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Jan. 15, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:39
January 15, 2016, Friday, Hour #3
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And let me make a let me make another point about this, folks.
This attack on conservatism.
Look, I don't want to repeat a bunch of stuff, but just to remind you of the story we've had earlier today in the Hill.com about this Republican strategist thinks the worst thing for the party that could happen would be for a conservative to get the nomination and win the White House to be the worst thing because it would delay the modernization of the Republican Party that has to happen.
I mean, we have to embrace the gays, we have to embrace comprehensive immigration reform and amnesty, and we have to get rid of Reagan.
And until the Republican Party does all of that, it's gonna never have a chance at being anything major and dominant.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Okay, so in the midst of all of that.
And that by no means is the only such story that's out there.
It's not a secret that the Republican establishment is not crazy about its own base.
And this three-year-old autopsy written after the Romney defeat we've been quoting from today, where I just highlighted these things.
Thank you.
We have heard the Bush campaign brag about how they were going to get the nomination despite the base.
They're gonna be the first to win a party nomination by doing it without their own base.
That was an objective, and to revisit that the way they were going to do it was money.
They were going to outraise everybody, number one, and thus be able to outspend everybody else.
And the other nominees or the other candidates for the nomination all be conservative.
They would divvy up all the votes and support.
They would divvy up all the money.
They would basically cancel themselves out.
Jeb would be the last guy standing, establishment wins, despite having not been supported by the base.
And that was the objective.
So don't tell me, don't anybody try to tell me that the Republican Party wants its base, loves its base, wants to capitalize on who the base that's not the case.
They're trying to grow and expand this party and de-emphasize the conservative aspect of the party.
It's not even arguable.
Okay, now here's why this is so frustrating to me, folks.
You and I, and anybody in common sense understands what we've had governing us the past seven years.
It's been undiluted liberalism on steroids.
You can call it socialism, you call it totalitarianism, whatever, but it's liberalism and whatever other offshoots.
And it's a disaster.
It has destroyed the economy.
94 million Americans not working.
It has destroyed.
Look at retail sales five-year low.
Walmart's closing 159 stores in America, 200 and some odd worldwide.
We do not have an economy recovering.
We do not have a great recovery or great economy, period.
The health care system, which was once the best in the world, has been turned upside down and is non-functioning.
It costs more.
People are now finding ways around utilizing it.
But more than anything, it's not anything like it was promised.
The liberals told us it would be cheaper, that if we liked our doctor and insurance plan, we could keep it.
They lied to us through their teeth.
And everything they told us about this has not come true, just the opposite has.
Students are graduating from college in with worthless degrees like this studies or that studies.
There's no practical application for any of it in the real world.
Thus they're not going to get paid for it.
There aren't any career type jobs to have out there.
Worldwide, governments have overspent, they don't have any money.
Us at the top of the list, $19 trillion in debt.
You know where they're going to go get the money?
They're going to get the money from your pension plans.
And have you seen the European Union all of a sudden thinks Apple has underpaid its taxes by $8 billion because of the way it structures itself in Ireland.
The point is governments don't have any money.
They have outspent, they have taxed their citizens to the point that everybody is a pauper in one degree or another, particularly in Europe.
Now, all of this, And I can go on.
I could detail many other disasters that have befallen aspects of life in the United States.
We haven't even touched on the cultural rot that liberalism has brought us.
You want to talk about the fact we don't have any borders anymore, but liberals want this country to have absolutely no limits on the people who come here, who they are, how they are, what they do when they get here.
The last thing liberals care about is they become Americans.
You can extrapolate that and calculate what it's going to mean for job opportunities, wages, career opportunities, the expansion of the welfare state to support people coming here or not able to support themselves, which is just fine with liberals, just fine with the Democrat Party.
My point is there's one solution to this, it's conservatism.
There has never been a better time to contrast it.
There has never been a better time to demonstrate it.
There has never been a better time in the midst of this country being transformed and nearly destroyed by liberalism.
We have a greater opportunity than we have ever had to present the solution to people in the form of conservatism, and we've got evidence for it working.
