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Nov. 19, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:42
November 19, 2012, Monday, Hour #2
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And Grick, and uh welcome back, folks.
Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and here we are, Thanksgiving week as we are approaching one of my all-time favorite times of the year, the holiday Christmas season.
Great to have you here.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
We'll get to your phone calls soon in this hour.
One correction, uh, Mike Murphy ran the Schwarzenegger campaign that Arnold won, not the one that he lost.
But the the bottom line is that that look at uh Schwarzenegger was a disaster as governor of California.
I hate to say that.
I don't like saying it at all, but this is these Republican consultants, all of whom now trying to blame me for what's happened.
I haven't run one campaign, and they know it.
They think they have the strategy, they have the blueprint, they know how to win, though none of them ever do.
But then I come along and I get the public so riled up that I end up getting people to vote in ways against the strategists have convinced their candidates they can make happen.
It's my fault.
Now, these these Republican, remember how the the theory of elections, 40% vote Democrat, 40% vote Republican, 20% in the middle.
And all these consultants, for years, decades, they've they've they portray themselves to Republican candidates as I'm the guy who can get you the moderate vote.
I'm the guy that can get you the independent vote, I'm the guy that can make you win the election.
I'm the guy that can overcome this conservative problem the party has.
And then they end up with these squishy candidates.
They end up with these candidates have no chance of winning.
And even if they would win, they would be disasters.
Because they're Democrat light.
And then after they lose and lose and lose, what do they do?
Blame a guy on a radio.
I'll never forget, just to remind you here, before Obama was even inaugurated.
I was so criticized when I said Obama's policies to undermine the private sector were on purpose.
When I said I hope he fails, because I knew what he was going to do.
He did exactly what I knew he was going to do.
And I didn't want him to succeed at that.
I didn't want him to succeed in destroying capitalism.
And all of these great traditions and institutions that have defined this country's greatness that have made us a superpower.
But look at what's happened.
You look back on it.
It was on purpose.
It's obvious.
You know, playing Santa Claus doesn't sell when you got 4% unemployment, but when you have 8% or 9% unemployment, it does.
So you wreck the economy, you jack up unemployment, you do it on purpose, and you hold out the government as the answer, the savior, as the immediate savior.
Forget working hard.
There aren't any jobs.
And even if you can find a job not going to pay enough, this country is not the same way it was.
It's Obama's message.
Let me handle it for you.
We'll extend your unemployment benefits.
Go back and look at the number of times Obama uses the word "benefits" in speeches that all four years, and telling people how to get theirs.
I don't think there's any question about it.
The question is, have we lost the country?
And they've got this Thomas B. Edsel piece in the New York Times yesterday, in which he he basically says that we have.
Just summarizing this, in a nutshell, Ed Saul says that all the Democrat pollsters say that I'm right.
He cites Pugh, Greenberg Carvel, Public Religion Research Institute as Paul's.
But the money quote is at the end.
He says the upcoming fiscal cliff deal will show whether our side has lost the country or not.
In effect, the 21st century version of class conflict sets the stage for an exceptionally bitter face-off between the left and the right in Congress.
The national government is facing the prospect of forced austerity, weighing such zero-sum choices as raising capital gains taxes or cutting food stamps, slashing defense spending or restricting unemployment benefits, establishing a fifteen cents a gallon gas tax, or pushing citizens off the Medicaid rolls, pushing central bank policy favorable to the financial service industry or curtailing Medicare eligibility.
In broader terms, the political confrontation, and we'll see it play out in the fiscal cliff deal.
The political confrontation pits taxpayers against tax consumers.
And it is taxpayers who form the center right coalition, tax consumers who form the center left coalition.
And according to the tax policy center, 46.4% of all tax violers had no federal income tax liability in 2011.
And other polling data shows that more Americans approve of socialism than they do capitalism.
Three different polls.
So he's agreeing with me.
Is Rush Limbaugh's country gone?
Yeah, the difference is he's happy about it, and I'm not.
That's the difference.
But he agrees that the country is gone.
Now let me read a couple things to you.
This is from one of the power line guys, I forget who, but is a piece praising Lindsey Graham for his appearance on TV yesterday by Benghazi.
And he wants to withhold total praise for Graham because Graham went on to criticize Romney for his Santa Claus comment that the Obama administration had spread around goodies to buy votes among its favored constituencies.
Graham seemed to say that this is scandalous allegation.
Whereas, for anybody who's been paying attention, it is a succinct summary of the modus operandi and in fact the reason for existence of the Democrat Party.
