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March 17, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:50
March 17, 2014, Monday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Actually, why wait on this?
Grab grab sound bites twenty-seven, twenty-eight before I get the sound bites twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.
Why wait on it?
Man's just jump in.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome.
Ill Rushboat, talent on loan from God.
Here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative and Tea Party studies.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
What do you think the only thing that can stop the Republican wave is, folks?
Let's just appears to be conventional wisdom now.
I, your host on February 13th, predict a wave.
Later that same day, my prediction is poo-pooed and disqualified because I don't know politics.
It happened on Fox, they said that.
Then a month later, we had this soundbite montage.
All kinds of Republicans and Democrats forecasting a wave election.
One month after I predicted it.
One month after saying I was crazy to know what I was talking about.
So given that, what is the one thing that could stop this wave election?
What is the one thing?
What is in fact the only thing?
Yes, let's really let's let's let's drill down here, get right to it.
What is the only thing that can stop the Republican Party in 2014 and in 2016?
What would you say off the top of your head would be the only thing that could stop the Republican Party from this big win?
And I'm talking about the the GOP.
Don't just what is the one thing that could prevent this big anti-Obama vote.
Well, let's go to Fox News and a program called Happening Now.
It happened this morning on Fox News, Greg Jarrett speaking with Democrat strategist Joe Trippie about the 2014 midterms.
And Greg Jarrett said, okay, Trippie, the numbers favor Republicans, but the states where Democrats normally would win, the president's approval rating is in the tank, which likely is what led to the New York Times story over the weekend about Democrats fearful the president's gonna be dragging them down.
By the way, got that story.
Right here.
New York Times, Obama has become poisonous to Democrats.
Has hell frozen over?
What a that's actually a New York Times story.
So Greg Jarrett is asking Trippy.
Okay, so the numbers favor the Republicans, the states where Democrats normally would win the president's in the tank and his approval numbers, which led to that New York Times story.
What about all of this, Trippy?
But maybe what happens in the Republican primaries, whether they get to the magic number six or not.
There are a number of races, Georgia, uh, Mississippi, and Kentucky, among them where the Republicans are having the establishment versus the Tea Party fight like they've had in previous years, and how those play out could actually decide whether Republicans can take advantage of the Okay, so they're talking about the Senate here, but Trippie basically saying, well, you know, the only thing that can stop this big Republican wave is the Tea Party.
Imagine that, folks.
The only thing a Democrat saying that the only thing that could stop a Republican wave be the Tea Party.
How would that happen?
Well, it's simple, isn't it?
These Tea Party people, a bunch of extremist, racist, pro-life conservatives, they turn off everybody.
They nominate stupid idiot hick candidates, and if the Tea Party gets too big, they're just gonna ruin it for everybody.
If to properly understand this, think of the Tea Party today as the modern equivalent of the pro-life movement of the 80s and 90s, which the Republican Party also hated.
They just weren't as vocal about hating them.
It was more quiet.
It was behind the scenes.
Like that dinner party I attended in the Hamptons, where this is this big rich donor came up and poked me in his stomach in the chest, so what are you going to do about the Christians?
What do you mean?
They're killing us.
Pro-Lifers, they're killing us.
I'm embarrassed to go to convention with them.
My wife's nagging me all the time, they're going to kill us.
We're never going to win anything, and we've got all these pro-life people.
No, that's what the Tea Party is now.
And the Tea Party has become the equivalent of that.
I.e.
conservatives.
So in the conventional wisdom inside the beltway, the only thing that can stop Obama is stop the Republican win is the Tea Party.
Now you and I know that the Tea Party is going to be the reason Republicans win.
He ain't going to be the Republicans.
The Obama and the Tea Party.
Next up is Carl Rove.
And Greg Jarrett said, so what about that, Carl?
You've got Kentucky, Georgia, Republicans might need to win more than six seats here in order to take the Senate.
They might.
Senator Mitch McConnell is poised for a big win over his uh challenger Bevan.
But Joe's right.
George is uh up in the air.
