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Feb. 3, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:43
February 3, 2014, Monday, Hour #2
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And you are tuned to the most listened-to radio talk show in the country.
This is the award-winning, thrill-packed, ever-exciting, increasingly popular, and still growing by leaps and bounds, Rush Limbaugh program.
Now into our 26th big year of broadcast service, the EIB network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, and the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
Let me see, what is this?
Deadspin, deadline.com.
Super Bowl ratings down double digits from 2013, still in top five ever despite blowout.
Those are the overnights.
You just wait.
This is going to be even worse than they think.
Because it was just...
Look, I...
I can't.
You ever felt handcuffed?
I feel handcuffed.
There's just things I can't say.
You're supposed to trust me.
It would make no sense to say them.
And the longer I himhaw about it, the more you're just going to get frustrated.
And so I'm just going to back off.
And let's just stick now with other things that have happened.
Because you know how I feel about it.
It was a downer.
It was a disappointment.
It was.
I have no idea how the commissioner felt about it.
I assume they are like most people living in a bubble.
Oh, it was wonderful.
It was great.
It was a Super Bowl.
Hey, New York, 50 degrees.
Hey, we pulled it off.
Hey, it was wonderful.
I have no idea.
Nothing the commissioner could do about this.
No waving a magic wand that could address the things I found disappointing and downerish about it.
Folks, let me just get to this theory here.
I've teased you enough with this.
Let me explain to you what this is.
And I'm going to give you the – there are many sources for this.
I first came across this sometime during the day on Saturday.
I'm doing a little show prep because I figure once Sunday and Super Bowl comes around, I'm not going to be doing any show prep.
So I was getting some stuff done on Saturday, and I ran across in a blog a reference to some other blogger who thinks that the Republicans are doing what they're doing with immigration because they really don't want to win or they don't want to win in a landslide.
But the blogger that made that reference had no details.
So what is this?
So I had to hunt it down.
I had to start using search algorithm rhythms.
And I came across a piece at Real Clear Politics by a young man named Sean Trend or Trendy.
It's the word trend with an E on the end.
I've not heard it pronounced.
I don't know how he pronounces it.
So it's Trend or Trendy or Trende.
I hope I've gotten it right in one of those attempts.
And he has a very, very lengthy piece at Real Clear Politics on this.
And point five here is Republicans are afraid of winning.
And I read this, and it dovetails with a couple, maybe three other places.
Here, in a nutshell, is the thinking.
And the thinking, by the way, derives from people who can't make head nor tails of the Republican strategy.
And they think it makes so little sense that there's got to be some conspiratorial reason.
There has to be some hidden reason that we wouldn't figure out immediately to explain this because it doesn't make any sense.
When, in fact, the simplest and most easily understood explanation is probably the reason.
But since that's so unacceptable, people have had to search and come up with theories to explain this.
And again, it's why are the Republicans committing suicide?
Why are they advancing an issue that otherwise is dead?
Why are they advancing an issue that the base of their party opposes virulently?
Why are they advancing an issue that only 3% of the population deems important right now, given everything else going on?
And this is amnesty or pathway to citizenship or comprehensive immigration reform.
Why are they doing it?
And the simple answer is that moneyed Republican donors, as epitomized by the Chamber of Commerce, are demanding it.
And money is the mother's milk of politics.
And these donors are saying, if you want our money, and further, if you want a high-paying job with my trade association when your career is over in Congress, then you'll give me this.
And that's the simple explanation.
They're simply responding to the money people.
But that's not good enough for some.
It's gap can't be that.
They wouldn't be willing to commit suicide.
Well, they're not.
The people that are going to score with high-paying jobs after doing this are not committing suicide.
They are, in effect, greasing their skids.
The party ends up having suicide committed for it.
But because the simple and most logical explanation doesn't fly, theories have been concocted to explain it.
And so here it is.
Go back to 2010.
Big Republican landslide win.
Brought on by who?
Tea Party.
2010, the Tea Party comes to life out of nowhere.
Nobody saw it.
When it was happening, nobody knew what it was.
When it was growing, nobody knew how to define it because there wasn't a single leader.
