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April 3, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:46
April 3, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Talent on loan from God from deep in the bowels of the highly fortified and protected EIB's Southern Command.
I am Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchor man.
The doctor of democracy and America's truth detector.
All combined as one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
We are here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, and the email address L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Now back to our audio sound bites, Barack Obama yesterday and his uh obvious attempt to influence the vote at the Supreme Court.
Something I was trying to think.
I've asked people if we can recall other presidents doing this.
I frankly don't, but I've I can't say conclusively.
I don't know if Bill Clinton ever did.
Um I I campaign finance reform, I don't know what happened with that.
I know members of Congress go out and say things, but presidents I just don't recall.
It doesn't, if it has happened, it's not often, it's not common.
It's not something that either of the Bushes ever did.
Ronald Reagan never did it.
I just can't say for certain that this is unprecedented.
I I don't think a president has ever called out the Supreme Court in a State of the Union message, for example.
I don't think.
Well, I know Andrew Jackson said to John Marshall.
Uh okay, go ahead.
Back in 1832.
Go ahead.
I'm you enforce it if you want.
I'm not going to.
But it's um I the Jackson thing could be a myth.
Well, yeah, I know FDR went after him when he's running for re-election, but but that didn't work, you know there are presidents who have attempted to run against the Supreme Court as a as a as a campaign prop.
This is an attempt to influence the vote of a particular justice or two.
I I look I can't honestly say it hasn't happened before.
I just know that if it has, it's extremely rare.
And it is a total violation of decorum and and you know all the other traditions, which are falling to the wayside anyway.
So let's go back to the top.
This is the bite where Obama tells the Jeffs, I think you guys better understand.
Justice should understand.
Or else what?
What if they don't understand or else what?
You guys better understand.
You better understand what I expect.
It's what he's telling them here.
I think the American people understand, and uh I think the justices should understand that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have uh a mechanism to ensure that people with pre-existing conditions can actually get health care.
Stop tape.
Doesn't matter.
Not what's being argued irrelevant.
This is guilt ladling once again, trying to throw guilt up on all these justices.
Look what you're going to be doing to people if you vote the wrong way.
Keep going here.
So there's there's not only a economic element to this and a legal element to this, but there's a human element to this.
Whoa, whoa!
Stop whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
There's a human element.
And only he has the connection to the human element.
Right.
That's that's exactly right.
That's why he nominated Sotomayor, because she has uh ability to relate and understand the trials and tribulations of minorities, that's not in any way relevant to the qualifications for somebody to be in the Supreme Court.
We need somebody up there to understand the plight of Hispanic.
That doesn't matter.
That's not in the qualifications.
Empathy is irrelevant here.
But as far as Obama's concerned, it trumps the Constitution.
That's what he's saying.
The human element.
What offends me about that is that incumbent upon that is that we don't.
Is that we're not connected to the human, that we don't care about human beings.
That's what he's saying.
He cares about people we don't.
Really?
What do we stand for?
We stand for individual freedom, individual liberty.
We stand for people being able to use their God-given talents combined with ambition to be the best they can be, whatever that is.
I said it our my CPAC address to the nation.
We love people.
We want the best for everybody.
We don't want to punish anybody for their success for their failure, whatever.
We don't look at various pockets of this country that's got to be gotten even with or something like that.
Human element?
There's that arrogance and conceit again.
And only the liberals care about people.
And I hope that's not forgotten in this political debate.
There's not a political debate.
It's a legal argument.
It is not a political debate at the court.
I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning the court.
A law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.
Wait a second.
Stop saying unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law.
It happens every term.
Nothing unprecedented about overturning an unconstitutional act of Congress.
Okay.
You talk about can I remind you of Proposition 187?
Proposition 187 California.
The people of California voted to end welfare payments to the children of illegal immigrants.
The statewide ballot initiative and the people of California said we're tired and we're not going to pay for the health care or for other welfare for the children of illegal immigrants.
