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Feb. 1, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:28
February 1, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
All right, let's see.
Where are we here?
Where are the soundbites?
Oh, yeah.
We're up at number 10.
But we've played more than nine.
Like, we've already played 29 through 34, for example.
I mean, we've been swamping you with the sound bites today.
We're back in order at number 10.
Whilst the other stuff here in the stack, great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh show prep for the rest of the media.
And in case you doubt that, one of the first seven or eight soundbites, at least five, that we played today are from the cable net people saying, we're not going to know what the conservatives are going to do until Limbaugh finally tells them.
I mean, that's, I could play them again to illustrate the point if you missed it.
They're all wondering who I voted for yesterday.
They're all guessing.
They're all taking syllables, not just words, syllables.
They're analyzing syllables, I said yesterday.
Yeah, and then they're extrapolating from that what I didn't say to try to figure out what I did.
So we're here.
We've got another hour of broadcast excellence, and we'll be talking to you on the phones as well in this hour at 800-282-2882.
The email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
When I got there, nobody was there.
Well, I walked in and walked down.
It was the shortest time spent in a polling place in my life.
I was not exit polled.
In fact, I wasn't stopped.
There was nobody there.
I didn't get any more than a couple glances.
Normally, I'm stopped.
Hey, will you take a picture next to my mid sign?
No, sorry.
We take a picture next to whatever.
That didn't happen.
Nobody wanted an autograph.
When I actually got inside, a couple of the people in there, the poll workers, very nice, shook my hand, gave them my photo ID.
I said, why do you need this?
You know, this is racist.
And they tried not to laugh.
This is racist that you want my photo ID.
You know, one of the poll workers said, you still live at this address?
Why?
Are you going to follow me home or something?
No, no, I just live pretty close.
I just want to know if you still live there.
Yeah, yeah, I still do.
And then I said, is Pat Buchanan's name on this ballot?
And again, they've got to be very serious in there.
I tried not to laugh.
But I was in there.
There were two other people in there.
And I asked them, well, how's the turnout?
We've been swamped all day.
It's one of the biggest turnouts we've ever had here for anything.
But they were all done by the time I got there.
In fact, normally, after you vote, there's a guy in there.
His only job is to slap that I vote sticker on.
This guy didn't even bother to slap it on me.
He just gave it to me.
I didn't even have to walk out of there with the I voted sticker on.
Yep.
Did I feel that the person I voted for, you know, you keep trying to trick me, and you're not ever going to succeed.
Yes, I had to show a photo ID.
Yes, I did.
And I did tell them I thought it was racist.
And, you know, a couple of them had no idea what I was talking about.
A couple did smile.
They were trying not to laugh in there because it's a very, very serious thing.
Real citizenship goes on inside the polling place.
What?
You're kidding.
Snirdley is telling me that the poll worker at his polling place did not speak English.
Had you find your own name on the list?
You realize how many times you could have voted?
The guy didn't speak English.
Where I went, there was one sign in Spanish, and it was over in the corner buried by under a plant behind a vote a key.
That was it.
It was behind the potted plant.
You really had to look hard to see it.
Vote a key.
And I said, who is Key?
Is he?
I haven't seen Key on the ballot.
Gallup.
This is in the Washington Examiner.
Gallup released their annual state-by-state presidential approval numbers yesterday.
And the results should have, I'm just reading to you from the Washington Examiner here, the results should have Obama very worried.
If Obama carries only those states where he had a net positive approval rating in 2011, like Michigan, for example, where he's up 4844, Obama would lose the 2012 election to the Republican nominee 323 to 215 in terms of electoral votes, which that's an interesting way to look at this.
State-by-state presidential approval numbers.
If Obama carries only those states where he had a net positive approval rating last year, then he would lose 323 to 215 electoral votes.
Gallup added this in their story.
Overall, Obama averaged 44% job approval in his third year in Orifice, down from 47% in his second year.
His approval rating declined from 2010 to 2011 in most states, with Wyoming, Connecticut, and Maine showing a marginal increase.
Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Jersey, Arizona, West Virginia, Michigan, and Georgia showing declines of less than a full percentage point.
The greatest declines in Obama approval numbers were Hawaii, South Dakota, Nebraska, and New Mexico.
So, and if you look at on a map, on a red and blue method, one, two, three, four, five, six.
Well, the northeastern states are small, they end up.
But you look at this map, there's hardly any blue on it representing Obama in terms of electoral votes.
