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Feb. 15, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:35
February 15, 2016, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hi, folks.
Greetings.
Welcome to the EIB Network and the Rush Limbaugh program.
Great to have you here.
As we kick off yet another week, Broadcast Excellence, Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
So it was Saturday afternoon, and I was immersed in a project.
I did not have the television on.
And I was not connected online to anything that was providing me a news feed.
And I do not have news alerts that bop into me.
I've not set those up because I have weeded out all this harassment from notifications.
So I get a text from a friend that says, our country is cursed.
I said, okay, wrote back.
Why?
It's just unbelievable.
It just seems like the decks are so stacked against us.
I said, what's going on?
Was my next text.
Then the next thing, it's Galia.
I said, with an exclamation list.
So what?
What?
So I went to the drudge report and I found out what had happened.
And my heart sank, like everybody else's did.
I mean, just total unprepared for shock and sadness and panic.
And you probably can fill in all the remaining emotional blanks that I flashed through immediately.
And I must admit that it didn't take very long before I began to ponder exactly how this was going to play out politically.
And then I got scared.
And so that began the entire thought process, the remembrances, the times that I had met Justice Scalia and all of the first time I ever talked to Justice Scalia was on the phone at the office of my television program.
And it was, so it had to be 1992 or 1993.
And at the time, I had been noted for saying that if I had not been born with my own brain, that I would have liked to have had Justice Scalia's brain.
And I had said it enough times that I guess he heard about it because he was on the other end of the phone call that came in.
And he was calling to say hi and actually was requesting an autographed photo for somebody at his church.
I forget who it was.
And we had a laughter-filled conversation about my request, my wish that if I didn't have my own brain, I would get his.
And it didn't last more than five minutes.
But it was in the first four years of this program.
And this is really heavy stuff.
I mean, here I'm talking to a Justice on the United States Supreme Court who is near the top in everybody's assessment reputation and so forth.
And I'm pinching myself like I've done so often and so many times during the course of my career.
And it was some years later that I actually had the chance to meet Justice Scalia.
He was in Missouri.
He was on one of his recess speaking tours, and he happened to be scheduled to make an address.
I think he was in St. Louis.
And I think he did something at the University in Cape Girardeau, my hometown, or something brought him to Cape Girardeau.
It might have been a speaking address or something to do after he had come to, after he'd left St. Louis, go to Cape Girarda.
My cousin Steve told me that they were hosting a little dinner party for Scalia and the people traveling with him, it was the middle of the week and asked me if I'd like to come in.
So I said, sure.
So Catherine and I dropped the plane and we flew in.
And we ended up giving Justice Scalia and his, it was Leonard Leo was with him a ride back to Washington at the end of the evening on our way home.
And I think over the course of the program here, I've shared with you some details of that conversation, but I've never identified who it was.
For example, one of the things that came up in that conversation, I took the, I took, I'm sorry, I was selfish.
I took the opportunity this occasion to just try to learn as much as I could about the court from Justice Scalia.
And of course, I had peppered Justice Thomas with similar questions as I got to know him.
And the one thing that I recall, and I've mentioned this to you, and I've never forgotten it, and I never will.
I was under, I guess, some misunderstandings, misconceptions about how the court works.
I was under the belief that the justices debated cases as they came in.
I knew the procedure.
They agree to take a case, to hear a case, and at some point they go into the chambers and they vote.
And for some reason, I assume there's always debating, horse trading, maybe not horse trading, but debating.
I always had the impression that there was persuasion that went on in there, case after case after case, maybe not every case, but that justices feel passionately about cases, many of them that come before them.
And I thought maybe if the passion was such that they would actually try to persuade other justices to agree in verbal debate.
And Justice Scalia looked at me with a sort of a mild incredulity on his face.
He said, I'm going to change their mind.
They're not going to change their mind.
And he meant the liberal justices.
They're not going to change their mind.
He's acting like it was not a silly question, but something he hadn't even changed their mind.
We don't do that.
That doesn't happen.
We go and vote.
We write our opinions.
