All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 16, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:42
January 16, 2014, Thursday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Yeah, just a little question, just a little mental exercise.
If, I don't know, let's go back 19, say, 88, 89, 90.
If Bill Clinton had divorced Hillary and married Jennifer Flowers, would Jennifer Flowers be the Democrat frontrunner for 2016?
And here's it.
And here's another question for you.
And seriously, can somebody tell me, I haven't bothered to look it up.
I've just explored this using my own memory.
Somebody tell me when or who or both, when and who was the last Democrat frontrunner to get the nomination.
And by frontrunner, I mean presumed, like Hillary is now and like she was in 2008.
It's presumed that she's going to be the nominee.
And it's presumed that she's going to be, well, but, okay, LBJ, sitting president, 64.
He was incumbent.
LBJ, how about FDR?
Was FDR a frontrunner before he won the first time?
My point is, you can go back, and you have to go back a long time to find a Democrat frontrunner who actually got the nomination.
And it may be true of the Republicans, too.
I don't know.
It may be a frontrunner phenomenon, but it's specifically I'm asking it about the Democrats.
Because all of this conventional wisdom is that it was going to be Hillary in 2008.
And isn't it amazing?
We're right back there now.
And we just had an audio sound.
F. Chuck Todd and the Democrats think that they have taken Christie out because they've got their polling data, which shows Christie's popularity is rising in New Jersey and some other places.
But in a head-to-head matchup with Hillary in the same poll where they were tied or Christie was up a couple points, Christie's now down 13.
It's over.
They think that they've succeeded in taking Christie out.
We just played those soundbites for you.
And let's say, grab soundbite number six, Peter Beinart.
Well, last night on the Situation Room on CNN, Wolf Blitzer said, you wrote a piece this week, Mr. Beinart.
And a line from that article jumped out at me.
You wrote, the GOP today is an awful brand.
It is crucial that the next Republican presidential nominee possess a personal brand that transcends his or her party's brand.
If a Republican wins in 2016, it'll be because he or she wins over a significant number of people who dislike the GOP.
Now, naturally, that made Wolf get moist.
You know, he started salivating on that.
Wolf is hard to contain him.
Had to tighten the belt another notch.
I mean, that kind of excitement.
So he said to Beinart, so, so how does Christie fit into that?
Christie was by far the best person they had who could have done that.
Christie had shown he had a reputation for bipartisanship.
He had on certain important issues like immigration and gay marriage.
He had taken a position that was probably more palatable to the kind of voters that Republicans need to win.
And he had a big personality.
He didn't just seem like the next Republican in line.
And that's why I think that his political wounding, and I think it's certain that he's politically wounded, even if he survives, is really a danger for the Republican Party.
I don't see anyone who has the personal brand that can trump the party's weakness in the way that Christie did.
Man, is that not a mouthful?
Does that not tell us everything we need to know?
Here you are, Peter Beinhart, card-carrying leftist, card-carrying leftist media type professor, you name it.
He fits all of it.
And listen to what he said.
Christie had shown he had a reputation for bipartisanship.
He was by far the best person the Republicans had who could have made people vote for him even though they don't like Republicans.
You know, that's exactly what the Republicans think, too.
That is how perverted and corrupt this has become.
You've got people like Beinhart, and he's the people who run around saying this kind of drivel.
And the Republicans end up believing, they end up thinking they're hated to the extent that they are.
They do not understand why.
I mean, it's natural that Democrats wouldn't like them.
That's not news.
And that's not a problem in politics that people of the other party don't like you.
What's new in politics is when your own party detests you.
And that's where the Republicans are.
But that's what they don't get.
So here you have this guy, this card-carrying liberal Democrat, telling us who and what we need in order to win, and that Christie was it until Bridgegate.
Because he had shown he had a reputation for bipartisanship.
Hello, Bob Dole.
mccain uh hello uh romney Where did it get him?
All right.
He had on certain important issues like immigration and gay marriage.
He had taken a position probably more palatable to the kind of voters Republicans need to win.
So here we have a Democrat saying what you Republicans need to do is support the same things that we Democrats do, and then you will win.
That makes a lot of sense, does it not?
If you're going to have a Republican that also supports gay marriage and amnesty, why would you need that Republican?
Well, because that Republican, he could survive, because Democrats hate Republicans.
If the Democrat voters could like this guy, then it would come down to a personality contest.
And if the Republican and Democrat candidates stand for the same thing, it's what Beinhardt is saying here.
It's profound coming up.
