All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 22, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
January 22, 2016, Friday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Have you ever seen this?
Have you ever seen a primary campaign where the two top front runners in a party are both trying to be destroyed by that party?
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Do you ever remember seeing anything like this?
Forget in your lifetime because you haven't.
Or maybe you.
No, not two.
The two top front runners, factions, different factions within the Republican Party are trying to take out both of these guys.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome to Open Line Friday on Rush Limbaugh's EIB Network, the most listened to radio talk show in America.
Great to have you here, as always.
The telephone number if you want to be on the program's 800-282-2882, the email address, L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
For those of you who are new, and that's a big number.
The audience is expanding in near geometric proportions as people seek guidance, answers, explanations, information, and an answer to the basic question, what the hell is happening out there?
Let me tell you what Open Line Friday is for those of you who are novices.
Monday through Thursday, callers on this president.
And by the way, this program is a benevolent dictatorship.
There is no First Amendment for anybody but me.
I'm the dictator, but I'm benevolent.
Monday through Thursday, when we go to the phones, the calls have to be on subject matter interesting to me.
I mean, that's why people listen.
They don't tune in here to be bored.
But on Friday, I throw all that out, take a giant career risk by not limiting what it is callers want to talk about.
So Friday, you can bring up anything you want.
I consider it a gift from the benevolent dictator to the subjects.
Day that week they can bring up anything they want.
Questions, comments, doesn't matter, doesn't have to be politics, doesn't have to be.
Whatever you think this program is primarily about, can be anything.
So that's basically it in a nutshell.
Here again, the phone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
So over here you have establishment Republicans trying to take out Ted Cruz by sidling up with Donald Trump.
Over here, you have conservative intelligentsia, the intellectual leading light of conservatism national review, trying to take out Trump.
The establishment, which National Review has been plenty supportive of in recent years, is trying to take out Trump or trying to take out Cruz sidling up to Trump while National Review is trying to take Trump out.
If Ted Cruz becomes president of the United States, I am here to tell you that there will be more knives needing to be removed from his back placed there by fellow Republicans than by any number of knives in his back placed there by the Democrats.
Because the Democrats' attacks will be from the front.
And he will see those coming.
I have never seen anything like this.
Where the two top front runners are both being targeted by different wings or elements, if you will.
And folks, people keep not hounding me, because I don't consider it to be hounding, but people keep asking me, Rush.
What do you think?
What do you do?
What are you gonna do?
What what do you make of all this?
In fact, let me find a soundbound.
I wasn't gonna play this at the top, but it it fits if I can just find it here.
It's CNN.
I think it's CNN trying to figure out what I think of it.
Yeah, here it is.
Grab number number nine.
This is a piece on CNN.
They're utterly confused.
This ran last night on Anderson Cooper 360.
And they always say, folks, this is important.
Left wing America, the drive-by media, the Democrat Party, when talking about you or me or conservatives always say that we're just a bunch of, among other things, simpletons.
That we're too dense to understand intellectual nuance.
Well, we're too dumb to understand any nuance.
That uh you are mind-numbed robots, incapable of forming your own opinions and making up your own minds.
So you tune here to find out what you should think, and you tune in here to find out what it is you don't know.
And if you didn't do that, you would be blindly traversing the tundra and the countryside, thinking the blizzard was going to kill you today.
So, given that, given how we know the left looks at us in terms of being simpleton and mind-numbed robots.
Listen to this report from Tom Foreman on CNN last night.
Trump has enjoyed oceans of praise on conservative radio.
The last ten minutes of what Trump did last night sealed the deal.
I mean, the sincerity, the appreciation for the audience.
But now that he's taking on his closest challenger, Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz, the tide is turning.
A genuine conservative, even in the Republican field would not go after Cruz this way.
As the months passed and the battle with Cruz became inevitable, the conservative talkers sharpened their words.
And the dean of conservative talk, Rush Limbaugh.
I think Trump is making a strategic error in the way he criticizes Cruz.