That electoral vote map is the county by county at the end of every election.
When you look at where the Democrats win presidential elections, it is Washington, California, everything in the Northeast except for New Hampshire, including Maryland, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
The rest of it is Republican.
It is stunning.
Ari Fleischer was on CNN's special Florida primary coverage last night.
He was on with Anderson Cooper.
They were talking about Romney's win in Florida.
Ari Fleischer said.
The fascinating thing about this race is if anybody can get Mitt Romney one-on-one, he becomes increasingly vulnerable.
But Newt is blocking Santorum, Santorum is blocking Newt.
If it was Santorum on the basis of how he did in that last debate, the exciting way that he went after Romney on healthcare, he took it to him on the health care issue with specifics more than anybody else.
Aerie Fleischer is, you know, watch out for Santorum.
If Santorum ever got one-on-one with Romney, that the dynamic of this thing could really change drastically.
These red-blue states, not entirely, but boy, it almost always matches the right to work states, the right to vote states, the photo ID and all that stuff.
You can see where the fraud's taking place.
It's amazing how few states and counties the Democrats need to win the White House.
Union versus non-union states.
And it stands to reason.
Let's move forward.
Somebody number 12.
This is Sarah Palin.
She was on the Fox election coverage last night with Brett Baer, who said, you said if you were a resident in Florida, you'd vote for Newt Gingrich.
If you lived in Las Vegas, Nevada cauckey coming up.
Who would you vote for there?
Whomever it is to allow the process to continue.
I still say competition breeds success for the U.S., and that's what we need in this debate.
As it stands, obviously, it's Romney and Newt who are closest to being the front-running candidates.
So I would continue to vote for whomever it is to allow the process.
And at this point, it looks like it still is Newt.
You've got to continue to kind of even the plane filled with your vote.
And even the plane fill allows that additional vetting, that additional information about candidates and their ideals and their goals for this nation and how they're going to reach these goals for our nation.
It allows it all to continue.
Sarah Palin, obviously not in favor of Romney.
Anything that propels this and keeps this going is her objective.
We'll be back and continue with more after this.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Rush Limbaugh, your guiding light.
America's real anchorman, truth detector, doctor of democracy.
Now documented to be almost always right, 99.7% of the time to Edmund, Oklahoma.
It's a Jan, and it's great to have you here.
Hi, Rush.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thank you.
Good.
I have a comment and then a question, if you'll allow it.
Certainly, I love questions.
Not enough people ask me questions.
Everybody calls this show, thinks they know everything.
Okay.
My comment first is that I think if we look back at the actually four, maybe even less than four years ago, at the Democratic nomination process and then the election that occurred in our country in 2008,
I think that we can say that this concept that people have been talking about as far as electability is concerned is really a concept that has changed and it's no longer what people have always thought and maybe still think it is.
Yeah, I've often been dubious at this whole concept.
You know, somebody in some faraway capital says, well, you know, you're not a guy that can beat Obama's Romney.
How do you know?
Nobody knows that.
On what are you basing it?
The guys won nine out of 25 elections.
I don't mean to be critical of Romney, but where does this, these things just get pronounced by consultants or powers that be, and everybody just accepted?
Who knows who's electable and who's not?
Look at it, it's like everybody said that we had to not nominate Newt.
If we nominated Newt, the whole election would be about Newt.
Well, and then Romney goes out there and commits a faux paw by saying, I'm not worried about the poor.
I don't care about the poor.
They got a safety net.
He's trying to zero in on his conservative middle class, but he gives them something they can take out of context, which they will, and Romney becomes the focus of the campaign, not Obama.
Anybody who thinks, this is my point here, anybody who thinks that we can nominate somebody who is not going to be the focus of a media destruction campaign is asinine.
Whoever we nominate is who the campaign is going to be about.
It's not going to be about Obama.
The media can't let it be about Obama.
It's about Obama.
He's sunk.
It's going to have to be about what a reprobate, racist, sexist, mean-spirited, heartless creep the Republican is.
And it don't care who the nominee is.
It's going to be about that.
And they're setting up Romney as the, I mean, Romney's going to be the Mr. Pennybags Money Bag on the Monopoly Game Board.
That's who they're setting him up to be.
So I agree with you.
Didn't come around and say only so-and-so is electable.
I don't.
You know, that's just something that they try to intimidate everybody into silence by saying.
What was your question?
