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March 12, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:49
March 12, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 Podcast.
And we're back, ladies and gentlemen, even after John.
And by the way, a heartfelt and special thanks to Mark Stein for being here yesterday.
It's always a thrill to have Mark Stein sit in for the uh for me on the program here, and people have suggested that I'm not gracious enough to the guest hosts.
You remember that, snurtly.
So I wanted to start off.
It's only the polite thing to do.
And we are appreciative.
Great to be back at the same time.
How are you, folks?
Telephone number 800 282-2882, email address L Rushbo at EIB net.com, the College of Cardinals making its way.
Yes, I'm gonna get to the Ryan budget.
You know, when this program started 25 years ago, if you talk about the federal budget, it was an invitation of people to tune out.
It was the same thing as discussing sewage problems in a suburb.
It just it just it was an instant tune out.
Now it's it's it's not anymore, but I'm not it's not gonna be the first thing.
We're gonna I'm gonna get to it.
I'm gonna tell you everything and he didn't know about it.
How the White House is lying about their reaction to it.
Just be it's why there's three hours here.
In the meantime, the College of Cardinals now entering the Sistine Chapel to begin the conclave to elect the next vicar of Christ.
For those of you in Rio Linda, that would be the next Pope.
For those of you who are Italian, it would be Il Papa.
Now you you may not well, I am I am a Pope, I'm not not that this Pope.
But however, you may not know this.
Yesterday on CBS, Slay the Nation at a round table, Bob Schiefer had uh Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn and Carl Bernstein on from Vanity Fair, Bernstein of Woodward and Bernstein fame, and they were talking about the church, Catholic Church, and the selection of the new Pope.
And listen to this.
It's on the way to irrelevancy if they don't start including women and certainly people of other color and ultimately homosexuals.
And so, I mean, they're all against homosexuality, even though so many priests are gay, that it it seems to say that as a fact.
I mean Well, if you have friends in the priesthood, as I do, friends in the priesthood will tell you that they have other gay friends in the priesthood.
You did you two things about this.
Did you notice Schiefer?
He went to commercial, but he did not he did not want to hear about all the gay cardinals.
We even I think we found a limit beyond which even a dinosaur media guy will not go.
Look, you know, I'll sit here and I'll let you guys pump up Obama to me all day and Bill Club, but I am not gonna sit here and listen to all about the gay cardinals.
You know, you can take it somewhere else.
We're going to commercial break.
So some huzz there to Bob Schiefer.
I mean, even he said, you know, we're not gonna go there.
This is a Sunday morning news program.
But then, beside that, did you also notice Sally Quinn and Bernstein agreed with her?
The Catholic Church is on its way to irrelevancy if they don't start including women, people of other color.
Does she realize that the next Ill Papa might be from Africa?
It could well be other color.
People of color now has become people of other color.
What is the other color?
Mocha?
What is the no seriously, what is the other color?
Is it is it Asian?
I don't know how these leftists think.
I take that back.
I know exactly how they think.
I but I this is just I don't I have to take time to study.
I don't think of people as colors.
And Sally, what now is the people of color that's always meant African American and black?
Now people of the other color.
Does that mean we're looking beyond African American now?
Or is African American the other color?
Well, who knows?
Doesn't matter.
Still not my primary point.
My primary, at least the thing I got out of this.
The Catholic Church is on its way to irrelevancy if they don't start including women, certainly people of other color and ultimately homosexuals.
And so I mean, I mean they're all against homosexuality, even though so many priests are gay that it seems in Bernstein starts talking about all the friends he's got in the priesthood who've told him about all the gay cardinals and Schaefer tightened a belt and went to commercial break.
Now I just I would just want to ask you, would Sally Quinn or Carl Bernstein or any two other American liberals ever go on television and say that Islam has to recognize people of other color and homosexuals if it's to remain relevant.
Would they ever say that?
Would they ever go on TV and warn these militant Islamists, hey, look, you guys, unless you start recognizing women, tell them to get rid of the burqa and people of other color and homosexualities, you are going to become irrelevant.
Would they ever say that?
Of course.
Sally Quinn would never say that.
Would never tell Islam that it has to recognize homosexuality.
But anyway, I'll tell you what I think.
