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Feb. 13, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:34
February 13, 2013, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
By the way, we're up to audio sound by number two.
I forgot to tell you that during the uh obscene profit time out there at the top of the hour.
Greetings, folks.
And welcome back.
Great to have you here, L Rushbow at 1-800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
And as usual, rest assured, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Email address if you want to go that route is L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
And we do check.
We do check those emails, folks.
We do read them.
I occasionally we'll call one.
And of course, we're inundated daily with emails from our subscribers at rush247.
Let's see, what is the here?
Carrying the same theme.
There's a Rasmussen reports story, survey results.
Americans overwhelmingly believe that it's not only fair for entrepreneurs to get rich, it's good for the economy.
Now you see something like this, and you swear you're living in an alternative universe.
How can this be?
How can this be with Barack Obama continuing to gain approval for his policies?
To be untied to the fate of the country.
Americans overwhelmingly believe that it's not only not it's not only fair for entrepreneurs to get rich, it's good for the economy.
A new Rasmussen Reports National Telephone Telephone Survey, 86% of likely U.S. voters believe it is fair for those who build very successful companies to get very rich.
Only 10% see that as unfair.
And these figures include 56% who see such rewards as very fair, and 2% who say it's not fair at all.
It was over a thousand people that were surveyed, thousand uh likely voters.
Now we have polls that show dissatisfaction with the country's direction, but support for Obama's agenda.
A giant total disconnect.
The people of this country, and by people let's let's let's leave it at low information voters.
They happen to be a majority of people voting.
Majority of low information voters do not associate what's happening in the country with Obama policies at all.
They don't associate Obama as having any relationship whatsoever to what's happening in the country.
This is it I'm sorry, I wish I could have figured this out in February of 2009.
I really do.
I I can't tell you how embarrassed I feel.
Well, I know it doesn't make sense, but it's still, it's been out there to be seen.
It has been discoverable.
It was it was learnable.
And I missed it.
We we've been beating our heads up against the wall, trying to understand why it is that people do not associate the decline in the country with the president of the United States when every president heretofore has either gotten the blame or the credit when the economy goes down or up.
Every president has.
Now, in the case of George W. Bush, they finagled a way to get him credit for a good economy that they reported as being bad.
They convinced the American people we were in a recession long before we were.
They convinced the American people that millions of soldiers were dying in Iraq.
But the key to this is the key to understanding it is that Barack Obama never governs.
He is never, he doesn't allow himself to be seen as governing.
Yeah, he's been elected, but he's not governing.
This explains the never-ending perpetual campaign.
Obama is constantly running against what's wrong.
There are forces, powerful forces arrayed against Obama and you.
And he's representing you, and he's trying to stop these forces.
And he's trying to expose these people.
And he's trying to overcome the dastardly things that they are doing.
And who are they?
They are the rich.
They're the people who've cornered the market on everything.
The rich and the people who've managed to commandeer everything for them and left but mere crumbs for everybody else.
And Obama is trying to get it all back for you.
And not only get it back for you, it was yours to start with.
Somewhere along the line, it was all yours.
And over the years, these mysterious powerful forces ended up finding a way to take it away from you.
Barack Obama is not linked to the direction of the country at all.
He has no relationship.
His policies, his agenda is not seen as having anything to do with the direction the country is going.
It's a profound marvel here.
This is an amazing political feat that has been accomplished.
not finished.
Into the fifth year of running the country and still seen, not as an outsider.
It goes deeper than that.
It's not that he's seen as an outsider.
He's seen as a crusader.
He's seen as somebody who understands exactly what it is that's causing you all your problems and strife, and it's he's trying to expose it and fix it.
it's like it is it's like Hugo Chavez is like I mentioned uh in the last half hour.
Throughout history, dictators have never been blamed for the bad things happening in their countries.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, these people were all running the revolution.
They were all running against whatever was happening that was making life miserable for people.
They were always the revolution in Cuba for crying out loud is still going on.
