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Sept. 2, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:41
September 2, 2015, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Let me ask you a quick question.
So Jeb Bush is out there.
He went out there.
He was out there.
He was he was speaking Spanish to a Spanish-speaking group, so far as so that makes sense.
And he's telling them that Trump.
El hombre no es conservadore.
It means the guy's not a conservative.
Now, if Jeb is telling people in Spanish that Trump isn't a conservative, does that mean that Hispanics want to elect a conservative?
Because we're not told that.
You know, we're we're well.
Just a little thing to think about there, folks.
Greetings and great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh, real honor to be with you here every day.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
This program gets action.
You remember yesterday we had a story about some stupid directive at some university called WSU.
And the story did not define what WSU was.
It could have been anything.
Western sensitive university, Western sensitive, whatever university.
Turned out to be Washington State, which we learned later, talking about it.
And the story was that Washington State University was attempting to censor politically incorrect terms and require students with white skin to defer to minority students.
And if they didn't, they wouldn't get ahead.
Remember that?
You may not remember Snurley, because you were screening calls probably.
It's a very challenging thing for the official call screener to actually listen to the program while screening.
Sometimes that's why.
You know, you'll hear me do a brilliant 15-minute monologue, and the next caller is saying what I just said, and you're saying, how in the hell can that happen?
Snerdley didn't hear my brilliance.
He's screening calls, he doesn't know.
Um we have systems in place, but sometimes they fall apart.
But nevertheless, certainly he's looking at me wide-eyed.
He didn't hear this yesterday.
Washington State University, actually, professors were out there telling students if you don't defer to minorities, you have no chance of getting ahead here.
Meaning you're not going to be graded well and any number of other things.
So we talked about this yesterday.
Figure out that it's Washington State University, and today, the very next day, Washington State U smacks down professors who want to censor politically incorrect language.
Officials at Washington State, this from a daily caller.
Washington State University have now announced that taxpayer-funded professors on campus cannot proceed with their flagrant attempts to censor politically incorrect terms or require students with white skin to defer to minority students.
The epic smackdown came on Monday in a strongly worded statement from the interim scrual president, Daniel J. Bernardo.
He said, over the weekend we became aware that some faculty members, in the interest of fostering a constructive climate for discussion, included language in class syllabi that has been interpreted as a bridging students' free speech rights.
We are working with these faculty members to clarify, and in some cases modify, course policies to ensure that students'free speech rights are recognized and are protected.
it The public university CEO felt compelled to remind faculty members that they are required by law to adhere to constitutional speech protection.
Just a tiny little victory out there in the entire sick ocean that is education in this country today.
Just a minor little success story.
Now, let me let me complete my my train of thought.
A previous caller reminded me that people have been calling filled with despair in recent years, despondent, depressed, and the country was finished.
That they did not see any evidence that traditional institutions and values were represented by a majority of the population anymore.
You probably heard many of these calls.
And she made mention of the fact that you always tell everybody that you're optimistic, and you try to explain why.
And she said that I she said she remembered me telling people that all of this is way too fluid and unpredictable to give up.
That things can happen overnight that nobody can foresee, a tipping point, something big that could happen to wake everybody up.
And she was asking me if I thought the Trump insurgency here is that event.
And it could well be, which led me to a little offshoot.
There is, you probably have seen this too.
Any number of I'm I don't use these terms derogatorily.
Let me say this up front.
I'm just trying to be as descriptive as I can.
You have within the conservative movement, you have all kinds of people.
You have conservative intellectuals, you have the conservative intelligentsia.
You have the rank and file.
You have the uh magazine and website editors and writers.
It's a it's an entire menagerie of people that comprise the conservative movement.
Now, prior to Trump, the conservative movement, the intellectuals in the movement were were very uh precise in their definitions of what is and what isn't conservative and who is and who isn't a conservative and who is entitled to speak for it and who isn't.
And there's been within the conservative movement a vicious battle for the precious position of leader, intellectual leader, the person that provides the intellectual energy that defines it.
Ever since the death of William F. Buckley Jr., and it's not that he actively sought that role, it's just that he was it.
