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Oct. 8, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:50
October 8, 2012, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Mitt Romney, folks.
Oh, whoa.
I gave too much credit too, so there we go.
I have some reverb there, folks.
I was hearing myself, which I never get to do.
So that's kind of pleasant.
His problem was it was a second after I said it.
Anyway, we're back now, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, a full week of broadcast excellence.
Here it is, Columbus Day.
Is Elizabeth Warren working today?
I wonder if Elizabeth Warren's working today, the high-cheek bone priestess in Massachusetts, who is we all those focahontas or whatever the nickname is.
Another tremendous speech by Mitt Romney just now.
And by the way, let me tell you something.
This man is truly showing his presidential timber.
He finished right on time, just in time for this show.
He didn't go long.
He didn't speak into the beginning of this program.
That's the kind of sensitivity you look for in a leader.
And Romney showed it.
It was a great foreign policy speech.
I tell you, it sets up the debate, the next debate between Romney and Obama on foreign policy.
And there again, folks, not just on paper, but in the real world, Barack Obama is an empty suit on foreign policy.
This was rock solid today that Romney.
We're working on soundbites from it now.
It's presidential.
It was solid.
It was confident.
And it's a speech given amidst an increasingly chaotic and volatile Middle East.
And it was just such a great, great, great contrast.
He said something very interesting.
The first purpose of a strong military is to prevent war.
That's exactly right.
You build the B-2 bomber, hoping you never have to use it.
This is what the left never understood and to this day never understands about the defense budget.
You build all of these weapons as deterrence.
National security means something.
Safety, protection of the American people.
You build these weapons to send a message to the rest of the world.
Don't try it.
If you couple that with a leader in the Oval Office with the will to project American power, you have deterrence.
And that is what Romney did today.
He very intelligently, solidly, confidently projected American power and gave an indication of how he would do that as president.
You know, Obama's speeches, when you get to Obama speeches on foreign policy, they aren't solutions.
In fact, Obama's speeches on anything are not solutions.
In the area of foreign policy, Obama's speeches are green lights to aggressors.
Obama's a green light.
Every time he speaks, he's a green light to our aggressor.
He's an appeaser.
He blames a videotape for eight days.
Today, Romney blamed the terrorists.
And we continue to learn so much.
Do you know the day of the attack the ambassador asked for help?
In addition to days leading up to the attack in Benghazi and got none.
So this upcoming foreign policy debate between Romney and Obama is going to be a great opportunity, I think, again, folks, to educate the American people about just how lax our foreign policy is, our national security apparatus is.
And I don't know how far Romney wants to go into it, but there are foreign policy scandals, galore he could talk about.
Fast and Furious is one.
The debacle in Libya.
We have Americans are dead.
Americans have died under Obama and his foreign policy.
So we'll see.
But it was just a fabulous speech that exuded leadership.
It was presidential.
It was a message of peace through strength.
And it was delivered with great clarity.
And I love people who understand the purpose of a powerful military deterrence.
You build the bomb, hoping you never have to use it.
You build the B-2 bomber, hoping you never have to use it.
As I said, the left never knows.
Well, why would you wait the money on a Mr. Limbaugh if you never are going to use it?
Couldn't we better spend that money feeding the starving and quenching the thirst of the third?
No.
We already do that.
We spend plenty of money on the hungry and thirsty.
We're not short there.
You build it and you don't use it, and the left and a lot of other people think it's a waste.
You build it and don't use it.
It's imminently successful if its existence reduces attacks.
But that, again, depends on the timber and the character and the leadership of whoever is in the Oval Office.
And right now, that's not a kind of leadership being exuded that is, I don't even want to use the word threatening.
It's not, we've got somebody who's sending green lights to aggressors, appeasing, giving dates certain for the end of war, when we're going to pull out of Afghanistan, for example.
Folks, it's great to have you here.
Here's a telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
If you want to go the email route, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
The left, folks, is still discombobulated over Obama's debate performance, the New Yorker on the cover.
The cover of the New Yorker is an artist rendering of the debate setting from behind Romney at his podium on the right, an empty podium and an empty chair on the left where Obama should have been.
Saturday Night Live.