Accusing the Democrat Party of buying votes with taxpayer money is like accusing Toyota of making cars.
There's no question that's what the Democrat Party is.
So why all this resistance to it on the Republican side?
Why all this objection to Santa Claus?
Here we have from the Daily Caller from Altoona, Iowa.
At Iowa Republican Governor Terry Branstead's birthday fundraiser on Saturday night, Republican Steve King from Iowa Congressman echoed Romney's recent remarks that Obama won the race by giving gifts to certain demographics.
Well he did, King told a Daily Caller.
It was Santa Claus versus personal responsibility and fiscal responsibility.
But again, folks, this this is we're not saying this in a vacuum.
Santa Claus sells when you got unemployment at 8%.
When you have people laying people off because of Obamacare, Santa Claus looks good.
Hard work is not an immediate solution.
Especially if you can't find any.
And why can't people find any?
Because of what Obama's done to the economy.
Not Bush.
What Obama has done to the economy.
I knew this was going to happen.
Obama set out to destroy the private sector.
He's made a good start.
So now the solution to that obviously is not hard work or anything else.
It's uh it's Santa Claus.
Then there's this.
This is gonna sound I I'm convinced that we have listeners in the Czech Republic.
Because there was an editorial Stephen Hayward at Power Line got hold of a translation of a paragraph of an editorial.
This is from Facebook Friends, a translation of an editorial from the Czech newspaper, Prager Zeitung.
Praita Zadugan.
And here's the translation.
The danger to America is not Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency.
This is the Czech Republic, isn't it?
Although I did say this.
This is the Czech Republic, which not too long ago escaped the jack booted thugs of Soviet communism.
It'll be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a guy for their president.
The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America.
Blaming the prince of fools should not blind anyone to the vast Confederacy of fools that made him their prince.
The Republic can survive a Barack Obama who is merely a fool.
It's less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who those who elected him.
And made that's the Czech Republic newspaper.
That's of course this is going to be said to be mean spirited, unkind, and harmful to the Republicans.
And then remember the caller we had in California last week.
So upset what's happening to his state.
He was going on and on.
when they passed the lottery out here, they promised that it would pay for education for 25 years.
Now, he was listing a bunch of things wrong with the state.
I said, sir, the people of that state are voting for it.
They are not being fooled.
The people of California just voted to raise taxes on themselves.
Now, they think they're raising taxes on the rich.
But before it's all said and done, they're raising taxes on those who still pay taxes.
By the way, the number of people actually paying for California to work is shocking.
Somebody sent me a note.
There was apparently a discussion, uh, round table discussion recently.
And one of the participants on the round table said if you count all the living souls in California, including inmates, mentally ill children retirees.
But don't count state government employees.
Count everybody but state government employees, 37% of the California population actually works.
And of the 37%, only half make enough to pay taxes.
So in California, only 37% are creating anything of value, and of that 37%, only 18% are actually paying taxes to support the system.
Is it any wonder then that on November 6th, Californians voted to raise taxes on those people?
And Mayor Brown's all happy.
This tax increase is going to work because the people voted for this one.
They didn't have this one shoved down their throats, and he's right.
They're getting what they want.
They're voting for what they're getting.
They're not being fooled at all.
People of California want what is happening.
There's no arguing that, folks.
No way, shape, matter, reform.
Just like there's no arguing here that we are dealing with this phenomenon known as Santa Claus.
It exists in the Democrat Party.
question about it whatsoever.
Thank you.
The End And we're back.
El Rush Bo serving humanity, simply by showing up.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Here's uh here's Andrew, Oklahoma City.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
You're up first today.
Hey, it's uh great to speak to the great El Rushbo.
I am a true rush baby.
I have been listening to you for the past 20 years, and I am only 27 years old.
So it's not a good thing.
I appreciate that, sir.
Thank you very much.
I really appreciate that.
I uh you know, I don't fit into the uh so-called demographic of the old angry white guys in the country that was uh was uh said about you earlier.
I you know, I'm a young guy who lives in the city.
Yeah, how old are you?
How Andrew, how old are you?
I'm 27.
27.
You're not 65.
Um do you live in the sticks or no?
Oklahoma City's not sticks.
It is to Steve Schmidt.
No.
Uh do you you see uh uh are you white?
I am white, on that one.
See, you're still the problem, then.
Well, my question for you today is how do we promote conservatism when the Republican leadership doesn't even buy into it?
You live it.
You just live it.
You look at them to liberalism, at least they buy into it and they believe their own medicine.
When our our leadership doesn't even believe the ideals of the party.
Our leadership cannot make the case for conservatism.
