conventional wisdom is that Santorum's voters would go to Gingrich.
I'm not so sure of that.
You've got, I'll tell you one thing that's going to happen in Florida tonight if the polls are right.
And I say if the polls are right, if the polls are right, the combined number of votes, Santorum and Gingrich, will be larger than the number of votes Romney gets.
And that's going to tick people off.
Because what it's going to say is that the conservative vote is stronger.
If a conservative voter unified behind one candidate and stayed that way, then Romney would be beat.
But the conventional wisdom that Santorum's voters would go Gingrich, I'm not so sure.
There's a reason that they're not for Gingrich.
I wild guess on my part.
I would think if Santorum got out, the bulk of his voters would go to Romney.
But I don't know that it's a nuff that would matter.
Did all of Perry's supporters go to Gingrich?
No, they went to Santorum.
So why would Santorum's voters go to Gingrich?
A lot of people who think they're the smartest people in the room have this thing all figured out.
I'm just not sure that anybody really knows.
But common sense tells me that you've got the option of Gingrich or Santorum if you're voting and not Mitt.
And the reason you're choosing Santorum or Gingrich instead of the other matters.
In other words, the Santorum voters may really be anti-both the other guys.
But at the end, who knows?
Perry's voters didn't go to Gingrich and he endorsed Gingrich.
But you wait.
If the polls are right, Gingrich and Santorum's vote totals when combined will outnumber Romney's.
Governor Christie's in the news.
He was in Trenton yesterday, held a press conference to make some staff appointment announcements.
And during the Q ⁇ A, he had this to say.
You have numb nuts like Reid Gishura, who put out a statement, you know, comparing me to George Wallace and Lester Maddox.
Now, you know, come on, guys.
At some point, you've got to be able to call BS on those kind of press releases.
I think, quite frankly, that those who say things like that like Geshura should be ashamed of themselves, that they're that desperate to try to change the topic on this issue that they would actually raise those folks, reprehensible people in America's history.
One is numb nuts.
You have numb nuts like Reid Geshura, who put out a statement comparing me to George Wallace and Lester Maddox.
What Christie's done that has raised little question marks here, some red flags, is he's named another judge.
And this judge is a supporter of gay marriage.
And a judge is a guy who has written of gay marriage being the equivalent to the American civil rights racial movement.
And a lot of people, wait a minute now, thought Governor Christie was this big conservative and he's nominating a judge with this record supporting gay marriage and comparing it to the civil rights.
So, come on, you got numb nuts like Reed Gishura put out a statement, you know, comparing me to George Wallace and Lester Maddox.
So in that, you know, when it comes to his own political enemies, one thing you see about Christie does not hold back.
He's not out there saying the Democrats in New Jersey mean well, but they're just in over their heads.
Christie seeks to destroy these people.
I don't know if he would say that about Obama, but about his own enemies, he doesn't hold back.
Then he had this to say about the State Assembly and other politicians up to the Jews.
They forget where the money comes from.
They think it just appears.
It comes from your hard work.
It comes away from your families.
And so now that I want to give you some of it back, there's going to be every excuse in the book not to give you your money back.
And they're going to come up with all kinds of spending programs that are better investments for New Jersey.
Well, let me give you my opinion.
There is no better investment than to invest in the people of New Jersey by giving them their money back and letting them spend it.
Chris Christie talking about tax cuts, government spending, and so forth.
He talks like that, and people eat it up.
They just love the guy.
They just love the guy.
Yeah, that's true.
Snerdley's going back to the archives of the past and saying and asking, where did we first hear it's your money?
And that, of course, would have been from my oral cavity.
I.L. Rushboat, way back in the early 90s, explained all this.
Your money.
It's not the government's.
It is your money.
I don't know that Dana Perino is going to be happy with this, but Christie's supporters are.
Now, Charlie Christ was on hardball last night with Chris Matthews talking about the Republican primary.
Matthews said, so you're in Tampa, governor, right now.
Suppose it's next September, late August, actually, nine months or so from now.
