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Aug. 16, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
August 16, 2012, Thursday, Hour #2
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Time Text
That's right.
The home state of Aaron Rodgers, Ryan Braun, Scott Walker, Aaron Rodgers, me.
All right, we've run out of famous people from Wisconsin.
I'm going to open this.
I don't know if this is a smart thing to do.
Is it?
Well, Rush was talking about it, so that gives me the right to talk about it.
I'm going to talk about CNN for a minute.
It's like talking about a national irrelevancy.
Solidatte O'Brien is giving an interview in which she's denying that she's a liberal.
Soledad O'Brien is one of those CNN people.
You still remember CNN?
It was once an important network.
Soledad O'Brien was guest hosting for Anderson Cooper on his program, Anderson Cooper 36 or 3600 or 360 or whatever it is.
So right from the start, I do sympathize with Soledad O'Brien a little bit.
As a guest host myself, I understand that when you are guest hosting, you're held to a different standard than the host, who one assumes isn't going to make mistakes.
Anyway, Soledad O'Brien was guest hosting on Anderson Cooper's program and was interviewing Barbara Comstock, who's a campaign advisor for the Romney campaign.
And as she was doing the interview, you could see her flipping through copy from the Talking Points, Talking Points memo, which is a liberal website.
Rush criticized her for it.
Now, I'm not going to speak for Rush here, but Rush and others drew attention to the fact that here she is using a liberal memo to throw questions at a liberal guest.
Solinette O'Brien has given an interview to the Hollywood Reporter.
How they got this story, I don't know, in which she denies being a liberal, and she has an explanation for why she was flipping through Talking Points memo.
She responds to Rush's comments by, in which Rush points out that she didn't attribute anything there at all.
She said, editorially, I was not reading off the Talking Points memo.
The memo had an accurate verbatim quote of what Senator Ron Wyden said, and when I was talking to Ms. Comstock, she was saying something that was patently untrue.
O'Brien also answered critics who complained what they perceived to be a left-wing bias in her reporting.
Quote, I don't think I show bias on my TV show.
I think I am aggressive with people about trying to find the facts behind what they say.
Am I a liberal or a conservative?
I'm neither.
First of all, no one who is a conservative ever denies being a conservative.
Every conservative I know, when you ask, are you a conservative?
They say, yes, I'm a conservative.
Someone asks me, are you a conservative?
Yes, I'm a conservative.
You're not one of those right-wingers.
No, I, in fact, am a conservative.
Every conservative I know not only admits it, they're proud of it, and they brag of it.
The only people who deny their political ideology are liberals.
Am I a liberal?
No, I'm not a liberal.
The instant you hear someone denying that they're a liberal, it means they are a liberal.
She continues, like most Americans, I find politics very frustrating.
Like most Americans, I'd like to hear from politicians the facts.
That is what drives me.
Then she comments on an exchange she had with John Sununa, the former governor of New Hampshire, on Tuesday.
Sununa was so frustrated with the line of questioning that he told her, quote, put an Obama sticker on your forehead when you do this.
O'Brien said she took offense to Sununa's assertion that she was biased and accused him of name-calling and so on.
Here's the problem with Soledad O'Brien, with Anderson Cooper, and in general, with CNN.
Everybody knows where Fox News is coming from.
Most of their talk programming is from the right.
They claim that their newscasts are unbiased, but they certainly give a fair airing to the conservative side.
So they are perceived to be a conservative network.
And their ratings are booming because conservatives feel this is the only place they can trust to go for their news.
In the meantime, you have MSNBC out there on the fringe left.
Everything they do is liberal, and that's where the liberals go for their news.
CNN is also liberal, but pretends that it is moderate.
So if you're a liberal, are you going to watch the liberal outfit, MSNBC, or are you going to watch the one that denies being liberal, CNN?
In other words, there's no niche left for CNN.
They pass themselves off as this centrist organization that doesn't take sides and is just presenting things right down the middle.
If that was what they were, they would have a larger audience.
There is a market for that, but it's not what they are.
