It was clear that Feinstein says, I've been here all these years to Ted Cruz.
I mean, he didn't use these words.
And I've been here all these years and you're this young whipper snapper and you don't know what's going on here.
You don't know how we do things here.
It was classic.
And we got the audio coming up.
We got lots of stuff coming up.
It's the most listened-to radio talk show in the country, and it is Friday.
So let's go.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Yip, yip, yahoo.
Open line Friday, ladies and gentlemen.
One of the acknowledged and greatest career risks ever undertaken by a major media figure in the United States.
And that is turning the content of the program over to rank amateurs.
You lovable rank amateurs, but amateurs nevertheless.
And happily so.
It's always a fun day where we find out what's on people's minds.
They approach it in an objective, unbiased way.
800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program.
And if you want to send an email, the address is Elrushbo at EIBnet.com.
Let me conclude this Pat Cadell business with the Republican consultant.
This stuff is really, really important.
If you want to, you know, people, why do we lose the election?
Because everybody thought we were going to win that.
I mean, everybody.
Everybody thought the polls are wrong.
And had the turnout reflected the possible conservative enthusiasm out there, Romney would have won.
But there was this, they ignore the conservatives, take them for granted.
They're going to be there.
And if they're not, don't care.
Just go for the independents.
Go for that chunk of people in the middle.
And as I say, Romney, in the five battleground states, this is the precise statistic.
Because overall, in all states, Romney won independence by 5%.
But in the battleground states, in five battleground states, he won independence by 10 to 12% and lost the election.
And all these wizards of SMART were stunned.
They couldn't believe it.
Now, Cadell at CPAC said, look, as a Democrat, he could tell people the truth about the failings of the Republicans and their 2012 campaign effort.
He said, I have no interest in the Republican Party.
In my party, he said, the Democrat Party, we play to win.
We play for life and death.
You Republicans play for a different kind of agenda.
Your party has no problem playing the Washington generals to the Harlem Globetrotters.
You're happy to be walked all over the place.
You're just happy to be in the game.
You're happy to be acknowledged.
And he does not know how right he is.
Washington is a town run by the left.
It's run by liberal Democrats.
And not just in the power sense in politics, but socially as well.
And everybody wants to be liked.
Folks, I really believe the pursuit to make everybody like you is the greatest prison you can put yourself in because you end up denying who you really are.
You're afraid to be who you really are.
If your quest is to be liked, if your quest is to be accepted, and everybody wants to be.
This is what's so hard about it.
We're all raised to make people like us.
We're all raised.
Don't you offend me, mom and dad say.
Don't you make our family look bad, mom and dad say.
You better, you know, better like in high school.
Everybody wants to be the big click.
I mean, it's seductive to be popular, to be liked.
But I think generally in life, in politics, particularly, if you pursue that course of being liked and you go overboard on it, you cease being who you are.
And you end up not even knowing who you are.
Try to be all things to all people.
It can't be done.
And I think the Republicans have been so beat up by the media over the years.
And the media and the Democrats run that town where they live.
Nobody wants to get beat up.
Nobody wants to be savaged in the media.
Nobody wants to be accused of being a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, particularly racist.
Nobody wants that.
So they hands off Obama.
But it never works.
This effort to make themselves liked never gets, they never gain respect.
What the Democrats want is for every Republican to be like Bob Michael, the guy who used to run the Republican House back in the 70s and 80s.
Just be content there with being perennial losers.
Know your place.
And that's what Cadell says.
Our party, Democrats, we go for the juggler.
We play for life and death.
You guys are happy to be the Patsys.
He said to the CPAC audience, Mitt Romney failed to back his own campaign with his own money when it was most needed.
He said, my question for Romney is, you spent $45 million of your own money in your 08 campaign where you didn't have a chance.
Why didn't you give your campaign a loan in the spring instead of letting Obama define you?
And then when Romney did not go after Obama on Benghazi in the last debate, the last two debates, I remember seeing Cadell on TV beside himself.
But he launched both barrels.
He let him have it.
Now, Ted Cruz and Dianne Feinstein and guns.
I think what I want to do, yeah, let's start with number three.
