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Aug. 13, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:11
August 13, 2012, Monday, Hour #3
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Hi folks and welcome back.
Here we are at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative studies.
I am your host, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling, all-concerned Maharashi.
Sitting here at the prestigious Attila the Hun chair, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis.
It's a thrill and a delight to have you with us.
There's other stuff going on in the news out there, such as this.
Congressional Budget Office reports that opening up ANWAR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, would generate $5 billion in revenue over the next 10 years and potentially $25 billion to $50 billion in revenue between 2023 and 2035.
The report requested by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan examined removing restrictions that could also cover other lands and offshore areas.
The $5 billion generated over the next 10 years would mostly come from bonus payments made by private firms for the opportunity to explore and develop resources.
Royalties on oil and natural gas production would not materialize for about 10 years because of the lag time between leasing the land and the beginning of actual production.
Billions, drilling and ANWAR could yield billions in state and federal revenue.
And not only that, not only would it generate billions in state federal revenue, it would give us a bunch of oil and a bunch of natural gas.
It would make us that further along the road to independence on foreign oil.
But we can't do this because you see, those are old, tired, worn-out ideas.
Producing our own oil and producing our own gas.
Yeah, we've tried that before and it just didn't work.
It didn't work when we tried to produce our own gas.
It didn't work.
We tried to produce our own oil.
Nope.
Obama told us this.
Obama tells us this all the time.
We can't go back to those days where we produced our own stuff.
We can't go back to the days that we created our own jobs.
That stuff, that stuff started 200-plus years ago when the country was founded.
That was always a trick.
That was nothing more than a bunch of rich guys arranging things for themselves for the rest of time.
Yeah, it never did work.
Scores of women mysteriously appear at a Romney Ryan rally.
Andrea Mitchell stumped.
That's a headline from a blog post at Red State.
Scores of women mysteriously appear at Romney Ryan rally.
Andrea Mitchell can't figure it out.
How did it happen?
Speaking of that, hey, grab Soundbite 32.
We just had today.
I'm telling you, there's been a shift.
There has been a shift in strategy from Obama Biden.
You heard, we played the Biden.
I'm not going to play it again.
You heard it.
If you didn't hear it, I'm telling you about it.
It's good as hearing it.
Obama talked about what a decent family man that Paul Ryan is.
And his crowd started booing.
And Obama said, no, no, no.
Nope, nope.
He's a decent guy.
He's a decent family man.
And now Biden, this afternoon in Durham, North Carolina, at a campaign event.
I called and congratulated Congressman Ryan, who's a good guy.
He's a decent guy.
I call to congratulate him.
We both talked about these are stark, stark choices.
The differences couldn't be more clearly laid out through the selection than you're going to hear.
And the American people are going to make a choice.
It comes down to a fundamental different set of values.
It's what we value.
These are good guys, by the way.
No, no, I really mean it.
I think they're decent men.
But they have a different value set than we have.
Now, wait a second here.
So both Obama and Biden are going out of their way to talk about what decent men Romney and Ryan are.
This is, we're not even a week removed from Obama accusing Romney of killing the guy's wife.
That was just last week.
By the way, do you hear Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz claimed that she didn't know the political affiliation of the people that ran the PAC that run the PAC?
Debbie, it's Bill Burton.
It's John Podesta.
It's Democrat.
I didn't know.
I don't know that it's Democrats that run that.
And then she suddenly realized that she did remember that they were Democrats.
Now, what do you think is going on here?
Ryan and Romney are decent guys.
These are really good guys, by the way.
Decent guys.
They both used that term, and Biden really laid it on here.
These are good guys, by the way.
decent men.
Well, some might theorize that there's some polling data that they have that suggested accusing Romney of murder didn't go well with people.
But now with these guys both so prominently talking about what decent guys Romney and Ryan are, what really, they're good guys, they have just undercut every Democrat who plans to go on TV and say the opposite.
They've just undercut, by the way, if you think that that ad with the steel worker accusing Romney of killing his wife, you think that's the only ad of that type, they've gotten a pipeline, you've got another thing coming, I'll bet you they've got a whole series of ads like that ready to roll, already cut, already produced.
Are those ads now neutered?
Ha.
Look at, I don't pretend to be able to explain this other than to say, knowing how unfair and unbalanced the media is, that the next time one of these Romney killed my wife ads runs, the media can say, oh, no, no, Romney and Biden both.
They're decent guys.
Now, they've said it on the record.
This can always be cited as an example of Obama and Biden running a top-drawer, above-the-fray, really decent campaign.
