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Aug. 20, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:28
August 20, 2012, Monday, Hour #2
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Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen.
Dougabanski for Rush Limbaugh.
The telephone number is 1-800-282-2882.
New York Times today has the story.
GOP packaging seeks to reveal a warm Romney.
What if he was actually already warm?
I'm just asking, why does he need packaging?
And why does the New York Times seem to think that it's packaging?
It's all fake, it's all flimsy, it's all on the surface.
That what Romney is going for.
The one who needs the packaging, well, we covered it in the last hour.
As if they're not fighting about how to package Obama each and every day.
So the New York Times goes on, and I love this line in the story.
The campaign aides, this is of Romney, are determined to overcome perceptions that Romney is stiff, aloof, and distant.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have never found him stiff, aloof, or distant.
We've been told all kinds of things about this guy.
He's distant.
He doesn't connect with women.
They have tried everything on for size.
I have found him to be very good and natural in many ways.
Could he spiff up the act a little better?
Yes, I think there are a few pointers that could be given.
I say from the perspective of a Hollywood producer.
But actually, the perceptions that he's stiff are invented constructs.
They're part of the psyops mechanism I discussed with you earlier.
So, and then the New York Times spends some time putting down the value of conventions.
You can bet as we move into these conventions, you know exactly what you're going to get.
And I'm excited for it.
I'm excited for it.
What Obama's got to do in his convention is the thing that they're desperately trying to do, which is to fire up their base.
They've got to do it.
That's what the famous lines you didn't do it on your own are all about.
That's what these outrageous lines are.
The base for Obama has no passion left.
The passion is gone.
The passion for Obama's base is gone.
So we're certainly very shortly going to have these conventions.
I love them because I'm a political junkie as you are.
And I will love the debates as well.
Have you been following this debate story?
The National Association of Black Journalists said on Friday that the Commission on Presidential Debates needed to stop treating black reporters as if they were unqualified, invisible, or both.
The group said that diversity was important in a year in which as much as a quarter of the electorate is expected to be non-white.
Now, I want to echo my agreement with them.
We may mean two different things by diversity, but I want to echo my agreement because by diversity, there's no room for diversity of thought.
I have nothing against the idea of having people of different races be the moderators.
Of course not.
What I'm interested in, however, is who they are, what their thought process is.
I was appalled as you were appalled to learn that the debate moderators were going to be Jim Lehrer from PBS, Candy Crowley from CNN, Bob Schieffer from CBS, and Martha Raditz from ABC.
Every single one of them is a liberal from a liberal news operation.
There's no Fox represented.
There's no Wall Street Journal represented.
And are we meant to believe that they're going to go up there and put on the disguise of impartiality?
You and I know that messages get conveyed in all kinds of ways on television.
The raising of an eyebrow, the tipping of a head, the nod.
The people who appear on television regularly understand how all this works.
So we've got a system that's 20, 30 more years old of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather.
We might as well still have them there.
Ask.
Look, we saw how it worked during the Republican primary season.
None of us liked it.
I don't know why the Republicans submit themselves to this stuff.
I mean, I've watched Bob Schieffer the other night with Romney and Ryan asking some incredibly unintelligent questions about why the rich are paying so little in taxes.
So Schieffer has his silly questions on 60 Minutes.
They're stunningly banal, stunningly consistent with the fact that the thing you always see from people on the left, including some intelligent people, is a total lack of intellectual curiosity, a lack of intellectual honesty.
They do not want to get to the truth of the matter ever.
Then you have Candy Crowley.
She was out there saying that the nomination of Paul Ryan in the VP slot was a death wish.
That should have caused her to recuse herself almost immediately.
But of course, a lib never recuses themselves, do they?
So who decides who the people are in these debates?
I mean, it always frustrates me.
I mean, isn't it obvious that any journalist who's made the sort of remark that Candy Crowley has made should automatically, automatically go?
So, you're going to have Romney campaign.
The Romney campaign, the Republicans are allowing the left to control the debates.
Maybe this means, just maybe, that they're very prepared, that Romney will dazzle, that they can throw the charge, the obvious charge.
Maybe the public who is watching will be very offended by the bias.
Stop and think about this for a moment.
It could very well fire up the conservative base.