If, in the leftist view, if the Democrat and Republican candidates believe in the same thing, in this case, amnesty, bipartisanship, and gay marriage, then what will be the determining factor and who wins?
Personality.
And that is where the media thinks that they can destroy any Republican.
They destroyed Romney with his personality.
They turned Romney, who was one of the gentlest, nicest souls you'll ever meet, into a modern incarnation of Satan.
They did.
So what Beinhardt here is saying, you Republican, you need to come up with a candidate who thinks exactly what we think.
And then you'll win it on the strength of personality.
Right?
And so in a personality contest, Hillary versus Christie, who do you think the media is going to engineer that victory for?
It isn't going to be Christie.
I care, bully, bull in a china shop, uncouth, undisciplined.
I can hear it now.
What Binhart and these guys stealthfully know is that if they can somehow convince the Republicans that the only way they can win is to start saying they are for, to support the same policies Democrats do, what these guys know is they're going to kill the Republican Party.
This is just maybe it's easier for us to see folks because we are far removed from it.
But what a trick this is.
This is the same trick, almost as good as convincing Republicans the only thing they have to do to win is get the independents.
And thereby they get the Republicans campaigning for 20% of the vote.
So yeah, Christy Chon, he had a reputation by partisanship.
He was right on amnesty and gay marriage.
And those are the kind of issues that a Republican's going to have to start supporting if they have any hope to win.
He had a big personality, and it just didn't seem like it was his turn.
I mean, he was really the guy that was going to earn it.
He stood out in the crowd.
But now, now with Bridgegate, I mean, even if he survives, it's really a danger for the Republican Party.
So what an amazing thing, because the takeaway from this is this is exactly what I fear inside the Beltway Republicans also think.
It's what they're doing.
They're talking about bipartisanship, amnesty, gay marriage, pot legalization, all of that.
By the way, by the way, that's going to be fun to watch with the NFL.
This pot business.
Oh, yeah.
That's going to be, it's going to be fun to watch how they deal with that.
Now, I'll explain in mere moments.
I've got to take a break.
I've got to get some phone calls in here because I promised.
Fastest Three Hours in Media, hosted by me, El Rushbo, here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
This is Zach in Caldwell, Idaho.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello, sir.
Hello, yes.
I'd just like your opinion on why is it that those who work hard and are successful are perceived as ignorant unless they go out and get this education or this higher education that they're pushing so hard?
Well, I'm not sure I agree with the premise.
Why are successful people who didn't go to college looked down on?
Yeah, pretty much.
I'm a pretty successful guy.
I've built my own world with my own two hands here.
And yet, every time I go to talk to somebody who's of the leftist persuasion, they perceive me as ignorant.
Well, you're a threat.
You've gotten somewhere that violates the prescriptions they've set up and they believe in themselves.
And as such, you represent a threat to them.
You're not supposed to be possible.
And so you're a quirk of fate or what have you.
But that's the nature of elitism, sir.
They're just superiorists.
And one of the things that makes them superior is where they go to school.
So it's superior to run out and get a bunch of debt that you're not even going to be able to afford.
I mean, look at the way they – can you imagine how they look at the Robertson family of Duck Dynasty?
Here are people.
They're almost like backloads redniks, kind of like me.
Well, okay.
Here you have multi-millionaires in a duck call this.
I guarantee you, they're embarrassed by them.
They don't think they're anything special.
They don't credit hard work.
They just think that a bunch of dumb hayseed customers, a bunch of dumb hayseed hicks that live where they have their business.
They like guns and so forth.
That's just the nature of elitism.
They just, they, they're just better than you, sir.
You didn't go to college.
You probably couldn't get in.
You're really, it really says you're dumb and stupid.
You're not educated like they are.
Who cares if you're a success?
You just aren't as smart as they are, no matter what you do.
Well, I guess at that point, I'll just keep on going being ignorant then.
Well, don't worry about it.
Who cares what they think?
Like you said, these are people that, what have they done?
The people you're talking about, you're talking about the people responsible for running up the debt.
And it's actually a very good question and illustration of the whole societal caste system.
You know, the old high school clique, the old saw that we never really get out of high school.
These are the people that define proper, smart, educated, dignified.
And you don't fit because you didn't go to college.
And not only that, you didn't go to the right one.
I mean, these people look down on people that didn't go to the Ivy League.
You could have a college degree from University of Iowa and they're going to sniff at you.
But I wouldn't let it bother me at all, aside from just being able to satisfy your curiosity about it.
Whatever you do, whatever you do, and I don't think you do, I'm not saying this, but whatever you do, don't succumb to this and allow yourself to think of yourself as second class because these people look at you that way.