He actually founded what's officially known as the conservative movement in the modern era.
There are a lot of great thinkers prior to Buckley, from whom he learned as well, Edmund Burke, just the name one, uh, but there are a number, but then in terms of an actual movement, he started National Review, the magazine, and uh there were copycats of that, and it grew.
And as long as he was alive, he was so respected and revered that he was automatically anointed with that position even after he had retired.
But when he retired and became less of a day-to-day player, uh, the movement began to replace him.
Competition's common in every walk of life.
The liberals have the same thing.
The liberals is a competition, but who is the big liberal, who defines it, who's this.
They just happen to be a little bit more cohesive on the liberal side.
And they don't excommunicate fallen liberals.
They protect them, circle the wagons around them.
The conservative movement is eager to identify false conservatives pretenders and dispatch them.
Just the difference in the two.
So then you throw into this mix.
Well, uh one more thing about about Buckley.
Now, many people thought that Buckley could not possibly be the leader because his reach did not extend to the grassroots, that he was so smart, so brilliant, so well spoken, so on in his own world that he didn't have the ability to inspire and relate grass, but he did, both directly and indirectly.
Buckley inspired others who did have the ability to reach the grassroots and so forth.
Uh so uh it's it's a mistake to say that that Buckley was maybe the leader, but way up here as an untouchable.
He his tentacles reached deep, if not directly from him, but rather from disciples of his that believed in what he believed were inspired.
Reagan was one of his disciples, of folks.
Reagan was a huge disciple of William F. Buckley.
And vice versa, by the way.
So Buckley passes away, and that began, this is all my theory.
Um I don't know how many others agree or think I'm all wet with it, but when Buckley passed away, it then became an open competition for who was going to replace it.
Who was going to be Mr. Conservative?
Who was going to be the guy that determined what was and who was and what isn't and who isn't conservative.
The battle's never been won.
I mean, there has no singular figure, particularly in the literary world to have filled the Buckley role.
It's an ongoing competition.
As such, it has taken on many different identities.
And the Trump insurgency here has I don't know if the word exposed is right, but it has served to illustrate the fractious nature of conservatism as a as a movement.
I have and I say this honestly.
I'm not, I'm not trying to sound uh know it-all ish or condescending to anybody.
Speaking for myself, I have never thought of Donald Trump as a conservative.
My whole life, I've known him, I know him socially, play golf with him now, and then he's I mean, I I can reach him on the phone if I want to.
But I've never considered him a conservative, and I've never, I've never considered him a liberal, don't misunderstand.
But as far as a movement conservative, Trump hasn't been, I've never been under the impression that he is.
And I've never held it against him.
And I've I've I've never felt like, well, he's not worthy of speaking on things I believe in because he's not a conservative.
That's not my attitude.
I know he's not a liberal.
I know that he's nowhere near what modern day liberalism is.
What I also believe fervently is that all of this support for Trump, this movement, whatever you call this that's happening with Trump, it's not about conservatism.
And that doesn't bother me.
But some in the conservative movement are pulling their hair out over this.
And like I mentioned, Brett Stevens writing in the Wall Street Journal, this piece, it is just vicious to uh to conservatives.
I mean, it's just over the top vicious.
It stands alone in that in that regard, but there are others in the conservative movement who are also writing pieces, admonishing people supporting Trump that he's not conservative, you're being fooled, you're destroying conservatism by allowing Trump to carry the mantle of conservatism, and I just I've never seen or or been of the opinion that that that's what Trump is about is conservatism.
And the paranoia that he is about that, and some of these uh conservative intellectuals who are having a big problem with this writing about, I think are missing what this is all about.
Now, why they're missing it is a whole other bunch of theories.
Now, I had the Brett Stevens thing right here.
I wanted to quote from it, and I can't I thought I had it in uh in the Trump stack, in fact, and I must have put it somewhere.
I can't do this it.
Yeah, here it is.
The Donald and the demagogues.
If by now you don't find Donald Trump appalling, you are appalling.
That's how this piece opens.