There may be some changing of minds along the way, but no, no, no.
Are you kidding?
Change their minds?
I mean, he made it abundantly clear to me that we were dealing with hardcore ideologues that there was no changing anybody's mind on anything.
Now, he wasn't referring to all justices.
I know some of you are, what about Justice Kennedy?
We've heard.
Look, I don't know any more than what I'm telling you.
He didn't mention any names, and even if he had, I wouldn't repeat those here.
But it was a lesson in how the court operates.
I also was able to detect and learn what Justice Scalia read to stay informed.
And he was, put it this way, he was exactly what you would expect or hope him to be.
You didn't know him.
You only knew him by reputation.
And you had questions about him, questions for him.
If you had a chance to have those questions answered, he would be exactly what you would hope he would be.
Rock solid, committed, devout, confident, humorous.
You've all heard the stories about how he got along with all the justices on the court socially.
New Year's Eve with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her late husband that shared a common love and appreciation for opera.
And I was aware of the conviviality that went on.
So I was shocked that there was no attempt at persuasion that went on.
And I don't know how many people to this day still think that there is, but I can only tell you what he told me.
Now, there might be many of you out there who are court watchers who think that what I'm telling you here is not correct, that of course there's debate.
I can only tell you what he told me.
But the thing that stuck with me was, I'm not going to change your mind.
They're not going to change their mind.
He made it clear that it was pointless to try.
And I interpreted that as a correct and proper understanding of just who those people are.
They have not arrived at where they are as the result of debate.
They are committed ideologues, which takes me to this whole subject of Scalia's replacement.
I think this is being way, way, way overanalyzed.
I think this is way, way, way over-commentaried or commentated about.
Let me just tell you what's going to try to be happening here, what the left is going to try to do.
And it's not, this is not even arguable.
This is not up for debate.
Barack Obama is going to try by whatever means necessary to get the most committed leftist on this court as soon as he can.
And all of this talk about the ways of maybe coming up with a compromise candidate that, you know, Obama doesn't want to go the whole year without a justice on the court.
You know, if you go case by case, there are many instances where it's actually okay and helpful in certain cases for the conservatives for there to only be eight justices.
Because when there's no court decision on a case before them, the lower court's latest ruling holds, which could be very helpful to us, for example, a couple cases in Texas.
And it could be beneficial to the left as well for lower court rulings to survive, which would be the case if there isn't a ninth justice and the vote remains deadlocked at 4-4 on any particular case.
The real test here, the real test is going to be a test that we have witnessed for six years.
And that test is going to be: will the Republicans say no to Obama?
This is all it's going to come down to.
Will the Republicans stop Obama?
Will they try to stop Obama?
All this talk about Obama trying to find somebody that may be a little bit more moderate, maybe acceptable to the Republicans.
All that means is that doesn't mean that Obama is going to water down his choice.
This is it, as far as Obama is concerned.
This is ballgame.
This is legacy.
This is a generation or two, maybe, for Obama to shift the balance of the court to his way long after he has vacated the presidency.
And they don't know.
It's like Justice Scalia said to me, there's no changing their mind.
There's no such thing as a moderate in advancing their cause.
Maybe they'll label somebody a moderate just to camouflage who they really are, but they're not Obama and the people plotting.
And I guarantee you that plotting was going on within minutes of them hearing that Justice Scalia had passed away.
Don't doubt that either.
I saw a piece today in the, I forget where it is.
It's a column by somebody, it's a woman actually, PJ Media.
I don't have her name in front of me right now, but just really ripping Obama for not even showing enough respect for Scalia to wear a tie when he made his comments about the passing of Justice Scalia.
They had to grab him off the golf course out there in Rancho Mirage, California.
And he had plenty of time to get a tie.
He purposely chose not to wear one, I guess.
And this column sort of excoriates him for going the casual look, which was symbolic of a lack of respect.
But that's old school kind of thinking.
It really.
No, no.
Of course, I'm going to discuss Trump.
Of course, I'm going to discuss the Republican debate.