If Paul Brown, who said Todd Aiken was right, wins the nomination, Republicans are in deep trouble.
Whoa.
So Todd Aiken equals what?
Tea Party.
Right on, dude.
Todd Aiken equals Steve Party.
So Tea Party to both Joe Trippie and Carl Rove is the only thing that could trip up the Republican win.
It took me a long time to figure something out about why the Republican establishment fears conservatives.
I had to be told this because I had an entirely different perception of this event.
The Republican Party to this day associates conservatism with Goldwater, not Reagan.
And Goldwater to them, that 64 presidential election was one of probably the most embarrassing moment in their political lives.
Not Watergate.
That was one guy that could be blamed off and thrown off on one guy who was corrupt, they all thought.
Get rid of Nixon, we're cool.
The Goldwater defeat to this day is what scares the pants off the Republican establishment.
They think that any conservative nominee is going to lose in a massive landslide like Goldwater did.
Now you might be saying, wait a minute.
What about Reagan?
They don't look at that.
And I never even looked at the Goldwater loss as an embarrassment.
I looked at it as a beginning.
The Goldwater campaign was the beginning.
That is what begot Reagan.
The Goldwater campaign is what brought the conservative wing of the Republican Party to actual life and relevance.
But the Republican establishment looks at the Goldwater loss as the most formative event in their lives, and they're scared to death of it repeating.
And any to them, Todd Aiken is Barry Goldwater.
Christina, not a Barry Goldwater.
Any just pedal to the metal conservative equals Goldwater, and you might well how do they ignore Reagan?
They didn't like the fact that Reagan won.
So Reagan was Reagan was an aberration.
And they say that Reagan was Jimmy Carter.
I mean, Reagan was an alternative.
They ignore the two landslide wins.
They do not credit Reagan's conservative.
In fact, they go back and forth.
On the one hand, it's the era of Reagan is over.
I mean, when you guys forget this conservatism, it's over, it never was a factor.
And then the other thing they mean with the era of Reagan is over is that conservatism's done it, never had a chance.
It was only one-time deal because of Reagan's powerful personality.
So it really wasn't conservatism that won anything.
Conservatism does nothing but lose for us, is what the Republican establishment believes.
Then you might say, well, JFK was not really a liberal as you define liberals today.
If you look at JFK and what he did, he was for tax cuts, and in some areas he was for reducing the size of government.
And then if you look at LB, LBJ did what LBJ got out of his, he didn't even enter.
He didn't even run for re-election 68 because he was going to lose in a landslide.
Only four years after Goldwater, the Democrat sitting president had to bow out.
I'm just telling you, the Republican establishment thinks that a conservative nominee equals Goldwater, and that was the most embarrassing, humiliating time in their political lives.
Not just those who are alive today who were alive then.
Such has been the teaching of that event that young Republicans who were not alive then have been told how embarrassing it was and what an extremist Goldwater was.
And all the ads that they ran and how embarrassed they all were to be a Republican because of Goldwater.
And then they come up with their selective definitions of Reagan to exempt him.
They say Reagan really wasn't Coldwater.
Reagan was running as Carter and Reagan's power of his personality.
Reagan didn't win because he was conservative.
And that's what survived.
So now the Tea Party may as well be, as far as the establishment is concerned, the Goldwater campaign.
That's how they look at it.
I'm just telling you so you'll know.
Because I can't tell you the number of people ask me why does the Republican Party hate the Tea Party?
Why don't they form a coalition with them and have this massive majority and just sweep to victory?
Because they think you just heard it here.
Tippy believes that the Tea Party is the only thing that can derail the Republicans.
And they really do believe it.
It's not just a lack of objective analysis.
They really believe this.
And so do a lot of Republican consultants, folks.
Just so you know.
Meanwhile, the New York Times does have this piece about how Obama has become poisonous for the Democrats.
But the Republicans are more frightened of the Tea Party than they are eager to exploit the weaknesses of Obama.
We'll take a break, we'll come back, and we'll keep going right after this.
Don't go away.
Your guiding light.