If you have reached physical maturity and still chuckle at Trump's pubescent jokes about Rosie O'Donnell or Heidi Klum, you will never reach mental maturity.
If you watched Mr. Trump mock fellow candidate Lindsey Graham's low poll numbers and didn't cringe at the back of class, you are incapable of class.
If you think we need to build new airports in Queens the way they build them in Qatar, you should be sent to join the millions of forced laborers who do construction in the Persian Gulf.
It would serve you right.
That's just the first paragraph.
Since Mr. Trump joined a GOP presidential field and leaped to the top of the polls, several views have been offered to explain his popularity.
He conveys a can do image.
He is the bluntest of the candidates in addressing public fears of cultural and economic dislocation.
He toes no line.
He serves no pack.
He abides no ideology.
He is beholden to no man.
He addresses the broad disgust of everyday Americans with their failed political establishment.
And so forth and so on.
A parade of semi-sophisticated theories that act as bathroom deodorizer to mask the stench of the Trump candidacy.
Mr. Trump is a loudmouth Vulgarian appealing to quieter vulgarians.
These vulgarians comprise a significant percentage of the GOP base.
The leader isn't the problem, the people are.
It takes the demos to make the demagogue.
Well, this is the perfect illustration of the problem that so-called conservative intellectuals are having with the Trump insurgency or the Trump campaign.
To the point now that they feel it necessary to insult the people supporting Trump in addition to insulting Trump.
Now, these are the people who routinely tell us that we are racists or nativists or whatever because we do not believe in their policy of open borders.
And because we are intolerant of this invasion of people, which they call illegal immigration, which we term it invasion.
Since we're not tolerant, we're not sophisticated.
We don't have the ability to understand what this country's all about and what this country needs for a vibrant future and so forth.
And it's the j it's one of the biggest disconnects I've ever seen in my life between Washington and the rest of the people in the country.
Now explaining the Trump phenomenon, not that difficult.
At the top of all of it is this invasion.
At the top of the list of reasons why Trump has a large and growing following, is it's all about immigration and how the establishment inside the beltway is now openly not even disguising what they've thought about average ordinary Americans for years now.
And that is unsophisticated, rubes, uneducated.
I mean, take any insult that you want, appalling stupid uh you name it.
Look at I hate to interrupt myself, as you can imagine, but I have to because of the clock here, so we'll be back.
Back we are, Rush Limbaugh here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Look, I'm I'm having trouble explaining here what I actually mean.
It's it's it's it's it's not that I'm afraid to say anything.
I'm just trying to structure this right.
Um, this disconnect.
These the problem, I think, with all of these, the the conservative literary people at the magazines and websites and the columns and so forth who are writing so disparagingly of Trump and of his uh supporters and followers.
Uh best to say that.
Uh well, they are establishing people, yeah, I know that, and what they're actually trying to do is engender support for the party at the end of the day here.
And anything that doesn't do that is considered damaging and threatening because conservatism doesn't run for office, the Republicans do, and these people are all devoted to the Republicans winning because that puts everybody on the winning side inside the beltway, keeps the ruling class together, gives them their power, so forth.
But it to me it's deeper than that.
Uh Because the many of the people that are complaining in their writing and in their columns and in their blog posts and so forth.
I'm not trying to offend the all they do is write.
They comment and that's it.
As though that's an achievement in and of itself.
There isn't any action that is inspired or suggested by all of it.
And those are the people now complaining at the action that is taking place that's a direct result of events happening.
People here on supporting Trump are not supporting Trump because they've been fooled or bamboozled or told to.
It's because of real things happening in the country that apparently some don't see.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, 800-282-2882.
Look, my point is like here's a piece that just cleared.
Who wrote it?
Doesn't matter, you're gonna find out anyway, at some point.
Trump has succeeded in convincing conservatives to discard their principles overnight.
Okay, um this will provide an excellent opportunity.
Conservative principles.
What good are they if all that's ever done with them is written about?
What good are conservative principles if all anybody ever does is talk about it?