While the negative campaign's being waged elsewhere, Biden and Obama have inoculated themselves.
From that's one thing, I'll leave it up to you to come up with others.
The debate schedule and moderators have been announced.
First presidential debate, October 3rd in Denver, nominated or moderated by Jim O'Lara of PBS.
Far left-wing liberal Democrat.
Town Hall, October 16th, Hempstead, New York, moderated by Candy Crowley of CNN.
Far, far left-wing Democrat mama.
Third presidential debate, October 22nd, not far from here, down in Boca Raton, moderated by Bob Schieffer, far, far left-wing liberal Democrat and dinosaur, correct, and dinosaur.
And the vice presidential debate will be October the 11th in Danville, Kentucky.
And it'll be hosted by Martha Radditz of ABC, far, far left-wing liberal Democrat.
Martha Radditz, where is she?
What do you mean, where is she?
She says ABC.
Oh, who is she?
She's an infobabe at ABC.
What do you mean who she is?
Who is she?
Short blonde hair.
She's, yeah, it could be a thousand.
You'll know her when you see her.
But it's the same old media hacks handling the debates.
And here's Candy Crowley from Saturday morning on CNN's special coverage of Romney's announcement of Paul Ryan.
Not every Republican has signed on to this kind of ⁇ I mean, they will publicly, but there is some trepidation.
I'm afraid that this might be, looks a little bit like some sort of ticket death wish.
That, oh my gosh, do we really want to talk about these things?
Is this where we want to go when the economy is so bad we could have stayed on that?
Yeah, yeah.
She's one of the debate moderators at that town hall.
She's moderating the town hall on October 16th in Hempstead, New York.
And yeah, it's a death wish ticket.
It's a ticket death wish.
Oh my gosh, do we really want to talk about these things?
See, she thinks that putting Ryan on the ticket takes the economy out of play.
I'm sorry.
I think it does just the opposite.
Somebody is going to need to explain to me how putting Paul Ryan on the ticket or having Romney on the ticket with Ryan somehow takes the economy out of play.
It moves it front and center, as Romney and Ryan demonstrated throughout their appearances this weekend.
And how we have an inane media mantra.
We have a montage here Saturday and Sunday, a bunch of mainstream media people describing, and they're all saying the same thing, by the way.
It's now a choice.
Now, see, it's not a referendum.
It was going to be a referendum on Obama.
Romney had set that, but now he's put Paul Ryan on the ticket.
And it's no longer a referendum on Obama.
Because now that Ryan's on the ticket, it's now a choice.
Here, listen and see if this makes any sense to you.
They wanted to make this a referendum on Obama.
Now it's a choice.
Romney has tried to make it a referendum.
Now you have a choice.
Barack Obama wants to do is make this a choice.
Romney wanted to make this a referendum.
It was going to be a referendum.
Now it becomes a much more of a choice.
This is not a referendum election.
This is a choice election.
No longer a referendum on the president.
They now had to move into a choice election.
It makes the election not a referendum on Barack Obama.
Changes the storyline from a referendum on the president to a choice election.
We have a choice and it's no longer a referendum.
Shift the election more toward the choice and away from a referendum.
Isn't this amazing how they all get the same facts?
They get the same talking points.
Every one of these people.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven people, ten people in our montage.
Remember when they Bush put Cheney on the ticket?
It brings gravitas.
Now it's a choice election, not a referendum.
What changed?
Now, look, somebody smarter than I am is going to have to explain this to me.
Would somebody explain to me how in the world this all of a sudden did not become a referendum on Obama?
Well, no, are they thinking that the previous Romney campaign was just to run out there, be a decent guy, nice guy, and talk about what a reprobate Alaos Obama is, how bad the economy is.
But now that we've got Ryan on the ticket, well, we've put an arch conservative up there, and now that there's a conservative on the ticket, oh, no!
Oh, no, the American people hate conservatives as much as we hate conservatives, and so now this is a choice between Obama and a mainstream racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe conservative who, by the way, wants to cut your Medicare.
That's how they look at it.
A conservative on the ticket.
They hate conservatives.
And they think everybody else does as well.
That's the world they live in.
And so, since there's a conservative, I mean, he may as well have added Satan.
And when you put Satan on the ticket, well, that takes everything about Obama off the ticket.
It now becomes a choice between a Messiah and Satan, not a referendum on Messiah.
That's how they think.
This is inane.
They're deluding themselves.
Now, what's next?
Axel Ronda.
Oh, okay.
Excuse me.
