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Jan. 2, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:44
January 2, 2015, Friday, Hour #2
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Live from New York City.
It's open line Friday.
Welcome.
Thanks for having me, and thanks for listening to me, being with me here today.
Happy New Year to you.
It is Eric Eriksson filling in for Rush who's coming back next week.
Now, as I mentioned at the end of the last hour, there's new polling from Pat Cadell in the People's Poll.
According to a national poll, sixty percent of Republican voters want a new speaker.
And only twenty-five percent would vote to keep Speaker Boehner.
Speaker, this is becoming a news story.
And joining me on the phone is Congressman Jim Breidenstein of Oklahoma, who's one of those who announced at about eleven thirty this morning that he's not going to support the speaker in in the vote.
Congressman, how are you?
I'm good, Eric.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
Happy New Year to you.
Happy New Year.
It's good to hear your voice.
Okay.
I had heard a while back that you were going to probably support the speaker, and then after the amnesty vote and other things, you you've now released a statement saying you're not going to vote for the Speaker next Tuesday.
Why?
Well, after we won this election, uh I looked at the numbers and came to the conclusion that it's it's really not possible to defeat the speaker on the floor of the House.
Because the Republican majority is just simply too big.
Uh rallying that many uh conservatives to vote against him would be difficult.
So I put out a uh basically just uh uh uh an op-ed piece indicating that um it's not likely that we're gonna be able to defeat him on the floor of the House.
Now I also said in that statement that I had a a list of expectations that if I voted for him I wanted him to be aware of.
Well, even before I could get those expectations to him, uh we we ended up passing the the CR omnibus, the Cromnibus.
And this is a piece of legislation that of course funds the government through twenty fifteen and takes off the table our ability to rein in this president using the power of the purse.
You know, we have this very aggressive liberal, I would say leftist president who is an activist, um, and he's using uh executive orders to undermine the Constitution and change the way our government functions.
We have a responsibility when when we have a commander-in-chief that does this kind of thing, we have a responsibility to use the power of the purse to rein him in.
Well, we just took that off the table in the lame duck, uh knowing full well that this was going to fund the government through the rest of the of of fiscal year twenty fifteen.
So in the lame duck, we could have done, I'm talking about December eleventh when we passed the Cromibus.
We could have done a short-term CR to get us to January, and then once we had a Republican Senate in place in January, we could have actually put Republican priorities on the agenda and and and unfunded some of these uh you know aggressive maneuvers by the President of the United States.
And instead, what we did is we made a deal with Harry Reid, and oh, by the way, Barack Obama himself to fund the government for the rest of FY 15.
And I know you've talked about this a lot of the years.
Well, but now they would say we only funded the Department of Homeland Security until February, so we can fight him on executive amnesty.
Right.
So here's the reality.
Uh the Homeland Security Department uh ultimately provides, you know, funding for customs and border protection.
And for interior and customs enforcement ICE.
Um so w we what we are suggesting here is that we're gonna defund our only enforcement of the border in order to compel the president to defund his executive amnesty order.
Now that doesn't seem like a good strategy to me.
It doesn't seem like the president is gonna be too worried about us defunding Homeland Security.
And by the way, it wouldn't be us, of course, it would be him.
Uh the way our government works is we have three branches of government, and each one has to come together to to to put together a package that represents the will of the the majority of the American public.
And unfortunately, what we have is a president that issues executive orders, and we have a Republican Party that is unwilling to stand up and fight against the president.
You know, that that seems to be that's my largest frustration here, Congressman, is that we've the entire campaign season, the Republican leadership said we're gonna stop the president, we're we're gonna we're gonna uh deny him the ability to do these things.
They get elected in November in just historic wins, the largest majorities for Republicans since World War II, and then they immediately fund everything the President wants to do.
And that and that's the challenge.
It's uh th we have taken off the table our constitutional prerogative to to defund uh these executive orders.
Uh and certainly again I'm not saying we could have done it on December eleventh.
In fact we couldn't have because Harry Reid still had control of the Senate.
What I am suggesting is that had we just done a short term CR, and I'm telling you this as somebody who doesn't vote for continuing resolutions.
When you say we're going to fund the whole government or we're going to fund nothing and we're going to fund it the way we funded it last year, you deny that's what a CR does.
You deny the American people their representation.
Well let me stop you there and ask you are you worried about the ramifications of opposing the speaker you've got it you're on the Armed Services Committee I believe.
Are you worried about being stripped of committee assignments and things by voting against him?