What good are conservative principles if that's all they are, if there's no associated lifestyle, if there's no associated action, if there's no associated political objective with it, what good is it?
I, for one, am tired of conservatism being nothing more than some intellectual feast every day.
Let's look at the Tea Party as an example here.
The Tea Party movement is one of the most important political movements in this country in our lifetimes.
Let's look at how powerful the Tea Party movement was and is.
The Tea Party movement came to in existence in 2010 as a result of real world events, not because the members of the Tea Party had read a bunch of conservatism.
They hadn't read a bunch of books and they hadn't read a bunch of websites and they hadn't read a bunch of columns and they hadn't read a bunch of blogs.
What they were was angry and scared over what they knew Obama was doing that threatened the country and the future of their children and grandchildren, specifically with Obamacare and the spending that was happening with this administration, they could see this country's future literally circling the drain.
And so people who had no formal political experience in their lives, meaning they had never been part of a campaign.
They hadn't maybe the most they'd ever done was put signs in the front yard.
They had voted and that was it.
But they had no professional political experience in their lives, and they came into existence.
There wasn't a single person that was leading them.
There wasn't a single person that served as the creator of the movement.
It was a grassroots effervescence that bubbled up, resulting from real world events that these people manifestly opposed and were frightened by.
the Tea Party movement was so big and so threatening to the left that they had to create their own fake version of it, which was called Occupy Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street was everything the Tea Party wasn't.
Occupy Wall Street was made up.
It was designed.
It was planned.
It was executed.
It was created.
And it was created as a counter.
It was made to look like it, too, was organic, except it opposed the Tea Party.
It supported Obama.
It supported the Democrat Party.
It supported liberalism.
And the media wrote about it as though it was as organic as the Tea Party.
But it wasn't.
It was bought and paid for by Democrat donors.
It was nourished by the Democrat Party and leftist organizations left and right.
It had organized protests.
It had organized locations.
It had organized activities.
It had donations to it.
It had specific purposes.
The Tea Party was never so organized as it was.
in that sense because it was all organic.
Now you would think that an uh uh something like this that just arose from seemingly nowhere that existed specifically to oppose and stop Barack Obama, you would think that the Republican Party would make tracks to embrace these people.
You would think that the Republican Party would do everything it could to build a bridge.
The Republican Party is smarting, it's it's it's it's in pain, it's whimpering around because it's just got shellacked.
In the in the 2008 election, Obama wins, all appears lost.
He's got health care, he's done the stimulus, there's no stopping him, and here comes a movement of people, average ordinary Americans never involved in politics before, and they are huge in number.
They are willing to donate.
The Democrat Party is scared to death of them.
The Republican Party has a built-in majority with the Tea Party.
All they have to do is build a bridge rooted in opposition to Obamacare, it's made to order.
The Republican Party was, in my estimation, given not for anything they did, a majority.
And the Republican Party made not one move to embrace the Tea Party.
Some individual Republicans did, and the Tea Party ended up having members or like-minded people elected, such as Ted Cruz and others.
But the Republican Party and the Democrat Party, the Washington, D.C. establishment, rather than try to form an accord, try to form an alliance, tried to destroy it.
The inside the beltway establishment tried to destroy the Tea Party.
Now, the Inside the Beltway establishment is made up of these people today writing about who's giving up and sacrificing their conservative principles.
If the Tea Party was anything, it was conservative.
And if it was made up of anything, it was made up of conservatives.
At that point, they weren't obsessed with what the principles of conservatism were.
Because that was a given.
That was understood.
The opposition to Obama is naturally conservative.
That's what these people already were.
All they had to do was be joined.
All they had to do was be inspired.
All they had to do was be motivated, welcomed in, but they weren't.
They were ostracized.
The Democrat Party, especially.
Did the Republican Party do much to help the Tea Party when it was in that mess with the IRS?
The IRS trying to deny tax exempt status to all those Tea Party organizations, fundraising groups.
Where was the Republican Party in there trying to help them out, represent them, bashing the IRS, joining in the effort to hear diminished Lois Lerner and her efforts?
The Tea Party was bashed, impugned, ripped to shreds daily by the drive-by media.