I didn't see it.
I got an on-the-spot report from Mr. Snurdle.
Saturday Night Live totally dumped on Obama and dumped on the media upset about Obama, totally made fun of Obama here.
Obama had to go to Hollywood.
Will somebody explain something to me?
California's in the bag for Obama.
Is it not?
California's in the bag.
I mean, there's no reason to go out there, spend any money there.
And by the same token, we're told that Obama raised a record amount of money in September.
And furthermore, we're told that he might end up being the first billion-dollar candidate.
So why go to L.A. last night?
Why go?
I mean, it's a $25,000 plate fundraiser.
It's a Wolfgang puck's new restaurant.
Why go?
Now, he went out.
He assured these Hollywood types, everything's cool.
Everything's fine.
I know what I'm doing.
I can't do it every night like you do.
I can't act every day like you do.
That's what he told him.
I got the soundbite coming up.
But why even go?
They could mail the money in.
Are the Hollywood people so important you got to go meet them personally or they will abandon him?
Something weird about it.
And by the way, Gallup, which is being sued by the Department of Justice, which means it's under the thumb, under the threat of the government, has Romney with a post-debate bounce of five points among registered voters.
Obama and Romney are tied at 47%.
The political battleground poll is up.
I've always quoted the battleground poll to you.
This is Ed Goaz and Celinda Lake.
Ed Goaz is the Republican.
Celinda Lake is the Democrat.
And they poll their respective samples.
They put them together and end up with the results.
Now, in 2008, Obama won the Independent vote over McCain by eight points, 52 to 44.
This morning, the new battleground poll is out.
Mitt Romney is up by 16 in independence over President Kardashian.
16 points, 51 to 35.
What a difference.
A debate watched by whatever, 65 million people that can't be spun by the media.
Obama can't be protected.
By the way, I should point out too: 85% of the sample in the Battleground poll, which shows Romney up by 16, 85% of these people were sampled and polled before the debate.
Now, we are at October the 8th.
This is when, traditionally, the polling starts, historically anyway, becoming a little bit different from what it has been prior.
This is when the race starts to tighten.
This is when the race starts to be portrayed a little bit more honestly than it has in prior polls, particularly if you go back to last spring and in the summer.
Now, this independent result today from the battleground poll, that's a 24-point swing among independents since 2008.
And what did the independent, the independents make up, what, anywhere from 15 to 20% of the electorate?
Some people say even more.
Now, even with this, even with Romney up by 16 in independence, the battleground poll still has Obama up 49-48, which I don't pretend to understand.
If the Independents are 15-20, maybe 25% of the vote, Obama's still up a point.
And Gallup registered voters, Romney with a five-point debate bounce at 47-47 now.
Pre-debate, it was Obama 50-45.
Now it's 47-47 with another debate coming up.
It is taking on now a different face.
There are different reactions taking place.
We've got, have you heard all the excuses being made for Obama?
Folks, this is, it's funny.
It is great.
Some of the headlines in the liberal media, the media, since Obama's debate from The Atlantic, Snippy Obama, whose heart's not in it, from the Daily Beast, which is Newsweek, Tina Brown.
Does Obama even want to win the election?
From The Observer, has a disillusioned Barack Obama lost the will to win.
Chris Saliza, The Washington Post, is Obama overrated as a candidate.
At least that's how he starts.
By the end of Saliza's piece, he pats himself on the back and says, never mind.
Obama's still the best candidate in the history of the world.
Byron York of the Washington Examiner has noted this phenomenon, has written about it.
Has Obama become bored with being president?
You know, he's only saving jobs a maximum of four years.
After four years, Obama gets bored and wants to move on to other things.
He may just not like the giggle.
He likes the presidency, but he doesn't like the work.
He doesn't like people.
He doesn't like schmoozing.
He really didn't care.
John Kerry is now to be blamed, too.
They're dumping on him, lousy debate partner.
You know why?
You know why they say Gary is at blame?
Because Obama chose Kerry to portray Romney in the debates, but Kerry wants to be Secretary of State.
And because Kerry wants something, it is said that he went soft on Obama in debate rehearsals because he didn't want to make Obama men.