And a federal judge threw it out, said it wasn't constitutional, said the people of California didn't know what they were doing.
Don't tell me that judges don't throw out laws.
One judge in that case, Prop 187, and there are a number of others, countless examples.
How about Obama refusing to enforce federal law in Arizona when it comes to immigration and instead suing the state?
So that's a lie.
That is not true.
And of course, this majority of a democratically elected Congress.
It's messing with the history of this again.
Let's review.
Obamacare passed the Senate late on Christmas Eve of 2009, had a vote of 60 to 39.
All Senate Democrats, two independents voted for it.
All the Senate Republicans voting against it.
It passed the House on March 21st, 2010, by a vote of 219 to 212.
All 178 House Republicans, and 34 Democrats voted against it.
There was no bipartisan support for this.
It barely won by seven votes.
There was not an overwhelming victory by a majority of Democratically elected Congress.
And in fact, if we're going to talk about democracy and majorities, I'll again remind you of the polling data on this.
Anywhere from 60, depending on the poll, to 75% of the American people oppose Obamacare.
Shouldn't the justices pay attention to that?
If we're going to politicize this, if we're going to tell the justices they got to start paying attention to democratically elected politics, democratically elected this or that, how about democratically conducted polls?
That would be Philly Mr. Limbaud to say the court should respond to it's silly to say they should respond to legislation.
It's not what is being argued here.
Here's the next part of it.
And I just remind conservative commentators that for years what we've heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint.
That uh an unelected uh group of people would somehow overturn uh a duly constituted and and passed uh law.
Uh well, there's gonna uh a good example, uh, and I'm pretty confident that this uh this court will recognize that uh and not take that step.
Well, once again, uh reiterate for you that he has totally an incorrectly def misdefined uh or incorrectly defined judicial activism.
Judicial activism, nobody ever accuses judges of judicial activism for following the Constitution.
Judicial activism is when judges do not follow the Constitution, when they legislate from the bench, when they write their own law, which, by the way, is what they were asked to do in oral arguments.
When the whole notion of throwing out the mandate came up, and Scalia said, Well, wait a minute, you want us to go through all 2700 pages here?
During oral arguments, the Libs were asking for judicial activism.
Okay, you guys throw it out, you tell us what we can do, what we can't.
Scalia said, I'm not gonna read his whole thing.
Members of Congress, I haven't read this whole thing.
Which is stunning in in and of itself.
Everybody that has any power over this thing has never read it.
Justices haven't read it, members of Congress haven't read it, Obama hasn't read it.
We have.
We don't have a vote.
How about Obama?
His Justice Department just announced one day that they're going to stop enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act.
Remember that, folks?
Just enough, we're going to stop defending it.
Supreme Court found it constitutional.
Obama said, I don't care, I'm not going to enforce it.
Holder, whoever, DOJ, where are I going to enforce it?
So they're trying to redefine judicial activism here.
And turn that one upside down as well.
Here's let's just get to the final soundbite we have from Obama yesterday afternoon at the White House.
As I said, we are confident that uh this will be over, that this will be upheld.
Uh I'm confident that this will be upheld because it should be upheld.
And again, that's not just my opinion.
Well, here we go.
It's the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and all over the place.
Academics and judges everywhere across the past.
lawyers who examine this law, even if they're not particularly sympathetic to this particular piece of legislation or my presidency.
So...
Oh.
So, all across the spectrum, even people who disagree with him realize his law is constitutional.
That's another thing.
It just isn't true, folks.
Totally manufactured and made up.
That's the usual Obama straw dog argument, a straw man argument.
All these nameless people never identifies them.
Never quotes them, just says they exist.
People all across spectrum.
People hate me, people love me, liberals, conservatives, economists, experts, law review presidents like I was.
Uh legal analysts, pundits on TV, even Keith Olbermann.
All agree.
Yada yada yada.
Another reason people think he got a leak because of this faux pas here.