The media tried to make it look like a bunch of looney-tune nutcases.
Republican Party made not win.
And then these are the people upset over what's happening to Trump.
or with Trump.
This is not about conservative principles.
This is not about who has them and who doesn't and who's sacrificing them or who's giving them up or discarding them.
What this is about is a whole lot of Americans thinking they had representation in Washington, and they've discovered they don't.
They've been giving money to a political party.
Political parties have been campaigning, promising to do X, Y, and Z, and they've been getting voted for.
They've been given majorities, House and the Senate, but that's where it's all stopped.
At the party level.
The Tea Party can't be killed because it isn't one person.
It isn't an official movement.
It does not have a headquarters building.
You can bomb it, you can't nuke it, you can't do anything.
It's there, it's growing, and it's going to continue to grow as long as Washington remains unresponsive.
Which Washington appears to be more and more unresponsive as the days go by.
So all these people that are got their underwear in a wad over people supporting Trump.
They need to look in the mirror to explain why.
If they really want to know why all this is happening, just have to look in the mirror.
You can only tell people they're stupid and dumb so many times.
You can only tell them they're unsophisticated so many times when they're staring the loss of their country in the face.
With this invasion, illegal immigration and Obamacare.
And all of these executive orders that Obama's doing, and there's not a single ounce of apparent opposition to any of it.
It's not about conservative principles.
And these people in the w uh that are writing about it in those terms are simply, I think uh doing what they can to marginalize Trump and his supporters in a apparently convoluted effort to maintain support for the rhinos or the establishment or or the ruling class, whatever you whatever you want.
Um, I have to take a break.
I'm gonna get back to the phones here, folks.
I could I could spend another twenty minutes explaining this, but I think you get it, at least my thoughts on this by now.
Sit tight, we'll be back with much more after this.
Don't go away.
Okay, back to the phones.
This is Colleen in Oklahoma City.
I'm glad you waited.
Appreciate your patience.
Welcome to the program.
Hi.
Hi, thanks for having me.
You bet.
Okay, so I just wanted to thank you for sparking my interest in politics.
Um I'm 22 years old, and my dad loves your show, but I couldn't exactly say the same.
Um I've been kind of forced to be listening to you growing up, and every time I'd ask my dad to change to a music station, he'd be like, Well, this is music to my ears, so we'd have to stay and listen to your show.
And um this summer I've been spending more and more time with my dad, and finally I gave in to actually actively listening to your show, and it's not bad.
And I'm actually Yeah, I mean, it's he's got something to what he does.
Who knew?
But I'm actually now motivated to pay attention to the election, become an educated voter, and for like the first time in my life.
So Holy smokes, that's amazing.
Yeah, you're way cooler than I thought.
So I'm glad I gave your show a chance.
Well, uh you do not know how you have made my day.
No, because I can understand.
Look, it I when I was uh I was I was 18, 19, 20, 14, 15 once.
And I I know when your parents are doing something and they force you to or ask you to, and that's the last thing you want to do.
Parents aren't hip.
I mean you love them, but they're not hip.
I mean, you for cool and stuff, you don't go to your parents.
So you're forced to listen to it, which is just gonna naturally make you resent it.
Yep.
And uh for what how can how were you able or how is your dad able to continue to keep this program on against your entreaties to turn it off?
I mean, how did he how did he survive your efforts to make him change the station?
Well, I mean, I love him, so anything that'll make him happy, he worked so hard for me, so I'll keep his show on every once in a while.
So he finally challenged me to give it a shot this summer, and I did.
So for how many years had had you had this attitude about the program before you actually started giving it a shot this summer?
I mean, I've been having my dad's been listening to this since I can remember, so I mean it's just this year.
I just turned twenty-two, so I guess my whole life until now.
So you are a reluctant rush baby.
Yep.
That's uh Well, yeah, I know you're not now, but you were.
You were I was, that's the truth.
Well, I I'm I'm I'm flattered to no end.
Uh so y only recently you have what what did you think of politics before this?
What was your attitude about whenever you came across any political news?
