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May 9, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
May 9, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Hi, folks.
Welcome back.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh as usual.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
I am profoundly, deeply interested in fairness here.
So that's what we do.
To bring it about, I only use half of my potential.
It'd be scary if I used it all.
People be dazzled into stunned disbelief, and they wouldn't remember anything.
So I can't go too far with it.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program, email address, El Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Americans, ladies and gentlemen, are taking their country back, and they're doing it one election at a time.
As was evidenced in Wisconsin, Americans are not afraid of union goons.
They're not impressed with slowjam and prezy.
They aren't intimidated by the media anymore.
From reconfirming the meaning of marriage to showing support for a great Wisconsin governor to humiliating a sitting Democrat president with a huge turnout for a convicted felon.
Voters demonstrated the power attributed to Barack Obama and the state-controlled media has been overestimated.
Conventional wisdom was nuked yesterday.
Tea Party dead.
Occupy Wall Street and the Ascension.
Obama's shoe-in re-election.
In fact, the Beltway Republicans, the Republican establishment, still think Obama's a shoe-in.
They really do.
I kid you not.
They think, maybe not a shoe-in now, but before yesterday, Rush, don't get your hopes up.
He's an incumbent.
He's got so much at his disposal.
And could well be.
But the people don't want to hear that.
The people of this country are not going to allow themselves to be dispirited with phony polls, inaccurate reporting.
They're not going to be influenced by photo ops with George Clooney being $5 trillion in debt, new debt given to us by Obama.
That Trump's photo ops with George Clooney.
Years of eight and a half plus unemployment now Trumps the preesy slowjamming the news with Jimmy Fallon.
Out-of-work college graduates snapping out of their hope and change trance and they realize all they're getting is insurmountable student loan debt, not jobs.
The voters are continuing to tune out the drive-by media in greater numbers.
Talk radio, the internet, Fox News.
And the people of this country know what's at stake.
They know failure when they see it.
They know disaster when they see it.
And they know how to stop it.
And they fully intend to.
Last night, last night was a significant aftershock of the 2010 electoral earthquake that rocked the Democrat Party.
A Tea Party's not dead.
2010 was a warm-up.
The Tea Party's moved on from a protest movement to an active, vibrant, grassroots movement that knows how to nominate the right people and then get them elected.
And that is sending shivers of fear down the spines of professional Democrats, their consultants, elected officials, and people in the media.
Democrats are voting against President Obama.
Democrats are distancing themselves from failure.
The cult of personality, the cult of celebrity, that this White House has attempted to mine.
It's being overwhelmed by the sting of reality.
People's homes having no value, people's jobs paying nothing, people not being able to get jobs, no economic growth, moratoriums on drilling for oil, roadblocks on pipelines that would bring oil, which would cheapen energy prices, a tax on existing conventional energy sources.
The American people want no part of it.
The American people don't hate fossil fuels.
Barack Obama might.
The American people don't, and he has not been able to convince them to.
The American people are not going to settle for 8.1% unemployment.
The American people aren't going to settle for 7% unemployment.
Vast majorities of the American people understand the greatness of this country.
Vast majorities of the American people understand, and listen to me carefully here, when this nation is on the right track, there's none better.
When this nation is on the right track, there's no end to opportunity.
When this nation is on the right track, there's no end to prosperity, economic, educational opportunity, better than anywhere in the world.
But this country isn't on track, and the American people know it, and they want it back on track.
They don't want this new direction.
They don't want this fundamental transformation of America.
They don't want a silly, impossible socialist utopia.
They want reality.
They want an acknowledgement of the greatness of this country, not somebody who's embarrassed of it or who doesn't like it or thinks it's immoral or unjust.
American people, vast majorities, are very, very angry to hear their country described this way.
They're very angry to sense that a Democrat Party looks at this country as unjust and immoral.
They are sick and tired of phony race stories from the Duke La Crosse case to Trayvon Martin.
They are sick and tired of being lied to in the media.
They are sick and tired of big things, medium-sized things, and small things.
They don't want to be told that a snail darter is more important than they are.