Well, my question is, you know, if that's the case, that electability is not what it's all cracked up to be and what people say we should really be looking for the electable nominee, then why are people that can't stomach Romney that say he's not conservative enough for me, why are they going to Newt?
Why don't they go to Santorum?
Well, I can only, I mean, you'd have to ask every particular voter why they're choosing Newt over Santorum, those who do.
I could only hazard a guess.
Why do you think?
Well, my feeling is that they think, okay, Romney's just not quite there.
He's too far left for me.
I can't trust him.
Newt's been a conservative guy, as far as his stance on fiscal matters.
He's been known for that for years and years.
Okay, I'm going to go to Newt.
He's the next big name.
He's the next profile guy.
I think you're on to something.
I think you're on to something.
It's name recognition.
It's name ID.
It's what have you done for me lately?
Newt has clearly been a household name for decades.
Santorum hasn't been.
I think you're onto something there.
It's not a criticism of Santorum to say it.
It's also when you look at the polling numbers.
There's Romney with 25 or 30, there's Newt with whatever he is, and Santorum down in the 10s.
Well, why should I support the guy in the 10?
But then people say, well, look at Ron Paul.
Well, look at Ron Paul.
He supposedly got all of this support that all these people love.
He doesn't even run an ad in Florida.
He's at 7%.
So the supposed support that Paul has, he doesn't have.
The illusion doesn't match the actual number.
Rick Santorum really hasn't yet been a national figure.
Newt has been.
But, you know, in a way, we know more about Santorum as far as his public behavior, his actions, from what he did when he was a congressman and in the, you know, in Congress.
We know more about what he would do than we do know about what Obama was going to do when he became the nominee for the Democrats.
Because he hadn't even been in the Senate for two full years.
Yeah, but that's a whole different set of circumstances.
Oh, gee, Obama had no record, which is an asset.
Obama was a Democrat, which is 95% of it.
He has always been a media darling.
And the fact that he had the historical aspect attached to his candidacy gave him Velcro.
He was perfectly insulated against any criticism whatsoever that the media would follow up and echo.
He had the largest team anybody could have playing defense for him.
I'm glad you called.
I appreciate it very much.
Jan, this is Aaron, Salt Lake City.
Erin, welcome.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
It's great.
I just first wanted to say that this is my first time calling, and I'm new to listening to you full time, and it's a pleasure.
Thank you.
I think that, just allow me one second to just explain who I am.
I think it's important to my point.
I am a 37-year-old mother of three who has multiple sclerosis, and I have, you know, like I said, three children, and I live with my elderly parents who my father has two terminal cancers and getting dementia.
And I take care of my mother every day, and I'm also a young adult author.
And so I think that I'm a person who has a lot of first education, but also a lot of sympathy and compassion.
And I'm a very busy person.
And so I find it offensive in a way when people in the media say about Mitt Romney that his followers are not real true followers, that we're not passionate about him, because I am extremely passionate about Mitt Romney.
And I know so many other people that are.
I've been rooting for him since 2008.
And I'm frankly just really, I don't know what to do.
And I know that you used to be his supporter, and now you're not.
And I really haven't had the time to listen continually to you to know exactly those reasons why.
But I don't really understand what he could do now to, like, for example, for you or for Sarah Palin, when she says, he just hasn't convinced me enough that he's a conservative.
We still just need to be convinced.
And I really don't know what he could do or say to convince you guys now because I feel satisfied in the things that he has said.
Like this whole thing, for example, with Obamacare.
And everyone's like, Romney care, Obamacare, that's a liability.
I don't see that.
I see that he has explained his position, how it's different, states rights.
You know, he's trying to take care of those 8% and so forth.
I think that blaming him for Obamacare, and excuse my, you know, since I am a young adult author, to take it this way, but blaming him for Obamacare is like blaming Stephanie Myers, the author of The Famous Twilight, for all of the vampire werewolf books that are all over the bookshelves now because she wrote this book and everybody wanted to be like her.
I need to ask you a question.
However, I need you to hold on to the break to do it.
Can you do that?
Yes, I can.
Thank you.
And we will be back.
Hey, turn on the dino cam.
Get back into the groove here and go back now to Aaron in Salt Lake City, Utah.
You might be surprised in my question for you.
What is a young adult author as opposed to an author?
We write for young adults.
Like when you write, you have a certain genre and it's hard to cross over.
So once you become a young adult author until you have a lot of following, you continue to write in the same genre.
What happens when those people grow up?
Do you grow up with them or are you still writing for young adults?