No one I know who's conservative thinks that CNN is moderate.
They all think that CNN is liberal.
So where is CNN going with this?
They're like liberal light.
They're liberals for the liberals who can't stand to watch Rachel Maddow, I guess.
There's no niche there at all.
And as for some of the commentators and interviewers on CNN suddenly getting tougher, I think they're being driven by fiction.
There's this show on HBO now that Aaron Sorkin does called, what is it, Newsnight or whatever?
Newsroom, that's what it's called.
Now, I've got a problem with this show.
I'm going to admit to something here.
I like Aaron Sorkin's stuff.
I actually, yes, I do.
I watched The West Wing, which was this thing set in the White House with supposedly the kind of president all liberals wish they actually could have.
A liberal who had some integrity.
The liberal bias in that show was nauseating, but it wasn't a bad show.
The acting wasn't bad.
So I watched it.
I loved The Social Network.
That's the movie that he made about the founding of Facebook.
I thought it was a great movie.
Helped me understand the whole thing.
I didn't like the point of view that he had, but I thought it was a good movie.
He had a show on TV maybe 10 years ago that was kind of a version of ESPN that was a good show.
So I like his stuff.
So I've watched Newsroom.
It is terrible.
I mean, it is numbingly awful to the point that I've stopped watching.
They're passing this thing off as a successful cable news operation in which they seek the truth, which mostly consists of going after and knocking down conservatives.
In reality, there's no market for that type of programming because it exists everywhere.
They act as though they're doing something novel by running a news program that pursues what they perceive as the truth, which in fact is nothing more than ripping into conservatives, ripping into the Tea Party, ripping into anybody who has a viewpoint that's right of center.
In fact, that's what the entire media is.
Anyway, people like Solitaire Brian are watching this show, and I think they're trying to be what's going on in Newsroom.
Before I go back to the calls, there's another television story I need to do.
The biggest debut in the history of cable television occurred on TNT on Monday night with the television program Major Crimes.
7.2 million people viewed it.
The most popular news series on cable TV this year, according to TNT, there's a big asterisk on this.
Major Crimes is the sequel to a show called The Closer, which had its final episode ever Monday night right before major crimes.
The difference between the closer and major crimes is the closer has Kira Sedgwick in it.
Major Crimes does it.
Otherwise, it's the same cast, the same setup, the same directors, the same set, the same everything.
I don't know how many of Russia's audience watch the closer.
Snirdly, did you watch the closer?
You didn't watch the closer.
Anybody at the closer?
The closer?
It's like one of the greatest shows ever, and Kira Sedgwick was great.
Major crimes, doing a show, The Closer without Kira Sedgwick, is like the Rush Limbaugh program without.
No, I'm not going to say it.
It's not like the Rush Limbaugh Program without Rush.
It just isn't going to work.
The show isn't any good.
You kept waiting for her to come on screen and she wasn't there.
1-800-282-2882 is, you know, this show is starting to sound like Open Line Friday, which is tomorrow and not.
Who is doing the program tomorrow?
Doug Urbanski.
His first name isn't Mark.
Doug's done the show a couple of times.
Doug Urbanski will be in tomorrow.
Right now, 1-800-282-2882 is the phone number.
Let's go to the phones in Big Rapids, Michigan.
Pamela, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hello, Mark.
I just want to say that so many, you know, yourself and others are filling the airways lately, especially today, with how Obama hates successful people and corporations that make money.
But it seems to me that everyone is, you know, everyone saying that or working for Obama because it's impossible for me to believe that you don't remember that the first two and a half years of his presidency, he was bailing out all the corporations that had misappropriated funds, investors' funds, while they took vacations and multi-million dollar trips and partied with that bailout money.
What are you implying here?
And he hates corporations now.
No, I said he hates successful corporations.
Who does the bailout?
The bailout money goes to every loser business that exists.
He bailed out General Motors.
He bailed out Wall Street institutions.
He gave money to every wind and solar company under the map.
As long as you are unsuccessful, Barack Obama and the liberals love you.
But they can't stand as businesses that are successful.
