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June 28, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:15
June 28, 2012, Thursday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right 99.7% of the time.
And I expect that number to skyrocket because of the healthcare ruling, because on this, we haven't been wrong.
Great to have you here, folks.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address, L.Rushbo at eibnet.com.
Arthur Davis is a former Democrat, former member of the Congressional Black Caucasians.
Arthur Davis has switched in Alabama to the Republican Party's African American.
He has been requested by news organizations and others to react to the ruling today, and he sent an email.
And I, your host, El Rushbo, as a powerful, influential member of the media, have a copy of Arthur Davis' email.
I would like to read it to you.
John Roberts' surprise defection is a policy victory for Barack Obama that's worth no votes.
Just as Democrats miscalculated in 2010 by assuming that the passage of the health care law would prove that they could get things done, they are drawing the wrong lesson today if they assume a court's vindication of an unpopular law will somehow validate the first Obama term.
The hostility to Obamacare among independents and swing voters is based on the cold fact that precious few of them believe it has done a thing to lower their premiums or improve their coverage, and that will not change.
But according to Arthur Davis, there is a larger story.
This result shows that the left's continuing capacity to shape elite opinion by marginalizing positions that roughly half the country holds.
This result shows the left's continuing capacity to shape elite opinion by marginalizing positions roughly half the country holds.
Just as the left has caricatured opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion as retrograde and extreme, it just pulled off the same feat in the context of Obamacare.
The case was made, and Chief Justice Roberts bought it, that a court that has struck down 169 congressional statutes would somehow be dangerously activist if it added a 170th one to the mix.
It's an undemocratic, disingenuous sleight of hand that the left is practicing, but it's winning.
The cost is that it only widens the gap between middle America and the elite.
This is Arthur Davis, a former Democrat, now Republican, member of the House in Alabama.
By the way, the Politico is reporting that the Romney camp says it's already raised more than a million dollars today.
And maybe the timing is just a coincidence.
Maybe some of the money people are taking out of the stock market.
But the Romney campaign has announced that it has raised over a million dollars.
Republican Congressman David Schweikert in Arizona just said about the ruling a little while ago, Supreme Court just woke up a sleeping giant.
Election just rolled back to 2010 because it was driven by Obamacare.
I hope he's right.
I would think the people of Arizona would already be awake by now.
I wouldn't think they would need the health care ruling in Arizona to be awake.
Now, there's this.
I mentioned earlier the Volokh conspiracy.
It's a blog that circulates in legal circles.
And apparently, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of people are doing what you and I are doing.
What in the name of Sam Hill happened here?
It was thought, and nobody knew for sure, but there were tea leaves.
And I'm an expert now in the tea business.
You know, I know tea leaves, and there were tea leaves out there that the mandate was going down.
White House thought it was going down.
The media thought it was going down.
And in fact, the first announcement today was the mandate was ruled unconstitutional.
That was the first thing that got reported.
And then it was a few short seconds later that the first uh-oh came.
Oh, wait a minute.
The mandate's unconstitutional, but the whole thing stands because Chief Justice Roberts is calling it a tax.
So after the shock wore off, people started trying to figure out what in the heck happened.
And all the news networks, even CNN got it right, reported that the mandate was struck down.
Fox reported it was struck down.
AP reported it struck down.
Washington Post reported the mandate was struck down.
Fox.
It was a cruel trick to play on the American people.
Mandate struck down and mere seconds later.
Uh-oh.
Now, the Volokh conspiracy.
No, don't tell me, what did I do with this?
Well, yes, it was still stuck in my printer.
It's a post by a gentleman named David Bernstein.
Scalia's dissent, at least on first quick perusal, reads like it was originally written as a majority opinion.
In particular, he consistently refers to Justice Ginsburg opinion as the dissent.
Back in May, and earlier this week, by the way, there were stories that Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg was writing the dissent.
That did leak.
And these guys are referencing it here at the Volokh Conspiracy blog.
And they say that in his dissent, Scalia consistently refers to Justice Ginsburg's opinion as the dissent.