We've got the eight years of Reagan.
We can come up with many more examples of that, individual and group, what have you, places around the world where it works and works fine.
We know what we're going to be up against.
We know that the primary opposition, conservatism comes from the socially culturally liberal left, who look at it as nothing more than extension of judgmental religion out to deny them a good time and judge them in the process.
We know where the opposition is going to come from.
We know how it's made up, we know how it attacks.
We should have learned by now how to defeat it and beat it back.
The culture of this company is being destroyed from inside out.
The education system is a disaster.
You have you seen the news stories on what the drinking water in Detroit looks like coming out of the tap.
Take a look at wherever liberals have run things with no check and no balance, and it is a disaster.
We don't have to say it anymore.
We don't have to predict it.
We don't have to theorize it.
We just have to point to it because it is reality for way too many people.
I know the Republican has a branding problem, the party and so forth.
My my point here with this little dissertation, we know what the solution is.
The solution to this in the short term, in the long haul, whatever, is conservatism.
Now, implementing the solution, a bunch of different theories and how you do it.
One election's not enough.
I understand all that.
It's not magic.
It's going to take a real commitment.
My point is to reject it.
To reject conservatism as the legitimate solution to this is just wrong.
And yet, the party, which ought to be pushing back against all of this that's happened, the party that ought to have been saying stop for seven years.
The party that should have been pushing back and trying to make sure that all of this that happened didn't happen, or that it was harder for it to happen, or that while it was happening, the party should have been speaking up and telling American people you shouldn't be supporting this.
Let me tell you what's going to happen, because it would have.
Seven years of a teachable moment has gone by, and we've missed it.
Seven years, eight years on the cusp here of really great teachable moments have been wasted.
Because for some reason, the Republican Party is embarrassed of conservatism, or doesn't believe in it, or take your pick why they aren't conservative and don't want any part of it.
The fact of the matter is, it is the solution.
And now I ran across a piece today, an autopsy on the Romney campaign, essentially, as a lot of contributors, and this guy, O'Connell, I think his name, a young millennial, Spells out the worst thing is a conservative winning a nomination and then winning the presidency.
That would delay the modernization, much needed modernization of the Republican Party.
Would delay it for a generation.
Instead, what we need to do, we losing would be better, because that will allow us to point inward at our problems and say we must finally embrace comprehensive immigration reform and do whatever it takes to make the Hispanics vote for us.
Then we must go out and hug The gays.
I'm reading right from paraphrasing, but we have to hug the gays and everything about that culture.
Show them we don't oppose them, friend in us, the Republican Party.
And then we have got to get rid of Reaganism.
We have finally, it says here, just in this Reagan fetish, as it's called.
Well, I'm here to tell you that that isn't a solution to anything.
It ain't going to grow the party because all you're how are you going to go out and hug the gays and make them convert from the Democrats to you?
Just the hug?
Is that all it's going to take?
You'll realize there are there are issue-oriented ideological reasons why the militant homosexual lobby votes Democrat, and you're not going to get them by disavowing conservative.
I don't understand the way these people think.
Which leads me to believe it is more personal to them, simply about being accepted and not reviled and hated and thought to have been kooky or hayseed or what have you.
Regardless.
Here we are.
Right in the midst of an authored.
This is a disaster that has the fingerprints of the Obama administration all over it.
This is the result of policy.
But we don't even have an opposition party willing to say that because of fear.
Fear the media is going to accuse them of what being mean to the first black president or being racist or what have you.
And the worst case is it maybe they don't disagree with what Obama's done.
They just think they could do it better and smarter.
I don't know.
But my point here is what better time to make the case that liberalism doesn't work than in the midst of it creating this disaster.
And why is there a reluctance to do so?
And for those of you who think Trump's no conservative, you know what Trump's doing?
Whether he's conservative or not, he's making the point that what's happening in the country now isn't working.
And that's why he's drawing a lot of people who agree it isn't working and want it stopped and want it fixed.
And by not even being willing to have anybody in the party say that you've left a vacuum open for somebody like Trump to come in and suck up all the oxygen.