There wasn't a headquarters.
There wasn't a policy statement, position paper, anything like that.
It was just mom and pop showing up at town halls, and they were upset about Obama.
They were upset about all of the spending, stimulus bill, and everything.
They were upset about the rising level of debt and what that meant for them and their kids and grandkids.
They saw an unresponsive political class in Washington.
They didn't see an opposition party in the Republican Party.
They didn't see anybody trying to stop Obama.
They saw a party paralyzed by media criticism.
They saw a party paralyzed by the president's race.
So they, for the first time in their lives, got involved in organizational politics.
And as a result, the Republicans picked up 50-some odd seats when they weren't even trying to.
And a lot of those new seats were held by people from this new so-called Tea Party.
And they were real conservative Republicans.
And the Republican leadership, the Republican establishment, was not happy, it turns out.
I mean, they liked winning, they liked getting the House back, but they didn't like the fact that the reason for it was the Tea Party.
And the 2010 midterms, if you go back and look, that happened not because the Republicans put forth any ideas.
I mean, there wasn't a contract with America people could vote for.
There wasn't a single person on the ballot people could vote for.
That was strictly an anti-status quo election.
It was people voting.
I mean, they were rising up in opposition to Barack Obama.
They were rising up in righteous anger to the Democrat Party.
And I should have seen then, and I, well, I did, but I should have put two and two together a lot faster.
Here you have brand new people in politics, never before involved in organizational.
Yeah, they'd voted, but they hadn't participated in get out the vote.
They had not participated in voter registration drives.
They hadn't done anything but vote.
Now all of a sudden they're organized.
Here's a massive new bunch of people, and they exist solely because of Barack Obama.
It would seem to me an automatic matchup for these people with the Republican Party.
And therefore, it would make sense to me if the Republican Party began outreach to them, try to bring them into the fold and make them Republicans.
That didn't happen.
In fact, just the opposite happened.
As the Democrats mounted their criticism and began calling them teabaggers, the Republicans themselves expressed suspicion and consternation and anger with these people for one reason or another.
And so they remained isolated, even though they were the sole reason there was any pushback against Barack Obama.
Well, the theory begins with the notion the Republicans do not want that happening again because the Republicans are trying to get rid of the Tea Party influence within the party.
Because the Tea Party doesn't understand the role of government in politics or in people's lives.
The Republican establishment right now happens to believe that the game is over in terms of big government being involved in people's lives.
Some very astute, well, not astute, some intellectual Republican theorists, commentators, writers, journalists really believe that the debate over big and small government is over and that big government has won.
And they believe that the vast majority of American people want a big government.
Therefore, the Republican establishment believes that their future success is tied to convincing Americans who want an active involved government that they are better at running such a government than the Democrats are.
But at no point and at no time are Republicans to talk about limiting government or reducing it because standard operating procedure today, Republican establishment, Democrat establishment, is that you and the low-information crowd and whoever else, Americans have accepted and want an actively involved big government in their lives.
The Tea Party is devoted to the exact opposite premise.
And therefore, the Tea Party is a problem.
And so, therefore, are conservatives a problem, because conservatives and the Tea Party, to the extent that they differ, are now the old-fashioned fuddy-duddies out of touch and out of tune with the mainstream of America.
So goes the thinking, which again has bought the notion that Americans by large majorities want an active, big government with a strong executive, but doing it smartly and wisely and with the proper respect on limits.
And that is how they are trying to differentiate themselves from the Democrats.
So now if you come forward to 2014, the polling data is such, I mean, when Henry Nostrilitis Waxman announces his retirement, when Pelosi alludes to it and then has to call it back, which she did last week, no, you misunderstood me.
I'm going to be here, she said.
George Miller, another congressman from California who has been there since before the Sandinista days, George Miller was the Sandinistas' liaison in Congress.
George Miller was the liaison of communists in Nicaragua.
Well, wherever he could find them.
George Miller is resigning.
A bunch of Democrats who do not want to be in the House if they're not running it are retiring.
So it tells us that the Democrats' own polling data is such that it's lost in 2014.
