All Episodes
Previous Next
June 11, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:38
June 11, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Don't you dare!
Don't you dare believe that immigration had anything to do with Eric Hanner losing.
Don't you dare.
Now, White House is telling the Republicans immigration had nothing to do with it.
Politico is telling the Republic immigration had nothing to do with it.
Ladies and gentlemen, greetings and welcome to the EIB Network and the Rush Limbaugh program.
I can honestly say I have never seen such a divide between the people who govern this country and the people who live in it.
I have never seen Washington so distant and so removed and so unaware.
I have I I it it is stunning to me to listen to some of the commentary from inside the beltway.
And I think this election, anybody, everybody has their take on what happened with the Eric Cantor and Dave Brad election last night.
Um but I'm gonna remind you, I went back and looked at some of the transcripts of me on this program uh in the past months in which I have been predicting a wave election.
I've been predicting that inside the beltway people have no clue what the people of this country are really thinking.
They have no clue how irritated people are, they have no idea how angry, and they don't care on top of that.
Even if they were aware, uh but but Washington has less and less about it that relates to normal life in this country as I've ever seen.
And the commentary in the aftermath of this election last night is is evidence of it, and I'll share some of that with you as the program unfolds.
It's great to have you here.
The telephone numbers 800-282-2882 and the email address, Lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
I'm there there was uh an analyst on Fox News last night.
And I still don't believe I heard this, but I did.
I heard it, I looked it up to make sure I heard it right.
There was an analyst who is may as well write editorials for the Wall Street Journal, who said was very worried, and was very upset, and was very angry, and was very frustrated,
and he said the real problem with Eric Cantor losing is that the Republicans have sent a message to the people that they can't get an immigration bill done, and my eyeballs about bugged out of my head when I heard that.
This is a quasi so-called conservative slash mainstream Republican establishment analyst who looks at Eric Cantor, who forgot who his constituents are.
His constituents ceased to be the people that live in his district.
Eric Cantor became a creation of Washington, and his constituency became Barack Obama and the House leadership.
That's why he was doing what he was doing, that's for whom he was doing what he was doing, and the people in his district finally figured it out, I think.
Didn't take long, really, but they finally figured it out.
You don't take pictures or have pictures taken of yourself arm in arm with Barack Obama when the subject is immigration and expect there to be no kickback or pushback on that.
But the tone-deafness, and I think the willing disregard for public opinion on any number of issues is unlike anything I've seen.
It's always been somewhat present with the Democrat Party.
When this program started in 1988, one of the things happening was the House Bank scandal, and and uh we've been through that.
This is members of Congress could write themselves checks, whether they had the money in the account to cover it or not.
Didn't matter what they were paid.
And they had they were they were puzzled why their constituents were angry about this.
They couldn't figure it out.
It led to the Republicans taking the House back in 1994.
That was one of the first things.
The Republicans, however, have always been distant or not tied to that elitist establishment existence.
And I think that's changed.
I think the pressures of that town are such, you know, the Libs run it.
They run it politically, they run it socially, which is crucial.
They run it media wise.
And the Republicans, I can give you names of Republicans who cut their teeth working for Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp, who now you wouldn't recognize as conservatives after just a few years in that town.
And Eric Cantor forgot who his constituents are.
Constituency became the Chamber of Commerce, donors, the Republican leadership, and even the president.
And all these guys are caught up in this notion that they can't be confrontational, that that's going to kill them.
It's going to wipe them out, that they've got to be agreeable.
They've got to be bipartisan.
Well, look where it's getting them.
And by the way, whoever said that there is any confrontation in politics?
Politics is all about confrontation.
The tricks that the media and the Democrats have played on Republicans that they fall for continue to amaze me.
And I think this is indicative.
Now I'm going to tell you something else, too.
Uh, folks, I'm gonna I'm gonna just fall short of a prediction here.
But Snerdley came into meeting and he said, Well, this kills amnesty.
You know that now.
But they're never going to get a bill before August.
No, no, no, no, no, no Well, what did that supposedly mean?
It meant the end of Obama care, didn't it?
And six months later, what'd we have?
We had Obamacare.
So the defeat of Eric Cantor is supposed well, that's it.
I mean, Republicans have seen the handwriting now.
Oh my God, no, no, it can't get it.
What do you think is happening on the southern border anyway?
The zone is being flooded with illegal immigrant refugee children.
Obama's doing it anyway.
But now what has Eric Cantor got to lose in moving Amnesty?
