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Oct. 10, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:50
October 10, 2013, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 247 Podcast.
And once again we are back, ladies and gentlemen, and you are as happy, and we're happy, and everybody's ecstatic.
Well, I don't know how happy you are about things in general, but I know that you're happy that we're back.
Happy that we're all here.
And that's reason to be happy.
Great to have you here.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network and the Limbaugh Institute.
Always.
Dependably always and forever, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have your telephone number 800 282882, the email address Lrushpo at EIBNet.com.
So the Republicans had a uh uh well, I don't know what you call a press conference.
I guess it was because they took questions, a little press conference out there, and uh Republican leaders, John Boehner and some of the caucus uh big wings went out there and they announced uh the latest strategery.
Now, you know, folks, I I um for those of you who have listened to this program for any length of time at all, you know that there is an ongoing effort here to be optimistic and happy, content, what have you.
There's enough negativism and pessimism out there to swamp everybody.
And as there's more than usual lately.
And if you're like me, you have to actively fight it in order to avoid being swept up by it.
You know, as a powerful influential member of the media, just to give you an example, I can't tell you the number of people who send me emails telling me what they think about things, because they, as does everybody else, want to impress me.
I mean, it's just a fact of life.
And I can't tell you how negative it all is.
Uh people go out and they find stories in the media and put the most negative spin to it.
They're just my my point is that there is a a profound pessimism out there.
Always, it seems to be the natural human predisposition.
Optimism takes effort.
That's why people have gotten rich writing books about how to do it.
My old adage, you go to the library, you won't find a book on how to fail.
Everybody knows that.
But books on how to succeed earn millions of dollars for their authors.
Norman Vincent Peel, a power of positive thinking, great example.
At any rate, uh I'm swamped by it, and I'm sure you are.
And if you watch Beltway News, sorry, it's not news.
See, I'm even contradicting what.
If you watch, what is the right name?
It's it it what it's the daily narrative, but it isn't news anymore.
If if you watch, if you just if you've watched the coverage, okay.
If you watch cable news coverage of Washington, you can't help but be swept up by pessimism.
And so that's something that I actively try to counter each and every day, but at the same time, you can't be phony positive because people see right through that.
So it is a delicate balance.
Now I'm I'm leading up to something with all this.
I'm not just, as my dad used to say, talking to hear my head rattle.
Because I have been noticing something in the conservative commentariat, in the DC coverage.
And it has me quite frosted, but then again, I can't come here and fully express the outrage I feel because that would just lead to more pessimism, and that's not good.
So it is a delicate balance.
Now it all starts with that little Republican presser today.
Boehner went out there.
Now I am told that Boehner said, In fact, let me let me actually scroll to it.
Because I didn't hear this.
Did you watch the whole thing?
I'm told that Boehner said, among other things, he said, if ands or butts were candy and nuts, then every day would be Christmas.
But of course, ands and butts aren't candy and nuts, and every day isn't Christmas, and somehow that relates to negotiations with Obama.
Now, the Republicans announced a strategy, and it is not what I thought they were going to do.
This is Thursday, so I guess Monday or Tuesday.
Word leaked that what Boehner was going to do was propose a short-term expansion of the debt limit, not tied to any defund Obamacare effort, which I like.
I don't like linking these two because there's lots of ground being gained on the defund Obamacare, and that's ultimately where I'm leaving here.
So if you just stick with me on this, there's lots of ground being gained, but I fear that we are getting ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here.
And that's what I'm trying to.
I don't, I don't I really don't want to be pessimistic in this, but the same thing I've got to be honest here, which that's the coin of the realm on this program is honestly mine with you.
Then when I first heard, it was either Monday or Tuesday, that there was going to be a separate proposal sent up to Obama and over to the Senate to expand the debt limit for a month or two.
Immediately, almost uh within hours, another story said that wasn't gonna happen, that Boehner had decided against doing that, pulled it back, and they were going to unify Obamacare defund effort, whatever they're the with the defunded delay with the uh whatever they were going to do with the debt limit increase, and they were then gonna link them again.
Ah, geez, they had it right the first time, now they're pulling it back.
And that's where it left.
I thought that's where it didn't.
Then today they go out there and they do this presser, and they're back to the original proposal I first heard about on Monday.
House Republican leaders are pushing a six-week increase in the debt limit without any conservative strings attached.
This is to supposedly calm the jittery financial markets, this according to senior Republican advisors.
