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Jan. 30, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:37
January 30, 2014, Thursday, Hour #2
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Hi, folks.
Welcome back.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
And we are into our 26th year of action.
Obama just started his first.
Well, at the state of the coup speech, he said, let's make this a year of action.
Well, it's a day late, a dollar short, because we are into our 26th year of action.
Great to have you.
Your phone calls are coming up at 800-282-2882.
Okay, now finished with the analysis of where the electoral determinants are.
And of course, this is just late January.
Anything can change.
And the big thing that could wipe all of this out is the one issue that could make Republicans stay home.
And that would be if the House Republican leadership pushes forward with any kind of immigration reform.
There is no reason that any Republican voter can be made to understand why we have to do this.
And yet, the Republican leadership since hellbent seems to have been on getting this done.
It's the end of the Republican Party.
There's no, that's not even arguable.
All you have to do is look at California and what's happened to the Republican Party there since the last time we did amnesty, which was Simpson Mazzoli, 86, 87, and you see what will happen.
I mean, it makes when you flood the country with millions of people who are pre destined to vote Democrat in a vast majority sense, who are inexperienced and low wage, what in the world is going to happen?
When you bring in that many or legalize that many and you've given up on your assimilation, the assimilation aspect of immigration, then you have balkanization that takes place.
There's no evidence that this works.
There's no evidence that this benefits the Republican Party.
So people looking at this and they're just scratching their heads.
And that's why people come up with explanations for it, such as, well, these guys have been in the house for all these years and they make their annual salary and that's it.
But when they leave, if they do the Chamber of Commerce's bidding on this, maybe they'll get a great, great, long-term, high-paying gig in a Chamber of Commerce-related business.
Or maybe a lobbying company will hire.
Maybe a donor will hire them at some point if they do this.
That's why people start coming up with explanations like that.
And what those people that assume things like that are actually saying is that the Republicans in the House leadership would sell out the party and the country for their own personal gain.
That's pretty damning.
That would be a serious charge if somebody actually publicly made it.
I'm not.
I'm just repeating to you what I've heard from people who believe there has to be a logical explanation for this, and the logic isn't found in the politics of it.
So what is it?
Well, here's where we are.
Reset the table.
The Democrats have given up Courtney Politico, late January, subject to change, where we are today.
It's real, by the way.
I think people of this country are so fed up.
Status quotes.
Not that they're fed up with Democrats.
That'd be great if they were.
I'm not even going there.
They're just fed up with Washington, with government.
It isn't working on the thing that is, in many people's lives, the most important thing in the world to them, and that's their health care and their health insurance and not going bankrupt and not losing everything.
And Washington doesn't get that.
They're not connected to these people.
They use them, they exploit them, they take their votes, and they promise them all these things and lie to them.
And that bond has been really, really severed here.
But it's not because the Republicans have done anything.
They haven't done anything that's attracting these people.
This is a total anti-vote if it happens.
If the election were today and it happened the way it's expected, it'd be a total anti-vote like 2010 was.
So, in the midst of that, why in the world would you sabotage that?
Why would you do something guaranteed to keep your voters home?
Well, the only logical political explanation is that the Republican establishment is willing to get rid of the Tea Party as voters, as members, and conservatives, and willing to live in the wilderness for how many number of years necessary to reassemble a coalition that is made up of moderates.
And particularly these guys who, when this is all over, are going to be okay job-wise after they're not re-elected, after they're defeated, primarily or what have you.
And that is a legitimate political possibility, too.
You know as well as I do that the Republican establishment is not enamored of conservatives in the Tea Party.
And the Republican consultant class doesn't like them.
And whoever, Palin, Cruz, Mike Lee, don't like them, don't like the voters.
And if this can sever them from the Republican Party, that's the only logical political explanation for it.
It still doesn't compute.
Mickey Kaus has a piece today at the Daily Caller.
And this is about the Republicans, who, by the way, if you're just joining us, Paul Ryan and Rince Priebus and the spokesman, the communications director for the RNC, Sean Spicer, appeared this week on MSNBC to tout immigration.
I'm sure they know that MSNBC is under a ban on this program.