As I said, we're confident this will be over.
Ah, that is upheld.
Did you catch that, Mr. Sturdley?
Here, play that again.
Play the stand by three here just from the top again.
As I said, we are confident that uh this will be over, that this will be upheld.
Oh, oh, uh, so people are thinking, well, it's on his mind.
It's been overturned.
Nothing like it.
Here's Joe Axelrod.
Sorry, David Axelrod, David Axarod, who's a former reporter who is now Obama's uh uh consignary.
Capu to two-tutti, or whatever it is.
And he was on uh with Charlie Rose today on CBS this morning.
And Charlie Rose said the president had a message Supreme Court yesterday, David.
Tell us what he's saying when he talks about judicial activism if he's trying to send a message to the court as it considers this case.
I don't think he's trying to send a message, Charlie.
I think he was answering a question about uh what his his reaction to last week's proceedings.
President believes that the Supreme Court will affirm the law because it's in keeping with their precedent uh not to overturn a law that Congress passed uh of this magnitude, certainly on a five to four sort of vote.
Oh, we're back to my theory from last week.
Can't overturn this 5-4.
It's too uh too uh uh too much magnitude.
Can't overturn this 5-4 vote.
No, no, no.
President's confident.
He was just answering your question, Charlie.
No, no, no.
Well, let's go back to January 27th in the House Chamber, State of the Union show.
Barack Obama attacking the Supreme Court after their ruling in Citizens United.
With all due deference to separation of powers.
Last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations to spend without limit in our elections.
I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests.
Or worse, by foreign entities.
They should be decided by the American people.
And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.
Oh, man.
I'll tell you what, folks.
The Citizens United case really damn boozled and they hated it.
That's what gave us the super PACs, by the way.
And uh Obama does well, you know, because they'll take money from foreigners, they'll take money from unidentified people, they'll take money from people that commit vote fraud.
They'll take money from uh people convicted of campaign finance law uh uh breaking campaign finance law.
They don't care.
This all.
You know what this is?
We had an unfair advantage until the court ruled.
And now the court gave our opponents the same fundraising opportunity we've always had, and we don't like that.
We don't like a level playing field.
But that was the assault on the case on the court, and during that is when Samuel Alito, the justice, shook his head and was saying no.
Right to Obama.
Okay, phone calls when we come back.
Don't go away.
Okay, we're back.
Rush Lindboy here, the excellence in broadcasting network.
Really ironic to hear Barack Obama whining about legislation being decided by unelected judges.
I wonder if you've ever heard of Roe versus Wade.
You talk about unelected judges imposing their own view of life on us.
No greater example than finding abortion to be constitutional.
What about all of his czars who are unelected, who are unaccountable, who never have to be confirmed?
We don't know anything about them.
What they do, with whom they do it.
Who elected Kathleen Sibelius to regulate one-sixth of the nation's economy?
Our health care system.
Who elected her?
Who elected Stephen Chu?
Who elected Obama's czars?
Who elected the EPA to rule by fiat on carbon dioxide emissions.
You see, it's okay to ram through Congress something of this magnitude along party lines, using legislative trickery.
That's perfectly fine, but it can't be struck down five to four.
It can pass 219 to 212, but it can't be rejected 5-4.
We can ram it through Congress all day long with nobody even having read the bill.
But the justices can't reject it by a vote of 5-4.
This whole notion of the human element.
Throughout our legal system, the human element is expressly omitted.
And by human element, I mean the emotion.
Emotion, human element, not part of a trial, not supposed to be part of a trial.
Now, lawyers do everything they can to sneak it in.
But the law is not supposed to take that into account.
The law is specifically to focus on the law.
The human element.
Back in 2008, Obama said the mandate would hurt individuals.
They may charge people who already don't have health care fines or have to take it out of their paychecks.
I don't think that's helping those without health insurance.
That was the human element as far as he was concerned, 2008.
Now doesn't matter.