We've got three bites from yesterday morning in Washington.
This is during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing marking up gun control legislation.
And up first is Ted Cruz speaking to Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.
The question that I would pose to the senior senator from California is, would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?
Likewise, would she think that the Fourth Amendment's protection against searches and seizures could properly apply only to the following specified individuals and not to the individuals that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?
Are you applauding?
Are you standing up and cheering here?
This is just not done.
These people are never called us.
Here's Dianne Feinstein with her list of approved guns.
Diane Feinstein, Senator, California, former mayor of San Francisco.
Okay, fine.
Great resume.
You and you alone are going to determine what kind of guns we can all have.
So Cruz said, well, are you going to determine what books we can all read?
Are you going to determine what words can't be said and what words can?
And liberals are not used to this.
This is effrontery.
This is lecturing.
This is disrespect as far as the left is concerned.
And Diane Feinstein was not happy with this.
And she told Cruz not to lecture her.
I'm not a sixth grader.
Senator, I've been on this committee for 20 years.
I was a mayor for nine years.
I walked in, I saw people shot.
I've looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons.
After 20 years, I've been up close and personal to the Constitution.
It's fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution.
I appreciate it.
Just know I've been here for a long time.
I've passed on a number of bills.
I've studied the Constitution myself.
I am reasonably well educated, and I thank you for the lecture.
Incidentally, this does not prohibit.
You use the word prohibit.
It exempts 2,271 weapons.
Isn't that enough for the people in the United States?
There you go.
We're not prohibiting anything.
We're exempting 2,271.
Isn't that enough for the American people?
Which encapsulates this arrogant condescension and this attitude that the American people don't know what's good for them, do not know how to run their lives, do not know which guns they should buy and shouldn't buy, do not know anything.
We have to do it for them.
By the way, I've been here all these years.
Don't lecture me on the Constitution.
I've studied it.
I'm comforted.
Dianne Feinstein has studied the Constitution.
She says she's even reasonably well educated.
And she says she's been up close and personal to the Constitution.
Doesn't matter if she doesn't know what's in it.
If she doesn't agree with what's in it, if she doesn't respect what's in it, what does it matter?
How close?
She could sleep with it every night for all I care.
If she doesn't like what's in it, what difference does that make?
But that's how notice she didn't dispute Cruz on the substance of anything.
She turns this around as a personal attack and how dare he.
And it wasn't a personal attack at all.
He was simply talking about the Constitution.
So Cruz wraps it up with this bite.
I would note that she chose not to answer the question that I asked, which is, in her judgment, would it be consistent with the Constitution for Congress to specify which books are permitted and which books are not?
And to use the specific.
The answer is obvious: no.
Well, but why didn't you say so at the get-go?
Anyway, there are a lot of Dr. Krauthammer didn't like what Cruz did here.
And I.
The Krauthammer on Fox did not appreciate what Cruz did.
Well, let's listen to Dr. Krauthammer.
He was on a special report with Brett Baer last night, and they were talking about this.
And this is what Dr. Krauthammer, who's on Fox, said.
It was an interesting exchange, and in the end, Cruz overshot the manner in which he asked it.
I think it appeared a little bit offensive.
I don't think Cruz helped himself.
So, Dr. Krauthammer didn't like the tone.
He didn't like the manner in which Cruz asked the question.
So, Cruz overshot, didn't do himself any favors.
It might have offended the independents.
That's right.
Might have offended the moderates.
Folks, this is, you know, we have all the respect in the world here for Dr. Krauthammer, but I think this is part and parcel of what Cadell actually was talking about CPAC regarding the consultants.
We're happy to, you know, we're set up, we let them, we let the left give us the behavioral rules under which we must operate.
And then when we don't operate under the rules they give us, our own people chide us.
But the Democrats never overshoot.
Obama never overshoots.
His tone is never bad.
Anyway, Diane Feinstein last night, she went out with Wolf Blitzer.
And Wolf Blitzer said to Feinstein, Senator, clearly you were insulted by what Senator Cruz said.
Walk us through your thinking.
Well, I just felt patronized.