The House, the Democrats don't have a prayer getting it back.
And in fact, same polling data shows that the Republicans could win the Senate.
But let's stick with the House because the theory is that it's so bad for the Democrats that the Republicans are, again, going to win by default simply because they're not the Democrats, because they didn't have anything to do with Obamacare, because they hold no responsibility for anything that's happened because they just haven't.
I mean, there's no way you can put Republican fingerprints on anything because the media has spent the last five or six years bashing the Republicans for not helping and for not doing anything constructive and not helping the president.
There's no way you can turn around now on a dime and do a 180 and blame any of this on the Republic.
Now, Obama's tried to get their fingerprints on stuff with tricks on debt ceiling increases and so forth, but there aren't any until you get to amnesty.
And then that's being set up that if that happens, that's going to be only the Republican fingerprints.
That's going to be the only owners of it will be the Republicans.
Now, theory holds that the Republicans were not happy with what happened in 2010 because of who made that majority possible, who made that landslide policy, and they don't want to go through it again.
They're trying, you know this is true.
Republican leadership is trying to get rid of Tea Party influence in the House, trying to get rid of conservative influence, trying to get rid of anybody who believes government should be limited.
They're trying to get rid of anybody who believes roller government should be rolled back.
So, reading now from Mr. Trend, Trende, Trenda, Trendee.
In the course of my musings on Twitter, Amish dude, another blogger, Twitterer, suggested that the real motive here is that GOP leadership is actually concerned about the implications of a landslide win.
Of all the suggestions put out there, this seems to make the most sense and synthesizes the above theories reasonably well while addressing most of my pushbacks on them.
The idea is twofold.
First, a landslide would present as much of a problem for the Republicans as it does an opportunity for those who might want to revisit the issue in 2015.
Oh, that's another.
If there is a landslide for the Republicans brought on by the Tea Party in 2014, it's not good for people like Christie and others who want the Republican nomination in 2016.
If the Tea Party delivers another landslide, then the Republican establishment is in deeper trouble when it comes time to nominate their presidential candidate because the Tea Party is going to demand one of them, a conservative, limited government, roll it back.
So the theory is the Republicans will do anything to limit the power and influence of the Tea Party, including championing an issue that's designed to make them so mad they don't vote in 2014.
And that the Republicans' position is so strong that they can still win the midterms while ticking off the Tea Party.
And the best of all worlds would be if the Republicans hold the House minus Tea Party votes by passing amnesty.
They get their money from the chamber.
They get to say they've run out and bridged the gap to the Hispanics.
And they get their high-paying jobs with the chamber and its companies and related businesses when they retire.
And the Tea Party has no influence in the win, and therefore no influence when we get to 2016 and presidential nominee time.
Nah.
Oh, yeah. Good job, too.
God, just know.
Oh, wow.
Now, I haven't finished in this theory business, and I'm not going to be able to in this segment.
And I'm going to start taking phone calls before I wrap up the theory presentation, just because I don't want to lose the calls.
They're good, and people have been waiting for a long time on us.
I've got to get it in.
So just sit tight.
There's not that much more to go on this.
I mean, you basically heard everything except what I think of it.
And what are the two glaring things wrong with it?
Who in the world ever plans to run a prevent offense?
Have you ever heard of anybody trying to win a squeaker in politics?
There's simply too much that cannot be accounted for.
Yeah, we want to win, but we don't want to win by 10 or 12%.
We only want to win by 2% or 3%.
How do you do that?
The second thing, you really gonna bank on the fact that polling data now shows you a landslide win, and you're going to start implementing a policy that you know is going to cut the rug out of your support by 20 or 30%.
You really going to do that kind of thing?
Oh, I just, I don't know anybody who ever plans to win a political contest by a squeaker.
All right, folks, we be going to get back to the theory discussion here in mere moments.
But I want to get to the phones.
We'll start in Yakima, Washington.
This is Ron.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Yes, sir.
Longtime listener, longtime Seattle fan.
Well, it's great to have you on the program.
You know, I know what Yakima, well, I don't know what all, but I know one thing Yakima is famous for.