We will get to your calls when we come back.
I'd say, folks, um, it just never stops.
Obama's in Washington today at the Associated Press Luncheon.
This is uh a meeting of the American Society of News Editors Convention.
Yes, I know the lines and the jokes we could make about the people in that room.
But he is, and I've got the sound bites here, and we're gonna get to them.
He is back to using the language of conservatism as a thin veil for his socialism.
The purpose of his remarks today, he's campaigning, reaching out to independence.
He is attacking free market capitalism while trying to make himself sound like a capitalist.
And why?
Well, because he says it always fails.
It's never worked.
This country's never worked.
The only thing it's worked is the last three and a half years.
I uh the audacity and the and the goal, this is the worst economic recovery in our nation's history.
There's a Wall Street Journal story on this today.
The worst economic recovery.
According to him, this is the only thing that works.
The economics since the founding of the country don't work.
Keeps talking about trickle-down economics as something the rich pedal to keep people poor.
We've got the sound bites uh coming up, but he's he's he's running for re-election, and he's trying to make himself sound like he's what he's not.
He doesn't want to sound like he's an Olinskyite today, they don't want to sound like he's a Marxist today.
He's a good capitalist, but he's got ways to improve it.
Getting rid of this trickle-down stuff.
In the meantime, we got to get some phone calls in here, and we'll start out on Long Island with George.
I'm great to have you on the program, George High.
Hi.
Yeah, hi, George, we're on the air.
Yeah, hello.
Can you hear me?
I hear you fine.
Otherwise, I couldn't answer your questions.
Oh, okay.
Uh I call to ask why if the president thinks that the uh Supreme Court can't overturn a law because it was passed by a democracy democratically elected Congress, then how can the president veto it?
Um, of course, he's this is right.
Um the uh the instances of of the Supreme Court over overturning laws are outside just the example I just gave.
The judge in Prop 187 California throwing it out after the people of California had voted in favor of Prop 187, the judge, that's unconstitutional, you can't do it.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is constantly doing this stuff.
He can veto legislation.
Of course, none of this is unconstitutional.
Again, what what what what Obama is doing here is I don't like to use the word threat, because it it it conjures um too many thoughts that I don't intend to convey here.
But he's clearly trying to make these justices, particularly Anthony Kennedy and the conservative justices, he's trying to ladle guilt on these people by telling them what all they're gonna be taking away from people if they find his law unconstitutional.
All these people that have health insurance now who didn't.
And all these people have now have insurance at pre-existing conditions who didn't.
And look what you're about to do.
So he's he's he's um uh he's warning them.
I think the justices should understand what I expect out of them.
That's what we uh he's lobbying.
He's he he's he's clearly trying to intimidate them.
There's no question.
Not threaten, I'm not I'm not saying the words, but he's clearly trying to intimidate them, and he is lobbying them at the same time.
He can veto legislation because he was elected.
It's in the Constitution, it's not a problem.
George thanks, Michael in Northridge, California.
Hi, great to have you on the program, sir.
Thanks, Rush.
I I believe that uh for a number of reasons uh that we've discussed, you've discussed, that we've read and watched on TV and so forth.
Obama and the rest, they they know the Supreme Court's gonna uh overrule.
I heard that uh faux pas too.
That was more Freudian than it was faux pas that they're that that they're gonna strike the mandate and or uh Obamacare down.
I just think that uh what he's trying to do is position himself for why he needs to be re-elected, whether or not you like Obamacare, you gotta vote for me, okay, so I can put a liberal justice, you know, if and when the opportunity comes up in the next four years, so that I'm there to put a liberal justice uh in uh into the Supreme Court.
We don't want to have happen again what happened uh during Obamacare.
Well, that's fine.
And uh every uh I'm th there's there's nothing really wrong with that.
I mean the uh the idea of judicial appointments is uh is a huge campaign point that uh people of both parties make.
But I you know you're right.
