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April 7, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:10
April 7, 2015, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Greetings, welcome back.
It's great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
If you regularly listen to this program, you will be a step or two ahead of where everybody else is going to be the next day or two, the next week or two, in terms of what they are discussing.
800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program and the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
I mentioned earlier this piece by Joel Kotkin at Real Clear Politics.
What?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Every day, every day.
Are you going to get to X?
Yeah, I'm going to get to it all.
I got two hours left.
You're going to talk about the Iranian deal.
What do you need to know about it that you don't already know?
There isn't anything new in the Iranian deal.
It's not a deal.
They don't have anything agreed to.
It's a smoke and mirrors ploy.
Obama doesn't care if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon.
Obama believes the United States is the destabilizing agent in the world and in that region.
There's nothing new here.
I'll be glad to provide more details, and I will as the program unfolds.
And yes, we'll get to Rand Paul, but maybe not till tomorrow.
I'm not going to get to Rand Paul until I got some soundbites.
I have no idea what he said here yet.
And it's not my fault he did his announcement when the program's on.
I can't do two things at once here.
All these other responsible candidates, they did their announcements around this program, either before it or after it.
Rand Paul came here.
He came here a year ago.
It seems like maybe not that long, but it was some months ago.
He was a very nice guy.
He came by the EIB Southern Command.
And we met for an hour.
And he laid out exactly how he was going to win the presidency.
He told me what his strategy was.
He told me what the Republican Party's challenges were.
I'll tell you one thing he said to me.
He said, the Republican Party cannot win anymore with just votes from its own members.
And he said another, he said, Rush, you may not like it.
A lot of people may not like it, but this is a country that is segregating itself into groups.
And our party is going to have to learn how to talk to each of these different groups.
We can't go out and speak to a collective America anymore.
That's just the reality.
Well, I sat by.
I politely listened.
That's what I was there for.
I mean, he didn't come here to find out what I think.
He came here to tell me what he thinks.
So I dutifully sat there and listened.
And, yeah, I asked some questions, but I didn't get into arguments with him.
That's not what this was.
He laid out his strategy, how he was going to get this group and that group and that demographic and that demographic and where he thought the party was falling behind.
And it sounded reasonable from his standpoint.
And he's pretty much executed so far everything he told me he was going to do.
He told me the college campuses he was going to visit, the areas of the country, the various states, and he's been there.
He hasn't done anything that he didn't allude to.
That's not quite true because he didn't tell me everything he was going to do.
But the point is that what he told me, he's been consistent with his actions.
And so, no, I was not issuing a cutting comment by pointing out that he's the only one that announced during the program.
Snirdly thinks, are you criticizing Rand Paul behind this?
No, no, no.
I'm just pointing out the reason I can't talk about what he said here is because he happened to announce when the Program.
No, I think a seasoned campaign staff might have forced him to do it.
Look, these people aren't idiots.
They sit around.
They've no doubt heard me praising Scott Walker top to bottom, back and forth, ditto Ted Cruz.
And I've met with Rand Paul, and I have not entered into effusive praise.
So he's probably there, the campaign staff.
I say, well, we've got nothing to lose here.
I'm guessing at all.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter that he did the announcement during the program.
The only thing that matters is I can't talk about what he said because I don't know it.
So until I have a chance to listen to what he said, read what he said, and get the audio soundbites, I might get some of those today.
And I can't do it justice by talking about it.
But I thought the two fundamental things he told me was the Republican Party can't win with only its voters anymore.
And that the American people are segregating and have segregated themselves into groups, and they have to be approached that way.
There are voters who want to be treated as members of groups, not individuals.
He said, Rush, you may disagree with it.
You make it bad for the country, but that's the way it is.
I can't deal with what I wish was the case.
I have to deal.
If I'm going to get elected, then I've got to approach the American people in the way they're now living their lives and organizing themselves.
And I can't appear to be ripping it to shreds.
So he was cool.
He was very forthcoming.
And he had it all figured out, by the way.
He had his strategy all feed.
He had applied a considerable amount of thought to it, spent a lot of time thinking about it, and was well versed in it.
