All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 31, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:31
August 31, 2012, Friday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
My promise is to help you and your family.
Mitt Romney, August 30th, 2012, Republican Convention, Tampa, Florida.
That's what's out there all over the place today.
It's Friday, folks.
Let's roll.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Oh, yeah.
Yip, yip, yahoo!
Open line Friday, where callers, when we go to the phones, largely determine what we talk about on the program.
It's their day.
They don't have to talk about things I care about.
They're not put on the air according to synergy and topic programmability and compatibility and all that stuff.
Nope.
It's just whatever.
Whatever happens, happens.
Sometimes it's a big bomb.
Hadn't happened much, but it has happened.
Here's the telephone number, 800-282-2882, the email address, El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
I never once said that I want anybody at this convention to go out there and say Obama's a bad guy.
What I want people to do, and they did it, by the way, and they did it in flying colors.
I wanted the country spoken up for and defended.
And I want the contrast drawn between people who think this country's guilty of something that was founded unjustly, immorally, that this country needs to be cut down to size, that this country's the problem in the world.
That needs to be rejected.
And I don't think it's a mistake to tie Obama to those beliefs.
That's what he believes.
That's why he's doing what he's doing.
He can be a fine guy for all I'm talking about.
I just don't think he's very bright, and I don't think he's very experienced.
But I, you know, this notion of him being a beg, all I ever said was, please don't tell me he's a nice guy.
Don't pander.
I know you're afraid.
I know the Republicans are afraid of this.
Deep emotional connection that some Obama voters have with Obama.
And they're worried that they can't break it.
And that they only hope they have a breaking it is to agree.
He's such a nice, wonderful guy, but he's not.
Nice guys don't say the things, Obama.
Nice guys don't accuse you of causing another man's wife to die of cancer.
Nice guys don't accuse you of throwing grandma over at a cliff in a wheelchair.
Nice guys don't attack small business.
Nice guys do not blame the successful.
Nice guys do not say that the rich get rich because they take from the poor did Reagan keep talking what a nice guy Jimmy Carter was in 1980 did Reagan want to Jimmy Carter.
You know he's a great guy.
I love his peanuts, but he just not at all.
We played a clips of Reagan from his acceptance speech in 1980.
I don't remember Reagan saying, yeah, Carter, he's a great, great guy, good guy, just a bad president.
Is Obama out there saying that Romney's a good guy?
Just a failed governor?
Is that what they're saying?
They're saying some pretty insulting things about Romney.
Anyway, let's see.
Oh, folks.
Next week, Democrat Convention.
Bill Clinton apparently now is going to be the huge star.
There are a bunch of big Democrats that are not showing up.
Pelosi apparently isn't going.
Dingy Harry, nobody knows for certain if Dingy Harry is going to go.
Hillary Clinton is not going to.
Hillary Clinton's going to be in the other side of the world.
Hillary Clinton's going to be in New Zealand or Australia during the Democrat convention.
She doesn't want to be anywhere near there.
She probably worried what will happen.
You know, if Bill hits on Sandra Fluck, I mean, that could be embarrassing.
Well, let me tell you what's going to happen next week.
In part, they're going to have a real tough time demonizing Paul Ryan.
Not that they won't try, but they're going to have a very tough time.
And after the stories that were told all week long about Romney and his character and his charity and his selflessness, demonizing Romney is going to be a tough thing to do.
So I want to warn you: don't be surprised if they zero in on me among other people that they try to demonize.
I think that's a given.
And it may well be, those of you, you know, rush babes on our Facebook page, our Twitter, stand by because you may be activated next week.
We may send out the secret decoder ring signal to put you into action.
And the only reason I say this is this next soundbite.
This is last night on CNN, the Situation Room.
And they had the former Green Jobs czar on Van Jones.
They were talking about Romney's faith.
They're talking about Mitt Romney's faith.
And speaker after speaker after speaker came up at the convention last night to testify to Romney's faith and his character.
So they bring Van Jones on.
Here's what Van Jones said: Rush Limbaugh is a person of faith.
