All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 21, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
February 21, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 247 Podcast.
And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
I'm back.
And so's everybody else.
Since that phony holidays over, everybody back to work now.
Happy to have you along.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
The email address L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
I need to issue a warning.
If you were not here yesterday, you missed one of the most volatile phone calls that we've had in a while on the program from a uh a listener, a a supporter.
Um a man who professed throughout the call that he loved me and been listening a long time, but yesterday hated me.
Well, maybe a bit of a stretch, but he was really, really ticked off.
And it was all because I simply read the first two of the 59 points of Mitt Romney's economic plan.
And I was quoting from a piece, a blog post by a guy named Ben Dominick, and all hell broke loose.
So I need to issue uh a little warning.
There is a lot of Rick Santorum news today.
There's not much Mitt Romney news.
And so we talk about what's in the news.
And so there will be a bit of discussion about Santorum today.
And I don't want any of you to think that it means anything in terms of where I am.
No, no, no.
I'm not being defensive, and I'm not being fra I'm just I'm just giving everybody a warning.
I'm telling you, there are people who are losing close friends over this primary race.
And and I it it's it's volatile.
It is causing friction between a lot of people who have a lot of affection for each other.
Uh even me, uh, my friends, your host is not immune to this.
It's even it's even happening to me.
As uh as such, I just want to give you a little warning.
There's gonna be Centaurum news.
I'm not worried about that.
I'm I'm not Obama is gonna unify everybody.
That's what's gonna happen here.
That's what this is this is not something here to be uh uh worried about.
That that that that's so far down the road, it's not a that doesn't bother me at all, the uh lack of unity or whether will there be any I you know by the way, there's some Ron Paul news that um you Paul bots, you're not gonna be happy to hear, but I'm duly duty bound to mention it, and that's gonna happen on the program today.
We have a great list of audio sound bites with ten that I didn't get to from yesterday that I asked Cookie to hold over.
So I've got those.
We had PBS is doing a multi-part series on presidents Clinton and Kennedy.
And we have some audio sound bites from the first episode of the Clinton uh biopic di documentary, whatever.
Um last night.
Well, d no, it's it's it's it's really about how much uh uh put a put it, um because both of their dalliances with the women won in the mob and and uh in case of Kennedy and Clinton with the interns, the the this this documentary in part, part twos tonight, focuses on how vulnerable these guys made the country.
They subjected themselves to blackmail.
The piece points out that neither guy could uh pass his own administration security clearance.
PBS, I kid you not, PBS is doing this.
So we've we've got have we got the continuing whisper campaign and the heart in the bowels of the Republican establishment.
In fact, I have a piece here from CNN.
Some Republicans whisper about plan B. This is nothing you haven't heard.
It's just another day of it.
This one's from Mesa, Arizona.
In a whispering campaign, not ready to go public.
Some senior Republicans are so anxious about the state of the GOP race That they are actually considering the unheard of a scenario that would lead to another candidate entering the Republican primary race and potentially an open convention.
They're not happy and they're not unhappy enough, however, to go on the record calling for another candidate to enter the fray.
They are whispering it amongst themselves and to their friends in the state control media.
In fact, according to CNN, when pressed, many Republicans say the chatter about another candidate is inevitable.
In this long and inconclusive primary process, they also say it's just not likely to happen.
Well, that's just it.
Stop and think of this for a moment since it's a whisper campaign.
The establishment is saying, hey Santorum, screw you.
Hey, Newt, screw you.
Hey, Paul, screw you.
That's what they're saying.
They're saying, Mitt, oh, Mitt, we love you.
What happened?
And now if they go to an open convention, they're basically going to be saying, what do you think Santorum and Newt are going to do?
You think they're just going to lie down and let the establishment run an open convention and pretend these guys don't even exist?
And for those of you who are intrigued by the concept of an open convention, I understand that, but who do you think's gonna run it?
The Tea Party isn't gonna run it.
I mean it'd be fun.
They're gonna try, no doubt they would try, but the same Republican establishment that's gotten the party in this mess is the same bunch of people that would run the open convention.