Plan was presented to the House Republican caucus this morning after the Treasury Secretary Jack Lou warned the Senate panel that he would be unable to guarantee payments to any group, Social Security recipients, bondholders, which is a crock unless Congress raises the federal debt ceiling.
So the Democrats are throwing every scare tactic card out there, and the Republicans are acting as predictable.
And then, not that this matters to anything, or maybe it does, I don't know.
Then a parade of Republicans strode to the microphone and expressed their joy at having been invited to the White House today to meet with the president, talked about ands and butts and candy and nuts.
And they were all uh they were happy.
They were uh that this is this is the kind of thing that's needed.
They said they get the negotiations off the dime.
It's good.
Uh felt uh proud.
Uh I don't know if they said honored, but but uh they were they were feeling good that uh Obama has invited them to the White House to discuss this.
I guess in their perspective, it represents a bit of an Obama, not a cave, but uh maybe they're looking at it as a as a moral victory.
I don't know.
Now this takes me to what I have been hearing in the conservative commentariat and the DC coverage.
This is what frosts me.
This is where I've got to be careful in sounding too mad, because at times it's uh it's unproductive.
And I've heard it a lot of times now, uh, predominantly on Fox.
And it coalesced for me last night what Lou Dobbs said.
The conservative commentariat is now claiming that the Mike Lee and Ted Cruz defund strategy was delusional.
And it was pointless.
And that it was dangerous, risky, and unnecessary.
It was rank amateurish.
It was not mature.
It was dangerous.
All of these things.
And then they followed that by claiming that the strategy they like, which is the piecemeal, send a bill up to fund the NIH, send a bill up to fund the veterans, send a bill up to fund uh highways, whatever.
That piecemeal strategy, these small spending bills that illustrate the mean spiritedness of Obama.
That's brilliant.
That is really, that was so crafty, and that represents turning the tables on Obama, and they're saying that that is what has led to Obama being a 37% approval.
And what makes me frustrated about this is that this piecemeal, but none of this would be happening if it hadn't been for the defund and delay strategy of Cruz and Lee and the people who joined them.
So the point is that the establishment is still hellbent on demolishing and discrediting the Tea Party and the Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, whoever else was involved, coalition.
Because what they did, this ongoing effort to defund or or to delay, is that has that's what exposed Obama.
That's what's created this groundswell of public opinion opposed to Obama.
That's why Obama's at 37%.
But the conservative commentary, the establishment Republicans, oh no, no, that was childish.
That was immature.
That was risky.
That was just, that was just risky.
But I'll tell you what, they come around and say this this piecemeal business, fund this and fund that, that's brilliant.
That's brilliant.
And they claim that just was sheer luck.
That that just fell into everybody's lap.
And it we talk about oftentimes credit, you know, the Reagan quote, he didn't care who got credit as long as the job got done.
But in this case, this there wouldn't have been time.
There wouldn't have even been the thought process to piecemeal send little small funding bills up to Obama if the defund and delay Obama strategy had not been implemented and to us to a certain degree at least successfully implemented.
Without that, can we be honest here?
If Ted Cruz and Mike Lee hadn't done that, you know where we'd be right now?
The Republicans would have long ago caved.
We would have Obama fully implemented, we'd have the debt limit raised, we'd be it would have been a grand slam slam dunk win for Obama and the Democrats.
Obamacare would have been not opposed if it weren't for Lee and Cruz.
There wouldn't be any of this that's going on now if it weren't for that.
And the conservative commentariat is saying, oh, that's irrelevant.
In fact, that was rank amateur.
I mean, that was really, that was really that was, you know, that was dangerous.
I mean, that was that was delusional, it was pointless.
I don't know if you've picked up the same thing as you've listened to the commentary.
Maybe I'm a bit too sensitive to this.
Um, but uh it it this.
And it to me, again, it's not about credit, it's about the end result.
It's about substance here.
And so now there are rumors.
I'm not even comfortable passing the rumor align now.
There are rumors that the Republicans are getting ready to cave on everything after they've presented her piecemeal thing here on the debt limit, that they're ready to just walk away from everything now.
And I don't, I don't, I don't know why.
I don't know what the thinking is.
But the bottom line is that whatever's happening now that's good is has nothing to do with Cruz.
It has nothing to do with Mike Lee.
It has nothing to do with the delay or defund Obama effort.
All that all the all the great things happening now, the piecemeal, the Obama's plunging approval rating, the uh the Democrats saying outrageous things, having to apologize, no.
All of that happened because of the brilliant thinking of the establishment types.
And it's just not the case.