They still speak up the revolution.
Castro is still seen and idolized, envied, he is respected by the people of Cuba.
Now, a majority, not all, of course, but a majority still do.
That's why Castro, for example, never wants the U.S. embargo to end.
U.S. embargoed the blockade, he calls it.
That's why the U.S. is the evil force that's preventing Cuba from becoming all it could be, and that embargo is part and parcel of it.
It makes no common sense whatsoever, and you'll go absolutely insane trying to analyze this with common sense.
This is how you understand massive support for Obama's agenda and total dissatisfaction with the country's direction.
The only way those two things can coexist at the same time intellectually is if Obama's agenda is not seen as having one shred of relationship to what's happening in the country.
Obama's agenda is seen as the fix, the attempted fix.
Obama's agenda is seen as a valiant effort to fix the unemployment situation, to fix the housing problem, to fix the fact that the world hates us, to fix our foreign policy problems, to fix the health care problem and the immigration problem.
None of what Obama does is seen as a cause.
It's not only that, it's not even seen as relating.
And so you have a story where 60% believe letting entrepreneurs get rich is good for the economy.
It's not only fair for entrepreneurs to get rich, it's good for the economy.
And Obama can in his State of the Union speech basically come out and blame those people for the problems that we face and not be seen as an obstacle to creating wealth, not be seen as an obstacle to entrepreneurism.
He can come out and basically say he is opposed to entrepreneurism.
But he actually doesn't.
He opened his speech last night by talking about the one thing that we've always all agreed to.
You work hard, and if you play by the rules, you get ahead.
Everybody playing on a fair field and a fair shot and so forth, which is the exact opposite of what is happening, but it sounds good.
So that's what Obama is trying for.
Right now, the deck is stacked against everybody.
The rich have all the marbles.
The 1% have all the marbles.
It's uh profound thing.
And yet, if you look at just the one half of this, dissatisfaction with the country's direction.
Okay, well, there's a potential.
There is at least potential to open people's eyes.
There's another factor here, too, folks.
And you can't take this factor out of the equation.
That's Obama's race and the historical nature of his presidency.
He's the first black president.
A lot of people voted for Obama in 2008 because that vote did number things individually.
Vote made those people feel good about themselves.
Those people, when they voted for Obama, I am not a racist, and nobody can ever say I am, number one.
Number two, that vote was going to fix the race problem.
It was going to erase slavery.
It was going to eliminate all the horrible things in this nation's past.
Finally, we were going to, as a nation, speak up and say in one voice that we are no longer racist.
We are no longer a slave state.
Then the blank canvas aspect of Obama, that he stood for anything you wanted him to be.
And those people are not going to admit that they made a mistake.
Those people are not going to admit that their vote was cast erroneously.
So all those things add up.
To me, this is important.
I'm harping on it because, of course, the objective here is to have an informed, by the whole point of this program has been, the operating theory of the program has been, that an informed public voting every four years, every two years will bring about the best possible governance and the best possible culture society that the country can have.
But they must be an informed voting public.
Winning in the arena of ideas.
This is not about ideas.
None of this is about a this, by the way, explains Clinton too.
Clinton was a perpetual campaign.
Only on rare occasions, same thing for Obama, did Clinton actually wanted to be perceived as governing as in charge when some like welfare reform.
He wanted credit for that, so for the two or three days that that mattered, he was president, though he wasn't campaigning, he was governing.
Obama does that when he signs various bills.
But why is he, for example, State of the Union speech last night, and for the rest of this week, he's on the campaign trail.
What's he doing?
He's running against the powerful forces trying to stop him from fixing these problems.
He's not governing.
And that's how he is able to create and maintain the illusion that he has no relationship whatsoever to what actually happens.
That unemployment, nothing to do with him, even after five years.
National debt, deficit, nothing to do with him.
Budget cuts that might be harmful, there are no such things, by the way.
Nothing to do With him.
And Mike, if you would, bear with me, play it one more time.