Well you know there there are those in the past who have been stripped of committee assignments for doing various things that you know leadership was not happy with would they do that to me I I don't know.
I'm on the Armed Services Committee that is very important to me.
I am a a Navy pilot.
I flew combat in Iraq and Afghanistan I've got three hundred and thirty three carrier arrested landings.
I've got an air medal a Navy commendation medal with Combat V. I would I would think it'd be very difficult for them to take a guy like me and kick me off the Armed Services Committee.
If they did that it would be uh it would be probably worse for them than it would be for me.
Well I think it'd be a badge of honor to you standing up to him look let me ask you one more question.
Uh do you think that you need 29 votes?
I I have heard uh from several people running the numbers that there may be a a solid 25 of twenty nine do you think you can get there.
I don't right now I don't know what the numbers are.
I can tell you there's a lot of discontent inside the Republican conference and it's not just from conservatives I can tell you you know there are moderates that wish that we had a more open and transparent way of doing business.
This idea where you create a sixteen hundred page bill and you give members forty nine hours uh to look it over and ultimately take a vote on it that that doesn't just alienate conservatives it alienates um moderates as well inside the Republican conference and even beyond that it alienates the American public.
And this is the challenge that we have when you look at the Cromnibus, you know you could say well, you know, a hundred and sixty Republicans voted for the Cromnibus and therefore Speaker Boehner represents a majority of Republicans.
Well remember um he may he may represent a majority of Republican politicians in Washington DC.
But as as that that poll that you just showed or talked about indicated he does not represent a a majority of Republicans outside of Washington DC who are not dependent on him for committee assignments for chairmanships for fundraising for re-elections.
The regular people at home who are just trying to you know pay the bills, put food on the table and get their children off to school, those folks and I can tell you this as somebody who has children in elementary school I went to a Christmas party for my first grader and I had to I had to listen to parents tell me you know we need to get rid of Speaker Boehner.
And this is not I'm I'm not saying this doesn't give me any pleasure to tell you this but I have to deal with this inside my district.
The American people know what's going on.
You cannot hide from it anymore.
And these are not people that are Tea Party activists they're not Republican activists.
They're not members of the Republican Party in any you know meaningful way.
They're just people that are are living their lives and they're frustrated that we just won the biggest election in in in I don't know maybe American history but it's at least the biggest in almost a hundred years.
Right.
And at the end of the day we we're governing as though we just lost and enabling uh the president to continue trashing the Constitution.
Congressman Jim Brightstein of Oklahoma thanks very much for joining me here on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Thank you very much for that and good luck to you God bless you and and those who will line up with you.
Folks, how does this play out?
What does it look like?
Let me explain to you uh what this looks like were this to happen.
Now there are people in fact I'm seated on Twitter right now.
Oh if they vote no it could be Nancy Pelosi no.
I've I've looked at the House rules.
It is you've got to have a an outright majority of the House based on the votes cast.
So let me let me explain this to you.
You're going to hear members of Congress, you're going to call members of Congress, and you're going to ask them about this, and they're going to say, well, Nancy Pelosi could become Speaker.
Or they're going to say, Well, I'm going to vote not present.
I'm not going to vote for someone, I'm just going to vote not present.
If they vote not present, because it's it's they're not going to vote yes or no, they're going to vote for Boehner or Pelosi or someone else.
If they decide to not vote or they decide to vote not present, those votes aren't counted, and it's a it's the absolute majority of the votes cast.
So conservatives are in this very interesting position, and let's do some history here real quick.
Conservatives are in a position where moderate Republicans found themselves in when Newt Gingrich was speaker.
If you remember, go back to the late 90s.
It was the Chris Chases of the world, and I remember Rush talking about this back then.
I'm a longtime Rush listener, and I remember these monologues.
And it was Chris Shays and moderate Republicans who wielded a veto pin within the conservative conference.
They were the guys the Republicans had to pay attention to because they didn't have the authority to say yes to things, but they have the authority to say no to things.
And they could shape the Republican agenda in the House of Representatives with Newt Gingrich's speaker by saying no to certain things.
Conservatives find themselves in that position now.
Which is deeply humorous to me, and that conservatives who should be standing athwart history yelling stop are now able to stand athwart the Republican conference and yell stop.
They can't meaningfully say go.
The odds are, let's say 29 Republicans got together on next Tuesday and they rallied around one person to be Speaker of the House, all 29 of them.
The odds of that person ever becoming Speaker Zilch, but they do have the power to stop Boehner or Pelosi.
