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Feb. 21, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:47
February 21, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Greetings, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh and the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you with us.
Where we meet and surpass all expectations.
We do not have limited dreams of our size and scope here.
Or on our achievement at the EIB network.
And here AP even has a story on this.
Obama peddles modest American dream.
And listen, it's by Erica Werner this time around.
President Obama's message can sound decidedly down to earth.
Four years after winning the White House, Obama is dealing with a different economic so forth and so on.
It's supposed to be a news article, not analysis or an editorial.
The AP's claiming Obama no longer focused on the lofty version, lofty version of overcoming divisions and remaking Washington.
Nope, nope, he's come down to earth now.
Obama has come down to earth.
He's now concerned with the most building blocks of middle class economic security.
A job, a house, a college education for the kids, health care, money for retirement.
That's it.
That's what he's focused on.
That's it.
No more grandiose dreams.
He's come down to earth.
And they're happy.
They at AP think this is reasonable, responsible.
My question is, can any, can you dorks at AP?
You, Ms. Werner, can anybody point to me where Obama has improved any of this?
He controls the student loan program, he controls health care.
Hell he controls the housing market.
Can anybody tell me where any of this is any better?
With Obama in charge.
Don't try.
You can't.
Another very, very, very, very, very, very worried about rising gasoline prices now.
Uh Washington Post and New York Times, I think on Sunday, both had stories uh oh no rising gas prices.
Could it possibly be damaging to Obama's campaign?
New York Times, Washington Post, both concerned about rising gasoline prices.
Do you realize gasoline prices have never been higher at this time of year than they are right now?
In some places in LA, $4.93 a gallon.
They've never been higher.
And in his daily news briefing just now, Jay Carney, White House press spokesman, said there's no magic solution to rising oil prices.
Um president's very aware of the pain Americans feel at the pump.
Now isn't it funny?
That's not what we heard from the Democrats during the summer of 2008.
No.
See, every time the gasoline price went up, why didn't Bush do something?
Remember John Kerry, who, by the way, served in Vietnam.
If he were president, he'd go over there and he'd tell the Saudis what for.
He'd go over there, he wouldn't let the Saudis get away with this.
He'd tell them what for.
He'd make their minds right, he'd tell them what the reality of the world is.
Every time the gas prices went up under Bush, Bush could do something about it.
Heck.
A lot of media people want to say there's a magic guy behind the curtains in charge of gas prices.
Wanted to set out to find out who it might be.
The price of gasoline's up 90% since when Obama took office, folks.
And they're right to be concerned about it.
Now here's the Bill McGurn piece.
The politics of the double standard on social issues.
Bill McGurn, full disclosure, friend of mine, he writes the Wall Street Journal.
And this piece is an unexpected surprise.
It's unexpected in that it is rare that anyone is advising a principled conservative like Santorum to basically continue to be who he is, be himself.
That's what this piece does.
When Barack Obama was campaigning for president in 2008, McGurn begins, he declared that marriage is between a man and a woman.
For the most part, Obama's position was treated as a non-issue.
Well now Rick Santorum is campaigning for president.
He too says that marriage is between a man and a woman, but boy, what a different reaction Santorum gets.
And there's no mystery why.
Mr. Santorum is attacked because everybody understands he means it.
Santorum is attacked because he means what he says.
Obama, by contrast, gets a pass when he says marriage is between a man and a woman because everybody understands that he's winking and nudging, and that he's not telling the truth.
The press understands that this is just one of those things Democrat candidates has to say or have to say so he doesn't rile up the great unwashed.
Everybody knows the press knows Obama can't be truthful about this.
The press knows if Obama were go out there and say that he doesn't think marriage is just between a man and a woman, there'd be hell to pay.
So he has to lie about it.
We all wink and nod.
We understand he's got a lie.
In fact, we'll even do some stories here on how lying is good for the culture.
It's what they did for Clinton.
Now it's it's arguably the most glaring double standard in American life today.
It helps explain why candidates with social views that are fairly conventional among ordinary American citizens of thirty one states, including California, have rejected same-sex marriage, when put to a vote, find themselves depicted as extreme.
It also speaks to why even some who share Santorum's social views nonetheless fear that his outspokenness on these issues will only undermine his candidacy.
That's right.
Even the people who agree with him kind of tone it down, gosh, we know social issues.
People are gonna react, please don't shut up, Rick.
And that's led some people to suggest that Santorum simply drop the social issues altogether.
Their hope is that by concentrating his energies solely on Obama's management of the economy and foreign affairs, that Santorum might avoid dividing his party and America.