And by the way, by the way, there are cracks in the establishment.
That's right.
I have two audio sound bites today from members of the Republican establishment who are also whispering, ps.
You know what?
Santorum could actually win all of this.
Yes, one's Ed Gillespie, the other is Ari Fleischer.
And they are whispering, hey, Sandorum could actually, you know, not that bad.
So there's all kinds of things happening below the surface, all kinds of things above the surface.
They have the regime continues to flounder, their approval numbers continue to fall.
Obama is out.
He has said one of the most I've got one of the most amazing quotes.
It's nothing he really hasn't said before, but the way he put it all together in this paragraph about the American dream and what the middle class in this country wants.
It is so indicative, so illustrative of just how limited a sculpt Barack Obama as president of the United States has for people and their ability to achieve in this country.
He the bar is so low in his mind for what you need and want to be happy.
Wait till you hear it.
So we got folks lots of stuff today.
There are cracks in the establishment.
You might say chinks in the armor.
A dent, dent, dent.
Oh, it's a good thing I don't work at ESPN.
Dent in the armor out there.
Now the primaries, let's go back to this brokered convention business or this managed convention.
The primaries were invented to take the power away from the party elites who used to pick the nominee at the convention.
When was the last time it happened, snurdly?
When was the last time that there was one of these conventions where the nominee was chosen?
On the Republican side, wrong-o, dude, but I know you've got a bad sciatica nerve out there and you've got an excuse for being wrong.
It was 1976.
It was in Kansas City at the Kemper Arena.
It was Reagan and Ford.
That was the that was yeah, well, managed.
That that was that was a convention where the nominee was chosen at the convention.
I lived in Kansas City at the time.
I remember I got I have, not I got, I have so many memories.
Nelson Rockefeller came to town, and of course, he had to do the obligatory thing, tour the art museums.
He went to the Nelson Atkins Art Museum and the media in tow, and he stands there, he's pointing at some painting.
And then he had to go find the finest restaurants in town.
And they showed him drunk practically on the floor of the convention one night with a New York delegation all out of whack because the Rockefeller Republicans were on the verge of taking it on the chin with Reagan.
Turned out Ford ended up winning things.
But I also remember on the last night of that convention, Reagan stayed at what was the Alameda Plaza Hotel in the Country Club Plaza.
Just a fabulous, fabulous place.
And the orchestra, the music for the convention was provided by a guy, I think his name was Benny Banack.
And I was watching ABC's coverage, David Brinkley was uh, I think it was ABC in 70s.
Yeah, it would have been ABC in '76.
And they the the one night, might have been the last night, the convention was almost out of control, and they had Benny Bonack playing music, trying to soothe everybody, get everybody uh calmed down and ready to move forward.
And I remember Brinkley was one of the driest wits I ever just Marion Barry delivering a speech 84 convention San Francisco, and he's ranting and raving as the mayor of Washington just going.
Sounds sounds you can't understand what he's saying.
Except tonight, tonight we on the inside.
And Brinkley said, and that is my mayor.
It's all he had to say to tell you what he thought.
Anyway, Benny Banack is playing the music at the Republican convention trying to calm everybody down, and Brinkley said, it's not that Benny Bannock's repertoire is so limited.
It's that the delegates don't seem to be able to be controlled here.
And just every every time Brinkley opened his mouth, I it's like Rick Rick Perry.
Rick Perry makes me laugh.
So we've set the table.
There's gonna be a lot of Centaurum news.
Right now there's not a whole lot of Romney news.
There's not a whole lot of Gingrich news, but there is some.
Uh Mitt should get out of the race if he loses Michigan.
That's what Newt thinks.
We've got sound bites.
We got John Meakin, by the way, formerly of uh Newsweek on Charlie Rose last night, claiming that I have ruined politics in America.
You want to hear that?
Grab soundbite number two.
I, your host, L. Rushbow, have ruined or has ruined politics.
The guest was also Michael Beschloss, the uh presidential historian, and they're discussing the American presidency on President's Day on the Charlie Rose show.