Now, if we're dealing with somebody that petulant, if we're dealing with somebody that childish and immature, which might well be the case, but they're asking us to believe a lot here.
Yeah, Kerry went soft on him in the debate because he wants to be Secretary of State.
He didn't want to make Obama mad.
What are we talking about?
We're talking about re-election.
We're talking about rehearsing.
You know, Romney, on the same night, Rom Portman is portraying Obama, the Republican from Ohio.
And apparently, he is just being mean and interrupt.
And just, he's, it got to the point where Romney said, get him out of here.
I'd rather face Obama than Portman.
But the point is, they're doing the proper kind of prep.
They're telling us that Kerry is taking it easy because he doesn't want to blow his chance to be Secretary of State.
By the way, in this Battleground poll, which shows Obama's still up by one, even though he's down 16 in independence, the bad news for Obama in the poll is that most of the swing states polls, he's not hitting 50.
Actually, I think the worst news about this poll is that 85% of the sample was polled before the debate.
That's true.
Obama doesn't want to prepare for the debates.
It's a drag.
He doesn't think he should have to.
It's beneath him to even have to debate this and these issues.
He's so above everybody else.
It's just beneath him.
Plus, he doesn't like Romney much anyway.
Which is one of the well-known but untold stories here.
Okay, I got to take a brief time out.
When we come back, audio soundbites of all the excuse making for Obama and his miserable debate performance.
Actually, Rasmussen says that the percentage of voters who identify themselves as independents is 29.2.
So almost 30%.
This is the latest poll by Rasmussen, which was August 1st.
37.6% Republican, 33.3% Democrat, a margin of plus 4, and 29% Independent.
So if Romney's up 16 points, 5135 among independents, then he's up 16 points among 30% of the electorate.
Of course, if all this is right, we have the Romney speech.
I've got four soundbites.
I want to just get right to it.
This is Romney was at VMI in Lexington, Virginia.
The attack on our consulate there on September 11, 2012, was likely the work of forces affiliated with those that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001.
This latest assault can't be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the administration's attempts to convince us of that for so long.
No, as the administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others, especially on women and girls, who are fighting to control much of the Middle East today and who seek to wage perpetual war on the West.
Yep, it wasn't a video.
It was al-Qaeda.
Two things at work here.
A, in blaming the video, just a review, Obama wants everybody to think that it was a right-wing extremist.
It was a conservative.
Somebody close to Romney that was responsible for it.
Number two, remember now, this is very important since they took out Osama bin Laden.
Part and parcel of that, the regime wants you to think that al-Qaeda has been dealt with.
There is no more al-Qaeda.
They always said the definition of victory in the war on terror was getting bin Laden.
That meant the end of al-Qaeda.
Well, of course, al-Qaeda is back.
They're not done away with.
Al-Qaeda was responsible for the death of the ambassador, but Obama couldn't have that known.
So blame it on the filmmaker.
So here's Romney, VMI, setting the record state clearly, passionately, and confidently.
Here's the next sample that we have for you.
The relationship between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel, for example, our closest ally in the region, has suffered great strains.
The president explicitly stated that his goal was to put daylight between the United States and Israel, and he succeeded.
This is a dangerous situation that has set back the hope of peace in the Middle East and emboldened our mutual adversaries, especially Iran.
Now, this is not table-pounding.
This is not shouting, but what he said there, highly accusatory and correct, explicitly stated his goal was to put daylight between the U.S. and Israel, and he succeeded.
Distancing us from our lone ally or our best ally in the region.
Made it clear, point blank.
Here's the next in which he says that hope, I love this, by the way, folks.
Hope is not a strategy.
When we look at the Middle East today, with Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, with the conflict in Syria threatening to destabilize the region, and with violent extremists on the march, and with an American ambassador and three others dead, likely at the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates, it's clear that the risk of conflict in the region is higher now than when the president took office.
I know the president hopes for a safer, freer, and more prosperous Middle East allied with us.
I share this hope.
But hope is not a strategy.
Zing.
Zing, not table pounding, not shouting and screaming.
Reasoned, reasonable, logical, and truthful.
By the way, Obama is still saying that he has defeated Al-Qaeda.
