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May 20, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:54
May 20, 2015, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Great to have you back, folks.
It's the fastest three hours in media, the Rush Limbaugh program hosted by me.
It's an eponymous program, meaning named after me, 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, LRushbow at EIBNet.com.
Look, I want to, in this hour, I want to get into a little bit what's happening in Iraq with Ramadi and ISIS.
Folks, it's horrible.
It is literally terrible.
It is incompetence in American foreign policy on parade.
It's worse than incompetence.
Nobody is this incompetent.
This kind of stuff that is happening with us conceding ground that we had gained through hard work, just giving it up the way we're doing, is, I don't know.
It's just, it's terrible.
And in my mind, it goes beyond incompetence.
But before that, Mr. Snerdley went out and found this piece I referred to earlier that is in salon.com.
It's written by, I'm sorry, Slate.
Slate.com.
Well, Slate Salon, what the hell is the difference?
But okay, it's at slate.com.
And it's written by a guy named by Jamel Bowie, who is a slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race.
He's African American.
And what he's actually doing is reacting to a piece that he ran into on Politico.
And the title of his piece here is Republicans Are Not on the Age of Extinction.
He says the GOP is an aging party, but it isn't about to die out.
Now, the conventional wisdom, again in Washington, the conventional wisdom of political scientists, political professionals is that the Republican Party is aging and white and is soon to be eclipsed into non-existence on the basis of demographics alone.
Nothing to do with issues.
It has everything to do with hip, cool, and age.
And this guy, Jamal Bowie, does not think that necessarily is the case.
The Republican Party controls Congress, the majority of governorships, and the majority of state houses.
But Daniel McGraw in Political Magazine says the Republican Party is literally dying.
Since the average Republican is significantly older than the average Democrat, far more Republicans than Democrats have died since the 2012 elections.
And to make matters worse, the Republicans are attracting fewer first-time voters.
And unless the party is able to make inroads with new voters or discover a fountain of youth, the GOP's slow demographic slide will continue election into election.
That's in the Politico magazine.
Mr. Bowie says it's hard to argue the numbers that Politico's writer assesses here.
Republican voters are disproportionately elderly, and it's safe to assume a large slice of the party's voters will die by 2016.
You know, one thing that's never factored here is they never do factor the number of Democrats who die in the womb.
They never do that.
They never factor how Democrat voters are being, well, they're dying too, in abortion, 1.3 million a year.
And that does add up.
You throw that out over five or ten years, and those people live long enough to become 18, 21, able to vote.
They don't exist.
Hello, immigration.
Why do you think, you know, there are many reasons why the Democrats are for open borders, and one of the reasons is they are aborting many of their future voters as a matter of policy.
Abortion is the sacrament.
Every abortion that can happen must happen.
And when an abortion happens, a future human being dies.
And in the case of abortion, most of those future human beings would be Democrats.
So they've got to replace them somehow.
But it's only you see how the Republicans are dying off.
The Democrats are against the perpetual party of youth, a never-ending supply of it.
Yes.
At the same time, at least since 2008, the number of young people who become Republicans has declined.
And barring a major shift in a Ute vote from its allegiance to the Democrat Party by 65 to 35%, Democrats will pick up 2 million new voters in 2016.
By contrast, notes Politico, the youth split plus the number, the death number, puts Republicans at an almost 2.5 million voter disadvantage.
And again, just to sum this up, it's because certain Republicans are going to die because they're elderly and they're not going to get very much of the youth vote.
So if you combine the low percentage of the youth vote with death, the Republicans are going to be down 2.5 million voters.
Never forget this, though, that in 2012, there were anywhere between 3 and 4 million Republican voters that didn't vote because they were fed up.
They were not happy with Romney as the nominee.
And it was a protest to stay home.
There was not a shortage of Republicans in 2012.
They just had a significant number of them not show up.
Had they showed up and voted for Romney, we'd be in a different world right now.
But these guys want to convince themselves the Republican Party's dying.
And they want to convince themselves that the Republican Party is losing young voters by a margin of two to one.
Or actually, three to one.
Now, here back to Mr. Boole, who are Bowie, who is at slate.com.
It is Slate, right?
Not Salon.
Slate, because it doesn't say here anywhere.
Slate.com.
There's no doubt, he says, that the GOP is in a tight spot.
But it's too much to argue, as Politico does, that the party's primed for decline.
For starters, the trends Politico identifies for 2016 were also true in 2012 and 2008.
In fact, for most of the last decade, it has generally been true that Democrats have had an easier time getting and replacing voters than Republicans, who rely on a demographically narrow group of white people in both the South and the nation's interior.