And Beschloss says, you know, money.
Money has taken on this awful role in America.
Now, you know why they say we said, have you did you see what Obama's pack raised in January?
His super PAC.
Obama's super PAC, folks.
Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas guy, the Venetian guy, has given Newt 21 million.
And is talking about dropping another hundred million?
Do you see that?
Sheldon Adelson is thinking about dropping another hundred million for Newt and somebody else he doesn't say.
In Obama's super PAC, there is a total of $58,000.
And 50,000 of it came from one donor.
One donor put in 50 of the 58,000.
Now, how many of you have been, and me too, believing this silly notion Obama was going to have a billion-dollar war chest.
A lot of people believed it.
58,000 in the super PAC.
The super PAC, there are no limits.
If Sheldon Adelson wants to put a hundred million dollars in it, he can do it, for example.
And he's put 10 and 11 respectively, million in Newt's campaign, super PAC.
Obama 58,000, here's Besh loss.
Oh, gee.
Money has taken on this awful role in America.
This is a presidential historian.
We are told this is the foremost, the most renowned, the person with the most expertise, the highest regard.
This is the go-to guy on the presidency in terms of history.
And his lamenting that money has taken this awful role.
Where has he been?
How long have people been complaining about money in presidential politics?
My whole life.
So what is it all of a sudden now money has taken on awful role?
Could it be that he's just upset Obama's not raising as much?
That would be a very cynical view, but what else could it be?
Anyway, that's what he said, and Meekham, formerly of Newsweek, where is he now?
Where's Meekham is Random House executive editor?
Which means he's the executive editor of novels, right?
Books.
What does Random House do?
They publish books, right?
Okay, so anyway, here's what he said.
To be primaried as my favorite newfer.
I'm getting primary.
It's this Rush Limbaugh astro turf all around the country where every district has their talk show host.
And if you're an incumbent member of Congress and you reach out and you don't stick with the orthodoxy, you're gonna get killed every afternoon.
And that's going to encourage somebody to primary you.
It becomes expensive, it becomes embarrassing.
So suddenly you find that why the hell straight from the orthodoxy when I'm just going to pay for it.
So I, your host, El Rushville, have ruined politics by spawning thousands of local talk show hosts who hold politicians' feet to the fire.
The way, exactly right.
There's a way to translate this.
I, your host, El Rushbo, having spawned thousands of local talk show hosts, have finally created discipline in the party.
You campaign for election, you win, and if you don't govern that way, you are going to be held accountable.
To Meekham, this is a problem.
It's a problem because there's not enough latitude to lie, not enough latitude to spin and flail and get away with not doing what you said you were going to do.
Damn limbaugh and damn these talk show hosts and damn this account this accountability.
We'll be back.
Now a little bit on the uh Obama super PAC.
Does it not sound a little strange to you that Obama only has 58 or 59,000 in his super PAC?
I happen to believe that's a very uh fishy.
Very fishy report.
Because back in February 1st, it was reported that Steven Spendberg gave the PAC a hundred thousand dollars, and that the SEIU gave a million dollars.
And so that now maybe Obama spent some, but Steven Spenberg gave Undergranny SEIU a million, and they're reporting Obama's got 58,000.
And now the Obama campaign is using this uh excuse of low fundraising totals, which I frankly don't believe.
I don't believe they're that bad.
Because Obama's gonna start being more closely involved with them.
Uh he's he's gonna start appearing at uh priority USA events after having said he was not gonna do his super PACs or having to do with them.
Remember that?
He's not a total 180.
Remember now it was Obama who started all this religion and politics stuff, this recent iteration of it.
He started it by equating what was it specifically?
He equated Jesus with one of his tag yeah it was payroll tax cut, right?
He equated Jesus in the Bible with everything that's come after that has simply been reacting to it or responding to it.
Obama also said, and he put down packs, remember the super PACs exist for one reason.
Citizens United.
The Supreme Court case, which said corporate entities and others could donate to political campaigns.
That's the super PAC.