It isn't hard to understand what's happened here.
I mentioned earlier Jim Garrity at National Review Online has decided to take the occasion of all this introspection going on in the Republican Party and do his own little analysis of the Democrat Party.
And it's it's really good.
It's funny too.
So the Washington Post, Philip Bump, reporter, notices that Hillary Clinton's doing a little better in Iowa than she did in 2008.
She's doing worse in New Hampshire, and her lead over Bernie Sanders is shrinking faster than her lead against Obama.
Charlie Cook National Review sees a distinct possibility that history will repeat itself.
He said it's not impossible to imagine a similar Hillary decline this year, nor to conceive of the brutal snowball effect that could deprive her once again of the only real ambition she's ever held, and that's to be president.
First, she loses Iowa and then loses New Hampshire.
And I guarantee you, we mentioned this last week.
If that happens, that makes it reality, not just theory, not just polling results.
Let either of those two things happen.
And I guarantee you all of this talk and thinking that Hillary's automatic stops immediately.
He says, we hear a lot about the divide between the grassroots and the establishment and the GOP, but Democrats have the same divide today.
Let's do a quick sketch.
Members of the Democratic base, these are the insane lunatics.
My characterization.
Members of the Democrat base believe they have been given a raw deal by life.
Whether or not they are actually poor, and many in the Democrat base really are poor.
Whether they are or not, they feel poor and they feel they have been barred from changing those circumstances.
They believe they have been victimized by sexism, racism, and all other manner of social discrimination.
The base of the Democrat Party's circumstances in their minds are a result of malevolence from powerful forces in American life.
They're victims.
Other people have made their lives miserable.
It's not a consequence of their own choices.
They're not responsible for the misery that is their lives.
It's somebody else's fault.
In their minds, they could have and should have been great successes in life, but they were stymied at every turn by malignant forces trying to keep them down, like the Koch brothers, for example.
If it wasn't their teacher and their schools failing to recognize their great potential, then it was their bosses and their employers.
The cops hassle them for no reason.
The only remedy they see is for the government to give them things that they find too expensive and can't afford on their own.
Higher education, health care, child care, all of that should be free because they're entitled to it anyway, and they would have had it except these powerful forces have stepped in and denied it to them.
So they are owed these things.
Housing expensive too.
The government should let them hold off on paying their mortgages.
The rich should pay for all this as they've got the money.
And what do they need the money for anyway?
The Democrat base knows that it as smart and hard working as Bill Gates and all those other CEOs.
They're just being victimized and denied by powerful forces.
There should be a revolution.
And then those millionaires and billionaires who think they're so smart wouldn't be so smug.
That's the Democrat base.
The Democrat elite.
Well, life has been good to them.
They may trash corporate greed, but they've already made their fortunes.
Of course, taxes should be raised to pay for everything because they can afford it.
And they'll talk to Wilkins, the accountant to make sure they get every deduction they can.
The country, according to Democrat elites, yeah, is doing pretty well under Obama.
He doesn't get nearly enough credit for turning everything around.
The real worry for the Democrat elites is how bad climate change is getting.
And why can't Obama hurry up and just create cap and trade by executive order?
Their brokers are telling them they can make a killing in the solar panel and wind industries, particularly with the subsidies.
Why didn't Obama get moving on it?
That new Tesla model they can't wait, that just looks fabulous to them.
Really, this country could be in a much better spot if they, the elites, could just control all these backwards rednecks and their guns.
In all their years of living in these gated communities, they've never felt the need to own a gun.
They don't understand why anybody else would want to.
And somebody, according to the elites in the Democrat Party, somebody's gotta step in and stop those xenophobes screening about the Mexicans.
Maria's the best maid they've ever had.
How can anybody hate her?
Sanders, Bernie Sanders, closer to what the Democratic base wants, the poor people who think they've been victimized by everybody else, and Hillary Clinton, she's the representative of what the Democrat elites want.
It's a pretty as a surface explanation, pretty damn on spot.
Back after this.
Okay, here we go to uh Patty Bellevue, Florida.
Great to have you.
