Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You know, I know you people don't watch MSNBC anymore because I don't watch it.
Since I don't watch it, you don't watch it.
Now, we don't talk about what happens on MSNBC anymore because it's not worth it.
But somebody told me how Chris Matthews ended his show on Friday.
He said that Ted Cruz represents, and I quote now, the unsmiling, contemptuous face of the wild, nasty, hard-right fringe of the Republican Party.
And I have to tell you, folks, I was a little hurt by that.
What am I, chopped liver?
How do I get left out of that?
Anyway, greetings.
Great to have you here as we are off and running another three hours of broadcast excellence here on the one and only Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Your telephone number if you want to be on the program.
800-282-2882.
The email address ilrushbow at eibnet.com.
Sturdly, a quick programming note.
This is a short week for me, taking a brief little vacation.
So today and tomorrow are my only two days here this week.
And I'll be back, I think, what over the fifth or the sixth.
Not sure which.
Are you going to guest host tomorrow?
Is that why everybody was looking at themselves like, and why is it that I think I'm doing the program?
Who's the guest host?
Oh, geez.
Stein is the guy, two days of Verbansky after the, yeah, yeah, but, but, well, okay.
Well, geez.
Why did I even show up today then?
I mean, I showed up.
Right.
I know I'll be back next week on Wednesday, but I thought that I was going to be here today and tomorrow.
I'm being kicked off my—yeah, yeah, yeah.
I guess.
Well, a little snafu here.
So safe to say here, I'm kicked off my own show tomorrow because we've already got the guest host.
The guest host has to take supremacy.
So, what, is Stein going to do this from his bunker in New Hampshire, Australia?
Okay, so Stein is not traveling to New York to do the program.
So there aren't any hotels that we would have to eat by canceling.
See where I'm going?
I'm trying to talk my way back into doing the program tomorrow, folks, so you can't hear it.
The staff is steadfastly opposed to it.
Plans have already been made for a guest host tomorrow.
Okay, that's it then.
This is it for me.
So what I was going to tell you is we'll just do Open Line Friday on Tuesday here.
Oh, now, now, now they're telling me I'm the boss, and if I want to come in tomorrow, I can.
Yeah, except that you've already made plans with Stein probably was going to go to Australia or something, and now he's not going to go to Australia because he's going to be in the bunker in New Hampshire.
Oh, he's doing some shows next week, too.
Monday, Tuesday, next week, Stein.
Okay, so I'll be back on Wednesday.
Yeah, 10-minute commute.
Okay.
Okay, well, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to say how I feel at the end of the program today.
If I get ticked off at the end of the program, just say, hell with it.
Stein can do the show tomorrow.
If I feel like I got unfinished business at the end of the program, I'll come in.
Now, I can't do that.
That keeps everybody hanging, even though it is nice.
What was that?
You got two people talking at once.
I'm sorry, folks, you can't hear this, but trust me, you don't want to.
What was he?
Yeah, okay, true.
Well, gee, the larger problem is, or the larger things, how did this happen?
You know, I've got a lot.
Yeah, well, in addition to what I've already got here to do, yeah, that would tick me off.
Well, this may work out better.
It might work out.
Okay, I'll let you know as the program unfolds.
And now to the news.
The problems I have.
It is a curiosity.
How it is that I think I'm going to be here and you all eagerly planning for me not to be here.
Well, I know.
That is true.
The staff has been urging me to take vacation in the early 90s.
They do have to kick me out of here.
All right.
Well, I'm just going to play it by ear today and see how it goes.
And I'll try not to put too many people out.
Okay?
Now, to the news.
A majority of Americans.
This is the kind of thing I see.
It just points to the utter futility.
Oh, and let me just say something here at the outset.
I have a number of emails over the weekend, and I went out and played golf on Saturday.
And I can't tell you the number of people I run into who think, okay, we've got Obama now.
This is it.
Combination, IRS and Benghazi.
And I just want to, look, I'm not trying to be a downer here.
I really am not.
You know, I'm just the mayor of Rielville.
And I'm telling you, none of this is going to result in any serious damage to Obama.
He's certainly not going anywhere.
But more importantly, the media is not going to turn on the guy.
You know, I get kind of disappointed because there's still so many people on our side, and I understand it.