Actually, I think I've got that figured out too.
I think I know what happened there.
I think I know what the objective was.
I think I know what the game plan was.
Well, not to terrify the party.
I mean, that's the end result.
I don't know if that was the objective.
No, just wait till you hear it, and then you can start poking holes at it.
Don't start poking holes at it before I've told you what I think.
I know you're going to poke holes anybody, anyway.
Everybody does.
Just wait till I've told you what I think went on there.
There's a whole bunch of things.
And I'll tell you what it boils down to.
It boils down to the fact that, here, let me just give you one caveat.
George Will was on television and just said, this is it.
And William Crystal has said, this is it.
Trump's behavior in that debate, that's going to show up now.
We are going to see Trump lose some support.
They are confident that that's going to happen after Trump's performance, behavior, whatever you want to call it, however you want to characterize it on Saturday night.
I'm here to tell you that if it doesn't, and I'm not going to make a prediction on that because I really don't know, I can tell you that in any case, anybody else, any other time in American history, they'd be finished.
That would be the end of it.
No matter what the establishment wanted, the supporters would abandon.
But I don't know that that's going to happen this time.
And if it doesn't, it is just going to add about 10 exclamation points to how ticked off people are at the people running this country, which I still don't think they understand inside the beltway.
I still don't think they get it.
I think they understand there's some anger out there, but I think they think it's fleeting and temporary and irrational and will eventually die out and go away.
I don't think it's taken seriously.
I know full well the establishment of both parties is not going to respond to it.
They're not going to react to it in a way that's, okay, I guess we're going to have to modify or change.
They haven't reached that point yet.
This is all this anger support for Trump, as far as they're concerned, still irrational, uninformed.
And so they're not going to react to it yet.
And it's those people who think that this is the straw that broke Camel's back.
This is the step too far.
We will see.
And if that doesn't happen, if Trump doesn't lose support or a significant amount of support, it's just going to mean they still don't get how angry people are.
What if Trump gains support?
Nobody's even thinking about that.
What if his support goes up because of this?
But I'm getting ahead of myself because I haven't gotten into my analysis of why it was all done.
I've spoken to nobody, folks.
I really haven't.
I really don't do that.
I mean, they call me sometimes, but I do not make an effort to reach out to people to get inside behind-the-scenes information so that I can share it with you without actually telling you I've got it.
I don't do any of that.
I'm just like you.
I have news sources available to me that you have to you.
But in this instance, I've not talked to anybody at any campaign before that debate, and I haven't talked to anybody since that debate.
And nobody has reached out to me to.
Nobody has tried to talk to me about it.
So the only thing that happened was that on Thursday, Chris Wallace Thursday night said, you know, I got a great idea.
Send me an email.
I got a great idea.
Why don't you come on Fox News Sunday, Sunday morning, and analyze the Republican.
I mean, that would be fun, but I can't.
Chris, there's not enough lead time here.
I've got something I can't move, and you're going live, and I can't, I need to do it in my studio for my hearing challenges and all that.
So that didn't.
I ran into Britt Hume on the golf course Saturday.
I was just finishing my round down here.
I was just finishing my round.
I was in the locker room my way out, and I hear somebody say, tap me on a show, say, hi, I'm Britt Hume.
I know Britt Hume.
So I looked, oh, it's Britt Hume.
Hey, how are you doing?
And we had a little five or 10 minute conversation about the Haney project.
He had watched.
He's a golf nut.
He'd watched the Haney Project.
He told me he'd watched every episode and asking me questions about it.
And so I had to leave, and he was just heading out to play when I was coming in.
But I was unable to do the Fox News Sunday show yesterday.
So nobody knows yet what I think of any of this that happened.
But back to the, oh, my gosh, I've got to go.
I just, oh.
I went way long in that segment.
This segment's going to be very short, and that sounds very bad.
And I apologize for that, folks.
I just took my eye off the clock.
I know how frustrating it gets to have a one-minute segment.
Let me just reiterate.
We're going to get into this in detail, by the way.
I'm going to share with you some of the comments that are out there.