And of course, Obama and his bunch were totally opposed to that Supreme Court decision, even went so far as during a State of the Union speech, publicly impugning members of the Supreme Court for that decision.
And it was Justice Alito during the Supreme Court, the uh uh State of the Union speech where he shouted back at Obama, no, that's not true.
Well, he didn't shout back, but he nodded, he said, No, it's not true.
So Obama's I'm not gonna have anything to do with super PACs.
Now all of a sudden he is.
He's changed his mind.
So I think they're gonna underreport what's in this super PAC as best they can to make it look like it's not that big a deal when it actually is.
That's right, it was Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast who said Jesus said the rich should pay more in taxes.
I mentioned there was a couple of cracks in the establishment where Santorum's concerned.
Here are the bites last night on CNN at Anderson Cooper 360 spoke with uh Ari Fleischer, former Bush 43 press secretary about the Republican primary and Santorum.
Anderson Cooper said, Ari, do you think he should just get back to focusing on economic issues and leave all these social and cultural things behind?
I think for the first time today in this race that Rick Santorum has a very decent chance of beating Mitt Romney for the nomination.
Two things happened over the weekend and have been building since this three-state win.
One is that the conservative angst with Mitt Romney is really coming to a head.
People are really saying we we don't want to support Mitt Romney.
Is there finally somebody else to go to?
And Rick Santorum has really now energized the social wing of the Republican Party, which is a very powerful and vociferous part of the party.
A little bit different from the Tea Party part where Rick Santorum has got to get back to.
But in the process of the conservative collapse in Romney with the social movement toward Rick Santorum, he really has propelled himself forward into this primary contest.
Yes, he has.
And as such, the long knives are coming out.
They've gone back now to a speech that Santorum gave back in 2008, in which he said Satan has set his sights on America and uh other institutions in America.
That's highlighted on Drudge.
It's all over the place.
We got the audio sound bites of the speech coming up.
So he's the now uh new kid on the block, the fresh face.
Some might even say Santorum's the new front runner, so here come the long knives from everybody.
And opposition research is going back in his past and dredging up anything they can find, everything that he said, and he knows full well what's in store for him.
In fact, there's a really good piece in the Wall Street Journal from it was yesterday, might be published today.
It's by Bill McGurn, and it is titled Sex Lies in Rick Santorum, and it's it's an advice piece for Santorum on what to do.
And it really is good.
I'm gonna share with you uh elements of it, excerpts of it, in just a moment.
Um, Ed Gillespie, by the way, said uh similar thing that you just heard Ari Fleischer say.
Ed Gillespie said it over the weekend that hey, you know, Santorum could win this.
It's it's it's clear that there is in the Republican base a significant not Romney segment, and it's shifted from Newt had it for a while, Bachman had it for a while, Rick Perry flirted with it.
Um have had it.
Uh and and now it's Santorum.
And Gillespie said it, here is Mike DeWine.
Mike DeWine is uh Ohio's attorney general.
He was on MSNBC last night speaking with Lawrence O'Donnell about his switching his endorsement from Romney to Santorum.
And Lawrence O'Donnell said, You did something I've never seen before, uh jumping from an endorsement of Mitt Romney before the candidate has dropped out.
I was a Romney delegate, and I guess I bought into the conventional wisdom and and and felt it back in October when I endorsed Romney and actually became a Romney delegate, that he was the best candidate to beat uh Barack Obama to beat the president.
We run campaigns for a reason, and we learn a lot of things.
What I'm seeing in Ohio, and what I was seeing is that the Romney campaign was going nowhere.
Uh, it didn't get any better from day one until last weekend.
Uh, and still is not getting any better.
Uh there's no excitement, and the excitement that we're seeing in Ohio, at least, uh, is in regard to Rick Santorum.
Folks, something is happening out there.
That former United States Senator Mike DeWine, and now the uh Ohio attorney, I think he's the former Senator, regardless, he's the um Ohio Attorney General, and he was deep in the bag for Romney.
Those are incredible statements that you just heard.
No excitement.
Romney campaign going nowhere didn't get any better from day one until last weekend, still not getting any better.
