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Feb. 3, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
30:56
February 3, 2016, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
I am Rush Limbaugh, and this is the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It's great to have you here, as always.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882 and the email address LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
I didn't comment on this when it happened.
And I'm glad I waited.
John Kasich, did you see he was endorsed by the New York Times?
Well, yeah, you should see Snerdley's reaction.
Oh, oh, yes, in the Boston Globe, too.
Yeah, I knew.
Didn't surprise me at all.
See, that's the thing.
The endorsement of the New York Times, John, did not surprise me at all.
Nor does the Boston Globe endorsing Kasich surprise me in the slightest.
That's not the news.
That's not the story.
John Kasich is staking his and Tom reading to you here from one of the many stories about that today.
When it printed, it didn't print the website.
I don't remember what it's a credible one.
It's not some cook place.
I just don't know what it is.
Doesn't matter.
John Kasich staking his entire campaign on New Hampshire.
And perhaps for the first time this election cycle, he had the entire Granite State political world to himself this weekend and was loving it.
As he was there, everybody else was in Iowa.
Camped out there, New Hampshire.
Kasich waltzed his way through his 82nd, 83rd, 84th, 85th, and 86th town halls.
He's done that many town halls in New Hampshire.
And he did one, two, three, four, five of them over the weekend, Saturday and Sunday.
Perhaps the first Republican to hug and kiss an endorsement from that newspaper, Kasich thanked the New York Times repeatedly in these town halls.
Now, wait.
Kasich thanked the New York Times repeatedly and honed in on one sentence in particular at the town halls.
And he's hyping himself and he's telling people who he is and what's going on.
And the sentence in the New York Times endorsement editorial that Kasich quotes is this.
And Mr. Kasich is no moderate.
As governor, he's gone after public sector unions.
He's fought to limit abortion rights and opposed same-sex marriage.
Kasich also got the endorsement of the Boston Globe and seven out of eight newspapers in New Hampshire per his own count.
He emphasized the endorsements to voters in these town halls with the same empathetic finesse that he weaves into other centrist pitches that can be unpopular with conservatives.
And here he is talking to a crowd Salem, New Hampshire on Sunday.
I guess he's Q ⁇ A and a guy's asked him a question and Kasich says, and then, sir, yesterday I got endorsed by the New York Times.
A couple days ago, I was in my room and I thought about all of this and I cried.
It's amazing to come from where I came from and have these wonderful things said about me.
Speaking to reporters after his Salem event, Kasich repeated that it was a lovely editorial where they said, Kasich's certainly not a moderate, but he knows how to get things done and bring people together.
I like that.
So he cried.
He admitted that he was in his room, and I'm sure he was being very introspective.
Some people go into their solitude and take stock of where they are.
Many people do that, actually.
And he was in the process of doing that.
And the fact that the New York Times endorsed him brought him to tears.
He cried.
And then it's amazing to come from where I came from and have these wonderful things said about me.
A reporter tweeted that Chris Christie's camp did not even accept a meeting with the New York Times editorial board.
The New Jersey governor's team later circulated an email with the subhead, the New York Times endorsement, further proves that John Kasich is a liberal's idea of what a good Republican should look like.
Earlier this week, America's Future Fund, a conservative super PAC, released an ad branding Kasich as an Obama Republican after highlighting his support of Common Core Medicaid expansion and tax increases.
When he wasn't being asked about the New York Times, Kasich, who sometimes refers to himself as the Prince of Light and Hope, who has pitched himself as an optimistic consensus builder determined to keep his moral high ground by running a positive campaign, was questioned about his own campaign dabblings in negative approaches.
Anyway, started crying over the wonderful aspects of being endorsed by the New York Times and thinking, but whoa, what a, from where I've come from, he was man, his dad was the mailman.
In McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, which is just up the road from Heinz Field, if you know the geography there.
McKees Rocks, McKeesport, those are both places you never admit that you've been even.
I'm just kidding.
I have affection.
My first job outside of town was at McKeesport.
Or as the natives call it, it's a very Polish community.
They call it Mekesport because they couldn't pronounce McKeesport, Meckesport.