Just hoping at some point, because, you know, you want right to triumph.
You want wrong to lose.
You want wrong to take it on the chin.
And you want what's right triumph like we think it used to.
And I can't tell you the number of people who are really hoping that the media will have no choice but then to turn on Obama, on Benghazi and the IRS.
And folks, it just isn't going to happen for a whole host of reasons.
The racial component is, in one sense, in terms of removing from office as in impeachment, which some people are hoping that's never going to happen.
You can erase it from your chalkboard of possibilities.
But the other thing, the media finally turning, that would be like them turning on themselves.
It isn't going to happen.
The media and Obama are the same entity.
It's not just that they're Democrats.
It's not just that they're all liberals.
It's that there is a personal investment.
They look at Obama and see themselves.
He's exactly what they consider to be the elite, the best type of citizen of this country, his pedigree, the Ivy League, his ideology.
There's just no way that they're going to turn on it.
It isn't going to happen.
The main reason there's no journalism.
We don't have journalism in this.
Not at least from what's called the mainstream media.
There isn't any journalism there.
There is simply alliance, and the alliance is oriented toward getting Obama past this with as little damage as, in fact, what is actually taking place is that I've got a story here in the stack.
I wish I could remember who, oh, I think it's a blog talking about how successful Obama's been in terms of transforming the country vis-a-vis his agenda.
And that's undeniable, especially there are two things here, folks, that if they happen, and one of them practically already has, then this country's never, ever going to be the same.
One's Obamacare, the other is amnesty.
And I would say of those two, that amnesty is the most transformative because that guarantees Democrats power for as long as you can see the future.
I mean, if we're going to grant amnesty and path to citizenship and voting rights, which is what this is all about, if we're going to grant voting rights to whatever the number, 11 million people, so let's say 70%, which is what the polling data says that Hispanics vote Democrat.
If we're going to, if we're going to just automatically anoint 8 million new Democrat voters with not one new, or well, 2 million Republican voters at best.
Sorry.
Don't know what you're going to do.
That's transformative.
Then you add Obamacare to that, which, as you know, nationalizes the healthcare system and eventually takes it to single payer.
The idea that Obama's in trouble here, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to, I guess I am Mr. Cole Shaw today, but it just doesn't, it's not the case.
And I got to face this stuff squarely and honestly, you look at this IRS scandal.
I'm going to tell you again what the IRS scandal is all about.
You have different kinds of scandals.
And a lot of scandals are where people get mad at what was attempted.
Nixon, he tried to bug the Democrat headquarters.
He was trying to do whatever.
He didn't succeed in any of it.
But you look at the IRS scandal, it wasn't so much just the attempt.
There was blatant success there.
The suppression of Tea Party money, donations, and votes happened.
That was dead serious.
That's why the IRS scandal is a huge deal, because it was successful.
There was a successful effort.
This is not just a scandal because of what was attempted.
There is that, but the attempt succeeded.
You look at the 2012 election returns, you'll see that Obama's turnout was millions of people less than it was in 2008, and he still won a sizable margin.
Now, you can chalk some of it up to the Republicans, again, not having a genuine conservative candidate.
But this IRS scandal saw to it that there would be less money supporting Romney, that there would be less money supporting Republican candidates, and that there would probably be less people voting for the Republican.
It worked.
The IRS scandal achieved the suppression of Tea Party votes.
All the while this is going on, we have to listen to these silly allegations that the Republicans try to suppress the black vote, the gay vote, the female.
Republicans don't try to suppress anything.
You know, liberals think that we are bad people.
We think they have bad ideas.
It's a huge difference.
They think we are reprehensible people.
We think they have bad ideas.
Some of them are what?
Some of the what?
The ideas of the people.
Well, yeah, but my point is that it's an attitude and a mindset.
The liberal, the thing that animates them is that we are rotten, evil people.
Hell with our ideas.
I mean, they don't even go there.
They don't even debate our ideas.
We are just rotten, evil people.
We, when commenting on them publicly, let's talk about how their ideas are bad.
They are far more grievous and aggressive in their pursuit of us and their attempt to relegate us to irrelevance.
The old Obama bromide here of eliminating all opposition.