No, we don't play anything from MSNBC.
A way to be under the radar.
It's a way to curry favor with Democrat voters.
I know.
If it doesn't compute, don't blame yourself.
Now, we've got those soundbites coming up, but Mickey Kaus, he goes back and forth, centrist guy, leans left, but is sensible now and then.
He's got a piece at Daily Caller about the Republicans and their pursuit of immigration reforms.
Is this the best scam they can come up with?
Immigration reform watchers have been waiting to see how the GOP leadership tries to package legislation to trick anti-amnesty conservatives into voting for what in essence is amnesty.
Curiosity grew after House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatt gave the impression the leaders were prepping some sort of enforcement first approach, or at least preparing to pretend that they were proposing an enforcement first approach.
If we can have a way to get immigration enforcement up and operating, I see no reason why we can't also have an agreement that shows how people who are not lawfully here can be able to be lawfully here.
That's one of the Republican leaders speaking.
Now, the problem for Republican lobbyists, whose clients would deeply appreciate the surge of cheap labor an immigration bill could provide, the problem for Republican lobbyists is that the Democrats will not agree to any legislation that requires enforcement measures, meaning securing the border.
The Democrats will not agree to any bill that actually requires securing the border, like an E-Verify employment check or a system to catch visa overstayers or a fence or anything.
They will not agree to any bill that requires those measures to be up and running before legalization.
The Republicans are saying, we're going to do amnesty, but not at first.
We're going to shore up the border.
We're going to legalize the people here, but not citizenship.
They can't vote.
And Kaus is saying, and Democrats are never going to support that.
That's not what they want.
They want legalization now for two reasons, to please their constituents and to allow them leverage against enforcement later, once legalization has been pocketed.
So asks Mickey Kaus, how were Boehner and company going to sell legal status first as an enforcement first plan?
And now we know, he writes, by pretending that legal status isn't legal status.
And he said, this is so pathetic.
This is something not even the famously deceptive Senate gang of eight ever tried.
According to Paul Ryan, illegal immigrants would at first get probationary status along with a work permit.
They could come out of the shadows and live and work here.
And then, if measures are taken so that the border is secured, then they would get a regular work permit.
The idea, according to Greg Sargent, well-known leftist at the Washington Post, seems to be that undocumented illegals will be allowed to work on probation while the border is being secured, but they will not enjoy legal status.
And all that means is they can't vote.
And that's all that matters to the Democrats and maybe the Republicans, but really not at first.
The Republicans are really trying to satisfy the Chamber of Commerce and their donors.
That's what the Democrats want the voters.
The Republicans want their donors to keep donating the money.
So if the idea seems to be that the undocumented to be allowed to work on probation while the border is being secured, but will not enjoy legal status, Democrats saying, why?
Why not?
And the answer is apparently because their probationary permits might not be permanent.
The immigrants could be kicked off of probationary status if certain security benchmarks aren't met.
And Kaus says, this is a joke.
This is never going to happen.
Who do they think that they are fooling with this?
He said, the first thing that isn't going to happen is secure the borders.
It's not going to happen while we've got 12 million or whatever on probation.
Hey, 12 million, come out of the shadows.
We're here.
You're here.
We love you.
There's a job over there.
There's a job over there for you.
You can do anything, but you can't vote.
Meanwhile, while you come out of shadows, we're going to go down and we're going to build a fence, secure the borders or whatever.
But while we're doing that, you can't do anything but work and pay taxes.
And by the way, if you do something that makes us mad, we could revoke your probationary permit.
You could be kicked off if certain benchmarks for shoring up the border aren't met.
And people say, come on, that's never going to happen.
In the first place, the reason going to happen is because nobody wants that.
That is language in there to appease somebody.
That language is to appease the Tea Party.
That language is to appease you.
It's language designed to appease everybody who opposes this.
Because they're trying to convince you that you're worried about these people coming and flooding the voter rolls with Democrat votes and voting.
And that is not going to happen.
And everybody and their uncle says, oh, yes, it will.
Because the reason why this doesn't pass a smell test is Chuck Schumer.
I mean, it's real simple.
