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Sept. 27, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:43
September 27, 2013, Friday, Hour #2
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Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network on Friday.
Let's hit it.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Yes, and I promise you're going to get to your phone calls pretty soon in this hour.
So if you're on hold, be patient.
I thank you for waiting.
We'll get to you, Il Quicko.
If you're trying to get in, there's no way.
The lines are totally filled.
They always are.
You have to time your call at a precise moment.
You have to know when I'm going to disconnect the current call.
You have to be able to predict that well in advance and then hit your last digit or the send button, either one.
And if that describes you, the telephone number is 800-282-2882.
Okay, so let's just review something here.
Dingy Harry, the Senate majority leader, is forcing a vote on a bill that includes a provision that defunds Obamacare.
Oh, yes.
You didn't know this?
It's exactly right.
Dingy Harry is forcing a vote on a bill that includes a provision that defunds Obamacare.
This provision will be removed as soon as the bill is passed.
The only reason Dingy Harry is doing this is so some Democrat senators can claim that they voted to defund Obamacare.
And yet they want to tell us that it's Ted Cruz who is scamming us.
Yep.
Ted Cruz is the scam artist.
Ted Cruz is lying to you.
Ted Cruz is misleading you.
Ted Cruz is using you.
It's all just a game, don't you know?
You're being told to support something that doesn't have a prayer.
And Cruz, so goes the theory, knows it doesn't have a prayer.
But he's misleading you.
He's tricking you.
He's trying to get you to sign petitions and call Washington and all that for something he knows that isn't going to happen.
And so the question I have for you is, do you feel tricked?
Do you feel that Cruz is using you to either up his profile or raise money down the line?
Because he's not doing that now.
He sent an email blast out late yesterday afternoon about this and there was not a request for money in it.
When's the last time that happened to you, by the way?
You got some sort of email from an elected official about some issue that there was not a request for money.
When does that ever happen?
But Cruz sent one of those out.
So he's not been asking for money, but do you feel tricked?
Do you feel like you've been roped into supporting something and calling your senator or congressman or something that isn't going to happen?
It doesn't stand a prayer of happening.
And when it doesn't happen, are you going to be sad and depressed and really mad, enraged?
And are you going to feel used?
And are you going to be further soured and turned off to conservatism?
Because this is one of the criticisms being bandied about in Washington about Cruz, is that he's using you.
He's really, I mean, this is mean.
This is really mean.
He's scamming you.
He's using you.
He knows full well he's going to have a prayer.
He's doing this for his own profile being raised, doing his own ego, whatever.
And you don't have a prayer.
And when this doesn't pan out, and when it doesn't happen, that you're going to feel used and discarded.
And the worst thing is, you are going to distrust conservatism after this.
So I just, I wanted to ask if that describes you.
If you want to comment on it, when we got to the phones, feel free.
But the real scam is being run by Dingy Harry.
Because I'm not making this up.
He's forcing a vote on a bill in the Senate that has a provision in there that defunds Obamacare.
And some Democrats are going to vote for it.
And then he's going to pull that provision.
As soon as the bill's passed, there's going to be a revision, take it out.
But then these Democrats that voted for it are going to be able to campaign in 2014 and 2016 saying that they voted to defund Obamacare.
And that's the only reason Dingy Harry is doing it.
And yet, we're supposed to feel scammed by Ted Cruz.
As Cruz said on Wednesday, the Senate vote that Dingy Harry is orchestrating is what is the show vote.
It's a major scam to try to fool the low-information folks back home into thinking that there are some Democrats who want to defund Obamacare.
Let me put another way.
Cruz is being lambasted for exposing this scam of this Senate and its vote.
That's really why the long knives are out for Ted Cruz.
He's told everybody this is a show vote, and that's exactly what it is.
And Harry Reid is letting the Senate pretend to be voting to defund Obamacare when everybody knows he's going to strip that provision out as soon as the bill's voted for.
But the drive-bys, yeah, they're all out there calling Ted Cruz the scammer.
The guy who is exposing the scam is the scammer.
All this upcoming vote in the Senate does is let Senate Republicans and some Senate Democrats be able to tell their low-information constituents that they voted to defund Obamacare.