I don't think he thinks anybody's more powerful than him, and I don't think he's a compassionate person.
What have I got to do with any of this?
I'm not even there.
I wasn't at the convention.
And yet, they got to throw me in because they can't demonize our guys.
They can't demonize Romney.
Well, they can, and they've tried to.
But after this week, it's going to be harder.
They have no compunction about lying, but it's going to be really tough to portray Romney as this insulated, selfish, rich guy who wants to go out and cause everybody else to suffer when his whole life has practically been devoted to people who are underprivileged, disadvantaged, and helping them out.
And the same thing with Paul Ryan.
Sounded blue, I come up.
Well, look at Rush Limbaugh is a person of faith.
I don't think he thinks anybody more powerful than he is, and I don't think he's a compassionate person.
This is why I don't need to go to the conventions.
I get mentioned even when I'm not there.
Doesn't matter that.
No, no, it doesn't matter.
I don't care what he thinks.
My point is, Van Jones is an Obamaite.
This is a heads up of what this convention is going to be like next week.
That's all I'm playing it for.
That's all it is.
I don't care what he thinks.
He doesn't even know me.
He doesn't know how stupid he is.
He doesn't think I'm a compassionate person.
I mean, it's absurd.
It doesn't even think I'm more powerful than I don't even think of having power.
I don't, man, I never once contemplate power.
It's not part of my makeup lexicon being.
But anyway, they have these caricatures created, and they have these brands of people like me.
And this is how they're going to attempt to rile up their base with stuff like this next week.
So I'm just warning you people.
Let's move on to Clint Eastwood.
Clint Eastwood and the empty chair.
Improv.
This I loved.
I thought this was the essence, as I say, the essence of simplicity.
I thought Eastwood was funny.
I thought he was...
Brevity is the soul of wit.
And Eastwood demonstrated that last night.
Let's go to the audio soundbite.
Hear him making fun of Oprah on national TV.
Who does that?
Well, outside of us, of course, but nobody does that.
But we all do.
I was watching that night when he was having that thing and they were talking about hope and change.
And they were talking about, yes, we can.
And it was dark and outdoors and it was nice and people were lighting candles and they were saying, I just thought, this is great.
I mean, everybody's crying.
Oprah was crying.
And I was even crying.
And then finally, I haven't cried that hard since I found out that there's 23 million unemployed people in this country.
Now, that is something to cry for because that is a disgrace, a national disgrace.
And we haven't done enough, obviously.
This administration hasn't done enough to cure that.
Now, I don't know about you.
I love words.
Words mean things.
Even words that sound like throwaway words.
I think when Eastwood said, I was watching that night when he was having that thing.
People say, you know, he is senile.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
He couldn't even remember what.
No, no, no.
Having that thing is perfect.
Yeah, they were having that thing.
He was, it wasn't.
This is the perfect way to diminish.
He was talking about Obama in Grant Park after the election.
And all these people, the zombies.
And they're lighting candles and they don't even know why they're there.
They just feel good.
But you ask them why, and you'd get spaced out Oprah type answers.
And in the throw-in, Oprah was crying.
I mean, I'm sorry, but that hits me right in the heart because I have a theory that Oprah's success is directly related to how much she cries.
And I've told you this over and over again.
So that one, when I heard it, I thought, that just made, you talk about emotional connections.
Clinton and I were on the same Zen-like astral plane with that one.
But, yeah, I was watching that night, having that thing.
That's the kind of thing I wish I had said.
And to most people, it's a throwaway or some senile old guy who can't remember what he's talked about.
And he also ripped, appropriately so, the Vice President Joe Biden.
What do you want me to tell Romney?
I can't tell him to do that.
Can't do that to himself.
You're crazy.
You're absolutely crazy.
You're getting as bad as Biden.
Of course, we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party.
Kind of a grin with a body behind it.
I'll tell you, folks, when I saw that empty chair, I at first didn't know what was going on.
Because of my hearing, as I said, to wait for closed caption to catch up, so I was lagging behind everybody until I figured out what was going on.