Imagine Newt Gingrich talking like that at your convention.
I don't know what he's referring to here specifically that Newt was talking about, but it may not matter.
There is a conservative insurgence, if you will.
Comments from Rush Limbaugh, I understand he talked about, you know, you need to kind of back off the heat and the rhetoric as it relates to Speaker Gingrich.
And we saw Sarah Palin come out, I think, this weekend saying that, you know, if you want to upset a liberal, vote for Newt and things like that, there is a play for Gingrich, if in fact he does lose tomorrow in Florida.
Getting to Super Tuesday, where you have some other southern states to sort of reignite himself once again.
He's already done it twice.
Charlie Christ saying that there's a new conservative insurgency out there.
People like Sarah Palin and me getting behind Newt.
Then, on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS, the editorial director of the National Journal Ronald Brownstein was on, used to be the LA Times.
And they were talking about the Republican primary, Smiley said, if I say to you, so Romney wins, and then said, so what?
And the so what means that Newt is not going to go anywhere.
He's told us he's not going to go anywhere.
So Romney wins in Florida.
What of it?
You have seen more establishment Republicans like John McCain and Bob Dole rally around Romney.
In a kind of action-reaction cycle, you're seeing more of that kind of populist wing and vanguard conservative wing of the party, whether it's Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin or Herman Cain, kind of rally to Gingrich's defense.
Yeah, yeah, that's happened.
We've rallied to Gingrich's defense and also ripped Gingrich.
They've ripped Gingrich over his attacks on Bain Capital and so forth.
There's more, though.
On Scarborough's show today on MSNBC, the New York magazine National Affairs editor John Heileman was a guest.
The co-host, Miko Zhazhinski, said, Look, you got Newt Gingrich here who can be villainized.
You got a great record of things to use against him.
Look at the AD when we looked at Miami Herald online yesterday.
He talks about the housing crisis, how Newt cashed in on that.
That's not untrue.
And that's something that's going to touch people here in Florida where the housing crisis has really hit.
There are a lot of people who are angry at the way that Mitt Romney and the Republican establishment have crushed Newt Gingrich in this race, the way they've conducted this race.
You've seen Rush Limbaugh, you've seen Sarah Palin, you've seen Herman Cain, a lot of populist grassroots conservative leaders who've rallied to the side of Newt.
It's fascinating to listen to all these people say I've rallied to the side of Newt and that I'm out there angry at the way I've got people mad at me because I'm not angry enough at Romney.
Gosh, I wish I could use names.
You know some of these people.
I got people telling me that I'm going too soft.
If you're not careful, you're going to end up electing Romney.
You're not hitting him hard enough.
You're letting Romney get away with all this garbage on Newt.
And now here come the drive-bys and they are associating me with going to the map to defend Newt against all this stuff.
Here's Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, also on MSNBC, Jansen and Company.
She said, How do you deal with this populist grassroots conservative wing?
You see what's shaped the drive-bys have their narrative here that there's a populist grassroots uprising and wing of the party, and that it's Palin and me and Herman Kane, which is three different reporters who have lumped me and Sarah Palin and Herman Kane in this populist grassroots uprising, conservative uprising, defending Newt.
Maybe this is why I'm getting such hate mail from the Romney people.
Hell anyway, she said they feel that Romney's being rammed down their throats and they don't like Romney.
Palin, Kane, Limbaugh don't want Romney.
And Michael, what can be done about this?
That's one of the things that Mitt Romney has got to solve for his campaign, quite frankly.
You don't do that by tearing down someone of Newt stature, for good or bad, like him or not like him.
You know, he's played a role in the party and he has a lot of support behind him.
That's the concern that the Sarah Palins and Rush Limbaughs and others have about the way this process is unfolding.
Getting back to my point, it's time for the adults to step up, run the campaign that's going to talk in a visionary way about the future of our country and leave all the pettiness society.
Okay, so I play you those sound bites to show you there's a narrative out there that has sprung up that's got me, Herman Kane, and Sarah Palin outraged and doing everything we can to fight back at Romney and defend Mitt and so forth.