Nevertheless, Republicans have won two midterm elections and they've come close to grabbing the White House from an incumbent president.
The reason it didn't had less to do with its aging base and more to do with the macro conditions of the 2012 election.
The economy was just good enough to give Obama a second term.
If you had higher unemployment and lower growth, however, you're likely looking at President Romney in 2013.
No, if you're just if the Republicans had nominated a conservative, not a pretend conservative, if they had nominated a conservative, we would have been looking at president conservative Republican in 2012.
It wasn't the economy.
Obama didn't get any credit for the economy.
It was all there in the exit polls.
There were two things from the exit polls that we learned in both years, 2008 and 2012.
The big question cares about people like me.
81% Obama, 19% Romney.
And those who thought the economy was a problem blame George W. Bush for it.
Hello, media, and hello, Republicans, for failing to campaign against Obama in 2012 as the architect of a ruinous economy, because they were of the belief that independents don't want to hear Democrats criticized.
So they even let him off the hook of Benghazi with the help of Candy Crowley in a presidential debate.
They handcuffed themselves.
Consultants out there said, don't go after Obama.
Let's go after his policies.
How do you separate the two?
I always asked.
Anyway, Mr. Bowie at, is it Salon or Slate?
Mr. Bowie at Slate.com says that the same thing is going to happen in 2016.
For as much as Republicans are in a demographic disadvantage, it's also true that their ultimate performance depends on the fundamentals.
And if Obama's approval rating declines, and if the economy hits a snag, see, this hits a snag, it's been a snag for six and a half years now.
Let me, if the economy hits a snag, this is this, I mean, by my insult, intelligence being insulted.
There's no economic recovery.
There's not even a pretend economic recovery going on out there.
Anyway, I got to stick with this.
You know, I could have an editorial comment after every sentence.
If Obama's approval rating declines and if the economy hits a snag, then voters will turn against Democrats and Republicans will recover the White House even as they struggle to replace their core supporters who are dying.
Now, how's that possible?
Would somebody explain to me, it's demographics or it isn't.
If the Demographic's going to kill the Republican Party, then how in the world can an Obama being blamed for the economy save them?
If their voters are dying, what else matters?
If their voters are dying and more going to be dead in 2016 than we're alive in 2012 or whatever, and if they're not getting the youth vote, what does it matter?
See, that's where these people get all wet.
They think they're the smartest people in the room, and they start talking demographics.
And they get Republicans believing this horse hockey.
And that's how Republicans end up thinking they've got to be for open borders to get the Hispanic vote.
And they've got to be for this and that to get the women's vote.
And they've got to be this and that to get whatever groups over there vote.
And yet the Democrats tell them you can't win unless you agree with us and somehow get your voters to not die.
But Obamacare has taken care of that.
But which is it?
What matters here, demographics or does actual policy or events matter?
And why is an Obama economy going to hurt Hillary?
This economy, if this economy were going to exact a price on the Democrats, it would have done so already.
But remember, we discussed this in the first hour yesterday.
More Gallup polling data out there that the people think the country is in the wrong direction, left and right.
I mean, it's in the wrong direction.
It's heading down the wrong direction fast.
But they don't blame Obama for it.
They're blaming the country.
A majority of Americans think the country's better days are over, but they don't associate this with Obama.
And the reason they don't is because the Republicans have not tied any of this to Obama.
It just, you can't rely on people concluding what you want them to conclude.
You have to lead them to it, which is what a campaign is, which is what a persuasive speech is.
You have to identify your opponents and you have to tie them to their policies that have been ruinous.
In this place, Obama's economic policy of growing the government, shrinking the private sector, it's impossible, mathematically, for the economy to be growing here at any significant replacement levels because Obama's commandeered so much of it.
It literally is shrinking.
The government is becoming more and more the gross domestic product, and the government doesn't have any money until it takes it from somewhere.
It takes from the private sector, which is shrinking, and that's where your careers are, millennials.
That's where your jobs are, and Obama's taking it.
Take a look at the number of businesses closing down.
Take a look at the number of businesses not starting up.
Where do you think your careers are?
They're somewhere in the federal government, having been subsumed by some bureaucracy.
And somehow, this becomes the country's problem, the country's fault, not Obama's.
In the medium term, it says here, Republicans will begin to make up for the death rate of their most loyal supporters.
How?
Well, eventually, the Republicans will find a working national majority, even if the country becomes as brown and liberal as some analysts project that it will.
Put differently, the real question of Republicans and elderly voters isn't if the party will die.
The only time a major party died is when it was killed by sectional disputes around slavery.