Really appreciate your patience.
Hi.
Hi, Russ.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yes.
Um, fairly angry listening to you today.
I think what you should do is come out of the closet and just say outright that you support Ted Cruz.
Because that's what I believe you do.
And I think you should be honest with your listening audience, because you believe he's a true conservative.
I don't believe he's conservative.
He reminds me of a radio preacher that my grandmother used to listen to and scrounge up two dollars to send for a prayer cloth.
I think he learned his skills on a used car lot.
And as far as I'm concerned, why is he running for president?
Why is Trump running for president?
Trump doesn't need the money.
He doesn't need the power, he doesn't need the notoriety.
He's running for president because he actually is a patriot who loves this country.
And personally, I'm not looking for a preacher in chief.
I'm not looking for a debater in chief.
I'm looking for a commander in chief.
So what are you mad at?
I'm angry because I think you should just go ahead and say that you're supporting crude.
Why do you why why why why do you think that?
Because I I think that's what you do.
And I think you should do that, and then that would just clear up all the uh confusion.
There isn't there isn't any confusion out there.
Well, there's certainly confusion with me, because if it were not for Trump, not a lot of people.
Well, it seems wait a minute.
You know, usually it's people calling here and giving me the business for being too supportive of Trump and screwing legitimate conservatives by not supporting them.
Here you are a Trump supporter.
Wow.
I'm confused here.
So if you uh if you missed it, the Pittsburgh Steelers that play in the late game on Sunday in Denver in the NFL divisional round, the Steelers have announced that wide receiver number 84, Antonio Brown is out.
Concussion resulting from the illegal hit by Von Tay's burfick number 55 of the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Steelers just released their practice and injury report for the day.
Ben Rothisberger is questionable.
That means 50-50 to play.
He'll play, but the effectiveness is unknown.
So the number one wide receiver and playmaker Brown, leading receiver for the year, well, close to it with uh was uh uh uh well I'm having a middle block and who it is.
Uh the other guy out there, uh from a uh come to me in a minute.
Anyway, he's out.
Le'Veon Bell, the number one running back has been out since November as the result of a Vonta's Burfect hit.
And Rottlesberger at 50 is a Vonte's Burfect has single-handedly done more to damage the Steelers and their chances to win Sunday.
And I fully expect the Steelers to announce before the game Sunday they really don't want to win since they're not at full strength, and they don't have the team they really want to have.
They rather win with Rottlesberg at 100% and number 84 out there.
So they're gonna say that if they win, it's kind of not real.
It might set them back in their development for the future if they win with their backups.
Sounds crazy, doesn't it?
Sounds it sounds really stupid to hear the Pittsburgh Steelers might ask, you know what, we don't want to win because our backups are gonna be playing.
That wouldn't look good for us.
It'd make us look like we're picking the wrong guys.
So we don't want to win with our backups.
You think they're nuts.
What I'm telling you, there are Republican establishment people who do not want to win the presidency if they win with the wrong guy.
This is my point.
Okay, back to the phones.
Who's next?
Joshua in Marietta, California.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Russ, honor and approved, sir.
Thank you.
Yeah, so excuse me.
This morning I was listening to another radio program, and uh it was a sports national sports talk radio show, very popular host, uh fancy an independent.
And he says about 10% of the voters out there are registered independents, and he states that typically they're not going to vote for someone as far left as Bernie Sanders, nor would they vote for someone as far right or quote unquote unpopular or unlike unlikable rather, as uh as a cruz or trope.
So uh my question to you is you know, we we typically know that repu Republicans are gonna vote for Republicans, uh Dems are gonna vote for a Democratic candidate.
Um what is the Republican Party doing to try and influence those independents to vote for the Republican citizen you know in this upcoming general election?
Um, Joshua, let me first tell you that the Republicans already own the independent vote.
Mitt Romney got a vast majority of the independent vote in 2012.
I mean, it it literally was not even close.
And the important fact about this is that for all time, well, in the modern political era, the conventional wisdom has been you can't win the presidency without a majority of the independents.
You can't win with just your voters, neither party can.