We do all of this as it's drawn up, and within two hours, Chuck Schumer's going to find a camera, maybe less than that.
And he's going to start talking about what he wasn't told and how inhumane this is.
Do you mean to tell me that we're going to welcome these wonderful, great, real Americans out of the shadows?
And we're going to tell them to go do dirt work that nobody really wants to do.
And we're going to tell them they got to pay taxes and they can't vote.
That is unacceptable.
And the move will be on legislation to get rid of that probationary status and turn them into voters.
And nobody's going to vote that down.
And Kaus's point is, this, of course, is what's going to happen.
And he's asking, why don't the Republicans know people see through this?
The headline, is this the best scam they come up with?
He's asking the Republicans, do they not understand how transparent their plan is?
So Kaus says this is a joke.
A, four reasons here.
Anything that allows formerly illegal immigrants to be able to be lawfully here is legal status.
You call it probationary or whatever you want to call it, but it's legal status.
If you are going to take them from illegal to legal, you bring them out of the shadows, they are legal.
You've just granted amnesty.
No matter what you say and no matter how you try to calculate it, you've just granted amnesty.
And he says that the Ryan plan gives this legal status the ability to live and work here instantly, rewarding people who immigrated illegally with the main thing they were after, and that is legal status.
And by that example, more people, more illegal immigration would be encouraged because future illegals in waiting would see what happened.
They would see that after a certain passage of time, they're going to be made legal too.
So it's not going to shut down illegal immigration like the amnesty people tell us.
And just like we were told after Simpson Mazzoli, we got to do this and this will stop it.
Ted Kennedy, remember?
We won't have this problem anymore if we do this now.
And they're saying that now.
The second thing, nobody is going to re-illegalize previously legalized illegals.
It's a tongue twister.
But what he's saying here is, okay, we bring them out of status, out of shadows, and we make them legal.
But then we say, if we don't secure the border, if there's something goes wrong there, then you're going to go back to being illegal.
He's like, that's not going to happen.
Who are we lying to?
Who are we kidding?
Nobody is going to re-illegalize people that have been legalized if border security goals are not met.
How's that going to happen?
We can't even run a website for healthcare.
How in the world is any of this going to happen?
We're going to legalize them, and then they can't vote, can't become citizens until we soar up the border.
But if something goes wrong there, then we're going to re-illegalize them.
And thinking is, is this never going to happen?
This idea, Kaus writes, is so bad that there is zero chance the provision would even make it into final legislation after House-Senate negotiations.
The entire purpose of Paul Ryan's exploding cigar legalization provision is to give House conservatives a reason to say immediate legal status isn't really immediate legal status.
And that's why he said, do these people not, do they really think conservative Tea Party people are this dumb that they're not going to see this for what it is?
That's the purpose of Kaus's piece, then if I sum it up.
And then the third thing, even if you accept, nope, break time.
Just saw the clock be right back.
Third thing coming up.
Don't go away.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome back.
I'm going to get your phone calls in the next segment, I promise.
Here is the third thing.
Even if you accept all of these terms, Paul Ryan's plan does not satisfy the promise of Bob Goodlatt since it allows illegals to be lawfully here before enforcement measures are up and running.
See, Goodlatt's out there trying to tell everybody, don't worry, we're not going to legalize anybody until we secured the border.
No, the plan legalizes people while we secured the border and then claims if something goes wrong with that, then we will re-illegalize them before they are able to vote.
And Kaus says, really, is this the best that they could come up with?
I'm beginning to worry about the lack of ingenuity among America's skilled legislative con artists.
Maybe we need to import some better ones from abroad, like a guest lobbyist program on an H-1K visa.
Get some people in here who know how to run a scam.
Nikki Kaus in the Daily Call, he said, what's wrong with a straight enforcement first, legalization second approach anyway?
The undocumented have been waiting in the shadows for 25 years.
They can wait five more while we implement a few measures to prevent another surge of additional undocumenteds after this.
Why the need to do it now?
He's asked.
And the answer, of course, is right a C of C.
It appears, anyway.
What's in the public domain is the reason we got to do it now is a Chamber of Congress.