But when they panned the crowd after Eastwood said, I can't tell him to do that.
I can't do that to himself.
You're crazy.
You're absolutely crazy.
You're getting as bad as Biden.
They panned the crowd, and I saw what I know.
I mean, we didn't hear anything, but I know what I saw.
I saw a bunch of people explaining what he was talking about to other people.
I saw a guy laughing, telling a woman who had a look of total confusion on her face what he just said, and vice versa.
But there were some people I didn't quite get it.
I got it right off the bat, and most people did, but it was funny to see it being translated out there.
And then, after the camera stuck on some people long enough, after they had had it translated, you see their mouths fall open.
Really?
Is that what that means?
Where are you going to get this?
This is real.
Everybody, critics are talking about such a lack of dignity, so beneath the image that the Republicans wanted to put forward.
No, this was real.
Everything about this convention this week was real.
And he's what he did ramble some.
I mean, it was ad-lib.
There wasn't a prompter up there.
Well, actually, if you look at a still shot or two, you'll see a prompter for the empty chair.
Yes, you will see a prompter for the empty chair.
If you look at if you see a picture of still shot, even a live shot at the right angle.
But he did ramble, but then he eventually got to another point.
We own this country.
We own it.
And it's not you owning it and not politicians owning it.
Politicians are employees of ours.
And so they're just going to come around and beg for votes every few years, and it's the same old deal.
But I just think that it's important that you realize that you're the best in the world, whether you're Democrat or whether you're a Republican or whether you're libertarian or whatever.
You're the best, and we should not ever forget that.
And when somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go.
What could be more sensible?
What could be simpler?
The fact-checkers, by the way, some of the lib fact-checkers are actually testing to see if you can do that to yourself to see if Eastwood was lying.
Some of these lib fact-checkers are actually trying it.
I do too.
Desperately trying to catch Eastwood in a lie.
Now, here is another, what a lot of people would consider a throwaway line.
He says, politicians are employees of ours.
Everybody's laughing and everybody's chuckling and applauding.
And then he says, so they're just going to come around and beg for votes every few years.
It's the same old deal.
Amen.
That's exactly how a lot of people look at politicians.
They're going to come around, beg for votes.
Same old deal.
But you're the best.
You're the people who make the country work.
And when somebody doesn't do a good job, we got to let them go.
Just that simple.
Okay, let's get the phone calls when we come back.
Don't go away, folks.
Okay, to the phones to Grand Blanc, Michigan and Sandy.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Hi.
I just wanted to let you know that I'm really, really excited about Mitt.
And I didn't go into this convention for him.
I was really disappointed.
I thought, oh, man, another McCain.
But as the days went by and I listened and I watched and I got excited every night and looked forward to it.
And then last night was the clincher and I really am behind Nitt Romney 100%.
You know, I had the same sense that you just expressed when I watched the first night of the convention.
Well, even Monday.
I mean, there were shots of people in the convention hall, even though Monday they canceled, but they were there.
They gabbled at the order, did some things procedurally for 10 minutes, shut it down.
But there were people there being interviewed.
And then on Tuesday, when they got going, and the crowd shots and so forth, and Romney's name would be mentioned, there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm.
I had people there who were telling me this, they felt bad.
The place was dead.
Yeah.
It just, and it clearly, to me, was not Romney's party.
It was as though everybody thought we had a candidate that had won by virtue of attrition rather than rabid support.
But like you, I think by the close of business last night, it was his convention.
Well, everybody was fantastic, all the speakers.
And I love that Martinez or that girl from New Mexico.
That'd be a woman from New Mexico, yes.
She was great.
Susanna Martinez.
Yes, Martinez.
Yeah.
What do you like about her?
Well, I liked her attitude.
I mean, she had a down-earth attitude.
They all did.
They weren't snooty and they weren't Republican and they weren't rich.
You know, they were just down-home people, just like everybody else.
Exactly.
It was real.
And the stories that they told about America were real.
Here, Grab Soundbite, what is it?
Number 11.
