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Oct. 11, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:49
October 11, 2013, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
No, I am not going to divulge a rumor.
I'm not.
You know I don't do that, especially this one.
I just, if it comes true, I'll tell people I knew about it, and they'll be happy I didn't tell them.
But no way.
I mean, he's a great guy, but I just can't, I can't take that out there Friday.
No way.
Would you?
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
No, I'm not trying to tease anybody.
I'm in the middle.
I have people urging me to tell you there's a rumor flowing around out there about the Republicans in Obama, and I'm not going there.
I know what the rumor is.
We'll know in due course.
And if I put that rumor out, oh, geez.
Now, people are telling me I could head it off at the pass if I put it out there.
That's no way.
I know.
Look at rumors, unless they involve the Clintons and Vince Foster.
We don't do them here.
Okay.
Okay.
Greetings, folks.
I'm not trying to tease you.
I'm just, it happened to be that I was being urged to divulge this right as the program began.
And the microphone went on, and I was in the middle of denying that I was going to do it, refusing to do it.
Anyway, it's Open Line Friday.
It's great to have you here.
How are you?
Telephone number, 800-282-2882.
The email address, they'll rushboard EIBnet.com.
And the only thing different about Friday from Monday through Thursday is that we don't screen the calls.
The program is tightly.
Monday through Thursday, you have to be focused on something I care about.
Or at least you have to convince Snerdley you are.
But on Friday, we kind of broom that out of the way and open it up to whatever you want to talk about.
And it's a, I think, a golden opportunity for callers to ask preguntas and make points that they maybe haven't heard made here or think should be made or just satisfy curiosity about anything.
So again, telephone number 800-282-2882.
Okay, let's just get into this NBC Wall Street Journal poll that just totally turned Washington upside down yesterday.
I mean, it just dispirited every Republican who heard about it, and it ignited and made joyously happy every Democrat and every media person who heard about it.
It is the NBC poll, and it panicked the Republicans.
And it's this poll that shows the Republicans literally getting killed over the government shutdown.
It's not even close to other polling data.
Other polls on the shutdown.
Yeah, the Republicans are being blamed more than Democrats, but not by a big spread.
But in this poll, the NBC Wall Street Journal poll, the Republicans are literally getting murdered.
It's like 90% blame them.
I mean, it's not, but it may as well be.
And not only do 90% blame them, 90% hate them.
And 90% wish they would die.
And 90% wish they would leave the country.
And 90% wish they would shut up.
And 90% wish that they didn't exist.
And 90% wish they would switch.
I mean, it's that bad.
That's how it was interpreted.
Now, keep in mind, just two days ago, there was an AP poll that showed Obama at 37%.
And we're still hearing crickets over that poll.
However, however, the AP has some unflattering news about Obama today and the Democrats.
And I don't know that it was I who shamed them into doing this because they, you know, nobody touted their poll, but it's two different universes today.
The NBC Wall Street Journal poll, then some of this AP news doesn't jibe with the NBC Wall Street Journal poll.
People have looked at the internals of the NBC Wall Street Journal poll and it's 800 people.
The spread of Democrat to Republican is 43, 32.
So there are 43% in the poll are Democrats, 32% are Republicans.
That's an 11-point difference there.
That's not representative of all, at all, of the makeup.
But in addition to that, there's a question in this poll that's worded in a weird way, but it revealed that the sample in this poll out of 800 people of government employees is double its normal size.
So in addition to the poll showing a Democrat-Republican advantage, 43 to 32, the percentage of government workers in the poll is twice, or it's double what the sample normally includes.
They basically polled Washington is what they did here.
But see, here's the thing.
Once it hits, it doesn't matter.
The reality in Washington, everybody believes it.
The Republicans believe it, and they're acting on it.
And the Democrats believe it, and the media believe they're acting on it.
And so here, let me give you an idea.
Here's a media montage we put together of the drive-bys endlessly hyping this poll, blaming the Republicans for the shutdown and blaming them for being alive and blaming them for global warming and blaming them for Kim Jong-un and blaming them for practically everything.
I mean, it's just, they are beside themselves.
They are so giddy.
Now, remember, when the AP poll earlier this week showed Obama at 37% zip, zero, NATA.
But this poll, this is exactly what they wanted at exactly the time they wanted it.
Who do the American people blame for the shutdown of their government tonight?
Our new NBC News poll is out, and the answer is clear.
Our pollsters called it jaw-dropping.
The Republican Party has been badly damaged.
There's no sugarcoating this.