Our old buddy Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation last summer wrote a report, issued a report, published a report, made the point that if you take a body of 11 million immigrants who have an average education of 10th grade, and these are statistical numbers.
Nobody's insulting anybody here.
Just calm down.
But that's basically what we're talking about by definition.
And even that may be somewhat charitable, but we'll stick with it.
If you take a body, 11, 12 million immigrants who have an average education of 10th grade, and you give them access to 80 different means-tested welfare programs, including Obamacare, Social Security, and Medicare.
Who is going to pay for that?
There is polling data that shows overwhelming majority of such arrivals are not here to join the Tea Party.
They believe in big government.
They believe in command and control government over their lives.
It's just what they believe.
You throw this group of people into the mix with no assimilation and immediate access.
And what have you?
You're overwhelming a system that's already incapable of fulfilling its original purpose and charter.
Now, I don't want to misunderstand.
I'm not thinking that Kaus here has nailed it.
I just wanted to share with you a take on this that I found humorous in parts, but interesting.
I guess my quibble with Kaus would be that this was only meant to be a fig leaf and not a scam.
Immigration itself is the scam.
It's the mother of all.
Amnesty is the mother of all scams.
But this securing the border talk is just a fig leaf that enables the real scam.
The scam is not the strategy.
That's my quibble with what Kaus said.
He's laughing at the strategy.
He's saying, can't they come up with a better way to light up?
Can they come up with a better way to scam us?
Can't they come up with a better plan that'll fool people?
Where's Bill Clinton when we need him?
That's what Kaus is asking.
And so I don't think their strategy is the scam.
Amnesty is the scam.
The substance of this is the scam, not the strategy.
That would be my quibble with Kaus's take.
But to each his own, let's go to the audio soundbotes.
Again, this is MSNBC.
Programming on MSNBC is under a ban established by me.
We do not air anything that happens on that network.
And we haven't for well over a year.
And in the time, I must remind you, in the time since I imposed the ban, their numbers have tanked.
And so has CNN numbers tanked.
You know what Larry King said about, see, Larry King was being interviewed by somebody at the Huffing and Puffington Post.
And Larry King said, yeah, they got real trouble.
What they ought to do is just run SpongeBob all day and break in for important breaking news.
He did.
He said it, his attempted humor.
This runs SpongeBob SquarePants all day.
They do just as well running a cartoon because what they're doing now is a cartoon.
Just go ahead and run SpongeBob SquarePants.
And then when there's a fire or something, break in.
And then after saying that, he then had to launch into an attack on Fox.
He says, yeah, I know Fox is killing it, and I know Ailes, and I like Ailes, but come on, fair and balanced.
You're trying to tell me that their objective, I mean, this network hires former consultants for political campaigns.
And what do you think MSNBC, NBC, ABC, and CBS do?
They don't just hire the consultants, they hire ex-candidates, ex-office holders.
They hire spouses of all these people.
Anyway, Paul Ryan was on MSNBC yesterday.
Chuck Todd interviewed him on the daily rundown.
Now, I don't know why he went there.
It could well be.
Snurdley thinks they went there because I've got the ban and they don't think that I would play audio of them on MSNBC.
You think that is that?
I don't know.
I think there's a different, I think they, remember, what are the Republicans obsessed with?
At least outwardly.
They appear to be obsessed with Democrats liking them.
They appear to be obsessed with Democrat voters not thinking they're whatever.
So they're going here on a Democrat network and saying, hey, look at us.
We agree with you on something.
We're all for what you're for.
We're just harmless, lovable people.
Anyway, F. Chuck Todd said, let's start with the early report that says the plan that you guys are going to push will have a pathway to legalization, but not citizenship.
Is that how you understand it?
That's right, but it also involved basically a probationary kind of a status to make sure that a person is not rewarding for having broken our laws and not preferenced over people who did follow the laws, meaning legal immigrants.
But is citizenship eventually on the table?
No, no, I'm saying what I'm trying to say is you've got to make sure that this isn't an amnesty.