This is a giant scam that the Senate is running on people today at the behest of Dingy Harry.
And in fact, the vote just happened.
It was 79 to 19 to invoke cloture on the House passed continuing resolution.
And they're going to strip now the defund Obamacare provision of 19 votes to defund Obamacare, essentially.
And they're going to strip this out.
You wait.
As Cruz said, voting for cloture was the crucial vote.
And it allows them to say they voted for the House continuing resolution while allowing Dingy Harry to strip the defunding provision out of it.
No, no.
The House CR, the continuing resolution in the House, contains a provision defunding Obamacare.
And that's what the Senate voted on.
It's right in there.
It's the House continuing resolution, their version of it.
And by voting for cloture, that shows they want the House continuing resolution to move forward.
But as soon as it moves forward, the Obamacare defunding provision will be stripped out of the Senate version.
They vote for the House version, accept it.
Oh, wow, we just voted to defund Obamacare.
Then the Senate version of the CR bill, it gets taken out.
That's how it works.
Huge, huge scam.
And you're supposed to be supposed to think that it's Ted Cruz running this scam and using you.
It's fascinating.
Here is Ted Cruz.
This is this morning in Washington.
He's on the Senate floor.
When it comes back to the Senate, after the House stands their ground yet again, we will have an opportunity for Republicans to come home, for Republicans to stand together.
And I very much hope the next time this issue is before this body in a few days that all 46 Republicans are united against Obamacare and standing with the American people, that we listen to the American people the way Senate Democrats are not.
That's the scam, they say.
Conservatives inside the Beltway say, he's just lying to you.
It's really sad, in fact, folks.
You're just the huddled masses being led down this endless path where there is no solution.
There is no defunding of Obamacare.
It doesn't have a prayer.
It isn't going to happen.
Ted Cruz knows it.
He's using you.
And then when you figure that out, are you going to be sad?
You're going to be dejected, suicidal, depressed, enraged.
You're going to feel like you're nothing but pawns in the game of life like Mongo and blazing saddles.
You're going to tune out of politics and you're going to hate conservatism.
You're going to blame conservatism because Cruz is a conservative.
And this is what the mainstream Beltway conservatives think.
And I just wonder if that accurately describes you.
Do you not know what's happening here?
You really, really, at the end of all this, going to be so dejected and feel like the biggest fool that's ever been sucked into anything in your life?
Tom Harkin, this morning, also on the Senate floor, Democrat radical senator from Iowa.
It's dangerous.
It's very dangerous.
I believe, Mr. President, we are at one of the most dangerous points in our history right now.
Every bit as dangerous as the breakup of the Union before the Civil War.
Whoa.
Whoa, what's brought that on?
What in the world is old Dung Heap talking about here?
Well, that's our affectionate nickname for him, Rachel, because he talked about a dung heap one day.
It alliteratively goes with Tom Dungheap Harkin.
It just works.
It's very dangerous.
Yeah, people disagreeing with Obama, is what he means.
People disagree.
People trying to defund Obamacare.
People trying to get rid of the law of the land.
This is worse.
This is as bad as it was during the Civil War.
This is horrible.
What was the Civil War about?
I mean, right down to brass tax, what was it about?
Well, once again, freedom.
Was it not in many ways?
Not only, I mean, I'm not trying to say that in a pollyannish way, but certainly freedom was on the agenda.
I got to take a break, and we'll come back, and we will get to your calls, as promised.
So sit there and sit tight.
We'll be back.
All right, now, here is further clarification of the Senate scam.
If you really want to know the intimate, intricate details, in a nutshell, the cloture vote to cut off debate allows Harry Reid to get what he wants in the bill by just a 51-vote majority.
And by voting for cloture, the Republicans gave Reid that power.
But the Republican senators say that they're going to then vote against Reed's stripping of the defunding bill out of this.
But the Republicans know that their vote on that's going to fail because the Democrats have the majority.
So everything that is happening here is for show.
Exactly as Senator Cruz said.
Folks, the people who are screaming bloody murder at Ted Cruz for wanting to defund Obamacare just had a vote in the Senate to do that.
And they're trying to destroy the guy over his effort to really defund Obamacare.