It's whether a younger, future Republican Party will still have a conservative movement.
And there we get to the nub of this.
The point of this story is to say the only future the Republican Party has is if it wipes out and destroys the conservative movement within it.
And how do they do that?
And I'll guarantee you, this is in salon.com or slate.
This is slave.com.
Guarantee it, it's a bunch of Republican consultants who believe that very thing.
That the only future of the Republican Party is to get rid of their conservative wing.
And if they do, then the party can grow and become hip by being pro-choice in certain sectors where they have to be and for open borders and amnesty in certain states where they have to be and whatever else that they have to do to be more like Democrats.
They'll be free to do when they get rid of the conservative wing.
Now, what these guys all know, these are very crafty guys, what they all know is that if you get rid of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, that's when it dies.
It doesn't matter if your elderly voters are dying.
It doesn't matter if you're getting a youth vote or not.
If you wipe out the conservative movement, you get rid of Fox News and talk radio at the same time, then you have gotten rid of the Republican Party.
And that's what it's all about.
Got to take a break.
Back with more after this.
Chris in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
It's great to welcome you to the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Rush, the dream of a lifetime.
Thanks for having me on.
You bet.
I have a question for you.
Yeah.
I'll be brief.
You mentioned earlier that anybody with a D-next hiring name is going to get 240, 34 electoral votes.
What Republican politician hires a consultant that is willing to concede that right off the bat?
That's like hiring a coach that is conceding 28 points before they even start the game.
I hear you.
Well, no, no, the correct analogy, you hire a coach who expects you're going to lose seven or eight games a year.
That's right.
So who would hire that coach?
Who would hire a business?
Well, the Cincinnati Bengals are dead for the longest time.
The Oakland Raiders have done that.
Just throw it.
Thank God I'm not a Raider.
No, it's a good question.
Let me cut to the chase here.
He heard me talking yesterday that there's a bunch of different ways that people looking at a presidential election.
I happen to be one who looks at the whole country's up for grabs, and it's based on articulation of issues and persuasion and showing people you care about them and identifying the issues that matter.
And then there's another school of thought that looks at the electoral college map and concludes going in that the Democrats are going to win a minimum of 200 electoral votes or 230 and there's nothing you can do about it.
And they arrive at this by looking at the states that the Democrats are guaranteed to win.
And they start with New York and California.
They add those electoral votes and they say, okay, Democrats start with those and we can't win them and there's no way we can win them and there's no way we should spend any money trying.
And then they add other states.
They'll add Massachusetts in there and they'll add obviously liberal Democrat blue states and the Republicans are doing the same thing, by the way.
And your question is, why would you hire anybody that's going to write off entire states and geographic regions?
And you do it because of money.
You only have so much money, no matter that it may set a record, and it has to be allocated in places where they think it has a chance of being effective.
That's why I have heard, you want to get further irritated, get this.
I have heard, I wish I could remember who.
It was a Republican consultant.
And it was in something I read, and it's been months ago now, that the 2016 election was going to be won in three states.
If the Republicans didn't win these three and all the ones that they are assumed to win, that it was over.
And one of the three was Florida, one of the three was Ohio, and I forget which the third one was.
And they believe this.
They believe it's, and the reason for this is obviously population, registered voters, voter turnout.
And it becomes hard to argue.
I mean, it's a hard case to make that the Republicans could win California.
They just, do you know there's not a single Republican that holds statewide office in California?
The last Republican to win California was Reagan.
Do you know that Richard Nixon won California all four times he ran there and Reagan did too, counting times he ran for governor?
1988, last time, Republican, 84 maybe.
I don't know whether Bush carried California or not, but is it 84, 88?
Now stop and think of this for a second.
What happened?
What changed?
What in the world happened?
The Republican Party, I mean, Pete Wilson, those guys, we owned California not that long ago, a generation ago.
We owned California.
Never New York, but we owned California.
I'll tell you exactly what happened, folks.
It's called Simpson-Missouli 1986, and they opened the flood.
We did not do any immigration from 1924 to 1965.
We assimilated all the people who had immigrated prior to 1924.
And Ted Kennedy comes along and starts agitating for opening the borders again.
And Simpson Mazzoli comes along and we legalize it.
We amnesty 3 million.
And that's since we did that.
The Republicans have been written off in California, and they don't even hold a single statewide office.
I mean, it's kind of depressing to think of the Republicans used to own California, had the governorship.
There was a day where the only powerful Democrat in that state was Willie Brown at the State Assembly and the mayor of San Francisco, whoever that happened to be.
Far cry.
You can pinpoint it to immigration.
There are other factors as well.