One of the reasons why the stimulus program didn't work is that we spent so much money throwing money at corporations that made products that no one wanted.
Meaning, once the stimulus money dried up, we were still nowhere.
Solyra went under because Cylindra was in an industry that does not have a real market for its products.
Obama loves to give money to an auto company that's going under.
He loved to give money to the Wall Street banks that were going under.
And in some instances, I understand that we had to keep the economy moving.
And you can debate whether or not we would have had a fiscal calamity if we would have allowed all these institutions to go under.
But to say that Obama loves corporations because he's in favor of all of these bailouts, what Obama loves to do is hand out welfare.
He would never allow stimulus money to go to successful businesses.
You know, it's not in him.
By the way, she brings that up.
How does John Corzine get it?
Is it Corzine or Corzine?
Corzine.
John Corzine.
Former everything.
Senator from New Jersey, governor of New Jersey, former head of Goldman Sachs.
He took over MF Global.
How much money did they lose?
$100 billion?
Was it a billion?
Lost it all.
Companies going under.
The feds are investigating, and apparently, there are going to be no charges filed against Corzine, who is a good Democrat.
None of these Wall Street guys are ever held accountable for their screw-ups.
While I am a defender of the free market, I am not a defender of these large Wall Street brokerages and investment firms that go out there and play with money as if it were candy and then the instant that things go bad, presume that they're going to be saved by the government of the United States because they're, quote, too big to fail.
If they're too big to fail, they're probably just too big.
Look at the language that they use.
Well, MF Global failed because it made a big bet on European bonds.
Bet?
The language that these hedge funds use, bet.
Oh, they've got a bet on housing, got a bet on this, a bet on that.
How about an investment?
I think the whole area of Wall Street and finance in this country has gotten to be too large.
I think that you've got investment houses that are playing with other people's money, yet they're saying they're using money that's from their own account.
I don't think that they ought to be allowed to do it, and I do think that we do need to downsize a lot of them.
Anyway, Corzine's not going to get any jail time, and he's now saying that he'd like to start a hedge fund.
Who would invest money with him?
Where's that capital going to come from?
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Do you talk like this to Rush?
Bo Snardley is arguing with me about my, you do talk like this to Rush.
I'm pretty sure you talk however you want to whomever you want.
Who are you to say that the government of the United States can tell any business that they're too big?
Well, here's the problem with that.
If we're going to bail them out every time they flop, then we've got a vested interest in making sure that they don't continue to make stupid decisions.
My problem with the banks is that they have FDIC insurance and the ones that don't, the big investment banks, every single time they have a hiccup, we're terrified that there's going to be a Great Depression because all of these bonds are intertwined with one another.
I do think we have a right to say that businesses that are in one area shouldn't be in another.
I don't think they should be trading for their own account.
Whether that means bringing back Glass-Steagall or not, if you've got billions and billions of dollars in investor money and you're now going to play with house money and you don't differentiate between the two, you're setting up a problem.
There wouldn't be a need for us to be taking a tougher stand with the big Wall Street firms if they weren't constantly making decisions that threaten the economy.
I don't believe that the government ought to be running around policing businesses, but if we're going to every single time an MF Global or a Lehman Brothers or a J.P. Morgan Chase makes a terrible decision that threatens their stability, be terrified that it's going to bring down the entire country, we've got to question what kind of a role we have with them.
Furthermore, it's the Democrats that enable the big Wall Street firms because most of the people who run them are liberal politicians.
Jamie Dimon's a big Democrat.
John Corzine's a big Democrat.
People perceive Wall Street as being this avenue of Republicanism, and it's not.
Look at how the whole credit crunch occurred in the first place.
It was all government manipulating in the market and then government having to step in to stop the market that it manipulated in from being completely distorted.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae got involved in guaranteeing subprime mortgages.
This became a product that therefore everybody was making money on.
So the Wall Street firms created derivatives to match the subprime mortgages.
They all go under.
We all then have to step in and make sure that the entire American economy doesn't collapse.
Some businesses can't do it.