They don't want to be told that they can't buy light bulbs that they've always bought.
They don't want to be told they're destroying the planet when they know they're not, when they know that's a hoax.
They don't want to be forced to have to buy $50 light bulbs.
They're sick and tired of being told they can't have salt or trans fat in their foods.
They don't think that dietary decisions ought to come from a garden in the Oval Office.
They don't think a woman who has had no experience in the food business should have any business telling any of us what we should or shouldn't eat, particularly when they see her husband chowing down on stuff she disapproves of when she's not around.
The American people do not want Obamacare.
And that's been the case since before it was signed into law.
The American people don't want Obamacare.
We don't hate fossil fuels.
We don't hate oil.
We don't hate big CEOs and executives.
We don't want to punish success.
We want to emulate it.
We want success for as many people as possible.
We're sick and tired of elected officials at the highest levels trying to divide the people of this country, particularly along racial lines.
I think the American people in significant majorities are sick and tired of every effort the Democrat Party makes to divide this country, be it on racial lines, sexual orientation lines, gender lines, when you name it, they've had it.
But, Mr. Limbo, if you think that, though, why do they think people like Dick Luger packing it?
Dick Luger was all about compromise.
No, Dick Luger was not about.
Dick Luger was about letting Democrats win.
Republican voters are sick of Republicans letting Democrats win under the guise that this is how compromise takes place or this is how we get along.
The people of this country do not hate people who create jobs.
They actually like people that create jobs.
They want to know people who create jobs.
Many Americans actually want to work for people who create jobs.
I'd rather work for somebody who creates a job than somebody who doesn't because there isn't a job in that circumstance.
Look at the support Scott Walker is getting in Wisconsin.
After a tsunami of national union money into that state, threats, conventional wisdom from the media that Walker's dead.
The poll's all said Walker's finished.
Don't have a chance.
Democrats taking the state back.
Look at the vote turnout in Wisconsin.
Walker, who didn't need a single vote for anything last night, got more votes than the two Democrats combined in Wisconsin.
You kidding me?
I mean, that says it all, or at least so much.
All right, brief timeout.
And we'll take a break, come back.
We'll get some of your phone calls in.
And then some of the soundbites, some media assessments.
Why did Dick Luger actually lose?
What really went on?
And yes, I'm continually being hounded here to offer my unique and not found anywhere else thoughts on Mrs. Clinton's appearance.
Because after all, I'm the one.
See, people remember, I'm the one who asked some years ago, 2008 presidential campaign.
American people want to watch the aging process in the Oval Office.
And some people think that what's happening now is a referendum on that question.
Anyway, I have the answers, probably not what you think, but I have them to that and pretty much anything else you might be curious about when we come back.
Yeah, folks, I told you, I told you the first hour of the program, a bunch of Democrats are going to be asking themselves, what are we doing here?
Why are we going to be spending all this money for a convention in North Carolina when all it's in there is a bunch of hayseed, backward tobacco juice spitting hicks that think marriage is between a man and a woman?
And lo and behold, Think Progress, very liberal internet location, website, blog.
14,000 sign petition urging Democrats to move convention out of North Carolina.
Boy, I say it and they do it.
North Carolina approved Amendment 1 yesterday.
By this morning, a change.org petition created by Gay Marriage USA has already received 14,000 signatures urging a Democrat National Convention to move its operations out of North Carolina.
Since the convention is planned for Charlotte this September, the petition asks the DNC to move to a state that upholds the values of equality and liberty and which treats all citizens equally.
They want to move out of there.
And then Breitbart, senior Obama advisor, Obama will certainly endorse same-sex marriage after the election or in a few minutes.
Remember, I say it, they do it.
Just to repeat, they sent plugs out, Joe Biden on Sunday, and his, it was now, we get to it in the soundbites, it was strategic.
Biden was ordered.
It was a plan to go out and say that he's got no problem with gay marriage now.
And that was supposed to be the statement for the administration so that proper progressives around the country get the message, Obama's for gay marriage.