It's the uh audio soundbite number 30.
This is from the Frank Luntz Focus Group.
I don't have it in front of me, so it might not be 30, but whatever it is, the Frank Lunz Focus Group from Hannity last night, as you listen to this, every one of these people voted for Mitt Romney.
From the Romney people, what did you like about Barack Obama's State of Union address?
A couple of few.
I liked his immigration that he talked about putting people at the back of the line and so that they didn't get preferential treatment just because they were here.
I think education, the reform he was talking about, affordability and making it efficient, I think that's gonna education all starts from education, really.
One more.
I like how he spoke of bipartisanship and working with Congress and moving the country forward by working together.
I believe he means it.
How many of you believe he means it that he's gonna be more bipartisan this term than he was before?
He means it's a mistake.
Right.
So immigration, I like what Obama's proposing.
He's making people go to the back of the line.
He actually isn't, but he said that last night, so that's what people heard.
They believe him.
When he lies, they believe him.
His immigration plan is not going to make any of these illegals go to the back of the line, they're gonna be at the front of the line, and they're gonna get citizenship right off the bat.
It doesn't do me any good to say this people are not gonna believe me, they're gonna believe him.
Education.
Why, we love what he's doing, education.
Education is it.
That's everything for our kids.
And of course, Obama wants to fix it.
Bipartisanship.
We want everybody to work together.
Want everybody to get along.
The most partisan president ever, the most divisive, not seen that way.
No, no, don't say that.
Nobody's gonna believe that.
He's not.
He wants everybody to get along.
These are Romney voters.
You heard him.
That's their take from last night.
I gotta take a timeout.
We'll get to your phone calls when we come back.
Don't go away.
Ladies and gentlemen, this explains why Obama walked away from the grand bargain last August on the expansion, the raising of the of the debt limit.
Remember John Boehner, remember how mad we were, and we were going into the end of the campaign and maybe it was a couple, I forget when whenever it was, Boehner gave Obama everything he wanted, and then Obama changed the rules of the game and asked for another $500 billion or trillion dollars in tax increases.
After Obama, when when Boehner finally caved on revenue, when Boehner fine, okay, we'll we'll agree to raise taxes.
Then Obama came and asked for more, and Boehner finally said, That's it, pal, we're out of here.
Obama didn't want the grand bargain.
He didn't want any kind of a deal, even though Boehner gave him everything he wanted.
The Washington Post couldn't understand it at the time.
I'll never forget this.
A grand bargain means there's an agreement.
Obama doesn't want to agree.
It's better for Obama to be seen as continuing to fight these powerful forces.
Look at if the country's going to hell in a handbasket and you want it to, and you're the architect, it's a brilliant maneuver to make sure that other people are seen as responsible for it.
Now, folks, this could not happen without a totally compliant media.
It's not just you need a charismatic figure.
Sure, this is obviously true.
You need a profoundly charismatic leader, but you have to have a complicit media.
If you don't have the media on your side, you'll never get away with always blaming somebody else.
The wreckers.
If Obama didn't have the media following his lead on this, he couldn't get away with any of this.
So don't misunderstand.
I'm not saying the media have no role here.
They are willing and activist participants in this.
But the grand bargain, Obama being offered everything he wanted and turning it down after making a demand that was impossible to be met.
It means that Obama wants no responsibility for anything.
He doesn't want to be any any any uh he don't want to be perceived as responsible.
He is shirking all responsibility by refusing to govern, by refusing to compromise, by refusing to take yes for an answer.
The moment Obama agrees, this is why, you know, my instincts, I have known there's no common ground.
There isn't any way there can be bipartisanship.
There is no, in terms of ideological ideas or ideological factoids or characteristics.
There's no common ground between what Obama wants and what the Republicans want.
There is no way to have bipartisan compromise.
But beyond that, it's the last thing Obama wants.
Doesn't want there to be a real budget, for example.
It's the same tactic.
With no real budget, you can't tie Obama to anything that happens in the budget.