You could very well be offended by the bias of the liberal questioners.
Think about that for a moment.
Now, if it starts to look like Obama's been handed the questions in advance, and trust me, it may look like that for a while.
They don't need to have a meeting about this stuff.
They don't need to have faxes going back and forth because they know the areas that are the safe zone with each other and the wink and the nod that they consider to be his safe zone.
They will ask Romney anything controversial.
There will be no hard questioning of the president, President Obama.
So these events, moderated, so-called moderated in quotation marks by the old mainstream media lapdogs are actually called debates.
They are no more debates than they are propaganda forums.
And maybe that's what you'll see through this.
They are propaganda trials in a way based with questions that are framed in a way to reinforce false ideas and false notions, hoping that their voter base, which is the ignorant largely, this is an election, as I've said to you prior, that depends upon the stupid and the naive.
That is what they're counting on.
That you're not paying too much attention to the facts.
So they would like to reinforce these false ideas upon the ignorant about an ideology that does not give you the details.
For me, I would like to see us rid ourselves of this disgrace of this debate system.
And I do not understand, maybe you do, why the Republicans agree to this, why they put up with this nonsense.
For my part, I would drive a much harder bargain.
Do you remember the Gingrich-Herman Kane debate?
I thought that that was an interesting one because Gingrich and Kane were doing it in the sort of Lincoln Douglas style.
And we learned more about the men from their humor, from their perspectives, when they actually spoke about issues.
You couldn't really get too much fluff, too much diversionary tactics in play in a debate like that.
But when you've got leftist moderators automatically going and Romney is seeding half of his time in any segment merely to disentangle what the question is, because the questions tossed at him will be entirely slanted.
And Obama will be able to talk about whatever he wants to talk about.
Now, if I were advising Mitt Romney and I'm not, I would urge him not just to prepare for the debates in the way that they are.
Get his facts, his figures, his presentations, his smiles, his demeanor, his relaxed demeanor, his tone, his timbre, his jokes, all that will be in play.
Of course it will.
But I would concentrate very hard on studying how the president, how Barack Obama debates.
Because this man has several fascinating qualities.
He is thin-skinned.
He is bothered by things people say to him.
I guarantee you, at some point in the debates, you will hear Obama say, you know, I want to go back to something my opponent said a little while ago.
When someone says that in a debate, take it from me.
They know they've lost the debate.
Watch for the code.
You're smiling in there.
If you say it, I'll say it again.
If you say, I want to go back to something my opponent said a little while ago, you're off track.
You've lost control of yourself.
You've lost control of the debate.
You've lost it all.
Your head is someplace else.
Now, Obama has a very, very nasty habit.
He gets away with it.
You've seen it with interviewers, with reporters.
Do you remember that reporter down in Texas that Obama looked in the eye?
Do you remember he got into?
Yes, he was more than snarky.
What Obama does is he pulls facts and figures out of thin air.
He pulls facts and figures out of thin air, says them as if he knows they're not the truth.
He's not even a terribly good liar in this regard.
I do not like using the word liar to describe the president of the United States.
Please understand me.
He's not even a good liar.
He'll pull these facts and figures out of thin air, and then he will fix you with a gaze that says, I dare you to challenge what I have just said because I am Barack Obama.
Now, one of Romney's challenges is going to be, how do you call the president of the United States, Barack Obama, a liar without using the word liar?
Because I'm sure there'd be great concern about how that plays out there in the world.
How do you call him on this stuff?
In addition to having your facts and figures well at hand, because he will fix you with the gaze.
He's quite easy to throw off balance.
I mean, he has a series of techniques.
I'll go into them in a little while.
But he likes to juggle statistics.
He likes to quote them out of context.
He likes to misrepresent sources, facts, and figures.
You know the one where he keeps saying, economists agree.
Most economists agree.
Most experts agree.
Who?
Who are these economists?
What do they agree about?
Who are these experts?
Oh, everyone's looked at.
The experts have looked at Romney's plan.
They tell me it's not going to work.
Who?
When we come back, I will share with you the simple declarative sentence that explains Barack Obama's entire worldview.
If you want to understand him, we'll sum it up for you only here on the Limbo Show in a nifty, wrapped-up little package.
It's Dugabanski for Rush Limbo.