We just heard both Obama and Biden talk about the decent guys.
Really, really good guys that Romney and Ryan are.
Really, really decent guys.
But this morning on CBS, David Axelrod was there, and they were talking about Ryan.
And the political director at CBS, John Dickerson, said to Axelrod, I said, David, old buddy Opal, you said that Ryan's a certified right-wing ideologue.
Somebody he works strongly with is Ron Wyden of Oregon.
So how can he work so closely with Wyden and be a right-wing ideologue?
He's a leader of the Tea Party, the intellectual leader of the Tea Party group.
He was one of the leaders in taking our country to the brink of default last summer because he wouldn't accept one extra dollar of taxes on the wealthy.
And then when you go to social issues, he's someone who believes we should make abortion illegal even in cases of rape and incest.
He's a very, very much out of the right wing of the Republican Party.
He's a genius, but his views are quite harsh.
How can you be a genial fellow and be that mean?
How can you be a genial fellow but want to force women into back alleys?
How can you be such a genial fellow and want to cut taxes for the rich and raise taxes on the middle class and the poor?
How can you be a genius fellow and be this extreme?
This kind of a right-wing extremist, a Tea Party type.
How can you be so genial and be so mean at the same time?
Then Axelrod, he added, he tells CBS in this next bite that they're lying.
Everybody's lying about Obama's Medicare cut.
You're repeating what is a misstatement by the Republicans.
I would call it a lie.
The story of Little Red Riding Hood.
And grandma should say, What big lies you have.
We took that money and we extended the length of Medicare by eight years.
Make no mistake about it.
These Republicans don't believe in Medicare.
They want to turn it into a voucher program, and slowly all the burden is going to shift to seniors themselves.
And that is not an answer to entitlement reform.
It is no lie.
Obamacare cuts Medicare by 700.
But not only that, they threw it back and they double-counted it in order to keep it under this mythical $1 billion price tag, which we lost that a long time ago.
Anyway, it's break time, time to go.
Quick timeout, back after this.
By the way, I meant to mention this earlier.
CBS last night did a 15-minute interview with Romney and Ryan, and they left out something very interesting.
Did you know this?
They left out something that Ryan said.
They edited this out.
This thing took place, I think they actually did the interview on Sunday at a furniture factory in Hickory, North Carolina, somewhere.
But this is what did not air.
It has, it's been found, CBS website.
Ryan said, My mom is a Medicare senior in Florida.
Our point is we need to preserve their benefits because government made promises to them that they've organized their retirements around.
Now, in order to make sure we can do that, you must reform it for those of us who are younger and we think these reforms are good reforms.
They have bipartisan origins.
They started from the Clinton Commission in the late 90s.
Now, I want to go back to the three things every voter needs to know about Paul Ryan's Medicare reform plan in 100 words.
And number one is no one over the age of 55 would be affected in any way.
Ryan's mother lives in Florida.
She's a senior on Medicare.
He's not cutting his mother's Medicare.
He said on sick, no, they didn't air that.
They edited that out.
Now, don't you think it's kind of important to put that when you've got people and CBS wanted to leave the impression that Ryan's Medicare cuts are draconian and harmful?
Don't you think if you've got the guy saying, well, my mom's on Medicare in Florida and we need to preserve their benefits?
Government made promises to them.
They've organized their retirements around.
We can't cut that.
Don't you think it'd be kind of important to air that if you really are trying to help America understand who the guy is?
And don't you think that if you edit that out, I'm sure just an oversight, right?
Just like the NBC oversight of editing the 9-11 call, Traybon Martin case.
Yeah, and I'm sure just like CNN plays stupid girls when they're preparing an interview with Palin or when Jimmy Fallon opens up with lying ass BIH, he's going to interview Michelle Bachman.
These are just accidents.
And I'm sure just an accident, right?
That CBS somehow couldn't find room to leave in their 15-minute interview.
Paul Ryan telling the nation that his mom lives in Florida and is on Medicare and that we need to preserve their benefits.
If you don't put that in, Isn't that journalistic malpractice?
Maybe not lying to the American people, but pretty close to it when you're trying to portray Ryan as some guy cutting the program when he said in your own interview he's not.
Hi, and welcome back.
Great to have you here.
All right, let's start putting some pieces together.
So Obama and Biden today talking about Ryan and not even Romney.
Oh, decent guys.
Oh, just really, really good guys.
Now, really decent family guys.
So, this is classic Alinsky.
You go out there, you let the rabble, you let your community organizers, your Robert Gibbs's and Paul Bogales go out there and say the dirty stuff while you take the high road.
