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Feb. 16, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:26
February 16, 2016, Tuesday, Hour #2
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And we're back.
Happy to have you with us here on the EIB Network, Rush Limbaugh behind the golden microphone here at 800 282882 and the email address Ilrushbow at EIB net.com.
So our last caller, very nice woman, extremely complimentary from Texas name was Wendy.
Wanted to know when people are going to wake up.
And she defines people waking up as realizing Ted Cruz is the answer.
Realizing the only hope is Ted Cruz.
And part and parcel of that in her definition, waking up is defined as when are people going to realize that Trump is not one of us?
When are people going to realize that Trump is a fraud?
When are people going to realize that Trump is dangerous?
Whatever she thinks of Trump, and I'm trying to include whatever a lot of critics of Trump think of him.
He's not genuine, not a conservative, not uh stable, you know, unhinged, whatever.
The criticisms of Trump uh run the gamut and are all across the board.
But the point of her question was when are people gonna wake up and see this?
And my answer to her was that I think people are awake.
Now a lot of you are upset with me, and I understand that because you think that I have been uh performing in more of an analysis rather than advocate role here during the primaries.
I would warn you, this is what I do every primary.
There's there's been one exception, and that was Perot back in uh in 1992.
And I've told you why the exception for Perot, and it was because I knew that Perot had no intention of wanting to be president.
He did not want to win.
That's not why he was doing what he was doing.
There was a personal vendetta there that I don't need to revisit it.
Ross Perot is a is a fine man.
He's a very accomplished, he's a great American, a great patriot.
But he didn't want to be president, and a lot of people uh he didn't intend to even get in the remote into it, but he made a speech at the National Press Club that just lit up the country on wasteful spending and how to get the budget in control, and about lobbyists and a bunch of uh unaccountable people were running the country into the ground, and it resonated as it always does, and he was propelled, and I were I remember Perot snuck up on the establishment.
They didn't they didn't even see him coming.
They didn't take him seriously as a candidate because he wasn't when he started when he made that first national press club speech.
I remember tuning into C-SPAN.
I used to watch C-SPAN back in the early 90s, uh now Nen and I had it, uh headed on, and Christopher Hitchens was a guest.
It's about some new book that he had.
And every caller was asking him about Perot, and he didn't know what it was about.
He had no clue.
And after a half hour of not one call about his book, and every call about Perot, he looked at Brian Lamb said, Who the hell are they talking about?
I'm missing something.
I'm gonna have to get caught up.
And it all happened right in Washington at the press club.
The establishment, Hitchens was parted, but was so insular, insulated, they had no clue.
And it's amazing, back in 1992, don't forget you had a conservative electorate, which felt betrayed then by George H.W. Bush.
Read my lips, no new taxes.
He eventually made a budget deal with, I guess it was Foley, whoever the Democrat speaker of the House was at the time, and we got our tax increase and all that stuff that uh H. W. Bush said running his uh Reagan's third term, ended up being compromised.
It's the same attitude, the same mindset in the electorate back in 1992, and they glommed on to Perot on the same basis they're gloming on to Trump, and that is this guy's a doer.
He's not a politician, he's an outsider, he's gonna get in there kick names.
But I knew that Trump didn't actually want to Trump uh Perot didn't want to win.
And in fact, got out when it looked like he was gonna win.
And you remember what his excuse was?
That the Bush team had hired a national inquirer to sneak photographers in to take pictures of his daughter's wedding.
And that was a last draw.
Larry, that's a last straw for me, Larry.
I don't want this job.
If that's the kind of garbage I gotta put up with every damn day, it's having the Pat Baretti in there trying to undermine me.
So no, Larry, you can have it.
That was it.
Well, he was on Larry King live a lot.
So Trump wants to win.
Trump is serious about winning.
But back to the point, folks, that nobody's asleep here.
Especially this.
Now people on the left, that's a whole different ball of wax.