He's got nothing to lose moving Amnesty.
What does Boehner have to lose moving Amnesty now?
See, I don't think they're scared.
I think they're mad.
I don't think this scares them.
I think have you heard anybody seriously now, folks.
Dave Brett had a wonderful message.
Dave Bratt had a great message.
Have you heard anybody embracing it?
Have you heard anybody in Washington on the Republican side embracing his message?
No.
All you're hearing is talk radio being blamed, or the voters being blamed, or the uh confrontational nature of politics being blamed, or some meaningless tripe.
But nobody's embracing Bratt's mess.
Let me tell you, Republicans, what you have to lose if you don't get this right, and that's the presidency.
That's what you have to lose.
Now maybe they don't care.
Maybe all they want is their Senate committee chairmanships.
That seems to be one of the prime motivators.
But if I uh not predicting it, but I'm just gonna tell you that I won't be surprised if the behind the doors attitude is one of disgust and anger at the people of this country and the voters in Cantor's district, and the reaction, okay, let's show them what's what, and just move this.
Amnesty Bill forward.
Right here.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am holding in my formerly nicotine-stained finger because I opened the program saying, don't you dare think that immigration had anything to do with this.
And I've got it right here in the political.
Listen to this.
Immigration didn't doom Eric Cantor.
And you can find this in countless inside the Beltway media stories.
Here is the relevant paragraph.
About 72% of registered voters in Cantor's district polled on Tuesday said they either strongly or somewhat support immigration reform.
72% of the people voted yesterday say they support immigration reform that wait for it.
A would secure the borders, B block employers from hiring those here illegally, and C, allow undocumented residents without criminal backgrounds to gain legal status.
If that's what immigration reform was, then 72% of registered voters in Cantor's district say they would support it.
Well, that's not what immigration reform is.
And if that's what it is, the Republicans have done a poor job of explaining it.
Because everybody knows that immigration reform is amnesty.
Everybody knows that there's no serious intent to secure the border, that this poll may be right.
Let's take it piece by piece.
72% said they strongly or somewhat support immigration reform that A, would secure the borders.
Does anybody think that that's what's being discussed now?
Does anybody believe that whatever they put together in Washington, whatever they do is going to secure the border first?
There's no way.
The Democrats, no way they're going to secure the board.
The Democrats want as many poorly educated, economically poor dependent people as they can get.
I have never understood why the Republicans don't get what's happening to them, but it is clear they don't.
In gauging some of the reaction to Cantor's defeat, it is stunning.
It is literally stunning what they don't understand.
I I such as Oh, the worst thing about Cantor's defeat, oh no, it's going to send a message to the country that the Republicans can't get an immigration bill done.
And that is supposed to lead to Republicans losing elections in droves in November because nobody in the Beltway know that nobody in this country wants immigration reform the way they're doing.
They don't want it.
We don't want any part of it.
We don't want to even talk about any part of it the way it's being discussed.
Do they not know this?
If they do know it, it's strictly in our face and screw us.
I'm telling you, I have never seen the divide this wide.
I have never seen the gap of relatability from Washington to the heartland, flyover country, the rest of the country as it is today.
Thank you.
The people of this country who are paying it know full well that securing the borders isn't going to happen with whatever's being discussed now on immigration reform.
The people of this country can hear the Chamber of Commerce guy.
The people in this country can read the Wall Street Journal editorials.
They know that the only thing that immigration reform is going to be is a slew of new poor Democrats that are going to end up busting the federal budget, electing Democrats in perpetuity, and there isn't going to be any border security.
There isn't one person in Washington talking seriously about border security who has advanced an idea that has any workability to it whatsoever.
Well, what's the second aspect of it?
It has secured the borders, block employers from hiring those here illegally.
Well, the law already says that.
What everybody understands here is that the effort that is immigration reform, comprehensive immigration reform, is to flood the country with cheap labor, no matter How you get it, and no matter whether the people are legal or illegal.
And the third aspect of this?
Allow undocumented residents without criminal backgrounds to gain legal status.
There is at present no mechanism capable.
We can't even, we can't even.
We can't even prove that four million people have signed up for Obamacare.
We have a government-run website that supposedly is collecting people's personal information, including credit cards and whatever, and we can't prove the people who've been there have been there.
And they want to try to tell us that they're going to be able to do criminal background checks on all these people in the shadows and weed out those who haven't committed any crimes, and then grant them legal status.
This is not what immigration reform.
This poll question that featured those three, that's not immigration reform.