They just have to vote for someone else.
The Republican, this is the way you need to think of it.
The conservatives in the House of Representatives wield a veto pin.
Republicans have been caving left and right because Obama wields a veto pin.
Now conservatives in the House wield that veto pin.
They may not be able to get their guy elected, but they can stop other people from getting elected as Speaker.
All they have to do is come up with another name, and they don't even have to agree on the name.
All 29 of them can vote for someone different.
But those 29 votes voting for other people is enough to shape who does not become Speaker of the House.
And that's pretty powerful.
Conservatives may want to use that.
Eric Erickson in for Rush.
We'll be back with your calls.
Welcome back, Eric Erickson filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Thanks for joining me.
The phone number 800-28282.
Let's go to the phones to David calling from Racing Wisconsin.
Welcome and happy New Year.
Welcome to a happy new year to you, sir.
Just a bizarre kind of a question.
I'm wondering if there's uh a unified, you know, enough uh people that could cause a problem if they vote against uh Speaker Boehner voting, you know, none of the above, and um could that actually put Nancy Pelosi or is it like the the the uh you know what what rules are there, safeguards in place to prevent that from the.
This is such a great question because there are members of Congress, new members in particular, who are going out who campaigned saying I'm gonna oppose John Boehner.
And now they're saying, well, I can't because Nancy Pelosi would get elected.
I according to the House rules, I I've asked experts, I've looked at it myself.
It is based on the absolute majority of all the votes cast.
So let's say in the ideal world, a hundred percent of the House of Representatives votes, a majority is what, 218 votes.
So Speaker Boehner would have to get 218 votes.
Um this is one of the the situations where people are saying things and and they may just not know.
Um the situation is that you gotta have an absolute majority of all the votes cast.
So if anyone votes not present, or take all those votes out.
And so whatever's left over, it's gotta be a majority of that.
So you've got twenty-nine Republicans who vote for someone other than Boehner.
They don't even have to agree on the person.
And then you've got all the Democrats vote for Pelosi.
And then you've got Boehner.
Well, it looks like Pelosi's got more votes than Boehner, so she must be speaker.
That's not the way the rule works.
The rule works, it's gotta be the absolute majority of all the people who are there.
So those twenty-nine votes have blocked Boehner and Pelosi from becoming Speaker.
And now they got to move on and they gotta revote and try to find someone new who can get an absolute majority of the people.
It's not a plurality, it's an absolute majority of the people voting in the House of Representative.
So again, conservatives, they can't pick someone necessarily.
They don't even have to rally around one person.
In fact, there are names floating out there, and I I wouldn't dare to name those people because the sheer weight of the speaker's office would come down on them and get them to race rush to the nearest microphone and say, No, no, not me, I'm with the speaker.
So I I would avoid that.
David, that's a great question.
Thanks very much.
Let's go to Abe calling from Rochester, New York.
I bet it's snowy there.
Uh it's a little bit snowy, you're right, Eric.
How are you?
I'm good.
How are you doing?
Good.
Uh and happy New Year, Coo.
Happy New Year to you.
Um my interest is uh in defending Mr. Boehner a little bit.
Um I am a conservative and I suspect my long range uh positions would be very similar to yours.
However, I think the reality is that we better do things with some rationalization here in the government, or we're gonna wind up with another two years of uh going nowhere in a hurry.
And the first step in that is to provide some reasonable finance for the government for the next six to nine months, which I think Boehner and McConnell accomplished.
Not without some trade-offs with the Democrats, but at least it underpinned the operation of the government for uh nine month period of time.
At the end of that time or within that time period, I would hope that the Republicans would clearly establish what they want to do on immigration on Obamacare.
Uh in education the whole nine yards.
But it gives a period of time where we can do it in small concise pieces.
And with pretty decent thought given to what's happening.
You know, Abe, I don't have a problem with us doing it in small concise pieces, but it like Congressman Breinstein said, and I've got a personal problem, and and by the way, I don't want to get the the host and name of this program in in trouble here.
The these I'm expressing my views, not the views of Rush Limbaugh.
I personally was deeply frustrated, as Congressman Bridenstine was, the Republicans just won one of the largest election victories in the last hundred years, if not the largest.
In fact, when you add in the state legislative races, gubernatorial races, county races, and down to municipalities that have partisan elections, you have to go back to the 1800s to find any landslide, and that too would have been for the Republicans.
To do that and then rush out of the gates after that election and say we'll do nothing to shut down the government.
