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Jan. 9, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
29:52
January 9, 2014, Thursday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by the host on this program meet and surpass all expectations held by the massive and growing audience each and every day.
The views expressed by the host in this program documented to be almost always right, 99.7% of the time.
Great to have you with us, my friends.
Telephone number if you want to be on the uh program 800 28282 and the email address, lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
You know, I actually I expected this Christie thing to maybe at most take up the first hour of the program.
At most.
But I'm folks, uh you the media, with the exception of Fox, which is probably safe to say in the Christie camp.
The media is salivating now at the prospect that Christie's career is over.
I've got sound bites from yesterday and last night and this morning, where the media's talking about this possibility.
Now, the conventional wisdom is that Christie just handed the media a knuckle sandwich today.
Even even old Snerdley.
Yeah, Rush May just made mince meat of the media.
You wouldn't know it by watching the aftermath.
The aftermath is I don't know if Christy can save his career now.
That's Wolf Blitzer, that's the New York Times, that's all these people at CNN.
There's no question they're doing the bidding for Hillary.
There's no question our janit from Shiloh, Illinois nailed it.
I mean, everybody the Democrats are assuming Hillary's gonna be the nominee, and a lot of Democrats assume that Christie's gonna be the Republican nominee.
And so this circumstance has come along, and it's an opportunity now to take Christie out.
And I don't know if Christie's surprised or not.
I mean, uh I would think anybody who's out there talking about, well, I can cross the aisle and I can work, and we can show that politics can work and government can work and we can work together.
I think a guy that gets caught up and believes that probably can also be surprised that the media wouldn't try to go after him.
Well, let's face so many of our Northeastern Rhino Republicans think that that's the magic ticket.
How many elections have we lost with this strategy?
We've had McCain, we've had Dole, um even to a certain extent, Romney.
There was that every one of these Republican candidates has tried to say in their own way that they're gonna work with the Democrats and that we're gonna be bipartisan, and we're gonna I I know how to cooperate and get them to cooperate.
Now, where's it gotten them?
And yet the Republican establishment keeps nominating these people and keeps supporting these people and Christie, what do you think?
You know, the the um there's a bunch of different strategies.
If you if you look at Christie's uh boardwalk stroll with Obama, now what was that?
Let's let's ask ourselves, let's let's let's put things in context again here.
Let's go to the Republican National Convention, where prior to the convention, it was thought by many that Romney would choose Christie to be VEP.
Not by everybody, but there were a lot of policymakers, kingmakers who thought that would happen.
It didn't.
Pop quiz.
Does anybody Snerdly quick?
Don't think about it.
Who was the vice president with Romney?
Who was the pit?
Okay, he got it.
Paul Ryan.
All right.
How many people do you think could not have answered that immediately?
Just to just mean anything.
But the point is it wasn't Romney.
Or it wasn't Christy.
So here comes the keynote speech.
Look, we've been through this, but just want to relive it.
The keynote is supposed to be the fire in Brimstone.
The keynote, folks, is kick off at one o'clock on Sunday in the NFL.
The kick off the keynote is the Saturn Fife Rocket launching the candidates campaign.
And that's not what Christie did.
He didn't even mention Romney.
It was a low-key speech.
A lot about Christie's family and his mother and every politician's mother tells them if somebody hits you, you get up and knock a nose off or something.
Biden's mother told him that.
Christie's mother told him that.
And after that keynote, there were people a little curious, if not concerned.
What was that?
Why didn't you even mention Romney's name?
Why are we still talking about Clint Eastwood?
We ought to be talking about the keynote here.
Why aren't we?
Then comes Hurricane Sandy.
The White House calls Mayor Doomberg, says, we need to come in.
Doomberg says, no, you're just going to gum up the works if you show up here, we don't need you.
White House calls Governor Kumo in New York.
We want to come in, photo op, help out.
Governor Kumo, New York.
No, don't show up here.
You're just going to gum up the works.
We need to keep everything open and running for first responders.
Call New Jersey, Governor Christie.
Come on in.
They walk together arm in arm.
They have a slurpee.
Whatever else.
Praise each other to the hilt.
Christie, in response to the criticism, says, hey, I'm Governor of New Jersey.
My state's been wiped out.
Obama's got the money.
Bite me.
But what really was that about?
Well, they both got, but what beyond the what was it really about?
What was Christie doing in addition to trying to secure federal aid from Obama for what else might have been going on?
Well, wait a minute.
Snerdley just said something very interesting to me.
It does happen, folks.
He said that Christie was trying to secure the nomination, Republican Party for 2016.
But wait.
The only way that Christie could get the nomination for 2016 is if Romney lost a week after Obama shows up in New Jersey.