It was clear that it was his set of ideas and not a bunch of advisors that he was trying to remember what he had been told.
It was clear it was his ideas and his strategy and so forth.
So we shall see how it all plays out.
Like I said at the top of the program, I think 16 or whatever it is candidates, it has the potential here to be fun.
I mean, you talk about diversity.
You talk about wide-ranging views.
The two things that concern me about this are things that concern me in every campaign cycle.
And one is when we get to the debates, they're going to be moderated by the George Stephanopouloses of the world who have as one objective to take everybody on that stage out, one by one and one at a time.
So I hope that there are some changes and modifications in the way the Republicans decide to do all of these debates with all of these different candidates and who the moderators are and what the networks are.
The second thing, and I have mentioned this too, second thing that I don't know, bothers me.
It does.
It bothers me is each one of these guys, be it Cruz, be it Marco Rubio, be it Rand Paul, be it Scott Walker, every one of them.
And I don't mean to be leaving anybody out.
By the way, I'll tell you who has grown some guts here recently.
And maybe she's always had them.
I just didn't know.
Carly Fiorina is on fire out there in California.
She is on fire and she's calling them out.
She's calling the liberals out by name and she's not taking prisoners.
And this is such a marked change from, you know, when she was in the McCain stable.
I don't want to say harem because I don't think that quite works.
I don't see McCain with a harem, but a stable.
She was in there with Meg Whitman.
I mean, And she's become a different candidate.
Forceful and confident and not holding back.
So anyway, what's going to happen is every one of these candidates is going to have their totally devoted supporters, both in the general public and in the media.
And here come the litmus tests.
This is the thing, the single issue crowd.
We're going to try to take out everybody who's wrong on one thing, might be a 98% perfect conservative, but if they're wrong on 2%, they're not qualified.
And our own people will start trying to take them out.
It happens.
It just does.
And they're impure.
They're not real conservatives.
You know the kind of thing that I'm talking about.
So those are the two things.
Those are the pitfalls.
Oh.
Who, these candidates are young?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Compared to what's on the other side, the other side, Jurassic Park.
Exactly right.
I don't care if you're Hillary.
If you're talking about Biden, hell O'Malley may not be Jurassic Park.
They're trying to make him into JFK, which is not pleasing to the Clintons because Bill Clinton was always JFK.
And in every which way you could be JFK, he tried to do it.
And now for Martin O'Malley to come along and to be said to be the new JFK, that's not going to sit well with the Clintons.
Mark my words, before this is all over, the Clintons are going to get ticked off at being rejected again.
Or the attempt will be made to defeat them and reject them, as opposed to the party supposedly being in unison love and admiration and support and devoted to Hillary.
We're going to find that's not the case again, just like we did in 2008.
They were not totally devoted to Hillary in 2000, despite all the pre-pub, despite all the things we heard, Hillary was a lock, that she was, it was a coronation.
The primaries were a formality until the first viable alternative came along and gave enough Democrats a chance to fly the coop.
They did it.
It's going to be the same thing this year.
Somebody comes along that's more attractive than Hillary, and that's not very hard.
I didn't say that.
They'll split the coupe again and thereby illustrating that this whole notion that Mrs. Clinton's a lock and is the universal support Democrat Party, once again, not true.
But our side, all kinds of different ideas, all kinds of different ways of fixing things, 16 different people.
It's supposedly what all the Civics 101 people tell us they want.
Wide range of ideas, diversity, mosaic, you know, all these surface things that people say are going to have Hispanics, women.
We're going to cover it all.
It won't matter to the left, but still it will be visible to everybody.
Now, let me get back to this piece here in Real Clear Politics, because this is, to me, very interesting.
Joel Kotkin calling out the high-tech hypocrites after pointing out here that Apple can sell products in countries that behead homosexuals and imprison women for looking at men the wrong way.
Apple doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
Apple doesn't denounce it.
Apple doesn't say word one.
But then you have a domestic circumstance involving gay rights, and Apple goes, gets in gear, and the CEO inserts the company, not himself, but the company, into the battle.
And all of a sudden, corporations are wonderful.