If I were you, I'd just look at them and laugh.
Because what they really are is befuddled, jealous, envious, and confused because you're not supposed to be able to happen.
I'm not either.
I'm not supposed to exist the way I do.
I didn't go to college.
Well, I didn't finish.
So there are a lot of us in this.
Now, some of you might be saying, what about Gates?
What about jobs?
Well, they dropped out too.
But once they rejoined the group and became members again, one of them, culturally and politically.
Zach, I appreciate the call.
This is Chris in Lake Linden, Michigan.
Great to have you on the EIB Network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
I'm calling because just to share the frustration of my 19-year-old niece putting herself through college and how Obama can't believe that if you work hard, you can get ahead.
When she has breaks from college, she would like to work full-time, so like for a week or two weeks off, and she can't because the job she works at can't hire her for more than 29 hours.
And for two weeks, it's hard to go out and get a different job to supplement those 29 hours.
So she can't make extra money during her breaks.
Right.
Now, what is it you're upset with Obama about, though?
Well, I'm just saying he can't believe that he, you know, if you work hard, she would love to work hard.
She would love to make more money to help her pay for her college.
Look, I really, just, sorry to repeat myself, I really don't think that he believes that.
I think it's just something that a leftist will say to relate to a majority of people when he's really fooling them.
He doesn't, this is, he can't tell the people what he really thinks about this.
He wouldn't get elected.
He's got to make them think that he holds certain traditions as close and dear as they do.
He does.
One of the reasons he wants to transform the country is precisely because his people, his leftists, they don't think hard work gets you.
They think the game's rigged.
They think the rich control who succeeds and who doesn't.
And they think hard work is a trick to exploit people so that the rich can benefit from all their labor.
They don't believe in it.
We're into six years here of an economy slowly but surely being unwound.
We are six years of an economy that is itself being transformed.
And he says this so often and in exactly the same words that I'm convinced he's simply saying this because he wants people to think that he believes it's true.
And it's something that sounds good if you trying to convince people that you're actually engaging in an effort to rebuild the economy.
I mean, hard work and perseverance paying off.
That's just not distinctly American.
That is something that is a human truth.
Hard work, perseverance, stick-to-itiveness, all those things pay off.
That's boilerplate 101, and that's exactly how he's using it.
But as you just illustrated, that's not the case.
As the private sector continues to shrink, and this is the mathematics of it, the old saw about hard work and perseverance, preparation, education, all of the effort that you put in, the devotion that you have, there has to be a pie for you to get your piece of.
And the pie has to be growing.
It has to be expanding to account for population increase, people retiring and leaving the pie, younger people getting out of college or entering the workforce and wanting their piece of the pie.
The thing about America is that pie has always gotten bigger.
It has always expanded.
There has always been an opportunity for anybody to get as big a piece of that pie as they reasonably expect or want.
That's what's changing.
The pie is shrinking.
And as a result of the pie shrinking, there's less to be had because the government's usurping more and more of it.
And in the midst of all that, the president says, yep, well, hard work, you work hard, pay off.
That's always been the deal.
That's been the promise of America.
It's not a promise of America.
It's a capitalistic truth.
But more than that, it's a human truth.
But it's all this guy's doing is making it harder and harder and harder for everybody in the middle class to be upwardly mobile.
That's what was always distinctive about America, is the pie grew even for the middle class.
That's what's stopped happening because of him.
As usual, in the email, I have doubting Thomases and people who think they're challenging me, who think it's ridiculous to say that Obama does not believe that hard work is how you make it.
A bunch of emails.
You realize how ridiculous you sound?
Of course, everybody believes.
He believes that.
I'm telling you, he does.
You know what Obama believes?
You didn't build that.
That is what Obama believes.
Now, what does that mean?
Remember, it was popularized recently by the fake Indian from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, who was getting standing ovations, by the way, from Democrat voters when she made the point that the successful, you didn't build that.
Now, what does you didn't build that mean?
It means that you, the successful, really aren't responsible for your success.
That's what he really believes, folks.
Now, in the example that she used and that he used, they take a factory, because to them, America is factories.
You have to understand the socialists and communists, everything is factories and workers in their minds when they look out over America and they see factories.
And inside the factories are workers.
And they see a head honcho in the factory, the owner or the CEO, and they resent the hell out of the guy because they don't see him as doing any work at all.
But he's making 15,000 times what the workers are making.
So the workers who are really working hard are really making the guy rich.
He's exploiting them.
He's robbing from them.
He's stealing from them.
He didn't build that factory.