So you are admitting to me here that you are suggesting that one of the reasons for that arm in arm, man love, walk on the boardwalk was to get Obama re-elected, clearing the field for Christie in 2016.
Okay, so we have it.
Is that what Romney Christie was really doing was just essentially trying to get Obama re-elected.
So clearing the way for Christie 2016.
Well, and there may be others who think that.
But something was going on.
So here we are.
Let's just stick with that then for a second.
Okay.
Romney did lose 2016 for the Republicans is wide open.
The conventional wisdom again is Hillary is gonna get it this time.
There isn't gonna be a young black guy come out of nowhere and take it from her.
There isn't gonna be a young good-looking Democrat woman come out of the woodwork and take it from her, and there's a pretty safe bet on that.
There aren't any excuse me.
And Hillary got kind of shafted in in 28, so it's her turn now.
She's the presumptive nominee.
And I guess it's presumed that Christie's the Republican nominee.
And so what's happening now?
This whole event here with the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge is an opportunity for the media to take Christie out now and clear the decks for Hillary.
Is that what's going on in the media?
That's uh I'm telling you, that's that this is what some people are are no doubt thinking that that's that that Hillary is Now, you know, the New York Times, speaking of the New York Times, folks.
I don't know how to tell you this other than to just tell you.
They had a two-part story on Benghazi by David Kirkpatrick, which was an out and out series of lies.
And it was no question that it was done to clear the decks for Hillary.
It was about Benghazi.
A two-part piece, and it's amazing the conventional wisdom outside of the New York Times pretty much all agrees that it was a bogus set of facts.
That Al Qaeda was nowhere near Libya, nowhere near Benghazi.
And that the video was solely responsible for the attack.
After the second installment in the New York Times, the Washington Post had their own story which contradicted that whole thing.
The Washington Post, you may not have heard about it, but they had a story without mentioning the New York Times that just blew the New York Times story by David Kirkpatrick out of the water.
It wasn't a video, and Al Qaeda was all over the place, and in fact still is.
And not only are they all over the place in Libya, they're moving back into Fallujah.
They're back into Iraq.
They're everywhere.
The Washington Post story, Al Qaeda, bigger and more widespread than ever after five years of Obama.
So the New York Times runs an absolutely bogus two-part story that is designed to help Hillary, and now they're spending all their time on lane closures in the George Washington Bridge at Fort Lee,
New Jersey, to take Christie out, and they have tweeted today that despite his apology, and despite his denial, and despite all of this, it doesn't mean that his career isn't over.
...
Governor Christie is now faced with a story that isn't going away, no matter how deftly he handled the media today, no matter how typically Christie he handled it.
This is the beginning.
This isn't the end of anything.
The media and the assumption is clear decks for Hillary.
Now, Christie, this wasn't supposed to happen because he's been working with Democrats and he's been bragging about it.
And he's a we just want to show you we can work together, and we can't get things done, and we can accomplish things to the American people, and politics can be made to work, and government can be made to work, and I'm the guy showing it everybody how to do it.
All right, which was supposed to be the big selling point.
Is this ability to compromise, cross the aisle, work together, and blah, blah?
What good has it done, Christy now?
What good again has it accomplished?
Here's the audio soundbite of Wolf Blitzer.
This is this afternoon special coverage of Chris Christie's press conference on the bridge lane closure scandal.
The...
The bridge lane closure scandal.
IRS not a scandal.
Benghazi, not a scandal.
Obamacare, not a scandal.
Lane closures in Fort Lee, New Jersey, are a scandal.
And CNN is on the case.
Wolf Blitzer speaking with the newly hired media expert.
They stole him from the New York Times.
Brian Stelter is his name.
He used to run, he started a blog called TV Newser.
He was a media groupie.
The New York Times hired him to be their media Editor and critic.
CNN was so impressed they stole him away.
He's in his third or fourth week now at CNN as an expert.
I think he's 18.
Well, he may be 25.
And that's who Wolfe is talking to.
And this is Wolf's observation.
Rush Limbaugh has been pretty critical of Chris Christie right now.
So the question is this how much will this hurt Christie, assuming he can salvage his political career and maybe run for president of the United States?
Well, Chris Christie, of course, remind us of this giant split that exists in the Republican Party and in the conservative movement.
Somehow I end up in even this.
Rush Limbaugh has been pretty critical of why don't they ever say Krauthammer?
Why does it you know Dr. Krauthammer has been very critical?
Well, I mean, there's the answer, I guess he hasn't been.
Anyway, they throw me in here.
And the expert analysis is well, Chris Christie reminds us of this giant split that exists in the Republican Party in the conservative movement.
Today that may be true to a uh to an extent.
All right, let me take a brief timeout.
What are we going to call this scandal?
A bridge to nowhere scandal?
