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Feb. 1, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:27
February 1, 2016, Monday, Hour #2
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Greetings and welcome back.
Music lovers, thrill seekers all across the fruited plain.
Rushlin bought 800-282-2882 and the email address L Rushmow at EIBNet.com.
Great to have you here.
As the official kickoff now, the 2016 presidential campaign has begun.
Now just to expand here a little bit, folks.
To me, the problems with health care are a lot like the problems with immigration.
And in not just those two.
I mean, you can take pretty much every problem that we have in this country, and it's this is what's so frustrating to me.
You can tack it all.
All.
Now there's been some help, but you can tack it all to Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.
Everything that has happened that makes you unhappy, have you ill at ease, worried about the future.
You live in the greatest country on earth.
For the last seven years we've been led by people who have not believed in this country, do not like the way this country was founded.
And they have gone about to change it.
They have set about and they have succeeded to transform it, not just politically, culturally as well.
They have done their best to turn this country upside down.
They have practiced from the belief that the people who have been successful in this country have not earned it, that the game was rigged and it was given to them, that it was handed to them, and that the losers, as they look at things, life's winners and losers, they think that it's unfair and unfair system that created that, so they want to re-rig the game and pick the winners and losers.
But their objective is to create losers.
Their objective is to create losers who do not see any future for them as self-reliant, who only see a future for themselves if the government is involved in their life somehow, some way, every day.
The Democrat Party no longer has any middle of the roaders in it, it no longer has any centrists in it, it no longer has any moderates.
Well, maybe Joe Manchin, I mean you but you can't name more than a couple.
They are total radicals now and defined as radicals by people who have never liked the country.
They have not respected what it stood for, what it was formed to be, the ways in which it was founded, none of it.
They're angry, they're mad all the time, unhappy, and they want to spread that unhappiness.
They create chaos after chaos after chaos to keep people on edge, with the ultimate aim being to have as many people as possible turn to Washington, D.C. for the solution to everything not right in their lives.
Meanwhile, they are the people creating all of these things that are not right in people's lives.
It is a singular quest, and the quest is for power.
It is not about improving the lives of the most people, it's not about freedom and and and liberty, it's not about the U.S. Constitution, it's about the acquisition of singular power for as long as they can hold on to it.
Let's get specific.
You look at the uh the problems with immigration.
If we had enforced our immigration laws, we would not be in the problem, would not have the problems that we'd not be in the trouble we're in today.
We've got plenty of immigration law, and it's good.
And were it enforced, we wouldn't have this problem.
There isn't a need for comprehensive immigration reform.
There isn't a need for new law.
It's all there.
All we have to do is enforce it.
If we had allowed the laws of supply and demand, i.e.
the marketplace, to run health care instead of government for the last 50 years, we wouldn't be where we are in health care today either.
I mean, health care is this massively complex and impossibly expensive proposition today.
But it need not be.
Why isn't the hotel business massively complex and impossible to afford?
Why isn't the airline business?
Why isn't pick any business?
Why isn't it as screwed up as health care?
And I can imagine all the answers being everybody gets sick, Russian, everybody needs health care.
Right.
But why does a band-aid cost 500 bucks or whatever it costs?
If you're in a hospital.
You know, the market is an amazing thing that functions exactly as it should.
I love using the example of hotels.
We have a range of hotels in this country, motels, hotels, whatever you want, you can find it.
You can find the most expensive five-star hotel experience in the world if you want to pay for it.
And if you want to spend 20 bucks a night or an hour, you can do that.
Whatever you want, the hotel business has it for you.
It's all based on the ability of the customer to pay.
Not everybody can afford a five-star multi-room hotel suite.
But some people can and will happily pay for it.
So some of them are available.
But if you don't, if you're not into that, if you want to spend whatever it is at a motel six or take your pick, it's there for you.
There's no reason health care shouldn't be the same.
But the problem began when Harris Wafford said, well, if our Constitution is going to provide you with a lawyer, it ought to provide you healthcare.
It ought to be a constitutional right.
And then came the notion that all health care should be equal, that everybody should get the same kind of treatment, i.e.
the best, no matter what it costs.
Democrat Party came along and said, that's what we're going to provide for you.
Is it working?
You know what's happening in healthcare right now?
The people who can afford the best are getting it.
You know, what's happening?
Doctors are leaving Medicare, leaving Medicaid, setting up private practice, and they're taking on 25 or 30 customers who pay them a retainer like you'd pay a lawyer.
Against whatever you're going to need healthcare wise the rest of the year.