But folks, it's unrealistic to expect that they're not going to go after each other.
The conservative talkers will almost certainly hurt Trump if they keep hitting him this way.
But if he looks like he can win the nomination and the White House, they could change their tune again.
After all, they've been mad at the Democrats a whole lot longer.
What does all of this mean to you?
They do not know what I think.
They are curious, they are confused.
The dean of talk radio, is he for Trump or is he against him?
They can't figure it out.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you of a phone call we got yesterday, toward the uh end of the program, 28-year-old young man.
And yeah, we're gonna get to the national rear stuff because I've got Rich Lowry and these guys all on TV will react to it as um if you're hearing their words.
But I don't think what's happening here in that regard is complicated.
I think this is easily explainable because we are literally going through things here that in many ways are unprecedented, and there are challenges for people that they choices, challenges they haven't had to make.
And it's it's all it's it's causing much consternation and confusion.
Life times, careers are being questioned, the relevance, the importance by virtue of this Republican campaign.
I think what's happening is so big, is so momentous.
It's impossible to predict exactly where it's going or what the end result is going to be, but it is exciting.
This is thrill pecked, and what is happening here has the potential to be huge, no matter the result.
It has the it has the potential to accomplish what so many of you for the last 25 years have called here and said you thought the Republican Party was going to do.
There are genuine opportunities for massive upheaval in change here, with more than just one outcome.
I myself am still analyzing it.
I'm still trying to figure out what every thing that happens means.
I'm analyzing why certain people are supporting certain candidates, why certain people are not.
What is it about certain candidates that's attracting all of this support?
What is the appeal?
I'm still analyzing it and trying to figure it out.
And I'm having a ball doing it, by the way.
It is a it is a uh a fun challenge to have.
And I don't want to kill off any of it yet.
May I be honest with you?
I don't want to kill off anything that's happening right here.
It's too big.
It's too momentous.
It's larger than any one of us.
It's larger than any one organization, ideology, publication, whatever.
What's happening here is so huge, I don't want to kill off any of it.
I want to let things take place and let the natural ebb and flow of the process be the determining factor of what happens here.
Nithel Limbaugh, are you thing?
Are you so stuck on your thought?
You'll think this is Mr. New Castrati out there asking me a question.
You think you're so big you could destroy something.
Well, uh, let's just say that I don't want to chance it.
Now let me go back to this guy that called yesterday, toward the end of the program, 28 years old, millennial.
He said, and we were at the at the time there was a discussion as it is every day here, people calling why they like Trump why they don't.
Why they like Cruz, why they don't.
Uh Rubio, you name it.
Uh people trying to explain to me, even going so far as trying to tell me why I like Trump.
I mean, everybody's playing this analysis game.
And this guy calls and says something that I hadn't heard said in this fashion.
He said, Rush, I'm 28 years old.
And what you need to understand is the way people my age and in my circle are looking at all of this.
The first thing he said was, let's look at the two parties.
The Democrat Party, and I'm gonna use his words here.
He said, the Democrat Party has become the party of the fringe, the fringes in America.
And without my prompting, he defined what he meant.
And he spelled out verbatim, the Democrat Party coalition.
And to him, a 28-year-old millennial, they are the fringe.
The LGBT crowd, the gay marriage crowd, the civil rights coalitions, uh the militant feminism, the rape culture on campus crowd, the everybody trying to make everybody politically correct, the denial of for the First Amendment, limits on free speech, putting photographers and pizza owners in jail if they don't do a cake or take pictures or bake a pizza for a gay wedding, put them in jail.
That's the Democrat Party, and that's the party of the fringe.
He said the Republican Party is the party of white people.
But what he meant was the party of Middle America.
He's talking about the party, they're not fringe, they're standard, they are in his words, well, uh my words actually defining what he meant.
He was not speaking race racistly or racially in this.
He was defining who the various constituent groups are for the political parties.
Democrats are the fringe, and he said the Republican Party represents the white people of America.
White men, he said, basically white men.
But here's here's the key to it.
