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Nov. 21, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:29
November 21, 2013, Thursday, Hour #2
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Okay, all right.
It's outrageous.
I have there's no question they did the dingy Harry went ahead.
They just voted the nuclear option in the Senate.
They just changed 250 years worth of rules on advice and consent.
And now it just Obama's gonna get every judge he wants.
He's gonna get if they want to add seats to a court.
If they want to add five new liberal seats to the DC circuit, for example, they can do it.
There's no stopping them because the Republicans don't have the votes.
Now, greetings, folks.
Oh, sorry.
I was gesticulating wildly, and I just knocked the microphone totally out of range.
Anyway, greetings and welcome back, Rush Limboy, the EIB network.
Great to have you here.
U.S. Senate stops filibusters on nominations.
That's the Reuters headline.
They have managed to pass a rule ending the filibuster for judges.
This is known as the nuclear option.
And basically what it means is they have erased the need for there to ever be 60 votes before going to a final vote on a judge.
It's now 51 votes.
A Democrat-led U.S. Senate in an historic rules change stripped Republicans on Thursday of their ability to block Obama's judicial and executive branch nominees.
Party line vote 52 to 48.
Democrats abruptly changed the Senate's balance of power by reducing from 60 to 51 the number of votes needed to end procedural roadblocks known as filibusters against all presidential nominees.
This, folks, this part and parcel of why the Democrats are so hellbent on winning the House in uh in 2014.
This winning the House would give them total authoritarian non-challengeable control over the U.S. government.
Quite literally, there would be no way to stop them.
None whatsoever.
All of those years that the Republicans held the Senate, all we heard from a whining and crying Harry Reed and Diane Feinstein was about protecting the rights of the minority.
That's all we heard.
The Republicans were a cruel majority that had no intention whatsoever of ever listening to the minority, which represented quite a large swath of the American people.
And now, of course, that's out the window when the minority is Republicans, they don't even exist.
And they're not due any respect, constitutional or otherwise, constitutional or human.
And so basically what this means with a president like Obama is there's no stop.
He can nominate anybody for anything in in the judiciary and for a presidential czar or a well, czars are not cabinet, well, whatever.
There's no way he can be stopped.
Because all it takes is 51 votes now, and the Democrats have more than that.
There's no way.
250 years of rules, Senate rules, out of the window.
As the Democrats have made it plain, they're not interested in democracy.
And that really is what this means.
Not interested in democracy at all.
Total statist authoritarianism.
And frankly, I'm being kind with that terminology.
But I'm a little conf no, not conflicted.
What's the word?
I just Mitch McConnell was just on TV acting surprised and outraged and our guys always act surprised.
And that's what I don't get.
Why do they not know who they're up against?
Why after all of this time?
Why do they not come to grips With what they're up against and lay some groundwork for fighting it and opposing it in the public arena.
If they don't have the votes to win it in the Senate, why not take the news to the American people and let them know what's going on?
No, after the fact, always act shocked and outraged, surprised that Harry Reed would conduct such a power grab.
Why are they surprised?
This is what I don't.
The economy for EA for me, the dilemma for me is, and this really is short-sighted, I'll admit, but there's a part of me that says, you know, they deserve this happening to them.
Because they refuse to understand who it is they're up against.
They refuse to understand the scope and the threat posed by their political enemies.
And so they act surprised when this happens.
I don't know how else to put it.
I just I because I don't understand.
I mean, I heard I've heard all the explanations.
Well, Rush, they're all together, you know, it's all the establishment.
And uh Republicans are afraid of opposing the Democrats because they think the country loves the Democrats.
Well, what about the Constitution then?
Forget it.
You know, if what about defending 250 years of Senate rules for the sake of that?
What about defending it because of the Constitution?
What about trying to preserve the country?
What what so what maybe you think people don't like you?
I'm telling you, folks, it's bullies and PTSD all over again.
Our guys are Jonathan Martin and the Democrats are Richie Incognito.