We'll discuss all the different analysis about Obama and the replacement for Justice Scalia.
But it's really going to come down to the Republicans, and they're saying the right things right now.
I've noticed McConnell said that the president should not make an appointment during the final year.
We've got Schumer and the Democrat Party hypocrisy where they have advocated exactly what the Republicans advocate for today, but they're acting like nobody remembers them saying it and so forth.
We'll get into all of that.
But McConnell did not say would.
He said should.
He did not say no way, ever, know how is Obama going to get nominee.
He said he shouldn't.
There's wiggle room there.
Greetings and welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh, cutting edge of societal evolution, telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address, lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
This is what presidential elections are all about, Supreme Court justices.
This is going to add a new focus to the presidential campaign.
Even though the Supreme Court nominations already are an integral part, this is going to hyper-focus it.
It's going to eliminate it even more greatly.
And it's the reason that that's important is because there's yet another opportunity, and there have been many of them.
And this is a great opportunity for the Republican Party, once again, to contrast itself with the Democrats.
Who would the Democrats pick?
What kind of justices and what does it lead to versus the justices that conservatives would pick?
So it's going to be a big deal.
Now, let's go to McConnell's statement.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday signaled there would be no vote on any appointment picked by President Obama to replace Justice Scalia, setting the stage for a dramatic political showdown in Washington that will likely result in gridlock for the remainder of the year.
McConnell is not planning on bringing to the floor for a vote any nominee Obama selects to succeed Scalia, according to a Senate GOP aide.
Now, what is this?
What is another word for gridlock here?
Another word for gridlock is government shutdown.
The magic words, are they not?
How many times have you heard a Republican elected official or even a member of the Republican media commentariat wring their hands and lament that we cannot have another government shutdown?
We cannot be held responsible for it.
If there's a government shutdown, we are going to get blamed for it.
And we will lose elections.
The people like their government, they want their government open and operating.
They want their government cutting checks.
They want their government providing benefits, unemployment, welfare, you name it.
And if I've heard this once, I've heard it a gazillion times.
Republicans say, we can't do this.
We cannot do anything that'll shut down the government, which has always meant we can't oppose Obama.
We can't stop Obama on the budget or anything else because the Democrats then start wailing about government shutdown, and the Republicans can't deal with it.
So, anticipating, and believe me here, folks, when I tell you there is no compromise candidate, there is no meeting halfway.
That's not who Obama is.
It's not who the Democrats are.
And a Supreme Court justice is the place, if there's one place above all where there will be no compromise, it's the Supreme Court and a seat thereupon.
There will be no compromise.
Obama is going to find he's got a chance to replace a textualist originalist.
He's got Antonin Scalia embodied the absolute worst of a Supreme Court justice as far as Obama and the left are concerned.
Of all the so-called conservative justices, Scalia was satanic.
Because Scalia was formidable.
Scalia could not be defeated intellectually.
Scalia could not be trumped in any way, shape, manner, or form, other than by votes.
But nobody would out-analyze him.
Nobody would outsmart him because he believed in things the left doesn't.
They don't believe in the original intent and finding it.
They don't believe in looking at the text of the Constitution and combining that with original.
It's kind of a mistake to say that Scalia was a strict constructionist.
He was not.
He was a textualist.
And here's the difference, as he explained it.
He said a strict constructionist would look at the First Amendment and say it only applied to the written word, because at the time the Constitution was written, that's all there was.
There wasn't telephone.
There wasn't radio or TV.
There was nothing on the air.
All there was was spoken and written.
And if you interpret the Constitution in a strict constructionist, as it was constructed with original intent, then you'd have to say that there is no free speech unless something's written.
And he said that's not at all what they meant.
And you have to be able to interpret the text, the textual content, and so forth.
So he considered himself to be originalist and a textualist, his word.
And you have to understand what they meant.
And the only way you can understand what they meant was to study them, the founders, who wrote it.
And what they meant with the First Amendment was that government would not stand in the way of anything anybody said anywhere, anytime, anyhow, except, you know, the fire in a crowded theater.