Anyway, I just found it, I don't know what I found it crying over a New York Times editorial and thinking how amazing it was to have these wonderful things set up.
To me, folks, that's not the to go seeking the approval of I don't want to be I'm not trying to rein on Governor Kasich's parade if it makes him happy.
That's fine.
I'm not trying to dump on that.
I just found it, I don't know, odd.
Some way, somewhat, and I'm sure I'll hear about this, but I just.
Now let's move on to Marco Rubio.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
As you know, on yesterday's program, I don't know, something was either a caller here or something I was reading in the news, something that happened on the program.
I just reacted in a semi-visceral way to the idea that all of a sudden Marco Rubio has become this establishment candidate, which to me means that he's a rhino, a moderate Republican, tending toward even maybe a liberal Republican and all that.
And that's just not who Marco Rubio is to me.
I think made the point analyzing the results in Iowa that Rubio is heavily influenced by Reagan, as was Ted Cruz, as was Dr. Carson, three of the four top finishers in Iowa.
I think this is momentous.
I think it's remarkable because the Republican Party establishment are trying to tie Rubio to is actually the group that wants to get rid of Reagan and Reagan influences the Reagan fetish.
The era of Reagan is over.
And I think Rubio's a Reagan.
I think Rubio is somebody whose life story and Rubio is somebody whose ideology is much closer to Reagan than, say, a Mitt Romney or a McCain or take your pick of whoever Bob Dole, the establishment people happen to love.
And I know that a lot of people are very nervous about Marco Rubio because of the gang of eight.
And Rubio's out saying, don't think we have enough support in our party alone to get elected president.
We're going to have to branch out.
Some people look at Rubio as an interventionist in foreign policy, which to them means globalist.
I understand the fears people have of Rubio.
And I understand the conservative contrast that can be made between Rubio and Cruz.
There's no question that you can make that contrast, that one Cruz is top to bottom, check mark after checkmark after check mark, no doubt, is Ted Cruz a conservative.
And I understand Rubio's given reason.
People reason to be less confident.
Gang of Eight, Bill alone, the argument over whether or not he does favor ultimately at the end of everything amnesty.
I understand all of that.
I just know I would too.
If the New York Times came out and said this is the best talk show in the country, I would panic.
I would think it's over.
I would say, what am I doing wrong?
That's exactly right.
If the New York Times came out and started treating me the way they treat, I don't know, take your pick of any liberal personality or actor.
If they started treating me that way, I'd say, what in the world did I do wrong?
I would think it's about over if I'm being praised by the New York.
It's exactly damn right.
I know I'm looking, I'm walking on eggshells all day today.
I'm trying not to crack the eggs.
But, friends, I just, at some point, I know we need to run against the establishment.
I'm leading the charge.
But Marco Rubio ain't them.
Now, I don't doubt that they are trying to make him them.
I don't doubt that they're putting pressure on him.
They don't have anywhere else to go.
Their guy isn't going to go anywhere.
Their guy is Jeb.
Then their next guy is Christie.
They're not going anywhere.
They've got to find somebody.
And they're glomming onto Rubio.
But let me tell you something.
You know what really made it happen reality for me?
I'm listening to people analyze Iowa.
And they're tabulating the votes by percentage and leaving Rubio out when discussing the percentage of the Iowa caucus vote that went to conservatives.
And they would say something like, and if you look at it, 51% of the caucus scores in Iowa tended to conservative.
That would be the total of Cruz and Carson.
And somehow Rubio got left out of that, which that's what made me start scratching my head.
How can you not count the support that Ruby got?
Rubio is, in many people's minds, is a conservative.
He clearly is not a rhino.
He's not the kind of Republican you think of when you hear establishment Republican.
To me, anyway.
And so I think you have to add the votes that Rubio got, the percentage that Rubio got.
If you do that, you're well over 60% of the Hawkeye Caucus electorate that chose conservatism.
Trump, you would not throw in that mix.
Trump himself doesn't want to be identified that way, or it's not that he doesn't want to be, but that's not his angle from which he's coming.
But that's the only point that I was trying to make here.
We have a political story here.
GOP establishment rallies behind Rubio, top Republicans urging several of his rivals to drop out.