With no budget deal, you can't tie Obama to it.
But you can continue to portray the Republicans as the enemy.
Look at the sequester.
Sequester is his idea.
And his entire existence today and last night and last week and next week is to run against it.
And look what the sequester is going to do.
It's going to take food out of the mouths of babies.
It's the same tactic.
His agenda, his policies, no relationship to what happens.
He's constantly fighting the evil forces, and therefore he can never agree with them.
He can never strike a deal with these evil forces, because then he would share responsibility for what happens.
And after eight years, he is going to end up being held responsible for nothing that happens in this country.
That's the objective.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution.
By the way, folks, this explains this theory of mine explains so much.
Everything that I have explained has a focal point, and it is this.
Keeps Obama from being blamed for what is happening to the country, which is what he wants to happen.
As you and I all know, he is devastating this country.
He is tearing down the traditions and institutions that made the country great.
And all the while...
He is seen as fighting it.
All the while he is seen by most people as trying to stop it.
He is seen by most people as doing everything he can to save this country.
But there are powerful forces out there that are working hard, and they've gotten away with it ever since the days of the founding.
Benghazi, Benghazi, a microcosm of this whole approach, and explains why Obama refused to get involved.
He never wants to get involved when there's the slightest chance that he could be held responsible.
Therefore, it's the video, therefore it's Susan Rice, therefore it's Hillary, therefore it's anybody.
And at the end of the day, it's always Obama seen as the great crusader.
He's trying to get to the bottom of things and fix it and make sure it doesn't happen again.
While everything that happens has no relationship to the fact that he is the leader of the country, has no relationship whatsoever to the fact that he is the president.
It's why I think he's always voted present all of his political career.
This is what agitators do, what community organizers do.
They rile people up and then they step aside.
While a chaos happens and then pretend that they had nothing to do with it while they come in and try to calm everybody down and fix it and get everybody working together.
And make sure that we invest properly in education.
And make sure that we don't let the sea levels rise too much.
We've got to tackle global warming and make sure those health insurance companies don't get away with raping people like they always have.
and This explains why Obama let Pelosi write Obamacare.
It's why Obama never went out and actually sold it.
You remember why the uh the mainstream media early on would always complain about how Obama would never really go sell his policies.
Now he is now.
He's he's and he's not selling policies now.
What he's doing, he gives his State of the Union speech then runs out.
He's on the campaign trail.
He's not trying to sell policies.
The purpose of these next three days is to explain what he said in the State of the Union speech and to continue this fairy tale that there are powerful forces that are arrayed and aligned against you and everybody else in this country.
And he's doing his best to protect you and make sure that the playing field is level and you get a fair shot.
Broward County in Florida, right down the road here.
This is Nat.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
You're up first today.
Hey, Rush.
You know, I was watching the uh State of the Union, and I saw this woman, Destaline Victor, and I was inspired by this idea that a 102-year-old lady had to wait hours for voting.
Then I found out she didn't, she didn't emigrate to this country until she was 78 years old.
And my mind being what it is, I started saying, how has she been supporting herself?
Is she getting Medicaid, Medicare?
Surely she couldn't have had a career starting at age 78.
Well, they see, wait a minute now.
You've just this another thing.
Until last night, honestly, I didn't know we had a voting problem in this country.
I mean, in this sense, I didn't know that it was that hard to vote in America.
But last night, if you listen to Obama, why people are waiting six and seven hours in line and they're giving up and going home and powerful forces are arrayed against us, their vote doesn't count.
And so he highlights this 102-year-old woman who stood and sat in line with her aching feet and her broken body to exercise her right to vote.
And uh I'm sitting there literally, I looked at Catherine, I did not know that we had a problem.
Now, I know the left claims that photo ID is a problem, and they're constantly harping on the voting rights act.
They're always saying that people's uh franchises threatened, but I didn't know that that it was a physical problem with early voting.
I thought voting was easy, so easy people doing it two and three times in this country.