There's a reason that we don't allow doctors to do dental work.
There's a reason why there's a reason why you don't go to a plumber if you want to put in a new floor.
They're doing too many things.
There are restrictions that we should put in place with some of these businesses.
You know, you ask, when has the government ever said that you're too big?
We did bust up ATT.
People will argue that forever, but I do know that the technology revolution started after that occurred.
Do you remember how much it cost to make a long-distance call when ATT had a monopoly?
Costs a lot.
I think if J.P. Morgan Chase had a banking division that was separate from the big brokerage division, which was separate from the investment banking division, we wouldn't have to be terrified that these institutions are going to screw up.
Right now, we're worried about how many of them are tied into European bonds.
If the Euro collapses, if Greece goes down, if Spain goes down, if Italy goes down, is it going to screw up all of these banks and therefore bring all of them down?
And they've got all this other, everything's so intertwined right now.
If we've got this fear that something is too big to fail, I keep going back to, we have to start asking questions about whether or not it's too big.
I'm right about this.
Let's go to Amanda in Indianapolis, Indiana.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Darling.
Hey, I just wanted to make an observation about the media spin regarding the vice president presidential candidates.
You know, when Paul Ryan came on the Romney ticket, the media threw their hands up in the air and said, that's it.
He's admitted.
He cannot win.
And when he loses this election, he is going to blame it on the extreme radical conservative that is Paul Ryan.
And that was the end of it.
But then we have Joe Back and Chains Biden here clearly making all sorts of gaps on the media.
And the media says, well, he didn't mean that.
That was a metaphor.
I mean, he clearly meant something different.
Well, they have to do that.
And he thinks that's a clear contrast.
They have practice at apologizing for idiot Democratic vice presidents.
I mean, Gore did the same thing.
I invented the internet.
Remember when Al Gore said that he and Tipper were the model for Eric Siegel's love story?
So now Biden coming around, they just go back into the same default mode.
You do wonder, though, the media members that are assigned to Joe Biden, which has got to be bad duty.
Nothing important ever occurs, just a lot of screw-ups.
What they think every time he says one of these things.
The point, though, that you raise about the impact on the ticket itself, I think right now Paul Ryan is an asset to Romney because it makes the Romney campaign look serious, committed, and issue-oriented.
And Biden is, I think, a detriment to the Obama campaign.
The fact of the matter is that every Republican in America would be afraid if Biden was dumped and someone like Hillary Clinton was put on the ticket.
Again, I don't want to give them any ideas here, but I think Biden is a real drag right now on Obama.
My name is Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I mentioned on yesterday's show that a district judge in the state of Pennsylvania upheld their voter ID law, photo identification for voting.
It's going to be appealed to a higher court.
And my guess is: see, all of these appeals are being timed to put the laws on hold.
And this is going on in a lot of states, including my own, Wisconsin, where our own voter ID law is being tied up in the courts, so that photo ID for voting isn't in effect for the November election.
One of the things to watch, though, is that none of these appeals and none of these cases are being filed in federal court.
They're all being filed in state court.
Why?
The United States Supreme Court has already upheld voter ID law in a case, I think, from Ohio.
And because they're on record as upholding it there, they're clearly going to uphold all of these other laws.
So what the ACLU and the liberal organizations are trying to do is challenge them in state courts where they have Democratic justices on these reviewing courts where they can put the thing on hold there.
Eventually, all of these photo ID for voting laws are going to be upheld.
The goal of the left is to have as many of them as possible, though, on hold for this election.
The reason they'll be upheld is that there's nothing onerous about the requirement.
We long ago.
Jumped over the hurdle that says that you need to show a photo identification to do things in America.
You need to show a photo identification to do almost anything here.
What photo ID does is make vote fraud harder.
Since only one side cheats, the Democrats, that's why they're against photo identification for voting.
Let's go to the phones.
Peg in Brookfield, Ohio.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Mark Belling.
Hi, thank you.
It's such a pleasure to speak with you.