Now, back in May, there were rumors floating around around relevant legal circles that a key vote was taking place and that Roberts was feeling tremendous pressure from unidentified circles to vote to uphold the mandate.
So they're asking the question at this blog, did Roberts originally vote to invalidate the mandate on Commerce Clause grounds and to invalidate the Medicaid expansion and then decide later to accept the tax argument and essentially rewrite the Medicaid expansion to preserve it?
If so, was Roberts responding to the heat from President Obama and others preemptively threatening to delegitimize the court if it invalidated the Affordable Health Care Act?
The dissent, along with the surprising way that Roberts chose to uphold both the mandate and the Medicaid expansion, will inevitably feed the rumor mill, which it is doing.
Now, I want to be very careful because none of this matters in terms of the outcome today.
It's not going to change.
If people found out, if they can prove that Roberts changed his vote because of intimidation, it won't change anything about this outcome.
And I don't think anybody is ever going to be able to firmly establish that this happened.
So I don't want to be misunderstood here.
But this decision is so shocking to people.
Folk, there's nothing constitutional about this law.
It is utterly shocking.
What happened today is disgraceful.
And that's why the rumor mill is ginning up because people are trying to find what they can.
It's a logical explanation because the Constitution effectively didn't exist today when this decision was announced.
And the people trying to figure this out are obviously going to look into the rumor mill and try to find some way of explaining it.
It's not going to change anything.
So you might say it's pointless to focus on it other than it being gossipy and interesting in that regard.
However, if it were ever confirmed as true that a Chief Justice, any justice, was motivated by virtue of threat and intimidation to change a vote.
If the threat of intimidation and whatever else can result in vote changing or a vote period, then of course you'd have to conclude that essentially you've got organized crime running the show, not the Constitution.
Organized crime definitionally, not literally.
There's another blog out there that is rolling with the same theories called legal theory blog, and they've come up with the same thought.
And they've got an article, evidence that votes shifted after conference.
Initial vote to declare mandate unconstitutional.
They're looking at this.
And by the way, all of this is permissible.
They can vote, change their votes whenever they want, up until the time of announcement, or whatever limit they place on themselves.
The justices in the court are not bound by their first votes or by their original votes.
It has a larger meaning, obviously, if this does.
It takes me back to Arthur Davis.
I'll read you the second paragraph of Arthur Davis' email today.
There's a larger story here.
This result shows the left's continuing capacity to shape elite opinion by marginalizing positions that roughly half the country holds.
What do you mean?
Conservatism has been marginalized to be kookville.
Just as the left has caricatured opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion as retrograde and extreme, it just pulled off the same thing in the context of Obamacare.
A case was made, and Roberts bought it, that a court that struck down 169 congressional statutes would somehow be dangerously activist if it added a 170th one to the mix.
It's an undemocratic, disingenuous sleight of hand the left is practicing, but it is winning.
The cost is that it only widens the gap between middle America and the elite.
So his point here is, is that whatever intimidation was used on Roberts, it was, hey, judge, do you really want to be thought of as a nutcase, fruit case, kook, right-wing extremist?
And that's what Arthur Davis said, whatever the pressure was, and if there was such pressure, that's how it manifested itself.
Anyway, folks, I just, I feel nervous even mentioning all this stuff to you because it gets into the area of pure speculation and gossip.
And I want you to understand that that's what it is.
And there's a reason for it.
This is inexplicable to people, and they're trying to understand it.
What in the hell happened here?
What happened to the Constitution?
That's why all of this is being visited the way it is.
But no matter what the speculators come up with, it's not going to change the outcome today.
Got to take a break.
We'll do that.
More of your phone calls coming when we get back here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Sit tight.
Do not go away.
Okay.
Look, let me cut to the chase here, folks.
The reason that I'm nervous with all this talk about this speculation that Chief Justice Roberts caved and who got to him and who, the reason I'm having trouble with this is, is that I don't think that's what happened.
I believe I mentioned earlier this week, might have been yesterday or the day before, that I had been warned years ago.
I was in a conversation about justices in the court, how they respond to public pressure, Washington Post style section, you know, the usual obligatory way you go and discuss the way that the media tries to influence outcomes of votes on the Supreme Court.