Yakima, Washington.
You may find this fascinating.
Yakima, Washington was the first city in the entire country where the 90-gallon trash can on wheels was tested for sanitation purposes.
It happened in 1984, 1985.
And because it was deemed a success there, they were big enough for dumpster diving, but big enough to handle the usual house load full of garbage.
You get it out to the truck.
And that's why they've been popularized all over the country.
Yakima, Washington, for the 90-gallon on-wheels, the gray plastic things, trash cans.
So congratulations.
Well, thanks.
So what's up?
You're a Seahawks fan.
Seahawks fan.
Like to talk about O'Reilly first, if I could?
Oh, yeah, whatever.
Well, you know, to me, Super Bowl Sunday is football, food, and fun.
O'Reilly, I think, is a little arrogant.
He's got his show five days a week.
Right.
Sells his shirt, sells his pins.
That's fine.
I can tune out or tune in.
But I don't want him on Super Bowl Sunday interviewing the president who just had a State of the Union message, so he had his chance to speak.
Well, let me give you a little history because it's not by any means unusual.
And it's something that every network, when it's its turn to televise the Super Bowl, does.
NBC has it.
Normally, it would be somebody like Tim Russert or their Meet the Press host.
Maybe their political guy who would interview the president.
CBS does it.
It would be Bob Schaefer or somebody.
When it's Fox's turn, I mean, they don't have a news division, so you got to go to Fox News Channel.
And they went to Obaxter, and so he got the interview.
And it's not unique to Fox, a presidential interview.
It's not unique to Obama to appear on one.
My only thing is that in this case, we have to be honest about this.
Obaxter, O'Reilly asked Obama some questions he's not been asked before.
In fact, the AP, the Associated Press, accused Obax accused, I feel like Dr. Strangelove, and I can't get that right arm down.
The AP accused O'Reilly of asking Republican questions.
They were about Benghazi.
They were about the disastrous health care rollout and the website.
They were questions that should have been asked a long time ago.
The only problem, and I think this is what you mean, Ron.
Correct me if I'm wrong because I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you said it.
You're not there.
The televising network doing the pregame, you don't have your TV on the Super Bowl to hear about Benghazi.
That's for Sunday morning or some night or whatever.
But this is not the place where you're going to be interested in it, right?
Right.
If you want to hear a president being interviewed in the pregame, you want to hear the president talk about America.
You want him to talk about sports and football and innocuous stuff.
So my fear now is that this has happened is that now that it's happened, since nobody wanted to hear it, it can now be said, well, Obama hadn't dodged any questions.
He was asked tough questions.
He answered the tough questions.
And there's no feedback.
There's no fallback.
There's no fallout.
Everything's fine.
Nothing to see here.
And it's over.
And the questions aren't going to be asked again at a time when more people will be watching for a specific reason.
So it's just a missed opportunity, as part of the.
My complaint is: I think it's arrogant to think that Bill O'Reilly is going to take 12 minutes of airtime.
Bill O'Reilly isn't doing it.
Fox is.
Well, whoever, do you think that a president that has repeatedly lied to the American public time after time after time is going to come to Jesus in a 12-minute interview?
No, but that's not.
Super Bowl Sunday.
No.
And cleanse his soul.
No, it's not.
So why waste my time?
Give me a chicken wing recipe or a dip recipe or something relevant.
I just told you why.
Because now it's done.
Now he answered the tough questions.
Now he said what he said, and you didn't get mad.
Neither did anybody else.
And so it's over.
Get over it.
Don't badger the president anymore with this stuff.
He's answered it already.
Move on, can't we?
No, he didn't answer it.
That's the problem.
He's not going to answer it.
No, no, he did.
Whether he did or didn't, he did.
The questions were asked.
He answered.
Forget what he said.
And from the Fox standpoint, you know, you're making the classic mistake of looking at this as substance rather than marketing.
Well, the way Fox does this, the way they look at it when it's over, they did it.
They got their questions in.
They got their PR for their guy.
They got their number one guy on TV with the president, Super Bowl pregame, done.
Well, what happened on it doesn't matter.