You still write for young adults.
But you can.
If you're famous enough, like Stephanie Myers, you can usually cross over to adult women's lit or something.
Now, there's a movie out there.
The reason I asked, there's a movie out there starring Charlie's Theoron, and it was up for an epidemic award called Young Adult.
And I thought maybe you were telling me you wrote the screenplay for the movie.
I'm the young adult author.
And I thought, wow, we've got a Hollywood play.
Then I figured, no, when I heard the rest of your call, that wasn't the case.
Because this movie doesn't sound like something you would write about.
No.
No, I didn't actually see it either.
Okay, here's, you know, you're asking me about Newt or Mitt and so forth.
I can just tell you that 2008, the opponent was McCain.
In 2012, here, everything's different.
And given what exists in 2008, Romney was the closest thing to a conservative there was.
In a lot of people's view, he's not this time around.
He's not the closest thing to a conservative.
And this is ballgame.
There are a lot of people who are just don't want a moderate, who don't want the next Republican Party's, it's his turn candidate.
We don't want somebody from the establishment who's not going to ruffle it up.
And there are people who question Romney's genuine conservatism because of Romney care, because of things that he has said.
He's openly said, I'm not a conservative.
I am a moderate.
I'm a proud moderate.
I'm one of these right-wing conservative guys.
He said this back in a debate with Ted Kennedy in 94 running for the Senate.
They agreed with each other for the first 45 minutes.
I mean, these are things that people don't forget.
And then.
Why don't you think people change?
Yeah, it's a question of people believe the change.
When a politician tries to change, it's very tough.
People think politicians are routinely sneaky.
They think politicians admit that's the business that he's in.
Now, Mark Stein, who guests hosts this program, came up the other day, and I'm going to have to do this from memory.
His way of illustrating that Romney doesn't have a core, that he speaks platitudes and talking points rather than from his heart.
He says, if he hears one more time, Romney said, I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America, millions of Americans love and believe in.
I'm that American that millions of Americans believe in.
I'm an American.
And people ask, what did he just say?
That's a parody of some of the milquetoast Talking points that some people think.
And so when that happens, they question: is it really in there or does it have to be written and committed to memory?
Can I say something?
And I might just be opening a camera.
Are you sure that you are not Sarah Palin?
I am, oh my gosh, I promise.
No, if I could just say something, like I said, I might be opening a can of worms, but really, this is what me and many people feel: is that the issue of that people just cannot connect to Mitt Romney is because he's a Mormon and I'm a Mormon, okay, but I'm not here.
You know, Harry Reed's a Mormon and he got in Florida, he got the evangelical vote.
I know.
But well, can I tell you that it's interesting as I was on hold with you earlier today when I was on hold, they had Ron Paul on Fox, and he was saying how he really felt like he had a good shot in Nevada because of all the Mormons over there, which people say will go to Romney.
And this is true with what he says.
Okay, for example, Utah, we are Mitt through and through.
And that's not because he's a Mormon, because so was John Huntsman.
We love him because of the Olympics.
But what Ron Paul is saying is that because we are constitutionalists, we love the Constitution.
It is very sacred to us.
And I know that people say, I don't know who Mitt is.
And I personally have never met Mitt, but I can tell you, I know.
Let me just tell you.
I know what he's saying.
I don't think this connection bit even is being discussed in the way you're talking about it.
I don't think it's connection from audience to Mitt.
I think the people talking about it say that he doesn't connect.
And it's because of that parody.
I believe in millions of Americans who believe in an America where millions of Americans love America.
That's not, I know all about connecting with people.
And the problem is not that you don't connect with him, not that his supporters don't, is that he doesn't really connect with them.
And that's just the people who say that, Aaron, let me just tell you, I don't want to mean to hurt your feelings.
What they're saying when they say that is that he's not genuine.
That's the people who say that and believe it.
Nothing to do with Mormon.
Nothing to do.
It is that they just don't think he's genuine, that he doesn't believe the stuff he's saying.
He's saying it because he's trying to convince people that he's conservative because he's really not one.
That's the rub.
That's what I hear from people.
Pure and simple.
You asked.
You asked.
And one thing I will never do is run for the hills from a question.
I love the questions.
Thanks, Aaron, very much for the call.
I appreciate it.
What do you mean it's not an intangible?
No, it's very, no, it's, but it's important.
The whole notion of whether people are genuine or not matters.
It matters, and it's not something you can teach somebody to do.