If we're ever going to talk about the irrelevancy of the Catholic Church, can I enter that fray?
Can I?
I would say the Catholic Church is on its way to irrelevancy if it doesn't start distancing itself from the Democrat Party and the idea that liberalism equals charity.
is liberalism does not equal charity and that's how the church got sucked into supporting.
Deny Not just the Catholic Church, but all religions got sucked in to supporting the Democrat Party and all these movements, all these social causes, because they began to equate government largesse with charity.
And it isn't.
The government is not a charitable organization.
Charity exists because people willingly donate their own money to the cause.
That's not what happens with government social programs.
That money is extracted from people, and it's spent on things that many people would never spend that money on if they had any control over it.
But the church got roped in then, and they weren't the only ones that got roped in.
Now, where was I yesterday?
Folks, I have to say I had a great time yesterday was the annual Ernie L's charitable outing at uh PGA National, right up the road here.
This is I don't know, the fourth or fifth year for this.
Ernie Ells has an autistic child, and he began charity called Els for Autism, and that's what this tournament does is raise money for it.
And his uh is his co-conspirator in this is a good friend of mine, Marvin Shankin, who is the publisher of Cigar Ficionata, which, as I've mentioned before, is one of the best and finest male lifestyle magazines that you will ever run across.
It started out as devoted to cigars and the finer things in life that you can do with cigars, Lewinsky's excluded.
We would never, I say Marvin, I say we because I I've been a devotee of Cigar Afficienado since its founding.
I was the first human cover on Cigar Ficionado, not a not a caricature or a uh a drawing.
And Marvin's a good friend, and of course, there was a cigar fad because of Cigar Ficionado, and like all fads, it it leveled off.
And Marvin adapted the magazine to include even more men's and male lifestyle aspects to it, while maintaining all the in-depth best coverage of cigars there is anywhere in the world.
And he has maintained.
It's a tough thing to do.
You know, you've got to I mean, who would have ever started a magazine about cigars in the first place?
A beautiful, big, four-color.
This is not some chintzy little newsletter type thing.
You know, that the two or three pages on typewriter paper.
It's a full-fledged, four-color, fully advertising supported magazine on cigars.
Who would have ever thought of it?
It was his passion, along with wine.
He also publishes the wine spectator.
And so I got to know Marvin shortly, well, I don't know, 20 years ago now.
Twenty-two.
Whenever I got into the cigar, that long ago.
Been a lot of places, done a lot of things, and always play with Marvin in the L'Autism Tournament.
And he's a fun guy, but everybody loves his nickname's the Shock Maker.
Rudy Giuliani was in our group.
Our fourth yesterday was Rory McElroy.
Number one in the world, 23 years old, lives in Palm Beach Gardens in Monaco.
And I have to tell you, he was he was just, he was great.
Twenty-three years old.
I I took him aside, and I told him.
He was he was entirely humble.
He was not distant, did not act like he didn't want to be there like some people in his situation do.
I've done that.
There are plenty of places I don't want to be, and I let people know when I'm there.
What are you laughing at, Snertley?
What do you mean no?
Snurkly say it's not the kind of thing you should admit.
Well, it doesn't happen much because I've reached a point in my life where I don't have to do what I don't want to do.
Boy, folks, you do not know.
You speak of freedom, you do not know what kind of freedom that is to not have to do things you don't want to do.
That is that's that's worth taking time to appreciate each and every day.
But even at that, even at that, there are things I don't want to do that I have to do.
Sometimes, rarely.
And I'm just joking.
I don't act like a, you know, the a bad guy.
I just but a lot of people do.
A lot of people, when they don't want to be someplace, act like it.
They're off putting, they they send out a vibe, don't approach me.
I'm here because I have to be.
But Rory was a great guy.
I took him aside, and I said, You're 23.
I wish that I had the uh the the worldliness and the level of uh maturity and knowledge, you know, how to deal with performance pressure and all that at age twenty-three that he does.
Now he had a meltdown a couple weeks ago on that course during the uh during the Honda Classic.
Uh just got fed up with the way he was playing and walked off and had to do a press conference the next week down at Durral to explain, and he chalked it up to youth and all that.
