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Sept. 14, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:06
September 14, 2015, Monday, Hour #3
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Time Text
I just got a funny note from a friend.
In fact, he's an elected member of Congress.
Oh, I'll go ahead and step in and tell you who it is, and Louis Gomert.
Louis Gomer just sent me a note.
He said, Rush, any time you are thinking of stepping in it, I find myself more interested.
But hell, you may as well go ahead and step in it because we're all already up to our eyeballs in it anyway.
So go ahead.
Thank you, Louie.
Greetings.
Welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, great to have you here.
The Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone number is 800 282-2882 in the email address L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Folks, it's a serious problem, and I I uh this is stepping in it, or in the vein of stepping in it.
And by stepping in it, what I mean is I'm I'm not trying to openly criticize my friends.
I mean, people on the same side of the aisle as I am.
All I error am trying to do is be helpful.
If I were trying to criticize, I would name names here and call people out, and it's not my point.
Fighting for what you believe in is a mandatory thing in politics.
It's required.
It's not enough, just tell people what you think.
Uh and get kudos for that.
But in all too many cases, it seems to be totally satisfactory.
The satisfaction comes from writing something or saying something, have other people say, Man, that's right on, man, that's so right.
Oh God, are you so smart?
And that's where it stops.
We see the manifestation here of not fighting back in the Republican Party.
How many of you have gone to the polls in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, thinking you're electing people are going to stop what's going on, or at least try to.
I know every damn one of you.
And you haven't seen an effort to stop it, much less reverse it.
All you've gotten are excuses or quasi support for the status quo.
And it gets worse than that.
Then, when there are people who fight back, and I count myself as one of those, and there are many others, we end up being criticized as troublemakers.
Uh we're we're we're causing a bad image or reputation to descend on everybody.
A black eye on the movement or what have you.
Uh and as such, there's there's no defense of any of the people who do fight back.
So the people that fight back are marginalized and considered uh, I don't know, fringe or what have you.
The Democrats are fighting every day for what they believe no matter what.
The left constantly is in its never-ending fight for what they want, as you know, and the aggressor in any conflict always sets the rules.
The left is not satisfied with getting kudos from each other on how smart they are.
Uh they really are not happy until they skunk us.
And that's what they live for.
We are their biggest enemy.
We're a bigger threat than ISIS, we're a bigger threat than uh Al-Qaeda, bigger threat than any real enemy in their minds, because we're the ones that threaten their power.
We're the ones that seek to defeat them at the polls.
We're the d the most direct threat to their power and security that they know.
So we are their number one enemy.
Conservatism.
We are their number one threat.
It's relentless.
Our side doesn't even fight back, but the there's another manifestation of it, and that is that young people on our side never learn the fight.
They don't learn it, and in fact, they come to think of it as sort of dirty.
It's unseemly, it's unsurfistic, it's ungentlemanly, it's unsophisticated.
And uh end up being risk-averse.
And uh so you do you you have to try to implement what you believe.
You have to try to – it's great to have all these great policy objectives, but then what?
I mean you have to fight to get them implemented.
Means you have to defeat somebody.
And I really think this is one of the things that makes a lot of people nervous about Trump, and that is uh his the perception that he's a a brawler or a fighter, and that this is just uh unseemly.
So I I think it I think it is a factor.
And it uh it does matter, and it explains uh quite a bit too.
There's also um Social status involved in all of this and perceptions from people that are desired on the other side and be perceived as a reasonable guy by the left as opposed to one of these shouting Crow Magnans or Neanderthals or what have you.
But it is clear to me that the American people, at least the voting public that's supporting Trump, and is in opposition to what's coming out of Washington from the establishment, clearly wants to fight themselves.
They think the country's worth it.
And they think they've been voting for people who've been telling them they will push back and stop.
And there just hasn't been any.
So we'll see if it changes.
Hope it does.
But as I say, only time will tell.
Now there's a whole other stack of stuff here that is not directly related to politics.
Of course, I think everything is political.