And the guys that are ripping him to shreds just had a vote in the Senate to do just that so that they can go home and say they did.
Now, the Republicans are trying to keep Dingy Harry's feet on us, all his feet to the fire on this, by trying to vote to prevent him stripping out that defund provision from the House, the Senate version of the House CR, but they don't have the votes to do that.
It's all for show.
And it's I'll tell you what makes me feel like a fool.
You know, it isn't Ted Cruz.
It's not anything that Cruz is.
I'll tell you what makes me feel like a fool when I get sucked in is when I watch the drive-by media report on this stuff as though it's unknown what's going to happen.
It's the future of the country.
They're hand-wringing.
They're doing all this analysis and strategy of what's going on.
They're in on it.
They eat this stuff up and they act as though there's something really unknown that might happen here.
And if anybody is running a scam on us, it's the drive-by media in conjunction with the White House on all of this.
That's when I even get mad at myself for falling into the trap of analyzing what various media here, like Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Borges are just now discussing this.
And I can't hear it because obviously I'm doing the program, but they're discussing this in the greatest of detail and what it might mean here, what it might mean.
It's all bogus.
It's just the outcome's a foregone conclusion.
We know this.
Let me go to the phones.
Where are we starting here?
Somebody give me the line that we're going to take first.
Jeff in Summer, New Jersey, you're first.
It's great to have you here on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Rush, great to be here.
Let me just start by saying I don't know if this is sufficient, but all I have to say is thank you.
That's for everything you do.
All I have is thank you.
I think it falls short of expressing what a national treasure you are, but nonetheless, that's what I have.
I appreciate it.
I really thank you very much.
Let me comment or answer the question if I can on Ted Cruz because it ties into a lot of different things I wanted to say.
Not only do I not feel deceived by Ted Cruz, when I look at Ted Cruz and I listen to Ted Cruz, not only do I see a man of honesty and integrity, but I see a glimmer of hope.
I see a little bit of light in the distance.
Ted Cruz is a truly principled leader who clearly doesn't care about what's best for his political career, and he truly does care about what's best for us.
The people I feel deceived by are the Boehners and the McConnells and the Cantors and the John Cordens who claim that they want this to go away, and yet they're deceiving us by embracing what they know is a fatally flawed strategy.
And that is sitting back and saying, listen, this is going to die of its own accord because if we learn anything from watching Democrats, they don't sit back and let anything they want die.
They will make any maneuver.
Will do anything they can to make sure that Obamacare doesn't fail, whether it's granting other waivers, whether it's not implementing certain parts of it until it's fixed, implementing other parts, whatever it is they need to do, they will do.
That is exactly right.
And even when it fails, what they will do is promote people who were intimately involved in botching it and make it look like it was a huge success.
But there's another good analogy, too.
Something that we do as Republicans or conservatives that they don't like.
They don't sit around and let us implement it and then think it's going to blow up.
They launch every weapon and ammo they've got to destroy our ideas and destroy our objections.
They never sit back and let it happen and then under the theory it's going to implode or collapse.
They don't take that chance.
Of course they don't.
They practice preemptive strategy whenever they can.
And I think that this strategy is going to very sadly backfire.
Although maybe it's not so sad.
It's a chance to get rid of a lot of this deadwood.
But this strategy is going to backfire on every Republican who says this is the way to go.
They are going to be looked at as people who are not up to the task, who are not true leaders, who don't have backbone.
And I can tell you only anecdotally from out here in the field, just being a citizen and a Republican, a conservative, and all the people I talk to, they are infuriated.
They have reached the exasperation point with this kind of tepid inaction.
Well, I know.
You look at the polling data and the opposition to this bill, this whole concept of socialized medicine is profound.
And it's a dynamic opposition.
People are actively angry about this, actively want to do something about it.
They're not just running around in a passive way saying, oh, yeah, I oppose that.
I mean, they're inspired to action by this.
They oppose it so much.
I just wish I knew.
I wish somebody could show me, maybe there is an example of where an idea like this was allowed to implement.
It was so bad that it fell apart on its own and that everybody saw how bad it was.
And then the leaders and the people responsible for it were held to account.