Our leadership cannot make the case for liberty or freedom.
Our leadership is not interested.
Our leadership is just like theirs, invested in government to an extent.
Government's where all the money is, governments where you make all your money, governments that's where all the money goes, it goes to Washington.
Absolutely.
I just I see the backlash from uh from the Santa Claus controversy here.
And it you know the hard work is frowned upon as uh as a way to success.
It's uh it's a little troubling.
Well, it's it's what would you call redistribution of wealth, by the way?
I mean, what is it?
The redistribution of wealth is taking from someone and giving it to somebody else who has not earned it.
That is that is a key.
How is that not a comparative description to Santa Claus?
Now, Santa Claus makes his own stuff theoretically.
His little elves are up there making all those iPhones and stuff.
Santa Claus is not really taking from somebody else.
But Santa Claus is still the gift giver.
And that's how the Democrats want to be perceived.
But but your question here hard work is frowned on.
I take you back to Republican convention.
I am convinced.
You know, we I happen to like that convention a lot.
I thought that that convention was uplifting and inspiring.
And particularly to the uh minority groups that that we're trying to reach.
And when I hear Marco Rubio and and others say, and Bobby Gendal, we've got to reach out with conservatism.
We got to take conservatism to everyone.
It'll I totally agree, but but the party's not doing it.
The party hasn't done it and I don't know how long, to be quite honest with you.
But is that not what our convention attempted to do?
Exactly what Ruby Owen Gendal are suggesting needs to be done.
We had Fast, I'm I'm getting blue in the face repeating this.
We had the most accomplished, the most achieved in politics, minorities in this country.
And they all had a common story.
All of this is important, and that common story they came up from nothing with hard work.
And became the best they could be.
They reached the pinnacle, some of them still climbing the pinnacle of their careers.
And that scared people.
Jindal and these guys are going to have to realize that conservatism scares people right now.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a most fascinating piece.
Right here it is.
It's from The Daily Caller, and it's by Caroline Maye.
And here's the headline.
Homeland Security promotes welfare to new immigrants in government welcome materials.
And she begins her piece with this.
Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your new country can do for you.
Welcome I'm not kidding.
Welcome to USA.gov is the website.
Go click on it.
Welcome to USA.gov, a website maintained by the Department of Homeland Securities, U.S. citizenship And immigration services bills itself as the primary gateway for new immigrants to find basic information on how to settle in the U.S., featuring a prominent section for new immigrants about how to access government benefits.
Depending on your immigration status, length of time in the U.S. and income, you may be eligible for some federal benefit programs, the webpage reads.
Government assistance programs can be critically important to the well-being of some immigrants and their families.
Frequently, however, there's a lack of information about how to access such benefits.
Benefit programs can be complicated.
And you may be given misleading information about how they operate.
The Department of Homeland Security page offers links to government websites that explain how to access benefits, including food stamps, supplemental Social Security income.
These are newly arrived immigrants we're talking about.
Medicaid, Medicare, temporary assistance for needy families, and the official website with information on all available federal benefit programs.
Benefits.gov.
Did you know that such a website existed?
Benefits.gov.
Now it says here that the link doesn't yet work to uh benefits.gov.
Let me read this to you again.
While while all these people are out saying that the government of Morocco is not about Santa Claus.
That's an insult to people.
Don't don't don't.
The Department of Homeland Security page, web page, welcome to USA.gov.
This is new immigrants.
Links to government websites that explain how to access benefits, including food stamps, supplemental security income, Medicaid, Medicare, temporary assistance for needy families, and the official website with information on all available federal benefit programs, benefits.gov.
Welcome to USA.gov also boasts to immigrants that free public education for children is one reason.
Many immigrants come to the United States.
It is?
I thought they came here for hard work and making their way in the world to become Americans.
But the Obama website here says, no, they come here for free education for their kids.
Though the website appears to advertise benefits, new immigrants are not necessarily eligible for the benefits displayed on the website.
Enrollment in SSI and temporary assistance for needy families may also serve as impediments to future immigration status adjustments.
The spokesman, Bill Wright, told a daily caller, the website's not intended to advise individuals on their eligibility.
Well, what's it for them?
If it's not to advise them on their eligibility, why do you have it?
Why is it tell them what they're eligible for or might be eligible for?
No Santa Claus, huh?
It's not what Obama's all about, huh?
It's not why we lost, huh?
It's not why we're losing, eh?
Can you imagine a website greeting to newly arrived immigrants?
Welcome to the United States.
If you're interested in finding a job, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, go here.