That's still, that's another reason why he's got to go off tangent and not deal with our enemies directly, because as far as he's concerned, he's wiped them out.
Hope is not a strategy.
Somebody better tell the Nobel Peace Prize Committee that.
They gave him a peace prize on the basis of hope.
How's that looking?
As I listen to these Romney soundbites, it reminds me when I was listening to the speech live.
It was exactly an hour ago.
And when you just listen to what Romney is saying about our position in the world and how he's saying it, and you compare it to what Obama says about our position in the world, I just can't get over the stark contrast and the stark difference.
I mean, you ask the question, who is more presidential?
Who should be our commander-in-chief?
And the option is these two guys.
There's no comparison.
It is competent, confident leadership versus really rank, amateur, cliched liberalism.
Not even informed, educated, not even informed and educated by three years on the job, just cliched liberalism.
Do you realize that Obama is being treated by the media?
I went out to dinner last night.
I left the bunker.
I've been cloistered.
I've been working so hard.
I haven't been going out to dinner much.
But it was a good friend's birthday last night.
And Congressman Alan West was there, by the way.
You talk about a solid congressman here from South Florida.
What a great man he is.
And he's in a tough reelection fight down here in South Florida, his district.
His campaign looks like he's going well, but everybody just flocks to him when he speaks.
He's inspirational and he inspires confidence as well.
And I get the obligatory, what are we going to do about the media questions, but they weren't as bad last night.
I didn't have anybody, there were 32 people at this dinner.
And first, not one of them quoted the New York Times to me.
I actually went home not mad.
Normally I go to these things and at least five people will complain to me about the New York Times and ask me what we're going to do.
And last night, not one person.
That's progress, at least for me.
But there wasn't nearly the panic last night that there's been in other campaigns or previously this year.
The mood was much better among people at this dinner were all us.
And what I said to a number of people last night, one of the things that you've probably noticed about the media coverage of this campaign that bugs you, and you might not have been able to nail down why other than the bias.
But it's this.
I think the media is treating Obama like a candidate, not an incumbent.
He has no record.
He has no performance.
There is no reflection whatsoever.
Everything about Obama in the coverage is still rooted in the fact that he's just a candidate.
And so he gets away with all this hopy-feely changy stuff, this philosophical stuff that, well, I don't know that he is getting away with it with the electorates.
That's the key.
But the media is trying to help him get away with it.
Romney, on the other hand, is being treated as the president.
Romney's getting the incumbent treatment from the media.
And Obama is getting treated as a candidate.
But when you listen to these two guys, and when the choice we have is these two guys, when you listen to him speak on foreign policy, even after three and a half years, all Obama can say is Osama's dead and GM's alive.
But this Benghazi attack, the death of our ambassador and the other three Americans, folks, this is incompetence on parade.
It's a disaster waiting to happen again and again and again because we don't have anybody who knows what they're doing.
We don't have anybody who believes that national security actually means something.
We have somebody instead who thinks that this country's been wrong in the execution and even the acquirement, acquisition, I should say, of its superpower status.
And so when Obama speaks on foreign policy, it literally is a green light to our enemies.
There certainly isn't any deterrence in Obama.
Obama's not deterring anybody.
He's not deterring the Iranians.
He's not deterring al-Qaeda.
And that is evidenced by the attacks in Libya and the protests in Cairo and the accompanying protests in the rest of the Middle East.
The entire Arab Spring was mischaracterized from day one as an outbreak of Obamaism.
Freedom elections, democratic elections.
It was nothing of the sort.
It was the Muslim Brotherhood figuring that they had free reign.
If not an ally in the White House, they certainly had somebody who wasn't going to do anything about it.
And the odds were that he would be on their side because he would turn that event into something advantageous to him as a campaign event rather than something that's a serious foreign policy and national security issue.
Everything that happens in the Middle East is a national security issue, in addition to foreign policy.
And it's all treated as though it's just the next event in a long list of events that need to be spun as campaign events.
When you listen to these two men speak, and you've heard three of the soundbites, I hope you can see this whole thing in its entirety at some point, Romney's speech.