We live next to Warren, Ohio, and Paul Ryan just buzzed through our town with the security entourage, and I missed him, but I was able to hang around afterwards and feel the excitement in the place.
The media was still there, and it was just such a pleasure.
We are in a Democratic type of stronghold here in Northeastern Ohio, and it's such a wonderful thing when somebody that is fiscally responsible comes through and makes a good impression.
We have a president now who is good at one thing, and that is spending other people's money.
And to have two such fiscally responsible people on the ticket is a thrill to me.
I want to go back to something that you said, Peg.
You said that you got there after he spoke, but you felt the excitement in the crowd.
Give me a little bit more of what you mean by that.
How did you, what sense did you have that the crowd was excited or what did you mean by that?
Well, there were, a lot of the females were talking about how good looking and how thin he was.
I got a chance to speak with one of the people that interviewed him, actually on WFMJ here in Youngstown.
And she was saying, you know, that it was just he was a nice person.
He came and he ordered a hot dog.
And he was speaking with a young man who gave, you know, it was his birthday and he was just very, very amenable to people.
The reason I asked that question.
I don't think he got into any political type of political.
Yeah, the reason I asked the question is, as I mentioned on the show yesterday, I know Ryan.
I've known him since he first ran for Congress in 1998.
His district is right in the heart of my listening area.
He represents the southern part of Milwaukee County and then a few other counties in our listening area, Racine, Kenosha, Walworth, Rock counties.
I've watched him his entire political career.
He's very, very good at the politics part of it.
And I think that that's something that maybe the national media isn't aware of.
They know of Paul Ryan as the policy wonk.
He's the guy that has written the plans.
He came up with the blueprint.
He came up with the tax reform plan.
He's the guy that has the Medicare and Social Security reform plans.
He's got all these ideas.
He's a wonk.
He's kind of a little bit of a nerd.
I think that that misses the essence of Ryan.
He's the whole, he's the real deal.
He's got the whole package.
He's very, very good with people, and there's a genuineness about him.
You not only don't have to worry that he's ever going to be in over his head on anything, he's got this ability and style that makes it easy for him to relate to people.
I mean, he represents a district that's classic swing, often votes for Democrats in presidential elections, but he keeps winning big back home.
And even when the liberals have turned on him, nothing's ever really stuck because people like him.
The politics part of this is real.
He's a very, very good candidate.
And the more people in the country see him, the more they're going to like him.
The other part of Ryan, and I think that this is a really, really important point to make, is that he's got that ability to talk about conservative issues with a smile and to present them in a positive way.
It's the same ability that Rush has.
Nobody wants to hear somebody constantly scolding them and offering a message of nothing but gloom and doom.
Ryan, like Rush, like for that matter, Reagan, has this ability to present conservative issues in a way in which they're telling you that if you do it the way that I want to do it, better days are ahead.
Ryan's not a guy who says the world is coming to an end.
He says that we're facing terrible problems if we don't change, but that we do have the ability to turn it around.
Even on the campaign trail after Romney chose him, he kept saying, we can do this.
We can turn this around.
We're going to be honest with the American people.
We're going to tell them the truth.
But we can turn it around.
That sense of optimism is critical in presenting a conservative message.
And when you think of some of the conservative politicians who've been out there who've created a backlash, Pap Buchanan sometimes, even Gingrich, oftentimes moderate voters, the people who aren't strongly ideological, they've been turned off by that approach.
They think that it's too harsh, that it's too negative.
The party of no, that's what the Republicans have been called.
You're not going to get that from Ryan.
He's always cheerful.
Out on the campaign trail, he's got the smile, kind of that awesh demeanor.
He's very good politically.
As I said, I've been watching him his entire political career.
People are going to like him.
And it's much harder to demonize someone, to say that he's this terrible, awful right-wing extremist, when you come across as positively as Ryan.
He's got the right style for this.
And I think that his selection is going to work not just in the political, not just in the terms of the policy dimension that he brings, but it's also going to work because people are going to like him as a person and as a candidate.
To Karen in Mesa, Arizona.
Karen, you're on the Russian Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark.