Well, from Obama's standpoint, he did it.
They hire reporters to go to the press conferences.
Let them ask.
Why don't they ask it there?
Because they're not going to.
Those are Republican questions, and they're not going to ask Republican questions.
Well, we're in deep trouble.
And O'Reilly doesn't go to the press conferences.
And I wouldn't either.
Don't anybody misunderstand?
Here, I've got to sound bite some of the questions.
Look.
Look, Ron, I appreciate that.
Look, I understand your frustration.
But did you think, Ron, that two minutes or two hours before the Super Bowl started, you were going to get the truth of what happened in Benghazi?
Yeah.
You did.
Did you think you're going to get the truth about, you think Obama's going to, yeah, we knew the website wasn't going to work and it's not about that anyway.
It's about controlling your life and making sure you can't.
You think that's what you were going to get?
No.
No, of course not.
Nope.
Here, let's go to the Ron, thanks to call.
I appreciate it.
Let's see.
How many of these do we have?
We've got, it looks like one, two, three, four.
They're not very long here.
Here's the first one is on Benghazi, and Obama blames the critics.
Bill, think that's what they believe.
And they believe it because folks like you are telling them that.
I'm not telling them that.
Well, I goofed up here.
The question, O'Reilly said, your detractors believe that you did not tell the world it was a terror attack because your campaign didn't want that out.
And Obama said, Bill, think about that.
And O'Reilly said, that's what they believe.
And Obama said, they believe it because folks like you are telling them that.
No, I'm not telling them that.
Okay, so the question was, your detractors believe you didn't tell the world it was a terror attack because your campaign didn't want that out.
Let's just the IRS question.
We still don't know what happened there on the IRS.
Bill, we do.
That's not what happened.
Folks have, again, had multiple hearings on this.
I mean, these kinds of things keep on surfacing, in part because you and your TV station will promote them.
Okay, so I'm gathering what happened here was that O'Reilly asked the tough Republican questions, and Obama said, that's all been dealt with.
And the only reason people care about it is because you and your TV station keep bringing it up.
Here's the next one.
The next one is on there was not even a smidgen of corruption in the IRS.
Here's the question.
O'Reilly said, you're saying there was no corruption in this IRS scandal?
No, no.
There were some boneheaded decisions out of a mass corruption.
Not even mass corruption.
Not even a smidgen of corruption.
Okay, so that's see.
It's two hours for the Super Bowl, and there's no corruption in the IRS, and there was no terror attack.
The only reason people think that's because your network says there was.
And the IRS scandal is nothing to see there.
They had countless hearings.
The only people worried about that are you because you keep talking about it.
And here is O'Reilly asking why he wanted to fundamentally transform the country.
Mr. President, why do you feel that it is necessary to fundamentally transform the nation that has afforded you so much opportunity and success?
I don't think we have to fundamentally transform the nation because those are your words.
I think that what we have to do is make sure that here in America, if you work hard, you can get ahead.
What is it with that?
There it is again.
I'm telling you, this has been a focus.
They don't believe that.
This is a focused group tested phrase now because he says it every time he opens his mouth.
We just got to make sure that America, you work hard, you get ahead.
That, obviously, they're focused grouping this within the regime.
They're focus grouping this within the context of socialism criticism and this kind of thing.
Yeah, he didn't deny it.
He just ignored him.
What do you mean, transform the country?
You wouldn't understand anyway.
Now, then later, not during, maybe it was during the interview.
I don't know.
Somebody, somewhere at some point, O'Reilly said of or to, I'm not sure which Obama, I don't think you're trying to hurt people.
He might have said this in a post-interview.
He might have said, I don't think Obama's trying to hurt me.
He might have said it to him.
I just is one of the two.
But his point was, I don't think, I just think he's wrong.
I think Obama's policies are wrong.
But I don't think Obama is trying to hurt anybody or anything.
That's what the right-wing extremists believe.
And O'Reilly will do anything to make sure he is not deemed a right-winger because that, you know, whoever leads that group is already taken.
So he can't go there.
So he's Mr. Independent, moderate, you know, above the fray type thing.