The workers and the government who built the road to get to the factory and the stoplights to avoid accidents on the way to the factory and the sewage lines to keep the factory sanitary.
The guy that owns the factory and owns the business, he didn't do anything.
He didn't build that.
Everybody else did, except they're getting screwed because they're not being treated as owners.
They are exploited.
And I'm telling you, when you hear Obama say, and we've got to continue to set stablehood Americans to work hard and become a success, doesn't believe that.
Hard work is not how you get to the top.
You get to the top by cheating people, stealing people, being inheriting something.
Some of that's a generalization, but the point is you cannot have a guy who says two things like Obama did.
You didn't build that.
And we've played that sound.
Remember, he caught hell for that.
And they spent how much time trying to spend that.
You didn't build that.
You didn't make that happen.
All the rest of us did.
The government did.
You did.
That's what he really believes.
So on the one hand, you didn't build that.
You didn't make that possible.
We did.
And then in the next breath, he says, work hard, put everything you got into it, and that's how you succeed in America.
You succeed in America with guys like him in office, and you become a target.
You become a suspect.
How did you do it? becomes the question.
And hard work never ends up being an answer, does it?
You got it through some kind of subterfuge.
You succeeded by some kind of cheating or some kind of unfairness or some kind of discrimination.
And that's what the left thinks.
When you've got a candidate for the Senate standing up, pointing to the factory and telling the CEO and the owner and the executives, you didn't build that, and gets a standing ovation.
What do you think those voters think?
You know what percentage of the pie is growing?
I talked about the pie.
There is a section of the pie that's growing, the welfare state, the dependent class, is growing by leaps and bounds.
There's an article today via the Heritage Foundation.
Guess which group is getting food stamps at an alarming rate, is the headline.
Food stamp rolls, as you know, are just growing by leaps and bounds.
We're almost close to 50 million Americans on food stamps, 91 million Americans not working.
The percentages are frightening here.
But what many people may not realize is that participation among able-bodied adults without dependents, that is actually now a government category.
Able-bodied adults without dependence.
For those of you on Riolinda, what that means is healthy adults upon whom nobody is depending.
They have no kids and they're unmarried.
They're simply alone and they're able-bodied.
They're able to get up every day.
They're able to drive.
They're able to walk.
They're not sick.
They're not injured.
They are not disabled.
Able-bodied adults without dependence is the fastest-growing group enrolling in food stamps.
The number of people in that category has been skyrocketing compared to the total number of recipients or participants.
In just four years, the number, four years, Obama's beginning his sixth year now.
In just four years, the number of able-bodied adults without dependence on the food stamp rolls has skyrocketed by over 2 million in just the past two years.
Now, measure that against the number of jobs lost and the number of people that are no longer in the labor force.
And let's remember, too, that Obama is the one who did away with the work requirement for welfare and food benefits.
There was a great reform to welfare that Clinton signed in the 90s.
It was called welfare reform.
And you had to show that you were trying to find work in order to get benefits.
Obama came along and wiped that out.
You don't have to even look for work to get benefits.
You don't have to look for work to get welfare.
It's what Obama said.
It was at Roanoke, Virginia, July 2012.
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me because they want to give something back.
If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own.
You didn't get there on your own.
You didn't build that.
I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.
Well, there are a lot of smart people out there.
It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.
Let me tell you something.
There are a whole lot of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system we have that allowed you to thrive.
Somebody invested in roads and bridges.
If you've got a business, you didn't build that.
Somebody else made that happen.
That's what the president believes.
He doesn't believe in the prescription of hard work equals success.
In that statement, he just puts it down.
He just delegitimizes it.
Cookie find that from our archives.
That was July 2012, Roanoke, Virginia.
Give me the whole thing.
I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was so smart.
A lot of smart people out there.
Well, it must be because I must be because I worked harder than everybody.
Well, let me tell you something.
A lot of hardworking people out there.
That's not what makes the difference.
So you, you know, you little pajama-clad, nothing better-to-do libs sending me hate mail.
Keep it up.
It's good amusement, but you don't know what you're talking about.
This guy does not believe what he's saying today about hard work paying off.
The whole premise of liberalism is that that is a myth.
If you look at the Democrat Party enemies list, it's every successful corporation individual you can think of other than in Hollywood or academia.
Success is impugned.
And worse than that, it's targeted.
After you've done all this hard work, the president says he believes in, and after you become this big success, the president says he believes in, then what happens?
Then you are accused of not paying your fair share.
Then you're accused of not caring about your fellow man.
Then you're accused of being greedy and selfish.