But I'm not trying to obviate your question.
You just raised another one for me.
Uh but again with that optic last night, sir.
Here you have a 102-year-old woman who cares enough about us and her president in our country to vote.
And look at you.
You're wondering how the hell she's eating.
Right.
That's my nature.
And I'm also wondering.
And see, this is Obama's fighting against people like you, too.
I know.
You I mean, how could you do that?
How can you look at a picture of that woman and want to deny her food?
That's the way it works.
That's the way it works.
He's saying, wait a minute, she didn't get here till 78.
How has she been supporting herself?
It's an excellent question, but it's the wrong question to ask about the wrong person on the wrong day.
What do you want her to do, sir?
Starve.
Man, these extremists.
Thank God for Obama.
Sees the beauty in everybody.
From the New York Times on this woman, She stood in line for three hours at the local library in North Miami before a poll worker advised her to come back later when the lines would be shorter and she could get assistance in her native Haitian Creole language, which she did.
They told her to come back later when there would be a translator.
She didn't speak English.
They had to go get a translator for her.
But no, as far as anybody watching the State of the Union show last night was concerned, something about this polling place in Nord Miami didn't want this poor woman to vote.
And she hung in there.
She hung in there.
She fought for what she knew was right.
She was fighting against these same forces Obama's fighting against.
Forces that would deny her the right for her voice to be heard.
She deserves a vote.
Gabby Giffords deserves a vote.
The dead kids in Chicago deserve a vote on his gun control bill.
Nat, appreciate it.
This is Ann Littleton, Colorado.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush.
Hey, um, I'm one of those that didn't listen last night or didn't watch, and so I'm just glad to learn all this that I'm learning.
And I what but I did watch Marco Rubio, and I wondered if you were as offended as I was when he took a sip of water.
Offended.
Well, that's what they're all saying this morning.
Well, I mean, here's again, uh just tell you the truth.
I'm watching Rubio.
I have had dry mouth before.
And I knew he had it.
I could tell the way, no, the way he was speaking.
Yep.
Snurtly saying he was wiping sweat and his mouth.
No, that's not what the dry mouth, his mouth was dry.
He kept doing this.
Uh and that comes, by the way, I'll just be that comes from being nervous.
It comes from butterflies.
That's what causes it.
Either that or the room.
One other thing that can cause it is legitimately cause it is excessively warm temperatures.
That room could have been hot.
TV lights could have been hot.
That can also cause dry mouth.
So he reaches for the bottle of water, takes a takes a drink of it, and yeah, they're making fun of the guy all day and laughing for drinking a or taking it, taking a drink of water.
He's handling it very well, by the way.
He tweeted a bottle of water last night.
He did television interviews today with a bottle of water all day.
I think that slot, that's one of the lowest payoff slots that there is in politics, is responding to a presidential speech.
I don't care if it's State of the Union, whatever it is.
I mean, you go from the magnanimity of the House Chamber, the American flag, you got Boehner and plugs back there, but this the majesty of that with the constant applause, and then you go to a little room with no noise, no audience, no applause lines, and nobody applauding and so forth.
It's a really tough thing to do and to stand out.
And he did it.
And the way he's handling that bottle of water, I think it just it's it's another illustration of the odds that Republicans face.
He's now, as far as they're concerned, he disqualified to be president because of that.
He disqualified to run because he took a drink of water, had dry mouth.
Oh, his speech speech was excellent speech.
He took it right to Obama.
He took it right to Obama.
Well, in fact, we've got I'll play some excerpts of Rubio.
I'm not going to play any excerpts of Obama.
I did not see any of the Spanish part because I wouldn't have been able to understand the Spanish part.
I will watch the English version.
That's what we have some uh excerpts of, and I'll get to that before the program ends.
Right now, I got to take a brief obscene profit timeout.
Be right back.
Want to get back to the audio sound bites, um, and we're gonna go to the Charlie Rocheur SNMPS because this gets to the whole point, once again, confirming my theorem that there is no common ground that would facilitate bipartisanship.