And from Breitbart, Republican establishment candidates go full throttle after Rubio in New Hampshire.
Republican establishment presidential candidates Bush, Kasich, and Christie have focused their fire on Marco Rubio as part of the GOP nominees campaign.
This is all about a quest for money.
The donor class in this, I understand that, but when you get down to discussing ideology, I don't know how else to say it.
I know Rubio.
I don't know these people intimately well.
Not what you would call best friends with them, but I know them.
I've spent a lot of time with them.
I've spent a lot of time talking to them about any number of things, not just their careers and not just politics.
But whereas Jeb Bush, I would have no qualm with anybody describing Jeb as establishment.
He is the definition of it.
He is the poster boy this year.
I think the establishment really has nowhere to go.
They've got to go get somebody here.
Everyone in this race that the establishment, by that I mean the RNC, the GOP, the elites, inside the beltway, cadre, whatever.
If they'd had their drothers, it'd be Jeb, and then after that, it would be Christian.
And after that, it would be, I mean, some of them might even want to glommate a Kasich.
But Rubio is the last chance they've got to have a horse in the game.
I don't know if Rubio wants to take it and run with it as that, but I'm just talking about in a vacuum.
Vacuums don't exist, but Rubio, just as he stands and is.
I listened to his speech after the Iowa caucus.
I did not hear somebody embarrassed of or afraid of conservatism, conservative ideology.
I heard somebody, on the contrary, who understands it, who can articulate it cheerfully, happily, confidently.
The idea to peg this guy as an establishment type, knowing what that really means, is just something that doesn't compute with me.
But I'm not even finished with this.
We've got some audio sound bites to deal with, and others have weighed in on this.
David French, by the way, at National Review, who I mentioned earlier, has a unique take on this, too, that I want to share with you.
Just hang in there, be tough because we'll be right back and move right on with this.
Don't go away.
CNN's reporting Rick Santorum is getting out of the race now, which obviously there'll be more of this.
Linda in Tampa, I'm going to squeeze a phone call in here before the half hour expires.
How are you, Linda?
Hi, Rush.
Nice talking to you.
Same here.
Bad thing is, I'm going to have to disagree with you.
I can't believe it.
But on Rubio, I disagree.
I think he's nothing more than an opportunist who will say and do whatever it takes to get elected.
And when he was testing the waters here in Florida for his Senate run, we held a meet and greet for him with lots of grassroots in attendance.
He introduced himself and immediately started in on immigration plans he had.
And, you know, out of the shadows, pathway to citizenship, all that stuff, we all rose up and let him know we were not, we did not approve.
We were not interested in that.
He said he heard us.
He understood.
And a lot of us went out of our way, did everything we could for him to get him elected.
Got to D.C., first thing he did, gang of eight.
Now we're hearing the same slick talk and speeches that he said in Florida.
And we think amnesty has always been his first priority.
And now we find out there's been over two dozen immigration enforcement plans introduced up in Washington, and he has not co-sponsored even one.
Okay, okay, okay.
I'm out of time.
The guy's horrible.
The guy's rotten.
All right, fine.
We'll take a break.
I want to apologize to the last caller.
Linda, it was just a quick stab at humor.
I had five seconds left when you finished.
I was not trying to be flippant and not take your comments seriously.
I do take your comments.
In fact, you expressed them fabulously well.
You didn't hesitate or stutter or pause at one point.
I don't doubt you.
I'm not saying Marco Rubio is perfect.
I'm just saying that I do not believe that Marco Rubio is representative of what we all mean when we talk about the establishment.
I know he's got a lot of things to explain on immigration and amnesty.
I know it's something he may never be able to get past because the issue is too important.
People don't want to take a chance on it.
I understand that.
But I'm not, I'm not, I just don't want to sit by, I don't like throwing people overboard.
I don't like throwing people out and getting rid of them on the basis that somehow they're impure.
The guy is not a liberal.
He's not a squish moderate.
He's not the kind of person that's responsible for the messes.
Not even close.
But I also am not seeking perfection because aside from me, it doesn't exist.
And I say that flippantly and with attempted humor too.
And I watch the forces here that are attempting to take Rubio and plug him into that hole.