An unmitigated political disaster for the GOP.
The Republicans are getting flawed here.
They're getting really beat up bad.
Epic, awful, record-setting.
New polls.
Wooful polls.
The American people blame the GOP principally.
The Republican Party finds itself in trouble.
Big trouble.
New NBC Wall Street Journal poll showing the damage.
Republicans have taken a serious hit.
Devastating poll numbers for the Republicans.
The numbers don't look good for the Republicans.
Really, just dreadful poll results.
This has been a complete unmitigated disaster for them.
I'll tell you what, if I were looking at these polls, I'd be panicked.
Yeah.
So they're just beside themselves.
They're just ecstatic.
This is exactly what they wanted with a government shutdown.
This is exactly what they hoped for.
This is evidence that they still have the ability to move and shape public opinion.
I mean, they're ecstatic.
This is Christmas morning for them, this poll.
I can't describe it.
And on the Republican side, inside Washington, it is as dispiriting as you could imagine that it would be because everybody in Washington believes it.
In terms of the establishment, the Republican establishment believes it because they love it.
They can blame Cruz.
They can blame Mike Lee.
They can blame the Tea Party.
They can blame me.
They can blame Talk Radio.
They love it.
The Democrats love it because you can figure.
It makes total sense.
Now, folks, I think the poll is bogus.
I think it's not an actively representative, truthfully representative sample.
But then again, that ain't going to fly.
That ain't going to matter because it's out there and everybody believes it.
And as far as the low information voters are concerned, they believe it.
So this is just how the town works.
This is an example of how the deck is stacked.
Two days ago, Obama at 37%, and still not one mention of it in the drive-by media on TV, except to call it an outlier.
Except to say that it really isn't true.
It's just a single poll.
So's this.
The NBC Wall Street Journal poll is the only poll that has it this bad for the Republicans, but it's gospel, it's Bible.
The AP poll, yep, it's the only one that shows Obama below 40, but that's an outlier.
See, just a total outlier.
So let's give you, let's keep going with the sound bites here.
And because most of the news today, most of the top of the stack, is polls.
And another point that I have made over and over again is that polling has simply become a cheap way to make the news you want to report.
That's all it is.
Polling is no longer a reflection of public opinion.
Polling is the creation of public opinion.
Polling is an effort to manipulate and move public opinion.
It is no longer a reflection.
And worse than that, the very news organizations that do the polling then report on it as though it's news.
And all it is, is a public opinion sample.
Now, to give you an example, 20% of the sample in the NBC Wall Street Journal poll are government workers.
Do you know the percentage of the general population that works for government?
You know what that number is?
8%.
So the percentage of people in our population that work for government, 8%, 20% of this sample is government workers.
This same poll, which you're not hearing reported, found that 51% believe that Obama is putting advancing his agenda over what's good for the country.
There is blame for every, yet the real takeaway from this poll is, if it's true, is that all of Washington is hated right now.
All of Washington is disrespected or unrespected.
All of Washington is pretty much held in contempt and disgust.
Nobody's reporting this 51% detail that 51% in this survey say Obama's putting his advancing his political agenda over what's good for the country.
That's a big number.
That's over half the country think Obama is not even being genuine in any of this.
Now, let's get it.
Here's how it manifests itself, though.
We move on to CBS this morning.
Co-host Charlie Rose spoke with Bob Schieffer.
It's Friday, so the Schieff comes in to promote Slay the Nation.
It's a standard, ordinary, formulaic appearance.
The only reason Schieffer is there is to talk and to promote the Sunday show.
It's not because there's any particular news that he's an expert in.
It's just that it's Fridays.
It's time to promote.
Fox does it with Chris Wallace.
And the only network that does it, I don't see Gregory out there much promoting.
Do you?
I really don't.
No big deal anyway.
So Charlie Rose says to Schieffer, is there a sense in Washington today, Bob?
Is there a sense in Washington that we now realize that we're going to get this done?
It's just a question of how and when, meaning we're going to get the government back up and running, and we're going to get rid of Ted Cruz.
Republicans have now come to the conclusion that they've had enough.
They're being pounded to death.
This latest poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News shows that Americans overwhelmingly blame the Republicans for this happening.
The night before last, Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor out in Virginia, was at a function and Ted Cruz, who's one of the leaders of this shutdown the government movement, he showed up at the same function.
Cuccinelli went to quite extremes to make sure he didn't get his picture taken with Ted Cruz.
This guy has become toxic to other Republicans.