But as a philosophical and legal matter, it did not mean only what was written or only what was said because their view was far more inclusive than that.
It was a philosophical free speech in a constitutional republic is fundamental.
There can be no abridgment of it, period.
So the point is here that as far as Obama and everybody else in the leftist concern, Scalia was the absolute worst thing they had to deal with.
The fact that Scalia is now gone to replace Scalia with a moderate, with somebody who might go either way, just to satisfy, just to get a justice on the court, no way.
They're going to take Obama's going to do whatever he has to using any trick he's got.
And he's going to be guided by his years of experience with the Republicans pretty much laying down.
He's going to go for as powerful a leftist justice as he can get.
This is it.
This is where you overturn the Second Amendment, folks.
This is where you use the government to get rid of the parts of the Constitution holding you back.
This is it.
They're not going to compromise on this just to get the court back to capacity of nine.
And that's all anybody needs to know here.
You can overanalyze this from now until this is all done.
But that's going to be Obama's objective going in.
And the Republicans' objective had better be to stop it.
And the Republicans had better realize they are fully within their constitutional rights and powers to stop it.
There's nothing in Article II that says the president is guaranteed to get his confirmation.
There is nothing in there that says the Senate must fill the court up to nine.
They can leave it at eight if they want to.
Congress defines the courts.
It's there in the Constitution.
There's nothing.
Now, the left and their voters don't look at this like that at all.
This is way, way above them.
To them, it's simply a matter of fairness and equality.
And the rules say there are nine, and the president gets to put on who he wants, and anybody stands in the way needs to be destroyed, and the president gets what he wants.
And anybody that doesn't let the president have what he wants is in violation of something, and they're going to be targeted to be destroyed or what have you.
This, I guarantee, they're salivating.
Everywhere you can find in the deep, dark crevices or wherever they hang out, they're salivating at the opportunity they've got here.
And they are not going to squander it.
And if Obama thinks that he can get what he wants by simply threatening a government shutdown, what if Obama and the Democrats threaten to shut down the government?
Already, the news stories are referring to this will likely result in gridlock.
The debate over the next nominee and the confirmation fight will likely result in gridlock for the remainder of the year.
That's akin to a government shutdown.
If Obama goes out and says, these Republicans are standing in the way of every aspect of my agenda, not just this court fight, but they're being obstructed on this.
And in effect, they have shut down the government.
Will that cause panic to ensue?
Well, it always does.
I'm just, I'm not, no, no, no, no.
I'm not predicting doom and gloom.
I'm trying to alert everybody to this so that we can prepare for not falling for this.
Don't fall for government shutdown, GOP.
Again.
And who cares if you get blamed?
This is bigger than your feelings.
It's bigger than whether you get blamed or not.
And believe me, remember what McConnell said a week or two ago now?
He said that we're not going to stop the Obama agendas before Justice Scalia passed away.
So we're not going to oppose the Obama agenda because that might be problematic for our Republican presidential nominee.
It might make us and the party look like we can't make Washington work.
So they're not going to stop Obama.
Made it plain.
Does that transfer to this?
Well, not according to McConnell's statement.
McConnell's statement is no vote on Scalia replacement under Obama, but I need to find the exact thought I had it in this story, but I know.
Let me find it.
It's not, I don't need to find it.
He didn't, he used the word should.
Obama should not.
Not would not.
Some people, you're over, overanalyzing this.
I don't think so.
I'm just using intelligence guided by experience here, folks.
Let me get some phone calls on this because we are going to be hopscotching all over the place today, and I don't want to put too much distance in something we're talking about and calls on that subject.
So we'll start in St. Petersburg, Florida.
But David, great to have you on the program today, sir.
Hello.
Well, thank you.
And Mega Dittos.
And I would just say that this is the day that our founders planned for, when they created a checks and balances system of divided government where the Congress could say, our president has gone too far and we do not consent to what you are doing, especially since your actions are so thoroughly and routinely unconstitutional.