And the media is the commissioner.
He doesn't care anything about it.
Well, doesn't care.
It's going to always side with the power structure.
I don't know.
I just see there's a part of me that says, well, this is what you get when you behave in certain ways.
When you're not going to oppose them on anything, when you're not going to push back, when you're not going to fight back, when you're going to join them and criticizing your own party like the Tea Party, when you're going to join them and criticize conservatives when you're going to join them, and for what?
To make them like you?
Make the Democrats like you?
Are you doing this so they won't be mean to you?
So they won't be fair with you when it comes.
I just don't understand it.
But it's done.
Now Snerdley says that there's a provision in there, and I haven't had a chance to look at this.
Is there really a provision in this that if the Republicans ever win the Senate that this is not the rule set on the floor by who?
Who said this on the floor?
Some senator.
That you're kidding me, that the nuclear option, the 51 votes is only applicable if Democrats are the majority.
For the time, so if there's a change after the election, this goes away.
I haven't seen that.
Well, I wouldn't be surprised.
I just haven't seen uh that temporary solution.
Oh, okay.
That temporary, so it's only for now for the Democrats to get their judges in, it's just a temporary thing to deal with the roadblock.
Is that what it is?
Just judge it, yeah, judges and cabinet secretaries and so forth.
So but the point is, folks, if if a majority of the Senate can change the rules at any time, there aren't any rules.
When you get down to brass tax, that's what this means.
If they can change the rules anytime they want, then there aren't any rules.
It's just however aggressive the majority wants to be in getting their way.
And the Republicans are content to lose, thinking that there's valor in it.
I'm convinced.
They really think that there's honor in losing if they look good to the American people doing it.
If they look fair and if they look reasonable, that's how it appears to me from a distance.
That's how it appears to me from afar.
Well, let's um let's let's move on.
Juan Williams, Obama convened a secret meeting that didn't stay secret very long yesterday of left wing journalists and reporters.
He had people in there like uh Juan Williams.
Oh, people from MSNBC, Chris Matthews, I don't know, 10 or 12 of them.
It was like a strategy recession.
Obama brought them in there to, you know, buck them up.
I mean, basically tell them to be confident and go out and keep spreading the Obamacare word in a in a positive way.
And Juan Williams of Fox News just gave his report from that meeting.
And he said, among other things, that uh in the meeting, the White House said somebody in the Obama, somebody said that the White House wishes that the insurance companies had not sent out those cancellation notices.
Says the White House wishes they had called them renewal notices.
So they think they've got a PR and optics problem.
And the White House told these leftist journalists look, the thing you got to go out there and say is these were not cancellation notices, they were renewal notices, and these evil rotten insurance companies who are desperate to savage our brave young president called them cancellation notices.
So, based on what Juan Williams said, I L. Rushbow, I'm going to make you a prediction, that it will not be long before you hear everywhere in the drive-by media that the insurance companies are attempting to sabotage the great plan of our great young president by sending out what they were calling cancellation notices when all they really were was renewal notices.
Juan Williams came out and he told everybody White House is mad the insurance companies told the truth and didn't try to hoodwink their customers and lie to them about how they were actually losing their old plans.
White House thinks the only problem they've got is that the insurance companies called them cancellation notices instead of renewal notices.
And that's how they operate.
Remember, folks, liberal Democrats cannot survive being truthful, or if the truth about them is known.
Everything is a lie, everything's an illusion, everything is camouflage, everything is a mask.
And so now you didn't get cancellation notices.
That's the next thing.
You got a renewal notice.
And the insurance company, the insurance industry, doesn't like our brave young president.
They're trying to wreak havoc and sabotage his brave new plan.
Thank you.
Interestingly, I had a story from yesterday's stack that I didn't get to, but it's from Sheila Jackson Lee, member of the House from Texas is a Democrat.
She told National Review Online yesterday that instead of sending out cancellation letters, insurance companies should have told their customers their coverage was about to get better.