But it was entirely pleasurable.
Uh he hit folk for you golfers out there that I think it was the 16th hole.
He had it's a dog leg right second shot for those of us long enough to make the second shot.
I say those of us, not everybody.
He was in a trap, he's in a bunker, probably a hundred and eighty-five yards out, and took out, took a club out.
I didn't see what it was, puts it to within five feet, got back in the car, said, What do you swing?
He's an eight-iron.
And eight iron, folks, for the your husband, when he goes to the plant, an eight-iron, maybe a hundred and thirty yards.
And this guy who's five'9 and eighty pounds.
I've got a picture of us standing.
You could see how how I mean, I'm big guy, but I'm not tall.
I'm not massive big, I'm an average-sized guy.
But these guys' size doesn't, it's like Lauren Silberman said after her failed NFL kick tryout.
It's not the length that matters, it's the technique.
But he was a great guy.
It was fun to be with him.
Most of the golf pros are.
Most of the PGA Tour pros are.
He was um accommodating.
We even had our own little mini gallery following us around, which public was admitted, but nobody showed up because nobody knew it was happening.
It's a private event.
But it's always a good time.
It just it's always uh uh it's always a fun time.
And you've got comfort stations every three or four holes.
You've got the fine adult beverage manufacturers that get the fine cigars every three or four holes or whatever you want.
These guys are there exhibiting their products.
Gray goose orange in giant, giant bottles that you can't buy, of course.
They're not for sale.
But it was it's always a great time as a great cause, Ernie Elsen and his uh his autism charity.
So that's where I was, that's what I was doing.
And it it it's folks, one of the things I'm gonna make an observation.
I hope you understand this to me that was this this was uh uplifting.
I I've been out this course, I've been out to this tournament.
I don't know, forever, however many years it's been going on, it seems like five years, and it may be longer because time flies.
I had more people come up to me yesterday than ever before, thanking me for what I'm doing, which tells me that there are, and by the way, we've got polling data to back this up.
There are more and more people out there who are becoming high information voters who are starting to figure something out, and they're not happy with what's going on.
And my point, I I don't want to take a singular event like yesterday with more people than ever coming up to me, but I'm just I think what it means is that there is a golden opportunity for somebody on the Republican side to pick up and score big with just a little leadership.
People are hungering for it on our side.
They are they are thirsting for it.
No, I'm not gonna post the picture of me with McElroy.
I I didn't I didn't get his permission to do that, and who knows what kind of hell would descend on him if that happened.
Now these guys can't go political.
In fact, he was leaving to do a Nike commercial after the uh after the tournament, speeding out of there to go do that.
So now that picture will remain something in my private collection until it's hacked, like Michelle Obama's was, and uh and Arnold Schwarzenegger's.
I looked at that list and thank goodness I'm not on that list myself.
Wasn't actually hacked either.
It's it it was done actually a little bit more threatening way than that.
Some people put together the information with I don't know how to describe it.
It wasn't but it wasn't a straight hack.
Anyway, let's take a brief time out.
We've got uh some did you know, folks, did you know mummies?
Ancient Egyptian mummies had heart disease, clogged arteries.
Did you see that, Dawn?
Well, you know how old the mummies are?
Three thousand four thousand.
We didn't have French fries.
We weren't eating trans fats.
We weren't drinking twenty ounce soda.
It's another thing a judge shut Doomberg down, Doomberg sicked off.
Doomberg talking about portion control.
Here's a guy who blew out term limits, two terms weren't enough, he needed a third term, and he dares to talk to us about portion control and discipline.
Anyway, we have lots to do here, including the Ryan budget and Obama's response, which still there isn't a written Obama budget yet, not till April.
Be back and continue with all the rest of today's program right after this.
Hey, I guess the questions about the election of the Pope.
Is a photo ID required of the College of Cardinals before they can vote.
And I wonder, is there any early voting?
Like if some of the cardinals already voted and we just don't know about it.
You know, voted before they got to Rome just to make sure that they uh that didn't happen.
No early voting.
What about absentee ballots?
Any absentee ballots in the election, none of that.
They I mean they vote right there when they go in.
Like it used to be here.
You have election day and people would go vote.
What about exit polls?