And then, after he discusses that, about how the Republicans are being polled, pounded in the poll, Schieffer continues, and you'll hear Charlie Rose and Gail King in here as well.
You know, Charlie, the pendulum in Washington never stops in the middle.
It goes to the right or it goes to the left.
And once it gets too far to the right, then it starts to push back.
And I think Republicans realize they've taken this a little beyond where it ought to be.
And they are the ones that are getting hammered for it.
Taking it a little beyond.
See, the socialist takeover of health care, that's not taking anything beyond where it should be.
And the abrogation of law, the breaking of constitutional law by the regime, that's not taking things beyond where they ought to be.
But the Republicans attempting to represent a majority of the thinking of the American people, that is offensive.
The Tea Party Republicans attempting to do what they were elected to do, attempting to represent what, in the case of Obamacare, is a majority opinion.
That's taking things too far.
And thereby, evidence is produced that this is a government which holds the people in contempt.
The only thing that matters is what the Democrats want to do with government.
That's all that matters.
That's what must be supported.
And anything that gets in the way of it is considered to be a little bit beyond where we ought to be or extreme or what have you.
Now, let's get to this AP polling stack.
No, let's not.
Let me take a break here.
This would be a good time to do this so that I don't have a super short segment when we come back.
Sit tight, folks.
There's much more straight ahead, plus your phone calls, because remember, it's Open Line Friday.
Okay, let's get into this AP stack now, the AP polling stack.
Just amazing.
With everything going on, the vast majority of the news out there today is oh, and the continuing failure of the rollout of Obamacare.
How many people do you think have signed up?
51,000.
51,000.
You realize how many millions of people we're going to have to find and fine?
51,000, folks.
That's not even a thimble full compared to the U.S. population.
It's an outright disaster.
And by the way, given that, there is a, given the NBC Wall Street Journal poll today, out there in establishment Republican enclaves, the theory or the strategy of just, let's not do anything.
This is going to implode.
It can't possibly work.
Let's just sit back and let this thing fall on its own weight and let's stay out of the way so that we don't get blamed for any of this.
Otherwise, we're going to lose in 2014 because of Cruz and because of Lee.
We got to stop this.
It's a disaster.
It can't possibly work.
Let the people get mad at the Democrats for this.
And that's the strategy that has once again, I guess you'd say, emerged in the light of the NBC Wall Street Journal poll, which, you know, it's tempting to call it bogus.
The sample is skewed in a number of ways.
And we know who did the poll, and we know where they live.
We know what their desires are.
But then again, I don't think there's going to be a whole lot of success in running around trying to convince low-information voters that the poll is bogus.
They're just going to believe it like they believe everything else that they're told.
So the AP polling stack: Americans are finding, here's the headline: Americans find little to like in Washington.
Americans are finding little that they like about Obama or either political party, according to a new poll that suggests the possibility of a throw-the-bums out mentality in next year's midterms.
The AP poll finds few people, very few people approve of the way the president is handling most major issues.
And most people say he's not decisive, he's not strong, not honest, not reasonable, not inspiring.
That's in an AP poll today, which you are not hearing about.
And welcome back, Rush Limbaugh here on Open Line Friday.
Great to have you, folks.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
The email address ilrushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
So Americans are finding little that they like about President Obama or either political party, according to a new poll that suggests the possibility of a throw-the-bums-out mentality in next year's midterm elections.
There's no way that any poll says that.
This is just editorializing, opinionating, and extrapolating.
They didn't ask you a question.
Well, you feel like throwing the bums out.
The fact of the matter is, you know, I don't care how you divvy it up, and I don't care how you slice it up.
The fact of the matter is that the American people are fed up with Washington.
They're just fed up.
They're fed up with Obama.
They're fed up with the Democrats.
They're fed up with Republicans.
They're fed up with everything.
Nothing works.
The difference is the Democrats get away with good intentions.
Let's face it, folks.
The Republican brand, and I'm not even big on that kind of lingo, but since it works in helping to communicate things, it's worth talking about it in that sense.
The Republican brand right now is in a it's very damaged.
It's damaged to a point that there's specific things going to have to happen for it to be fixed.
The brand has been damaged over the years by what?
Paid smear ads, for one thing.
Indoctrination education.
Hollywood.
The pop culture.
The Democrat Party with their allies in the media, who cannot, to this day even, triumph in the arena of ideas.
So they don't even go there.
They create the illusion they're in the arena of ideas, but they're not.
Their entire tactic is to discredit and impugn smear their opposition.
And they've done it well because the Republicans have never known what to do about it.
Let me give you an example of this.