But wink winks, like who I told you yesterday.
They know he has to lie or they tell themselves he's lying when he says things that they don't agree with.
For example, they think he's lying when they hear him say he is opposed to gay marriage.
They tell them, hey, he just has to say that.
Yeah, yeah, he's really with us, but he has to say that.
Imagine that position.
You have to assume your voters know you're lying because saying publicly what your supporters support would doom your electoral chances.
But then the vote comes along, and it really is an astounding landslide defeat.
So people thinking Obama's going to have to come out and say something.
Now, the conventions in that state, to hell with the black vote, he's going to have to save that lay, gay, and lesbian transgender money, the donations they send in.
That's huge money.
And he's going to need that money.
He's going to have to come out for gay marriage here.
What is this?
The 31st or 32nd state in a row voted it down.
And in this case, affirmed it.
We're going to start in Indianapolis.
Mike, I'm glad you waited.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Mega, who's your entrepreneurial ditto, right?
Thank you very much, sir.
Appreciate that.
Hey, I just wanted to comment.
One of the, just from someone here in Indiana listening to the election, waiting to vote.
Luger ran this primary election like he was a Democrat.
There were radio ads against Luger bringing up his vote for, like, for example, on the old gas tax, and he was up it by a dollar and the anti-gun votes.
Luger's response to that was to complain against outside money coming in against his ads.
The worst thing I've ever seen from a Republican was when I got an ad, a flyer to my house that Luger sent me that said Murdoch would get rid of the Department of Education.
This was in the Republican primary.
I thought it was some kind of a dirty trick said for Murdoch.
I didn't Luger sent it to my own house that he was going to get that for against Murdoch.
I couldn't believe it.
Again, I thought it was like a Democrat.
Well, exactly.
Exactly.
That's what he became.
John O'Sullivan, the former editor of National Review, once came up with something that he might call it Sullivan's Law.
I call it Sullivan's Law.
It's a profundity.
It's very simple.
Here's what Sullivan says.
Any person or organization that is not actively conservative will become liberal.
And that is dead on.
It's accurate.
It's inarguable.
If you are not, conservatism is an intellectual application.
It is a pursuit, even though it is the way most people live their lives.
Conservatism itself, as natural as anything can be because it's rooted in liberty, is still something that has to be actively affirmed by its practitioners.
If they don't, they will become liberal.
Same as an organization.
Any organization, any think tank, any body of people that is not demonstrably actively conservative will become liberal.
It's what happened to Luger.
Luger, I don't know how conservative he ever really was, but doesn't matter.
To whatever extent he was conservative, he isn't any longer.
He became a moderate and then, for the most part, a Beltway establishment politician.
The saddest people in Washington today over Luger's defeat are Democrats and members of the media.
But what does that tell you?
So here's Dick Luger.
Imagine this.
Dick Luger sending out flyers, attempting to get people to vote for him, telling people that his opponent's going to shut down the Department of Education.
What does he not get?
That's exactly what Indiana conservatives want.
Ronald Reagan wanted to shut down the Department of Education.
So here's Luger thinking that he's sending out a flyer that is effective in its criticism of his opponent, and he doesn't realize that he has just given everybody that received that flyer a reason to vote for his opponent.
Oh, this Murdoch guy wants to shut down the bureaucracy.
Hell, he's my guy.
Luger has descended into one who believes that government's the center of the world, center of the universe.
Everything revolves around it.
He's issued a statement.
I guess I should do this after the break at the bottom of the hour.
He's issued a statement.
And it's completely illustrative of what happened to Dick Luger and what will happen and has happened to every Republican who refuses to stand up for conservatism.
They become moderates, then liberals to one degree or another.
They end up essentially being on the other team.
That's what happens.
And that's where Luger was.
And we'll be back.
Don't go away.
We are back.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Breaking news of sorts from Fox.
It's Ed Henry reporting that Obama is going to come out of the closet, maybe, on gay marriage.
Megan Kelly just spoke with the chief White House co-respondent Ed Henry about Obama and the White House policy on gay marriage.