He said the Democrat Party is free to openly promote and advocate for all of their fringe groups, and the Republican Party is not.
The Republican Party cannot say or do one thing to benefit their constituents because they're going to get called out as racists and bigots and whatever, so they have to stand mute.
The Republican Party can't say anything positive or pro.
It can't come up with any policies.
It can't introduce any legislation that advances its primary constituency group, because right now, at this point in time in American history, they are considered the problem.
White men are the majority, the dominant majority, they're ones that got the country in trouble.
They're the ones that have been racist, bigots, sexist, homophobes.
It's the Democrat Party thinks it's perfectly legitimate, go after them.
The Republican Party is their political representative, but they can't defend them.
So he said the two parties don't do a thing for us.
The two parties have a paralyzing fight.
One party that we might want to join can't do anything for us.
The other party that we don't want to join is engaging in all this fringe stuff that's resulting in the rot and the destruction of our culture.
And in the middle of all this, here comes Donald Trump.
And he said, What you need to understand, Mr. Limbaugh, is that it isn't about Donald Trump.
It's what Trump is and what Trump represents.
And that is a totally new way that cannot be tied to either of the two political parties, which frankly, Mr. Limbaugh, we don't like.
There's nothing for us there.
Now he's talking about, he was not assuming that he's speaking for every millennial or every 28-year-old.
He was talking about, don't know how many people, but I think it's a sizable number.
And his point about Trump was you know, you you keep talking about how Trump survives all these crazy things he says.
Mr. Limbaugh, it isn't about any of that.
Trump could say, do anything.
It ain't gonna hurt him because it isn't about him.
It's about the fact that he represents to us a new way.
A different direction.
An ability to be honest about what you believe the problems are, an ability to be honest about your opponents, an ability to be honest about the people you think are responsible for making the mess.
His point was we can't even do that the way the politics of the country is structured today.
You can't truthfully, honestly criticize your shut down by one side or the other.
And for the most part, the left never gets shut down.
They get amplified and promoted.
And the opposition, I mean, if you wanted to join the Republican Party, to what end?
Why would you?
You're gonna have a party that can't represent you.
You're gonna have a party that can't promote things for you because they're gonna be tarred and feathered if they try.
So Trump is the new way.
Guy was saying that his group hates this current structure, the way American politics is working right now.
And he thinks it's doomed to consign the country to the triumph of the fringes.
And by definition, fringes do not triumph.
By definition, fringes are not the majority.
And so we want our shot at success.
We want our shot at the American dream, and neither of the two political parties seems the slightest bit interested in any of that.
They've both got theirs in terms of things that give them power today.
And they don't want to take any risks whatsoever.
I was utterly fascinated by it.
I've been thinking about it, putting it in the mix with everything else that's happening out there as I try, and I really am without prejudice and without name-calling, I'm trying to figure out exactly what's happening because it is momentous.
I've got to take a break here because of the constraints of time and the programming format, but hang it to be tough.
We'll be right back.
Don't go away.
Hi, welcome back.
Open line Friday, Rushlin bought 800 282-2882.
Over on the Democrat side, there is upheaval, unexpected.
And you might even say over there it's unprecedented.
Bernie Sanders is literally mopping the floor in New Hampshire with Hillary Clinton.
It is got people totally perplexed and wondering if it is real.
The New York Times put together a compendium of quotes from a number of Democrat-elected officials intended to frighten every registered Democrat voter to flee from Bernie Sanders immediately.
Claire McCaskill, Missouri said the Republicans won't touch him because they can't wait to run an ad with a hammer and a sickle, meaning Bernie's a communist.
You know, I have to laugh these Democrats who embrace communism wherever they can find it, suddenly upset that one of them in their midst might be elected president.
Bernie Sanders, Jay Nixon, the governor of Missouri.
There would be a meltdown all the way down the ballot.
That's exactly what Bob Dole's saying about Trump.
The two party establishments, folks, are being turned upside down and inside out.
Now I understand the Republican establishment being in dire straits and existing in grave consequences.