Shining the light and showing the way.
Here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I always look the reason why the Republican Party being embarrassed with the Goldwater loss.
That never occurred to me.
I had to that had to be explained to me.
I've always looked at the Goldwater campaign as the birth of a really important big successful movement.
The Republican establishment looks at it as the most embarrassing, humiliating time in their lives.
But I've always looked at it as a positive.
By the way, there was no way you have John Kennedy assassinated in 1963.
There is no way anybody's going to beat LBJ a year later.
It ain't going to happen.
There is no way.
You could have put Pope John Paul XXIII in there, and he wasn't going to beat LBJ.
Hey.
Not a year after Kennedy had died.
But I'm just going to say if the it the the only thing that will stop the Republican wave election is if the Tea Party stays home again, like they did in 2012.
Do you realize four million Republican votes didn't didn't were not cast voters didn't show up 2012?
And I'm gonna tell you this if the Republican establishment keeps beating up on these Tea Party types and then starts, they're gonna some of them are gonna get ticked off and just stay home.
All right, all right, what do you think?
Fine, okay, go win it on your own.
The thing is the Republican establishment would prefer to lose with honor than to have the Tea Party win.
That's about where we are.
The Tea Party winning or being responsible for the win, that'd be as embarrassing as, oh no.
Oh, well, what do we do now?
Because they would think the Tea Party winning is a bunch of Todd Aikens running every committee.
That's what they think.
Todd Aiken and the committee vice chair would be Christine O'Donnell on every committee.
And you throw Sharon Angle in as uh as as lead counsel for the committee, and they're gonna have heart attacks.
But let's look at some recent he stuff.
Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney, who'd they run like they run like?
Didn't they didn't they didn't they they ran like moderate Republicans?
They lost.
Who lost the Senate and House in 2006 versus who won the House in 2010, and who won the House in 1994?
And if you want to go even deeper, George W. Bush wins two elections, running as a conservative, might have said compassionate conservative.
George H.W. Bush won his election in 2008 by promising four more years of Reagan-like government.
And then in 1992, George H. W. Bush, you know, the whole read my lips and making friends with Tom Foley and these guys, and look what happened to it.
I'm telling you, every time the Republican Party goes moderate, goes centrist, goes McCain, goes they lose.
They just lose.
The only time the party wins is when they go conservative.
Here is oh, I thought it was gonna be Howard in uh in Edgewater, Florida.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Ross, I'm glad to get through to you.
I got 30 once before was when McCain was running.
But could I say uh I shout out to my old pal and mentor, Joe Gordon Eggman.
But what I wanted to bring up, I'm 79 tomorrow.
I became a Republican in Palm Beach County when you can count them on your one hand, because I listened to Barry Goldwater.
I bought his book, and I I thought Barry Goldwater was the real zeal.
And I remember I was telling Snurling, I remember when Goldwater was making his acceptance speech or taking it, there was a picture, I think it was a St. Petersburg paper of uh Rockefeller with his middle finger extended.
And that's what happened to Goldwater.
That's why he lost so bad.
Romney Do you happen to remember where that was?
You know, I think it was in the Cow Palace in the exactly right.
It was the Cow Palace in San Francisco, and that's when that's when uh Rocky flipped Goldwater off.
Right.
And and Bob.
And he did it again.
Rocky flipped off Reagan in Kansas City in 76.
And I was so pissed off about, excuse me, but uh I remember uh uh Dirksen and all the rest, they didn't it never helped them.
That's just like that uh Peter King from New New Jersey, bad mouth and Ted Cruz for doing what he's elected.
I know, it really it hasn't changed.
It hasn't changed.
It hasn't changed except it's going to.
Look, Howard, I appreciate the call.
The Cow Palace, and and Goldwater's book was the conscience of a conservative.
That was the title of the book.
And uh I well not it Racky did not literally flip off Reagan, but everybody knew he had done it to Goldwater at the Cow Palace 64.
No, he basically.
I lived in Kansas City in 76.