You gotta go get the independence and the great unwashed undecided.
Well, Romney won independence like Republicans haven't won them before, and he still lost and lost big.
So the theory's kind of out the window.
Uh Your radio host this morning gave you cookie cutter theory.
Standard operation, conventional wisdom is that 10% of the country is insane left, 10% of the country's insane right, that leaves 80% insane or uh sane in the middle, some are Democrats, some are Republicans, but that's not enough to win.
You've got to go get the independence.
In the first place, there is no insanity on the right.
The insanity is all of the left, and it's not 10%.
A full 30% or more of the Democrat base should be committed.
Poses a threat to themselves and to the nation at large.
It's why we're in the mess we're in.
And they are catered to, and they are otherwise.
Well, they're treated like the victims that they think they are.
And they are unhappy, they're miserable no matter what they get.
Look, in all candor, you know, that 10%, uh left is wacko, 10% right is wacko.
That's not right.
That is that's that's it's just conventional wisdom, that's cookie-cutter theory.
The electorate, the fact of the matter is diverse and is up for grabs every election.
It depends on how campaigns are run.
And Donald Trump is proving it, Joshua.
Donald Trump has put together a coalition that's made up of every demographic that the Republicans think they have to have, and yet they still oppose him.
Donald Trump, 20% of his support basis Democrats, Joshua.
According to polling data, he's got a lot of Hispanic males and females.
He's got a lot of uh his African American sport is gonna stymie.
If Trump, his polling data right now shows that Trump is pulling 10 to 15 percent of the African American, if that's true, he's it's all it's over.
If everything else holds the same.
And at his appearance in Pensacola the other night, he was actually talking about winning 25% of the black vote.
If that, if that happens, you take that 25% vote away from Crazy Bernie or Hillary or whoever the Democrat nominee is, and it's all academic after that.
And for all of these people that want to rub their hands together, wring their hands and lament and oh my God, what is Trump doing?
They should seriously look at it.
There are explanations for all this that do not involve concluding the American people are crazy.
Biggest mistake both establishments make is to assume that average ordinary Americans are dumb and ignorant and they view them in contempt, and they never really try to delve deep other than with focus grouping here and there, to find out why they do what they do, why they vote the way they do.
So I hope that I hope that answer helps you.
I'm I'm the truth of the matter is that every election is up for grabs.
It depends on who wants it the most, and then who is going to really work the hardest and go out and do what it has to be done, what has to be done to win.
Many variables get tall tossed into that, like who's the consultant running the race, how much power does he or she have over the candidate.
And in many cases, the answer that's way too much power.
But I I appreciate the call.
I I I didn't mean to be flippant at the beginning in my answer.
I just couldn't resist.
You set me up there so well with a slow pitched softball.
Lance in Woodlands of Woodland, Texas.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Yes, sir.
Um, I think one of the reasons why um I was listening to your show yesterday or the day before.
Right.
And you were talking about a report where some of the other nominees were gonna go after Trump that and state that he's not he's Not as conservative as he says he is.
Or that he's not conservative enough.
And I think that would be another huge mistake on their part.
People, I think a lot of people like Trump because he has conservative views and he doesn't apologize for them and he acts on them.
We've had enough people in 2010 and 2014 that say they're conservative, say they're Tea Party, and then they just cave to Obama or anybody else.
They don't stick up for themselves, they don't act on their views, their conservative views.
They just say, I'm conservative, and then they just cave.
That's a good point.
That that's actually a good point.
I I I because in in point of fact, what you're saying is the same people who during campaigns tell us and assure us they're conservative, end up not being.
And yet those are the same people bitching at Trump for not being conservative and trying to tell us we're being fooled.
Like Mitt Romney, I'm a severe conservative.
We said, what is that?
He said, I'm a severe conservative.
He thought he had to say he's a conservative.
And when he came to talk to me, he was.
Then he'd go to a fundraiser.
That'd be a different story.
But at the same time, the same people who assure us they are conservative are warning us that Trump isn't.
Yet when they have a chance to be, they aren't either.