You either connect with an audience or you Nixon was never able to until 1968.
I guess I remember Roger Ailes put him in a roundtable, a circle in the round format on TV with the audience totally in Nixon answering questions, going back and forth, turning circles, standing up.
And that was Nixon's rebirth.
1968, he did an appearance.
I remember watching it.
And it was the first time in his life that people thought he'd ever really connected and given them some of who he really is.
And that's, it is an intangible.
It's hard to say what that is when you want to define connecting with somebody in a mass sense.
You know, when you meet surface people in your private life, in your personal, you know, when you meet somebody that you don't think is telling you who they really are.
Phonies.
You know them right off the bat.
That's all that's being talked about here.
And in politics, this criticism is it often gets vicious because this is a lot of people.
This election is a ballgame.
It's not about what the Republican establishment thinks in terms of whose turn it is.
It's people's lives.
People's lives are at stake here, they think.
Their futures, the kids' futures.
They're not going to happily vote for somebody who they don't think really gets that.
If they think somebody's just telling them that they agree with them and understand it and feel it, when they don't, it's going to be a tough sell.
It's going to be a real tough sell.
Yeah, Obama connected to young people.
Grant Park, yeah, he connected, but he connected on superficial stuff.
He connected on planet to the, he was able to convince people he meant when he said he was going to lower the sea levels.
The crowd that that mattered to thought he really meant that he was going to do it and could.
That's the connection.
He didn't connect with me because I know it's a bunch of crap.
It's harder to connect with conservatives because it's not an emotional connection that we look for.
And when you try to connect with people with emotion, when that's not what the game is, that comes across as even more of an effort to connect.
And that's, it isn't going to work.
By the way, folks, I need to, I need to offer up a correction here.
And I mistakenly said two days ago that Mike Huckabee had endorsed Romney.
And he has not.
He sent me a note saying he hasn't endorsed Romney.
He's got nowhere near endorsing Romney.
He says every week he doesn't support Romney.
And he still doesn't hate Romney from 2008, but there's still a little bitterness there.
But I thought I had heard last year that Huckabee had joined the establishment types and gotten behind Romney.
So he says he hasn't.
It was two days ago when he sent me the note.
So I wanted to make that clear.
This is Don, Phoenix, Arizona.
Welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Let me just say I'm a little bit offended by the fact that you equated the HRAP to Acorn because, you know, I was able to take advantage of HRAP here just recently, and it turned out pretty good for me.
Kind of a personal attack.
You thought I was personally attacking you?
Well, I took it that way.
Because.
Well, HRAP, my bank kept calling me over and over again to take advantage of it.
And I was on a 30-year loan with 28 years left at 5.125%.
And they were able to get me in at the current rate of 3.125% at 15 years with no down payment, no closing cost, and the mortgage only cost me a couple extra dollars a month.
Well, hallelujah.
I mean, all of us should sign up this program.
It's the government pay for all of our mortgages.
Now, well, what's really interesting about it is that, you know, my mortgage wasn't behind at all, or my house was kind of a lot more.
But they tracked you down anyway, sort of like soliciting food stamps.
Do they offer to set you up on food stamps, too?
They don't need to.
I do pretty well.
All right.
Well, it doesn't matter.
Don't try to register anybody for food stamps.
They need to get the numbers up.
Okay.
I've offended the guy.
I know, I know, I know he was just kidding.
But this program, this HARP thing, could end up forgiving mortgages.
That's where it's headed.
That's what Obama wants to do in election.
He's just forgive them.
Just wipe the debt off and then somehow make people think the banks are paying for it.
We're going to really get even with that and whether you see what your ATM fees end up being.
But that's what Acorn wants: for all of them to be forgiven.
My friends, there are times when you find yourselves very much alone, a problem too big to handle yourself.
You can try to solve it yourself, or if you're lucky, something happens when your lowest point of despair, your mind opens to a new solution that you hadn't thought of.
Okay, University of Missouri.
My brother is almost alma mater.
University of Missouri students will face a 6.5% increase in tuition and fees starting this summer under a plan being considered this week by system officials.
So out in the real world, people are taking pay cuts and they're losing jobs.
They're losing value on their investments.
They're doing with less and less.
Government never does with less and less.
Big education never does with less and less.
And nobody ever talks about big education.
I mean, Obama made a pretense of it last week.
Doesn't really mean it.
That's his buddies going to make sure they get paid.
All we're just going to do is loan more money to the students and put them in more debt to the government.
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