I felt he was somewhat arrogant about it.
And, you know, when you've come from where I've come from and what you've seen, and when you found a dead body and you put your finger in bullet holes, you really realize the impact of weapons.
Now, you understand that kind of thinking.
How would you ever justify war?
I mean, she could say, you know, I've been in foxholes.
I've seen people shot up.
I don't think we should ever do it again.
This is the way that she is attempting to anoint herself as qualified to ban certain guns because she has seen wounds caused by guns.
And that alone trumps the Constitution.
It trumps it.
She has seen the wounds.
Therefore, she felt patronized and insulted.
And Blitzer said, well, after you felt insulted and after you felt patronized, did you have a chance to speak to Senator Cruz after that public exchange?
No, I needed to cool down.
Have you cooled down yet?
I've cooled down.
So when you see him the next time, what will happen?
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
Well, I did say, look, I'm sorry, but, you know, this is one thing that I feel very passionately about.
And I appreciate the lecture, but, and that's all I'm going to say.
She can look at it as a lecture.
The problem here is, is that one side is dealing with this as a constitutional issue, and the other side, Diane Feinstein, is not.
She's dealing with it purely as an emotional issue.
She's dealing with it exactly like, you know what she's dealing with as Snerdley?
As a female news editor on a TV newscast deciding what to show and what not to show.
The chickification of the news.
In fact, I have in the stack, I have a story about that.
Some guy, his name is Nolte.
I have to find this.
It's in the stack here, and it's not a very big stack today, but I'll get to it about the chickification of television and how more and more women are determining what everybody watches on TV.
And this guy cites this rave show on HBO, starring Lena Dunham.
Is that her name?
The woman that did the commercial for Obama saying, your first time is really important.
Yeah, first time.
Don't just do it with any guy.
You know, pick from five or six.
And she was talking about your first vote.
Well, she's got this show on HBO called Girls.
That show.
Now, if you knew nothing other, and let me do a test.
Snerdley, you reacted.
What do you know of that show?
Okay, so you watched 20 minutes and fine.
What is your impression of that show?
As you listen to media buzz, Lena Dunham's all over the place.
She guessed on Letterman.
She's apparently the architect for what young women ought to be today.
What is the impression that you have?
Like that show is huge, right?
Is that the impression you get in the media?
Everybody's watching.
Everybody.
And that show's cutting 600,000 viewers.
That is disguised, not even a million.
Fewer viewers than the Daily Show.
600,000 viewers.
And this has been my point all along about media buzz, how they go out and create this notion that something's hotter and more popular than anything in the world when it isn't.
And his point is that you've got to be very careful in assessing what really is popular and what really isn't, and how things that aren't popular are kept on the air by virtue of buzz or bias or what have you.
And his point was that it's because women are making programming decisions on emotional basis.
I am just telling you what he said.
Do not attach this to me.
All I said was that Dy-Fi is approaching this not as a senator, as a constitutionalist, but the same way a female editor of a nightly newscast would.
Well, we can't show too much gore.
And because there's gore, we've got to get rid of what caused it.
What constitution?
It doesn't matter.
But I'm an expert on it anyway.
Okay, brief timeout, folks.
Open line Friday.
Your phone calls when we come back.
Don't go away.
Here's the thing, folks.
You know, Diane Feinstein got famous for being around when Harvey Milk was assassinated in San Francisco.
That's how she became mayor, and she was on the scene when he was killed.
And that's what she's talking about when she says that she's seen the gore and the bullet holes and she's plugged her finger in there and all that.
And nothing in her bill would have prevented Harvey Milk's murder, which doesn't matter.
You see, all that matters is that she is trying to eliminate suffering.
And she's exhibiting compassion.
So she wants to exempt 2,200 weapons.
The problem is the Constitution doesn't exempt.
The Second Amendment doesn't exempt anything.
And if I may be so bold, it is the Second Amendment is in the Constitution to help citizens protect themselves from people like Dianne Feinstein who would come along and if they could determine what words you can and cannot say, where and where you can't say them.
The Constitution is there to protect you from mayors like Mike Doomberg, who wants to tell you how big your beverage can be.