My question is concerning Biden's remarks about Mitt's going to unchain Wall Street.
And my question to Biden is, who is it that's refusing to chain Wall Street?
Last week we had the Department of Justice saying that they weren't going to prosecute Goldman Sachs.
Today they say they're not going to prosecute MF Global.
I was reading a blog on American Thinker today.
There have been, if you want to compare Bush, Clinton, and Obama on their Wall Street prosecutions, there have been 1,300 prosecutions, Wall Street convictions under Bush.
Under Clinton, there were 1,000 Wall Street convictions.
Under Obama, there have been zero attempts.
You know, the point that you're making is a really good one.
When you hear O'Biden, Obama and Biden talking about the financial industry and talking about the excesses on Wall Street, they act like they're not in charge of things.
They're running the government of the United States.
It's under their watch that the MF Global thing occurred.
It's under their watch that their buddy Jamie Dimon over at JPMorgan Chase managed to lose a fortune in bank money.
All of this stuff is happening while they are there.
The thing that's so upsetting about the MF Global story, whether or not any crimes are committed or not, I don't know because I don't know the federal laws in that regard.
What I do know is this.
We have Sarbanes Oxley that holds the CEOs accountable for just about everything that happens.
Sarbanes-Hox Oxley has terrified American businesses and has been a major disincentive to invest in our country because the hoops and regulations that you have to go through in order to do anything in this country are really, really severe.
None of those rules ever seem to apply when it comes to the big investment houses that are running around taking all of this money and treating as if they're own.
There was a transfer of funds at MF Global in which investor money was used to pay back money that was lost when they invested for their own account.
Now, again, I don't know that that's criminal behavior, but it sure seems like there's very little accountability when these really, really large institutions, mostly New York-based, are running around taking reckless actions with the money.
You're right about the point with regard to unshackling the banks and so on.
If Biden and Obama were serious about this, they'd be pursuing some policy changes that make it harder for financial institutions to be making reckless decisions that affect the economy.
Well, what's unseemly about this is that in this blog, the whole DOJ, the Department of Justice, is stacked with lawyers from all of the law firms that represent all of these firms, these Wall Street firms.
And there are.
Every time that Obama goes is looking for a financial advisor, he goes to Wall Street.
I mean, Geithner was really a Wall Street guy.
There's a revolving door that goes back and forth there.
I think the conservatives make a mistake when they carry water for the large financial institutions because it's really the liberals that they've been in bed with the most.
I just think that when you have an industry that is so integral to the United States of America that we're terrified that they fail, we've got to take at least a somewhat aggressive stance toward their reckless decisions.
And I don't think that that's a failing of Republicans.
It's been under Obama's watch that you've had this situation with places like MF Global.
Thank you for the call.
I appreciate it.
My name is Mark Belling.
I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Let's talk a little politics here.
There are some people who think that the Romney campaign is making a mistake by spending so much time on the Medicare issue.
There's clearly a winning issue out there for the Republicans, and that's the state of the economy, and in particular, the terrible unemployment rate that we have.
So why are they changing the subject and spending so much time on Medicare?
That's a fair question.
If we're to go back to the brilliant campaign advice of James Carville in 1992, remember the campaign slogan that Clinton had?
It's the economy, stupid.
Even though the economy was recovering by then, the recession was in 91, not 92, Clinton kept driving that we had a terrible economy, terrible economy, terrible economy, and that he understood they focused on it.
They were obsessed on that.
They made it almost a single-issue campaign.
And that lesson hasn't been lost on a lot of other candidates.
If you've got a bad economy, you would think that the Republicans would only be focusing on it.
So why bring up Medicare?
Why focus on Ryan's plan?
Why put on the ticket someone whose presence on the ticket is going to raise questions about another issue, especially one that the Democrats want to talk about, which is Medicare?
I think it's a fair question, but I think that there is an answer to it.
Kyle Rove has a column in the Wall Street Journal today.
Y'all know Carl, chief political advisor to Bush, pundit out there.
He's now the guiding force behind a couple of super PACs.