The Democrat establishment, the kook fringe of the Democrat base.
I'm not surprised they're sick and tired of having Hillary Clinton forced down their throat.
They didn't want her in 2008.
They don't want her now.
And so they're turning to whoever they think is as much more viable than she is.
Anyway, we'll sort through all of this as the program unfolds.
Hang on.
Open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, half my brain dying behind my back.
Just to make it fair.
It is Iowa.
Bernie Sanders 51% support in Iowa.
Hillary Clinton at 43, so it's an eight-point lead for Bernie Sanders.
Clinton led by 18 last month.
18 point lead in December, now down to uh an eight-point deficit.
Now the the Iowans are participated in the 2008 caucuses.
Survey found those people, Clinton leads Bernie 55 to 38.
So apparently his lead is with new caucus members.
Of course, if you listen to the experts talk, all these polling numbers in Iowa may not really matter.
Because here comes the conventional wisdom.
Iowa's a caucus state, and you don't just show up and vote.
You have to show up in the evening, and you have your coffee and you sit around and you chat about it.
You caucus, you discuss, and then you vote.
And they're saying the same thing about Trump.
I mean, yeah, is his voters going to show up and do this?
And I've seen in I don't know how many places Trump does not have a ground game.
And all Trump does is fly in, do a great show for an hour and a half or two hours with tens of thousands of people on hand and gets on the plane and splits the scene.
And leaving nothing behind, no ground game.
And again, this is what those of the standard ordinary operating procedure, conventional wisdom, American politics.
This is what they're saying to comfort themselves.
Hey, can't Trump, Trump, Trump, he's not going to win anything.
You got to ignore the polls, but no, no, he doesn't have a ground game.
Trump doesn't have any campaign experts.
He didn't have any specialists, he didn't have any people working the caucus areas.
You wait.
You're gonna see.
The polling numbers don't mean diddly squat.
People are so threatened by what's happening.
Folks, this is in one sense, a lot of this is easy to understand, easily explained from the even the psychological and the standpoint of human nature.
Politics is like anything else.
It is its own, let's call it a business just for the sake of it.
Just to call it something.
It has its own rules.
It has its own stars, it has its own wannabes, it has its own power clicks.
It has its upper strata, it has its worker bees, it has its people that everybody else makes fun of.
I mean, the whole gamut.
Politics is thought to be different from that, though, because we learn from early days in school that politics is civics, and it's policy and it's the best people with the best ideas, campaigning and re and receiving support for those ideas and integrity and character.
That's it's looks good on paper.
But this business is as cutthroat.
It's like it's like any private club.
You golfers, you want to join Augusta National, forget it.
You don't have a prayer.
The requirements to get into Augusta National are things 99.999% of the people who play golf in this country will never ever accomplish or qualify for.
You can dream all day long.
Politics is the same way.
The people who run it are not interested in new blood.
They're not interested in unless they bring the new blood in themselves and shepherd them and mentor them.
But if you're an outsider and you've never been in the business before, and all of a sudden you want to come in and run the show and assume the leader, you people are just not going to back away, let you have it.
No matter how great you are, no matter what you might do for them.
Let me put it this way.
Forget the name is Trump.
If a candidate could guaranteed fix everything that's wrong in this country, the way the Republican Party thinks it's wrong, if it were a slam dunk, if it were guaranteed that candidate will still be opposed by the Republican Party establishment.
If they've never heard of him before, or if he's never been in politics before, if he's not part of the structure, the infrastructure, if he hasn't paid his dues, if he's not part of the clique, they don't want him in there.
It's exclusionary.
And it's got all kinds of people who want to get into it, who want to climb that ladder, who want to be at the top, and you just don't get there.
It's in many ways, it's not merit-based, like so many other things in life are.
So there is a natural enmity to outsiders, to intruders.
And when an outsider or intruder gets in, gets a tent under the a nose under the tent and starts making noise, then the establishment lifelong members start caucusing together to figure out how they can get rid of this intruder who might just shake everything up.