Now, he's not a federal official, I understand, but the principle is the same.
The Constitution was written to protect individual freedom and limit the ability of the government to encroach upon it.
And it's been turned upside down now.
And the liberals don't like that.
The Democrats are very unhappy about it.
Constitution limits government too much.
So they want to rewrite it, have a second Bill of Rights.
They want a Constitution.
They call it a Charter of Negative Liberties, which we all find strange.
A Constitution negative liberties.
It defines our freedom.
But not then in government.
In government, it limits their freedoms.
So that's why it's negative.
So they want a new Bill of Rights that spells out what government can do instead of a Bill of Rights that tells government what it can't do.
And so everything is out of phase.
And Cruz understands this.
And every Democrat shakes in fear when he opens his mouth about the subject.
Back to the phones open line Friday.
This is Indiana in Hastings, Nebraska.
Indiana, great to have.
Don't tell me.
Let me guess your last name.
Can I guess your last name?
David Crackhead.
Jones.
Yes, sir.
Yes, Mr. Limbaugh, you were right.
No, I do believe it.
I was born in 1990.
My mom said I was the last crusader.
Well, I understand.
Understand.
Pop culture, big.
Anyway, welcome to the program.
Great to have you here.
So you were born in 1990, so you are 22, 23, somewhere around there.
Yes, sir.
Brittany, coming up, 20, 23 years old.
I'm a young conservative.
My question is for you.
I'm lucky to educate me on a little something right here.
I talk to old Democrats and talk to these new liberals, and it's not always the same kind of conversation.
Old Democrats sure as hell don't act the same.
My question to you is: what's the difference between these old school Democrats and these new school Democrats like Barack Obama?
I'd be happy to answer that question.
But first, just because I'm curious, at age 22, when you say you talk to an old Democrat, how old are they?
Oh, in their 50s.
Oh, yeah, that'd be old.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Well, let me answer it this way.
You've heard of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, JFK, president in 1960.
Yes, sir.
In 1962, John F. Kennedy gave a speech, an earth-shattering speech at the New York Economic Club.
Now, at the time he gave this speech, the top marginal tax rate in the United States, are you ready, was 91%.
That was the highest.
That was the top marginal rate.
Now, not very many people paid it, but that's what it was.
And we were coming out of the boom of the post-war period through 1950, and the boom was slowing down.
The country was not in a recession, but the economy was just sort of stagnant.
It was just chugging along.
And Kennedy was starting to worry about being reelected.
He was going to have to run again in two years.
So he went to the New York Economic Club and he proposed an economic reform package that had as its centerpiece massive across-the-board tax cuts.
He sounded in that speech no different than Ronald Reagan sounded in the 1980s.
Now, he was assassinated before the proposal had a chance to be voted on and signed into law.
It eventually was, partially in honor of Kennedy.
There isn't a Democrat alive today, not in Washington.
There is not an elected Democrat who would propose a tax cut of one penny.
Now, they will say they will on middle-class people, poor people, but they're not.
They're raising everybody's taxes.
In fact, I've got a story right here from the AP.
Insurers are warning of sticker shock due to Obamacare's new taxes.
Some Americans could see their insurance bills double next year when Obamacare is fully implemented as it expands coverage to millions of people.
Insurance premium is not going to go down $2,500.
They're going to double for almost everybody.
That's a tax increase.
That's Obama.
That's today's Democrat Party.
Every Democrat in the country voted for it.
That's just one illustration of the difference.
I dare say, if JFK, Indiana, if JFK were alive today and were the same guy today that he was in 60, he wouldn't be a Democrat.
They wouldn't have let him in the party.
They would have kicked him out and they'd be trashing him the way they trash any Republican.
It is, in fact, a lot of people, Indiana, a lot of people think that the Democrat Party's shift to the far extreme radical left began with the assassination of JFK.
Hubert Humphrey, and we have played, Hubert Humphrey was a presidential candidate in his day of the Democrats in the Kennedy era.
Hubert Humphrey, we played the sound bites.
Hubert H. Humphrey did a speech on the importance of family values that sounds just like Pat Robertson today back in the 1960s.