And I guess I can say that Rocky spent most of his time at the Nelson Art Gallery during the day, because that's what Rockefellers were supposed to do.
I mean, there were pictures in the paper with Rockefeller looking at some painting and pointing at it.
Oh, the Rockefellers, are they so wonderful?
Look at he knows his art.
And then he'd show up, and by the time he got to convention, uh, it had more than his share of adult beverages.
And he's sitting back there and he's just he's just throwing his hands up in frustration at Reagan and so forth.
It was history repeating it.
Folks, if you didn't know better, you would think that the only candidates who had lost Senate races, Republican candidates who had lost Senate races were Tea Party people.
If you didn't know any better.
But you know a lot of Republicans who run for the Senate that are not Tea Party types, they lose too.
Because I don't care who you are, you run for elective office, you have to run on principle.
You have to tell people who you are.
You have to do that.
You have to have a set of core beliefs that people can understand and that you can explain.
And whether you're Tea Party or not, but but the establishment types want you to believe that only Tea Party types lose.
And a lot more non-Tarty Republicans lose than Tea Party people do.
I got an email.
Actually, I got a couple emails.
What's that, Brian?
Oh, printer cartridges?
Oh, nothing I care about.
Okay.
I just get excited when I see boxes brought in, packages, presents.
And I mentioned the other day that I had to go get a test, because I'm I'm thinking of getting a cochlear implant in my right ear.
So people ask me, you know, did you pass the test?
I did.
You know, it was it's a balance test.
And I it's the most fascinating story.
I had I called my local doctor that serves as the as the family.
I don't really have one, but whenever I have anything or Catherine has this is the guy we call.
And I called him and said, could you put me in touch with somebody who can do this test?
So he put me in touch with an ear, nose, and throat specialist and surgeon by the name of John Lee.
So I went up to Dr. Lee's office, and Dr. Lee is one of the surgeons who does the envoy esteem.
Remember that they they they are sponsors of this program, the uh revolutionary surgery that you you have to have some residual hearing.
I don't qualify because I'm totally deaf, but if you've got some residual hearing, this procedure is able to use your natural equipment, your ear, to revive your hearing.
And in all of the time we were doing the envoy esteemed commercial, I never knew there was a local guy that did it.
I knew there were 10 or 12 surgeons around the country who had qualified to do the surgery.
So I'm up there, and I'm giving it.
And by the way, I just want everybody to know I am in perfect balance.
Every which way you can measure it.
I didn't lean right, I didn't lean left.
Perfect balance.
Actually, what it is, since I have had my inner ear, it's not technically removed, but your sense of balance is in your ears.
And the eyes are the route to the ear.
This test required me to wear goggles that were totally blacked out.
I had to keep my mind, uh, keep my eyes wide open.
They only measured my right eye, and I just had to stay And try to focus on nothingness and not blink for 30 seconds at a time for two or three minutes and do that for half hour.
And what they try to determine is if in the previous surgery, one of the uh ingredients in the cochlear had been damaged taken out if that had been the case and I only had one ear providing balance, then I would not have qualified for the for the surgery.
But I'm cool.
I'm in perfect balance.
It told me that if if a person loses this thing, I forget the medical term for it that's in your ear.
If you lose it in both ears, it's impossible for you to stand up.
You are dizzy, constantly, 100% and impossible to stand up.
And the purpose of this test was to find out if I had one or two, if the previous cochlear implant surgery had damaged or removed in my left ear.
Turns out I'm cool, I can have it, but it was just, and it's Dr. Lee was a was uh was a great opposite there was great, but I it's oh yeah, I really'm so happy to meet you.
Uh envoy Esteem, envoy Esteem.
So wow.
I never knew there was a guy locally that did it.
So it's always this.
What's this stupid question?
What is it?
Hmm.
Well, Snerdley is asking if I will hear in stereo if I get an implant in my right ear.
That's not the way we who get implanted discuss it.
We discuss it in terms of uh spatial SPATIAL, spatial perception.
Right now, with one implant, I cannot tell you where any sound comes from.
I literally cannot.