This story, every one of these speakers had a story like this.
A quintessential American story.
This is what this country has always been.
And this is what's under assault.
This is what Obama, the Democrats, don't want people to believe is possible anymore.
My dad used to tell us, Engeste país utele vanga poded lograrato la cosa que nosotros no podimos.
In this country, you're going to be able to accomplish all the things we never could.
A few years ago, during a speech, I noticed the bartender behind the portable bar in the back of the ballroom.
I remembered my father, who worked for many years as a banquet bartender.
He was grateful for the work he had, but that's not the life he wanted for us.
You see, he stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years.
So one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room.
That's it.
In a nutshell, parents want a better life for themselves or for their kids than they had themselves.
That's the point of parenthood.
And America is what made that possible.
And every generation was that way.
And now we've gotten to the point, we have reached a point in our generational evolution where increasing numbers of parents don't think it can happen anymore.
Parents today, with their kids still living at home, with mountains of student loan debt, do not see where their kids are going to end up doing better than they did.
And it's ripping their hearts out.
And we've got a political party that wants people to believe, yep, that's the new norm.
Those days are over.
We've got to deal with the reality here.
The economy that Bush left us was so bad, we've thrown everything we've got it.
It defies being fixed.
This may be the new norm.
We have a political party and a president who want people to think that Marco Rubio's story, that never really was real anyway.
That's just a bunch of folklore of an America.
But the real America is all these people that never had parents like that, never helped their kids get ahead.
And that's who we got to make good for.
It's perverted.
And that element of the American dream is what's under assault right now.
They want more and more people thinking that that's no longer possible here.
No, I'm dead serious.
I wouldn't have said it otherwise.
When Marco Rubio tells the story of his bartender dad, and when he says he stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room.
Now, I've had people in the email want to nitpick that and translate it literally.
You want to tell me that Rubio's dad was standing in the back of the room thinking one day his kid was going to be a senator.
I don't know.
I really feel sorry for people like you who don't understand the message.
A devoted father who was doing the best he could in his circumstances showed up every day, kept working so as to make a better life for his son, whatever it ended up being.
And that's exactly what this country's always been.
My father, and I'm sorry for boring you with this story again, but my father considered himself a failure as a father because he couldn't convince me to go to college.
And to him, there was no future if you didn't.
That was his life.
He was trying to inculcate in me the formative experiences of his life.
And he lived through the Great Depression.
He said, if you didn't go to college, you didn't have a prayer.
Not only of not getting a job, you weren't going to be able to keep friends that you had because they were going to surpass you intellectually.
They had better jobs than you did.
You'd lose everything you had in common with them when you were growing up.
His singular purpose as a father was that I do better than he did.
And he thought up until just two years before he died that he had failed as a parent.
The point is, that's what America was.
Where else in the world do people even dream these things?
Most places in this world, you know, the history of humanity is bondage and tyranny, oppression.
It isn't freedom.
Everybody's not born to freedom.
Everybody's not born to liberty.
Most people who have lived on this planet didn't have anywhere near an opportunity to even get close to realizing their dreams.
All they were able to do was dream.
And those were even crushed by oppressive, tyrannical leaders who didn't want people trying to improve themselves.
Most people in the world, from the beginnings of time, wherever you were born and however you were born, that was your life.
If you were lucky to live very long, then America comes along and this has fundamental, overwhelming change rooted in founding documents, freedom coming from God, and that the natural yearning of the human spirit is to be free and to be happy and to be good, to be excellent, and codify it in our documents, and it soon took over.
And that became one of the driving purposes of raising children in America.
To ensure that they did well and hopefully better than their parents.
And one of the reasons the country is in trouble and one of the reasons it's fraying in our fabric is because there are a lot of parents today who don't even think they have a chance, much less their kids.
And they're not even thinking about their kids having a better.
They're just they've got folks, I see examples of culture that I can't relate to when I listen to I'm not it will not serve a purpose to mention any names, but this is a story about a football player in the NFL who's always been in trouble.
Well, hey, I'll mention a name.