We want a system where you can come out of the shadows, you can get a work permit, and you can be on probation and you have to satisfy the terms of your probation while the border is getting secured.
Okay, we just dealt with this.
I just gave you the, I mean, every detail you could possibly need to know about this.
And you just heard it confirmed here.
So it's not amnesty.
No, no, no, no.
And what we want to do here will make sure that a person is not rewarded for having broken our laws, but they will be.
They're going to be here and they're not going to be in the shadows.
They're going to be legalized.
But they're not going to have citizenship.
And that means it is an amnesty.
We want a system where you can come out of the shadows, you get a work permit.
This is where Chuck Schumer comes in an hour later and starts beating these Republicans up.
Oh, yeah, you want to go out there and work their fingers to the bone, sweat themselves into dehydration, picking fruit and all these other vegetables that your people won't do and Americans won't do.
And they get sick and they die and there's no health care and they can't vote no way.
And they'll be tarred and feathered as hating the illegal immigrants or the newly legalized immigrants even then.
Next up was Rentz Priebus or Reince Priebus.
And this is yesterday on Morning Joe on the MSNBC.
And he's talking with John Heileman, who's an author and a liberal Democrat, disguised as a journalist.
Heileman said, where do you come in at the political wisdom of getting this done in the course of the next 10 months?
I think you have general consensus that something big has to happen.
There's a commitment among the most conservative members of our party and the most moderate members of our party that it's something that we have to get serious about.
And I think you're seeing that.
What did I miss?
There's a commitment among the most conservative members of the party.
We got to do this, get serious.
Well, okay, if you just put a period there, you know, get serious could mean let go of it.
You know, forget it.
Reince Priebus, by the way, appeared on MSNBC yesterday and then promptly issued his own ban.
He suggested that no Republican go on MSNBC because they issued a tweet making fun of Republicans because Cheerios has a biracial Super Bowl commercial, a biracial family eating Cheerios.
MSNBC tweeted that the conservatives wouldn't like that.
They'd be really bothered by it.
And Reince Priebus says, okay, we're not going on MSNBC anymore.
You guys can't make it.
MSNBC pulled back to tweet, but Reince Priebus' ban is still there.
But he got in before his own ban.
And I am lifting my ban to play these guys on MSNBC.
There's a temporary lifting of the ban.
Don't get used to this.
You'll note, you're not hearing any MSNBC people in these bites.
Final one.
Tuesday afternoon, MSNBC Live, Craig Melvin interviewed the RNC communications director, Sean Spicer.
Question: We're hearing the statement of principles unveiled later this week is going to call for a path, a path to legal status, not citizenship, for any of the 11 million or so adult immigrants in the country illegally.
How do you expect that particular part of the plan itself to help you with Latino voters?
Part of what this last few years have done is allowed us to have a conversation with different constituencies as far as what's in the best interest of the country.
This is not always about scoring political points.
It's trying to figure out what the best policies are for our country so that we secure our borders and we don't end up with a problem like we had back in the 80s where we granted amnesty and then trying to put a comprehensive plan together that ensures our border is secure and that recognizes the fact that we have a lot of folks that are here in this country illegally.
Okay, that is the head of the RNC.
He's the communications director.
Republican National Committee is basically saying, it's not about politics, we're doing this for our country and we secure the borders so we don't end up with a problem like we had back in the 80s when we granted amnesty.
But we're still back here again.
If we secure the borders, this will never happen again.
On Msnbc I wonder, nah, i'll wonder silently.
Your calls are coming next.
Don't go away okay Boise, Idaho.
We start on the phones.
James, thank you very much for waiting.
It's great to have you.
Hi, it's an honor to speak to you, listen to you for years and years.
Before I get to my point, can I just ask you a favor, untie half of the brain that's behind your back.
Quit playing fair.
You know we need you to.
You know.
You know, give everything you Guy, because they don't play fair.
Why should you?
Well, I understand the point, but it would really, it would be so unfair if I did that that it might even bother you.
Well, my question was, from when you're talking in the first segment about how the Republicans will be able to be re-elected, it's because of what the Democrats are doing.
My fear is it'll be similar to the 2012 presidential election where, you know, everything looked good for Romney.