And I'll put it to you another way.
If this story, 72% of registered voters in Cantor's district polled, said they either strongly or somewhat support immigration reform, if Eric Cantor was associated with that, with those three tenants, he wouldn't have lost.
Eric Cantor is not associated with this kind of immigration reform.
And nor is anybody else.
Immigration reform equals one word, amnesty.
Now they're gonna they bend over them the bend over backwards, try to convince you, no, it's not amnesty, it's not amnesty, if the amnesty will kill us, it's not amnesty.
You will hear the sound bites coming up.
You will hear further analysis from me.
But really, folks, Dave Bratt, here, let grab soundbite number 14.
Here's who the guy is.
Not one person inside the beltway is embracing his message.
Not one is welcoming him to town.
Not one.
Now listen to this, and you tell me what's wrong with it.
Although I had tremendous Tea Party support and just wonderful people in the Tea Party and grassroots helping me out, and they they're clearly responsible for the win.
But I ran on the Republican principles.
And we have this Republican creed in Virginia, and the only problem with the Republican principles is no one's following them.
The first one is a commitment to free markets.
We don't have any free markets in this country anymore, right?
And then equal treatment under the law and fiscal responsibility, constitutional adherence, peace through strong uh defense, and then faith in God and strong moral fiber.
That's what I ran on.
The Republican creed.
And not one Republican will embrace it.
Well, so far, there may be some who do.
I don't want to issue a blanket, but so far nobody's running.
Congratulate him, embrace him, and he is.
What in the world is wrong?
What is frightening?
What is threatening about what he's saying?
He's a free market guy.
He wants to repeal Obamacare.
He pledged never to raise taxes, stick to a five-year promise not to vote to increase the debt limit.
Everything in the world that resulted in people considering themselves members of the Tea Party.
Gotta take a quick break.
Don't go away.
Okay, people want to know who the did the poll.
Uh public policy polling, a liberal democrat firm did that poll I just quoted.
They did it for some liberal advocacy group by the name of Americans United for Change.
They may as well have done the poll for John Podesta.
But it was not Eric Cantor's polling unit that did the poll.
It was public policy polling, bunch of libs.
And of course, the White House, ladies and gentlemen, uh right here, National Review Online, a spokesman for President Obama rushed to assure House Republicans that Eric Cantor did not lose because of his gestures toward Democrats on immigration reform.
That just makes me cackle uncontrollably.
We are supposed to be reassured.
The Republic can you uh renders me almost Bruce Babbitt.
White House says, and we go, okay, thanks.
So here you have the people that look it.
if they really were serious about securing the border, they wouldn't be dumping all these kids in military bases and bus stations.
Now, some people want to say, hey, Rush, you know what, Cantor might have survived if that influx of kids had happened two weeks from now instead of now, wouldn't have a picture.
Maybe I don't.
Bottom line is they can talk all they want about securing the border, but not one person with any ability to do anything about it is lifting a finger to do it.
Because everybody in this country knows full well the Democrat Party wants all those people, and that's what they don't understand.
Why are the Republicans helping the Democrats essentially gain power forever.
People are fed up with it.
Totally with everything coming out of that town, I think.
We'll be back.
Hi, welcome back.
It's great to have you, folks.
Rush Limbaugh here and the EIB network.
Snerdily said during the breaks, oh, you're an anti-government guy now.
No, no, no, no.
Don't misunderstand me.
Look, everybody knows what I mean.
I'm not an anti-government revolutionary, this kind of crackpot that they're trying to uh pigeonhole everybody into.
Here's here's my point.
And by the way, folks, when it comes to the Cantor election, I'm not gonna sit here and arrogantly tell you that I know why it happened.
Like everybody else, I have uh some pretty good educated guesses.
But I'll tell you what I do know.
I do know that Congressman Cantor had ceased to be perceived as having his own district in mind as he did things.
He was he clearly had become an agent of the inside the beltway establishment.
And I'm telling you the the the divide, the gap, the distance between the elite establishment and average Americans has never been greater.
And Congressman Cantor was seen as part of that very small yet powerful group of elites in the establishment to whom what happens in the rest of the country is not even known, nor is there much concern for it.
You know, if if this border business, this as I say, they're they're if they were serious about securing the border, and if they really thought that that's all they had to do to get support for amnesty, then they'd be out there doing it.
They'd be stopping these kids, however, this is happening, but no, we're letting them in, we're depositing them in military bases in bus stations.