If, for example, I was in here and I heard a foreign sound, I would have to have you come in here and tell me where it was and what it was.
Because I I cannot, and as such, in public, I can't hear anybody but who's yeah, I couldn't find the cat.
Couldn't find the cat's meowing like crazy, couldn't find the cat.
It's up on top of the bed.
I couldn't tell where the sound was coming from.
So anybody on my left I can hear, but somebody on my right I can't.
So if I get the other implant, I'll be aware of sounds totally around me and on my right side.
Now, the way I hear things is not good enough quality to be able to hear stereo.
I hear in mono now, and it's probably going to continue to be mono, because man-made bionic electrodes cannot replace the intricacy of 35,000 hair cells in each ear.
You know, I had 12 electrodes versus 35,000.
The ability to translate sound and have it not even comparable.
So I will hear both channels, but whether I can hear well enough to see I it's and I can only hear music, I only listen to music that I've knew before I lost my hearing because I can't detect a melody, even with the second ear.
The second ear isn't is not getting it done's not gonna improve speech comprehension drastically.
It will a little.
It's just going to change the spatial nature of things and make the ability to be in public a little easier.
Because right now I can only hear in a crowd one person, and that's whoever's closest to me on the left.
And then they have to yell at me if there's like a restaurant or something.
But this gets really tricky because what happens if, and this is possible, what happens if I don't hear nearly as well on the right side as I do the left in terms of speech comprehension, which one's gonna be dominant?
The thing I don't hear well is I will I end up not wearing the right one.
What if it's better?
What if I hear speech better on the right side than the left?
My brain's not gonna combine them into one super, they'll both exist as they are, and they'll be competing against each other.
So if one's demarkably better than the other, it's gonna be confusing and I'll have to turn one off.
So it's unknown.
You do not know how you're gonna do until a month after the surgery when you turn it all on and do the map.
But everybody says that's done it bilaterally, both ears, everybody says the improvement is dramatic and go for it.
So that's why I started looking into it.
I'll have two packs, I'll have uh two things in my ear, and I'll just use one for the radio show.
Brian won't snow to hook you up twice, no.
Just once.
Hmm.
Well, Snerda, can they make a mix of the two feeds?
They each each implant has a map.
The way it works is, and it takes four hours when you first do it.
You sit down and they just have a machine's computer that sends tones at every conceivable frequency.
And you can't hear them.
When you first hear them is when you say, send them a visual signal and a point at them.
I've heard it.
Okay, that gets mapped.
That's at whatever volume level they sent it, that I hear the tone.
They do this for every tone.
And then after that's done, you're supposedly that they create a map that maximizes those particular frequencies.
And if they're different, and they will be from ear to earn, you can't combine them because my implant on the left is not going to be the same as the one on the right.
I've had to turn some electrodes off on the left side because of facial ticks.
I'm actually down to six.
And my speech comprehension has suffered from it.
I started out with 12 electrodes active, and I've had to turn half of them off because at volume, my my face started twitching.
Can't have that.
The right side could be dramatically better, but it's not going to make the left side better.
It's going to make the left side in conflict with the right side.
So they can't, I don't think they can do a single map that combines.
I haven't, I haven't asked them that because my assumption is based on what I know that the right side's not going to test like the left side does.
A, my brain on the right side hasn't been using its ability to hear.
Just to show you one other thing about this.
They don't know why some people do well with cochlear implants and some don't.
They've tried to come up with uh test cases of data to try to predict, and by doing well, they define it as speech comprehension.
I was in the 80s when I first tested 8082, but the minute you add other room noise, it goes down to 40, and then the louder that room noise, the speech comprehension eventually goes to zero.
But it was better than it was because I was able to use all of these electrodes.
What's always fascinated me is the people doing this have no idea what it sounds like.
You stop and think of this.
The people that have invented the cochlear implant and the audiologists that map it and get it ready, have no idea what it sounds like.
There's nobody that can that can even artificially dupe it.
They've tried and they think they've gotten close, but nobody knows because I can't hear what they've produced that's supposed to sound like what people hear with a cochlear implant.