However reasonable the argument may be on paper, it's simply not practical to make it.
social issues, arguments.
It's not practical first because Santorum is running as what he is, a conviction politician.
Having been dismissed for months by Republicans hostile to his social views, he's not likely to take their advice now.
He appreciates that he didn't get where he is today by trimming his sails.
Indeed, that's one reason that he's now overtaken Romney as the front runner in Michigan.
Romney is behind because Republican voters have yet to be persuaded he stands for anything.
Now I'm reading here from Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal.
You can call him or send him emails, but when you call him, Snerdley will not answer.
McGurn says one reason he's overtaken Romney is that Romney has yet to persuade Republican voters he stands for anything.
Santorum is ahead because even those who might not sign on to all of his social particulars are hungry for a nominee who doesn't bend with the wind.
Dropping the social issues is also not practical for another reason.
I hope you people in the Republican establishment are listening.
Dropping the social issues is not practical for another reason.
The media will not let Santorum do it.
When Obama used a prayer breakfast earlier this month to suggest that the gospel of Luke was a call for raising taxes on the rich, the press corps yawned.
When Santorum complained about the phony theology behind the president's worldview, suddenly it landed on every front page and lead every news show.
So what's the answer?
Well the answer is that when Mr. Santorum discusses these issues, he needs to fold them into his larger narrative about the free society.
That narrative has to do with pointing out the dependency that comes with an expanding Federal government, the importance of family and the threat to freedom when, say, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, or a Health and Human Services Secretary, can substitute their own opinions on these issues for the judgment of the American people.
Mr. Santorum comes to the task well equipped.
He echoes Reagan, for example, when he talks about how small government requires strong families.
Or when he's pointing out the intolerance of a federal government bent on forcing religious individuals and institutions to underwrite practices that they regard as abhorrent.
There is, however, one area where Santorum needs to demonstrate a discipline that's not yet clear that he has, and that is the ability to resist the efforts to drag him out of the public questions into weeds of theological debate.
In short, Santorum must resist the temptation to run for president on Humane Vice, the 1968 papal encyclical prohibiting artificial contraception.
Of late, Santorum has pointed out that despite his personal views, he has voted for contraceptive funding in the past.
Alas, he has also said that artificial contraception is the kind of moral issue he plans to talk about as president.
Now, these are important issues and they have large implications for society.
But he would be wise to set them aside.
He might be surprised to find out how prophetic the Vichy document was in its warnings about the consequences of the contraceptive mentality for society, including the weakening of the marriage bond.
A presidential debate, however, is simply not the vehicle for clarifying the coherence of the Catholic Church's view of human sexuality.
Now that doesn't mean that Santorum should compromise his views, to the contrary.
He needs to keep his comments simple, clear, and focused on the political point points that he's hoping to make.
And that in turn will require letting pass a great deal that he might be itching to talk about.
Santorum cannot change the double standard.
With a little discipline, though, he need not let himself be defined by it.
So basically, McGurn's saying, uh, look, leave Catholicism for your home.
Don't bring it to the political debate, but don't give up these social issues.
It's who you are.
Just correlate them to the political issues of the day.
And here's a good way of doing it.
Santorum was on Hannity a couple of nights ago.
And they were talking about the fake controversies in the media over Santorum's comments.
And Hannity pointed out that it was Obama who used the Bible to back up his tax the rich policies.
And he then asked Santorum why this double standard in the media exists when it comes to Obama.
And McGurn just explained it.
The double standard exists because the media winks and nods when Obama lies.
They know he has to, and they're willing to let it go.
What Santorum said to Hannity was, well, it's perfectly clear.
I mean, let's be honest.
This is standard fare.
I mean, I'm not saying anything particularly new here.
We've been talking about the radical environmental agenda that puts the earth over the needs of man that doesn't understand that the best way to create a sound environment is for people to be doing well and to have prosperity, because you go to countries where in fact mankind is not doing so well, and let me assure you, the last thing they worry about is the environment.
It depends on America's growth and prosperity, so we can in fact be good husbanding the environment as the way we should.
And for them continually distorting this kind of stuff, I think is actually one of the reasons we're doing well in the polls, is because people voting in the Republican primaries see this for what it is.
They see the national media trying to destroy conservatives.
And there's a level of sophistication now within the news consumers and the audience that fully understands that's what the drive-by media is about, and it's just Not as easy to do it.
It's not as easy to destroy conservatives as it used to be.
Well, there's any number of reasons why that is.
But anyway, uh McGurn is basically his primary point is there's some great points, and he's telling, he's telling uh Santorum, the uh human of it, leave it alone.
Don't bring it to the debate.