She said that she wrote an amendment before the president's announcement that would require insurance companies to tell the truth.
So this is it.
This actually got started yesterday.
Sheila Jackson Lee said to National Review Online yesterday, these were not cancellation notices.
That cancellation notice was not the truth.
It should have been we intend to or expect to modify your insurance.
They should have, and now today that's become, they should have called them renewal notices.
So they're going to try to change this with optics.
They're going to try to change this with what was that guy, uh Lakov rhymes with.
They're going to try to do this with words and imagery and try to make you think that you didn't actually get your plan canceled and take away from you.
Actually, you got a renewal notice.
You got a renewal notice and it was an improvement.
It was a better plan.
You did you just don't think because the insurance companies lied to you.
Now, the reaction reasonable people are going to have, well, then why'd the president apologize?
Because he did.
He went out there and apologized.
But what did he apologize for?
No, no.
He apologized for the way you felt.
He didn't apologize to what he said.
He did not apologize for lying to you when he said you could keep your plan.
He apologized that it upset you when you found out you couldn't.
So the table is set.
He never apologized for taking your plan away from you.
He apologized you felt the way you felt because you misunderstood.
You weren't being canceled.
You were being a renewal notice for a plan that was actually better.
Stand by.
On the cutting edge, L. Rushbo, documented to be almost always right.
99.7% of the time.
Okay, to the phones we go.
This is uh this is Robert in Norfolk, Virginia.
It's great to have you, sir.
You're up first today.
Hello.
Robert in Norfolk, Virginia, are you there?
Well, he's not there, so let's try Mike in here.
Robert in Norfolk, you are there, is that right?
Yes, I am here.
Yeah, I hear you now.
Okay, great.
Welcome to the program.
The first thing was that I would say when it's my first call to Marshall in law show, that one would say, well, I have to go.
You sound like a great guy.
Although I don't think it's ever gonna happen.
I probably figured out what I was going to say to you when I called.
So, my neighbors, you got their car.
Robert, I I cannot hear a word.
I'm sorry, this the I can't hear a word you're saying.
Uh would you would you snurdly get him on a landline or some such thing, if he can or I think what he's going to say.
What are you mad at?
What's what's anyway?
What he's going to say, he's one of these guys that thought that I was a wacko right-wing extremist uh jerk.
Um thought that everything I said was just out there.
And uh somehow he's changed his mind.
He just ran and talked to a liberal neighbor and he found out I've just been right on the money about it.
We'll try later.
Mike Merrillville, Indiana.
Welcome to the program.
Hi.
Good afternoon, Rush.
Um, to push back from the evo liberal biased press.
If John F. Kennedy was alive today, he would support Ronald Reagan and support Ted Cruz and the Tea Party.
I think you could make a very good case with with that.
Well, you know, now that may be if if if John F. Kennedy were alive today, and still a Democrat, no matter what he fought back in the 60s, he wouldn't be supporting Ted.
I I don't I that that would be a tough thing to say.
That'd be predicting 50 plus years of of uh the future that nobody could know.
But I mean, folks, the simple the the way I opened the program today is is the the best was a little pop quiz.
What do you call a politician's pro-life?
What do you call a politician for lower taxes for a strong national defense who was a proud nationalist, JFK loved America?
He would he was proud to be an American.
And you'd call that politician JFK.
That's who he was.
We've played the soundbites of him advocating tax cuts.
Uh he was not in any way a liberal, as you know liberals today.
In fact, there are people who have engaged in predicting what would have happened the next two years if Kennedy had lived.
And some of the uh some of the best thinking on this based on it here's the the sad thing about about this is you can't tell the truth about the Kennedy presidency.
Uh JFK's been martyred.
Uh This PR image of Camelot has been created.
And uh people don't want to believe anything other than what they believe.
But the fact is that the only reason Kennedy went to Dallas was he was in dire straits of of maybe not even getting the Democrat nomination.
There was no Camelot when he was alive.
There was no.