And he just, he doesn't think Obama's trying to hurt anybody.
He's just wrong.
I expected that to occur during the interview with Obama.
That's the only thing I got wrong.
I thought he would say that to Obama during the interview, but he didn't.
Anyway, that's the crux of it.
I mean, it went on longer than that, but that's the crux.
But in all fairness, O'Reilly brought up things to Obama that have never been brought up before.
I mean, so much so that the AP referred to O'Reilly's questions as Republican questions.
But now, it's in the past.
Obama did it.
He's answered him.
Nothing to see here.
Can't we move on finally?
And it's over.
Now, I got a timeout here, folks.
You be patient, as will I. We'll be back and roll right on right after this.
Okay, we go back to the phones to Moscow Mills, Missouri.
This is Rich.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
25 years listening to you.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I appreciate that.
Really do.
Goes back to 89 in California.
What I love about it is that you taught me how to view politics.
Well, cool.
I appreciate that, too.
I don't waste my time on the talk shows any longer, especially with our current president.
Yeah, it's a waste.
And it seems to me the only time, since Obama tells everybody how Republicans are how they are, the only time you ever see him next to one or even an O'Reilly is if he's, you know, like a Christie, is if he's got a way of using them.
Yeah, yeah, I see your point there.
Yeah, I see that, yeah.
But anyway, I want to thank you a lot because it sure made politics understandable when I understand the motive.
Well, does that make it more fun, though?
Sometimes when you understand it, it can frustrate you even more.
Well, I'm like you.
You know, I've been listening, and it seems like you've kind of tuned out to talk shows.
I have, but that's because they're formulaic.
And when you know what's coming on any show, you don't watch.
I don't like reruns.
I mean, even I don't watch movies the second or third time.
I know what's coming.
The suspense is gone.
And you told us long ago that just, you know, enjoy your weekend and tune in to me on Monday, and I'll let you know what you missed.
Right.
But now you're on your own on that because I don't.
You know, the reason I called was the football.
Yeah, okay.
And I'm so glad you started off with it because there's something that's been bugging me, and I can't even hardly find anything on it.
I Googled it.
You know, I've got you 24-7, and I've been watching you and trying to Google.
But the thing is, when I was watching it, and there was a little pregame where the night before the Broncos changed hotels, and it was stated that it was because of chaos and family members, and there was like three or four, you know, little reasons why somebody, high Bob, I assume, decided it'd be a great idea to change hotels.
So I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, is this done often?
It sounds a little strange.
You know, I'm picturing the situation and I'm thinking, I'm in a hotel with my wife, maybe some kids, some friends, whatever the situation.
I'm with people I know.
And then all of a sudden, somebody gets the idea Saturday night from the best I can understand and find out.
And that's how it was stated the night before.
Let me jump in here because the time constraints are such that I don't have a whole lot left.
That actually is standard operating procedure for Super Bowls and has been for years.
It is news when a team doesn't change hotels the night before game.
The reason it is done is because the coaching staff wants no distractions.
The night before the game, during the regular season on the road, the players are all one unit.
They have the team meetings the night before the game.
Then they have snack, dinner, whatever, and then bed check and so forth.
There's no carousing, none of that.
In the Super Bowl, the families are all there.
The wives and the children arrive on, I think, Wednesday or Thursday, and they stay with the players.
But on the Saturday night, the teams get the players out of there to protect them from a kid that's sick, maybe catching illness.
If there's some kind of a squabble going on with a family, get them out of it.
They want them totally, no distractions, totally, totally focusing on football.
Now, I wish last year, it might be last year, two seasons ago, one team didn't switch, and it made news because it was highly unusual.
But if you're looking for something that would explain the Broncos collection, it wouldn't be that.
It wouldn't be switching hotels.
It's something else.
Because it was team-wide.
It was not just a couple players that were off.
I'm glad I've run out of time here.
I just really, it's safer this way.
It is Sean Trendy is how you announce or pronounce the name of the scholar at Real Clear Politics.
It's one of the sources for the theory explaining Republicans may not want to win in a landslide.
Okay, folks, sit tight.
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