Can you imagine how that would sell?
No, if you want benefits, though, we've got the answers for you right here.
Back to the phones.
Here's uh here's John Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Rush, I'm I'm grateful to talk to you.
This is my seventh time.
This is the first time I've spoken with you that I've been nervous.
You can hear it in my voice, I'm certain.
I want to share something with you.
I'll be brief as I can.
Um, I think you've forgotten where you came from.
I I have never in my life voted for a Democrat.
I'm 56 years old.
I came from a bad background alcoholism.
I straightened my life out the military and supportive wife, you name it.
And the only person in my entire life I've ever wanted to meet.
I don't want to meet Barry Sanders.
I'm from Detroit.
I don't want to meet rock stars.
I don't want to meet actors.
I wanted to meet Limbaugh, and I wanted to meet Bob Dole.
You become so cynical.
You've become so pessimistic.
You've become so angry.
I go to work each day.
I own a small company.
I recruit for the automotive industry.
It's a tough industry to recruit in.
A lot of people lost their jobs.
I don't listen to you to hear you cream this president every day.
I don't like this man.
Not at all.
But every day I listen to limbaugh.
It's not that I want to be entertained like it's Forrest Gump.
I listen to limbaugh to be uplifted, to be motivated, to be to feel like there's a better tomorrow.
And that's been lost for four years.
Put yourself in my place.
If I were in your seat, and you're listening to me, and I'm saying exactly what you do.
For four years, you've creamed this guy.
You've been cynical on this guy.
We do not like this guy.
We think he's un-American, meaning he's just a lousy president.
And I think the reason that you do this, and I love you like family.
I almost I almost cried on your station once.
I'm a former paratrooper in the Army.
I competed in bodybuilding.
I almost cried talking to you once.
I was so rattled at what the Democratic Party had done under, oh, I don't remember who it was, a gentleman from North Dakota.
Tom Bashel, I think.
And I did that, or almost did that because of my level of comfort and what many of us feel speaking to Rush Limbaugh.
But today we're told to think that 60% of America's stupid.
And they're not.
I served with Democrats.
I served with liberals.
I think what our party needs to do and what I want you to do is get George Bush off your mind.
George Bush was a bad president.
He was a wonderful person.
I think of that guy like a father figure.
You listen to his voice.
He's calming and he's comforting.
But he spent what he spent four trillion dollars prescription drug plan.
John, John, hang on just a second.
George Bush isn't on my mind.
I don't know.
I don't know what you mean.
I've I I know you've called before.
You've attacked me before.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I mean it can't be with you.
You call here and you set yourself up as this sad, disappointed, big time rush guy.
Uh but but you I've never thought I'd be picking a fight with a guy that I've listened to since I left the Army active duty in 89, but sometimes, boy, you confuse me like you've never confused me before.
Well that was January.
You said I was out of touch last January.
You say it pretty much that did every time you've called here.
Well, maybe because I want my party to be a better you're a spokesman.
I don't run the party.
All I'm doing is telling everybody the truth.
All I ever do is inspire people.
All I ever do is uplift people or try to.
But at the same time, I don't wear rose-colored glasses.
I'm the mayor of Realville.
I probably last week was the most upbeat conservative Republican in media you could find.
Having fun here on the program.
I don't think the country's finished.
I don't think it's over.
I even said that we've reached the point now where words and policies are not going to overcome this.
We now are going to be saved by events.
And it is events that will save this country and wake people up.
Pure and simple.
Anyway, I'll look forward to your eighth call next time.
The End We are back.
Yell Rush Ball, cutting edge, societal evolution, and Mark in Chicago, your next.
Welcome, sir.
Nice to have you here.
Hey, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call and uh happy Thanksgiving, brother.
Same to you, sir.
Same to you.
Hey, Russ, I just want to go to the By the way.
You know what would be an interesting question?
Serious question.
Just randomly ask Americans on the street.
What is Thanksgiving?
Just a thought off the top of my head.
Go ahead.
What was your call about?
Okay, Rush, thanks.
I just wanted to, hey, let's all do respect to John, just the flip side of it.
And you know, Rush, I got a little frustrated listening to the monologue today in terms of Rush Limbaugh's America is is dead and not alive.
Let me let me help you explain how it is alive and it is thriving.
Wait a minute.
This this is this is a guy writing in the New York Times.
I was reading that was not my monologue.
I'm reading from his column in the New York Times yesterday.
He's happy.
He thinks we've lost the country, and he's happy about it.
He's happy that there are more tax consumers than taxpayers.