Megan Kelly said, what's going on?
Does anybody over there have the slightest clue what's going on?
We have some new information.
As you know, the president said in December of 2010 that he was evolving on this issue.
We're getting new information now, suggesting that he's ready perhaps to complete that evolution.
I just spoke to a source close to the president, a Democratic advisor outside the White House who told me the president is expected to go further than he ever has before on this issue.
The venue is going to be a last-minute interview the White House granted to ABC News, ABC's Robin Roberts.
Now, I want to caution that I've talked to two other sources close to the president who are suggesting that this could be short of a full-fledged endorsement of same-sex marriage.
Oh my god, they're excited over nothing.
He might come out of the closet, maybe.
He might do it with Robin Roberts, but he might not.
White House is not sure.
What kind of see, this is another thing.
The American people are not idiots.
What is this evolving on the issue of gay marriage?
What is that?
The American people know what it is.
It's gutlessness.
Everybody knows Obama is in favor of it.
And everybody knows he doesn't have the courage to say so because everybody knows that the vast majority of the people in the country are opposed to it.
And therefore, it will not help his re-election.
That's why they sent Biden out.
So now they're doing this dance.
Obama's evolved.
What does that mean?
He's really thinking about it.
How long do you have to think about it?
How old is he?
What's happened in the last three days, three years, three months to change his mind on this?
What happened last night?
What happened this morning?
What the heck?
Nobody's fooled by any of this.
This evolving business.
What they're doing, what they ought to, all it means is they're trying to come up with the slickest spin to explain his all of a sudden changing his mind, coming out in favor of gay marriage.
And they're coming up with a bunch of different trials and they're testing them.
They're waiting for focus group reaction.
They haven't found one that works yet.
That's all it means.
They haven't found a way to send him out there and say, you know what?
The evolution is complete.
And I have changed my mind.
I am now in favor.
Well, what's changed?
They don't have the answers to that.
They don't have a way of credibly doing this.
So they want credit.
They're trying to get credit for Obama.
They're trying to convey that he's changed his mind without him having to say so.
That's what's happening here.
Don't doubt.
I know these people, folks.
Like every square inch of my glorious naked body.
I know these guys.
I know how they think.
I know what they're going to do before they do it.
And all this is, is an attempt to get a wink and a nod and a silent, it's almost like a secret decoder ring signal to the progressives and the Democrat voters.
Hey, look at these.
He's for gay married.
I'm not going to say it.
That's what this evolving getting close because they so close.
But they don't want him to have to say it because then they can't control it after that.
They don't want him to have to say it.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
This is funny.
We put together, we do this every time there's an election and the media is shocked, stunned, and in disbelief.
We have a montage here from yesterday and last night.
Audio soundbite number two.
A bunch of different media types.
Whenever a conservative wins, such as Murdoch or a conservative issue wins, the language used to describe it is violent.
It's always the result of anger, an insurgency, temper tantrums on the part of the voters.
Here's the montage.
80-year-old Senator Richard Luger facing a Tea Party and conservative revolt.
Tea Party firebrand, Richard Murdoch, the Tea Party insurgency.
The Tea Party really beginning to take over the Republican Party.
Pushed you out by the Tea Party.
The Tea Party now has a couple of different places to shoot their anger.
Pretty tragic.
Working together is a negative thing.
Reaching across the aisle is a hanging offense in the Republican Party.
We have a problem, America.
Right.
So, pretty tragic.
Luger losing in a landslide.
Working together is a negative thing.
And then reaching across the aisle is a hanging offense in the Republican Party.
We have a problem, America.
The media.
Compromise, reaching across the aisle, working together is a negative thing.
The American people no longer buy into what the media definitions of those terms are.
Let me remind you of this.
All you people working together compromise.
See if you remember this.
On the day of the final 2008 presidential debate, Dick Luger gave a speech at the National Defense University praising Obama's foreign policy.
Praised his policy, praised his approach.
Dick Luger gave a speech in support of Obama.
A Republican senator was running for president.