I don't know about them.
My my attitude about the low information crowd and they're just mind-numbed, brain dead robots anyway, doesn't matter if they're awake or not.
They're going through life in a in a dependency haze.
So it it doesn't really matter.
They're going to vote the way they voted.
People on our side, if you think they're not awake, you've got to reexamine it.
They are totally awake.
They're awake to the point they're not sleeping, they're so ticked off.
Or so energized or so engaged, or what have you.
The second point that I made to her is that.
This is not an election of competing philosophies.
Ideological philosophies.
People say to me, Trump's not a conservative.
People say to me, Trump's not a liberal.
Trump's not a conservative.
Well, what is Trump then?
Over here, Cruz, Rubio, uh, the Republicans for the most part are conservatives.
There's some of them that really aren't.
But I don't this this uh primary, this election is not conservatism versus.
I mean, that it is, but it's that that's not how voters are going to decide it.
And and when it comes to uh conservatism, I can I can say this with 27 years here behind the microphone doing this program that.
And I say this because I've had people say it to me.
This is not something I'm intuiting, although after it was said to me a couple or three times, I started to intuit it.
Meaning dig deeper.
But there are a lot of people who have been donating to Republicans, and a lot of people who think they've been giving money to conservatives and conservative causes, and they're they started asking themselves, what are they getting for it?
Where is all this conservatism?
I mean, people solicit money in Washington to keep conservatism alive in Washington in the Republican Party.
We're the guys that can do it.
We have the contacts.
We help them write policy, we help them understand policy.
Great, great.
That's fabulous.
But where is it?
A lot of people are asking.
Where is all the conservatism?
Is it on Fox News?
Is it National Review?
Is it over at the American Spectre?
Where is it?
It isn't in the Republican Party.
That is for darn sure.
And so many people are livid about that.
I'm talking about the party of staff.
Yes, Ted Cruz is a good.
Look, it this is another.
What more do you want me to say?
Ted Cruz is the closest living thing to Ronald Reagan we're ever going to have in our lifetimes.
I don't know what more I can say about Ted Cruz.
I also like Mark Marco Rubio.
Uh in comparison to other options and choices.
People get mad at me for that.
He's not a conservative amnesty, uh, getting eight billion lying through his teeth, H1Bs.
Folks, I know all every objection you're gonna throw at me.
You know, I I've I've I know it myself without having to be told.
You know, I I'm the last person you should think doesn't know something.
If you're running around thinking, He doesn't know that don't include me in that list of people that doesn't know.
I know everything about these guys, good, bad, indifferent, ugly, pretty, what have you.
I don't say anything I say about anybody from an uninformed position.
And there isn't anybody that's fooling me about anything.
No, Rubio's not fooling me.
Once you realize there's no perfection, uh then the view.
What?
Realize?
Snurdly just thinks I have stepped in a huge pile of manure here by saying once you get past there's no perfection.
He thinks that's the biggest step in it I've done all day, maybe week, maybe all week.
I'm talking about in a candidate.
There isn't perfection in a well, there's not perfect.
There's no utopia.
There's no perfection anywhere.
That's and it doesn't mean that you settle.
I'm just advocating an honest perspective on things.
I don't have a reason for I can't come up with a reason to hate Marco Rubio like some people.
I can't come up with a reason to dislike Rubio, just like I can't come up with a reason to hate Ted Cruz if people come at me, you can't be serious what you said about Ted Cruz.
Really?
And if I told you the kind of people saying it to me, you'd totally understand who they are.
Ted Cruz scares a lot of people simply because he mentions God.
Ted Cruz scares a lot of people because he looks to the heavens when he talks about God.
That scares a lot of people.
Point is I hear all of this.
And what I my efforts here are to share with you as much of my understanding as I can in the sense that that could be persuasive in and of itself.
But I don't think any of you are asleep.
I don't think anybody's putting anything past you.