It was a Freudian slip, even though Freud would say there are no Freudian slips.
But um But by the way, Rush, uh it wasn't uh the Ninth Circuit judges that we elected.
We elected Gray Davis, who decided not to appeal 187, just like Jerry Brown and and before him, Schwarzenegger won't even uh defend uh Prop eight.
So the only thing is, exactly for for uh uh a governor uh two times who decided against the people's will.
Exactly.
Now, Michael, one thing though.
You sound very confident, because of the Freudian faux pas that the judges on the Supreme Court are gonna overturn the mandate.
And maybe the whole thing.
Am I right?
You think that?
No.
No.
I I'm I'm fifty-seven years old, and uh uh I know that uh Well no, but I thought you said that it's going down.
I believe it's going down.
I believe they believe it's going down, but am I confident to use your word?
Um I if if you told me I had to bet right now, I mean Scal Scalia's argument of do you want us to read 2700 pages was like, okay, so we're gonna vote this thing to be constitutional without having read twenty-seven hundred pages.
Um if I had to vote or had to take a position whether they're going to approve uh or strike down, I'd have to say they're gonna strike down, but you you know.
You know that uh um this thing could go the other way.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
There are th this vote that was held on Friday is just the first.
And I have mentioned on many occasions that uh I've been told by people very close to this, not this case, but the court, that they don't sit in a room and argue with each other and try to change each other's minds, but they do pass around their opinions.
And Anthony Kennedy over time.
Pardon?
They have changed.
They have then.
Yeah, Kennedy has changed his mind.
I forget what the case was, but he um it's well known.
He changed his mind after opinions got passed around.
So this isn't over.
No.
No, because uh Snurdy just asked me if I'm confident because Kennedy was asking most some of the most critical questions.
At the end of oral arguments, Kennedy also made points that made it perfectly clear he thinks the whole thing is constitutional.
He covered the spectrum.
He gave himself latitudinally away to go either way on this.
You have to read the whole transcript.
You have to y he the first couple of days uh it was if that's all you rely on, his mind was made up, he's gonna vote to strike down the mandate.
But later on, he constructed a scenario where he could be convinced that this is constitutional because the health market already exists.
The government's not creating it.
The market's already there.
People are already buying health insurance.
The government's not making them do that.
Only now they're just going to say everybody has to.
They're not creating a market.
He gave himself an out there.
So it's by no means can we take what happened Friday as the end of the road here.
But you could assume, based on Obama yesterday, that somebody has taught one.
No, not you couldn't assume.
You could guess that he knows the outcome of Friday's vote, and it wasn't favorable, and therefore he went on this uh little mission yesterday to ladle some guilt on these guys.
Um, so the questions on the table.
If you it's a good question.
If you folks, if you were on a Supreme Court, and you're undecided on this thing, and the president comes out and says what he says yesterday, and spells out all the pain you're going to be causing if you strike down his law.
Would you vote to uphold it just to avoid that criticism?
Would you vote to find the mandate unconstitutional and then have it said about you that you don't care about people losing their coverage with pre-existing conditions or losing their health care coverage or whatever.
The way to answer the question is to say that the media in Washington constantly attempts to influence the outcome of Supreme Court decisions by virtue of promising fawning coverage in the style section.
They'll do that before a vote.
They'll do it after a vote that they like for the next time around.
Whether it works, only a guess will suffice.
There's no justice is ever going to come out and say, I voted because I didn't like what they were saying about me at the Washington Post.
And no justice is ever going to say, yeah, I heard what the president said.
And it really uh it really changed my mind.
So you there's no way you really know if this stuff works.
Obama clearly thinks.
Look, he's the one.
He clearly thinks that he has the charisma and the overall presence to change these guys' minds on things that have nothing to do with the law.
But I'd say that the New York Times has uh has had some very fawning articles on Justice Kennedy recently.
You can you can see them, and you know the purpose.
So I we don't know what the vote was on Friday.