That's what the IRS scandal was about, eliminating opposition.
Obama didn't want to debate ideas.
Obama doesn't want to debate anybody.
He doesn't want to listen to Republicans' alternative ideas on health care, alternative ideas on jobs.
He doesn't want to do that.
He doesn't want to deal with alternative ideas.
He doesn't want to deal with, he just wants to eliminate any.
So the IRS scandal was an overwhelming success.
And the media isn't going to change anybody's perception.
The media is not going to do anything about that.
The Obama administration succeeded in using an agency of the government to actually suppress the votes and the political participation via fundraising of a sizable percentage of voters in the country.
That was genuine voter suppression that took place there.
But the media's relationship to Obama is, they're like brothers and sisters.
They're in the same family.
They're going to circle the wagons around him day in and day out.
They're never, they're not going to turn on him.
They're not.
Forget talk of impeachment.
I don't even mean they're not going to turn on him just from the standpoint of criticism.
They may offer some surface criticism, like Bob Schieffer.
Bob Schieffer, I wish they'd get their communication.
Here, grab something by number two.
This is about as bad as it's going to get.
This is Bob Schieffer on Slay the Nation yesterday.
Listen to this.
If I want to interview anyone in the administration on camera, from the lowest level worker to a White House official, I have to go through the White House press office.
If their chosen spokesman turns out to have no direct connection to the story of the moment, as was the case when UN Ambassador Susan Rice was sent out to explain the Benghazi episode, then that's what we and you, the taxpayer, get.
I am glad the president has asked the Attorney General to review whether his investigations into leaks is having a chilling effect on journalists, but it shouldn't stop there.
The president needs to rethink his entire communications policy, top to bottom.
It is hurting his credibility.
See, all this stuff's going on.
He doesn't know anything about it, but he'd better fix it.
Folks, that's as tough as it's going to get.
That's as bad as it's going to get.
Democrats get in a little bit of trouble.
The problem is always that they aren't getting their message out.
So, Schieffer, you guys are going to have to do a better job of getting your message out.
We can't cover for you if you're going to act like this because you're making it tough on us.
And I'm glad that Eric Holder is going to investigate himself, Schieffer said.
I'm glad.
I'm finally glad.
Can you imagine George Bush appointing Alberto Gonzalez to investigate himself?
I'm glad George Bush is going to have Alberto Gonzalez investigate.
It would never happen.
That's as tough as it's going to get.
Wishing they would not make these mistakes, hoping they could get their house in order so that I don't have to criticize them on my silly Sunday show.
I'll take a brief time out here.
We'll be back and continue in mere moment.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I saw that.
The reason is both my computer wanted to just went to sleep.
And I'm running a beta, and the preference on computer sleep is probably set to like 10 minutes, so I got to fix it during the break.
It's not a problem.
No gremlins here.
Sit tight.
We'll be back after this.
No go.
The drive-bys are overheated, folks, about the possibility here of Obama getting together with Chris Christie to once again walk the beaches of New Jersey.
So excited.
They're hoping that Chris Christie can save Obama's bacon again.
They're doing everything they can, but they want this photo op, this optic, to once again show that it's Obama who's cooperative and it's Obama who's bipartisan.
It couldn't possibly, as he is walking the beach with the New Jersey governor, a Republican.
Chris Christie, Obama couldn't have had anything to do with the IRS scandal.
I mean, he likes Republicans.
There had to be a bunch of renegade, out-of-control rogues in there.
So we have a montage, people from CNN, NBC, ABC, NBC, about the Obama and Chris Christie beach walk coming up.
The odd couple is back in just a few hours.
President Obama and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
President Obama heads to the Jersey Shore today, and once again, he tours with Republican Governor Chris Christie, just as they famously did in the final days leading up to the 2012 presidential election.
The sequel, if you will, of that political odd couple.
This is in many ways the ultimate odd couple.
Biggest media market in the country.
Governor Christie's appearing with the president.
Mr. Obama needs Republican Governor Chris Christie's endorsement.
The president and his host, Governor Christie, it's another example of bipartisanship.
See, it's so wonderful.
It's just so nice.
It's cooperative people getting along of the opposite party working together to try to solve the problem of the aftermath of that big nasty hurricane.