That's an actually it's a good point out there, Lance.
Now, the pre-pub going into the debate last night was that not that Cruz was gonna hit Trump for not being conservative, just gonna hit him.
I mean, it's it's it's down to three weeks now.
We get to Iowa, they're number one and two.
It's been kid gloves up till now.
And there was both of them went after each other last night.
First time.
What else did I predict?
I predicted that there was gonna be a gang up between Christie and Jeb aimed at Rubio, and that happened.
The minute it did, I got five emails.
You called it, you called it, and I did.
Christie and Jeb tried to gang up on Porto Marco in the in the debate last night.
Marco held his ground.
How did you think Rubio did last night?
I th I thought I I'm telling you, I liked them all.
I I thought we're talking the top tier here.
I thought they they all there wasn't a dull moment.
There wasn't a time where I thought, you know, I'm gonna go do something else for a couple of minutes here.
Uh every other debate there's been a lull.
There wasn't a lull in this one.
I take that there look, there was, but it's where I've expected there to be, so it wasn't a surprise.
But the point is I think everybody involved in this thing was on, they were attuned, they had their best foot forward all night.
I I really I thought it it was for the as far as the party was concerned.
I thought last night was a good three hours, two hours, whatever it was for the party.
That's the the overall view I came away from last night with.
No, yes, I said the North Carolina GOP would bust in there last night and booing Trump.
Not they were bust in, they were there.
The GOP was having its winter meetings that coincided there with the with the debate.
And North Carolina's close, so he had a bunch of North Carolina GOPs show up, and I understand they're the ones booing Trump in there.
So what?
Big deal.
They're all worked up on Facebook over this.
Because I said they were bust in.
Okay, you drove yourselves there.
Big deal.
What's the difference?
They were there.
And Trump got booed.
Is there any wonder who did it?
Man, oh man.
Here's uh here's Lynn in Oklahoma City.
Uh you're next.
It's great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Ray.
Um, if one of your parents is a natural-born American and you were born anywhere on the planet, you are considered a natural-born American as well.
So that should include all the love children that contractors and soldiers have had in Philippines and Paco.
Yeah, but see this is just as much American as Ted Cruz is.
Yes, but there's a big big DNA test.
There's a major difference in all those people in Ted Cruz.
None of those people are smarter than the Democrat people, uh Democrat Party, and are trying to run for president and kick them out of power.
And Ted Cruz is.
That's why his natural born birth has got to be questioned.
By the way, some clowns already file a lawsuit.
I mean, this is predictable.
No matter what Trump said, in some Democrat named Nathan Nate Natan Nate Nathan, Nathan uh Nathaniel Sonny Schwartz has already filed a lawsuit against him.
CNN already dragged the guy out of whatever rock he hides under.
Already had him up there.
So people are going to see Trump was right.
Trump was.
This is easy.
I mean, just as easy it was that Obama was going to get sued.
And it didn't stop Obama, did it.
Just like if Hillary's indicted, if you think that's going to stop her, if they indict her over this email stuff, you wait till the Clintons and Carville and Stephanopoulos get through with whoever did it at the FBI.
They're going to be a combination of alien, sex pervert, big tobacco salesman running around trying to kill your kids.
They'll just reenact what they did to Ken Starr.
But Hillary's not going to get out of the race if they indict her.
If they convict her, she might not get out of the race.
Democrats, do you show me here where it says you can't be convicted and run for president?
*laughter*
People be scrambling for the Constitution, trying to find what the founder said about that.
And then Al Sharp, well, George Washington should have been convicted, and so should so should John Adams.
And then they all should have been convicted.
So to be convicting Hillary Clinton's unfair.
I mean, these people will go wherever they have to to justify whatever aberrant behavior they engage in in such a way as to prevent it from punishing or harming their intentions and their desires.
I was thinking Julio Jones, the Atlanta Falcons, number 11.
He's a leading receiver in the league.
Antonio Brown's number two, but he's done it with his quarterback out for four games because of injuries so forth.
That's the metal block I was having with Julio Jones.
Anyway, we'll see you on Monday, folks.
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