We'll be right back.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, everything that you need to know about Barack Obama can be summed up, I promise you this a little while ago, in a nifty little sentence.
Everything, every place you turn, whether it's the Keystone Pipeline, whether it's Egypt, whether it's Israel, whether it's the Gulf of Mexico, whether it's China, whether it's GM, whether it's Wisconsin, every single thing about Barack Obama can be understood this way.
And I'm going to preface this sentence by explaining something.
If you believe, as I do, and as the empirical evidence shows us, that the man is not an intellectual man, that the man is not certainly not well-read.
Certainly not well-read because he's not a student of history.
He doesn't understand, by the way, being an Alinskyite prevents you from being a student of history because there's never any endgame other than agitation involved.
That is why he could never compromise on the budget, the debt, all the things.
You can't compromise.
It's not in your DNA as an Alinskyite.
All you know how to do is agitate.
So Obama's worldview of every single subject he encounters, including this election, including the debate, including the commercials, including the entire dialogue about the thing.
His view of Fox News.
His view of Rush.
Everything can be summed up in one very simplistic.
At least, look, I'm going to keep teasing for a moment.
They cannot stand to have their worldview challenged in any way, shape, or form.
The smoke starts coming out of their ears when you challenge their worldview.
Barack Obama's worldview is this.
And it is simplistic and it is wrong.
And it has a scary punchline at the end of it.
His worldview is this.
He sees everything, everything, each and every situation there is, only in the terms of the oppressed and the oppressor.
And he is the one to come and fix it.
He sees himself as the one who brings justice to the oppressed and who brings down the oppressor.
This is why he wants America to be cut down to a level playing field with the other countries.
This is why he allows China to be built up.
This is why he went to Cairo and gave that speech.
The speech that has resulted in this thing we call the era that we misname, the Arab Spring.
They talk about exporting democracy, democracy, democracy.
They use this word.
Democracy, ladies and gentlemen, is not what four foxes and one chicken are voting for for dinner, to have for dinner.
That's what's happened in the so-called Arab Spring.
The Constitution that Justice Ginsburg so does not like and wishes other countries would not look to as a model, that's the thing you want to export, Mr. Obama, to the so-called Arab Spring, not just the four foxes voting against the chicken.
His entire worldview on each and every subject.
This is why Larry Summers says the quote that's in the politico story today: he doesn't know what he's deciding.
That's it.
That's it, plain and simple.
Obama's worldview, I'll say it to you one more time, and I promise I'll get to your calls when we return.
And we'll still talk about the debate.
I'll still give you the tips that politicians can learn to make them appear better coming into your home, to communicate better coming into your home through the television.
Obama's worldview, very simple.
The oppressed and the oppressor, and he is the answer.
He is the one who will fix it.
Can you imagine at these debates, these upcoming debates we were talking about, from these leftists in the media, from left-wing news organizations?
Can you imagine a question that they could ask?
Mr. President, there's so many times you said one thing, then you said exactly the opposite.
Then you did exactly the opposite.
Do you think anyone should believe anything you're saying anymore?
Are they going to ask him that?
I don't think so.
Mr. President, your investments have failed.
Your solutions have not only failed, but you have brought this country, sir, to the brink of bankruptcy.
And yet you continue to say that you want to do more of the same or do nothing about it.
Why, sir, don't you care about looking at the things that have worked in history?
Do you think those questions will be asked?
You think they'll be asked, Mr. President, do you think it's fair that taxpayers invested in the pensions of unionized GM workers who contributed to your campaign at the expense of non-unionized GM workers?
Will that question be asked, ladies and gentlemen?
Mr. President, we've seen you on the videotape where you say you're going to make sure coal companies will go out of business under your plan.
We've seen you on the tape where you say electricity costs will skyrocket.
Are you aware, sir, that there's a big unemployment problem in this country?
And you yet you let your EPA run around rampant, forcing countries, companies out of business, putting more people out of work.
You've got thousands of people who've lost their jobs.
They've lost their incomes.
We are in a crisis.
Mr. President, we have seen the science and we've seen that global, man-made global warming may not be a threat.
And Nate, nothing has changed.
Ladies and gentlemen, I see that whilst I've been speaking with you, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, has gone on television.