When it comes time to get rid of the intruder, all they know to do is what they've always done.
They go to their playbook, whatever party politics playbooks there are, they go to them.
And so when you hear a lifelong political professional, consultant, fundraiser, donor, whoever, when you say, you hear them say, well, you know, Trump is doesn't have a ground game.
I mean, come on, you can't win without a ground game.
You can't just fly in and do speeches, even if 30,000 people show up, you get it again, have a ground.
They're trying to make themselves feel less frightened.
Because what's really going on is the potential here that everything so many people have relied on that's made them rich, that's made them famous, that's given them power, is on the verge of being destroyed and turned upside down.
A lot of people who in their hearts know that they are irrelevant are about to have it demonstrated in their minds, that's their fear.
And so it's circle the wagons time.
And the Republican Party, for these reasons and others, is really animated, motivated, energized by taking out both of their front runners.
So much so you have heard many of them say they would prefer to lose the presidency of the United States.
They would prefer to lose the most powerful office in the world if it meant somebody other than them within their party that they don't like or approve of winning that office.
Not only that, you've heard them say that some of them say they would even go so far as to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Does anybody think that's in the best interest of the country?
Does anybody think that's in the best interests of the future of the country for your kids and your grandkids?
No.
What is that?
That's self-preservation, that is protection.
Trying to hold on to little kingdoms and fiefdoms and so forth.
But it's certainly not what you would consider to be the national interest.
Now they will tell you opposite things, but that's why what's happening here is momentous.
You can see by the panic.
You you you can listen, you can hear, see, read the panic whenever anybody in the establishment phase, long there, entrenched, been working it for years and years, decades.
When they react to Trump, when they react to Cruz, you can many of them detect the fear.
So then learning what it is they're afraid of.
To me, that's interesting.
What I know is that neither of these two parties in recent years, well, one party is destroying.
What I wholeheartedly fervently believe with every fiber of my being is the best nation ever conceived by human beings.
One party has set out to destroy it.
They call it transforming it.
Now, to me, that is a clarion call to opposition.
Whatever else, they must be stopped.
Whatever must happen.
That has to happen.
And this, I think, is the primary motivating force behind people supporting Trump and Cruz.
It's not about being loyal to an ideology.
It's not even about being loyal to a party.
Being loyal to a party hasn't worked anyway.
That's gotten nothing done.
Being loyal to the Republican Party with donations, votes hasn't done anything.
I mean, look at National Review.
My memory on this, somebody's gonna have to check this for me, but it seems to me back in 2012, they ran a similar cover story or editorial that was against Newt Gingrich.
You remember this, Mr. Snerdley?
It was 2012, I believe.
They ran a very similar anti-Newt Gingrich cover in editorial back in 2012.
Rich Lowry said back then that quote, I don't think we've ever done anything like this.
And by that he meant gather together a group of conservative writers to try to dislodge a Republican.
I don't know if Gingrich was front runner, but February 2012.
So this is not National Rudy Gangrich 2012, drop out.
So this is this is not the first time.
And who ended up being the cover endorsed candidate?
Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney's not a conservative.
Mitt Romney had to fake being a conservative.
He's out there saying, Oh, I'm a severe conservative.
Mitt Romney is the architect of what became Obamacare.
We nominated a candidate who could not even criticize the number one Obama achievement with credibility.
So people, Republican voters and donors, they look at all of this, and they think there's a genuine crisis happening in this country, a genuine crisis that threatens the very existence of this country is founded.
They don't see any opposition to it in the Republican Party, they see opposition to it poo-pooed, laughed at, made fun of.
To them, the people who make this country work, there's a genuine crisis for their kids and their grandkids.
So when it comes to being loyal to conservatism or libertarianism or whatever, that's of secondary importance.
Now stopping what's happening, which translated is opposition to the Democrat Party, opposition to the American left.
Opposition to liberalism, communism, Olinskism, whatever you want to call it, opposition to Hillary Clinton, opposition to Bernie Sanders.