I mean, the media had this love and this mystique, but Kennedy's approval numbers were in the tank.
He was in deep trouble.
The trip to Texas was a political trip to try to gain support from that region of the country.
People trying to portray it as Kennedy took his life in his hands going there because he doesn't.
It's the exact opposite.
And even some of the most informed and scholarly thinking that I have found on this.
Kennedy was not a big believer in the Civil Rights Act.
There's some people who think that if Kennedy had been re-elected, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not have passed in 1964.
That it wouldn't have happened.
He was not he was not at all a liberal in the sense that you know them today.
Now who knows what would have happened.
I can tell you when we played those sound bites of JFK, the economic club of New York advocating tax cuts, Ted Kennedy got mad, made public comments about how we were distorting the memory of his brother by actually playing soundbites of his brother.
How are you?
Great to have you back, folks.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
There's a new book out by a guy named Ira Stoll, S T O L L called JFK Conservative.
And here's the Amazon description of the book.
As Ira Stoll convincingly argues, by the standards of both his time and our own time, JFK was a conservative.
His two great causes were anti-communism and economic growth.
That does not at all fit with the Democrats of today, folks.
He just doesn't.
His tax cuts, which spurred one of the greatest economic booms in our history, were fiercely opposed by his liberal advisors within his administration.
He fought against unions.
He pushed for free trade and a strong dollar.
And above all, he pushed.
In fact, you know where Kennedy was going to speak in Dallas?
The trademart.
That's where he was going after the motorcade finished.
He was heading to the Dallas trademark to make it.
He was huge on free trade.
He fought against unions.
And above all, he pushed for a military buildup and an aggressive anti-communism around the world.
Hello, Vietnam.
This guy, Iris Stoll says that JFK had more in common with Ronaldus Magnus than he did with LBJ.
And back in 2010, the Kennedy family demanded that Linda McMahon, she's running for the Senate in Connecticut, pull her campaign ads that included clips of JFK talking about the benefits of tax cuts.
We, I think, were the first to dig those up and play them way back in the 90s on this program.
They are in the archives.
The Groove Yard of Forgotten Soundbites.
Economic Club of New York, 1962.
You ought to hear Kennedy talk about tax cuts.
And how they they cause economic growth.
Rising tide lifts all boats.
He comes out against government expenditures, he called them.
And the Kennedy family got mad at us here.
Well, there is no us.
They had mad at me because we were playing those sound bites as well.
But I'm telling you, the Civil Rights Act, 1964 probably would not have happened if Kennedy had been reelected.
It was remember, it was his brother who had wiretapped and was bugging Martin Luther King Jr., who the attorney general.
And that would be RFK.
But now if you start asking him if he's alive today, I I think if JFK were alive today, he and Bill Clinton would be inseparable.
Can you imagine what those guys would be doing if JFK were alive today?
He and Clinton.
I mean Hollywood would it would just.
And I don't think there is no way that JFK would have would have become a he would have stayed loyal to the Democrat Party, and he would have moved, at least on the surface, to the left.
You don't think so?
Now, yeah, Reagan, Ray, I know Reagan was the same kind of Democrat and left the Democrat Party.
I can't that there's no candidate that was going to leave the Democrat Party, particularly one that had been elected president.
It just wasn't, with another one running for president, RFK.
That just was never going to happen.
You it anyway, that I'm pretty sure of.
But extrapolating from what we know to today and what would JFK be today, and how would he fit in with a modern Democrat Party?
Nobody knows, but we do know how what he was would fit in with him today, and they don't.
What's that?
Snerdley's in there saying, I know one thing for sure, he would love your show.
You think with with with the philanderer and all the fun we had with his brother that he would love this show.
Again, that's not known.
I don't like to get caught up in in the you know 50 years what would have happened.
Um, John John, JFK Jr., he was he was not this full-fledged radical leftist that they are today.
You know, JFK Jr. headed at magazine George and wanted me to write a piece in the inaugural issue.