Now, you were going to interrupt me and ask a question.
What were you going to say?
Because I don't want to have diarrhea of the mouth here and miss a question that you might have.
Well, I guess so even if it started the assassination of Kennedy there.
Some people think that the Democrat Party's shift to the radical left.
Now, by the way, the Democrats back then had liberals.
There have been liberals since creation of the country and before.
And the Democrat Party had its share, but they were the minority.
They were not winning other than in the usual enclaves of Massachusetts and California.
But even then, it wasn't nearly as deeply rooted, wasn't nearly as radical.
They've been shellacked with coming out of FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
Today, the Democrat Party is the only way to describe it is it's made up of people who do not think that this country's founding was legitimate, moral, or just.
And they think that this country as such is immoral and unjust, and they are hell-bent on changing it.
And that's what the Obama administration is really oriented towards.
And every elected Democrat in Washington today has that same point of view.
Okay, well, then when did the media really start tailoring to that left side so badly?
Well, the media has always been like they are.
The difference in the media is that back then there was a monopoly.
As recently as 1988, the media had a monopoly.
For example, when my program started in 1988, mine was the first national conservative media program of any kind ever.
There were conservative magazines such as National Review, but there was no conservative broadcast entity.
There were individual conservatives who participated as guests on programs.
But when I started 1988, you had only one cable news network, CNN.
The rest of the media was ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times.
There was no USA Today.
And so they had a monopoly on the news.
And the important thing about their monopoly was they were able to hide who they really were.
Since there was no opposition, there was no alternative.
Whatever they decided to ignore in reporting a news was ignored.
Nobody ever knew it.
They had total power to determine what the public saw as news and what they didn't see.
They had total control over all commentary and analysis.
And so they were able to create the impression that the majority body of thought in the country was liberal.
That's just what was.
That was just natural.
That was it.
There were plenty of conservatives, citizens, individuals, but they had nowhere in the media where their views were reflected.
The media, therefore, was able to hide their liberalism under this pretense of objectivity and fairness and equality.
Well, then this program started, and it spawned a number of other conservative radio talk shows.
Then Fox News came along in 1997, and their monopoly ended.
And with the end of their monopoly, Indiana, and this is key, away went the cloak, the masquerade, the mask.
They were no longer able to hide their objectivity in a monopoly.
They were exposed.
There were all kinds of different news stories that people were hearing.
There was a different take on all of it.
Their work was being criticized for the first time ever in a mass national way.
And so the media now is no different than they've always been in terms of the way they operate and the way they do their job.
What is different is that they do not pretend anymore to be objective.
They've taken that cloak off and they are partisans now.
They are every bit the facilitators of the Obama administration.
They've always been.
It's just now they make no bones about it.
They don't hide it.
They're very proud to be willing accomplices, stenographers of the Obama administration.
The last time, in the Gulf War, the first one in whenever it was 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, George H.W. Bush, we had a two-phase military operation.
We sent troops to Kuwait to make sure Hussein couldn't go any further, like into Saudi Arabia, get their oil wells.
And then the second phase was actual military operations to kick the Iraqis out.
CNN had a couple of reporters in a hotel in Baghdad.
The Al-Rashid Hotel, I think it was.
And those two reporters were obviously being bombed because we were bombing a hotel.
They got out.
They came back home.
Our intelligence agencies asked CNN if they could debrief those reporters.
And the reporters said, no, we are journalists.
We can't choose sides.
And I remember being incredulous.
Wait a minute.
What do you mean you report?
Are you not Americans?
We have no interest in who wins.
We can't take sides.
So they refused to help their own country by offering intel of what they had seen inside Baghdad, inside Iraq.
So they've always been who they are.
It's just a difference now.
In your life, you've seen them in the modern incarnation.
You've seen them as they've, in your life, they've been exactly what they are.
There used to be a day where there was no Fox News.
There was no conservative talk radio, nothing.
And back in those days, I remember the Goldwater Kennedy campaign of 1960.
Another little anecdote for you, just to illustrate the media.
One of the Goldwater commercials talked about the Northeast and the liberal elite and the bias that was there.
