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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 Joe.
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 me on the program here.
And people have suggested that I'm not gracious enough to the guest hosts.
You remember that, Snertley.
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, LRushbeau at EIBnet.com, the College of Cardinals making its way.
Yes, I'm going to 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 to people to tune out.
It was the same thing as discussing sewage problems in a suburb.
It was an instant tune-out.
Now, it's not anymore, but it's not going to be the first thing.
I'm going to get to it.
I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about it.
How the White House is lying about their reaction to it.
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 Riolinda, that would be the next Pope.
For those of you who are Italian, it would be Il Papa.
Now, you may not, well, I am a Pope.
I'm not that this Pope.
But however, you may not know this.
Yesterday on CBS, Slay the Nation at a roundtable, Bob Schieffer had 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 seems...
I can't 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 two things about this.
Did you notice Schieffer?
He went to commercial.
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 in Bill Club, and I am not going to 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 huzzahs there to Bob Schieffer.
I mean, even he said, you know, we're not going to 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 Il 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 it?
No, seriously, what is the other color?
Is it Asian?
I don't know how these leftists think.
I take that back.
I know exactly how they think, but 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.
And Bernstein starts talking about all the friends he's got in the priesthood who've told him about all the gay cardinals.
And Schieffer tightened a belt and went to commercial break.
Now, I 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 going to talk about the irrelevancy of the Catholic Church, can I enter that fray?
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.
Because liberalism does not equal charity, and that's how the church got sucked into supporting 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 Ells charitable outing at 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 Ells for Autism, and that's what this tournament does, is raise money for it.
And Is co-conspirator in this is a good friend of mine, Marvin Shankin, who is the publisher of Cigar Aficionado, 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've been a devotee of Cigar Aficionado since its founding.
I was the first human cover on Cigar Ficionado, not a caricature or a drawing.
And Marvin's a good friend.
And of course, there was a cigar fad because of Cigar Aficionado.
And like all fads, 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, it's not some chintzy little newsletter type thing.
You know, the two or three pages on typewriter paper.
This is a full-fledged, four-color, fully advertised and supported magazine on cigars.
Who would have ever thought of that?
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, 22, 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's for Autism Tournament.
And he's a fun guy.
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 just, he was great.
23 years old.
I took him aside and I told him 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, Snerdly?
What do you mean, no?
Snerdley says 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.
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'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 bad guy.
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 send out a vibe.
Don't approach me.
I'm here because I have to be.
But Rory was a great guy.
And I took him aside.
And I said, you're 23.
I wish that I had the worldliness and the level of maturity and knowledge, how to deal with performance pressure and all that at age 23 that he does.
Now, he had a meltdown a couple weeks ago on that course During the Honda Classic, I 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 Dural to explain, and he chalked it up to youth and all that.
But it was entirely pleasurable.
He hit, for you golfers out there, 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 185 yards out, and took out, took a club out.
I didn't see what it was, puts it within five feet, got back in the car, said, What do you swing?
He said, an eight iron.
An eight iron.
Folks, your husband, when he goes to play an eight iron, maybe 130 yards.
And this guy who's 5'9 and 80 pounds, I've got a picture of us standing.
You can see how, I mean, I'm a 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 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's always a fun time.
And you've got comfort stations every three or four holes.
You've got the fine adult beverage manufacturers.
They've got 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's always a great time.
It's a great cause, Ernie Ells and his autism charity.
So that's where I was.
That's what I was doing.
And it's, oh, I tell you, folks, one of the things, I'm going to make an observation.
I hope you understand this.
To me, this was uplifting.
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 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 thirsting for it.
No, I'm not going to post the picture of me with McElroy.
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 tournament, speeding out of there to go do that.
Now that picture will remain something in my private collection until it's hacked like Michelle Obama's was and Arnold Schwartzenares.
I looked at that list and thank goodness I'm not on that list myself.
It wasn't actually hacked either.
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.
But it wasn't a straight hack.
Anyway, let's take a brief time out.
We've got 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.
3,000 fourth.
We didn't have French fries.
We weren't eating trans fats.
We weren't drinking 20-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 until April.
Be back and continue with all the rest of today's program right after this.
Hey, I got some 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 it didn't happen?
No early voting.
What about absentee ballots?
Any absentee ballots in the election?
None of that.
I mean, they vote right there when they go in.
Like it used to be here.
You had election day and people would go vote.
What about exit polls?
The media over there with the 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 to the 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 a charm offensive.
Everywhere.
Didn't matter where I went.
Obama was on a charm offensive.
And I said, what is this?
What did I miss?
What charm of it?
There's no such thing.
It's not.
He's not a charming guy.
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 a member of the 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 elections here in America.
Can dead cardinals vote As dead Democrats vote in 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 soundbites.
This is July of 2000.
This is what happened after George W. Bush decided that 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 going to 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 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 being patient.
Here is how this sounded in 2000.
This is in July.
He meets 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.
A little gravitas.
You certainly have gravitas tonight.
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 funny then.
It's hilarious now, but it illustrates the groupthink.
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, 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 is wrapping up his GOT charm offensive.
President Obama's charm offensive.
Will the Obama charm offensive work?
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.
Being described as the 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 charm offensive.
The president's still on his charm offensive.
The charm offensive.
This charm offensive.
The president's charm offensive.
The charm offensive.
An ongoing charm offensive.
A 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 is 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.
What's actually yesterday, 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 reelection.
It's largely gone.
These are the same people who said that Obama had a mandate after his reelection 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 not even, we're just barely here 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 a 7.2% margin over McCain, a 2.8% margin over Mitt Romney.
And had 4 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 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 win.
2.8% victory, which is the first time it's ever happened to any two-term president where his margin of victory 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, 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, his 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 substance.
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 has dropped to 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.
Likeability 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 is very, very high.
Well, the likability number is 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 looking 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 offensive is an admission that he isn't charming or that the charm that he had 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 the death than Obama, and the number's 44-42.
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 44-42 between preferring Congress or Obama.
Well, it's 44% prefer Congress, and their approach, 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, the 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.
Got to take a timeout.
We'll be back and continue in a moment.
Ha, 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 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 hell-bent 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 conservatives, 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.
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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