It just isn't true.
So I I can't pretend to tell you where all this is uh going and where it's headed.
But the bottom line is there you have something here that's good that's happened, and the whole party still can't get behind it.
There's still division, it's still playing games over who gets credit for doing what, and we can't let the Tea Party guys have any credit, and we certainly can't freshmen have any credit.
Amateurs who almost brought down the government, saved by the mature establishment types who know what they are doing.
Take a brief time out, sit tight and continue with all this.
After this, don't go away.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you here with us, folks.
Yeah, I uh I I you know but the the the Bahner quote, it turns out to be uh accurate.
He was answering a question uh if uh ands or butts were candy and nuts every day'd be Christmas.
The point is every day Washington is Christmas.
And and that's that's the way Washington is viewed by by way too many people.
Here's the thing that that it really irritates me, folks.
If it hadn't been for Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, and I don't mean to be leaving anybody else out who joined them, if it hadn't been for their effort to even bring up the concept of defunding Obamacare, not delaying it.
They were specific on defunding it.
There was another group that was even arguing with them, and that was that that was the delay Obamacare group.
I mean, we we weren't even unified on the approach, but nevertheless, that's a minor point.
If it hadn't been for Cruz and Lee, we wouldn't be having this conversation about Obamacare or entitlement spending or the debt or the debt limit.
We wouldn't see Obama's approval ratings plunging.
We wouldn't be as is as focused on the failure of the Obamacare website as we are.
Guarantee you, it's all combined here.
If if Lee and Cruz had not done this, Obamacare would be fully funded, the debt limit would have been increased, and whatever was happening at the exchanges would be a well-kept secret.
But because Lee and Cruz insisted on this, the Democrats were exposed, Harry Reed, why should I care about kids with cancer?
Obama opening the national mall for illegal aliens and keeping it closed to uh to World War II vets.
People, whether the conversation is good for the country or not, of course it is.
Here's the thing, folks.
And this is something else I want to reiterate.
What the people inside the Beltway do not understand is that outside the Beltway, this is not just the Republicans versus Obama.
That's not how the people view it.
This is the country opposed to Washington.
This is the country.
Look at the polling data on Obamacare.
Massive numbers of people do not want it.
Washington is enforcing it.
Washington is forcing it on people.
We have news about the IRS now.
Wasn't just two rogue employees in Cincinnati.
IRS officials were called into the White House to share information with high officials there.
And out beyond the Beltway.
A near majority of people have had it.
They're fed up.
I said yesterday, I don't think Washington, I don't think Obama, I don't think even the Republicans understand how livid people were when they found out that the National Mall was closed to United States citizens in World War II vets and opened up to illegal aliens in the hundreds of thousands to demand amnesty.
And that's just a microcosm.
There is a lot of anger in the country over what is happening in Washington.
And the Republicans are not the beneficiaries of it as they think, because it's not seen as the Republicans trying to save the country.
They're not seen that way, sadly.
And so this is this is Washington versus the country.
That's how people outside the Beltway see this.
Hi, welcome back.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone.
Give you another example.
So last night I'm watching.
I was watching Fox.
And the subject of Obama's approval rating came up.
The fact that it had plunged to 37%.
It's okay.
And I think it just as I it's not being mentioned anywhere, and it means something.
He's at 37%.
It means something.
There's a reason for it.
And it's an AP poll.
The same poll that Wolf Blitzer couldn't get enough of when Bush was at 36% in 2006.
So I'm watching them discuss it.
Not going to mention any names.
It's not the point.
Not picking fights with anybody.
I'm just telling you.
So whoever was talking about this, the guest, member of the commentariat.
Well, it's probably not that low, really.
It's probably an outlier poll.
But it is low.
I mean, it is down a little bit.
Then this person said, but this is not to say that the Republicans are not botching what they're doing.
And I thought I sat up and I said, What?
Catherine was sitting next to me.
I actually I shouted the F-word at the TV.
I said, shut up.
And I don't do that anymore, folks.
I did that 25 years ago.
I'm table news doesn't.
I said, you do in the story, or you're doing a mention of Obama's approval, plunging at 37, and the point is, well, probably not that low, it's not a little bit, and then you got to rip the Republicans.
And not the you got to rip Cruz, you got to rip Lee.
And you got to throw in, it's not the Republicans are doing anything right here.
It's not the just head to get the establishment version of the Tea Party is dangerously off the rails here.
And it just, I don't know, it just it just made me mad.
I don't know about what else I'm trying to say.