He says that Romney is doing this because it would have been raised anyway.
I think what the Romney ticket is doing is working.
They were going to be attacked on the Medicare issue without regard to whether the running mate was Ryan, Rubio, Portman, Polenti, anybody.
Because Romney has said that he's generally supportive of the Ryan plan.
They were going to go after him on the Medicare part of the plan, and he was going to be attacked on it.
How do we know this?
Because every election the Democrats rip the Republicans on Medicare.
They always say that the Republicans are going to destroy Medicare.
What Romney has done here is go on the offensive on the issue.
They're saying we want the debate.
They're trying to force attention on what their plan is.
They want to lay it out so that they can define it before the Democrats define it.
Ryan's plan says that anyone who is under the age of 55 will have the option when they get to retirement age, 65 and over, to either stay on the current type of Medicare or go to a new system that gives them cash to go out and buy private insurance on the private market.
Anyone 55 and over, anyone over the age of 55, will be able to stay on current Medicare, that none of these changes occur for 10 years.
They believe that once people realize that regular Medicare will be available to everyone over the age of 55 and that no current recipients will be affected, that it's going to make the program easier to sell.
They're also counting on the notion that people under the age of 55 are terrified that if we don't do something, Medicare is going to be gone and that they are open to this opportunity.
They're open to the idea that somebody has come up with a plan that might save it.
By combining this with the attacks on Obama's own diversion of over $700 billion in Medicare funding to pay for Obamacare, they think that they can get the upper hand on the issue.
The old cliché, the best defense is a good offense, or the best offense is a good defense.
You can play that one either way.
What they're trying to do here is define the Medicare issue on their terms, knowing that the attack was coming.
Let me quote you two paragraphs from Rove's column.
Some Republicans worry that fighting about Medicare takes valuable time from talking about jobs, growth, and deficits.
True, but this fight was coming anyway.
Better to debate it now in ways the Romney campaign can control rather than see it raised in the campaign's final moments through under-the-radar robocalls and mailers to seniors by Democrats.
It is said that in politics, if you're explaining, you're losing.
That's not always true.
Sometimes when you're explaining, you're reassuring voters and undermining your opponent's credibility.
That's the case with this issue now.
It's why Team Romney was smart to quickly run an ad attacking Obama for robbing Medicare to pay for Obamacare.
Democrats have long had an issue advantage on Medicare.
Republicans cowered in fear.
This time, it's different.
The Romney-Ryan ticket is not only talking about Medicare, it is putting Obama on the defensive.
If Republicans succeed, politics will never be the same.
Now, whether you think Kyle Rove is a brilliant strategist or not, that is his argument, that the Republicans have an opportunity here to say, we're the ones trying to save Medicare.
Obama doesn't have a plan to save it.
We all know that it's going to go bust.
We all know that there isn't enough money to pay for Medicare as we know it when all the baby boomers are retired.
We have a plan.
We want to save it.
He's the guy that's taking money out of it.
I think this is going to work.
If they stick to their guns on this, it can work.
And I'm telling you, there's nobody who does a better job of explaining this than Ryan himself.
I'm Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
The left, as I was saying before the break, always uses the issue of Medicare to scare seniors.
The thing of it is, Medicare right now is scary.
I've got a column from Michael Tanner that I found in the New York Post.
According to Medicare's trustees, the program ran a combined deficit of more than $288 billion last year.
Going forward, the most optimistic estimate puts Medicare's future unfunded liabilities at more than $38.6 trillion.
More realistic projections suggest the shortfall could actually top $90 trillion.
To put this in perspective, the total wealth of every American earning more than $1 million totals roughly $11 trillion.
So we could confiscate every penny belonging to every millionaire and billionaire in America and still cover less than a third of Medicare's red ink.
When you think about this, when you see the time bomb of the baby boomers going on to Medicare, we've got to understand that the program has to be reformed or we're not going to have it at all.
We become grace.
We have no social safety net.
Obama offers no answers here.
Whether you agree with the proposal or not, Romney and Ryan are offering a way out of the Medicare problem.
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