I mentioned to you I happen to get it just a bit of a tiff.
Just a bit.
When I was most recently in California, went out and played golf with some friends, and all of them, way back when, were as rock solid conservative as I am.
It's just impossible for them to be out there if they want to work.
It's a sad thing.
Just is.
I in fact, I got a um I got a video greeting from a well-known television and movie entertainer over the weekend.
Little 30-second video.
Nicest, greatest thing.
I love I listen to you every day, man.
I just went on and on effusive in praise.
Please don't mention this.
I mean, it's serious.
They have to work.
They're afraid of not getting jobs.
So they moderate.
Anyway, on the on the golf course, I was asked if I had uh heard this podcast on PBS that was titled Serial.
And I replied, Yeah, I know what it is.
I read about it, but I haven't heard it.
Oh man, it's great, it's great.
You needn't no, no, no.
It's on NPR.
I have no come on, you really think Yes, I do.
If it's NPR, there is either direct politics in it or subtle or what have you, but I'll guarantee them to you, it is got all kinds of pop culture stuff in it that's designed one way or the other to subtly influence, mobilize whatever.
Is everything political to you?
Yeah, not to me, it is.
Everything is political.
That's the success of the Democrat Party for Christ.
The success of everything.
Everything they do is political.
Pop culture, media, music, movies, songs, books, you can't escape it.
Everything is.
It's one of the things I recognize.
And Andrew Breitbart did too.
Andrew Breitbart, that's one of the reasons there's a Breitbart website.
That's one of the reasons Andrew Breitbart, he, He finally came to a conclusion, or not finally, he came to the conclusion that if the conservative movement did not make a move and establish a presence in the pop culture that was not mocked, made fun of, and ridiculed, it was never really going to succeed or have a chance at massive success.
And I always agreed with him about that.
But pop culture is made and defined largely in Hollywood in Los Angeles and the entertainment capitals, New York as well, and it's just tough.
It is true that it's it's the rare public conservative who gets uh gets work.
I mean, I can count them on one hand.
I'm even reluctant to mention their names now.
But I I can name them on one hand, those who are prominent.
But if and if there's just one, just one instance where they screw up publicly, then it can be the end of them.
Mel Gibson as an example.
But there are uh there are others.
And the five I would name for probably surprise three of the five would probably surprise you.
It just is the way.
So everything to me is politics, and I think the key to success on our side is to recognize this.
Some people don't want to admit it because it's so that that would mean that a fight's so massive and so it's totally, we are surrounded that it makes it impossible to conceive a victory.
But that doesn't stave me off and put me off at all.
Anyway, so the point is when I say I've got something here, it's not really directly political, of course it is, as I will demonstrate with this story.
This is a story from the College Fix, which is a great bunch of young people, conservatives, campus types who have a website now chronicling life on campus from the conservative standpoint.
And this piece is from the weekend, I believe, late last week.
Being a victim has become a badge of honor on campus sociologists argue.
Victimhood has become a virtue in America's shifting culture.
A journal article by two sociologists suggest the rise of microaggression stems from culture of victimhood that celebrates the aggrieved and perceives them as virtuous martyrs, most notably in college campaign.
And there is power in this.
There are goodies.
There is welfare, there's special notice, there's special notification, there's special treatment for being a victim.
And you also get a lot of attention, which a lot of people want.
And making matters worse, according to these sociologists, this perception is fostered by university administrative coddle and support such grandiose notions for self-serving purposes, including to exert control of students.
In the settings such as those that generate microaggression catalogs where offenders are oppressors and victims of the oppressed, it also raises the moral status of the victims, the scholars say in their article.
And this only increases the incentive to publicize grievances.
And it means aggrieved parties are especially likely to highlight their identity as victims, emphasizing their own suffering and their own innocence.
Their adversaries are privileged and blameworthy, but they themselves are pitiable.
They themselves are blameless.
They themselves are virtuous.
They themselves are non-controversial.