McCain, supposedly a good friend of Luger's, Luger, is at National Defense University praising Obama's policy, praising his approach, and warning against the isolationist reactive policies espoused by McCain.
On the day of the last presidential debate, Luger is out ripping McCain, praising Obama.
At the same debate, Obama listed Luger as among the individuals, quote, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House, unquote.
There's no mystery why Dick Luger lost yesterday.
The American people don't want any more of Barack Obama, domestic or foreign policy, and they don't want any Republicans whose first objective is to reach across the aisle and make it easier for Obama to continue on the current path that we are on.
Luger, therefore, was to the left of McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Mark Halperin of Time Magazine should tell you is saying Obama is going to endorse gay marriage.
Politico.
Obama expected to speak about his views on gay marriage in an interview Wednesday afternoon.
Ed Henry was talking about Robin Roberts of Good Morning America.
But he's not changing his mind.
He told gay groups back in 1996 he was for gay marriage.
We looked it up.
1996 is a long time ago.
I know, but he told gay groups back then he was for it.
Dick Luger, back to him, admitted that he didn't vote the way his opponents wanted him to vote.
Or his constituents.
He didn't vote the way his constituents.
This statement that he's issued, here's how the politico describes it.
Luger unloads on unrelenting partisanship.
I would like to comment on the Senate race just concluded and the direction of American politics in the Republican Party, begins Luger.
I would reiterate from my earlier statement, I have no regrets about choosing to run for office.
My health's good, excellent.
I believe I have been a very effective senator for Hoosiers and for the country, and I know that the next six years would have been a time of great achievement.
Further, I believe that vital national priorities, including job creation, deficit reduction, energy security, agriculture reform, blah, would benefit from my continued service as a senator.
These goals were worth the risk of an electoral defeat and the costs of a hard campaign.
Analysts will speculate about whether our campaign strategies were wise.
Much of this will be based on conjecture by pundits who don't fully appreciate the choices that we had to make based on resource limits, polling data, and other factors.
In other words, I didn't have any money.
They'll also speculate whether we were guilty of overconfidence.
The truth is the headwinds in this race were abundantly apparent long before Murdoch announced his candidacy.
And he goes on to rip the whole notion of partisanship.
I mean, it's long.
It's 1,500 pages.
I'm not going to read the whole thing to you.
But I just tell you, if people in Indiana knew all of this about Luger, then there's no reason why he lost in a landslide.
There's no reason why they threw him out of office.
And if there's any doubt left in Indiana, when you read this statement, should put any of those questions you have to rest.
But Luger, in this statement, honestly, folks, seems to be proud of how much he voted against his constituents' wishes.
That was a sign of maturity.
That's a sign of independence, a sign of not being on a leash.
He knew better than his constituents.
He knew they're just not smart enough, informed enough.
Most of his statement is an attack on partisanship.
And he worries that there will be less compromise with him gone.
He warns against the increasing partisanship of the Republican Party, says it's going to be too conservative.
He says that the factors that led to his defeat will make the Republicans a minority party.
How out of touch can you be?
He just lost in a landslide by Republican voters.
Republican voters sent him packing.
Democrat voters couldn't save him.
The Republican Party, the Tea Party, the conservatives are trying to save the Republican Party.
Here, grab audio soundblade.
I'm going to Krauthammer.
Grab number eight.
Last night, special report with Brett Baer during the All-Star panel.
Brett Baer said to Charles Krauthammer, Dick Luger, what about that race?
What's the significance, Charles?
I think it's a generational issue.
Luger is a line of the Senate.
I think he's served very well.
He's been very important in foreign affairs over these years, but that doesn't appeal to voters.
He's been in there for a very long time.
He's had a lot of moderate opinions.
He's not a Tea Party favorite, and I think his time likely will have come.
I'm not sure there's anything he could have done differently in campaigning.
He is who he is after all these years.
His generation of the sort of somewhat right of center Republicans is in eclipse.
That's it.
Moderate Republic.
That's what center-right means.
You're either conservative or center-right.
Center-right is moderate.
Krauthammer doesn't use that term.