All of a sudden, corporations are people.
All of a sudden, it's okay for corporations to be involved in the political process.
All of a sudden, it's okay for corporations to donate money.
All these things that corporations are denied, all of these characteristics they possess and activities that they are not permitted to engage in because they're not really people are now welcomed and supported.
This is blatant hypocrisy.
And the tech companies are pretty smart because they convince their mind-numb robot followers and supporters that they actually care more about the social cause they're involved in than they do profit.
Now, if anybody thinks that about Apple, you have a lot to learn.
I don't think it's a bad thing a corporation seeks profit, frankly.
I think that's the objective.
Apple does it better than anybody else, and they are to be applauded for it.
But if they can get away with making some of their supporters think that they don't care about profit as much as they care about social issues.
And by the way, speaking of that, dare I ask again, all of a sudden social issues are a big important thing?
All of a sudden, social issues matter.
All of a sudden, social issues are something on which you can win?
All of a sudden, social issues do not mean your automatic defeat.
All of a sudden, the social issues are in vogue.
Well, what about the rhino-Republicans who hate the social issues?
They're embarrassed by them.
They want to do everything they can to get rid of them.
So we surrender in the culture war.
The left marches to victory in the culture war and dominates with what?
Social issues and corporations.
All the while convincing rhino-Republicans to de-emphasize both.
A bunch of wusses.
Just a bunch of wusses.
It was pointed out to me recently that the founding fathers were not wusses.
Some of the early and great conservatives, Burke, Buckley, Friedman, they were not wusses.
They were brave, they were bold, and they were not concerned with criticism.
It didn't stop them.
It didn't frighten them.
Like Buckley did not decide to moderate national review when the left bitched and moaned about something that was in it, like Illinois's or Indiana's legislature did when the left complained about their stupid RIFRA law.
Oh, okay, okay, we'll fix it.
We'll fix it.
We'll fix it.
Big meetings, big fixes, announce the fix.
There was nothing wrong with it in the first place.
Wusses.
But the left supporting all these corporations is not aware of how much hypocrisy there is.
And that's Mr. Kotkin's point here.
Beneath the veneer of good intentions, there it is.
Boy, that covers for so much.
Good intentions cover for failure.
Good intentions will mask real bigotry.
Good intentions, perceived good intentions, will mask real racism every day.
You could be the biggest racist in the world if you convince people you're trying to help them.
The left proves it each and every day.
Beneath the veneer of good intentions, the world being created by these tech CEOs, both within and outside Silicon Valley, fails in virtually every area dear to traditional liberals on a host of issues, from the right to privacy to ethnic and feminine empowerment and social justice.
The effects of the tech industry are increasingly regressive.
Silicon Valley Elite may have won its gender discrimination lawsuit against Ellen Powell.
Did you hear about that?
The hedge, the venture capitalist for anyway, I got to take a break here.
I just am trying to hurry up because of the time and I can't expand it, so I just let him take it.
Back in a minute.
You know how to get rid of the whole Hillary threat, if you will, or the whole Hillary idea or equation.
We got 16 Republican candidates.
I think that's the number, 15, 14, whatever it is.
If every one of them would decide to run against her instead of each other during these primaries, every day, can you imagine from 14 to 16 different people every day all the reasons why she's not qualified, all of the things in the past, one of the biggest tasks I think these candidates have, and we're going to find out who has guts and who doesn't.
One of the tasks these guys have, women, the candidates, they have got to inform the millennial population of just who Hillary Clinton is because they haven't the slightest idea.
They were not old enough or even alive, more likely not old enough, to have a slightest idea.
All they know of the Clintons is what they see in the drive-by media, which is what?
Constant adulation.
Heroes, big stars, A-list celebrities.
Now, the temptation in primaries is to run against your opponents.
Obviously, that has to be done, but it's fraught with danger.
But there is a common enemy each one of them has because one of them is going to win the nomination.
And it's likely she's going to be the Democrat nominee.
The ultimate reality is that every Republican in the primary has a common enemy, and it's Hillary Clinton.