There's no comparison when you listen to the two as to who is more presidential and who should be our commander-in-chief with the choice that we have between these two guys.
I don't know if Romney was using a prompter.
I didn't, I didn't.
Somebody sent me a picture.
Yeah, it looks like he had a prompter.
He had a prompt.
There's a prompter there.
There's a real cool picture taken from what would be high center field of Romney at the podium and the way the cadets are assembled in the hall of the VMI.
But I do see two prompters there.
But Obama, I don't even think there's any leadership there.
There's just, he's just occupying the office.
We're treading water while we're trying to redefine what the purpose of the United States role in the world is.
And it clearly is a different role.
With Barack Obama, the United States is not the solution to the world's problems.
In fact, as far as Obama's concerned, we may be the problem more often than we're the solution.
That's unacceptable, but it's not the case with Romney.
With Romney, we are the solution.
We will lead from the front, not from behind, as we get with Obama.
And it's clear to me as I listen to this that Romney believes what he's saying.
And then if we get closer to all this, the debate focuses, people, Romney's leadership, executive leadership competence is shining through now.
Be it the way he talked about domestic policy, the economy, and the debate, now this foreign policy speech today.
There's another great line from the speech.
It's coming up in this soundbite.
Let's see if you pick it out.
Let's put his next soundbite.
The first purpose of our military is to prevent war, but there is a great line in this soundbite.
I'll roll back President Obama's deep and arbitrary cuts to our national defense that would devastate our military.
I'll make the critical defense investments that we need to remain secure.
The decisions we make today will determine our ability to protect America tomorrow.
The first purpose of a strong military is to prevent war.
The size of our Navy is at levels not seen since 1916.
I'll restore our Navy to the size needed to fulfill our missions by building 15 ships per year, including three submarines.
I'll implement effective missile defenses to protect against threats.
And on this, there will be no flexibility with Vladimir Putin.
And I will call on our NATO allies to keep the greatest military alliance in history strong by honoring their commitment to each devotee 2% of their GDP to security spending.
Today, only three of the 28 NATO nations meet this benchmark.
So did you hear the line, on this, there will be no flexibility with Vladimir Putin.
Now, you and I all get it.
But understand, there are a whole lot of people out there.
Obama phoned!
What about Romney?
He suck!
Still, a lot of people will have no idea what that reference means if they hear it.
What it's in reference to is that there was a G7, G8, G20, whatever meeting, and Obama didn't realize the mic was live, or he might have and not cared, who knows.
And he's talking with the diminutive Medvedev, who is Putin's puppet.
And he told old Dmitry, Dmitry's sitting there, Obama's sitting there, and Obama said to Dmitry, look, Dmitry, you tell Vladimir I'll have a lot more flexibility on these nukes after the election.
It was widely reported, and what it meant was, look, tell Vlad to back off.
You tell him, be patient.
I'll get rid of these things after I'm elected.
I can't do it right now.
I got to get re-elected first.
And Dmitry nodded, apparently understanding.
The translation was, look, Dimitri, you go back and tell Vladimir, I'll fold after the election.
You get what you want after the election, but I can't do it right now.
Obama said he wants to disarm.
He wants to get rid of nukes.
The Russians will not.
The Iranians will not.
The CHICOMs will not.
And I don't buy this business that Obama believes if we show leadership by getting rid of ours that the rest of the world will follow.
The reason is we're not the threat.
We're not the bad guys, which is something Obama does not get, doesn't conceive, or can't understand, or refuses to.
The other people are the bad guys.
And if they see us get rid of the nukes, all they do is celebrate, rub their hands together in glee, and we become less a threat.
Less that we'll be able to do to stop them should they choose to use theirs or move forward.
Okay, got to take a brief time out.
We come back.
See, I intended by now to be finished with all the funny soundbites of all the excuses the left has made in the media and elsewhere for Obama's miserable debate performance.
So we'll get to that when we get back.
One other observation about the Romney foreign policy speech.
The Washington Post ran a pre-buttal of Romney's speech yesterday, and it's Obama's camp pre-butts Romney foreign policy speech.
You want to hear what they said?
Here's what the Obama campaign said in advance of the Romney speech that happened an hour ago.