It's part of the daily briefing, only he's turned up and he's engaged in it.
Now, you know, ladies and gentlemen, what he likes to do when Russia is here.
He likes to start his talking exactly when Russia's on the air, exactly at the beginning of the show.
So what we've learned today is that when a guest host is here, he waits till midway of the show to see if the show is doing okay or not.
But he's, I'm told, I've not had a chance to watch this press conference.
I'm told he began by talking about Medicare.
Is that correct?
They are obviously very worried about this whole Medicare thing.
They're worried about Ryan.
He is the man who knows how to dismantle Medicare.
He is the guy who allows you to believe Romney's statements, and the first thing he's going to do is get rid of Medicare.
Romney's hired the guy who's written the architecture about how to get rid of the whole thing.
Can you imagine these debates?
I got one more hypothetical question for you.
A moderator to Governor Romney.
Governor Romney, given that a few of your supporters believe you'll ever be charged in the death of Joe Soptic's wife, do you think it's time to change the laws that protect CEOs from decisions that kill workers and their spouses?
So what does he say?
Romney says, back, I don't think they're going to charge me with that.
Moderator interrupts him.
So are you saying that your dirty money will ensure that some lawyer will get you off in a technicality?
This is what we're going into, ladies and gentlemen.
This is what we're going into.
Okay, I want to take a call or two here.
I want to go to Redondo Beach, California, my area of residence.
Jim, welcome to the show.
It's Douglas Serbanski filling in for Rush.
How are you today, sir?
I'm fine, thank you.
And I have one recommendation for everybody in the United States to go see 2016 Obama's America.
It should be required before you vote.
Are you an investor in the film, sir?
No, no way.
I'm a retired school teacher from 50 years ago.
I'm 84.
84.
You saw the film already, actually, yes?
I saw it this week.
It came out this week, and I saw it yesterday.
Were there any other customers there?
Customers?
Yes.
Were there any other people like you watching the film?
Hey, yes.
I never had seen so many people that looked like me that were watching that movie.
Yes.
Was the theater full?
There are quite a few people, but not full.
Was it a very small theater?
No, it's United Island, I think.
I don't know.
It's a very.
All right.
Let me ask you one last question, Jim.
When you left the film, is there one big thing you came away with?
Yes.
You may love him, you may hate him, but now you know him.
And is that a good experience?
It's good to know.
We should have known what this film was about 40 or 40 years ago.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thank you very Jim for the insight into the 2016 film.
My wife and I are getting ⁇ thank you so much for calling the Rush Limbaugh Show, by the way.
My wife and I are planning on going to see this show, this film.
There was a fabulous film.
I don't know how many of you got to see it.
I think almost no one saw it.
It was made by a filmmaker, a superb documentary filmmaker whose name is Steve Bannon.
And it was called In the Face of Evil.
And it's still available online if you want to get it.
This film every American should also have seen.
They couldn't get distribution.
This film that you're talking about, 2016, Jim, this film has actually ended up in movie theaters.
And I'm fascinated to know if there are audiences, if there are crowds, if people are going to see it.
Didn't sound like that theater was very full, Jim.
Didn't sound like, so let's go out and see it.
My wife and I go see it this week in Vera Beach, Florida.
Frank, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
How are you today, Frank?
Very good, Doug.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, you wanted to make a point, sir.
Yeah, I think that this nomination of Paul Ryan for the vice presidency with Mitt Romney is a brilliant move.
I think that what it allows them to do is for Ryan to pick up the argument of Medicare and Social Security, which Obama was trying to split the voters when he was just talking to Romney.
But now, with Paul Ryan there, who knows every in and out of this plan, would be able to attack Obama and put him on a defensive.
Meanwhile, Romney could talk about the economy, he could talk about foreign policy and show up Obama because I don't believe Obama can afford to have Joe Biden, his brilliant vice president, go up against either Paul Ryan or Romney in this campaign.
Are you, Frank, one of these people who thinks that the pick of Paul Ryan was like the pick of Sarah Palin, picking someone to outshine or help the candidate?
No, I think it's much better.
I think he was picked because of his knowledge and because of his being able to show the people just exactly what Obama is trying to do with this so-called his Medicare plan.