And just couldn't, it can't be that Obama's this strident partisan guy.
Gallup Daily Tracking Survey that was released yesterday says that a majority of Americans said they believe the federal government today wields too much power.
54% of Americans expressed that belief.
It's slightly higher than the number reported in 2012, slightly lower than what was reported in 2010 and 2011.
Only 8% of Americans said that they thought the federal government has too little power.
36% said the government has just about the right amount of power.
46% of Americans said they agreed with the statement that the federal government poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.
53% disagree.
Well, there's a lot there, but the big number, 54%, say they believe the federal government today wields too much power.
And yet they keep electing Democrats.
Do they have no idea who the Democrats are and what their main objective is?
What political party wants a bigger, more powerful government?
The Democrats.
Big disconnect here.
Let me tell you what this bipartisanship is.
President Governor Christie taking another stroll on the beaches of New Jersey.
Never mind, folks, that seven months after Hurricane Sandy, there are still a lot of people that haven't been helped.
But that's not the point.
Oh, no.
Seven months after the hurricane came and went, still a lot of people who haven't been helped.
But the point is that Obama and Christie want to help.
They really want to help.
They really want this to be fixed and solved.
So it is a case of the good intentions overwhelming any of the results.
The good intentions matter far more than the results.
Now, this bipartisanship that the media is celebrating over, there's any bipartisanship here.
Obama has money.
Governor Christie wants the money.
Governor Christie needs the money, so the people will be helped.
So Christie praises Obama.
It's a master-servant relationship.
It's exactly the kind of bipartisanship that the drive-by media wants.
Master-servant.
That's bipartisan.
That's what's going on here.
Master, servant, master, staff.
Don't take it any further than that, Snerdley.
I'm not going there.
I'm just telling you.
Obama's got the money.
Christie needs the money.
Obama wants to walk the beach.
That's what we're going to do.
Obama wants a photo op.
It's what we're going to do.
Get this.
This is from the Weekly Standard, Daniel Halper.
You know, I read stuff like this, and I asked him, do they really think that we are this stupid?
And the answer is yes.
President Barack Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, is, quote, beginning to feel a creeping sense of personal remorse.
The feelings of remorse began for Holder after he read an article in the Washington Post Monday at his kitchen table about how the Justice Department, which he heads, investigated Fox News reporter James Rosen.
At least this is the story unnamed aides are telling the Daily Beast, which is an Obama sycophant publication.
Get this.
For Attorney General Eric Holder, come on, the gravity of the situation didn't fully sink in until yesterday, when he read the Washington Post front-page story sitting at his kitchen table.
Quoting from the affidavit, the story detailed how agents had tracked Rosen's movements in and out of the State Department, perused his private emails, and traced the timing of his calls to the State Department security advisor suspected of leaking to him.
Then the story, quoting the stark clinical language of the affidavit, described Rosen as, at the very least, an aider, a better, and or co-conspirator in the crime.
Holder knew that justice would be besieged by the twin leak investigations, but according to AIDS, he was also beginning to feel a creeping sense of personal remorse.
So this has been going on since 2010.
And the State Department had been looking at James Rosen and basically tagged him as a co-conspirator in a crime.
But it wasn't until yesterday morning when Holder woke up on Memorial Day and read his copy of the Washington Post that he saw what was really going on for the first time and then began to feel sorry.
So then Holder probably put the paper down and shouted to his wife, hey, honey, you won't believe this.
Come look at this, and showed her the story about what's been going on at his Justice Department.
And he said, honey, you know, I'm really having a creeping sense of remorse over this.
How stupid do they think that we are?
Got to be pretty stupid.
Bob Dole says that the Republican Party should be closed for repairs because it's so out of whack.
Here, we got two soundbites.
This is Bob Dole.
He was on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, who said, What do you think of your party, of the Republicans today, Senator Dole?
I think they ought to put a sign on the National Committee doors that says, close for repairs until New Year's Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas.
So Chris Wallace then says, you describe the GOP of your generation as Eisenhower Republicans, moderate Republicans.
Could people like Bob Dole or even Ronaldos Magnus, could you make it, Senator Dole, in today's Republican Party?
I doubt it.
Reagan couldn't have made it.