I don't think he's seeking it.
Look, I had a conversation with him Monday morning for a half hour here.
And I asked him if I could talk about the conversation.
He said I could.
And he didn't put anything off the record in disclaimers.
The one thing he told me was how frustrating it is to be in the Senate.
And I've heard the exact thing from Ted Cruz.
Almost, not word for word, but thematically, I've heard the same thing.
Frustrating it is that the only thing anybody in the Senate cares about from morning to night is re-election and maintaining their position.
He said, I'm not staying there.
I'm out.
If I don't win the presidency, I'm going to the private sector politics.
I don't want to stay in the Senate 30 years to have to, I don't want to have to stay there that long to acquire any power.
The place is just not built for somebody that wants to move as quickly as it's what he told me.
Now, there isn't an establishment person in the world that wants out of it.
There isn't an establishment power broke.
The reason for their existence is to be in the club and to climb the ladder of success in the club and to be anointed by your betters and elders in the club and be given a hand up.
And Cruz has told me the same thing.
Cruz has talked about it publicly.
Cruz took it public when his direct criticism of McConnell and the claim that McConnell lied to his face about a number of things.
They can't get anything done there.
They can't get anything done there as conservatives because the place doesn't have very many.
But besides that, it doesn't have an agenda anyway other than self-preservation.
So they said.
Both of them have said this to me.
And they're not the only ones.
I've heard it from members of Congress.
The Republican freshman class in 1994.
Those are the people that made me honorary member.
Within, what was it, four terms, they were all gone.
They were all dynamic private sector successes, and they showed up with fire in the belly, and they were going to reform the place.
And after two terms, they got Alan West.
I remember being at a cocktail party in Washington after a very important vote when Alan West was serving in his first term.
And he shows up just beat up.
He'd been told by whoever runs the house, you Tea Party guys, you're nothing.
You don't get a vote unless you vote the way we want.
He said, it's just, they show up eager.
They show up with fire in the belly.
They show up motivated and inspired, and they get beat down and beat back.
And it's not that they don't have the stick-to-itiveness.
It's that the prospect of hanging in there and change and making change 30 years is what Marco Rubio said to me.
That's how long he figures it would take him to acquire any kind of genuine power in terms of the institution, which, you know, it's its own universe in there.
He did not sound like a guy who can't wait to be adopted by the establishment.
He didn't sound like a guy who can't wait to do their bidding.
And every time I've spoken with him, he has sounded like he's talking to me.
I'm talking to myself.
I don't know what else to tell you.
Now, I have a piece here, David French, National Review.
This is from yesterday, Marco Rubio and the difference between being establishment and someone establishment voters can support.
Here's his take on it.
Let's begin with a simple proposition.
Unless a candidate is seeking to fundamentally transform the GOP coalition, i.e., Trump, then winning a general election means uniting every GOP constituency under one banner and happily so.
Thus, we want a candidate whom establishment voters will want to support, along with populist Tea Party conservatives and every other wing in the GOP.
It's one thing to campaign against establishment politicians, but it's another thing to shun establishment voters.
French's point is, you throw the establishment politicians out left and right, but you can't throw away their voters, even though they will throw us away.
Establishment people will throw conservative voters over left and right.
In fact, they can't wait to do it.
So don't think I'm naive about anything here.
French writes, this brings me to the persistent allegation that Marco Rubio is nothing but yet another GOP stooge, a loser in the Dole McCain-Romney mold, and the tool of the Washington political class.
As I've noted before, along with my colleague Jim Garrity, in many ways, Rubio is an odd fit for the establishment charge.
After all, he's the original Tea Party senator who beat Charlie Crist.
He's been the target of tens of millions of dollars in negative ads from the ultimate establishment candidate, Jeb Bush.
And his voting record, with the notable exception of the gang of eight, has been not just reliably conservative, but extraordinarily so.
Indeed, Rubio is the architect of the single most effective legislation assault or legislative assault against Obamacare since its passage.
He says there's a difference between an establishment candidate and a candidate whom establishment voters can happily support.
In David French, National Review writer, in his view, Rubio is the latter, a candidate whom establishment voters can happily support.
Now, that would, I can imagine, scare a lot.