So you pay to reserve your doctor, and then whatever you need healthcare wise, you pay for that.
But the doctor's always available for you.
You know what you're going to get.
And the market's making it possible until Obama and the gang figure out how to shut that down, which they will, because it undermines their whole premise that everybody's entitled to the same.
There's no such thing.
There's no such thing as total equality, totally sameness when we're talking about outcome, because people are different.
They have different education, ambition, intelligence, desire, you name it.
But the desire to spread equality of outcome using class warfare and class envy, which is their stock and trade, creates false promises, impossible promises, which can never be kept, which keeps people perpetually upset and angry and feeling disadvantaged or what have you.
If the solution to immigration is to simply enforce our laws, and it is, it isn't really more complicated.
Well, it's a little bit more complicated because we have to deal with the massive reality of allowing people to get away with breaking the laws for who knows how many decades now.
But fix that, secure the border, enforce the law, problem solved.
It is not complex.
It made to sound complex by people who don't want to do it.
And if the marketplace would just be allowed to work in health care, wear whatever you want you can get.
Stop going to the doctor for hangnails and so forth.
It would make a lot more sense.
It may not totally reform it and fix it, it would make a lot more sense than what we have now.
This system is unsustainable.
Obamacare was not designed to succeed.
Obamacare was designed to create the very chaos, the very inequities, the very very inequalities that we have, so that one day, in total frustration, massive numbers of Americans would throw their hands up and say, look, just let's just let the government do it.
Or the government would say, you know, it's such a mess we've tried, let us fix it.
We'll be the sole provider.
Um, we'll be the sole source.
Yeah, yeah, man, because that'll be seen as making it less complicated.
But it doesn't work.
It never has worked.
Wherever you go in the world, this approach never ever has worked.
And our country cannot take any more of this and maintain its brilliance and its founding.
Its opportunity for the most.
Besides that, elements of the Democrat Party are taking direct aim at that America for whatever host of varying reasons.
So when I hear candidates start talking about issues that make me think I'm listening to Democrats or make me think I'm listening to people who think the solution to all this is more government, bigger government, smarter government, what have you, red flags fly high.
Because government, and this is not a cliche, and it's not simplistic conservatives, Government is the problem.
Who says Baron Barack Obama's an expert in anything?
Yeah, he's elected president.
What's he an expert?
He's not even, he taught constitutional law, he's not even an expert in the constitution.
Is he an expert in health care?
He certainly isn't.
There isn't a Democrat who is.
And yet they are invested in by people that vote for them, as the experts.
They cause the problems, they create the problems, then they demand they be allowed to create the solution of people go for it.
It's been one of the most.
I mean, socialism's a fraud.
I I have I've I've been amazed.
It's it's there's something about it that's seductive.
It has been demonstrated to be a fraud.
I don't know how many times.
Socialism, communism, totalitarianism, whatever you want to call it, it's a demonstable fraud.
False promises, phony promises, impossible promises, demonstrable failures throughout human history, and yet it continues to seduce people.
And I'm convinced it does so by the expert usage of the fairness and equality and compassion arguments.
It's not so much that those work.
What's really insidious about this is that proponents of free markets, proponents of getting government out of as much of this as possible, and just let the market hand.
Those people are successfully called mean-spirited, heartless, cold, and nothing could be further from the truth about every one of them who is accused of being that.
They are the exact opposite, in fact.
If you ask me, it's people like Barack Obama who are really cold hearted and mean spirited, but they get credit for all this compassion.
And so Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton are they pose a real threat to the future of this country.
They pose a grave danger.
Either one of them guarantee exactly the misery we have today multiplied.
No question about it.
Not possible for them to make life in America better.
Not even for the people who are going to be the beneficiaries of whatever it is they're passing out.
Think I'm wrong, take a look at their beneficiaries now and find the happiness for me.
Find the happiness among those in poverty.
Find the happiness among what they call the poor.
Find the happiness in the minorities that vote for them in droves.
Find the happiness.
I mean, even their wealthy voters and supporters.
You can't run into them without finding people angry, mad ticked off about something from Hollywood to academia.
They're constantly enraged, constantly angry.
Where's the happiness?
Where is all of this utopia that's supposed to have happened by now?
Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, multiply whatever you think is wrong now.
Whatever you think of health care, whatever you think is spending, whatever you think of the financial system, whatever you think of the culture, whatever you think of any aspect of American life, guaranteed you'll be even more miserable.
Guaranteed you'll be even more worried.
Guaranteed you'll be even more depressed.
Because it's only going to get worse.