Just simple terms, it just made me mad.
And I said, these they don't understand.
Even the people inside the beltway ostensibly, and I said, don't even understand what's going on in the country.
There are clear majorities of people don't want anything to do with Obamacare.
They don't like what's happening in healthcare.gov.
They don't like what they're learning.
They don't like what they're seeing about it.
They don't like what the experience.
It doesn't work.
It's an invasion of privacy.
It's it's it's hardly anybody in great numbers is signing up for it.
It's an absolute debacle.
And the people in the country are hungering for somebody to represent them and do something about it.
Rather than say, well, it's the law of the land and that's and this is real life that we're talking about here with real hard results on people.
What this law and if if this thing gets fully implemented out there, and people then start to be destroyed by this, they're not going to just blame Obama.
At some point, all of Washington is going to be lumped into the people responsible for this.
Because it has been obvious for the last month that there is a clear effort being undertaken to do something about this.
And it's also obvious that there is not a whole lot of help coming for the people who are trying to do something about this.
And yet, massive majorities of people want something done about Obamacare.
It's it's going to destroy things.
It's going to destroy people's futures.
It's going to destroy and not everybody.
Of course, nothing ever destroys everybody.
There'll be people who benefit from it, and that's going to make people dissatisfied as well.
Mike Lee sent out a it's an email letter.
I don't know if it's a fundraising letter or not.
Somebody sent it along to me.
I didn't get it myself.
It's one of these dear fellow American emails.
It's got some interesting points in it.
Dear fellow American, the Obama administration's behavior during the government shutdown has been the best argument against Obamacare anyone's ever made.
The American people do not want Obamacare, and they are demanding that Washington act to protect them from it.
The president's response has been to ignore them, to allow the government to shut down and then use his power to inflict as much pain as possible on people by closing national parks and monuments, by stopping payments to veterans and cutting off cancer research.
And all of that's true.
The sequester did not create the result the Democrats in Obama wanted.
There wasn't enough pain.
They want people suffering when the precious government is somehow shut down or when it's deprived of money.
And they were hellbent this time.
Okay, then people are gonna suffer.
We're gonna make sure this is the active strategy of the President of the United States.
The active strategy is to make sure that there is pain, personal pain, such as 26 military families not being funded, getting benefits, such as the debacle involving illegal aliens and amnesty on the National Mall, which is closed, such as national parks being shut down, such as cancer-stricken children not having access to the National Institutes of Health.
These were things that need not happen.
These were items chosen to be defunded after the shutdown by the President of the United States and his party.
Because together their purpose is to try to create a mindset in as many people as possible that life is not worth living if there is no government in it.
If the government is shut down, If the government has to do with a penny less next year than it got this year, then they want people to actually feel pain.
Because their objective is this government getting as big as possible, taking as much capital from the private sector as possible and transferring it to government for power and control.
They want people as dependent on government as they can make them, and that includes inflicting pain on them during a supposed shutdown.
And Lee, in his letter to Americans, is pointing out that very behavior ought to be sending up red flags to everybody if we have a president and a party willing to inflict this kind of pain because they petulantly don't get their way in a shutdown.
With this kind of power, we're going to give them total control of the health care system.
The president's response has been to ignore people who oppose Obamacare.
His response has been to allow the government to shut down and then use his power to inflict as much pain as possible on the American people by closing national parks and monuments, stopping payments to veterans and cutting off cancer research.
And then Lee writes, the president's actions show exactly why we should not expand the government's power over our health care choices.
What power the government has it will use and misuse to advance its own interests, even if that means punishing the American people along the way?
And there can be no doubt that the regime has attempted to punish people it considers its political enemies.
It has sought to inflict pain in the shutdown so as to create the impression that you and anyone else cannot possibly get by without government.
Without more government, without bigger government, without more powerful government, your life would be absolutely disastrous.
That's the impression they want to convey.
And of course, their rabid supporters are right in there furthering that notion.
They're rabid supporters who are going to be among those really harmed by all this.
I'm talking about their voters.
They're not.
You know, the people that go to these websites and post comments at the blogs, just your average ordinary derelict Democrat voter.
They're all in for this.
They're all in for you suffering.
They're all in for you inflicted, having pain inflicted on you.
Lee continues, the message behind the administration's shutdown bullying is the same message sent by the IRS abuses of power against the president's political opponents.
This is the abusive, unaccountable bureaucracy, and under Obamacare will soon be running America's health care system.
President Obama is not just using the vast powers of his office as leverage against Republicans.