I just don't, I don't, I can't recall that ever happening.
No, it's going to be the Republicans who are held to account on this if they fail to act affirmatively.
And you know that.
I know that.
Most of the most conservatives, most voters know that.
The only people who don't seem to know it and the polls are staring them right in the face are our elected representatives.
Well, I know.
It's a sad thing.
The great point that you made is that the Democrats just don't accept defeat.
They just, even when they are defeated, they aren't defeated.
When they lose, it's not structured as a loss, even treated that way.
Admittedly, they've got the media on their side.
That intimidates our guys, but still.
Amberbackets Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Tell you what, Mike Graham, let's see.
Let's grab, start at Soundbite 5.
They're not going to like me for this.
Well, I'm going to call them the Let It Collapse Chorus.
And a crew has called them the Surrender Caucus.
And they didn't like that.
And so I'll call a Let It Collapse chorus here, because this is not just this caucus.
This is media people and any numbers.
So this is a montage of Wednesday, yesterday, last night, and this morning.
And this is mostly people from Fox News.
And look, they're not alone.
I mean, I guess the prevailing wind in Washington on our side is that this is no way this bill can ever work.
It's going to collapse.
It's going to be a disaster.
Well, so is Social Security.
So is Medicare.
So is food stamps.
So was the war on poverty.
So is the Great Society.
All of those don't work.
I mean, the black family has been ripped apart by LBJ's war on poverty and the great society.
I mean, literally it has.
And it's not me saying that.
It is African Americans for 25 years who've called here and made that point.
There isn't a one of these programs that works.
The stimulus didn't work.
But what happens is people, there is this blind faith in government.
Particularly low-information people believe that everybody's intentions are good.
Even if it doesn't work, well, they're trying.
At least they care.
You've heard that.
At least they're trying.
At least they care about people.
You don't.
At least they're trying to help.
And then when it doesn't work, what's the solution?
Another government program to fix what's wrong with the first one.
And they build on themselves and they get redundant.
And that's how you end up with 16 different food stamp programs or school lunch programs or what have you, whatever they are.
Because they keep failing and they keep adding on repairs.
The architects of failure are the ones that continue to build on failure after failure.
I have yet to see the people of this country arise other than at elections.
Now, during Hillary Care, the people did want any part of it back then.
They wanted no part of Hillary Clinton running the health care system.
But they don't mind Obama running it, apparently.
And so the let it collapse chorus is in full sing.
Will Obamacare collapse under the weight of a bad law?
If you put it in and it really does collapse under its own weight, it would make it hard to do any more expansion of the entitlement state.
And why do we keep saving him from the spending from Obamacare?
Let them own this, and they will, especially Obamacare.
Let them own it.
Let Obamacare go into effect.
Even the labor unions are up in arms against Obamacare.
Why would you want to step in the way?
It's the oldest adage in politics.
When the other guy's committing suicide, get out of the room, that they ought to let this sail through.
I don't think this law can possibly stand.
It's pretty hard to predict exactly the day upon which it ends, but it's cracking.
Okay.
I understand the theory.
It just hasn't proved out.
I understand the desire.
I certainly understand when your opponents committing suicide get out of the way.
In talk radio, the adage is when you got a caller making a fool of themselves, shut up and let it happen because it's entertaining.
The adage, don't get an argument with a fool.
The audience won't be able to tell the difference.
There's all kinds of these things.
And the adage, let them own it.
It has a number of different outgrowth theories.
Go ahead, let's let the Democrats win the election in 92.
Let them win it.
Let's people find out just how bad Democrats are for this country.
Right.
You can take any number of entitlement programs, and what do we hear?
The entire Washington establishment runs around complaining about how they're not working, and they're all in debt.
And boy, we've got to do something faster.
They're all going to go bankrupt, right?
Does that sound like they're working?
No.
Does anybody get blamed for it?
If the blame game worked, FDR would not be a hero.
He'd be a goat.
He gave us all this.
LBJ would not be lionized.
LBJ would be an absolute failure if the entitlement state not working and imploding and collapsing caused harm to its architects.
I wish it did.
Don't misunderstand.
It would be great if the American people could see it that way.