And I did, and after I submitted it, I forget what it was, but I said, I I asked him, I said, I want to change, I want to pull something out.
And it was incendiary.
It was it was it was inoffensive, but it was incendiary.
And he tried desperately to get me to leave it in.
And I said, no, no, no, no, I've got to take it on.
He that the uh TV show staff one day was almost worthless because he had said he might come by to say hello.
And I had told the TV show staff, look, JFK Jr. maybe stop.
He wanted to come by and meet me because I'd agree to do the piece, but he never made it.
But the TV show staff was just in a tizzy all day.
Uh the only time they'd been unproductive waiting for JFK Jr. to uh show up.
Look, I know we Hubert Humphrey, we've got sound bites of Hubert Humphrey, Democrat nominee 68, uh potential.
But Hubert Humphrey, what Minnesota Democrat Farm Labor Party, with this guy talking about family values, you would not believe that he was ever a Democrat.
You you you wouldn't believe that he was not a Republican.
See, but you talk about Hubert Humphrey and JFK.
I'm I'm telling you, the theory that his assassination is what flipped the left in this country upside down and sent them into this out-of-control place they are now.
I believe it.
I think it did.
They can't get their arms around the fact that a communist killed their guy.
They just can't come to grip.
And that's why they have to revise history and make it like Dallas did it.
This festering boil of rabid extremism, anti-government right-wing hatred.
They really believe that, like I said in the first hour, they're doing shows on sports networks with former cowboys players claiming that that week they were all talking to each other how worried they were that some right winger was gonna kill a candidate president when he got to town.
And we're supposed to believe this.
And meanwhile, our communist and avowed Marxist communist killed JFK.
And that, by the way, folks can make the case.
That is what began the modern era of today's Democrat Party and leftist movement blaming America for everything.
That according to this book that I remembered reading, and I went and found the uh it's it's the uh Camelot and a Cultural Revolution, how the assassination of JFK shattered American liberalism by James Pearson.
And it's uh I think 2007, might be 2009.
But his point, his overall thesis, is that up until that time uh Democrats they believed in progressivism, they believed in big government, they believed, but they believed in they they they at least attached optimistic outcomes to it.
They really believed they were helping America.
They really believe they were helping families, helping people.
And now they they've uh they've just become the the country's horrible, it's rotten, it needs to be reformed.
The the liberals of JFK's day did not think there was anything really major wrong with this country.
The liberals of today are a new breed, folks.
I mean, they really are.
I was talking to David Horowitz.
I interviewed him for the current issue of the Limbaugh.
Well, I don't know if it's out yet.
But he grew up as a leftist.
He grew up as a communist.
Parents were communists.
He grew up that way, finally got out of it.
You know his story probably.
And he got really animated with me on the in the interview.
He said, we gotta stop.
They're not leftists, they're communists.
They're not liberals, they're not progressive, they're communists.
They are authoritarian statists, they're dictators.
That's who they've become.
I know them.
I grew up with them, was raised by them.
I mean, he was I've never heard him as animated as he was and and and forceful.
And it's it's it is it is true.
It's a whole different breed if you want to compare today's left to the left of um of JFK.
But that can't be allowed to stand.
The the media has been, and the Kennedy family, Jackie O, primarily, they've been on this mission to recast it all as Camelot.
You know, and I'm a literalist.
I never quite understood the comparison of the Kennedy administration to Camelot.
Because you know, in in Camelot, it was Lady Guinevere who screwed around on King Arthur with Sir Lancelot.
But that's not what was happening in Camelot.
The Kennedy Camelot was exact opposite.
That's why you stop and think if JFK was alive and Bill Clinton did you th you imagine the Hollywood people to want in on that action.
And hi.
Great to have you back.
Let's uh let's give the phones another whirl here.
Uh East Alton, Illinois, outside St. Louis.
Tony Hyde, great to have you on the program.
How about?
Hi, Rush, great to talk with you.
I hope the American people will see the collapse of the advice and consent rule for what it is, a revolution.