And if you want to throw Biden in, do that, or Martin O'Malley, whoever, but focus on Hillary because that's everybody seems to be afraid of.
And all 14, 15, or 16 of them simply make it an objective to begin the campaign against Hillary Clinton during the Republican primary and not wait until after the primary.
And in the process of doing so, a couple of candidates will surface and separate from the field.
Because in the process of campaigning against Hillary, explaining why Hillary would be bad for the country, they would thus also be explaining why the Democrat Party would be bad.
I think the sooner these candidates on the Republican side get in gear and start running against the Democrat Party, even in the primaries, and running against Hillary, the greater opportunity they're going to have to explain themselves in the process.
The greater opportunity they're going to have to attract interest in themselves.
The greater opportunity they're going to have to define themselves is by also defining and drawing the contrast with the differences they have with Hillary Clinton and everybody in the Democrat Party.
To me, it's a no-brainer.
Back to the phones, Lancaster, Ohio.
This is Michael.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Appreciate your patience, too.
Hello.
Yes, Mr. Limbaugh.
Very pleased to get to talk to you.
First of all, I owe you an apology.
I was a leftist Democrat for years that believed the lies that they told about you.
And thankfully, I turned the radio on one day and listened to you.
And I've been conservative since shortly after.
Really, it only took one day for you to learn the things you'd heard were not true?
That's right.
I turned radio on about, well, my mother, my sister, and my brother are all left to stay.
They still are.
But my mother and sister passed away, but I still go back and forth with my brother about.
But I'm not a Rand Paul, and I spoke to Mr. Shirley.
I mean, no disrespect to Rand Paul, but I called him Bland Paul, B-L-A-N-D, because he has about as much chance to be president as I do.
His speech delivery is like an eye doctor speaking to his patients, and that's what he is.
Well, that's right.
He is an eye doctor.
I did hear a little bit.
By the way, we've got soundbites now for you bland Paul fans.
Just kidding.
That's what Michael calls it.
But I did hear him say, he recounted that he was an eye surgeon, and he talked about a mercy mission that he had taken to Honduras with some other doctors, too.
Yes, I admire him.
Help people see.
So he is an eye surgeon.
His dad, Ron Paul's an OB, O-B-G-Y-N.
He's an eye surgeon, and I heard him say that he wants to save the country.
He wants to revive the country.
He wants to be able to help people nationally the way he's been able to help them as a doctor.
Well, America has to be the preeminent country in the world.
And when we're not, we see what happens.
Senator Paul's foreign policy wouldn't be much different than what we got with Obama.
So that's your big beef, foreign policy?
Well, we have to, the world's falling apart.
And I agree with some of the libertarian ideas.
But when it comes, the reason Ron Paul and Rand Paul are so popular among the college crowd is because libertarians think drugs ought to be legal.
And I believe that there are far too many laws, but I think we can't go down the road.
Look at what's happening out in Colorado.
And here in Ohio, they're talking about trying to get marijuana legalized.
Oh, they will at some point.
Well, I know, but I'm against it.
I'm 70 years old.
I've never taken drugs.
And I think we have enough problems with alcohol.
You've never puffed on a doobie?
No, I haven't.
No, never did.
I've smelled it at different concerts.
I kind of like the smell, the secondhand smoke of it, but I don't have any desire.
I like it to keep a clear mind.
All right.
Well, look, that's interesting.
You think that the youthful attraction to Rand Paul and Ron Paul is the fact that libertarians, they urge if either not legalizing, certainly decriminalizing a lot of drugs.
But I know it's not just that.
It's also the draft.
It's also there ain't going to be any foreign policy.
There isn't going to be anybody to be shipped around the world to fight wars because they're not going to get us into it.
They don't believe the U.S. has any role outside our borders.
Everybody else should fend for themselves.
Basically, Obama is putting that into play in the Middle East.
The one aspect of Obama's foreign policy that does have an active tangent to it is the harming of Israel.
But everything else, he's just kind of thrown the doors open and let these guys figure it out themselves.
And I've run into a lot of people.