No excitement.
The excitement that we're seeing in Ohio is in regard to Santorum.
Now, it could well be that there are things going on that we don't know.
Maybe San uh uh Romney and DeWine had some kind of a personal falling out.
I don't know.
But this is very rare.
Wouldn't say it's unprecedented, of course, but this is very rare for something uh like this to happen.
Uh, and particularly after all these high profile endorsements of Romney at Chris Christie at Donald Trump, uh, a number of the uh uh Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, none of it has seemed to matter.
None of it seemed to help and all these endorsements are coming from establishment Republicans, and they're just not being or having that much influence in terms of the voting preference of the Republican base.
It's fascinating.
That statement that DeWin may you couple that with Gillespie over the weekend and Ari Fleischer, all three of these guys would fairly be categorized as in the Republican establishment.
All this talk of a brokered managed convention, all the whispers, pretty soon there's going to be shouts.
And pretty soon these anonymous voices talking to the media about brokered or managed convention are going to start speaking out loud, and they're going to be quoted.
Their names will become known as the panic increases.
And believe me, there is abject panic in the Republican establishment.
If you try to understand it, understand that they hoped that this nomination would effectively be over before the first Hawkeye cauc eyes took place.
They thought the polling, the money would be such that Romney would simply not be beatable.
And certainly after the Hawkeye Calcai and the New Hampshire primary, that would have been those two would have been the final nails in the coffin and be over.
They desperately wanted an early conclusion for a host of reasons.
Among them they wouldn't have to spend a lot of money during a protracted uh primary.
And for another reason that's political, and this is also worthy of note.
The standard formula for winning a nomination in the presidency is in the primaries, as you know, you campaign exclusively to win the base voter of your party.
And then after you've done that, and you uh win the nomination, then you move to the center where you try to add undecided and independents to the people in the base that have supported you, and in so doing you create a majority and you win.
The Republican establishment tried something unprecedented.
That may be a bit stretched too.
I don't know that it's unprecedented, but in my lifetime I haven't seen it.
The Republican establishment attempted to win the nomination for Mitt Romney from the start by securing moderates.
They welcomed as many conservatives into the Republican presidential primary as possible.
They wanted to split the conservative vote.
The more the merrier.
Nine or ten of them, that's fine versus Romney.
So there's Romney as the conservative moderate.
That's what they hope to portray.
And the other conservatives would split the votes of the base and in the process secure the nomination for Romney.
But it didn't pan out that way, as we all know.
Romney wasn't able to take advantage of the conservative vote being split, because it was.
What happened was that a new non-mit seemed to show up or arise every week or two, and it became clear that the establishment's formula was not only not going to work, it became clear that Republican voters were sending a message to the Republican establishment.
Uh-uh.
Not this time.
So the Republican establishment's sitting there with this grand plan, with this brilliant strategy, and imagine how they're feeling today and how they're thinking.
These are the wizards of smart.
These are the people with all the experience.
These are the people with all the power.
These are the people who have the ability to marshal all of these disparate forces and have them coalesce and combine.
And it didn't happen.
It didn't.
Their preferred candidate hasn't been able to, as of yet, close the deal, even with the conservative vote being split so many ways in the primaries.
And so now the whispers of a brokered or managed convention.
And an unnamed Republican senator suggesting that we've got to pick somebody brand new.
Because everybody knows that Newt and Santorum and Paul and Perry and Bachman.
What a collection of losers!
We can't win anything with those people, for crying out loud.
So we can't have any of them.
And now Mitt can't seem to pull it off.
We can't close the deal for Mitt.
So we've got to go get somebody new.
And the two top names are Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush.
And Mitch Daniels is saying every time he gets a knock on the door or a phone call.
No, I'm not interested.
I never was interested, is what he's saying.
Jeb Bush saying much the same thing.
Although a couple things changed, Jeb Bush might actually be willing to get into this.
But I don't think they're going to change in time for a decision that he could make to get into this this time around.
But say his public postures, I don't want to be part of it.