That is what is motivating, energizing, and inspiring.
And that is not recognized, it's not acknowledged.
It's not even given any respect at many areas in the Republican Party.
So what are people going to do?
They're not going to, you know what, I must make sure that conservatism Does not get watered down in whatever it is.
It's way beyond that now.
94 million Americans are not working.
The border is wide open.
Floods of unskilled, uneducated, non-English speaking people are arriving here monthly, and they will work for Diddly Squad or go on the welfare state rolls.
In either case, squeezing the people in this country who are working, limiting their opportunity for wage increases, career expansion, and tax increases necessary to fund an ever expanding welfare state.
They don't want any part of it.
To them, it's not about compassion.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact to them.
They love the country, they want it to survive, they don't want it being destroyed, they don't want it tampered with, they don't want it transformed.
They have thought for eight years that there was an opposition party joining them in this effort, and they haven't seen it.
Now we've got this internecine fight going on over who's a real conservative and who isn't.
And to me, all this is so much bigger than that.
It's momentous.
It is profound.
And I think hugely important and really great things can happen here in one of two different scenarios.
It's not all wrapped up in just one.
Anyway, I'm a little alone here.
Let me take a break.
We will come back.
I always try to get phone calls in in the first hour.
And we've got to get the audio sound bites in geared as well.
So a lot to come here on open line Friday.
Be patient.
We'll be back before you know it.
Yakima, Washington.
You know what Yaka Washington's famous for?
First city in the country with 92-gallon rolling trash cans.
That you put out in the front yard near the street for the garbage guys come pick up.
Yakima, Washington.
Here's uh here's Josh.
Great to have you on the phone, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, thanks for having me.
I just want to say we need to affect change.
And the only way to do it is to get Trump in office.
He is the only person who has a pair that's willing to talk about the issues.
And, you know, I've always been a lifelong conservative.
I'm a W fan.
I know a lot of people aren't black Bush president fan.
I loved him.
His brother's a nice guy, but he doesn't have a pair.
We need someone to speak out.
I'm 34, and I agree with that 28-year-old caller, the millennium.
We need change.
And that's what Trump.
Now, let me ask something else he said.
He said, and I thought this was key.
Because everybody and their uncle, I saw it discussed today.
The establishment types of political professionals can't believe that Trump survived his opening comments about Mexicans when he announced his campaign.
They can't believe he survived what he said about Meghan Kelly, and they can't believe that he survived what he said about John McCain.
This 28-year-old guy told me yesterday, Rush, to understand this.
You have to understand it isn't about Trump.
He happens to be the vessel.
He happens to be the opening, whatever, but we're not interested in destroying Trump because we don't want to destroy what Trump represents.
Is that pretty much true for you too?
That's exactly it.
We need it's obviously not working.
Things aren't working.
Something needs to change, and it's not.
I mean, there are things where I kind of look at Trump and I say, boy, really shouldn't you said that?
But he's the only person to drive us to making change.
And I'm a results-driven guy.
You know, I work in logistics.
And we need to affect change.
We need to see results.
So the fact that he says off the cuff things, though it's not right.
I think your average voter, you know, we're all imperfect, right?
We we we all we all have our things.
He's gonna do stupid stuff, but he's gonna drive us to those results.
That's the only way.
You know, just you're you talk about thanks, thanks for the call.
You talk about things are not working.
I disagree.
I think the Obama machine is well oiled.
I think the Obama administration is clicking at on all cylinders.
I think there's nothing stopping them.
I don't think they're leaking oil.
I don't think they got any carburetor problems.
I think their jet engines are on afterburner, and there's nobody stop them.
It's working better than they ever dreamed it would.
And now Obama's so energized he's gonna go the executive action route because he's been told effectively that there's no attempt to stop him here.
Things are working for Obama, and that just adds to the frustration and the fear and the anger of people who don't want it.
Half my brain tied behind my back.
Just to make it fair.
Always remember that.
Fairness, the name of the game here.
▲
Export Selection