Don't you think Russian, like the avowed socialist in the golf course I told you about, he said, Don't you think, Mr. Olimbaud, that the wise thing to do is to just let those savages have attempted?
I mean, after all, we have been trying to manage those affairs for how many years, and it has not changed.
It's only getting worse and stabilizing.
Why not back out like Obama is doing and just let them have it?
That's what the avowed socialists said to me.
And that's basically what the libertarian foreign policy is.
And then you deal with the fallout as it ends.
Why is my email going to light up?
I, I, I, oh, this is, they're at least, libertarians hate when I criticize them.
How does anybody know I just criticize libertarians here?
I'm just saying, well, what is this?
What is anyway?
Why do I care?
I get ripped in emails every day, Snerdley.
Why is it going to make a difference now?
Why is it going to start mattering now when it doesn't yesterday?
You know, if you people really wanted to worry me out there, you'd stop nagging me.
Then I would think I've got a problem.
If you really want to start playing head games with me, leave me alone.
That's when you'll make me think maybe I'm losing it.
Just kidding, just kidding.
Toying with you all the way.
Well, look, since Mr. Paul has been brought up, let's go.
The audio soundbites, I have the transcripts of the bites we have.
Here are my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
As I said, this happened this afternoon in Lul at the Galthouse Hotel.
And here is, let's see, one, two, three, four, five.
Looks six sound bites.
Here's the first one.
I have a message.
A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words.
We've come to take our country back.
We've come to take our country back from the special interests that use Washington as their personal piggyback.
The Washington machine that gobbles up our freedoms and invades every nook and cranny of our lives must be stopped.
And here is who he says that he's going to take the country back from.
I want to be part of a return to prosperity, a true economic boom that lifts all Americans, a return to a government restrained by the Constitution.
A return to privacy, opportunity, liberty.
Too often, when Republicans have won, we've squandered our victory.
I think we're in the middle of doing that now.
He's got a point there.
I mean, do you see any signs of victory being exuded by Republicans ever since the midterm election since last November?
The next bite he points out here is that Republicans cannot be Democrat-light.
In order to restore America, one thing is for certain, though, we cannot, we must not dilute our message or give up on our principles.
If we nominate a candidate who is simply Democrat-light, what's the point?
Why bother?
We need to boldly proclaim our vision for America.
We need to go boldly forth under the banner of liberty that clutches the Constitution in one hand and the Bill of Rights in the other.
I don't want to split hairs here, but I think the Constitution and Bill of Rights are the same document.
And he said he was going to have one in one hand and one in the other.
Now, I know some might think I'm nitpicking here, and I'm not.
I'm just in fact, if you want to separate the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments for those of you in Riolinda.
I actually had somebody from Riolinda say, you know, ask me when I was back in Sacramento, well, the Constitution's so great, how come they had to, the first thing they did, had to change it 10 times.
I said, well, they didn't change it.
Yeah, they knew they made some mistakes in it.
They had to issue 10 corrections.
Isn't that what the Bill of Rights?
No, sir, that's not what it is.
Well, amendments or changes aren't.
Yeah, they are.
But these were additional expressions, additional declarations.
These were the specific enumeration of the rights the people had and the government did not.
Oh, why didn't they just say that?
Well, they did.
You may not have been taught the right way.
I ended up convincing him.
Well, he was convinced the Bill of Rights were to fix what was wrong in the original document.
Here's the next Rand Paul Bite.
The enemy is radical Islam.
You can't get around it.
And not only will I name the enemy, I will do whatever it takes to defend America from these haters of mankind.
At home, conservatives understand that government is the problem, not the solution.
Conservatives should not succumb, though, to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow succeed in building nations abroad.
There you go!
There you go.
That's what the last caller was talking about.
That's this retreatist, if you will, foreign policy.
And there's one more.
I said there were six.
There's only five here.
And here's the last one.
Pretty much continuing his previous point.
Let's quit building bridges in foreign countries and use that money to build some bridges here at home.
It angers me to see mobs burning our flag and chanting death to America in countries that receive millions of dollars in our foreign aid.
I say not one penny more to these haters of America.
There you have it.
That's Rand Paul.