But before they're going to see it that way, they're going to have to understand the ideological differences in the two parties.
They're going to have to, in a majority sense, understand what liberalism is.
And if the Republican Party isn't going to teach that, and if it's being countered every day in classrooms all over the country, then that's something that's going to be delayed and delayed.
Now, here's Dan Henninger.
Dan Henniger wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday making this very point.
He was on a Willis report of Fox Business Network last night.
Jerry Willis, the host, she said, when we read your op-ed piece today, you say we should let Obamacare fall of its own weight, but the reality is it is the law of the land.
Tell us what you have to say about how this is going to be a real test of liberalism's most precious tenets.
Well, that being the entitlement state, starting in 1936 with FDR creating Social Security, 30 years later, Lyndon Johnson creates Medicare and Medicaid.
We have had endless commissions telling us that the cost of these entitlements is unsupportable, the entitlement bomb.
So what do we do?
We create a fourth major entitlement in Obamacare.
Right.
And who keeps getting elected by saying that the Republicans want to fix these things?
It's the Democrats.
Who keeps getting elected by claiming the Republicans want to take these entitlements away?
People love these entitlements.
They don't think there's anything wrong with them.
The recipients, we had a call on this program.
This, I think, is fairly illustrative.
It goes back some years ago now.
It was HR, you'll remember her, Carolyn from Grafton, Massachusetts, just on the other side of Moss Turnpike.
She's a grandmother and, of course, a mother.
And she wanted her children paying higher taxes.
She didn't care.
She wanted her children and grandchildren paying higher taxes so that her Social Security wouldn't be cut.
She wasn't worried about whether or not it was a failure.
She was worried about whether or not somebody was going to take it away from her.
The people don't run around thinking that this is particularly the beneficiaries.
Do you think the people getting Obama phones are going to rise up in anger over the fact they're getting Obama phones?
The only way would be if they don't work, but they do.
Do people on Social Security get their checks?
Yes.
Do people on Medicare get treatment?
Yes.
Are we going bankrupt?
Yeah.
Do they care?
No.
The recipients love this stuff.
And the Democrats have made sure that almost half the country gets this stuff.
99 weeks of unemployment compensation.
Do you care what the unemployment rate is?
No.
As long as you get your check.
I just don't see this accountability.
And folks, don't misunderstand me.
Would love for this to happen.
I would love for the people of this country to realize that this stuff doesn't work.
And when it doesn't work, hold the people responsible for it accountable.
I would love that.
I just haven't seen any evidence.
And if the Republican Party isn't going to run around, you've got to help that along.
You can't just sit around and wait for people to figure this out.
And that's what I hear the collapse chorus saying.
It's going to collapse of its own weight.
And people are going to realize it.
Not if you don't tell them.
Not if you don't push back and make the case.
You know, you Republicans, you're all worried about what the media says about who.
How do you think people believe that?
Because the Democrats with the media for years have been describing you guys the way they describe you.
That's why they believe it.
They hear it over and over again.
By the same token, you're not.
The odds are you're not going to have a majority of people all of a sudden wake up one day and think, my God, Democrats suck.
This healthcare thing doesn't work.
You're going to have to tell them it doesn't work.
You have to tell them why it doesn't work.
You have to tell them who's responsible for it.
You have to push back against it.
And that's what Cruz is doing.
Anyway, there's one more bite here from Hannigar.
I interrupted myself.
I think it's just one more.
Yep.
And Jerry Willis was interviewing.
I mean, you heard him say that we've had this endless commissions telling us the cost of these entitlements is unsupportable.
The entitlement bombs.
So what do we do?
We create a fourth one.
And then he continued.
And I think this one, because of its complexity and because all we've been reading about it, notwithstanding the president, has got some big problems.
And I'm arguing that the American people, by experiencing Obamacare, are going to decide once and for all whether to continue with the entitlement state on its current course.
And I think if Obamacare gets into as much trouble as I think it's going to get to, then we're going to be able to look at alternatives to the sort of system the liberals have been pushing.
That'd be great.
Don't misunderstand me.
That would be absolutely great if that happened.
But the recipients, the people who get the subsidies, they're not going to find anything wrong with it.