And yes, we will fund the president's amnesty, and we will fund these initiatives.
I the American people elected the Republicans to tell the president no.
And they won the election and immediately told him yes.
In fact, I dare say, Abe, while I totally understand what you're saying.
Here's my big fear.
And that is the president now knows the Republican opposition is a paper tiger.
He knows they'll never shut down the government.
He knows they will fund things.
I think what the Republican leaders in Congress did trying to be like, trying to show they can go along to get along, trying to show they can make government work is to embolden the president to be even more activist with executive orders, knowing that when push comes to shove, they don't have veto power in the House of Representatives.
So they will never do anything to shut down the government.
They will just continue to cave to the president.
I don't want Republicans to cave to the president, and the President thinks they will now.
The American people voted for a party to not cave, but to tell the President no.
Folks, one clarifying comment from me here.
I've been saying vote not president.
I meant vote present.
That's what they do.
They they vote present.
Uh that they're there but they're not going to cast a vote.
If they all did that well remember as I said, you take all exclude all those votes and then it becomes between Pelosi and and Boehner and Pelosi would win if they all voted president.
They got to vote for someone and then those voters someone who knows this way better than me is a friend of mine, a congressman from Texas, Louis Gomert.
How are you, sir?
Well as far as I know I'm fine, Eric I had uh organizing for America that had rallies and were trying to reduce my percentage this last uh election and uh letter writing campaign and the governor elect was telling me back last summer, man, they're trying to reduce your numbers in East Texas so that they've got a shot at people like me and uh and they had an effect and my numbers went from seventy two percent to seventy eight percent.
So I can't uh East Texans they were not as concerned about party as they are people just being honest and doing the right thing.
And and uh yeah if thirty Republicans voted present then and all a hundred and eighty eight uh Democrats voted for Pelosi then she wins.
But uh as uh uh pointed out to some folks uh a few years ago the Constitution does not require that the speaker be a member of the House of Representatives.
Uh it just it just has to be an adult American citizen.
So as long as Republicans vote for an adult American citizen, they don't have to vote for the same one, but as long as they vote for an adult American citizen, then Pelosi cannot win at all.
She cannot get to eighteen.
She can't get a majority and so last time we had twenty one who had agreed in writing that they would not vote for uh uh Speaker Boehner to have another term and um you know things happened overnight and by the time of the vote on that Tuesday or that may have been a Thursday,
but at the time of the vote um we were down to nine voting for someone else and four or five voted present which was the same as um basically throwing it toward Pelosi uh present vote does no good.
But Eric when you look at the main issues that people are upset about the executive amnesty what have we done?
Well i is like my friend Jim Ridenstein pointed out, you know to take hostage the Department of Homeland Security is ridiculous.
You don't take a hostage that the other side wants you to shoot the president if we say to him you either stop your executive amnesty or we're not gonna fund the border patrol really oh well gee okay so we'll have a wide open border that's ridiculous.
You have to use the full power of the purse and we gave most of that away.
Obamacare heck y you've been covering this stuff er ever since I can remember Eric and you've been doing great in-depth looks I bet if you go back and look uh you'll find that terrible blunders were made by minority leader Boehner that uh helped Obamacare pass.
Uh the first time we voted on it we had a chance to stop it.
All we had to do was a motion to recommit that would have prevented any illegal alien from getting it because there were Democrats that would have voted for it and twenty two Hispanic caucus members said if that's if that passes as an amendment we're not voting for it.
They wouldn't have even had the votes.
Obamacare was dead after Scott uh Brown won in Massachusetts until our leadership decided to invite Obama to our own personal private retreat.
Right.
That that gym the whole thing up.
We've had one fiasco after another and now I mean we ought to be out there with our own solutions, the health savings account.
We're not going to be able to do that.
Hey Congressman let me stop you there and I I got a question I want to ask you for for just a minute.
It seems like Democrats and Republicans are in this very weird situation where the Democrats got annihilated on election day and decided to immediately put back up into positions of power the same people the voters just rejected.
Well in two thousand six the voters rejected the GOP and there's now this polling out from Pat Codell showing sixty percent of the Republicans are not fans of Speaker Bahner and yet the Republicans like the Democrats continue to put up as their faces the people the voters have already said no to why that's it it's it's unlike any leadership election I've ever been a part of before Congress.
I mean normally you vote for the best person or the most talented and sometimes you just vote for the most popular in other elections.
You know there are those hard heads like you and me that would vote for whoever we think is best.