Don't bring it to uh uh a campaign appearance.
That's that's your personal religious belief.
Not everybody's Catholic, just leave that where it is.
But don't give up on your social issues.
They are defining cultural issues.
Continue to be who you are and acknowledge the double standard, and the the real point for the Republican establishment is the media will not let the social issues be abandoned.
You can sit there and you can wish and you can dream all you want that abortion and contraception will not ever come up, but look who brought them up.
Look who invented a totally phony issue, and now a totally phony voting block.
Contraception mom, birth control moms for crying out loud.
The Democrats brought it up.
They go to it each time they're in trouble.
So for all this mainstream Republican establishment wish and hope and desire that the social issues not come up, they always will be.
And so it's gonna be incumbent upon whoever is not afraid to talk about them to not be afraid to talk about them.
It's that simple.
Quick time out.
Be right back.
Another bailout in Greece.
Now, you may not care about Greece, but you need to at least be informed, because if something doesn't change, Greece is us.
And Greece could very well end up being a state, if not us.
Greece won a second massive financial bailout in the early hours this morning when its partners in the 17-country Eurozone finally stitched together a 170 billion dollar bailout meant to avoid a disastrous default and to secure the Euro currency's future.
I give you the details of this.
This 170 billion dollar bailout hinged on squeezing last-minute concessions out of private holders of Greek debt.
This is the same way Obama bailed out GM and Chrysler.
He went to private individuals who uh owned bonds as opposed to stock, and Obama told him, guess what, guys?
You are eating the short end on this.
The bondholders at first opposed Obama called them greedy, said everybody has to sacrifice, and the bondholders ended up taking a bath.
The UAW and Obama were the big winners.
They had the company handed to them.
Now in Greece, 170 billion dollar bailout hinged on squeezing last-minute concessions out of private holders, individuals of Greek debt.
Banks and other investment funds are going to have to forgive 142 billion dollars in debt.
Banks and investment funds are just gonna have to write off 142 billion dollars that people owe them.
And furthermore, they have been told that they must forego profits on their remaining holdings.
They've been wiped out.
They essentially have been told to take a face value loss of 53.5% on their bonds.
They're gonna have to just forget 142 billion dollars that people owe them and promise to forego profits on what's left.
Now, luckily, uh ladies and gentlemen, it's just banks and investment firms that are losing money.
They're Not really people.
Well, isn't that what everybody thinks?
Corporation, that's not people.
A company isn't people.
I've had snivelling little leftists call me here and very snarkily say.
I suppose you're gonna tell me a corporation's people.
Yeah, it is.
Without people, there is no corporation.
Yeah, yeah, and they they just lose it.
Banks, investment firms, eh?
They're not really people.
No widows or orphans have savings or any investments in banks or investment firms.
There aren't any teachers' pension funds invested there.
No, no, no, it's not real people here.
You might think that it's banks and investment funds that are eating it, but who invests with them?
Average ordinary people.
Banks and investment firms are people, and they've been told with a smile, guess what?
You're wiped out.
We're gonna bail out the slothful losers in Greece, so they continue to have to do nothing to get their pensions, and meanwhile, you're wiped out.
You're the one that's gonna pay for it.
They're not really people.
No widows or orphans are invested there.
Sides, this is gonna teach people to invest in Greece, right?
You can't wait now.
Why do you think the stock market jumped over thirteen thousand in this country?
Aren't too many wise people with skin in the game that want to throw money into Europe right now.
Look what happened to people who did.
They were just told, you're eating it, pal.
You are gonna soak up a hundred and forty-two billion dollars in debt, just gonna give it away, and you are not allowed any profit on the rest of your holdings.
That's how it happened in Greece, it could happen here.
And time to go back to the phones as I try to squeeze as much in as I can.
This is Scott Jacksonville, Florida.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Great to have you on the program.
Raspberry 25 Megadidos from your number one listener Jack.
Thank you very much, Scott.
Appreciate that.
Thank you.
Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi said that Democrats shouldn't get cocky about their reelection hopes in 2012.
She would know cocky, uh, if anybody would on that side.
So my question, Rush, is shouldn't Republicans take advantage of these rising gas prices to point to Obama's lack of concern for uh America?
Yeah, I think rising gas price, say what happened to Keystone Pipeline, rising gas price, why is the drilling moratorium still going on in the Gulf?
Rising gasoline price, why the obstacles to domestic production?
And then if I were the Republicans, I go back and I get that Obama quote where he really wasn't unhappy that the price of gas had hit four bucks.
He was just unhappy how rapidly it happened.