It can't get better.
What they believe in doesn't work.
What they believe in is destructive.
So yeah, today begins a really, really crucial year.
This is the day it really begins because this is the day votes are cast for the first time.
And believe me, that's going to change the dynamic of everything.
Tonight, tomorrow is going to be much different than all the past months.
Because all the past months have just been speculation to fill time.
Wild guesses, educated guesses, expert analysis, what have you.
Tonight, reality begins.
And nobody knows for sure what's going to happen tonight or next week in New Hampshire or beyond that.
But it won't take long to start getting a feel for it.
Because after the votes are counted for many people, it's going to be senseless to remain in the race.
You'll see people dropping out.
And that alone is going to change the dynamic.
The people dropping out do have supporters.
They're going to go somewhere.
Nobody knows how that's going to shake out.
Might have experts who think they can tell you, but nobody knows.
This is the year where we're going to find out if a majority of people in this country actually want what's happening today, this destruction, this mess, this deterioration, if they want it stopped.
We'll find out.
I think they do.
Back after this.
Tom Dungheap Harkin, Senator from Iowa.
There's a reason we call him that, and I've forgotten what it is.
But he kept talking about dung heaps or something one day, and I it might have uh something to do with conservatism or whatever.
So we just reversed it and have been calling out.
He was a Washington Journal on C-SPAN today, and he got a caller from somebody named Karen from Virginia, who said Hillary Clinton has my support because she has earned it.
And when we stop looking at what's popular and start looking at who earned it, then we'll be on the right path.
I think the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, sort of the Tea Party, the right wingers, the Russian boss, that type, are attacking what they're afraid of.
Is there afraid that Hillary Clinton, as president, will be able to work with moderate Republicans and Democrats to actually get things done.
And that's what they're afraid of.
Well, uh, in the first place, uh, here, the the the the question is interesting.
I think if we stop looking at what's popular and start looking at who's earned it, then we'll be on the right path.
Hillary Clinton has earned it.
That's the whole point.
She hasn't.
She's the beneficiary of I don't know, something similar to nepotism or whatever.
I mean, this is this is payback.
This is, and they tried to pay her back in 2008, and the party didn't want her then.
And it's looking like a whole lot of Democrats don't want her now.
You ought to see the crowds that she's drawn.
Folks, 30 people, 400 people, 250 people.
It's tiny.
The pictures of her.
If I'm Hillary Clinton, after one of these things, I have to be asking my staff, what the hell are you doing?
Where are my crowds?
Because on the next page of the paper, there's 10,000 showing up for Bernie, 15,000 for Bernie, in the same place as Hillary is going.
It's stunning.
But Hillary Clinton working with moderate Republicans and Democrats to get things done.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a certain like kind of what's been going on now with Obama.
So Senator Harkin's not off far off the beaten path.
It's a little bit more complicated than that, pretty much.
Mercedes Schlap, Republican strategist on Howard Kurtz Media Buzz show on the Fox News channel yesterday morning.
And the uh what was the I don't know.
Well, I'm out of time here to play the bite here because I can't find the quote.
Here's the uh it's a good bite, too.
But we'll have to save this for when we get back from the uh break here at the bottom of the hour.
Gloria Steinem has weighed in on why women like Trump.
Now here's Gloria Steinem, who is the mother of modern feminism.
How can anybody pro-abort be a mother?
But she is.
She said the only reason women like Trump.
What do you think it is?
The only reason women like Trump is his money.
Really?
Is that how little things have changed?
Okay, Media Buzz, the name of the show, Sunday morning Fox News Channel.
Howard Kurt speaking with a Republican strategist named Mercedes Schlap about the primary race, and his question was Trump does get criticized frequently on Fox by some of the more prominent conservative commentators.
Dr. Krauthammer, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and then there's the National Review and Rich Lowry, which devoted a whole issue, trying to say he's not really a conservative, but those aren't the only conservative voices, and some are sympathetic to Trump, Ms. Schlepp.
The Trump supporters, if Trump is not happy with Fox, the Trump supporters are not going to be happy with Fox.
And so what's happening is that, for example, like Rush Limbaugh, they have been more sympathetic and brightbart towards Trump and what Trump's populist movement is doing and affecting and impacting the electorate.
And so, in essence, what's happening is is that you have just this conservative grassroots base that really they're listening to the talk radio.
They're mad at Fox, especially those Trump supporters when Trump is not happy with the network.
So Ms uh Ms Ms. Schlap here is saying that uh Il Rushbow and Talk Radio have more instance in her opinion and more influence than than Fox and conservative writers.