But anyway, we'll continue this.
I'm glad you called Chris.
Back in a sec.
Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner with a press conference now in San Francisco, the conclusion of the owners' meetings out there.
Maybe I think today they wrap up.
And we're rolling on it.
I have not had a chance to see anything that he has said.
I just read the closed captioning.
He was saying some things, nice things about Robert Kraft, but that's the extent of what I've heard.
Doesn't matter.
We'll have it when it's over.
Now, one quick thing before we get back to the phones here.
We just had the politico piece and this, it was salon.com or slate?
It was slate.com.
Salon.com, I'm sorry, Politico saying the Republican Party is finished because it's dying.
Of course, nobody ever calculates the Democrat Party's problem.
I mean, how many African Americans are in jail?
I mean, by virtue of their own complaint, they can't vote.
And if you listen to civil rights leaders, African Americans are dying unfairly because if it's unfair in America, we never hear about these impacts on the Democrat Party.
We only hear about Republican voters dying.
Anyway, the Politico says Republicans are dying because they're dying, and the party's going to die with them.
The guy at, was it slateersalon.com?
The guy at slate.com says, no, no, no, that doesn't matter.
As long as they're, because they're going to figure that out, the thing that the Republican Party needs to do is get rid of its conservative wing.
And if it does that, then we Democrats are going to have a formidable enemy.
As long as the Republicans hold on to their conservative wing, no problem for us.
That's this guy's point in slate.com.
Yet, if you go to the New Yorker, which I have done here, right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, story there warning that the GOP is about to run the table in 2016.
It's a story by John Cassidy, and he writes, this is an excerpt.
Take a peek at a new analysis of the American political firmament by Sean Trende and David Biler of the website RealClearPolitics.
It's a data-driven article that examines what's happening not only in Washington, but in legislatures and state houses around the fruited plane, which also have a significant impact on people's lives.
Trende and Biler conclude the GOP is already stronger than it has been for many decades.
And that, by the way, is true.
Thanks to the midterm elections in 2010 and 2020, the Democrats got smoked down the ballot.
I mean, it's a major landslide in two midterm elections.
And these guys are exactly right about that.
And with a good result in 2016, including a possible takeover of the White House, it could virtually sweep the board.
Indeed, Trende and Biler say the Republicans could end up in their strongest position since 1920, the year women got the vote.
If the specter of today's Republican Party monopolizing most of the levels of power, levers of power, at the federal, congressional, and state levels isn't enough to get people exercised about 2016, I don't know what is.
This is the guy writing at the New Yorker.
At this stage, Democrat control of the White House is about the only thing holding the Republicans back.
So there's an entirely different take from the New Yorker, from slate.com and the Politico.
And the reason the New Yorker is worried about this is because this is data-driven.
This is all poll analysis.
And these people live and die by that.
So there you have that.
Here's John in San Diego.
Welcome, sir.
Glad you waited.
And it's your turn.
You're up on the EIB network.
Hey, Mr. Limbaugh.
Mega Dittos.
I've always wanted to say that.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Snertley says, get right to my answer.
As far as dead Republicans go, the only ones that get to vote are dead Democrats.
But my answer to your question about Lindsey Graham running is like him and Mikey Huckabee.
They're just going to be running cover for the old Jebster, you know, when it comes to debate time.
And when we get into the meat of the campaign next year.
What John is referring to here, ladies and gentlemen, is that some time ago on this program, I was asked by Mr. Snirtley why I thought Lindsey Gramnesty, the senator from South Carolina, was getting into the president's race because Snirdly doesn't possibly think he can win, does he?
So what's he doing?
And I offered an opinion that is resume-enhancing.
By getting former presidential candidate, you can command certain things, speech, income, maybe a commentary slot on Fox News, what have you.
But yours, John, is an interesting theory.
What John here in San Diego is saying between the jokes is that Gramnesty and Huckabee are running to actually act as the establishment candidates, freeing Jeb to not portray himself as an establishment candidate and have some chance with conservative voters.
Is that your theory?
Absolutely.
And then come debate time.
Well, there won't be a debate because Ted Cruz will clean the floor with everybody.
But I think it's going to be really interesting to see how McCain said, oh, we can't go after Barack's middle name and this and that, and we can't attack Barack's policies because he's of a certain ethnicity.
I think that's how it's going to work out.
We can't go after Hillary.
Heck, they might even run cover for Hillary.
We can't go after her.
She's a woman.
Okay, wait, wait, wait.
Now I'm getting confused as to what you mean by cover for Jeb.
Because what I thought you mean by that is that these two guys, they're getting in the race, knowing they're not going to win, they're getting in the race to provide cover for Jeb.