We're just everybody's just assuming and guessing here based on what has happened since.
Now, most of the time, the preliminary vote ends up being the final vote.
It's not common that these guys change their opinions.
Uh justices change their opinions frequently and often throughout the whole process.
Oftentimes the first vote is how it ends up.
But that's again not recorded.
That's simply from people who have been close to it and have written about it, describing the way court works, not addressing specific cases that isn't done, but in recounting how things happen.
So we're all just gonna have to wait.
It's driving the media crazy.
They're begging for a leak.
Another reason why they think Obama might have gotten one.
Now look at the way we're talking today.
I have just one question.
Whatever happened to the independent judiciary, which is what we are supposed to have.
We are supposed to have an independent judiciary, separation of powers and all that.
Look at the way we're discussing it, and and we're uh only discussing it by virtue of reacting to the attempt by the President of the United States to influence the outcome.
Blatantly so.
It's a violation of decorum, ethics, any number of things, tradition.
But here's the thing.
This is what we know.
If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, the public will concur with it.
Every poll taken on this shows a majority opposed anywhere from the low 60s all the way up to 75%.
There isn't.
I don't want to be this definitive.
There may be one.
I think I s no, there's not a poll where a majority of those polls polled outnumber the people who agree with Obamacare.
There was a poll last week that said 49% oppose it and 34 support it.
So that's not a majority, but it was clearly a plurality of those polled.
There's not a poll out there where the majority, whatever the percentages supports Obamacare.
So if not nothing, no, not with the mandate include, of course, with the mandate include.
So we the end of the day, if this ain't struck down, the public will concur with it.
What could be better?
Obama's out there talking about all of these people who have insurance who didn't have insurance before.
I take you back to last week.
It was, I believe, Time Magazine.
No, take it back.
It was an AP story in a Las Vegas newspaper.
And we finally got the truth of the number of uninsured Americans.
All this time, the Democrats and the media have thrown around numbers anywhere from 30 million to 43 million uninsured.
Just like they constantly threw around there were three million homeless during the 80s.
They finally did a homeless census and found there were less than 500,000.
Totally made up number.
Made up by an activist, a guy named Mitch Schneider, and the media just ran with it.
So 40, 30, 43 million uninsured.
We found out that in a nation of 311 million people, there are 15 million who don't have health insurance.
And I remember last week saying we're going through all of this for that.
We're going to go into debt that we will never get out of.
We are going to try to implement a health care system here that will destroy the greatest health care system in the world.
All for 15 million people.
And then we learned something else.
We learned that the 15 million who have who don't have health insurance don't want it on purpose.
Remember, everybody gets treated at the emergency room.
So whether they've got insurance or not, so it doesn't matter in terms of catastrophic injury, or if you just have some other debilitating illness for 24 hours, you go into the emergency room, you get treated.
Whether you've got insurance or not, the number of uninsured was 15 million, and it was made up of two groups of people.
Rich people who didn't want insurance, who will pay for their health care as they go, and young people who didn't care about it because they're young, they don't think about getting terminally ill, they don't think about having catastrophic injuries, They don't think about dying in their 20s and teens, 30s, what have you.
It's not a bunch of people who are desperate to have health insurance who don't have it.
So he's talking here of all the people who have insurance who didn't have it before.
But that would mostly be all those young, healthy people who don't want to buy it in the first place.
It's those people being ripped off to pay for somebody else's benefits.
That's all that's happening here.
So this this phony construct for the president today.
Oh, these wonderfully poor people have finally have health insurance and never had it before, and they're finally getting treated and they never got treated before.
And you judges are going to take that away from them.
That's pathetic.
And it's beneath the office of the presidency.
I had a bag of combos here I was all ready to open.
In the stress of trying to save America.
But I use discipline.
I'm not going to open the bag of combos.
It's a pretzel snack.
I'm going to mess with it.
I got too much to do.
We will be back.
We will continue.
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