Those are the highlights of his announcement today that he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.
I just want to reiterate here that I think however many number of Republicans end up in this field, for some reason the number 16 is floating around in my head.
Whatever number it is, 1450, whatever the number is, I think, you know, I would love to be the consultant of all of them.
They're all going to have their own individual consultants, fine and dandy.
But I want to be the overall total campaign consultant with just one piece of advice.
Never forget the enemy, the opponent is Hillary Clinton.
And take as much time and every opportunity you can to expose her, to educate people this country who she is, who her husband is, and what would be bad if she were to win.
How it'd be a continuation of more of the same that we've had for the past six and a half years.
There's a whole generation or two of Americans that have no idea the truth of the Clintons, particularly Hillary.
And she is going to be the opponent.
If she's the lock to get the nomination, she is going to be the opponent.
Why wait until you've secured the nomination?
Just start on it with all of them every day telling the truth about Hillary Clinton.
It could go a long way to making sure she doesn't win.
And in the process of doing so, I didn't kill two birds with one stone.
In the process of doing so, you define yourself.
By defining your enemy, by defining your opponent, you by natural extension have to define yourself.
And in the process of doing that, you draw a contrast between yourself and your opponent.
And that really needs to be done.
I'm still amazed at how the Republican Party at large has yet to really take advantage of the most far-left progressive regime this country has ever had to draw a distinction and a contrast between it and what the Republican Party is.
Well, this primary season could offer that opportunity.
Got to take a brief time out, but that will be.
Sit tight, my friends.
Don't go away.
Washington is currently being hit with power outages all over the metro area.
The White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, some sort of explosion somewhere has thrown down much of the power supply, power grid for the nation's capital.
And that's pretty much all that's known about it right now.
They're tracking it down.
Nobody's put a label on this yet.
But the White House has been hit without power.
I don't mean that's a bad choice of words.
White House has not been hit.
Power is out at the White House as it.
Well, that's the first thing I thought of.
No generators.
But the State Department press briefing went on in the dark.
Got to be some generators.
You know, there are generators over at the National Archives.
Backup after backup, redundancy after redundancy.
And no doubt at the White House as well.
They're trying to track it down now.
And that's as much as is known now.
Here is Bruce in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hey, Russ.
Thanks for taking my call.
Long-time listener, first-time caller.
Mr. Sturton told me to get right to the point, so I'm going to do that.
I want to go back to your first hour when you were talking about gay marriage and the left.
For years and years and years, the left has been asking us, what do you have against gay marriage?
Why should you care if gays are going to get to marry other gays?
It's not going to hurt you.
It's not going to affect you.
It's not going to hurt your heterosexual marriage in any way, shape, or form.
Yet, as I watch the news, I'm seeing many businesses having to be shut down because they refuse to cater to a gay wedding, refuse to take photographs at a gay wedding, refuse to provide flowers for a gay wedding.
If these business owners are married and their businesses are shutting down, this is affecting their marriages.
Yeah, and sadly, by design.
See, I can't emphasize this enough.
And maybe I need to keep trying to be creative and come up with another way of making the point here.
But one of the ways that the left succeeds in the encroachment against the majority in the culture war is to ridicule every objection as rooted in paranoia or bigotry or racism or whatever, homophobia.
And they attempt to shame everybody into shutting up.
And they come along, it ain't going to hurt you.
It's all about what problem do you have with who somebody loves?
There's not enough love in the world.
What does it matter to you who somebody loves?
And you're right.
It's that it isn't going to affect you.
They say that about a lot of things, like Clinton and Lewinsky.
It was just sex.
It didn't affect you.
It had nothing to do with the way Clinton was doing his job, but we know that it did.
But this was never, it's never, it's not about the expansion of rights.
It's not, there's plenty of people that will bake a cake for a gay wedding.
There's no way a gay couple cannot find a wedding cake in this country.
But they want to make it look like they can't by choosing the target.
Sadly out of time in the middle of the thought again, but I've completed.
Fastest three hours in me.
I can't believe it.
Two of them are already completed, but they are.
A brief break here at the top and a fast return to action coming up.
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