And I think the media put together some sort of a commercial with a saw, sawing the Eastern seaboard off and floating away in the Atlantic Ocean, as that's what Goldwater wanted to do.
And I remember a reporter named George Herman, CBS, would routinely close out every report on the CBS Evening News and Walter Cronkite.
I'm George Herman from the Floating East, CBS News, Boston, or wherever he was.
So they've always been who they are.
Now, your question about old Democrats versus, because there used to be, back in the old days, what I call adults in the Democrat Party, because there's always been these radicals, but they were able to be kept in check somewhat.
Old warriors like a guy named Bob Strauss and Jack Valenti were able to work with Republicans, compromise, get things done, and keep the Democrat Party from drifting Soviet-style left.
But those guys are all gone now.
They've either died or they've retired.
And the Democrat Party is Barack Obama, Saul Alinsky.
It's this pure radical left.
And it's always had people like this, but it's never, I'm 62, you're 20s, 40 years older than you are.
It's never been this bad.
Well, it seems to me like those old Democrats now are not Democrats.
They're the John McCain's and any, they're the Lynch Grahams.
They're in the GOP.
Well, you know, in a way, the old Democrats are the John McCains of the day, the Lindsay.
You are, you're, you're pretty close to dead on there.
You are very shrewd.
That is very perceptive of you.
Excellent way to describe it.
And I guess maybe now the Democrats, all they have is those radicals now, so they're free to run lease, huh?
They are.
They are.
And with the media on their side, they're never held accountable.
They're never criticized.
They don't have to worry about being caught saying extreme, outrageous things or doing outrageous things and being called on it.
In fact, the mayor, the former mayor of New York is a guy named of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, just got charged again with corruption and thievery.
He was convicted for the second time, just total corruption.
You will not find the word Democrat in the story about the guy.
They are totally excused and covered up.
Anyway, you got it.
You've got it now.
You understand it all.
The only thing I would say to you is, don't change.
We'll be back, folks.
Don't go.
Back to the phones where we go.
Open line Friday.
Rush Limbaugh, talent on loan from God.
And we go to Pittsburgh.
Pat, welcome.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Brush.
Nice to be on the program.
Thank you.
I have a theory why part of the people may have stayed home and not voted.
And I know it's going to sound strange, but we were, I know personally myself and a lot of people I know, we were being bombarded with so many phone calls.
We were averaging 40 to 45 phone calls a day.
That just got impossible.
All the candidates, I mean, not just presidential, but everybody calling you?
All the different groups.
Most of it was presidential.
A lot of it, some of it was for senators, you know, other positions in this area.
But it was just all day long.
And so that, on top of you got your mail, and 85% of it was political mail, and then you turn on the TV and you had the nasty ads.
I think people just got burnt out.
I voted.
I'm 60.
I've never missed an election in my life since I was old enough to vote.
But I know of several people that finally put up their hands and just where they were enthusiastic initially, they just had it.
Well, it could be a factor.
It could be.
Because those robocalls were all over the place.
But you know what you need?
Were you getting those calls too?
You're all bent out of shape about it?
Oh, yes.
I got to the point where I told my family they needed to get me, call me on my cell.
I wasn't answering my house phone anymore.
Well, I was going to say, dump the landline, get a cell phone.
The pollsters and those people don't have those numbers.
Oh, I actually got a couple on the cell, too.
They're randomly picking numbers.
Well, wait till they get your cell phone numbers.
That's the next thing that'll probably happen.
Anyway, that's as good a theory as any.
But I also, in addition to that, I think there was a significant percentage of the conservative base that was just fed up.
They looked at Obama as a sitting duck.
I mean, this economy is in bad shape.
Everything's horrible.
Benghazi's happening, and they didn't see any apparent real desire to win.
Why should I support this?
After they had sent a bunch of money, probably.
Anyway, Pat, thanks for the call.
Brief timeout, my friends.
Back with more after this.
That's it, folks.
Another exciting hour, Broadcast Excellence in the Can on the way over to the Limbaugh Broadcast Museum, virtual edition you can see at rushlimbaugh.com.