Certainly Nixon couldn't have made it because he had ideas.
And we might have made it, but I doubt it.
What in the world?
Dole didn't make it in 96.
I don't, this is just, and if you read further in the story, but what bothers Bob Dole, he says the party has changed so drastically in recent years that the current GOP would not welcome the likes of Ronaldus Magnus.
Now, Dole may be onto something, but not in the way he means it.
What Dole is trying to say is the party's gotten so extreme to the right that not even Reagan would be accepted.
That's what has happened is that, I mean, who you've heard the people in the Republican Party, the consultants and the whatever, the era of Reagan is over.
What they mean is this business of the Republican Party being conservative.
We got to scratch that.
We got to wipe it out.
We need a more moderate Republican Party.
And that's what Dole is saying.
Oh, by the way, did you say a little story over the weekend?
I don't think too many of you probably saw this.
But a Republican consultant was working with Mayor Doomberg, a Democrat, liberal Democrat.
Well, he may still call himself an independent, but he's a liberal Democrat.
Mayor of New York City, a Republican consultant was helping Mayor Doomberg come up with TV ads against guns.
His name is Mike Murphy, Republican consultant.
Not a Democrat political consultant, helping a Democrat come up with ads to eliminate guns, but a Republican consultant.
So in Dole's view, this party's gotten so far to the right, it's so extreme, that not even Reagan would fit in.
Not even Reagan could win.
And certainly Bob Dole couldn't, and Nixon couldn't, and so forth.
So he wants the party to put a close for repairs sign up because it lacks vision and is unable to strike deals with Democrats.
That's Dole's major complaint, is that we can't, we don't have anybody willing to strike deals with Obama.
And that's what legislation is to people in Dole's generation.
You strike deals, you make deals.
And the way the deals happen is this.
The Democrats put forth an idea to advance their agenda.
The Republicans are sitting there not doing anything.
Republicans not putting forth anything to advance their agenda.
They don't do that.
They sit around, all they do is wait for the Democrats to put forth something to advance their agenda, and then the Republicans say, we must have an alternative.
So the Democrats set the table.
The Democrats set the agenda.
The Democrats buy the groceries and cook the meal.
We argue about the caloric content.
That's about the extent of it.
And there are Republicans today.
We've got to have alternatives every time they propose that.
Why don't we just say no?
Why don't we say no to Obamacare?
I want to say no to amnesty.
I want to say no to all this stuff.
What do you mean we have to come up with our own alternative?
But Bob Dole's generation deal-making.
That was it.
Striking a deal, coming up with compromise.
I would venture to say that today's Republican Party is actually doing pretty good at making deals with Obama on amnesty.
That's one area.
I don't know.
It just, it's interesting and illustrative of the continuing internecine battle going on inside the Republic.
Here we have the most radical leftist president and agenda that this country has ever faced.
And the Republicans are in an argument over whether or not they ought to agree with part of it.
Here they have and have had for five years the greatest opportunity ever to contrast what they believe, what we believe, with what's actually happening.
We have gone beyond theory now.
The liberals are actually implementing a genuinely radical agenda.
We've got an opportunity that's being squandered to contrast what we believe because we're buying into all this same old criticism that we're not bipartisan enough and that we're not cooperative enough.
So it's sad in its own way.
Striking deals with the Democrats is what got us into the mess that we're in today.
Too many of those deals were struck by old line Republicans who believed that when the Democrats put something forward, we must have an alternative.
They still set the agenda.
All we do is mess around at the margins with it.
Bob Dole further said that he was disturbed by the Republican Party's obstructionist behavior on Capitol Hill.
It seems almost unreal that we can't get together on a budget or legislation.
There isn't Obama's budget hasn't gotten a single Democrat vote in five years.
Does it not matter what the legislation is?
Does it not matter what the budget is?
Is no matter what they put forth, we're supposed to strike a deal with them?
Again, folks, I rear my head and say this is what happens when people do not look at things ideologically.
Yeah, it's just a bunch of Republicans and Democrats running around.
The Democrats happen to have the power right now, so we'll strike some deals with them and so forth.
And we'll win a couple elections down the road and they'll strike some deals with us.
And the ruling class inside the Beltway continues on uninterrupted.