Is it media over there?
We're gonna be exit poll data from the election, just the smoke, is that it?
Black or white smoke or smoke of other color.
Smoke of other color.
Because now Sally Quinn is introduced a church in order to become irrelevant is going to have to start including women, people of other color, and homosexuality.
When I got home yesterday, I started immediately into show prep.
And no matter where I went, everywhere on the internet, I even turned on cable news.
Well, I don't do that much anymore, because it's on all day during the program.
I kept seeing Obama was on charm offensive.
Everywhere.
Didn't matter where I went.
Obama was on a charm offensive.
And I said, what what is this?
What did I miss?
What charm of?
There's no such thing.
It's not he's not a charming guy.
What what?
So we dug deep, folks, and it's a you remember the media and gravitas.
It's happened again.
Charm charm offensive, the latest media thing.
If uh if a member to College of Cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church is a Democrat, can he vote twice?
He vote more than once for the Pope.
I'm just asking.
I'm trying to equate this with uh elections here in uh in America.
Uh can dead cardinals vote as dead Democrats vote in uh Chicago and Florida.
Probably not.
I just raising the question.
Mike, grab soundbite number two, not soundbite number one.
Let's go back to the grooveyard of forgotten archives.
Sound bites.
This is July of 2000.
This is what happened after George W. Bush decided at Dick Cheney.
He'd hired Cheney to do his search for a vice presidential nominee, a candidate, a running mate.
And after not very long, Bush said, you know what the hell with this?
I'm just gonna ask Cheney.
Cheney's the right guy.
And the media had a reaction.
And it was identical.
Every media person, it didn't matter.
Every Democrat, every media person all had the same one word reaction.
Now this is 13 years ago, and when we played this at first, it was to illustrate how there is no original thinking, and somehow a reaction to a Republican or conservative event is established and they all fall in line and repeat it.
And that word back then was gravitas.
It is what Cheney.
I know you've been listening for a long time here, but as I said last week, folks, please indulge us here.
I mean indulge me.
There's no us here, it's me.
We have people tuning in for the first time every day to this program.
It's a it's a neat balancing act here to move the program forward and not bore those of you who know some of the things I'm going to repeat for the new arrivals.
I appreciate you uh being patient.
Here is how this sounded in 2000.
This is in July.
He means all George W.'s weaknesses, lack of gravitas.
We see the son who is seeking some gravitas.
They were looking at candidates with gravitas.
But he has the gravitas.
You can sum it up in one word, stature.
It may go to the gravitas, or to use the favorite phrase gravitas.
This is a vice president who brought gravitas.
This will give some gravitas.
Add some credibility.
I think the gravitas that Cheney bought to the ticket.
What he gets is gravitas, a sense of weight.
He does not need anybody to give him gravitas.
It means that, you know, gravitas.
I think he also needs some gravitas.
To give gravitas.
Well, he brings gravitas.
He does seem to bring some gravitas.
It's called gravitas.
You certainly have gravitas tonight.
But he displayed tonight a certain gravitas.
I think gravitas is the word.
Unfortunately for the governor, you can't graft gravitas.
He has gravitas.
That was Mario the Pious there, Governor Cuomo from New York way back then.
So he heard they all described Cheney's selection as bringing gravitas to the ticket.
And it was it was funny then, it's hilarious now, but it illustrates the group think.
So I get home yesterday and I start diligently catching up on I didn't pay much attention to the news on Sunday.
I was out most of the day yesterday, so I came in and I started ramping up for today.
And no matter where I turned, no matter what I read, no matter what I saw, I learned that Obama is on a charm offensive.
President Obama's wrapping up his GOP charm offensive.
President Obama's charm offensive.
Well, the Obama charm offensive worked.
President Obama begins a charm offensive.
Charm offensive from President Obama.
Launching a charm offensive, his charm offensive continues.
We begin with President Obama's so-called charm offensive.
The President's so-called charm offensive.
The President's so-called charm offensive.
This so-called charm offensive.
President Obama's so-called charm offensive.
What some are describing as a charm offensive.
What's been called the Obama charm offensive.
Some call it a charm offensive.
A major charm offensive.
The President's still on his charm offensive.
The charm offensive.