I don't know.
Pardon?
No, no, not talking about both stories.
The first story is a football player who is very good, but he's had a troubled life, and he's been a problem everywhere he's been.
And if he gets in one of his funks, then he doesn't play and he refuses to be any good, and yet he takes the paycheck.
But nobody does anything about it, except he gets cut or traded from team to team.
His latest team tried to do something about it.
So they brought in a former player to talk to this guy.
And after the conference between the former player and the current Malcontent player, the player said he felt like he had a new lease on life because he had just learned that it was okay to be cordial to people.
It was okay to treat people nicely.
And I'm thinking, what must his childhood have been if he's just, he's around 30.
Now, what must his childhood have been if it's a revelation to him now that it's okay to be cordial?
Folks, there is cultural breakdown in the fabric of this country that some of you are not aware of.
And I don't mean to, I mean, it's bad.
That's why this convention to me was such an upper, because it hearkened back to simple possibilities, possibilities that exist to all human beings simply because they live in this country.
It's a singular opportunity.
Now, the other name, I'll go ahead and mention this because this is illustrative too.
The Dallas Cowboys have a potential huge star wide receiver by the name of Des Bryant.
Now, Des Bryant's mother had him when he was 16, and he's had a really tough bringing up.
And he's, for example, the general manager, this was a point of controversy when he came out.
I think he went to Oklahoma State, came out of Oklahoma State, and he's in the process of visiting teams before the draft.
And the general manager for one of the teams in the NFL actually said, so your wife was a prostitute.
Your mother was a prostitute.
Is that right?
And that leaked out, and that general manager caught all kinds of help.
Anyway, poor Des has run up a lot of debt.
He got money that he's never dreamed of, never seen before as an NFL first-round draft choice.
He's in debt.
He owes people at the mall.
He owes jewelers and so forth.
The Dallas Cowboys have had to put 24-hour security on him to keep him out of strip clubs and all these places.
And I look at the media writing about this.
And see, I have to be careful how I say this.
But avoiding trouble Was something that was standard operating procedure.
You didn't really have to have it drilled into you.
And our parents didn't need to send security details out with us as adults to make sure that, but because of the cultural problems that we've had, these are the steps that are now necessary.
It just makes me almost cry when I see what's happening to people in this country.
And then at the same time, we have a political party which tries to reinforce this idea that this notion that you can do good and be better than your parents never was real anyway.
That's what Obama and the Democrats want as many people as possible to believe.
And it sickens me.
And that's why this convention was such an upper for me.
They're actually out saying, oh, that was just a bunch of BS.
You know, that's an illusion.
That never really was the case.
The rich got where they are by stealing from everybody.
Or stealing or cheating or whatever they did to people.
And that's how the U.S. got big, by the way, because it went out, it stole the things that it wanted from the rest of the world.
And so success is illegitimate to this president.
It's illegitimate.
And furthermore, it's worthy of being targeted.
And there are votes in it.
And I'm sorry, it sickens me.
It just absolutely sickens me to see so much human potential not even have a chance.
And to have so many people in this country not even understand what being inspired is.
And then when people do try to inspire, like happened at this convention, they're the ones that get made fun of.
They are the ones who are impugned.
It's their intentions which are said to be phony and dishonest.
This convention, the Republican convention, if it had a theme, it was not just about America being the greatest nation it can be, but it was about maximizing human potential that is possible because we're Americans.
It is being an American that makes that possible.
The left wants to make sure people don't even try.
So they mock trying.
They mock people like Romney or others who have attempted to teach others and inspire others to achieve what they have or to even be better.
You think back in your life, there's one person, and maybe more than one, there is at least one person at some point in your life who told you or showed you or demonstrated somehow that you were capable of much more than you thought you were.
It's happened to me.
It could be the teacher that you hated at the time, or it could have been one of your parents.
It could have been a friend.
It could be any, but somebody in everybody's life has always been there to show you that you're better than even you think you are.
And I'm not talking about in any ego standpoint or sense.
I'm simply talking about capability.