Chris Christie's bridge to nowhere scandal.
Just I don't know why I'm still entertained by it, but I am back after this.
Actually, you know, and it's kind of nice to have a scandal where somebody actually did something instead of a scandal.
Somebody said something.
I mean, the scandals involving me are all over things that I've said.
But this is a scandal.
Somebody actually did something here.
It's finally great to have a scandal if somebody's actually done something.
I mean, if you're gonna have a scandal, have a scandal, go all the way.
And we got a scandal here with actual action in it.
And now, back to the phone to Rochester, Minnesota.
Hi, Steve.
I'm glad you waited.
Great to have you here.
Hey, Mr. Limbaugh, how are you?
It's Rochester, Michigan, actually.
Oh, Rochester.
What did I say?
Minnesota, sir.
I'm sorry.
Not at all.
My bad.
Not at all.
I've heard Rochester just about everywhere.
So it's true.
Hey, uh, two points.
You've got a commercial out there that mentions Nancy Pelosi and pole dancing in the same sentence.
Can we not do that?
Yeah, it's well, it's a parody.
That's I understand their path.
It's a satire.
It's supposed to make you sick.
It did.
It succeeded.
Um that caller Janet.
For a moment there I thought I was listening to the Janet show with Rush Limbaugh.
She was uh lively.
Well, yeah, my job in that case was to get out of the way and let her go.
And she was able.
I told you I wanted to take that call off.
Absolutely.
And she rose to the challenge.
Certainly did.
So this whole Christie thing here, uh, there's a headline here that I think a lot of people are missing.
Mainstream media jumps off Christie Bridge.
Well, I get your point.
It has taken the Gates book off the front page.
It has taken Obamacare off the front page.
And let me tell you, you pay you may not know this.
As we speak, after all of this that's gone on today, President Obama is unveiling his promise zone initiative right now.
So you've got the side-by-side A B comparison.
Christie barely able now to hang on to his career.
CNN and the New York Times, and of course others will join them.
Snerdley just said, I can't believe this.
They actually think they're gonna get this guy.
He's gonna be governor for three more years, and he's gonna get the Republican nomination to be running for president.
They think traffic cones are gonna derail the guy.
It isn't about traffic cones.
They have now decided they are an arm of the Democrat Party.
They have decided, they have come to the uh realization or conclusion that they can take out a potential Republican frontrunner.
And they're not going to stop until they do.
It isn't going to be about traffic cones.
It's going to end up being about much more than that by the time they're finished.
They just haven't found it yet.
But they're going to keep looking and digging.
They've said so.
They just started peeling the onion today.
And it's a big onion.
So they've got a long way to go.
Meanwhile, here's Obama.
He's out now with he's got some more victims surrounding him.
And he is announcing it's Santa Claus Christmas time in January.
He's now going to unveil his promise zone initiative, which is what?
Do you remember what it is?
A promise zone is a is an area of destitute poverty where Obama is going to offer businesses, tax incentives to hire the unemployed.
While Christie and his people cause people to die in ambulances on the George Washington Bridge, Obama is trying to help the unemployed with promise zones.
That's the juxtaposition of the news today.
That's how.
That's well, I don't know if Obama will say that.
If you like your poverty, you can keep your poverty.
Problem is if you are in poverty with Obama in the White House, you don't have any way out of it.
Here is Tom in San Diego.
Tom, thank you for waiting.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thanks, Russ.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yes, sir.
Uh the reason I'm calling is about the uh proposed extension of unemployment yet once again.
And uh I think the Republicans have to be a little bit more aggressive with their message.
And I think it needs to be more along the lines of uh personalizing it.
And I would say that while they are sympathetic to the victims, meaning the unemployed of five years of the Obama economy, and they do want to support the extension of unemployment compensation to those unemployed.
They unlike the Democrats who are willing to do so at the expense of their own children and grandchildren by increasing the debt, the Republicans are not prepared to go there.
And uh put the ball right back in the Democrats' court.
Well, since you've since you've called about this and you've got that idea, let me give you the current lay of the land.
Good.
I want to I want to tell you about two things.
The first I have here is an AP story.
GOP seeks jobless bill changes to offset the cost.
One day after clearing a key Senate hurdle, legislation to renew long-term jobless benefits stood at a crossroads yesterday, with gridlock beckoning from one direction and the prospect of compromise from the other.
Now, in a nutshell, here is where things stand on the push to extend federal unemployment benefits again.
The Republicans are saying that they will not extend the benefits unless they're paid for, and we're talking six billion dollars for three months.
Now that's a joke anyway, since Congress can always pretend to pay for something with creative accounting, but still they are making that that point.
It's a verbal point.
So now the Democrats are offering a compromise.
They say that they will pretend to pay for this latest extension if the Republicans will do it for a whole year, not just three months.