I'll appropriate and apply it here.
But what he means is the era of the moderate Republican is over.
And it began a long time ago.
Remember, Christopher Shays lost.
The moderate Republican, the only Republican in the House in Connecticut.
Went down.
It's been a trend that's been building a long time.
And of course, every moderate doesn't lose, but moderate Republicans are seeing their eclipse.
That's what this means.
Course, a moderate's going to see this as the end of compromise and the end of reaching across the aisle.
Because after all, what is a moderate Republican?
For all intents and purposes, is Democrat.
A moderate Republican doesn't have the guts to be a conservative.
It's no more complicated than that.
And this, Republican voters know.
Dick Luger was not looked to as a solution to any of the problems facing the country.
It's really no more complicated than this.
He may be a fine guy.
I mean, none of this is personal.
I'm just telling you that the voters in Indiana, after 35 years, did not see Dick Luger as a solution to the very real problems they face in their lives in this country, in Indiana.
Dick Luger was looked at, if anything, as part of the cause of the problems.
But if not that, it's clear Dick Luger was not looked to as a solution, nor are any other moderate Republicans seen as part of the solution.
And that's they all know it.
But they're hanging on for dear life.
Let's be back after this, folks.
Don't go away.
Back to the phones, Jerry in Milwaukee.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi, Rush.
In my state of Wisconsin, in 2006, 60% of the population voted for an anti-gay constitutional amendment.
That's the same numbers that voted in North Carolina today.
And we're a much less religious state than North Carolina.
So the numbers show support for gay marriage is going strongly in the direction of those who support equality.
Because the same support for gay marriage in North Carolina, in the United States, as Wisconsin, that's amazing change in public opinion.
And you cannot deny that, Rush.
Wait a minute.
I'm having trouble.
The same support for gay marriage in North Carolina, United States, Wisconsin.
What's the change in public opinion?
The public opinion is in 2011, numerous polls showed majority opinion, according to some polls, very majority, but majority opinion for same-sex marriage.
10 years ago, it was at 30%.
That's 2% change per year.
You're losing, Rush, like the right-wing lost on interracial marriage and like they lost on their opposition before.
Oh, I see what you're talking about.
I see what you're saying.
I see what you're talking about.
I see what we're losing.
Right.
See, here's the thing, Jare old buddy Opel.
Wasn't very long ago that marriage meant man and a woman.
Fine and danny, nobody had a problem with it.
It was just what it was, like two plus two equals four.
Definition of a word.
And some people came along and said, we're not happy with that.
The definition of that word doesn't allow us to be married.
We don't like that.
That's unfair.
So people, well, what the hell didn't they have to start defending this?
So where are we now, Jare?
Where are we now?
We've arrived at a point where the president of the United States is going to lead a war on traditional marriage.
That's where we want to call that winning.
Your side is winning when the president has to lead a war on traditional marriage, when you're losing in landslides and you haven't won a state?
I can see where you think you're winning because 10 years ago, Zip Zero Nada even thought about this until you guys decided you were unhappy and wanted to make everybody conform to the way you look at things, even if it meant bastardizing the definition of words.
So now we got the president of the United States leading a war on traditional marriage.
Is it going to be like the war on stay-at-home working mothers that you people have led?
Is it going to be like the war on the Catholic Church that you people have led?
See, all these subjects come up, Jerry Old Buddy O'Pal, because Obama and people like you are trying to turn traditional institutions on their head.
And people like me who are minding their own business all of a sudden have to stand up and defend these traditions and institutions from people like you and now the president who's waging a war on traditional America.
And I want to tell you something else, Jerry Old Buddy O'Pal.
At the ballot box, you're never going to win this.
You can put out all the concocted fake, phony polls you want.
The ballot box, you're always going to need a corrupt judge to overturn the vote of the people, Jare.
Old buddy, Opal.
I really don't know where the hours go here.
We got two hours completed here, and I feel like I haven't even really begun yet.
And there's only one hour left.
I can only imagine how great this must sound to all of you.
I never get to hear this, but I can.
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