The citizens have elected a Senate to create that balance for this man who is off the chain.
True, although just as a little side note, the Senate was not originally elected by the people they were appointed, but that you're right that that evolved and changed over the years.
But again, I'm not trying to be pessimistic.
Separation of powers and all that.
You think it matters to Obama?
That's my point, folks.
None of that matters.
Separation of powers?
You ever heard of executive orders, executive actions, and none of that matters?
Now, he's, well, Snarlie said, the most he could do is a recess appointment.
Nobody gone when he could do a recess appointment.
But he said that he will not do a recess appointment.
I don't think he's going to try.
Let me tell you something, folks.
Everybody is worried about down the road later in the year with a presidential campaign or near the end of the end of this year and the recess appointment.
That's not the worry.
The worry is right now, folks.
I'm telling you, the concern is right now.
That's what I'm worried about.
I'm not concerned what happens with a recess appointment down the road.
Can't put this off, can't think that this is going to be automatically backstopped successfully.
I'm worried about what they're plotting right now.
And all of these, look, I've got the stories like everybody else has got.
For example, right here, Obama filibustered Justice Olito voted against Roberts.
We've got the audio soundbite of Senator Chuck Schumer and the story where he himself back in 2007 said that George Bush should not have the right to nominate justices to the court in the last year of his presidential term.
And people say, see, see, they're hypocrites.
They're hypocrites.
Has that ever stopped them?
Has that charge, the successful charge of hypocrisy, ever changed one Democrat vote?
Has anybody who ever supported Bill Clinton dropped Bill or Hillary Clinton because you pointed out how hypocritical the Clintons are?
It doesn't happen.
It doesn't work.
It's interesting and it may have some value, but it's not going to change the way Obama goes about this.
And pointing out what Chuck Schumer said back in 2007 and saying that the Democrats, to be consistent, ought to be saying that Obama shouldn't be appointing justices.
Are you kidding me?
These are the people that blew up the Senate and the filibuster in order to pack the D.C. circuit.
They blew up years and years of Senate rules to get what they want.
You think a charge of hypocrisy where everybody in the nation knows about it is going to stop them?
It never has.
It's never caused the Democrats to lose one voter or public support from anybody in the media.
What happens when you point out hypocrisy, what generally happens is that people applaud the Democrats for how successfully they get away with it, like they applaud Clinton for how successfully he got away with lying day after day after day.
So you go to Chuck Schumer, hey, Chuck, you're being a little hypocritical.
You think Obama should be able to appoint a justice right here right now.
But in 2007, you said Bush shouldn't.
Different circumstance, you'll say.
Iraq war, massively unpopular, massively unpopular president.
The polls were in.
The country hated George Bush.
The country hated everything George Bush was doing.
But Obama is beloved, and Obama is still loved and adored and supported and so forth.
And it's not the same thing.
And he'll tell you he's not being a hypocrite, that he's putting the country first.
And you'll be left with, what?
Did he just say?
They just, that's what he's going to do.
That's what they'll all do.
They're not going to let hypocrisy trap them.
You can point it out all day long.
It's not going to be of any value whatsoever in this fight.
Pointing out Democrat hypocrisy never has.
Republicans get hoisted on their own petard with it.
That's part of the double standard.
Pointing out hypocrisy on the Republicans can nail them, but not the Democrats.
It's just the way it is.
I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, but I came across, I was analyzing the Republican debate on Saturday night, Trump, and what I think he's doing, or what I think he was trying to do Saturday night.
And if you know something, you should know this.
To this day, a majority of Americans still blame today's economy on George W. Bush.
The recession and the home mortgage crisis, all of that is still majority blamed on Bush.
Obama does not get blamed for it.
He may be criticized for ineptly dealing with it, but it isn't to this day.
No aspect of this economy is his fault.
And nothing in foreign policy is either because of Iraq.
I don't have time to go further in analysis, but stick with me because all of this will be made clear as we unfold today.
McConnell said this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.
Now, maybe I'm making too much about this, but I would prefer this vacancy will not be filled.
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