And all those conversations centered around Justice Kennedy as the swing vote.
And I was warned it's not Kennedy you have to look out for.
It's Justice Roberts.
I can't tell you who told me.
No, no, no.
I know who it is.
It's not that I've forgotten it.
I can't mention it.
I think really what happened here, I don't think there was a cave.
I think Chief Justice Roberts is establishing his legacy.
I think this is what he wanted to do.
I think this is his imprimatur.
This is the Roberts court like we had the Warren Court.
We had the Rehnquist Court.
This is the Roberts court.
This is his stamp on it.
I know it's fun to think about the intimidation that might have occurred and who succeeded with it and so forth.
There's also, I don't want to mention any names on this either because I don't mean to embarrass anybody, but another thing going around that you might have seen or heard yourself.
Hey, wait a minute, Rush, Rush, wait a minute.
Didn't this tax increase originate in the Senate?
Aren't the taxes in the Obamacare from the Senate and therefore they're unconstitutional?
Well, where are we going to go on that?
We got to go back to where?
The very same court that just said it's okay.
So what do we do?
Okay, even if that's a valid point.
Well, I understand this kind of stuff is going to happen on a day like this.
People grasping at straws, trying to look at something and grab onto to explain this and to give us some hope that we can reverse this.
There is one solution, remedy, maybe not the word.
We have one choice, and that's win elections.
Every one of them, folks, that's what we face now.
And the first one is this November.
With what happened today and the precedent set today that the government can tax anything, I don't want to scare you by speculating what that could end up meaning in terms of everybody's day-to-day lives.
What if Social Security goes bankrupt?
And then what if Congress wants to say that your 401k is now part of Social Security in order to bail it out?
Just take it.
You realize there's not much to stop something like that from happening until this is repealed.
And even that, the precedent is still there until the court, another court down the road, would reverse this one, which is not impossible.
But it's going to take elections because, as my buddy Mark Levin wrote recently in a book, we now live in a post-constitutional country.
With Obama, we got post-racial, we got post-partisan, and now we're post-constitutional.
The Constitution does not determine things that happen in this country where it's not a limiting factor any longer.
The big government types have always seen it as an obstacle.
And in two decisions this week, we've been shown architecturally the way around it.
It's going to require election after election after election.
Victory after victory after victory.
Ha, how are you?
Welcome back.
Great to have you, Rush Lynn Boe.
I have my wits about me, folks.
I always do.
I am not sidetracked.
I'm not diverted.
I am not distracted, nor am I intimidated.
I'm going to tell you exactly what happened here.
And it's not what the rumor speculation is.
I understand that.
This decision is inexplicable to people.
They're desperately trying to come up with an explanation that would fit in their mind.
My gosh, what happened here?
I mean, here's what happened.
The Supreme Court, a majority of the Supreme Court, found Obamacare unconstitutional.
They found the mandate unconstitutional.
The Chief Justice, John Roberts, kicked into activist mode and found a way around that.
I don't care if he found a way around it because he was intimidated by Obama or Patrick Leahy or somebody in the media.
I don't care because I don't think he was.
I think he did what he wanted to do.
He has sided with the liberal justices more often than not in previous decisions.
I just throw that out as a statistic, not as evidence.
I think he's building a legacy.
This is what he wanted to happen.
He found a way for it to happen.
And so now, folks, it's game on.
And I know some of you may get sick and tired of always being in this.
Why is it always game?
Why is it always us that have to do?
Well, it's the way of the world.
It's simply the reality we face today.
We are up against people who believe in tyranny.
We are up against people who do not want there to be individual freedom and liberty in this country.
That's what we face.
We don't face people who like a level playing field with the will of the people being the determining factor.
That's not the people we're up against.
We're up against people who do not like the U.S. Constitution.
We're up against people who do not like this country as founded.
We're up against people who want to change it.
They have not liked it for a long time or they've never liked it.
We don't have time to try to analyze why.
We don't have time to try to figure out how they ended up being this way.