I just ran across this this morning.
It's from a couple of days ago.
$500,000 grant for Obamacare education.
I said, well, what the hell is this?
$500,000 grant for Obamacare.
So I read this.
You know what this is?
The California Endowment, whatever the hell it is, announced a half a million dollar grant for Obamacare education to a group called Hollywood Health and Society.
Okay, so what is Hollywood Health and Society?
Well, you know what it is?
It is a program at USC at the Annenberg Norman Lear Center.
And Norman Lear of Alden Family, a huge leftist, has endowed a division or a wing or whatever the hell, a school at USC.
And you know what it does?
It provides TV show producers and writers and movie producers and writers with quote accurate and timely information for storylines on health and climate change in television shows and movies.
So to rephrase this, the California Endowment has given $500,000 that will be used to train people who write and produce television shows and movies the correct,
quote-unquote, the proper quote unquote information for storylines that they will include about Obamacare and global warming.
So the left is essentially, in this instance, buying and purchasing propaganda, except it's not thought to be propaganda.
The recipients of the money, these eager beaver writers and producers, show up and they are told what they think is the truth about Obamacare and global warming so that when they write about it or produce TV shows or movies, they have the Democrat Party spin.
But it is presented to them in the form of formal education via a grant from the Norman Lear Center at USC.
This is how it is done.
What do the Republicans do in this regard?
What similar effort do the Republicans have to inform or teach or whatever word you want to use writers and producers in Hollywood?
What effort are the Republicans engaging in to tell these people, you know, you're being propagandized.
You're not learning the truth.
You're learning the Democrat Party spin.
Not every writer and producer in Hollywood is a Democrat.
Not every writer and producer nor actor in Hollywood is a liberal.
Vast majority of them are, but not everybody is.
And this is just half a million dollars, but that's not the point.
The point is that a foundation essentially was set up, and it looks scholarly, but all it is is a propaganda machine.
That's all it is.
So that when Hollywood writer X decides that an episode of Revenge wants to do a side story on Obamacare because one of the characters in the hospital, here's how to put the pro-Obamacare spin in your script in a pop culture story that the low information voters are watching so that they learn the quote-unquote truth.
These people live for this stuff.
They are not interested in going to the American people in the arena of ideas and competing for their hearts and minds.
They are totally into propaganda, totally into mind control.
The Republicans haven't the slightest idea about any of this.
So in the process of this is just one little half million dollar grant.
In many cases, it isn't even necessary because the writers and producers already are pro-Obamacare and pro-the liberal spin on climate change and would ordinarily not need to be told how to include such propaganda in their storylines.
What this ends up doing is furthering the notion of destroying or damaging the Republican brand.
Would you agree with me, Mr. Snerdley, if I were to say in a descriptive way here that the word Republican in certain elements of our culture has itself become a pejorative?
The word Republican to some people is a joke.
The word Republican means racist.
I was touching on this yesterday in terms of what is in the minds of low information.
What is a conservative today?
Somebody's 25 years old grown up.
What have they been told conservative is?
They don't know Reagan.
They've been lied about.
What do they think conservative is?
Bush.
Bush is, and look at how they successfully propagandized and manufactured all of the lies and the hatred about George W. Bush.
They have done to the word Republican what we have done on this program, to the word liberal.
We're not alone in this, but the problem is the Republican Party doesn't join our efforts here to play the game defined by the aggressors, which in this case is the Democrats and liberals.
The Republican Party, so scared of its own shadow and so scared of its own tail, wants to try to avoid any of this criticism.
A lot of Republicans don't want to be thought of as Republicans or conservatives because the destruction and damaging of the brand has been so successful, and they're not interested in fighting back.
That's the last thing they want to do.
But the American people are willing to fight back.
The American people want to fight back, and that's why they are electing people like Cruz in Texas to go do it.
Have you noticed also, folks, that this AP poll here poll finds little to like in Washington.
Americans are finding that they like little about Obama or either party.
Few people approve of the way the president's handling most major issues.
Most people say he's not decisive, not strong, not honest, not reasonable or inspiring.
But have you noticed that there is never in the media, there is never, I can't remember the last time I heard this discussed, the idea that the Democrats lose their base.
It's a constant discussion about Republicans.
Not only that, not only the Republicans losing their base, they should, because the constant discussion is Republican base is a bunch of fringe kook extremists.
We never hear a word about the Democrat base.
No matter what Obama does, there's never any fear or thought that he will lose his base.
This is a one-way street.
The media isn't the media.
The media isn't news.