I don't I mean, it's one way of looking at it.
I think it's more about alignment.
It is it folks, it all boils down to who people think is the establishment and the elites and who they think isn't.
It really isn't any more complicated than that, I don't believe.
And I think people are very I think the thing about the the uh establishment of the elites is I think they underestimate, in fact, I know they do, the sophistication of people that are not in their immediate orb.
Uh they underestimate the intelligence, they un they certainly underestimate the degree to which people think independently, and are not the product of influence that stems from commentary or or what have you.
And I think even if you wanted to take it deeper than that, I think it it it also boils down to who people, let's call them voters, think is going to fight for them and who isn't.
And I it it's one thing to be a great conservative writer, and it's one thing to be a great conservative commentator, no matter where you are, but if that's all there is, then what good is it doing people?
This is the view I think people out in the rest of the country have of all this.
Yeah, there's some real brainiacs out there.
There's some great commentators, we get some great columnists, but then what?
Well, what happens?
We we we there they're never counsel um fighting the Democrats.
They never counsel, I mean, it just it's it's it's largely a question, okay, what what's it getting me?
And it's not just these guys.
You can you could say it about any conservative or Republican institution in Washington who's been out selling themselves, promising this or that.
People are starting to say, well, where is it?
Where is all this conservatism that I hear all the time?
I don't see any of it in Congress or much.
I don't see any in the Senate at all.
Where is it?
Yeah, we got a lot of it on Fox, and yeah, we got a lot of blogs, and yeah, we got a lot of websites, but where is it beyond that?
Yes, yes, Mr. Limbaugh, but what about talk radio?
Well, talk radio is considered to be in the mix each and every day.
Talk radio is certainly not the establishment.
It would never be permitted to be.
With no way in the world would it ever be permitted to be.
Unless, you know, it's NPR or uh a couple other exceptions.
But this all boils down to this is this this this campaign is not hard to understand.
Arguments about is populism.
I continue to be misquoted about this.
I never said, by the way, just to get it on route, I never stated with autological certitude or fact that populism and nationalism have triumphed or you or replaced conservatism.
I never said it.
I asked the question in in speculating, thinking out loud here while discussing all this with you, and that question gets cherry-picked and reprinted by itself without any notation that I'm asking a question, not making a declarative statement, what have you.
I never ever said it.
The populism's always had an appeal, and so has nationalism.
And I understand why they have appeals.
It's very simple.
Populism and nationalism translated is going to make America great again.
I hate to say it, but that's that's how it gets translated.
We're gonna make America great again.
America's gonna win.
We're gonna win.
America's gonna win, we're gonna win, we're gonna win, America's great, we're gonna restore America's great.
It's very simple.
Versus a lot of the conservatism, which is, well, you know, we can't, because Obama's in the White House.
Well, we can't because we don't have the Senate.
Well, we can't.
It's it comes to doers versus talkers.
I mean, there's any number of ways that you can you can look at it, but it's it's to me uh one of the most fascinating times politically of the entire 27 now into our 28th year, that I have been hosting the program.
And I'll tell you, folks, you want to know one of the things that was happening that contributed in putting this program on the map was something akin to what's happening now.
Back in 1988, when this program started, it wasn't long after that we learned about the House bank and the House Post Office.
And my first ever appearance on TV as a host of a radio show was on the news hour with Jim Wara and Judy Woodruff, and it was about the House bank.
Now, if you've forgotten, the House Bank scandal was, and its point was it was so easy to understand.
Members of Congress could go to the House bank and write checks for cash without having the money in their account to do so.
Some members of Congress were Overdrawn tens of thousands of dollars.
It it was to the point that it didn't matter how much they were paid, salary, didn't matter what their income was, because they didn't have to live on it.
And both parties, but it was it was easy to understand.
I remember being asked to go on, it was Judy Woodruff that interviewed me.
It was the first ever time on one of these shows.
And I I said to her, I said, she she was, you know, they were all why is this real?
Why do people care about this?
They didn't understand it back then.
Judy Woodruff, and she was nice, don't misunderstand.
This before they learned enough about who I was to hate me.
They were very nice.
Very supportive, in fact.
I was new kid of the blog.
Who is this young little whippersnapper?
Why we've never heard of this little guy out here talking conservatism.
Who's this little class clown?
So they had me in there.
And she said, Why is this such a big deal to people?
Mr. Limbaugh, I don't understand.
I said, because the average American can't do this.
The average American tried, he'd be thrown out by his bank and maybe end up in jail for crying out loud, and his creditors would be coming after you.