They are offended or they are victimized, or they are put upon, or they're laughed at, or mocked or made fun of.
It just isn't fair.
And of course, it's a dual whammy because it means the people who've made them feel that way are really, really rotten to the core reprobates.
So not only are we raising a bunch of little...
I've got a story here.
I was going to say eco commies.
I got a story here in Pacific Standard Magazine.
I guess it's a newspaper in Northern California.
It's a long piece by a mother who can't wait for her kid to get away from her and go to college.
Because she admits her own culpability, but our culture, society, education have turned this kid to an insane environmentalist.
Bugging her about everything she buys.
For example, when they go to the...
He's 14 years old.
They go to the grocery store.
Certain time of year, she'll go out and buy beef.
He will harangue her for...
But you know how much water it took.
Do you realize what threatened how you're helping hasten environmental destruction by buying beef?
Why are you even eating it?
You should be eating it.
You shouldn't be this 14-year-old kid talking to her this way.
That's the tip of the iceberg.
The example she gives are five pages long.
And she says she bears blame for creating this left-wing lunatic of his son, but you can bet that his high school does too.
She doesn't call him a lunatic.
She ends up saying she loves him, she's going to miss him, don't misunderstand.
But there's a part of her can't Wait for this kid to get away because she's tired of feeling guilty for living.
When he was growing up, he watched and read that the green Pablum on Sesame Street.
But he's farther off the cliff than most.
But here's a pull quote.
I can do nothing right in my teenage son's eyes.
He grills me about the distance traveled of each piece of fruit and every vegetable I buy.
He interrogates me about the provenance of all the meat, poultry, and fish that I serve.
He questions my every move from how I choose a car, why didn't I get an electric?
And a couch, why not?
Why get synthetic fill instead of natural fibers?
To how I tend the garden.
Why are you wasting water on flowers?
An unremitting interrogation of my impact on our disecrated environment while other parents hide alcohol and pharmaceuticals from their teens.
I hide plastic containers and paper towels.
It's by woman named Ronnie, Miss Ms. Ronnie Cohen, and it's at uh PSMag.com.
I'll have Coco dredge this up, and we'll link to it at Rushlinbaugh.com so you can check it later.
But it's people like that that we're raising.
We're raising little environmentalist wackos, they go away to college, they're learning to be victims.
It's making them unhappy.
It's making them miserable.
By definition, when you make yourself a victim, you're making yourself a secondary class person.
If you make yourself a victim, it means you allow people to victimize you, which means you really have no self-worth.
And this is the kind of thing that's being promoted.
Another pull quote, pull quote, a culture of victimhood is one characterized by concern with status and sensitivity to slight, combined with a heavy reliance on third parties.
People are intolerant of insults, even if unintentional, and react by bringing them to the attention of authorities or to the public at large.
Domination is the main form of defiance, and victimization is a way of attracting sympathy.
So rather than emphasize either their strength or their inner worth, the aggrieved emphasize their oppression and their social marginalization, marginalization, which is exactly right.
The offended, the aggrieved, the victims by definition allow themselves to think of themselves as second class.
They are able to be bullied, they're able to be offended.
I never wanted to give anybody the power to offend me.
I think it's such a waste of time being offended by things.
It's the stupidest thing in the world to me.
To be offended by something.
I mean, it happens.
Not often with me.
I mean, I will admit it happened.
When it does, I catch myself.
It's not worth this.
It's not worth giving anybody that kind of power over me or you or however you look at it.
But the entire process of victimization is one which purposefully causes people self-loathing.
And in that sense, then they allow others to come up with policies, behaviors, regulars regul uh regulations that punish the offenders and dictate life for everybody, sacrificing freedom.
Here, try this.
This is from the uh the Daily Caller.
And it says, ladies and gentlemen, California will give free hascruel diplomas to kids who flunked up.
Makes sense, doesn't it?
Why not?
State of California poised to award thousands of high school degrees to dropouts by passing a new law retroactively removing the requirement to pass a high school exit exam.