You see, Frank, this is one of the things I admire about Mitt Romney.
This is an executive-style pick.
It is not an obvious pick.
It's not a so-called safe pick.
It's not a pick that panders to any particular group other than the people who want to fix things in this country.
Exactly.
If you recall, when the nomination was first put out, there was a hue and cry about what a mistake it was and how he would cause divisiveness and so on.
Meanwhile, I think the tide has turned and people see exactly what they've gotten for Ryan.
You know, Ryan seems very popular.
Did you see him on television all weekend with his mother in Florida?
He's in Florida.
Yeah, fabulous stuff.
All right.
Well, Frank, it's good to have you out there.
Thanks so much for calling the Rush Limbaugh show.
Appreciate your chiming in very much, Frank.
So Obama will use these tactics in the debate that I started talking about.
And the tactics will be that he will present authoritatively expert conclusions, and he will present them as if they're firm conclusions.
Unnamed experts, unseen experts.
They all agree.
They all say this.
They all say that.
He will use snippets of details that never tell the whole story of what he's talking about.
Now, if the press is attentive, when these debates are done, like no other debates I've ever imagined or seen or could conceive of in my whole life, will there be a media handy to look into and write about the things he has said?
Because if they do that, there will be further exposition as to what we're dealing with.
He will cite unusual cases that are the exceptions to the rules rather than typical examples.
These are all tricks of the Alinskyite-style debater.
He demeans and defames his opponents.
He degrades individuals that disagree with him.
He loves to juggle statistics.
He loves to juggle unemployment numbers.
When he says that they're down, he doesn't tell you that 167,000 people dropped out of the labor force this month, like some spaceship came and took them up.
These hundreds of thousands of Americans vanish from the numbers every month as if the aliens have come and taken them away.
And that's what helps keep the numbers where they are.
And the numbers, even where they are, when you accept them for what they are, are disastrous anyhow.
So he is a master of misrepresenting facts, figures, sources, portraying very few details that give the representation of the whole story.
He made a claim that an independent, nonpartisan organization ran the numbers on Governor Romney's tax plan, claiming it would raise taxes on millions of Americans.
But I don't have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, this was hardly, I guarantee you, I guarantee you, it was hardly independent, hardly nonpartisan.
And it turns out, when they looked into this, when journalists looked into it, the study was indeed from a guy who was on Obama's staff from 2009 to 2010.
Guy named Adam Looney, who was a senior, appropriately named Adam Looney, who was a senior economist for Obama's Council of Economic Advisors.
That is not a disinterested individual.
And that is not the first time that Obama passes off blatantly partisan information as if, in fact, it's independent information.
I must scoop for a few moments, ladies and gentlemen.
Stugabanski filling in for Rush.
We'll be right back.
So when it comes to these television debates, they have chosen the absolute worst of the worst or the worst insiders to be the so-called moderators.
Every one of them, every last one of them are people who are more concerned about pushing particular views.
And the view they're not particularly interested in pushing is the view that the media is a public watchdog, a good public watchdog.
I love the idea.
What do you think of this, Mr. Snerdley?
That moderators would be total outsiders, non-political types, debaters, questioners, speakers from a variety of backgrounds, engineering, agriculture, farmers.
What do you think about that, sir?
You don't know if you like that.
I'm tossing it out there.
I'm talking.
I'm just tossing it out there.
But look, even the leftists, well, but then again, why aren't some of the great brains out there doing this?
Can you imagine some of the people who could be doing this?
You know their names.
I'm not going to say them.
Look, most people, even leftists, realize immediately that all Ford debates are to be moderated by leftists.
And the left has enormous glee about this.
And I am somewhat disgusted that the Republicans have let this state of affairs exist for so long.
What kind of chance does a country have when the left so thoroughly controls the entire conversation?
There's no question in my mind that they control the conversation.
You've got moderators who are openly anti-Republican.
They worship at the shrine of Obama.
Going into every single debate, you've got a somewhat of a rigged game.
Rush says, doesn't he?
That he likes to keep half his brain tied behind his back just to keep things fair.
Well, when the libs insist on liberal moderators, Obama and Biden are doing, they're saying they're incapable of facing Ryan and Romney on their own.
So the moderators, in effect, become their wingman, the backup, because they're too intellectually weak to debate on their own.