The next thing to come is their parents.
Look, people can figure this out.
I think.
It's no more complicated than this.
People have less and less respect for and use for Washington, the whole thing.
Republicans, Democrats, the administration, the administrative state, the regulatory state, the bureaucracy, the FDA, the IRS, all of this.
People are fed up.
They're fed up with lobbyists, they're fed up with a chamber of commerce, they're fed up with all these media pundit celebrities who also don't know what they're talking about, who have no idea what life is really like for most people in this country, and don't seem to really care.
That's what people are fed up with.
And if Eric Cantor was perceived as being part of that, that alone would suffice to explain his defeat without getting into specific issue analysis such as immigration reform.
What is the Tea Party?
What is it?
I had a long explanation about what the Tea Party is prior to my leaving on vacation.
Grab soundbite one, I want to play a brief excerpt.
This is May 28th on this program, and this is this does not actually get to the meat of how I define the Tea Party, but it'll take me there.
Listen to this.
The drive-by is the Democrat Party.
The Republican establishment salivating, excited and happy over their belief that the Tea Party is no more.
The Tea Party is gone.
The Tea Party has been vanquished.
And what they really mean by that is that they think they finally ended the day where conservative Republicans slash Tea Party nominate wackos in primaries who will then go on to lose.
The Tea Party isn't dead.
It's nothing more than a fervent desire on the part of the Washington establishment, both parties.
The Tea Party is never going to die.
The Tea Party's made up of average ordinary Americans who are all of a sudden becoming activist because they are simply combination of outraged, insulted, and frightened by what has become of Washington.
It's out of control.
The spending, amnesty, everything being contemplated is simply antithetical to the founding of this country.
They're trying to stereotype who the Tea Party is, and they will fail at that.
Because they're just patriots.
They're just people want to save the country from the direction that it's going.
And not even for themselves, but for their children and grandchildren.
Here's another thing.
It's called the Tea Party, but there isn't any party.
There is no convention.
There is no slate of candidates.
Washington persists in looking at the Tea Party through the prism of how they view and define politics.
And that's why they don't understand it.
The Tea Party is made up of people that used to be called citizens.
They were standard ordinary everyday people.
They were the voters.
They were who people or Washington used to really care about.
The Tea Party is the people in the greatest generation who won World War II.
The Tea Party.
Just the average ordinary Americans.
Love God, love the country, love its founding, believe in a moral code.
They don't threaten anybody.
They have been abused, impugned, lied about.
They're called racists, sexist, bigot, homophobes.
They're the furthest thing in the world from any of that.
They're just people.
And they live their lives as responsibly as they can.
They do everything they can to follow the rules.
Nobody's perfect.
But they see the country careening out of control.
And so they became activists for the first time in their lives, political activists by showing up at town hall meetings in 2010.
And the fact that the Washington establishment is f is frightened of them.
The fact that the Washington establishment makes no effort to embrace the Tea Party.
It's just the people who make the country work, is all it is.
And yet Washington is threatened by average citizens.
They're threatened.
They're scared to death of them.
They're angry at them.
They despise the Tea Party.
And the Tea Party is just your mom and dad.
It's your grandparents.
It's the guy at the ice cream stand, the guy that drove the ice cream truck in your neighborhood growing just the most invisible people you'd ever see.
They're just the people who make the country work.
And they're scared and frightened because they don't recognize their government.
They don't see their government representing them.
They see their government governing against their will.
And they don't understand it.
And they don't really know how to do anything about it other than organize and show up on election day and maybe raise money for candidates that they want to see elected.
The Washington establishment sicked the IRS on the Tea Party.
This is how out of touch Washington is.
The Washington establishment sick the Tea Party, and the Republicans in the establishment have done very little to defend people who have been set upon by the IRS for nothing more than wanting to organize politically.
It's not just immigration reform.
It's not just the Bergdahl prisoner swap.
It's everything combined with the arrogance, the snootiness, and the condescension with which establishment people talk about, deal with, and talk to the people of this country.
And it's everything.
It's the Republicans, it's Democrats, it's the regime, it's the administrative state, the regulatory state, it's all out of control.
The EPA with nobody objecting is going to mandate a thirty percent reduction in carbon output that will kill things.
It will destroy many people.
It will impoverish people literally impoverish people with their utility bills alone.
But forget that they don't have the authority to do it.
But even when it's always been you've had radicals want to do things like this, but they used to be reasonable, responsible, dependable people stand up and represent you and stop it, or try to.