No, no, no, it's not my time.
I don't want to get it.
As is the case with Paul Ryan, anybody else.
So now there's abject panic.
The Republican establishment has in effect for the past year in its own way governed against the will of its own voters.
And they find themselves where they are today, trying to figure out how to save their own bacon by having a convention that simply ignores everything that's happened so far in the primaries.
Well, you know that Santorman Newt and Ron Paul and the rest aren't going to just sit idly by and let this happen.
There's polling data on this, USA Today has gone out and asked Republicans what they think about a brokered or open convention.
And here's their report.
While most Republicans wish they had different choices in the party's presidential field and nationwide USA Today Gallup poll finds overwhelming resistance to the idea of an old-style Brokered convention that would pick some new contender as the nominee.
Sixty-six to twenty-nine percent.
Sixty-six percent to twenty-nine percent the Republicans and Republican leaning independence surveyed say it'd be better if one of the four candidates now running managed to win this.
Most are happy to see their roller coaster campaign continue.
57% say the battle is not hurting the party.
And I'm here to tell you it isn't.
Let it play out.
This is all good.
There's a reason why Mike DeWine was right.
There's a reason why you have campaigns.
There is a reason for this.
Let it all play out.
Everything's going to be fine because at the end of the day, this campaign, whoever runs it, is going to be aimed right at Barack Obama.
And that's going to be the animating feature for the vast majority of people that vote in this coming election.
Be right back.
Don't go away.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, Rushlin Bull.
I mentioned moments ago on this program that Barack Obama had made a statement that sets the bar solo for what he thinks is middle class success, happiness, and achievement in this country.
And I've got the actual soundbite.
I want you to listen to this.
This is Barack Obama.
This was January 25th in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at Conveyor Engineering and Manufacturing Company.
Just a brief portion of what he said.
If you're willing to put in the work, the idea is that you should be able to raise a family and own a home, not go bankrupt because you got sick, because you've got some health insurance that helps you deal with those difficult times, that you can send your kids to college.
That you can put some money away for retirement.
That's all most people want.
Folks don't have unrealistic ambitions.
They do believe that if they work hard, they should be able to achieve that small measure of an American dream.
They don't have unrealistic ambitions.
People, most people don't want much.
They don't have any unrealistic ambitions.
They believe if they work hard, they ought to be able to achieve that small measure of the American dream.
He's describing his own serfs.
He's describing people who live on that kind of stuff that he gives them.
The fact of the matter is that there are people in the middle class...
Remember, we had this this amazing story in the New York Times last week.
People stuck in the middle class in the safety net.
They are taking government assistance and they're embarrassed and they don't like it, and some of them have said, with all the obstacles in our way, they don't think they can work hard enough to get out of it.
But to say that people do not have unrealistic ambitions if you're willing to put in the work.
The idea is you should be able to raise a family and own a home and not go bankrupt because you get sick?
What the hell?
This this constant portrayal of health care as something that can cause you financial meltdown.
To how many people does that actually happen?
The percentage is so small you couldn't calculate it.
But to Barack Obama getting sick can destroy you.
So you gotta have Obamacare.
So getting sick won't distress you.
You give up your ambition.
You give up your desire to make something of your life in exchange for the security of not going bankrupt if you get sick.
This is appalling.
Yeah, got some health insurance, helps you deal with those difficult times.
Yeah, getting sick as the greatest financial threat known to every American, right?
Getting sick is the greatest financial risk in America.
That's what he wants you to believe.
Yeah, just want to be able to send your kids to college, put some money away for retirement.
That's all most people want.
They don't have unrealistic ambitions.
They believe if they work hard ought to be able to achieve that small man.
Man, what a limited view of potential freedom and possibility in America.
What?
Who in the world would want to follow this guy anywhere?
Barack Hussein Obama defining the American dream down.
Let me tell you what a Barack Obama really believes, folks.
Obama believes that if folks, if the folks work hard and become successful, they should be punished with higher taxes and the loss of all their deductions.
That's what happens to you in Barack Obama's America.
▲
Export Selection