See the dirty little secret, folks, Scott, I'm sure you know this.
Obama wants high gas prices.
Mr. Limbaugh, that is one of the most irresponsible things I've ever heard any talk so hot that's very true, Mr. New Castradi.
High gas prices will push people out of their cars and into electric cars and hybrids, mass transit.
High gasoline price exactly what Obama wants.
Obama wants pain.
He wants interruptions to normalcy.
Obama doesn't want you being able to cheaply move around the country, cheaply move around your town.
Obama doesn't want that.
This this guy has invested everything he has, including your taxpayer dollars into um green energy.
And you know the fraud that's going on there with the uh crony capitalism and the like.
Uh Obama's not unhappy with four dollars.
That's Jay Carney, uh really not a whole lot that can be done about uh rising gas prices.
Uh I think John Kerry didn't John Kelly accuse Bush of having a secret deal with the Saudis.
I think he did.
The 2004 presidential campaign.
He accused Bush of having some kind of secret deal to keep prices down during the campus, some silly thing.
But if I were the Republicans, I would make hay out of this.
If for no other reason than to settle a score.
You go back to 2006, rising gas prices, and check all the quotes from Democrats accusing Bush of doing it on purpose, or accusing Bush's economic policies of causing it, or accusing Bush of not caring about it.
Or worse than that, Bush and Cheney personally profiting from it.
You know, Cheney at Halliburton, Bush and the Bush family with big oil.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's all coming back to me now.
That's exactly what happened.
He accused Bush and Cheney of profiting from rising oil prices.
So damn right I turned it on them.
I don't think they're going to have to.
I look the New York Times and the Washington Post both on Sunday had stories.
Might have been Monday, although I don't know if this is Tuesday.
It might have been Monday, but it w either one.
Both papers were worried to death about rising gas price and what it meant to pour Obama's election chances.
Now I mentioned uh earlier in the program that Santorum people have uh dug deep and they found a speech that he gave back in 2008 to the Ave Maria in Ave Maria, Florida, Ave Maria University.
Uh Drudge has this plastered, the Democrats have found it, it's all over the place, think progress, the whatever, leftist think tanks, have dug this up, and it's part of the predictable attempt to impugn Santorum as an absolute religious nut and wacko.
But he did say these things, and he is going to have to have an answer for these things when queried.
Let's play the sound bites.
We have three of them.
This is where Santorum says that Satan has set his sights on America.
Again, this is at Ave Maria University, August of 2008 in Ave Maria, Florida.
The father of lies has his sights on what you would think the father of lies, Satan would have his sights on.
A good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America.
If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age?
There is no one else to go after other than the United States.
And that's been the case for now almost 200 years.
Once Americans' preeminence was sown by our great founding fathers.
Okay.
So he said it.
Can I take you back to the United Nations?
What was it?
2000, I don't know, three or four or five or six.
Hugo Chavez shows up.
He speaks either the afternoon that Bush spoke earlier or the next day.
But he gets to the microphone at the United Nations in the General Assembly, starts sniffing around, says, I can still smell the sulfur.
The devil was here.
And he had accused Bush of being the devil.
And the assembled monsters that look like they're out of a Star Wars bar scene that made up the UN General Assembly all started laughing.
So we're back to the double standard.
Hugo Chavez can show up and call George W. Bush Satan.
Hey, hey!
You know what?
That's right.
That's great.
Let's laugh about it.
Let's applaud it.
Santorum gives a speech, Ave Maria de Florida back in 2008, and oh my God, we're dealing with a nutcase.
Oh, wow, what a fanatic and weirdo.
What are we gonna get next?
An exorcism.
So the double standard does exist.
Here's more from the same speech from Santorum.
Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America.
Using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the route to attack all of these strong plants that have so deeply rooted in American tradition.
He was successful.
The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia.
He understood pride of smart people.
He attacked them at their weakest, that they were in fact smarter than everybody else, and could come up with something new and different.
Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it, because we're smart.
And so academia, a long time ago, fell.
Satan conquered academia, Rick Santorum, August 29, 2008.
And it was in 2006, September 20th, to be exact, where Hugo Chavez strode confidently to the microphones of the UN and was sniffing around and said the devil came here yesterday.
It still smells of sulfur today.
And let's not forget uh, ladies and gentlemen, Saul Alinsky, who's the primary mentor of Barack Hussein Obama.
Mm-mm-mm.
Saul Alinsky, the author of the book Rules for Radicals, a book about which Hillary Clinton wrote her master's or doctoral thesis, whatever it was when she was at Wellesley.