We don't want somebody the establishment likes, Rush.
Don't you get it?
We're talking about establishment voters out there, not in Washington.
We're not talking about the donor class.
We're talking about your daily, regular, run-of-the-mill GOP registered voters.
Rubio is the latter.
That's why talking heads speak of Rubio filling the establishment lane going forward.
That's why the Bush super PAC is spending tens of millions of the Republican donor class's money attacking Rubio.
If a Tea Party senator can fill the establishment lane, then millions of establishment voters are moving right, and the traditional political class truly is losing its influence.
Now, that's his opinion.
You may think it's all wet.
My God, Rush, I can't believe you're falling for this.
What's no difference in an establishment voter and an establishment politician?
Well, Mr. French thinks there is.
By no means through with this, folks.
And there will be many more phone calls on this.
And again, I was not being, I didn't mean to shut Linda out or be flippant.
I just had three seconds to come up with a quick reply, so I thought I would let her think she convinced me.
Now, if some of you were saying, well, that explains it.
Rubio called Rush on Monday.
Folks, they all call.
I talked to them all.
You think that no wonder Rex is appointing Rubio.
He thought he Rubio cognitive.
They all do.
I just never talk about it because most of the time it's off the record.
But I asked Senator Rubio specifically if I could mention this, and he said, yeah.
So there.
Here's Greg in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Mac Diddos-Rush from Easton, Pennsylvania.
Thank you, sir.
I have a feeling that the polls may have been right as far as Trump was concerned.
And I base that on the fact, something you mentioned earlier about how many voters changed their minds last minute.
And because Iowa is a caucus format, I've expected, you know, I'm a small business owner.
My wife and I have a business.
And I've always wanted to have a businessman run for president.
And Trump seems perfect for me.
But even when I talk to other conservatives, they look at me like I'm nuts, like he's going to cause World War III or, you know, his temper will get us in trouble.
So is it possible that going into the caucuses, many people's minds were changed last minute based on the interpretation of Trump from other candidates?
That's entirely possible.
Well, no, no, it's entirely the way the caucus works.
In fact, you need to read John Fun, Byron York.
There's a couple of them out there, people that actually went to the caucuses.
And Greg, this particularly, you would find fascinating.
The old argument that in Iowa, you've got to have a ground game.
You've got to have a staff that's been in the state getting people familiar with.
You've got to get them at the caucus.
You have to get people standing up for your guy and speaking for your guy at the caucus.
Every candidate has to have an advocate.
And I've read two or three different stories of reporters.
One of them was John Funning, another was Byron York.
They went to caucuses and they report on two or three.
Nobody spoke up for Trump in any of them.
There wasn't anybody at two or three.
Don't know how big, how small, don't know where.
But the point is, Trump did not have such a ground game.
He was like Romney in 2008.
Remember, Romney was flying in, or 2012.
Remember all those big crowds Romney was getting in the last week?
Everybody thought, man, oh man, we got really something happening.
But Romney did not have a get out the vote organization for conservatives per se.
He was relying on all establishment stuff.
So your question, yeah, two things could have happened.
Trump could have not had any advocates, and other candidates' advocates could have been ripping Trump left and right.
That's what happens in caucuses.
There are miniature debates at these things, many of them.
You don't just show up and vote.
There's nothing private about it.
There are conversations.
Some of them don't take very long, depending on their size.
But yeah, the late deciders could have been, clearly have been influenced by the specifics of what happened at the caucus.
Now, that's not going to be as big a factor in New Hampshire because Trump already has a game there, ground game there, and a little bit more.
He didn't put a whole lot into Iowa because he's telling the truth.
I mean, it was a place none of his experts told him he could win.
So that's not jive, but that won't be as big a factor in New Hampshire.
But if you're wondering about Iowa, yeah, it could have been extremely relevant, and it's a good point.
I appreciate your call.
See, this is why I mentioned a football story in the first hour, in case I didn't get to it.
I've saved it.
I got a lot of stuff saved.
We'll get to it tomorrow.
Plus, this Sika, is that what it is, the way this thing's being spread around?
We don't be here to lay this on that.
Anyway, see you tomorrow, folks.
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