I don't know how many of you are hearing this for the first time, like I am.
I just sit here and marvel at it.
I don't know where they get it.
All right, who's next?
Jim on Long Island.
Great to have you on the program.
Appreciate your patience.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
How are you?
Very well, sir.
Thank you.
Rush, I've been a listener for a long time.
I guess maybe even like 20 years.
Almost as long as you've been on the air.
And I can't understand it, but to me, it's so clear that it's Newt.
Newt is the one to elect.
You don't seem to have any doubt about it, which is the point that I'm making.
Uh-huh.
I don't see how anybody can be for Newt.
Look at the resume that he brings to the table compared to the other two.
I mean, it's like night and day.
Do you what how do you react when you hear the criticisms of Newt that are out there all over the place?
How do you react to those?
Like the Romney ads or whatever the media said about Newt.
Because to you, it's so crystal clear.
It's not even a no question in your mind.
How do you react when you hear those criticisms?
Well, I get nervous because I feel like the same thing is going to happen when everybody was saying vote for McCain because McCain is electable.
Then we vote for McCain and he didn't even get elected.
I don't see how so many people can be misled.
Yeah, there's a lot of emotion here on both sides, a lot of emotional.
Well, if people break it down to, you know, they watch what's going on and try not to listen to everybody trying to.
Yeah, but see, you, you are Cast in Stone.
You have, there's, there's something, nobody else.
And furthermore, you don't understand why everybody else doesn't see it.
And yet, a lot of people don't see it the way you do.
It's got to be, that's got to be an interesting position to be in.
I sometimes ask myself, you know, why do people not see Obama for what he really is?
And I have to realize 40% of the country want what he's offering.
All right, let me tell you what this news media narrative is all about, ladies and gentlemen.
I had for you three soundbites.
Ronald Brownstein, Michael Steele, John Heileman.
They were almost, word for word, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Herman Cain coming to Newt's defense, attacking Romney.
Conservative insurgency, populist conservative insurgency.
Three different guys.
Steele, the FC's a media guy now.
He's over to PMS NBC.
So three of them.
Almost the exact terminology.
So what's this?
Now, admittedly, Sarah Palin has been out there and she has been saying rage against the machine.
Vote Newt.
I have never used those words.
I have never said vote Newt.
I've never said vote Mitt.
I've never said vote Rick.
I've never said vote Romney.
Vote Gingrich, vote Centorum.
I'm not playing a trick.
I've never told anybody to vote for anybody here.
Now, the polls indicate that Romney is going to win this thing by 10 to 15 points.
So what is this all about?
I'll tell you what it is.
The narrative tomorrow is going to be Limbaugh, Palin, Herman Cain have no influence whatsoever.
They're lumping me in with all of these ribald, take-no-prisoner supporters of Gingrich.
They are very confident Newt is going to lose.
I haven't endorsed Newt.
I haven't told anybody to vote for Newt or for anybody else.
But just like the narrative after Florida in 2008 was, well, Limbaugh doesn't influence anything for crying out loud.
He did everything he could to oppose McCain to look who won.
So that's what's coming tomorrow.
That's going to be, and that's why Jonathan Martin sent me the note last night, wanting to find out who I was going to vote for, because he is certainly under the impression or was hoping that I would tell him I'm voting for Newt, because that's what's being set up here.
But then something will happen a week later, and I'll be back to being the kingly.
I'll be Mr. Big, the Mr. Big of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
But any opportunity they've got to suggest that Palin, me, Herman Kane, we don't matter.
Our endorsements don't carry any weight.
We don't really influence anybody.
That's what's coming tomorrow.
Because they've lumped me in with that crowd, and I haven't been nearly as definitive nor forceful as have Sarah Penny.
Certainly haven't endorsed anybody like Herman Cain has done.
So here I am, the big vote on the right, the big cracker on the right, the big voice on the right, and then tomorrow, the big nothing on the right.
That's what they're setting up.