I can't hear it well enough to know if it's accurate, and I don't hear the way anybody else does.
So no, but they don't really know.
It's fascinating to me.
Yet they that they do it all so well.
So you throw all that in the mix.
Uh here's what I was going to say.
There was a guy my age, when I lost my hearing, who had pretty much the same IQ profile as I did, which they say is a factor.
He was able to hear naturally, pretty much as long as I was.
The fact that in predicting how you're gonna do, well, how long you've been able to hear and what's your IQ.
It's all brain related.
But this guy waited a year longer than I did to have his implant surgically input and then turned on.
His speech comprehension never got over fifty percent because the brain atrophied.
It just adapted to communicating a different way since it couldn't hear.
There was no data on the audio nerve.
So they always say if you're gonna do this, do it as quickly as you can.
Well, I've the right side has atrophied for eight years here.
So I have no idea how it's gonna do.
And there's no way to predict it.
All you've got is other people who've done it and their testimonials.
So the point is I had some nice emails from people who want to know if I passed the hearing.
Yes.
And it is to tell you I am in perfect balance.
And I met this local ENT surgeon, John Lee, who does the envoy esteem.
So it was uh it was cool.
Everything's fine.
Quick timeout, back after this.
Let us go back to the phones.
Here is Andrew in Minnetonka, Tennessee uh Minnesota on a rush windball program.
Hello, Andrew.
Ray.
Well, sir, thank you so much.
Rams fans ditto.
Two quick points to you, sir.
Yes.
Um why is it that during the Democrat primaries, they never brag to their constituents that they should vote for me because I can work with the Republicans.
And I have made that point over and it's brilliant.
You never hear them say they can work with us.
They never tell their voters I can work with the other side and get things done.
I can cross the aisle.
Why do you think that is, Andrew?
Well, uh, because they'd have no intention of working with the other aisle.
Not only that, it's but they have an attitude of superiority.
They're on offense.
We are defensive all.
We think we act our people, McCain and people talk like that, start out every day thinking we're in the minority.
We're really trump change.
And we've got to show these the big click, the majority, that we can work with them that we're willing to cross the aisle and be and compromise you with.
It's an automatic admission of second class status, I think, to even say that.
And the Democrats don't think of themselves as second class, even though they're an excellent point.
And of course they they know much better than we do, so what should we know?
My second point to you is further proof that Obama knew that Obamacare would never work, is during your montage last week of Obama's lies and his run-up to selling of the law, he'd go back and forth between saying that families would save an average of 2500 a year and saying as much as 2500 a year.
Well, which is it?
It can't be both.
And that is classic distortion and confusion, and that's having it every which way.
So if somebody comes back and calls you on it, you're no no, I I didn't say definite.
He said, up to might be as much as.
It's a clever way of avoiding being locked into something.
And he knows that a low information crowd is not going to hear all of that.
They're going to hear $2,500 and cheaper, and they're going to vote on that basis.
And that's all Obama cared about.
He doesn't care how many people get the detail.
In fact, there's a there's a piece here, Andrew, that you will appreciate.
Joseph Curl, writing in the uh Washington examiner, and it's it's not a a thought that nobody else has had.
I just really enjoyed seeing the headline.
We completely overhauled the American health care system to ensure 4.2 million people.
That is his way of illustrating how few people have actually enrolled.
We had a 2.7 trillion dollar health care system that was judged to be bad and insufficient and unequal and unfair.
And so we've done all of this.
We've basically blown it up.
We've basically made it unworkable, All to sign up.
4.2 million people.
Obama said August of 2009, I don't have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance today.
In the wealthiest nation on earth, 46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage.
It's unacceptable.
Well, they still don't.
It's an absolute outrage, what has happened.
And I have to take a brief time out, folks.
Sit tight.
There's much more on the other side.
By the way, that 4.2 million number, that's just the number people signed up.
That is not the number who have paid.
They don't even know how many have paid.
The best we know is that about 25% of that 4.2 million didn't have insurance before.
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