Cover as far as he can go out and act like a conservative.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Okay, okay.
So what does that have to do with not calling Hillary out on her policies, though?
That's where I lost you.
Well, the same way McCain said we can't go after Barack's middle name.
We can't go after him.
We can't go after Reverend Wright, all that stuff back in 08.
You know, it's like the way McCain was just so weak when it came to the campaign.
Right.
Yeah, I got that.
But how does what are you saying that what's a Graham and Huckabee are going to tell everybody you can't go after Hillary?
Well, they might as well.
They all have the same ideology, it seems like, lately.
Yeah, I don't know.
Okay, no, no, no, I mean, serious.
Maybe I'm denser.
How does that cover for Jeb?
Does that free Jeb up to go after Hillary?
Well, they're going to be the attack dogs, and Jeb gets to have.
Oh, they are going to go after Hillary.
They are going to go after Hillary, so Jeb doesn't have to.
Right.
That's what I'm saying.
Jeb.
Oh, I thought you were saying that they weren't going to, just like McCain said, don't.
Well, Huckabee and Gramnesty aren't.
But you think they are.
It's ugly.
And then I had a quick comment on buying access.
Hasn't that been going on since the days of the Pharaohs in Egypt?
I mean, it's.
So maybe so, but I don't know that anybody's done it like the Clintons have done it.
Yeah, they're a little excessive, that's for sure, running a $2 billion.
So you don't think a presidential candidate selling access for issues if she wins the presidency is that's just part for the course.
That's just the normal state of the things, and as such, you're not worried about it.
I don't care if you sell access.
It's who's buying it?
The Saudis, the Chikoms?
I mean, who else?
Well, that's the point.
Nobody could buy it if you didn't sell it.
Of course, they're going to try to buy it.
It's the selling.
It's the thing.
They already have bought the access.
That's the problem.
That's what's coming out.
You know, all the money coming in from all these other despotic countries, it's like, wow, what are they going to want?
Well, yeah, exactly.
They are buying it, but they're only buying it.
I don't think there's a Republican candidate out selling this stuff.
Anyway, speaking of the Saudis, you just reminded me, they just put a want ads ad in the papers in Jeddah and Riyadh.
They are, I'm not kidding.
They have put ads out.
They're seeking more expert swordsmen because the beheadings have reached such a number they can't keep up with them.
They don't have enough swordsmen.
Apparently, it is a work of art to behead someone in the official form of punishment dictated in Saudi Arabia.
And not just everybody can do it.
And they're actually seeking eight new swordsmen.
And I don't know where they're looking.
I don't know.
I doubt that they're looking in any American cities.
But they clearly are seeking official beheaders, expert swordsmen, because there are more beheadings than they can keep up with.
So that's that.
I like the idea that Hillary, that Huckabee and Lindsey Gramnesty are in there to provide cover for Jeb.
I just have to think about how that actually happens.
But I can say Huckabee, when 2008 sabotaged Romney by turning over his delegates where in West Virginia and Winter State, Florida, to McCain.
And I don't think that's what John's talking about.
There's some other form of, you know, and I think if they're running as the establishment candidates, then it frees Jeb up from that responsibility so we didn't get hurt by it.
But if that's the case, then the establishment is admitting that they are their own biggest problem in the campaign, and they've got to do something to get the guy they want to win the nomination to be able to appear as not part of the establishment.
What does that tell you?
Back after this.
Okay, here's Roger Goodell.
I'm going to translate this for you before you hear it.
This is a little 15-second soundbite in which Roger Goodell explains how Tom Brady could have his suspension reduced or eliminated.
You know, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals.
We have a process here.
It's long established.
I look forward to hearing directly from Tom if there's new information or there's information that can be helpful to us in getting this right.
I want to hear directly from Tom on that.
Okay, I'm going to translate that for you even further.
What it means is, in the original go-around, Tom would not surrender things we asked for from his phone.
If he will, he's saying Brady obstructed the investigation.
It's basically what he's saying here.
And that's the reason for the penalty.
If he comes forward and tells us things we don't know, in other words, if he shows us that the things we suspect on his phone are not there, then that's all we need.
So he just put the onus on Brady here.
Tom, you want your suspension reduced?
Do you want it eliminated?
Let us see what you got for us.
That's exactly what that is.
Don't doubt me.
Yep, sure sounds to me like Roger Goodell is saying that Tom Brady has to show some cooperation.
Maybe even a little contrition.
Maybe open up that cell phone.
Maybe, you know, stop obstructing things and it could all go away.
Time will tell.
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