Ability.
The simple ability to achieve something, to be successful.
And to see that whole concept tamped down and portrayed as only available to a select few in a very small club.
That's what this convention was about, was showing no, no, no, no.
You know the old phrase, ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
We had one after another at this convention telling their stories.
And the more people invest in themselves and follow their dreams and use their talents and ambition, the less they're going to need government or a politician or a government program.
And in that process, the politician or the government program begins to lose its power, and that we can't have.
So the party has all the credit, gets all the credit for all the compassion, is actually and literally the party that is trying to strip all of that potential from as many human beings as possible.
They're making a deal with them.
Don't try any of that.
Don't buy this business that you can be good at something.
The deck's stacked against you.
All you're going to do is heartbreak and be disappointed.
You get fired a bunch of time.
It ain't going to happen.
Let us handle it for you.
Let us take you over the hard spots.
Because look, we don't think you have much ability anyway.
It's a characteristic of people on the left just to look down with contempt at average people and think that they don't have the ability anyway.
That's why people on the left are needed.
That's why big government's needed because people otherwise can't do for themselves.
And that is just utter BS.
So I just cringe when I learn of these stories about what must your upbringing have been like if you've been taught that bad things will happen to you if you're nice to people.
What have you been taught?
Maybe that's how you have to stay alive.
Maybe that you have to be defiant.
You have to be intimidating to make sure somebody doesn't push you off the cliff or whatever.
What must that be like?
But that doesn't have to be what this country is.
Anyway, I'm a little long.
I've got to take a timeout.
We'll come back.
More phone calls as we return.
Don't go away.
Okay, here's Paul in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Glad that you waited, sir.
Welcome to the show.
Rush, what makes me cry is you walking away from these Van Jung comments with what all that you do for charities from the military police and your telefund that raises millions.
Now, this guy can't be getting away with what he's saying about you.
You're talking about when he says I'm not compassionate?
Exactly.
What do you want me to do when, I mean, I could have not played the soundbite, but I wanted to play it because it's a prelude of what's going to happen next week throughout the convention, probably.
And not just aimed at me, but whoever they think they can gin up hatred for Romney for by citing as supporters of Romney on the same page.
Okay, so Van Jonesy sits out there, ah, Limbo, he's got more power than anybody else.
He doesn't have any compassion.
He's not compassionate.
What am I supposed to do with that?
You say I can't walk away.
Well, maybe somebody, maybe other than you, because you're an honorable man, but maybe somebody can let him know what you do for people in charities and ask him what has he done for charities and what fundraisers has he contributed to or even held.
Thank you very much, sir.
I really appreciate that.
What do you think his reaction would be if somebody did tell him?
Oh, he probably would say, SERU's in the house.
I don't know, Rush, but my wife and I, I just wanted to say one more thing.
Yep.
My wife and I watched Romney last night out on the porch with a six-pack of the tooth by tea that was given to me, and we enjoyed it with some technology, watching it on the computer, and we're hooked, and we're getting ready to buy.
Well, I appreciate that, sir.
Did you like what you heard last night?
Yes, sir, I did.
Were you a Romney guy before going into this convention or not?
Yes, I'm in Raleigh, but I'm originally from Massachusetts, and he's done some great things, and he's a good man.
Well, that's very obvious, but how many people didn't know that until last night?
You know, I've got the sound bites of the man and woman telling the story of their 14-year-old son at the time who had cancer.
I don't think there was a dry eye on that convention floor last night or watching TV.
It was the, what was it, 8.30, was it in the 8 to 9 o'clock hour?
So it would be wise to replay that for those of you who haven't heard it.
If you have, just to hear it again, too, because it was really touching.
You know, the polling data out of Missouri, a little surprising.
Claire McCaskilly, incumbent Democrat Senator Rett, 55% disapproval.
77% of Republicans have forgiven Todd Aiken.
And she only has a one-point lead over Aiken.
Public policy polling, but they only oversample Republicans by two points instead of nine points in their last poll.
Hmm.
▲
Export Selection