The California has crew exit exam was created in 2004 and is intended to make sure that students have a rudimentary grasp of English and mathematics before being awarded a hascral diploma and to counter the phenomenon of students receiving passing grades while learning almost nothing.
The test is hardly complex.
For those of you in Rio Linda, what that means is it's easy.
The math test, for instance, only covers eighth grade level material and can be passed if students answer 55% of the questions correctly.
It's still considered too demanding.
About 80% of California has scrollers take and pass this test on their first try while in the tenth grade.
Overall passage rates for the class of 2014 were above 97%.
But now a bill passed last Thursday by the California legislature, which Governor Moonbeam is going to sign, suspends this exam through 2018, while also retroactively suspending it back to 2004, which means thousands of students who failed to ever pass the Haskell exit exam, but otherwise completed all other requirements, will now be able to receive diplomas.
Must be something about getting jobs.
Must be that if you don't have a hash scroll diploma, it's tougher than ever to get a job.
Must be about leveling the playing field with all the newly arrived illegal immigrants in the job search quest and so forth.
But anyway, stay with us.
That's right, redefining hip on the radio as the saga.
Continues.
Here's Donna in Syracuse in New York.
Hi, Don, I'm glad you called.
Nice to have you here.
Hey, Rashi.
Hey, how are you?
Good.
How are you?
Good and good.
Thank you.
Um, I wanted to I'm not a big Trump supporter.
Um, but I could kiss his feet for what he has shown the Republicans that they have to do.
And I remember Osama bin Laden saying, when there's two horses to be chosen, the the horse that will be chosen is a strong steed.
And it was so true.
And I'm so fat up with the Republicans.
I'm I'm fed up with their mush, their hello to the gentleman on the other side of the aisle, Tom Cotton.
The kid that stutters a little bit.
I think he's great.
Um he's a representative, and I can't remember what his name is.
But you know, they're tough.
And people don't respect people that are mushy.
Well, who do you support if you if you don't support the people?
Who do I support?
I love Ben Carson.
You like Ben Carson.
I do.
I think he's tough.
You know, if he's if he was in charge of a hospital full of neurosurgeons, you have to deal with those kinds of egos every single day of your life.
Well, you know, let me uh.
Darn it, you had to go and ask a question.
I ought to I ought to suspend my answer to that question.
I will suspend my answer to the question.
What she said here, did you know what she said?
She said she's not a Trump supporter, but she thanks God what he's doing.
You know what that means?
What it means is she wishes the Republican Party would notice and start emulating.
She wishes they would notice.
There's no reason to be afraid of violating political correctness.
There's no reason to be afraid, criticizing people who Americans believe are doing great damage to the country.
There is no reason not to fight for what you believe in.
There's nothing that's going to come back and hurt you.
You can even survive media attacks.
If you build up a bond of support with your audience or with the voters, that'll protect you from whatever the media does to you.
And boy is that ever right.
And all these people on our side inside the beltway scared to death of the media.
If they had a deep connection with voters, it wouldn't matter.
Because the media would not be able to break that bond.
The media wouldn't be able to destroy that.
But The voters actually love somebody and respect them.
There's nothing the media can do to tear them apart.
The candidate can.
The candidate can screw it up, but the media can't.
But if you're going to sit there and be defensive all day, well, the media will call me a racist.
The media will do this.
And that means I can't really say what I really believe.
Then you're not going to establish a bond.
You're not going to build a connection with an audience.
Voters, in their case.
And that's what can protect you against media assaults.
I happen to know this.
And I've there are a lot of people who are hoping that the real value of Trump would be to demonstrate to other Republicans that it's okay to take on what you oppose.
It's okay to criticize what you oppose.
It's okay to tick off the media.
It's okay to violate political correctness.
You can live.
You can live and you will survive and you can thrive by doing it.
The lesson may be obvious, but others are not taking it.
So as such, Trump owns that particular niche.
If none of the other Republicans learn from this, Trump's going to continue to own this niche.
He's not going to have any opposition, folks.