He wants the tax consumers to win the upcoming battle on the debt cliff, the fiscal cliff, uh over the taxpayers.
Rush, let me let me let me tell him right now why it's uh you're you are you are alive.
Outside my father, you have been an amazing inspiration in my life.
I worked for the same company for 32 years.
I've been very successful.
I've worked hard.
I've had the same wife for 30 years.
She's a wonderful lady.
Got two kids.
One just got promoted at work.
The other's a United States Marine.
He's a firefighter, he's in paramedic school.
We do everything we can to give back to help people at church.
And I manage a uh national ministry honoring our fallen soldiers and gold star family.
Your America is alive.
Your influence is alive.
It continues, and you made a point earlier to somebody I can't remember.
I think it was the first caller.
We just need to keep doing what we're doing.
And our example will eventually be.
That's right.
He asked me if if the if the political leaders aren't doing it, what can we do?
Live it.
You live conservative, you live your life, you influence as many people around you as you can.
And you have done an amazing job.
I know I'm not the only one out there today.
There's a lot of people listening going, Rush has done the same for me.
And with that, Rush, God bless you, and uh, you're a great American buddy.
Well, well, I appreciate your call.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thanks very much.
I I uh look, I I I really appreciate this.
Folks, I I'm not taking these attacks on me personally.
Because I understand this is a you know, I I'm here on the radio, and the way you have to interpret these guys, they have their business.
It is the political consultancy business, and their business is a specialty in their view.
And it requires specific training and knowledge and experience and hard work and uh experience, what kind of thing.
And they are the experts because of all that.
And here I am.
I'm an outsider.
I'm a guy on the radio.
I'm a guy on the radio who they think has somehow intruded on their business, and I, in my world here on the radio, am giving them problems doing their job.
And I'm not qualified to do that because I'm not a consultant, and I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm just some yeah who on the radio.
So they're lashing out.
They're the ones losing elections.
But they have to get hired by the next losing candidate.
And so they have to make sure that their list of potential employers thinks that it's me losing elections and not them.
I don't have a record of election loss.
I have yet to run a campaign.
I have yet to pick a candidate.
I have yet to script a convention.
I haven't authored a political ad.
I haven't come up with a political strategy.
I comment on it.
I suggest things that I would do if, but I have never once inserted myself in their business.
I have never gone to a candidate and said this consultant is undermining you.
Never done that, never would.
Not my job, not my business.
But they look at it, it's it's just it's no different, folks.
When ESPN hired me, the reason that this McNabb thing happened was those guys didn't like me being in my turf.
Okay, I'm a political radio guy and conservative to boot.
Sports is their turf.
That's their that's their bailiwick.
And here I came, expanding my base.
And that wasn't permissible.
That isn't gonna happen.
It's no different here.
I have known, I can't, and I've I've told you this.
I have known for a long time that not every conservative considers every other conservative to be on the team.
There are a lot of conservative so-called conservatives who wish a bunch of us weren't on the team.
There is no conservative movement right now, by the way.
There is not a conservative movement, and there is not a singular conservative leader in electoral politics.
There is not a conservative leader in the media side.
There's not a conservative leader in the pundit side, and there hasn't been for years, and what What's happened is a lot of jockeying for influence and leadership power to want to be the go-to guy, smartest guy in the room or what have you.
And I am considered an outsider by all of those people.
I'm a radio guy.
I didn't even go to college for crying out loud.
I don't even have a pedigree.
I don't have a piece of paper that proves I know what I'm talking about.
So I'm an interloper.
At every realm that I have attempted to comment on, I'm an interloper.
Huh?
And you heard Schmidt, by the way.
Don't discount.
And we got these guys making millions and millions of dollars talking to old white hicks and hay seeds.
Well, people will tell you, if you give them enough rope, they'll tell you what really upsets them.
But I have always known, ladies and gentlemen, I'm the renegade.
I'm the outsider.
I'm not, I'm not in this club.
So as these guys continue to pick losing candidates, and as they continue to run losing campaigns, they need to have the next losing candidate hire them.
And so I'm the guy responsible for Republicans losing elections.
Hell, before it's all said and done, Romney will be exonerated for the Santa Claus analogy because he got it from me.
They'll even blame me on that before that's all over to exonerate him.
But by the way, I don't know if you've noticed, they have already drummed Romney out of the part.
Romney doesn't exist.
Romney is personal non grata.
Romney is, can't believe how mean they're being to Mitt Romney.
The same consultant claim.
He doesn't exist.
I've read the pieces.
I gotta take a break, sit tight, coming back with much more, don't go away.
So I checked the email.
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