But when you get to Congress what you find is the person in either party that wins the top election is the person that a majority think is going to win because a majority always votes for who they think is going to win because if they fail to support the person who wins they don't get their committee that they want.
They may not get their chairmanship or no they definitely won't get their chairmanship they want.
All these kind of things uh they they're just not going to get so a majority always vote for who they think is going to win.
I mean I'm not aware of any other place where o that kind of election happens but it happens in Congress.
Well hopefully hopefully there will be 29 to 30 Republicans this time who who again as I've said they may not have directly the power to pick their own person but at least can make a difference and make a change.
It just seems like I I I hate to be cliched here but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over to different results.
We do and we've been told over and over again look uh we're gonna go by regular order we're gonna make sure everybody has time to read the bills and then each time that doesn't happen, well we'll do that next time.
How many times do we have to be promised that and when we get in trouble the speaker has said it himself we always get in trouble when we don't follow regular order yet he avoids that following that means going through committee, having proper time to review it and that kind of thing and if you look at uh the accountability he himself has has been enforcing that no Republican can be the the leader of our party on a committee for
more than six years and that includes whether you're in the minority or the majority and he's now been six years as our top leader.
So but one other thing on the deficit was a solution when our speaker came up with the idea instead of having to make Republicans vote to raise the deficit why don't we just give a deadline and the the president can spend all he wants to up to that deadline.
Right.
Uh raise the deficit all you want what a solution then when the deadline comes up we'll vote for another deadline that's not really a solution to handling the deficit.
No and it seems like the debt and deficit continue to get out of control and under our small government Republican leaders in Washington.
It just it as a look as a guy outside the beltway in making Georgia it just it frustrates me deeply that I keep voting for Republicans who go to Washington saying they're gonna cut the size and scope of the federal government and then they fund all of the president's executive overreaches.
Well it it part of a big part of the problem is that we have so centralized the power in our party that yeah we have a steering committee, we have a rules committee, but if the speaker doesn't want something to come to the floor it doesn't come to the floor.
Speaker doesn't want somebody to be a chairman they Don't become chairman of the speaker wants a bill to come to the floor, then even if it hadn't been through committee, it gets to come to the floor.
These things have got to change.
And you brought up Chris Shays.
You know, I think I even gave Chris Shay some money because he was a friend.
He was much more moderate on many issues than me, but I respected him because he never lied to me.
And uh, you know, that's really important.
You know, we have leaders that we can count on them, and when they give their word about something uh like uh these sequesters will never happen that maybe you could count on the next time we'll fight.
It's always next time.
Congressman, I I gotta take a commercial break here, but I appreciate you calling in here.
Absolutely, Congressman Louis Gomer of Texas, and I am Eric Erikson in for Rush.
We'll be back.
Welcome back, Eric Erickson in for rush, the phone number 800-282-2882.
Saxby Chambliss, Senator from Georgia, who's retiring.
I got my start in politics working for him.
Got an interview with the New York Times where where he says that you you have to learn, even though you're a right winger, you can't govern from the far right or you'll risk shutting down the government and we all paid a heavy price for that.
Yeah.
If winning the Senate is paying a heavy price for it, I I might be willing to pay that heavy price.
Let's go to the phones, shall we?
Randy in Ocala, Florida, beautiful place.
How are you?
I'm doing great, Eric.
Let me mention one thing that Republicans in general and particularly Republican politicians overlook in terms of history.
Every time they talk about Republican history, they always jump from uh Lincoln to Reagan.
Right.
And in between is sandwiched president number thirty, Calvin Coolidge, my favorite.
Campaigning on his conservative principles.
Yes.
He cut the budget.
He had he had positive uh, you know, government uh uh budgets.
He actually paid down debt by doing less in terms of uh having government insert itself less into people's lives.
And he's looked as as a Republican, uh that the left media has not even trashed him yet.
So Randy Calvin Coolidge is my favorite president and and even above Reagan.
In fact, one of my favorite i the way I approach life to some degree, Randy, is the Calvin Coolidge advice.
He gave this great advice that sometimes you see twelve troubles bounding down the road towards you, and if you stand still, all but one will have bounced off the road before they get to you.
As opposed to, or it might have been ten in any event.
His idea was when you see all these things coming for you when you're in government, stand and see what sorts itself out.
That nowadays Republicans and Democrats alike, they want to be proactive and oh, somewhere in the future, analysts say something might happen.
By God, we need a law now to deal with what may or may not happen in the future.