Quick time out.
We'll be back and continue.
We'll get some of your phone calls in right after this.
Don't go away.
Okay, let's go grab some phone calls and we'll go to Rochester, New York.
We'll start with Philip.
Philip, welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here, sir.
Hello.
Thank you.
How are you doing today?
I'm fine.
How are you?
I just called to more or less let you know that I agree with Senator Dole.
I think your party should close up and repair until next year.
Oh, you're a Democrat?
No, I'm an independent.
Oh, okay.
Now, to prove my point, the last election, I think you had three Senate seats that you could have won handedly.
The one from New Hampshire with a, what was her name, O'Donnell, that was the witch.
And then there were these two senators, one from Indiana that rape was a gift from God.
Really?
These Tea Party people, Tea Party stands for taxed enough already?
Is that correct?
Taxed enough already is partly, yes.
It stands for many things.
That's one of the things, yes.
Well, that shows you how misinformed they are because we're at the lowest tax rate since Truman was president.
So if that's what they're going by.
Oh, you want to pay more taxes?
They're intelligent.
Do you want to pay higher taxes?
Do I want to pay?
I want to pay my fair share.
What's fair?
We're paying lower taxes.
Why are we in debt now?
Because we're not paying enough taxes.
What is this?
You think that we're in debt because people aren't paying enough taxes?
I think we're in debt because Bush put us in two wars.
You're not an independent.
You're a commie SOB liberal.
There's no way.
Come on, man.
You people on the left do not have to lie when you call here.
This happened last week, and we had to dump a guy because I'm not.
Look at it.
This is the fairest, the most open radio talk show in the country, and you libs cannot, you just can't be on.
There was no witch on the ballot in Delaware.
Independent, my ass.
Shrinking ass, by the way.
Crying out loud, you people on the left, if you just call here and be honest, you can be on the program all day or for as long as you're interesting, 30 seconds or so.
But, man, you're making a fool of yourself now.
We have debt because of Bush.
But this is why the country's in trouble.
People like this clown vote two or three times, probably.
Here's, well, who's next?
Phillips History.
Brad in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Welcome to EIB Network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Honor and privilege to talk to you.
This is my first time to get through.
I'm a former Democrat.
I was a public office holder for 18 years in Lancaster County, elected as a Democrat.
And I remember back in the 70s, 76, hoping Reagan should be the nominee because we'll roll over this right-wing conservative.
Then in 1980, he gets the nomination.
Oh, yeah, we're just going to roll over this.
He's too extreme.
He's too conservative.
Landslide.
84, the same thing with Mondale.
Landslide.
I'm a Republican today.
I changed party in office because of Ronald Reagan.
I have to give some credit to you, too, my friend.
And I just want to tell you, you're right on.
Republican Party is only going to win when it's strong on its principles.
Times change, but the principles don't.
And it's time to be the conservative party that we should be.
And that's when we're going to win Congress.
That's when we're going to win the presidency and show that we have leadership for the people of this country.
So I stand with you, my friend.
I feel like I'm pandering, but when I hear the truth, I just got to call in.
Why do you feel like you're pandering?
Well, I don't want to, because I'm calling in saying, oh, yeah, what you're saying is great.
Well, I know you like to hear that, but it is true.
It is honest.
I'm big enough to admit that I was wrong when I was a Democrat.
I was a conservative Democrat.
I was wrong about Reagan.
And he's just, he's been my hero for many years.
Yeah, that's grown to believe in it.
That's cool.
That's not pandering.
That's not pandering.
And you think I love hearing people tell me I'm great?
Well, yeah, probably I do.
But no, it is sincere and just being honest.
Like you say, too many Democrats are thinking their gut, no, Reagan was right, but just can't get around to admitting it.
And they're just going to make the same mistakes over and over.
The Democrats are not thinking, by definition.
They don't think.
They feel and they touch and they emote and they infer and all that, but they don't think, which is a major, major problem.
Brad, I appreciate the call.
Thanks much.
And I'll be back for my greatness after this.
Don't go.
So let's see.
Reese Witherspoon, Jessica Chastain, who else, Charlotte Scarlett, go join me.
One of those three going to play Hillary Clinton in a movie about Hillary from the Watergate days.