This charm offensive.
The President's charm offensive.
The charm offensive.
The charm offensive.
The charm offensive an ongoing charm offensive, quote, charm offensive, unquote.
It's being called the president's charm offensive.
Now I could give you all the names there, but it doesn't matter.
Not one of those were repeated.
Now I didn't know that any such thing was going on.
So I said, what is this?
And I learned, I read a piece by Ron Fournier, the National Journal.
By the way, the charm offensive isn't working.
Bottom line, but the charm offensive was Obama inviting Republican establishment types out to dinner.
The night that Rand Paul was doing his filibuster, Obama took who was it, McCain and Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker and Tom Corbyn, a bunch of Republicans to dinner in that 20-car motorcade for a half-mile trip.
And that was Obama's charm offensive.
And by the way, there are some White House staffers who are not happy about this.
They don't like the charm offensive.
They're being forced to do this.
They think that this whole thing's being drummed up, get this for media approval.
Now why would this be taking place?
It appears, ladies and gentlemen, that Obama's in some kind of trouble.
Either in the polls or in the arena of public perception.
And there is a polling story out is from a couple yesterday, a McClatchy Marist has a poll, and the headline of their story here says Obama tumbling in voters' eyes.
They start the story this way.
President Obama had piled up political capital with his impressive re-election.
It's largely gone.
These are the same people said that Obama had a mandate after his re-election to go grow to government, whatever he wanted to do, he had it.
The people elected him open-endedly.
Well, man, it didn't last long.
We're just barely here in the middle of March.
He needs a charm offensive?
Political capital is largely gone.
What was impressive about his reelection?
He won re-election.
This is, you know, these kind of facts only serve to further irritate me.
Because we didn't have to be here.
Obama's election victory was by a much smaller margin than his first victory.
He won in 2008 the 7.2% margin over McCain, a 2.8% margin over Mitt Romney.
And had four million Republicans shown up to vote, who did vote in 08 but didn't vote in 2012, we wouldn't be talking about an Obama victory.
But the Republicans, for whatever reason, just went silent.
You know, after Romney scored big in the first debate, that was it.
That was the end of offense.
And they just went into the prevent defense mode, where the objective was, okay, we've done it now.
We've catapulted our guy.
Let's not let's not blow it.
Let's not make anybody mad.
Let's not say anything provocative.
Let's not be critical of Obama.
And of course it all just petered away and the Republican base didn't even show up.
But I don't know what was impressive about the about the win.
2.8% victory, which is the first time it's ever happened to any two-term president, where his margin of victory s shrunk from first term to second term.
Then the McClatchy story here says that Obama's approval rating has dropped to the lowest level in more than a year, and we have been chronicling that last week.
And in I think three different polls now, Obama's approval number is under 50.
And this is when the slaves in the media start getting worried.
They start getting worried that they're not able to carry the guy's water, and that he's not able to do it alone.
And that's why they're all talking about how he's now on a charm offensive.
Why does he need one?
I thought he was the nicest guy ever.
I thought Obama was messianic.
I thought Obama was I mean, the low information voters, Obama's wonderful.
He's the greatest guy in the world.
Cool, he's hip.
I mean, he's already booked Michelle's 50th birthday party.
He got Beyonce coming, got Adele coming.
I was asked the other day, is there can you remember a president more eager to hang around celebrities than Obama?
And I could think of two that are maybe as the one's Clinton.
Clinton, he invited him to the Lincoln bedroom.
And JFK.
JFK had Hollywood people all over the place.
Sinatra's rat pack.
They were all over the place.
Marilyn Monroe, then they were all over.
I mean, when the celebrities weren't coming to the White House, JFK and RFK were going to them.
But the Democrats do fashion themselves as on the same plane as Hollywood celebrities.
Music industry top dogs.
And I've often thought, you know, Obama is seen by many particularly low information voters, not even the president.
He's just the biggest celebrity in the country.
The celebrity of the United States.
So when his approval rating drops below 50%, everybody starts getting alarmed.
Because they know in the back of their minds that this is all built on the flimsiest.
Obama's administration has success.
It's all built on the flimsiest of things, and that is media buzz.
It's all built on false images.