Just insane the way they do it.
Calvin Coolidge ran for president, he succeeded in what he was doing, and then he didn't run again.
He'd he'd done what he set out to do.
He he didn't feel the need to to be a bitter clinger and hang on.
What's so interesting is that there was a revisionist movement when Reagan was president to take on Coolidge and because uh Reagan was cited Coolidge several times, and there was a revisionist history to try to blame Coolidge for the Great Depression,
that he was so hands-off and shrugged government so much, and really it was well his successor in office who decided was a Republican and government should be activist, and just FDR manifested even more.
More Amity Shales or Amity Slays at the Wall Street Journal wrote a great book on Coolidge and pointing out also with another book on the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man, how it was a lot of activist government that prolonged the Great Depression.
Had they done what Coolidge wanted, they might not have gotten into that problem.
Phil, Tucson, Arizona, let's go to you next here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, Eric, uh thank you.
Uh I've been a long time listener and I finally got through.
Um, one thing that I don't like on an earlier subject about uh presidential candidates is the media, the left wing media foisting the candidates upon us.
Like, for example, now they're all a gog about uh Jeb Bush running for president.
And okay, well, wait a minute, I don't want my choice made for me.
You know, I want to pick my own candidate, you know, who amongst the other ones I like is you know, Ru Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or even Ben Carson.
Now, that's the thing that I don't like is the left-wing media making the conservatives' choices.
The media loves to do this, and nothing's gonna change.
I mean, they did it with McCain, they did it with Romney.
I I want to give all of the Republican candidates a fairer shot at explaining why they're running for the president.
But it it seems like the media wants to hover around and and give accolades to one or two guys.
Now, in dare I say, in fairness, none of the other guys have come out yet and announced.
Uh when they do, I think though you'll be proven, Phil, as to exactly what's happening.
The media is out there and they want to give coverage to one or two.
They they want to attack others.
No doubt, look, I I'm a firm believer that Ted Cruz is going to run for president.
Whether you think he should or he shouldn't, Ted Cruz, he is a dear friend of mine, he's gonna run for president in 2016.
And the media, I have no doubt, is gonna blame Ted Cruz for everything.
Like, look at this this interview, Sach Speech Ambliss, outgoing Senator from Georgia, has with the New York Times.
Let me read you again this quote.
We were all ultra-right wingers, but we figured out right quick that when you're in the majority, you have to govern.
If you're going to govern in this country, you're not going to govern on the far right or the far left.
You've got to figure out a way to somehow get pretty close to the middle.
Otherwise, you're going to do what we did.
Shut down the government.
And we paid a heavy price for it.
And you saw that again just a year ago.
The media and in a lot of Republicans and Democrats portrayed the Gingrich shutdown as just an awful terrible thing.
In fact, Gingrich has come out more recently and said they shouldn't have done it.
What happened?
The Republicans lost a couple of seats in the House that everyone before the shutdown said they were going to lose.
They picked up seats in the U.S. Senate.
They were at a draw for governorships around the country.
The bad things that the media and Republican leaders tell you happened in that shutdown, the gangers.
They didn't happen.
It's mythology that it was somehow devastating for the GOP, who then won the presidency in the year 2000 by the skin of their teeth, no less.
But they won it.
What happened after the 2013?
I remember nine-tenths of the people on TV, regardless of network.
All of the Republican pundits out there, all of the editorial columnists who even slightly lean towards the GOP, not conservatives, but lean to the party, were blaming Ted Cruz.
By God, he's going to shut it all down and Republicans are going to lose.
Our chances of taking the Senate are gone.
Amen.
And we won.
And they're not blaming Ted Cruz, they're trying to ignore him now.
They're trying to marginalize him.
They blamed him for the shutdown.
They said what he did would cause Republicans to lose.
They went into 2014 with hair on fire, blaming Ted Cruz.
And we got the Senate.
If that's the disaster, I'll take it.
The media, though.
They keep trying to shape these things, these candidates, these people, but we know the truth.
Ruth Eric Erickson in for Rush.
Friends, citizens, Rush Limbaugh listeners, this is an important announcement.
You need to pay attention to this.
There's an Associated Press story out.
Republicans are beginning to go wobbly on Obamacare.
They are beginning to go at the state level, they're beginning to go wobbly.
The Associated Press has a story out I want to get into in the next hour.
You really need to stick around and hear this as to who the blame goes to for why these Republicans who are going wobbly can't get done what they want to get done.
The media take on this is staggering.
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