Number one, and that's going to be a lot of people by design.
Santa Claus is making sure most patients get their presence here in the form of cheap insurance or a cheap fine and medical treatment.
But there's another aspect of this that I would be remiss if I didn't mention.
And while we're sitting around waiting for this thing to collapse, real lives are being affected.
As we sit around and wait for and apparently allow the implementation, this disaster that's going to happen is going to be a disaster that affects people.
Doctors, nurses, hospitals, patients.
And we're going to hope that the pain and suffering they incur results in them getting mad at the Democrats.
And furthermore, we believe that it's going to be so bad that they're going to rise up against Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and the school lunch pro, whatever else comprises the entitlement state.
And they're going to say, enough.
If the Republicans continue to nominate candidates who don't stand for the opposite of this, and if the Republicans don't push back and help people understand why their lives are collapsing, then that isn't going to happen.
At some point, they're going to have to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty and get in a mix here.
But they're afraid of me.
So it is said by others.
I don't believe that, but that's what's popular, isn't it?
And what did I tell you?
It just happened.
A news flash from thehill.com breaking Senate passes amendment to remove House provision defunding Obamacare from the continuing resolution 54 to 44.
It took them all the five minutes to do it.
This is what I mean, folks, when I say that you listen here and you are on the cutting edge.
If the Republicans, if the Let It Collapse chorus is really counting on Obamacare collapsing, why delay the individual mandate?
Why try to do away with the medical device tax?
Why try to delay to this?
There's so many inconsistencies.
If they really think it's going to collapse, don't delay anything.
Let it implement full boat.
Don't delay the individual mandate.
Don't delay the medical device tax.
Leave all this onerous stuff in it.
If collapse is the strategy.
Sorry, I'm a sigh of frustration and a little fatigue.
I don't mind admitting.
We got a new kitten.
We waited an appropriate amount of time.
We went out, got a new kitten, a new Abyssinian, a tawny.
And this little cat, I'm going to have to send some pictures up to Coco over the weekend.
This little cat, Punkin, Punkin was an adult cat as a kitten.
It was the most amazing.
This little kit is a kid.
This little kitten is like every kitten you've ever seen.
It just gets into.
And no, I don't think I've got a kitten unlike anybody else's.
Everybody's got these same stories.
But I mean, this little kitten tries to find every wrong place to go, every dangerous place to hide.
But it's the most affectionate little thing.
I've got some of the most amazing pictures of this thing sitting on the couch with us watching TV.
Now, it's not actually what it's doing, but it looks like it.
Named her Allie.
But I'm telling you, it's the most affectionate little thing.
Unlike most cats, she's not yet reached the aloof status.
That'll happen as she gets older, becomes a woman cat.
But right now, it's running me ragged.
And a cat is mine.
You know, I'm the only one that feeds the cat so that it bothers me, but she loves Catherine at the same time.
You know, we've introduced one dog to her.
Oh, two dogs.
The lead dog, Abby, is not having it.
Abby didn't care when other dogs should have this cat.
That's another story.
Wellesley doesn't care.
She's totally clueless anyway.
She doesn't care about the cat being in the room.
So anyway, they're late nights.
And a cat is all over me in bed.
It's just the most fun thing.
But so my sigh is a little frustration and a little fatigue.
And I'm just, I'm just, folks, two things again.
If we want this to collapse, if our strategy now is let it implement and collapse, then why are we trying to delay any of it?
Why are we trying to delay the personal mandate?
Why are we trying to delay the medical device tax?
Individual mandate.
Let it all implement.
We've got to be consistent here.
If we're going to win by virtue of this thing being bad, then it better be bad.
So we leave all the bad stuff in it.
And also from thehill.com, breaking news, Senate passes amendment to remove House provision defunding Obamacare 54 to 44.
Exactly as was predicted on this program mere moments ago.
And now another obscene profit timeout.
Don't go away.
Well, there's not enough time here to be fair with another caller, and there's nobody online that I want to be unfair with.
So we'll have to delay returning to the phones until the next hour, which is coming right around the bend.
Just a brief obscene profit timeout here at the top, and we'll be right back.
Don't go away, folks.
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