If if Trump's opposition continues to say, I just don't think it's appropriate to speak that way about Carly Fiorina, brilliant executive at Hewlett.
I just think it's inappropriate, and that's not what I approve.
If then fine, you can do that all day long, but Trump's going to continue to own the competitive position.
He's going to continue to dominate and win.
Not complicated at all.
But it boy, it must be hard for these people to do it.
It must be hard.
Inside the beltway influencer training that is so complete that these people that live there just cannot come out of the shell that you're required to live in when you're there.
Alabama public school children now required to study evolution and climate change, according to Yellow Hammer News.
State of Alabama will now require its public screw students to study evolution and climate change as curricula items.
The state screw board last week unanimously approved new standards that make these two subjects mandatory parts of the science curriculum.
So they don't have to rely anymore on just the opinion of the teacher.
Now it's official in the curriculum.
Evolution and climate change.
So the audio sound bites, here's F. Chuck Todd.
F. Chuck may get it.
This was on Meet the Press yesterday.
And uh he was setting up a report here about Trump and Ben Carson's positions as leaders in the Republican nomination race.
The discuss with the Republican establishment that has been a staple of conservative talk radio has now gone mainstream.
The result?
An election in which, in one poll, just two outsiders, Donald Trump and Ben Carson together have higher poll numbers than all of the so-called establishment candidates combined.
About eight of them.
And of course, you see, this is in Chuck Todd's view, the fault of talk radio.
Yes, the disgust with the Republican establishment that has been a staple of conservative talk radio has now gone mainstream.
I would submit to you that conservative talk radio is mainstream.
It doesn't have to go anywhere to get there, because it is.
Now, not to these people.
Inside the Beltway, conservative talk radio is fringe whatever.
It certainly isn't mainstream, but you see, it is.
Our audience here dwarfs the audience of Meet the Press.
And Meet the Press is a television show.
And we dwarf bigger audience here than those three Sunday shows combined.
Four, if you count CNNs.
Yeah, let's go and play number number three.
This is interesting in its own right.
This was C-SPAN's Washington Journal on Saturday, John McCartell speaking with National Journal, political editor Josh Crowshar about Trump's presidential campaign.
Rush Limbaugh show the transcript from his show, uh, the headline on that, my advice to Trump back to the issues.
This was the first time and he's responding to Trump attacking Ben Carson on his show.
It was the first time Russell Limbaugh sort of criticized Donald Trump, and he's been something of a neutral supporter of his.
He certainly has defended him passively on his show.
This is the first time Rush Limbaugh is the most influential conservative talk radio host, sort of threw a fastball to Donald Trump.
And I think that's very important.
A, because the talk radio element of the Republican Party is what's fueling a lot of Trump's support.
This is the first time you could see uh the possibility that Trump's support may have peaked.
All right, it's not the first time, it's a second time.
And both times I've simply said uh little free advice, time to get back to the issues.
I've said it twice.
But there's one other thing here.
It it talk radio is not fueling Trump's support.
Trump is.
I have great respect for Mr. Craftshar.
He's uh he's good at what he does.
So this is not uh a rip at him.
But you know, people in the media, because of their own self-perceptions, the people in the media think that they drive public opinion because they want to.
They're not doing the news.
I mean, they they're driving public opinion.
That's why they get frustrated when Democrats lose.
Because they think that they're out there influencing both with their polls and everything else.
So they think everybody in the media does that.
But I'm just passively watching Trump go by here, and I'm commenting honestly on what I see.
And if it sounds like support for Trump, it sounds like support for Trump.
But I've also spoken positively of the other candidates, not positively of those that I don't feel that way about.
But nothing happening here is responsible for Trump's support.
Trump is.
Oh, it would be easy to live in a fantasy world, folks, where I tell myself every day I'm the reason people think what they think.
But I have never fallen for that trap.
Quite the opposite.
This is what I mean when I say I have always had respect for the intelligence of those of you in the audience.