So, in other words, they want to extend unemployment benefits beyond the 2014 Elections here in November.
What a deal, huh?
I did.
I joked about it.
I said, I in fact, I can almost quote myself verbatim.
I said, what the Republicans ought to do is suggest to the Democrats, look, let's just extend them a whole year.
And let's get the issue off the table so that the Democrats can't keep hammering us with it during the campaign year.
I was being facetious.
That's what the Republicans have done with every issue.
Just agree to it, get it off the table so the Democrats can't hammer them.
Well, the Democrats have now proposed it.
The Republicans said, okay, okay, we'll extend for three months, but they're going to be paid for.
Democrats have come back, okay, we'll pay for it, because they know they're not going to just counting image, but we want to extend a whole year.
So that's where it is.
So they just put the onus back on the Republicans.
When you offer the Democrats establish a premise, in this case, unemployment benefits need to be extended.
If you don't just reject it, you're stuck.
And so the Republicans thought, like they always do, you know what?
We'll throw them a curveball.
We'll tell them we agree.
But it's got to be paid for.
They'll never agree to that.
And the Democrats, okay, fine, we'll pay for it, because they know they won't, but we want to extend it for the whole year.
And so now the onus is going to be on the Republicans.
How can you possibly reject unemployment benefits for poor people for a whole year, even when they're paid for?
So it's what happens.
Democrats make an offer or they establish a premise, a policy premise, and if it is not outright totally rejected.
If the Republicans say, well, we have an alternative.
But it's based on the premise they're stuck.
Now let me tell you about a column in the Wall Street Journal's market watch section.
They asked a question nobody in Washington seems to be asking.
What happens when jobless benefits are cut?
That's something that nobody wants to talk about.
Nobody wants to even.
What do you mean cut unemployment benefits?
Don't you have a heart?
Don't you care about people?
We're talking about extending unemployment benefits anywhere from three months to a year, and you want to cut them.
Well, last summer, a state did that.
Do you know which one?
Exactly, HR, North Carolina dramatically cut the amount of cash people received in jobless benefits.
They also, in addition to cutting the amount of money, they reduced the number of weeks that people were eligible to get benefits.
And you know what happened?
The unemployment rate fell within months.
By last November, North Carolina's unemployment rate was at a five-year low simply because they cut the cash and the number of weeks people were eligible.
How did this happen?
You're probably, well, what'd the unemployment rate go?
Because people had to go out and find jobs.
That was the only alternative.
You can do, you can pay people to not work, and they'll take it, and they won't work.
You can cut the benefits and length the time they get the benefits, and they've got one choice.
Work, well, two choices.
Social security disability, but that's another thing.
The Republican governor in North Carolina, Pat McCrory, didn't do this to punish the unemployed in his state.
He did it to be fiscally responsible.
North Carolina, as is other State can't print their money.
They don't have it, they don't have it.
And they had run up a massive debt to the federal government.
They had borrowed money from the feds to pay for unemployment benefits.
And with the benefit cut, tens of thousands of people became ineligible for the long-term federal extended benefits that recently expired.
The ones that Democrats now want to reinstate at all costs, even though they agreed to let them expire as part of the budget deal.
But voila, the jobless benefits with with those benefits cut.
People in North Carolina found jobs.
And North Carolina is not the only state where unemployment has fallen.
With less money to pay unemployment benefits, it's happened in Georgia and South Carolina, too.
This is the kind of leadership we ought to be getting in Washington.
Somebody ought to be suggesting you know what?
99 weeks is enough.
125 weeks is enough.
There need to be limits rather than this endless expansion.
But if you have been made to believe that people are fragile, and if you've been made to believe as a party, if the and the Republican Party, I think they've they've been beat up so much, they actually believe people can't help themselves anymore.
It's too hard to find work.
It's just impossible, and it's too much stress, and there's no political benefit to us saying go get a job.
It's easier for us to just, okay, well, we'll extend.
But this is exactly what I'm talking about.
Democrats propose hey, you know what?
Let's do it the whole year.
The answer is no.
We need to get serious now and start reducing this.
We can't afford it, and we're destroying these people by continuing to pay them not to work.
We need to get them off their butts.
The ones who can.
But they're that kind of courage, you you're not going to find it in Washington, folks.
It does not exist.
Uh one of the C. Oh, the Feds, the way they're going to get the Redskins, the Federal Trademark Office.
And I was going to spend some time on that today, and there's one other thing.
Talked about that.
Talked.
Well, I got to take a break here.
But it just leaves a whole bunch of great stuff for tomorrow.
Hang on, folks.
Gallup poll says what you and I have known for a long time that most political independents are not independent at all.
Details and open line Friday tomorrow.
See you then, folks.
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