That's what's missing.
The Tea Party exists because nobody can see any effort to stop the destructive direction the country seems to be taking.
Lobbyists, Chamber of Commerce, media, pundit celebrities.
Same faces, same voices thrown in people's faces every day on all the cable networks.
The formula is the same, the interviews are the same, the guests are the same, the hosts are the same, and the results are the same.
And it's all become predictable.
And more and more people are becoming insulted by it daily and see through it.
But this gap divide what whatever, you may have a better word for it than I do.
But I think it is epitomized by the fact that the Tea Party is not really a party.
It's just people.
It's just average ordinary Americans.
In my little definition, the people, the invisible people who make this country work.
And it isn't Hillary Clinton who makes this country work, and it isn't John Kerry and it didn't Barack Obama, it isn't Eric Cantor, it isn't John Boehner, it isn't Mitch McConnell, it isn't.
Those people are getting in the way of the country working.
Or they are perceived to be getting in the way.
People are pulling their hair out.
They can't believe that there is this innate inability or purposeful, whichever it is, distortion of who these people are.
You'll note that these illegal immigrant children, they're not being dumped.
In the neighborhoods where the establishment lives.
None of what the establishment is doing is happening to them or where they live.
The IRS is not being sicked on them.
They are always going to find a way to pay their utility bills.
Or it won't matter to them what their utility bills are.
But I've never seen it.
I've never seen this government so removed from mainstream American life as it is today.
And the Cantor election, just a microscopic, well, maybe not microscopic, but it's it's a small little illustration.
And the people inside the Beltway in the establishment, they're not scared.
Do not make the mistake of thinking they're scared.
They're mad.
Gotta take a break, though.
Sit tight.
Much more after this.
I'm gonna get to your phone calls pretty quickly here, folks, but I just want to remind you of something.
Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center sent Eric Cantor a letter this past spring.
Mozell was very alarmed over what he had learned Eric Cantor intended to do.
So he sent him a letter warning him that he might not want to go through with this, and it could be disastrous.
Here's how the letter begins.
Dear Majority Leader Cantor, conservative leaders were stunned to learn that you will be headlining a conference in Florida this weekend that is a direct attack on Tea Party conservatives.
Worse still, this event is sponsored in part by ultra-liberal financier and activist George Soros and organized labor, both of which have openly, repeatedly and often viciously waged war on conservatives and Republicans for years.
You don't think people that live in Virginia 7 knew things like this?
Cantor showing up at an anti-Tea Party rally.
Bad enough that, but that it was sponsored by George Soros.
I still think Chris Christie's political fortunes were sealed with that arm in arm embraced photo with Barack Obama after Hurricane Sandy, and I think a picture of Eric Cantor being embraced by Obama, walking into some room in the White House to talk about immigration didn't help either.
Optics matter.
The people that vote for Eric Cantor want him to stop in a political sense.
They want him to defeat Barack Obama.
Otherwise, they would vote Democrat.
They're voting Republican because they oppose Obama.
They're not voting for Cantor to work with Obama.
Otherwise, they just elect old Democrats everywhere.
This is the stupidest, silliest notion the Republicans have bought into.
It's a toss-up between the only people that matter in elections are moderates, independents.
That's a big trick they've fallen for.
And this idea that their own voters are electing them to cross the aisle and compromise and work with and help the Democrats.
And whatever you do, don't be confrontational.
That's asinine.
And I asked myself, do the Republicans really believe that?
They may be that far gone.
They may be that shell-shocked over what's happened to them.
Lifetime of being destroyed by the media day in and day out.
Lifetime racism, sexist, bigot, homophobe, creep, mean spirited, extremist, whatever they've been called every day.
Maybe they don't, I don't know.
Maybe it's worked on them.
I but however it it it what we're told as Republican voters, what we're supposed to understand that the American people just want two parties to work together.
If that were the case, the American people would elect everybody from one party.
This is absurd.
It's silly.
It defies common sense.
And it insults our intelligence.
Which may be at the top of the list of the problems they have.
By the way, folks, this is uh the big summertime two if my tea sweepstakes.
And to be announcing it today, it's always big, it's always thrill-packed, it's always eagerly anticipated, and it is one of the best sweepstakes that is offered anywhere in major broadcast media.
So I have an announcement coming up.
We've got other things going on in the news besides canter thing at your phone calls.
People want to weigh in on this, of course, and a review of just who Dave Bratt is, what he believes.
▲
Export Selection