There's no way you go to the bank and you write check for money you don't have, you get an overdraft notice, and you're shut down, and these guys can do it all the time.
They can do it for years, and it doesn't matter whether they've got the money.
And I said, I said, Ms. Woodruff, this is so easily understandable.
You there's nothing complicated about it, and the American people can't do it, and they're not gonna put up with it.
Well, her guest following me was a congressman from uh Michigan named Guy Vanderject.
And when my segment was over, they went to Guy Vanderject, and he raised his index finger, and he he was on from Washington.
I did the my appearance from the PBS studios in New York.
Same place where Charlie Rose was doing a show then.
May same place now to know.
But Guy Vanderjack looked, Judy Woodruff and pointed his index finger.
He said, Whoever that was, this radio guy, I'm telling you, that is exactly right.
This is so easily understandable.
And folks, the lid was blown off this, and it was in part the reason Jim Wright lost his speakership.
And then we learned it wasn't just the House Bank, there was the House Post Office, and you could do similar things there.
You know what you could do?
You could take a donor's check.
A member of Congress could take a check, say $5,000 from a donor, and go in and buy a dollar's worth of stamps and get $9,000 cash in return and change.
Well, once this stuff was discovered, and the mainstream media reported it, but ho hum, not that big a deal.
People chuckling about it.
But when people in the country found out about it, there was hell to pay.
Well, it's a you know that the end result of that was, with a lot of other things which followed, the Republicans winning the House for the first time in 40 years, four years later, 1992.
Well, the same kind of stuff is happening.
The things that are happening now in Washington are just as easily understandable.
Except it's not just one thing like the House Bank.
It's everything now.
It's everything that affects the future of the country.
It's the banking system, it's the financial system, it's the spending, it's the health care, it's the immigration, you name it, everything's out of whack, everything's being done for the insiders, and everybody outside Washington with an IQ of 90 who is paying attention, understands it.
And many of them don't like it.
Some of the Democrats don't care.
As such, and the people in Washington know that the people out in the country don't approve of it and don't like it.
They can read the election results, but it hasn't changed the way they're operating at all.
That's why there's hell to pay.
This disconnect is bigger than I have ever seen it.
And now there's an back when the House Bank was exposed, you know what happened?
You had members of Congress racing to straighten out their accounts.
You had members of Congress running to the microphones, acknowledging their guilt, promising to never do it, making excuses for whatever they did, But they it it mattered to them and they cared and they did their best to get back in the graces of good people, and a lot of them lost their seats.
That's what's not happening today.
When all of this chicanery is exposed, the people inside the beltway keep doing it and adding to the ledger.
So it's not unusual that people not in Washington object to what's going in Washington.
But now the divide is greater than ever, and the instances of differentiating behavior are numerous, not just one thing like the House bank or the related House Post Office business.
Anyway, let's take a brief time out.
We'll come back and return to your phone calls after this, because I know you're penting up out there.
Here is Bob in Quincy, Illinois.
It's uh you're up, sir, and I'm glad you waited.
Hello.
Oh, thank you, Rush.
Um, please let me introduce a bit of nuance into the Trump and the so-called Wilder effect.
Sure.
Um so if Trump wins Republican primaries by a greater margin than predicted in the polls, might that effect in the general election be augmented when you introduce Democrats to the mix?
And I'm suggesting that Democrats may be willing to vote for Trump, certainly many will, but they will be more unwilling to admit it to a polster, thus augmenting the effect in the general election.
So are we looking at 1980?
You are hoping that what we could be on the cusp here is a Donald Trump 47 state landslide.
That's what you're thinking is lurking here in the future.
Well, it it's possible if uh if he if he can beat Republicans by more than what people think, then I think it stands to reason uh there's stronger candidates in the Republican field.
I mean, he has to beat Cruz, he has to beat Rubio and others, Ben Carson.
They're stronger than Hillary Clinton or Bernie.
So I think I think if he gets through this Republican thing, it could it could be 49.
I mean, I don't know.
Uh he's got to overcome those unfavorables.
Sixty percent unfavorable, and you are counting on this wave of support to maybe soften the unfavorable, but nobody will know till votes are cast because you're looking at a version of the uh the wilder effect.
I have to run, but I'll expand on this theory in mere moments.
Wait a minute, somebody mad at me on the fo what is this?
I'm just seeing this.
Oh, slightly ticked off at me as if a Meghan Kelly caller on Friday.
Oh, I didn't emphasize something.
Okay, all right.
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