The media isn't journalism.
It's just the Democrat Party.
They never give their base a reason to get mad or leave.
It's not even something that's conceived to be possible that the Democrats would lose their base.
But in every discussion of Ted Cruz, every discussion of the shutdown, every discussion of trying to limit Obamacare, defund it or delay it, there's always the discussion of the Republican base.
And in this case, it's the base that's the problem.
And the Republican Party believes the media when they tell them that their own base is the problem.
We never hear about the Democrat base.
Obama, there isn't a single Democrat out there that ever has to even worry about losing his base.
There's never any pressure on the base anywhere.
They may as well not even exist.
In fact, the Democrats don't have a base.
Everybody that votes Democrat is the base.
There is not a war within the Democrat Party, we're told.
There aren't any more moderate Democrats left.
They're all just Obamaites.
The perception of that is 100% total unity.
On the Republican side, the very word Republican has become a pejorative.
Now, a business, what would a business do if this had happened to its brand?
Well, a business would do a couple of things.
The first thing a business would do would be to try to improve the product.
And then the business would hire new leadership.
Might even change the name of the brand.
But that's the last thing to happen.
Normally, if your brand has suffered some damage, like the makers of Tylenol did not change Tylenol, did they?
They didn't get rid of the name.
They had to change the perception of the product, and they had to work really hard to do it.
Give you any number of other examples.
They would improve the product, they would hire new leadership, and they would reintroduce the brand with a better marketing team.
None of that's taking place on the Republican side.
Think of the base as heavy users, best customers, if you want to continue the business comparison.
And most businesses would never throw away their base.
Most businesses would never discard their best users.
In fact, I gave an example of how most businesses treat their best users last week or the week before in a sterling example of how capitalism works with cellular carriers and their pricing.
Sorry if you missed it.
I'm not going to take time to repeat it.
But the point is that a successful business treats its best customers first, does everything it can to hold up.
The Republican Party is not doing that.
The Republican Party is essentially trying to rid itself of its best customers because it doesn't like them.
Now, I understand the analogy between a political party and a business is flawed.
And this does not, it's not the best, but it is somewhat analogous, which is why I've toyed around with it.
I've got to take a break here, but we'll continue this when we get back to the other side.
Get your phone calls in on all this, too.
So sit tight, don't go away.
You know, Reagan had to deal with the communists trying to take over Hollywood.
The communists had a plan for propagandizing the United States.
It was very simple.
He says, take over Hollywood.
Just take it over and just run it.
Some would argue that they have.
Now, Reagan was the president of Screen Actors Guild and fought it and so forth, different times, different era.
But nevertheless, there was the pushback.
Our old buddy Jeffrey Lord, the American Spectator, I think is writing about this for a piece that's coming up in the American Spectator next week.
But there's always been pushback.
This is, I think, one of the reasons why, and we got a call up there that I'm going to take, is it a woman, line one?
I guess it is, Shelly.
And there's not enough time to get to you now, Shelly, so just hang on.
But she wants to know how I can go on.
How's it possible?
Everything's so disheartening.
No matter what, we can't win because the media stacked against us.
I totally understand the sentiment, but there's a reason for it.
There isn't any pushback.
I take that back.
There is pushback.
There's Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.
And look what happens.
The Republicans fight just as hard to keep Ted Cruz tamp down as do the Democrats.
If the party that you support was actually engaged in pushing back every day and informing and educating and standing for something, you wouldn't feel lost.
You wouldn't feel despondent.
You wouldn't feel as though, even though the deck's stacked, you don't have a chance.
Patently obvious, most of you actually, understandably, think you're in it alone.
You don't see anybody pushing back, one or two people.
And then when they surface, Both parties set out to destroy them, which is happening with Cruz and Mike Lee right now.
So the Republican brand is in tatters, and the Republicans don't seem interested in fixing it.
Or at least their recipe for fixing it is to become Democrat light.
But the problem is, in terms of the opposition that the Republican Party represents or stands for, they've watered it down.
They've watered down the content of the product, the content of the opposition.
And the frontmen, the pitchmen, the salesmen, they're old and they're tired and they're worn out and they're failures.
And I say it in a non-pejorative way, McCain, an example.
And then they actively work against what their heavy users, what their best customers want.
There's a reason you feel despondent, but it's not your fault, folks.
We also never hear about Democrats losing their donors, do we?
We only hear about Republican donors being mad.
The Democrat National Committee's broke.
Democrat National Committee does not have any money.
We never hear about things like that.
A brief timeout.
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