There's no area where the Republicans and Obama agree.
And there really isn't.
And so this mythical desire for bipartisanship is just that.
It's a pipe dream.
And they were talking about this.
Charlie Rose with uh Mark Halpern, Time magazine last night.
Charlie Rose said, now has he made a decision that he can't deal with the Republicans, he can't bring them on board, so he just gonna confront them?
There is a school of thought that people whisper about here in this city, which is he's gonna spend two years trying to draw lines just like he did uh in the re-elect and hope that the last two years of this last term, he gets back control of the House, keeps control of the Senate, and finds a way to deal with some of these longer term issues back in a partisan way rather than a bipartisan.
They're just too fundamentally at odds about how you get new revenue, the balance between taxes and tax reform and spending cuts and where they should come from.
I think, as I said before, they're farther apart on specifics and on ideology than they've been.
Yeah, farther apart than ever.
These guys are late arrivals to the obvious.
There is no common ground.
There hasn't been any common ground since January 2009, folks.
There had by design there hasn't been any common ground.
That's the point.
There isn't any common Obama cannot ever be seen to agree or compromise with the Republicans unless it is seen as a total capitulation by the Republicans.
If the Republicans are willing to cave, then they'll call that bipartisanship gladly and happily.
But Obama's not going to compromise.
They're going to give up one iota of anything in order to strike a deal on anything.
And it's exactly what I've been saying.
And so what what Halpern's saying here, the whole point of this is to spend the next two years campaigning for the 2014 midterms.
That's what this current campaign is.
It's already started.
It's to make sure or to try to make sure that the Democrats win the House, and then there's not any need for compromise.
There's no need for bipartisanship.
Because then Obama and the Democrats can't be stopped.
If the Democrats retake the House in 2014, there's no way the Republicans could stop them.
And so there wouldn't be any need for bipartisanship.
And at that point they stopped talking about it and start talking about finally the American people have spoken, finding the American people have gotten what they want.
One-party rule.
And at that point, Obama will still not be seen as governing.
At that point, Obama will be seen as finally victorious in resting power, taking power from these mysterious forces that are constantly trying to harm you.
So that's what this perpetual campaign is about.
That's why there won't be any common ground.
There won't be any agreement.
There's not – Obama is not going to let anything happen that would permit, require, or have people see him as being responsible for anything.
Doris Kearns Goodwin was on the same show, Charlie Rose, and she weighs in.
And she says that the 2014 election is the whole ballgame.
Now, that's what all this is about.
The long-term hope here, in a certain sense, on the part of the president, is that even though history will say you can't get anything done in those last two years, you're going to lose in the midterms, that maybe he just can keep that election base going, keep that campaign strategy alive, and maybe have a chance to take back the House.
And I think it's worth that.
Meanwhile, you've educated the country, at the very least, in terms of what's necessary for climate change, for gun control, for immigration reform.
But if you should win, and if you should possibly take back the House, Look, the Tea Party took it over because they mobilized from the outside in.
So it's not impossible to imagine.
And then you get everything.
Then you get the whole ball game.
See, there it is, folks.
And but it the key is you have to be perceived as doing it from the outside.
So Obama is the president, but he can't be perceived as an insider.
He can't be perceived as governing.
He is constantly at war with powerful forces on scene.
Who are resisting fixing the climate, resisting fixing immigration, resisting fixing the problems with gun violence.
And these are mean, powerful people, whoever they are.
And they don't want an end to gun violence.
And they don't care if the climate is warming because they want to continue to use oil to fly their airplanes and drive their big cars and cool their houses.
And they clearly don't care about immigration before because they're racists.
And this is what Obama's fighting.
I've about got you convinced myself, haven't I?
What a great, valiant warrior he is.
It really isn't that hard.
So 2014 comes and they finally win the House.
And then the last two years are not irrelevant.
The last two years are when you close the deal.
You transform the country for good, and you throw away the key.
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