We now are governed by a monstrous assault on our personal liberty and freedom.
We are governed by it.
We are living under its thumb.
Jack Boot.
And it is now time to wrap this monstrosity around Obama's head.
He will not tell anybody what this bill means.
It's up to us.
And we can't even count on Romney to do this.
All we can do is hope that he gets it right.
We have to tell people what this bill is, and we have to be able to show them and tell them that's what this bill is and explain it.
This bill is death panels.
This bill is massive taxes on our behavior.
We have to be able to explain that what happened today does not mean free health care for the poor.
If anything, it means the poor will lose their health care.
What with his Medicaid expansion?
We have death panels now.
We have massive taxes, tax increases.
We have taxes on our behavior.
We have a tax if we choose not to have health insurance.
You young people who don't want to buy health insurance because you don't need it yet.
Too bad.
If you don't, you pay a fine.
And there are 16,000 IRS agents newly hired who are going to be enforcing this thing.
There will be, there are 2,700 pages in this monstrosity.
There are going to be regulations that haven't even been dreamed up yet.
Because as the bill states, countless times, as the Secretary shall determine, Secretary of Health and Human Services can pretty much write the law as he or she goes.
There will be denial of care.
Not everybody's going to get health care, whether they're insured or not.
It's going to be determined that some people's health care is not worth the cost.
Either the disease is too far advanced, or the disease is too far advanced, and they're too old.
Or perhaps they're not of the right political party.
Don't you dare discount that.
You keep in mind the kind of people we're up against.
We are up against people who want us, Arthur Davis exactly right, marginalized.
Half of this country, they want marginalized as extreme wacko alien kooks.
These are people that would be happy to deny your grandmother health coverage if you didn't vote for Obama.
And I am not exaggerating.
These are people who itch.
Bureaucrats and so who itch for that kind of power over people.
This law provides it.
Rationing.
It's all part of the mix.
We're $16 trillion in debt.
Not everybody's going to get health care.
And I don't care what Obama says, not everybody's going to get the best health care.
Not everybody's going to get equal health care.
Not everybody's going to get equal insurance.
Nothing Obama says about this has very much relationship to the truth.
You're not going to hear about any of this stuff that I'm telling you, but it is game on.
We're going to have price controls because premiums and things, prices of healthcare are going to skyrocket.
And these experts, these statists, the people who want total dominion and control over your life are going to be shocked because some of these people are true believers and they really believe all the propaganda.
They believe it's going to get cheaper.
They believe it's going to get more plentiful.
And when it doesn't, they are going to be shocked and stunned and they're not going to understand it.
Just like when every other program of theirs bails up and fails, they're clueless.
And all they want is credit for their good intentions.
But they're going to have to deal with the failure.
They're going to have to deal with the problems this bill creates.
So there will be rationing.
There will be price controls.
There will be massive deficits.
And all of this needs to be wrapped around the head of Barack Obama and every Democrat running for reelection who supported this thing, which is every one of them.
That's where we are.
That's what this is.
And now this precedent set by this ruling today where the government can tax behavior, not just your income, not just your user fee at a public park or a federal park or not just your gasoline tax.
Now, sky's the limit.
Whenever they want a tax, they can.
That was just affirmed via this decision today.
Now, I must say there's some people out there, doesn't matter who.
And this is quite natural too.
I understand this psychologically.
There are people who are trying to point out positive aspects in the Roberts ruling.
There are people who are saying that we've got to be very careful, Rush.
John Roberts, George Bush appointed.
We don't want to dump on John Roberts too.
Sorry, this is an appalling, disgraceful decision, and it's going to be remembered as such.
And this decision, this ruling originally was found to be unconstitutional.
According to the Commerce Clause, it was unconstitutional.
And what happened, the Chief Judge found a way, going activist to make sure this bill survived.
And it was the Chief Justice accepted a very little used administration argument that, hey, it's a tax.
Even though we played the tape, Obama said it wasn't a tax.
He went to the Met telling George Stephanopoulos in 2009, it's not a tax increase, George.
They didn't, they knew that this bill were sold as a tax increase.