So you say, decent guys, really, really decent guys, fine family men.
And then your surrogates go out on television and your pack runs ads and attacks them as genuine reprobates.
And you get to say, look, as far as I'm decent guys, I don't control the pack, as you well know.
And these people on TV, they speak for themselves.
So they get to inoculate themselves.
It's classic Alinsky.
Okay, so let's review.
CBS 60 Minutes edits out does not include Paul Ryan saying, my mom is a Medicare senior in Florida.
Our point is we need to preserve their benefits because government made promises to them that they've organized their retirements around.
And in order to make sure we can do that, you have to reform it for those of us who are younger.
And we think these reforms are good reforms.
They've got bipartisan origins.
They started from the Clinton Commission in the late 90s.
Then you go to the three things every voter needs to know about Ryan's Medicare reform plan in 100 words.
Number one, no one over the age of 55 would be affected in any way.
And by the way, this is not new.
Ryan has said this from the get-go.
Not news to me.
Paul Ryan was never going to cut Medicare for existing retirees or force them into some new plan from the get-go.
The first thing he ever said when he first announced this, the first thing, the first point he made was, we don't change anything for current recipients.
Let's go to the Washington Examiner.
Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that Paul Ryan's Medicare reform would hurt his father who survived lung cancer.
Oh, oh, we got another death here.
This one's going to be on Ryan, Gibbs' dad.
You're going to hand out vouchers to seniors.
You're going to hand out one to my father who's 83, who's a lung cancer survivor.
He has far different medical needs than his former White House staffing son does at 41.
He said that to F. Chuck Todd.
F. Chuck said, but wait, wait, wait, Republicans would say your dad's not going to get that because they wouldn't do anything to his Medicare.
But then Gibbs said that Ryan's lying about that.
I wouldn't trust Republicans on Medicare as far as I could throw them, Gibbs said.
He's a decent man.
He's a decent guy, says Obut.
And Bae's such a decent guy.
Family, here's Gibbs.
I wouldn't trust Ryan.
He's lying about that.
This is how it works.
Number one, three things every voter needs to know.
No one over the age of 55 be affected anyway.
Gibbs, my dad's 83.
He's going to get kicked out of program.
And F. Chuck says, no, no, no, the Republicans would say that you're dead.
They're lying.
They're just lying about it.
Republicans, I wouldn't trust them on Medicare as far as I could throw them.
Hey, Robert, you're going to sit around and let your dad die.
The point is, I don't even want to ask that question because it's not going to happen.
Ryan's mom is on Medicare, a senior in Florida.
She's not going to have any.
There are no Medicaid changes, much less cuts.
They are not going to change anything for current retirees, for current recipients.
But here, I mean, the same day that Obama and Biden, oh, decent guys, decent men, really good family men.
Here's Robert Gibbs.
I wouldn't trust Republicans on Medicare as far as I could throw them.
Ryan's lying about his intentions for Medicare.
Oh, he's going to kick his own mother off of it, huh?
Classic Alinsky 101.
Classic.
Now, the truth.
See, folks, I'm going to tell you something else about this.
Another reason why I was excited, and I've felt like a lone wolf when I read so many people.
See, I welcome this.
We now have a chance.
These guys, Gibbs is the latest example, but it's going to keep going.
It's going to keep in Debbie Washerman Schultz.
All these people are going to keep lying about this.
We've got the architect of the plan who's now the nominee who is going to have all kinds of national media coverage putting the lie to what the Democrats are saying about this.
Substance, ideas, truth.
And even if he weren't the architect of it, he has the ability to explain it because it's in his heart.
He doesn't need a teleprompter to do any public appearance anywhere.
It's in his heart.
It's not on his teleprompter.
I'm talking about Ryan.
That's why I say bring this on.
I am not afraid of any aspect of this.
Now, admittedly, I probably am not the best guy to listen to on being afraid of the media.
I've got a microphone.
If I choose to, I can refute what they say about me.
I also know that they haven't in the mains, in the big picture, they haven't harmed me.
And so I'm not afraid of them.
I don't care what they say about me.
I'm very much in a small club in that regard, too.
Because most people care deeply what the media says about them because most people don't have the opportunity to refute, fight back, or whatever, or don't care, as I do.
So you'll forgive me if I don't have as much patience with people who are afraid of the media.
My naive attitude is, how do we lose?
We have the truth on our side.
And now we got the guy who wrote this whole plan with his mother on the plan, and it isn't changing, and he's the VP.
He's on the ticket.