Quote, we are not going to be lectured by someone who's been an unmitigated disaster on foreign policy every time he's dipped his toe in the foreign policy waters.
Just as a refresher, this is the same guy who, when he went overseas on his trip, the only person who has offended Europe more is probably Chevy Chase.
Now, this is a riff on all those gaffes that Romney had on his three-country trip, and there were no gaffes.
The first gaffe was he supposedly insulted the UK on their security preparations for the Olympics.
It wasn't a gaff.
There weren't any gaffes.
He didn't make any gaffes.
It was all trumped-up media.
Folks have to tell you, you listen to this Romney speech on foreign policy.
It is such a refreshing thing.
We have finally somebody who talks about America's role in the world in a positive way.
America's moral and military role in the world.
It's been three and a half years since we've heard this country spoken of in the way Romney spoke of it, the way we always used to hear.
It didn't matter who the president was, even Bill Clinton.
I don't know about Woodrow Wilson.
But every previous president, when it came to foreign policy, the United States was it.
Now, we might have had people friends with the Soviets and this kind of thing, but we've never had somebody speak of this country as Obama has, apologize for this country as Obama has.
Run around the world claiming that we lead the world in torture and all this stupid, silly stuff.
So this speech from Romney, it was presidential in the sense that it was what we've all been used to.
Those of us old enough to have a lot of perspective on this.
It was just really, it was the old cliché breath of fresh air.
It was more than that.
It was a reminder of just how far gone we are, how detached we've become as a country under Obama.
Let's now head to these soundbites.
This is Sunday morning.
We have a montage of Obama advisor Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod, talking about Romney's performance at the first presidential debate.
I'm not going to take away from Mitt's masterful theatrical performance.
He did a superb acting job.
He did everything but learn tap dance.
Governor Romney had a masterful theatrical performance just this past week.
Again, it was a masterful, masterful performance by Governor Romney.
Governor Romney showed up to deliver a performance, and he delivered a very good performance.
Governor Romney went to give a performance.
He gave a good performance.
George Burns said, all you need to succeed in show business is sincerity, and if you can fake that, you got it made.
And that's essentially what Governor Romney's been about this whole week.
How many things have these guys thrown at the wall hoping something sticks?
And this is just the latest, that was a performance.
You didn't have meaning of it.
Once you fake sincerity, then the rest is easy.
They're floundering.
Their side is floundering.
These people on the left, there's stories about his professors at Harvard and so forth.
Folks, they don't know, they're very worried.
It's like I told you last week.
They believe this concoction of Obama as the most brilliant human being ever conceived.
They believe this stuff.
They believe it.
They believe all the stories they have made up about us.
They think Romney is the biggest empty suit, rich guy, cheat.
All these caricatures they create, they end up believing, but particularly the ones about Obama.
So smart, lower the C levels, all of that crap from the 2008 campaign.
They believe it.
I know you probably think I'm wrong about this.
Don't doubt.
They believe it, and they're floored.
They cannot explain what happened.
They can't.
So now Kerry is at fault or Romney had a great performance.
And Obama decided to carry that forward last night in L.A. at his campaign event, talking to a bunch of Hollywood people that are supposedly very worried, too.
He had to go out there to reassure them: don't worry, everything's okay.
Here's what he told them: Everybody here is incredible professionals.
They're such great friends, and they just perform flawlessly night after night.
I can't always say the same.
Oh!
He just admits to these guys that he can't do it every day.
No, he's saying he's not all performance.
He can't.
What?
Any number of ways of interpreting this.
But to go out there and tell these guys, look, everything's okay.
I just, I can't do it every day.
What is he acting every day?
And he goofed up at the debate.
Every day's an act with the debates, the real Obama, and uh-oh.
That's what a lot of them are afraid of.
Except these idiots in Hollywood have never thought he was acting.
They thought what they got and what they made up in their own minds about him was the real deal.
Everybody on his team's discombobulated.
Don't doubt me.
Okay, so the narrative is that Romney turned in a great performance, right?
He was acting.
But the New York Times has a piece in which they say that it was Obama who, quote, did not say his lines right.
I have details coming up.
We've only just gotten start here, folks.
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