So which is it?
I'm telling you, this at every job summit or at this summit today on college tuition, big whoop, he just utters the syllables about working hard, paying off in America.
Don't believe that.
These are the people that target success stories.
These are the people that try to delegitimize genuine success stories and try to convince as many people as they can that every success story wouldn't have happened if there hadn't been a government program somewhere in the mix that made it all possible.
Don't doubt me.
And before we get back to the phones, one other thing Obama said in Roanoke in July of 2012, that same speech where you didn't build net, and your hard work is not what made you a success because there's a lot of hard workers.
And your smarts didn't make you a success because there's a lot of smart people.
No, it was other people, government programs that made the difference.
He said the internet didn't get invented on its own.
Government research created the internet so that all these companies could make money off of it.
So he even tries to delegitimize whatever's going on on the internet.
It's just a bunch of profiteers, and they didn't even build it.
We did.
The government built it.
Government research built it.
Al Gore built internet.
And you people are profitable.
You didn't do that.
We got it now.
We got the whole thing.
Here it is.
This is Obama.
Listen to it yourself.
July 12th in Roanoke, Virginia.
If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own.
You didn't get there on your own.
I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.
There are a lot of smart people out there.
It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.
Let me tell you something.
There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.
Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we had that allowed you to thrive.
Somebody invested in roads and bridges.
If you've got a business, you didn't build that.
Somebody else made that happen.
The internet didn't get invented on its own.
Government research created the internet so that all the companies could make money off the internet.
He says with great anger and resentment, by the way, so don't tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about when I tell you that when Obama keeps talking about this time-honored tradition of hard work equally success and that we've got to bring that back to America.
He doesn't believe it.
He's simply saying it for public consumption because he knows that people expect that they've elected a president who believes that thing.
He'd be in deep doo-doo.
This was a campaign.
This was, he was in trouble.
Benghazi's going on, all kinds of stuff.
Romney's the Republican convention's coming up.
It was nip and tuck.
They weren't confident at all they were going to win.
He had to come out.
He was shoring up his base in that Roanoke speech.
That's where he was telling people what he really believed.
You can tell me all you want that I don't know what I'm talking about.
But when it comes to liberals and leftists, I am never wrong.
I know them as well as, if not better, than they know themselves.
Here's Sean in New Bern, North Carolina.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Dittos from barely 40-degree man-made global warmed North Carolina rush.
Thank you very much.
You know, I fly over New Bern.
Well, I used to when I would go to New York.
The route was always right over Newburn, North Carolina.
You know, I got my truck revved up to kind of help with the carbon monoxide here so we can warm it up here.
It's freezing in North Carolina.
Is that right?
I'm sorry.
Hey, listen, I wanted to just get to the point about what you're talking about with Christie.
And I think if the Republicans were smart, they would realize this business with Christie and how fast they take him out and how he's the model candidate.
To me, it's really proof positive that you got to stick to your conservative guns.
You got to secure your base and look at Ronald Reagan as the model for doing all that.
I mean, Ronald Reagan had the personality.
He stuck to his guns, his conservative principles, and he didn't let them define him.
He defined them.
And the American people responded to it like nobody's business.
Not since have we had the American people respond to a president, presidential candidate like that.
And you look at it, and you're exactly right.
What they do is when we allow them to define our candidates, that means they hold all the cards and they build them up as they did McCain over the years.
I knew if I stuck with you long enough, you'd swerve into the truth.
If you let the media make you, the media can destroy you.
If you let them make you, they can break you.
And if you try, if you're a Republican and you try to cultivate media love and support, they're eventually going to turn on you because you are not them.
You are not a Democrat.
You are not a leftist, no matter what you say, no matter what you do.
You got an R next to your name on a ballot.
You are going down.
Doesn't matter what you've said and what you believe and whether or not you've made them like you.
You are going down.
Now, as to why don't the Republicans learn from the Reagan example, you should know, if you don't, we've mentioned it numerous times here, so I'm sorry to be redundant.
But even during the Reagan era, the Republican establishment was not supportive.
Privately, they were not happy with what was going on.
And the first moment they had after Reagan left office to start sweeping all that away, they took it.
They are not conservative.
They haven't been conservative, the Republican establishment, for a long time, and they don't intend to be.
And that's that.
And we'll be back.
Passed us three hours in media.
Two of them are already in the can, ladies and gentlemen.
And we've got one big, exciting, busy broadcast hour remaining with lots of stuff, including pot in the NFL.
What are they going to do?
It's illegal.
And yet it is legal in two states.
▲
Export Selection