Uh the whole spirit of the uh Constitution is to uh limit government power and the abuse of power.
What this does is virtually make the uh judiciary a subcommittee of the uh of the Congress, and uh it opens the con it opens the judiciary to the uh to uh to all sorts of strange uh perverted people, communists, you know you you name it, uh, who will now be able to gain access, who formally would not gain the general approval of the Congress.
Well, folks, uh that might sound a bit far-fetched to you, but there's no stopping them if they if they want to nominate avowed communists to be judges, there's no stopping them now.
He's right.
I mean, is that it's just whoever Obama wants to nominate.
Thank you, Grosh, very much.
I mean, that's it, it's true, folks.
There's no there's no advice and consent.
There's just consent.
That's all it is now.
51 votes, Democrats have it.
So if Obama wants to nominate, well, I don't know, Basher Assad to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
There's no stopping him.
Why I just trying to give you an illustration.
There's no, I mean, the only thing stopping him, maybe if some Democrats didn't like that, but that's it.
Whoever Obama wants.
Anybody can be a judge now.
Anybody can be in the regime.
Even if there isn't a need or a seat for them.
They're trying to expand the D.C. District Court.
They are doing everything they can to get more judges on some of these courts so that always have a majority.
How about they want to make Bill Ayers?
A judge or uh Jeremiah Wright.
There's no stopping it now.
Now, some of you might be saying, well, what was stopping them before?
Well, you needed 60 votes, and that meant that the Republicans could stop.
The Democrats don't have 60.
They needed minimum five, six Republican votes for any Obama nominee.
Now they don't need any.
They don't even need all the Democrats, just need 51 of them.
And 250 years of Senate rule has just been nuked.
That's why they call it the nuclear option.
Yeah, I'm going to play some of these Kennedy sound bites.
It's not fair to talk about this stuff and not air it.
This is December 14, 1962, basically 11 months before Kennedy was killed in Dallas.
The New York Economic Club.
And Kennedy is making a pitch here for tax cuts and economic growth.
As you listen to this, you know, you ask yourself if you can imagine Kennedy as a Democrat or any Democrat today advocating this in any way.
This administration pledged itself last summer to an across the board top to bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963.
I'm not talking about a quickie or a temporary tax cut, which would be more appropriate if a recession were imminent.
Nor am I talking about giving the economy a mere shot in the arm to ease some temporary complaint.
The federal government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures.
There's not a Democrat in office that believes this today.
There's not a one who would publicly say this and survive.
The federal government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive spending.
It's not stimulus.
It's not bailouts.
No, it's to expand the incentives and opportunities for private sector growth.
There's not a Democrat alive today.
okay Who could get elected saying that, or who would say it?
Here's the next, again, this is 1962 in New York City.
When consumers purchase more goods, plants use more of their capacity.
Men are hired instead of laid off.
Investment increases and profits are high.
Corporate tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital.
The government has already taken major steps this year to reduce business tax liability and to stimulate the modernization, replacement, and expansion of our productive plan and equipment.
My God, he's talking about profit.
He's for profit.
And they try to tell us that the wacko right wing in Texas wanted to get rid of this guy?
Hey!
It doesn't fit.
This is right up every right winger conservative's alley.
Next bite, Kennedy, oops, yeah, I got I've got to play it.
No explanation, just listen.
Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other.
It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget.
Just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.
Surely the lesson of the last decade is that budget deficits are not caused by wild-eyed spenders, but by slow economic growth and periodic recessions.
And any new recession would break all deficit records.
In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low.
And the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.
John F. Kennedy, 1962.
Not a Democrat alive today who would say that, who believes it, and who could get elected saying it.
Not enough time, uh, ladies and gentlemen, to be fair, another caller, another soundbite.
And no, I've not I've I've not forgotten the Elizabeth Hasselbeck.
I didn't mean to make that big a deal of it.
The two bites I thought went together, but they didn't.
So I'll get to it.
Make that the first thing I do when I get back.
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