It's all built on false stories, PR, buzz, whatever you want to say.
And when the approval numbers drop, it's tough to stay on the same level.
You can't revive those numbers with the usual dose of celebrity stuff.
Because the drop in polling data is rooted in substance.
The drop in approval is rated in substance or rooted in.
It's rooted in the condition of the country.
It's rooted in the direction the country's going.
It's rooted Obama's approval falling below 50% is rooted in the fact that people are not happy and they're uncomfortable.
They're at unease.
This is just they don't like the path the country is on.
So the approval rating is dropped at the lowest level in more than a year.
More voters now turning thumbs down on Obama's performance than thumbs up.
The measure of how much people like him also has dropped, and the likability has been his strong suit.
The likability is what has kept The approval number high.
If you take the likability number and you average it with job performance number, you can elevate the approval, the combination of just like an average of two numbers, one of them's very, very high.
Well, the likability numbers, what's kept Obama up there, the likability numbers plummeting.
Ergo, everybody now says he's on a charm offensive.
Because they're desperate to get back the old Obama.
And I'm look at I'm not trying to be funny or even disrespectful.
But charming is not how I would describe Obama, but that's neither here nor there.
The admission that he's on a charm offensive, or the fact that he's on a charm admission uh charm offensive is an admission that he isn't charming.
Or that the charm that he had is is worn off.
Now they say here he's still vastly more popular than Congress, particularly Congressional Republicans, but in the biggest political clash of the year, federal budget, how to curb deficits, voters split 44 to 42 percent between preferring Congress or Obama.
Now you note how artfully that's worded.
In reality, people think Congressional Republicans have a better plan to handle a debt than Obama, and the numbers 4442.
Now, if you didn't have me translating this for you, you might think it's Obama 44 to 42.
In the biggest political clash of the year, voters split 4442 between preferring Congress or Obama.
Well, it's 44% prefer Congress, and they're appropriate, even though the Republicans are unilaterally unpopular.
This, by the way, is a forerunner.
This is sort of what was happening leading into the 2010 midterms.
And a Democrat's objective is the 2014 midterms and winning the House, one-party control.
That's why they're getting worried here, folks.
That's the big objective, and that's why the charm offensive.
And this and other recent polls are the reason for Obama's sudden charm offensive because the square sequester isn't working.
Scaring everybody to death, world's going to come to an end, all that sequester fear mongering didn't work.
The birds are chirping, the sun comes up.
Global warming isn't even happening.
Gotta take a timeout.
We'll be back and continue in a moment.
How are you?
Welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the excellence in broadcasting network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies and a related story.
This is some CBS News in Washington, the Pew Research Center in Washington has found that fewer Americans than ever trust the decisions made by the government.
Data collected from a survey taken in January of this year indicate that all demographics and partisan groups experienced an increasing lack of faith in government leadership.
Now you might say, well, it's too little too late, Rush, and I might understand you saying that.
Okay, so what's Obama's been re-elected, Obamacare here, it's all in motion, there's nothing we can do to stop it.
It's just too bad.
It's too late.
And you might have a point, except people like Ted Cruz, people like Mike Lee, people like Marco Rubio are hellbent on seeing to it that Obamacare is not fully funded.
And Paul Ryan's budget, which we haven't gotten to yet, Paul Ryan's budget calls for the full repeal of Obamacare.
Now, my point to you is that there are newly arrived conservative Republicans in the Senate and some Tea Party Republicans and some old reliable conservative Republicans, Paul Ryan being one, who are not sitting idly by and saying, you know what, the Democrats won, they get to do whatever they want.
I've gotten, I don't know if you've heard this or not, but more and more conservative, so-called conservatives.
Well, look, Obama won.
Gets to do what he wants.
Obamacare is the law of the land.
We can't do anything about it, and we shouldn't.
We're conservatives and we abide by the law.
No.
Sorry.
They never just sit idly by.
They fight every one of our judicial nominees.
They fight everything we try to get done.
We've got some people still trying to defund this monster.
And there appears to be and public support or public opposition to Obamacare continues to rise.
I kid you not, there was no there was.
There's lots of heart disease, clogged arteries, all of the horrible things that we think are new.
Found in mummies thousands of years old.
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