So an opportunity to expose a major lie being told by Obama and his whole campaign is now ours.
It's just out.
This is a hanging curveball waiting to be knocked out of the park as far as I'm concerned.
Not something to be afraid of.
But again, that's just me.
Ah, looky here.
And Snerdley, I want you to pay attention.
Snerdley's bugging me today.
Snerdley's acting like none of this Medicare stuff matters.
Then all the media has to do is say Ryan wants to cut it and it's over.
You look like this is a lost cause in there.
I know you're worried about it, but don't doubt me.
Look at this.
Roll call.
One of the most prolific fundraisers in Congress, Paul Ryan, has raised nearly $400,000 from retirees this election cycle, dramatically outperforming most House lawmakers.
This is according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Seasoned citizens are giving to this guy more than anybody else in the House.
Why?
So he can cut their Medicare?
Are they stupid?
Well, that's what Obama Biden are going to tell you.
Justin in New York City, I'm glad you waited, Justin.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you so much, Rush.
I'm really enthusiastic about this ticket, and I think that the key words that you said earlier were potential and opportunity.
And you talked about a hanging pitch just before about the CBS 60 Minutes scandal last night, really.
And my question is really just about the proper follow-up to all this, you know, that this weekend can't be it.
You know, they need to follow up about this interview last night.
Seems like a perfect way to do it with a smile and put it in the stump speeches and send it to media outlets, maybe even put out some viral videos.
Here's what CBS wanted you not to see.
And then follow that up with blanketing the media with other interviews because this is a race, and it's about who's going to be defining the narrative and who's going to define Ryan first.
And as we know from what happened last night, the media doesn't want people to see Ryan.
They might just like him.
I don't know if Ryan will say, now, I've told Bob Schieffer at CBS, but they didn't air this portion of the interview and then run in and make the point about his mother or if he'll just say it.
But I can guarantee you this.
Whether he talks about what happened on the 60 Minutes interview or not, his mother will be a focal point of every stump speech on Medicare.
It will be in the first five or six paragraphs.
My mother is on Medicare in Florida.
He'll say exactly to his audiences what he said to CBS that they cut out.
Now, whether he says CBS didn't air this, whether he goes after CBS, I don't know.
I don't know what their strategy is going to be on trying to keep the media honest, but I know his mother and her circumstance will be a feature of his stump speech.
No question about it.
Well, they don't need to attack 60 Minutes.
It just seems like a little fun thing that can go viral about here's what CBS, you know, and it doesn't have to be from Ryan or Romney themselves.
It could be from other people.
But I guess the point I'm really trying to get to is about the follow-up in terms of having, you know, 60 Minutes last night, that can't be it.
I mean, they need to be saturating the airways with other, you know, major interviews, you know, this week, next week, because the Democrats are going to do this immediately.
I mean, they're already out today from not even the Super PAC, but the Obama campaign has an ad in Florida targeting seniors about Medicare.
The last I saw about the new ad from the Romney campaign, it's about welfare.
I mean, and what Obama did with that.
That's fine, but where's the follow-up?
You know, where are the other interviews?
Where are the ads from Romney?
Where's the full court press to shape the narrative on Medicare and these other issues?
Well, it's only day three here.
You sound like Snerdley.
Well, only because the Democrats are going to be, the Democrats were out there Saturday morning with this.
They're out there again today, and it's a race.
I'm not saying I'm concerned.
Well, Ryan's not sitting in the easy chair with his feet on a footstool.
He's out there in Iowa, too.
Look, I know what you're saying, but if these guys, if I'm hearing you right, if you want them to every day correct what's in the media about them, that isn't going to happen.
They'd have time for nothing else.
I mean, if you want them to specifically say, you know, they lied about me yesterday on CBS, or they left something out about me on CBS, man.
I'm going to tell you what it was.
I think they're going to get the message across without seeming defensive about the media.
It's not manly to run out there and complain about how the media is treated.
It just doesn't get you anything.
It just doesn't.
But they'll get it done in a number of other ways.
I'm pretty confident about it.
I mean, we're helping here.
I'm not exactly a potted plant saying this.
We're doing what we can.
I appreciate your concern, and I think they have it.
I think they're well up to speed on how to deal with this.
That's one of the benefits I think of having Ryan on the ticket.
Gets this stuff.
He knows it full-fledged.
Okay, folks.
Sadly, we have come to the end of the program for today.
But that's okay because there's always tomorrow.
And it's a mere 21 hours from now.
Sit tight, be cool, be calm.
Everything's on track, and we will continue.
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