And I've known from day one that one of the main reasons you glommed onto this show was that it validated what you already thought.
You just didn't hear it anywhere in media until this show came along, way back in 1988, 1989.
But I've got nothing to do with uh Trump's support.
He does.
He's the one responsible for it.
He's the one that is engendering it, and certainly he's the one fueling it.
Here's Ron Fournier, meet the press yesterday.
Chuck Todd asked him a question and said, you know, Ron, you know, just watching all this, I get the idea that the right feels as if Obama will do whatever it takes to win, and they won't do whatever it takes to win on the Republican side.
That's what I'm getting out of this.
But but it feels like we're devolving for some reason, Ron.
The public right now is very angry, anxious, and asking, what side of the barricade are you on?
Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Carson appear to be on the other side of that barricade.
Donald Trump is crazy.
But he's punishing the establishment, isn't he?
Donald Trump is crazy, but he's taken on the media, isn't he?
Donald Trump is crazy, but he's saying what I can't say, isn't he?
The country is really angry, and until somebody brings positive change or very negative change, it's going to keep growing.
More interesting than that answer to me is Chuck Todd's question.
Look at this again.
You know, Ron, just watching all this.
I get the idea that the right feels as if Obama will do whatever it takes to win, and they won't do whatever it takes to win, but that feels like we're devolving.
So if Chuck Todd, I guarantee you this is the attitude of everybody inside the beltway, for the Republican Party conservatives to fight for what they believe in, constitutes the system tearing down.
Constitutes devolution.
We're going backwards, in other words.
The left is perfectly permitted.
Fine and dandy.
They can do whatever they need to do to win.
That's as it should be.
When we do, oh my God, it's getting nasty.
Oh my God, it's getting dirty.
Oh my God, it's getting unseemly.
So F. Chuck Todd says we're devolving.
We're devolving the Republicans, they're starting to defend themselves.
That's not that's not cool, Ron.
And then Ron says, Yeah, you know, Trump's crazy.
Crazy book, he's crazy, but it's crazy.
But I guarantee you, if F. Chuck Todd thinks he's, you know, one of the leaders of the inside the beltway establishment, ruling class, if he thinks it's devolution for the Republicans to fight back, might that not explain why so many on our side don't?
They don't want to be ripped by Chuck Todd.
They want Chuck Todd ripping talk radio.
They don't want Chuck Todd ridding, ripping some conservative blog, some conservative magazine.
No, no, Chuck, no, no, they don't want that.
But Chuck and Rip Talk Radio all day long, and that's fun.
But not them.
So they're not going to do anything to get Chuck Todd ripping.
Including not fight.
That's devolution.
And one more, our buddy David Brooks, who defined Obama's presidential potential by the crease in his slacks way back in 19, well, gonna be 2008.
Also on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd said, David Brooks, this fight inside your party.
For some viewers, they might say it's deja vu all over again, but this time it does seem like the frustration of Republican Party might just boil over.
It's like a mutiny, not a campaign.
And the problem is that there's an illusion in this country and in the Republican base that you can govern by screaming.
But there's a democracy.
You need a coalition.
We have a very tough legislative system.
And you gotta actually have craftsmen.
And there's insufficient respect for that right now among the Carson and Trump supporters.
Insufficient respect for the craftsman, he said.
Can you believe it?
Mitch McConnell and Boehner are the craftsmen, and there's not enough respect for what they do on our side.
So it's a mutiny.
Explains everything.
Don't fight.
Oh God, no, don't fight back.
That's that's devolution.
Oh, that makes everything look no, no, no, that looks unsophisticated.
Oh, no, no, no.
We've got to respect our craftsman.
What the hell is it?
Craftsman.
Yes, the establishment types so desperately want to blame Trump on somebody.
They don't want to blame Trump on Trump.
They don't want to blame themselves.
So if they can blame me and talk radio, then they will.
But Trump is responsible for what Trump's doing.
Nobody else.
See you back here tomorrow, my friends.
Thanks for joining us today, as always.
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