I mean, did you were you just not interested in it?
I wasn't interested, I didn't really pay attention.
I mean, I was way more interested in just music industry or pop culture.
Right, right.
I think it affected me that much.
And now I'm getting older and I'm realizing this stuff really does affect me.
So I need to pay more attention.
Well, I I I appreciate that.
Welcome.
Have you have you visited Rush Limbaugh.com?
Have you been to the website?
Um, well, just get this phone number, and you look different than I thought, but you're looking good.
Said it all the same, you know.
Well should have taken your call at the beginning of the show today.
Okay, so you you you have been to the website, you've been to you've perused it, you've looked at it.
Um, no, just to get this phone number, but I I mean Okay, well my my website, because it's really worth it has a paywall.
My website, I mean it's the the free side of my website is an encyclopedia, but the uh the stuff on the other side of the paywall is even better.
And what I want to do, I want to give you a a complimentary subscription to it so that you can access the whole thing.
And and I think when you do that, and it's it's not that you have anything else to learn.
Don't don't misunderstand.
I'm just saying that I'm really proud of it.
The content on that program on that website every day is voluminous.
And if you ever miss a program one day, you can go listen to it again there or read the transcripts of things.
And if you heard something you really liked, you can revisit it and relive it.
And it's really uh we it's a great representation of what happens on the program.
It's a lot of hard work putting it together every day.
And since you have uh recently arrived at the program and like it, the website would be a natural adjunct to it or resource if and when uh you had time to access it.
And I want to make sure you have access to the whole thing.
So if you'll hang on here, Colleen, uh Mr. Snurdy will get back to you, we'll we'll finagle away to get you a complimentary subscription so you get access to the entire site, okay?
Well, thank you so much.
You bet and we'll throw in a copy monthly uh issue of the Limbaugh Letter, which is the most widely read, I'm sure you don't know this, political newsletter in the country, too.
And it features an interview every month, because I don't do interviews on the radio show, because I am the expert.
But I defer in the newsletter and pretend that there are experts on things, and I talk to them.
Uh so we'll give you a subscription to that too.
But I I can't thank you enough.
I I appreciate uh your dad and uh everything that happened that made you stick with it and and get it.
I really do appreciate that.
So hang on for Mr. Snerdley.
Here's Fred, a trucker in Iowa.
Great to have you, Fred.
How are you?
Thank you, Rush.
Biddos, I'm a twenty-six-year listener.
I'm one of those people that actually lost a digit off my finger dialing the number.
One of the people that lost a digit.
Used to say that, and I haven't heard it in a while, but no kidding, it's gone.
Anyway, uh right to the point.
Oh, by the way, kudos to Mr. Snerdley.
Uh couldn't have been treated better.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Um this gentleman that's that wrote the article that you've been reading from.
First of all, this guy is not a conservative.
He may even be a Democrat.
Um wrote down a couple of notes.
I think he has the moral authority of Harry Reed.
He has the intellect of Nancy Pelosi and Rita from from Milwaukee.
Rita from Milwaukee.
I told you I've been listening a long time.
You have.
Obviously, you have.
That'd be Rita X. Yes, Rita X. Good old oh boy.
Anyway, I think I have finally found a solution for all these people.
What is it?
If if they finally, at long last, elect Nelson Rockefeller as president, then they'll be happy.
You know, there's more there's more truth to that than you I know you're making a joke, but there's more truth to that than you they have been trying to get Nelson Rockefeller elected president ever since 1992.
No question about it.
Meaning Republican and name owner, nor only a Northeastern liberal uh Republican sophisticated establishment type.
Anyway, Fred, I appreciate the call.
I really do.
Gotta take a timeout here, folks.
Much more straight ahead.
Don't go away.
Now, my my look, the overall point is I love conservatism, I am one.
But what good is it if all you do is write about it?
Do the liberals write about liberalism or do they do it?
There needs to be some implementation at some point, some advocacy for implementation at some point.
Or being a conservative is meaningless.
All you gotta do is write about it.
Write about who is one and who isn't one.
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