He is abusing his powers as leverage against the American people.
And he is.
There isn't any question.
There's a reason his approval numbers are at 37%.
There is a reason his approval numbers are falling.
It's a reality that is not reported upon.
It's a reality not commented upon.
Practically anywhere inside the beltway.
Now we have news.
Guess what?
The claims for unemployment insurance.
Last week or this week.
I forget which story somewhere in the stack.
So high.
It just shocked everybody.
And then the.
I think it's a California story.
Well, you know, it's because of the shutdown and because of the computer glitches in the California employment reporting system.
And that's why the unreal and very unusual high number of people applying for unemployment.
No, it can't be that we're losing jobs left over.
How in the world can private sector unemployment go up or not based on a government shutdown.
What are the things that are related?
They aren't.
Just because you've got a government shutdown doesn't automatically mean unemployment's going to skyrocket, not in the private sector, but yet that's the impression that is being conveyed in the story on joblessness that is out there.
Let me take a break.
I just saw the clock.
Must take a timeout.
Be right back with more.
Don't go away.
I'll tell you this.
Mike Lee is right.
Folks, this shutdown should show us that the federal government already has too much damn power, and it's it's worse than that.
They are not afraid to use it against the people for partisan purposes to advance the agenda of a particular party.
You know, it's one thing to go out and inflict damage on your political opponents within the realm of your business and politics.
But to go out and inflict pain purposely on the American people.
Regardless of their party affiliation, there's not everybody wanting to go to the Grand Canyon's not a Republican, for example.
Everybody wanting to go is not a Democrat.
That doesn't matter to the regime.
They are just trying to demonstrate to everybody if you send down your government, then we're going to make your life miserable.
We're going to show you how much life is not worth living if you don't have your government here, blah, blah, blah.
But they're in the process of doing this.
They are illustrating the corruptive nature of power.
Just blatant flat-out corruption, and it's right out in the open.
And in the process, we're also learning that these people don't care.
They have so much power, they aren't afraid of the reaction on the part of the people when that power is used to make life either more inconvenient or more painful or more arduous.
So people who want you to believe that government's the greatest thing on earth, people that want you to believe that government is good and decent and just the very people who want you to believe that government is the end all to every problem, are the very people using it to make your life harder.
And in the process demonstrating publicly that they're totally willing to corrupt, be corrupted and corrupt this power to get their way and to keep it.
This is exactly why we have a constitution to provide an obstacle, many obstacles to this kind of thing happening.
This is exactly what the founding fathers of this country did not envision and strove to prevent from happening.
And yet it is.
And it is happening because of lawlessness, because of extra constitutionality on behalf of people, positions of great power in the government.
And it's just out there for everybody to see.
It's just a question of realizing and admitting that that's what's happening.
The problem is the Democrats love this.
The Democrats love the infliction of pain.
Just like they love tax increases on the rich because they think that's going to make them suffer.
They love it.
And that's the nature, the human nature Democrats and the left have cultivated among way too many people in this country.
To the phones we go.
Donna, somewhere in Texas, your first today.
Great to have you on the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
And first, let me just say you are the champion of conservatives.
Well, no, no.
There's a lot of great people out there.
But I appreciate that.
I really do.
Well, they don't have millions and millions of listeners like you do.
So let me just say very quickly, I am what's called a major donor in the Republican Party.
And, you know, we gave a lot of money and mostly were small business workers.
which small business makes up 70% of all the jobs across the USA.
And we, after 2012 disaster, we cut the GOP off.
Many of us cut the GOP off, cut off RNC, cut off Carl Rove, no more super PACs.
And we have been saving our money.
Uh, I had a congressman call me a couple of weeks ago asking me for money.
I said, Have I ever told you no?
He said, No, you haven't.
I said, Well, today it's not no, it's hell no.
You know, Donna, I don't doubt that this is happening, but I'm I'm gonna tell you what the news is on this.
I have no doubt that what you describe as happening a lot, but the news is that the Republican donor class, you you just said you're a dumb major donor.
The Republican donor class is said to also hate the Tea Party and is demanding that the Republican leadership do something about it, or they're gonna withhold their money.
That's the news that's being reported.
Not your version of what's happening, by the way.
Be back after this.
There was a story in last Friday's Washington Post's Some longtime Republican donors unnerved by the party shutdown strategy.
Veteran Republican fundraisers alarmed by the defiant stance of Tea Party conservatives.
Yes.
And yet we just heard from a major donor who's not giving anymore.
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