If I had to bet, if I had to put money behind it, that would be what it is.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
Ed, you're up.
Welcome to the program.
I'm sorry to talk to you.
Look, I just do not believe that Romney can beat Obama.
When he gets up there on that debate stage with Obama, it's going to be pitiful.
Every time I've seen Romney in these debates, and I've watched nearly every one of them, he looks panicky to me.
He looks like he's breaking out in a sweat.
I just don't see how.
Well, if he gets the nomination, we're going to be four years of Obama.
Wait a minute now.
I just believe that.
I haven't seen Romney look like he's about to break into a sweat.
He panics, though.
He just looks like he's on the verge of panic.
In other words, well, on top of that, he has not really said much about what he wants to do.
He's got a 67-point plan of some sort.
No, it's 59.
Oh, it's well, whatever.
But who needs 59?
What we need is about six or seven, eight basic things.
I like to.
There are a couple of interesting pieces.
Well, Art Laffer has a piece in the Wall Street Journal today.
He was one of the architects of Reagan tax policy.
And Art Laffer's saying, you know what, folks, there's something really missing here from the Romney campaign.
I don't hear the guy talking about tax cuts.
I don't hear him proposing tax cuts.
I don't hear him talking about flat tax rates.
I don't hear Romney talk, and I'm worried about it.
Amen.
That's exactly right.
I knew you'd like that.
And on top of that, I'm sick and tired of hearing these guys cut each other, you know, just say all sorts of bad things about Newt.
Newts and bad things against Romney and so forth.
And to Santorum's credit, he has been very much more not in that vein than the other two.
That's true.
I'm getting tired of hearing that.
I want to hear what the hell they're going to do to get this country fixed.
And I don't hear that from Romney.
I do hear a lot of that good stuff from Newt.
Well, let's go back to your original point.
I want to go back.
Your original point is that if Romney wins and there's a debate, there will be.
There'll be three debates with Obama.
You think he's going to fizzle?
I just don't believe he'll.
I just don't think he can handle it.
I think he'll get his lunch eat.
Like, on what?
Health care?
Well, he, you know, he has that Romney care, and he sent two of his underlings down to Washington to help Obama work out his details.
And he's a big supporter of abortion.
I've heard some of the things that he said about he's going to support abortion for 18-year-olds and for those young ladies under 18.
If the parents don't agree, then they can take it to a court.
And the court said, go ahead, you little 14-year-old girl, get an abortion.
Well, that's a, hey, that is a big, big killer, in my opinion.
All right.
Okay.
Look, I appreciate the call out there, Ed.
I loved these passionate caller.
You're definitely passionate.
You're very confident.
Contrast the last two calls.
We had the guy, I just don't see how anybody.
By the way, I don't know that Romney supports abortion.
That's new to me.
But I know it's on the Gingrich ad, but I don't supporting abortion, advocating abortion.
I don't know.
It's a symbol of what's going on.
It's an example.
But the previous caller was, I don't see how anybody cannot support Newt.
This guy went about it a different way.
I don't see how anybody can support Romney.
I just don't see it.
On healthcare, the reason I asked him about healthcare specifically, you know, this mandate is going to be a challenging thing for Romney in the debates because Romney has stood up for the state mandating that you buy insurance.
He just said the feds shouldn't be able to do it.
And this whole mandate stuff, the reason so many conservatives got caught in this when it first was proposed way, way, way back in the 90s, is because if you don't look at it carefully and you just, if you agree, we've got a problem with free riders and people ought to pay their own way.
And as conservatives, you think people ought to accept their responsibilities for themselves, then in the midst of this healthcare debacle we're in, somebody comes along and suggests the way out of here, make sure everybody pays their own.
Hey, that makes sense to us.
That is very conservative.
Accepting responsibility, self-reliance.
Then you figure out that the responsibility in the proposal is the government forcing responsibility, mandating that people go buy it.
Then you say, wait a minute, that's unconstitutional.
So you realize after the fact the mistake.
So the Heritage Foundation people, this is clearly what happened.