You know, Obama had all these fell policies.
He's still blaming Bush.
A lot of people stayed home and he didn't win.
Well, he didn't vote for the public.
I understand the thinking here.
What James is saying here, folks, is he's been here since the beginning of the show.
And the first thing we did in the show today was a politico story about how the Republicans, the Democrats, have given up trying to win the House.
It's so bad.
And Henry Nostrilitis Waxman has announced his retirement.
He's getting out.
So bad, no prayer.
And it's so bad that they are doing everything they can.
Donors and strategists are marshaling their forces to hold the Senate.
Now, James, I'm just going to tell you that I understand you think that this is a trick, trying to get us to feel optimistic and let down our guard.
A, it's not possible to make our side optimistic.
I think we're too jaundiced.
I think we're too suspicious.
I think we are too experienced.
We're not going to fall for something as transparent as believing this is going to happen simply because the politico says it.
The 4 million people that stayed home in 2012, the Republicans that didn't vote, didn't stay home because they thought it was in the bag.
They didn't stay home because they thought the media had rigged the polls.
They didn't stay home because they thought their votes weren't needed.
They stayed home because they were angry at the Republican Party for nominating another Northeastern moderate.
And that's why they say they're tired of giving them money.
They're just tired of the Republican Party not doing the best they could do to win.
Now, I understand every time we get a story in the drive-by media about how the fortunes of the Democrat Party all of a sudden don't look so good, you get suspicious.
And you think that we're being tricked.
The media is trying to lull us into a false sense of security.
And I'm telling you, would it work on you?
I don't think where the Republican Party is concerned, you're capable of being optimistic, frankly.
I think all of us are too suspicious.
None of us are just going to sit around and let something happen here because the Politico has a story that the Democrats are in trouble.
What we're going to be asked, why don't the Republicans get in gear and really cement it?
I understand the trepidation here, but I just, when I say not capable of optimism about this, I'm simply saying I don't think there's that much faith.
People don't think our side doesn't think things can happen without them being involved.
I know that the Tea Party is the Tea Party.
They can sit home no matter what the Politico says.
The Tea Party, they're going to sit at home and, oh, man, it's in the bag.
You see what Politico said?
Democrats are giving up on the house.
It's not going to fool anybody.
Who's next?
Let's see.
Efren, Cortez, Colorado.
Great to have you, sir.
Hello.
Thank you, Brush.
Thanks for asking me on.
Well, welcome, sir.
I just want to get something off my chest.
You know, I used to be a victim of Democratic talking points, I guess you could say, where I grew up thinking that I am poor and that I really can't make it without them.
And to see this immigration thing go through, and all they're going to see on the media is what I grew up with.
Yeah, which is that you can't do it without help.
You can't do it without a guiding hand from an elected official or a government, right?
Right, exactly.
And, you know, I'm proof that it can happen.
I'm a conservative, not a Republican, and hard work does pay off.
I don't need somebody to tell me, hey, you can't do it without me.
Would you describe yourself as self-reliant?
Yes, sir.
Absolutely.
Well, when did this transformation in you take place?
When I was a teenager, and I actually, well, like most people, stumbled across you because throughout any other type of media, there's no such thing as conservative talking.
And so when I stumbled across you, I was like, whoa, no way.
That's what I think.
That's how I feel.
And so, you know, it kind of made me see a lot of things that I was thinking.
And that, you know, that was great.
So you had your instincts, and then you found a radio show that validated them.
You had somebody on the radio that was saying things that you thought were true, that were right.
And it gave you confidence to believe in yourself.
That's how it works, folks.
Exactly.
Efren, that is, that is fabulous.
Ephraim, hang on, Ephraim.
Let us just hang on.
Don't go away.
I got to take a break here, folks.
Sit tight.
Be right back.
I gave Ephraim an iPad mini with retina display, and I didn't have time to ask him on the air, so Snurdy did it.
And that's what had me a little tongue-tied.
I was trying to figure out if I could squeeze that in in the remaining seconds, and I couldn't.
Anyway, we got a break here to the top of the hour.
I want you to sit tight.
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