Saul Olinsky, who Obama has studied and implements to this day, and whose tactics he taught while ostensibly teaching law at the University of Chicago.
Saul Olinsky dedicated his book that all these leftists love to Lucifer.
The devil.
Here's Alinsky's dedication, lest we forget, at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgement to the very first radical from all our legends, mythology, and history, and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins, or which is which.
The first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom.
Lucifer.
Saul Olinsky.
Made that dedication in his book, Rules for Radicals.
So Santorum is just joining the crowd here in discussing this.
Here's the final soundbite.
The next was the church.
Now you'd say, well, wait, the Catholic Church?
No.
We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic, but the Judeo-Christianesic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic.
Sure, the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic.
Mainstream, mainline Protestantism.
And of course, we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country, and it is a shambles.
That's Rick Santorum, August 29th, 2008.
So that stuff's out there.
It's uh it's headlined on Drudge, and the left has it, and he'll have to deal with it.
He'll have to answer.
I don't know.
It's um it's just not the kind of stuff you hear a presidential candidate talk about.
It's uh it's it's not ordinary in that sense.
Snurdley says, Yeah, yeah, it's kind of refreshing.
Snurdy likes double stuff.
I mean, watches movies, he has the exorcist on a loop at all that helps with his sciatic pain.
Grab audio soundbite number five, and then after that, uh 16, 17, 18.
I mentioned this, and I gotta get these in the PBS special on Clinton, uh, part one last night, part two tonight.
And they're doing one on JFK, and they're uh basically making it clear that neither of these two guys could have passed a security clearance in their own administration.
Well, with all the babes coming back and forth and uh and other things.
I wanted to play this for you, though, first.
This was on Morning Show today that uh Mark Halpern was on from Time Magazine, and they were talking about Newt's remarks that defeating Obama is an issue of national security.
Mike Barnacle, the co-house, you talk about a degree of difficulty selling that argument out in a country when this president has argued he'd been tougher on terrorists than George W. Bush ever was.
Now, this is Mark Alpert.
Tens of millions of Americans find that argument about the president compelling, even though his overall foreign policy and national security ratings are high.
So Gingrich is saying what viewers of Fox News and listeners to Rush Limbaugh and other parts of the Republican face believe, even if it's not particularly supported by too many facts.
What do you mean it's not supported by too many facts?
We got a guy who wants to reduce the nuclear arsenal to 300 warheads.
Uh guy who wants America cut down to size.
Anyway, I'm responsible for local talk show hosts that hold candidates' feet their feet to the fire.
And now I'm responsible for the silly notion that Obama's a national security threat.
Gail Sheehe was interviewed as part of Clinton American Experience PBS documentary.
She said this as part of her uh participation last night.
Betsy Wright, his ferociously protective campaign manager, sat him down with a list of names of women.
And went through one after the other.
How many times?
Where did you meet her?
How likely is she to talk?
Betsy Wright said, but you don't understand.
On a national scale, people will investigate.
Your opponents will investigate it.
The media will investigate.
The problem is we're not just talking about you.
We're talking about your wife, Hillary.
We're talking about your child, Chelsea.
She said, I don't think you can run.
This is the bimbo eruptions.
They're describing what Betsy Wright did.
Sat him down.
Here are the women.
This is how many they are.
This is what they're saying.
It's not going to be just you.
And the next one, this is Betsy Wright herself.
I mean, it just became clear that night it was not the time for him to do it.
It just was not the time.
He felt for quite a while that that probably was the last real chance he would ever have to run for president.
That was it.
It was over.
You know, where would he go now that he wasn't gonna run for president?
What could he do in the future?
Um I think that over the next few months that became uh a tough time for it.
That was 1988.
So you can't run for president in 1988 in two to bimbo eruptions.
So what he did, they found in this documentary, he ran for Congress.
And they talked to his campaign manager, Paul Frey, who had this to say about Clinton's womanizing.
I mean, you got to understand it.
Uh at one time, there was at least 25 women per day coming through there trying to find him.
And I tell him he's out on the road.
You know, they get out the door.
And now, I mean, this is the star of the Democrat Party.
Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
Twenty-five, twenty-five women are coming through there every day looking for Bill Clinton.
And I say he's on the road, we're actually on the other side of the door with one of the other 25 women.
So the long-drawn-out campaign continues to draw out in a long, long way.
And it's proving to be fortuitous.
The people that are upset are the people that should be upset.
And the people that aren't upset are the people shouldn't be.
Everything's on schedule.
Everything is okay because the ultimate objective of all of this is to turn this energy against Obama the Democrats by November, and that is what'll happen.
And we'll see you tomorrow, folks.
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