Obama's out there saying nobody who makes under $200,000 a year will see their taxes go up as long as I'm president.
Everybody's taxes go up and sometimes monstrously high here.
They went to the end of the world to try to convince people this was not a tax increase.
And when the mandate was running into trouble, then they tried to say, well, maybe anything.
They sent their little varilli up to the court to argue it could be a tax.
They weren't excited about it.
They didn't want to sell it that way.
It turns out they didn't have to.
The chief judge found it.
They said, you know what?
I'm just going to call it a tax.
The government can do that.
They can't make everybody buy health insurance with the mandate, but they can with the tax code.
That's what happened today.
It is an appalling, disgraceful decision.
And as I was trying to say, when dealing with all the rumors and the speculation, there's no point in playing the game to try to find, okay, is there something positive here?
Is there something that we can grasp onto and say, well, there's maybe some hope.
There isn't any.
The only hope is the November election.
There's no way to get this decision redone.
We can't send this decision back.
The court's not going to take it.
They're long gone.
out of there.
I can't think of a founding father or any state that would have supported a constitution of the sort that the chief justice just set out in his ruling.
There wasn't even an income tax in the original Constitution.
It required the 13th Amendment.
So don't, you know, I know that there's a temptation to try to explain the inexplicable.
Try to find a silver lining to grasp and hold on to and so forth.
And if that makes you feel better, go ahead, but it doesn't matter.
The ruling is the ruling, and it stands.
And so now it's game on.
This thing has to be repealed.
It has to be repealed by the elected represent, excuse me, elected representatives of the people.
And that can only happen if the election results are massively in our favor in November.
That's the next task.
And I'm confident what happened in 2010 is going to happen with greater intensity and in larger numbers in 2012 than it happened in 2010.
I'm talking about the midterm elections, the Tea Party, and everybody mobilizing.
The Constitution was written to limit government power.
This ruling expands government power like no one has ever imagined.
This ruling expands government power like nobody has ever asked for it before.
Obama didn't even ask for this.
He didn't ask for this kind of massive tax increase.
He asked for the commerce clause to be able to force people to buy insurance.
And then what that would open in terms of future doors.
It's an appalling decision, and there's nothing in it that you can grasp onto and try to find some positives.
Plus, you want to.
It's not going to mean anything.
16th Amendment income tax.
I misspoke.
16th Amendment.
And my point is: no founding father would envision a constitution written this way.
Nobody envisioned a constitution or a government with this kind of power.
Got to take a break.
Sit tight, my friends.
We'll be back on the squeeze.
A couple more phone calls in here before we pack it in.
Here's Vic in Genoa, Illinois.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Rush, it is a great honor to speak with you.
I can imagine.
Thank you.
I just want to thank you for everything you do for America.
I wish it was more.
I can't tell you how much more I wish I could do.
By the way, I love the tea.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Maybe you can help me out on something here that I'm confused about.
But isn't when they, if they fully implement Obamacare, isn't that going to be devastating to insurance companies?
Yeah, eventually.
Okay.
So knowing that, hasn't it struck you odd that ever since the inception of this whole Obamacare concept, there has been no real outcry from the insurance companies.
No, I mean, they have massive resource to have publicity campaigns to lose Obamacare.
I'm glad you asked that.
This is where a new level of understanding is.
You would think, I mean, you're exactly right.
The automatic conclusion is the insurance company ought to be leading the opposition based.
No.
What does Obamacare mandate?
Insurance!
You've got to buy it.
It takes a number of years before they are thrown out.
But for now, it's Fat City.
The federal government is requiring you to buy an insurance policy.
What business wouldn't want that?
What business wouldn't want the fed?
Can you imagine if Apple got a federal ruling that everybody had to buy an iPhone and a Macintosh and become an iCloud man?
Can you imagine how much they would love government?
It's exactly what's going on here.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are not, as a people, as free as we were at 10.15 this morning.
We didn't lose a war.
No foreign enemy is taking away our liberties.
Our own government did this.
We're not nearly as free as we were five hours ago.
And Open Line Fridays tomorrow.
We will be here.
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