Now, that's something to be thrown in their face.
Obama has a huge problem.
According to the New Republic over the weekend, his biggest problem is his base, convincing the people who already support him to get out and vote.
Obama leads among people who say they probably won't vote in November.
That is hardly surprising, says the New Republic.
It's impossible to say just how many might stay home.
Poll shows that 44% of unlikely registered voters actually turned out and cast ballots for Obama in 2008 compared to 20% for McCain and 32% who didn't vote at all.
Put differently, this poll suggests that Obama 08 voters are more than twice as likely to have departed the electorate compared to their counterparts who supported McCain.
This is what we're all talking about when we're talking about getting the base out, getting the base out.
And Obama's just finished his press conference, and there is this continual theme that there's a war on women being declared.
We have Maureen Dowd's piece from the weekend of the New York Times.
We have, and they hate Paul Ryan because he voted to defund Planned Parenthood.
He opposes all abortions, as you know, he's a Catholic.
The idea is to paint him as a radical, as a person who is an extremist, to keep going and saying that, to keep hating him as someone he's not.
That is the whole idea about Paul Ryan.
Now, what are we going to do here about this conversation of civil discourse?
Because what you're supposed to do, and this is the question I was asking earlier, in a debate with President Barack Obama when he lists facts and figures out of thin air, the whole allowed conversation for a conservative is simply summed up by saying, shut up.
That's what they would like you to do.
That's what they would like me to do.
That's the entire message.
They do not want you to criticize Obama.
They do not want you to criticize inefficient unions.
They do not want you to criticize the failed policies of the Democrat Party.
They want you just to shut up.
And yet, most of you out there are understanding and following the plot.
They have been dependent that the majority of people would not be following the plot.
The majority of common sense people are following the plot now.
There's not as many of you falling for the accusations of the left as used to be.
So you must take it, we are told, if you're a conservative, you must be quiet with civility.
You must not argue with them.
Tone down your speech, we have heard again and again been told.
They would like to quell dissent, political opposition.
Things are changing with Paul Ryan, with Romney.
They're not falling for it.
This is one of the attractivenesses that people liked about Christie.
It's one of the attractivenesses people like about Balin.
And while they may or may not be the leader that we're yearning for, to say the least, they're exactly the right people sometimes when this conversation gets loud.
They do not like civil discourse.
I mean, Governor Christie, this is one of the reasons he gets under their skin.
He hates, they hate what he talks about because he talks about the truth and he gets way under their skin.
They call this hate speech on the other side because it plays to their big, big weakness.
It's all about feelings to these characters.
Now, I want to describe something to you.
I want to describe, I take you behind the curtain, and I'm going to describe to you what candidates can do in a vague way to be more appealing and where the advice can be given to them, particularly on the Republican side.
I can tell you a little bit of inside baseball stuff as soon as we return.
Now, I don't use the New York Times as my barometer of much, although New York Times, watch very closely, friends at the New York Times.
If Newsweek sells a lot of issues, they may be on to something, and I would copy them if I were you.
Maureen Dowd, writing in the weekend New York Times, takes huge, huge swipes at Barack at Paul Ryan.
Just tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the president finished up his press conference.
His little press briefing, I'll be describing some of his attitudes when we return after the top of the hour.
Maureen Dowd writes a piece where she takes apart Ryan.
She says Ryan looks like a bonus Romney son, as Dan Quill did with Bush Sr.
Republicans find the tableau of two rich white guys.
Is Paul Ryan a rich guy?
No, I don't think so.
Is he?
Oh, Paul Ryan?
I'm fascinated at the things I learned here.
Anyway, she says, same shirts, different generations.
She says Republicans find all of this very comforting.
With W. and Cheney, the usual order switched, and the vice presidential candidate played the role of surrogate dad.
She goes on and she talks about the beautiful calm of hysterical people.
She says the closer you look at Ryan, the uglier it gets.
She says, just as Cheney, hunter of small birds, once defended cop killer bullets and plastic guns that could slip through airport metal detectors, so Ryan, deer hunter, championed concealed guns and curtailing the background check waiting period for three days.
And she goes on, she goes on, and she talks about, she somehow implicates Ryan in the controversy about forcible rape.
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