And they long ago swore off the mandate.
Newt, as recently as 2009, was speaking of the mandate as a sensible thing.
He's gone back and forth.
Romney is on record as having implemented a mandate in Massachusetts.
His way out is: well, it states, you know, there's all these individual laboratories out there to experiment and try things and see which ones work.
And that's what I did.
And he said, we, you know, there were only 92% people had their insurance.
We were only talking about 8% of people in Massachusetts.
No, you're talking about all 100%.
When you have a health care bill, it requires people to have their health insurance.
It doesn't matter whether 92% already do.
You're mandating that everybody have it.
And so it is thought that he's going to have a, everybody knows, Romney's going to have a little bit more trouble opposing Obamacare in a debate Because his guys did help the White House put their Obamacare together as a model, or Romney Care as a model for it.
But then, as we mentioned yesterday, because I raised the specter that the way Romney's going after Gingrich ain't going to happen against Obama.
I've had a lot of people.
You don't know what you're talking about.
This Romney guy is ruthless, Rush.
That's the difference in Romney now and Romney 2008.
Romney is ruthless.
We can count on this guy to go after Obama.
Why aren't you seeing that?
He's not going to stop at Gingrich.
He's going to go after Obama.
He's going to hit him high.
He's going to hit him low.
He's going to do everything.
Concussion City.
You wait and see, Rush.
I don't know where because when Obama's name comes, oh, you know, he's just an unfortunate little sap running around in over his head.
Nice guy, just in over his head.
But on the other side, there are these super PACs that'll be out there.
They can go for the jugular, they can go for the carotid.
And Romney can say, I don't know what you're doing.
I can't legally talk to him.
Don't come to me.
Don't start complaining to me.
Hey, Goldilocks, leave me alone.
While the super PACs carry all of the hot water.
I got to take a break.
We'll be back.
These three hours are going by too fast, folks.
They just are.
Here's Bill in Bakersfield, California.
Great to have you, sir, on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hey, Hounddog did to the king of talk radio.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir.
The Titan.
I got to say hi to my daughter, Shannon, up in Ridgecrest and my son-in-law, who'll be listening to this later on his iPad, Byron.
Anyway, this thing with Romney, when he debated Kennedy back when they were running, he was running against him for Senate.
It took the guy 45 minutes to disagree with anything Kennedy said.
And I don't see the guy being any different.
I mean, you know.
He, yeah.
That's.
See, you, I remember that.
I remember even making that point.
I remember watching.
I had totally forgotten that.
I probably heard it on your show.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I totally had forgotten that.
Well, and then he governed.
I remember watching that and having that same reaction.
What is this?
Yeah.
This is moderate Republican 101.
Well, I'll give you some other examples.
In California, when Wilson gave up the governorship to run for Senate and John Seymour was put in, Seymour did the same thing with Feinstein and he lost.
And I don't know that Seymour was that much of a conservative, but even Schwarzenegger, as liberal as he became after he got shut down trying to do some stuff, he even stopped some of the junk that these idiots in California are doing in the legislature.
And, you know, it just well, we now know what was going on with Schwarzenegger, and there we see the Kennedy family testicle lockbox come into play.
But it's an illustration, again, of what moderate Republicans end up that's their thinking.
Well, I look at Romney like McCain part two.
And when I saw McCain out there, he looked like an escapee from a rest home with a walker.
I mean, I thought I was watching Mel Brooks portray somebody in a comedy skin.
Wait, was that in 2008 or just recently when he endorsed Romney?
No, that was when he was running, supposedly running against Obama and treating him with kid gloves.
Was escapee an escapee from the rest home with a walker?
That's what that's what he thought I was watching Mel Brooks.
Yeah, 2008.
You know, I kind of like that.
I wish I'd have come up with that myself.
Well, another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence is in the can.
By the way, folks, just I have to remind you again that Gingrich debated John Kerry on global warming one point, and they agreed on practically every point.
Nobody is innocent.
Everybody is guilty of some transgression somewhere against conservatism, except Santorum.
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