But some, maybe maybe Wendy, the last caller, let's use her as an example.
She, I think it'd be safe to say that she thinks that some people supporting Trump don't know what a big mistake they're making.
My point about Trump all along, what I've tried to say in I don't care how many different ways to avoid repeating.
I think everybody supporting Trump knows exactly what they're doing, and they can tell you why.
Now they may be wrong, but they're not in the dark, meaning they're not asleep.
They may be wrong about some of their assessments.
But the electorate is fully awake on our side, and it's fully energized.
And whether you think it's healthy or not, I think the most animating characteristic of our side this year is anger.
And some people think that can be good.
You can channel anger and do positive things.
Others think it's a totally destructive emotion, that it can poison you.
It can turn you into a giant pessimist of self-fulfilling prophecies and so forth.
And both happen to be true.
But it's no denying, nevertheless, that anger is and the anger is legitimate and it's genuine, and it's aimed at what people consider to be profound, daily, insulting betrayal from.
Let's just call it people in Washington.
It is clear that a majority of Americans think that those leading the country, governing the country in Washington, are doing it for their own benefit to the exclusion of everybody else.
Well, if you know anything about envy and anger and so forth, then that will explain quite a bit of a lot of people wanting those people to be taught a lesson, wanting those people to suffer, wanting those people to lose what they have in terms of their power, because they're not doing it for the good of the country.
It's not that they're not doing it for the good of all.
It's that they are letting the country go to hell.
And they don't care because they're getting theirs in the process.
That's the opinion many people have of it of them, the people in Washington.
So I think they're fully awake.
And if you want me, let me ask you this question.
If you want to call and answer the question, fine.
I'm not arguing with anybody here.
You know me.
I'm just a giant sponge.
I try to absorb and learn as much as I can.
Tell me if you if you are one of the people out there who thinks that as a conservative leader I should be destroying Trump, would you call here and tell me how you would do it if you were me, given that Trump doesn't seem to be able to destroy himself.
Tell me how you would do it if that's what you think needs to happen.
If the only way we're gonna get Cruz or Rubio or any conservative elected is for people to see the light about Trump.
I want you to tell me how you would do it when Trump gets any camera time he wants, he gets any microphone, any interview he wants, he gets it, any he's offered, he takes.
You tell me.
In the meantime, an obscene profit time out here on the EIB network back after this.
And back to the phones we go.
This is Moshe in Clifton, New Jersey.
Welcome.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hey, Rosh Diddles.
I've been a listener since 1988, since I was a little boy in the eighth grade.
And I've been listening to you and thinking of you as the father of modern day conservatism conservatism.
I look to you for years to help clarify how I thought on various issues, and I've never called the talk show before.
But today I'm confused.
I feel like a ship being tossed about with the navigational system gone blank.
I'm not used to hearing Rush as the dispassionate observer of things that are going on.
I mean, if we believe that conservatism is the hope for our country, how can we just sit back and just watch Trump take it away?
Well, I have not been dispassionate.
Uh and I'm not just sit back watching.
I'm doing everything I can.
You're observing.
You're helping us explain why Trump is doing what he's doing by...
But I I mean, look look at what he's doing.
Why why not get out do you believe that you have the ability to to influence millions of people?
I believe you do.
I don't do this program every day with that in mind, and I never have.
I've that's what I mean.
I've often said that I don't show up here cognizant of having power, and I don't contemplate it.
I don't think, okay, how can I you know I I I I hope to have a a uh play a role in in people's level of being informed and educated and being able to critically think rather than be force fed stuff and become sponges or mind them robots and so forth, which primary criticism I've always faced in this program, that's what I've been fighting against.
But let's cut to the chase.
What would you do?
If you're sitting where I'm sitting and you are everything you think I am, what would you be doing?
And I think you think Trump needs to be uh exposed.
And not so how would what would you say?
What would you do?
Well, listen, Rush, I I speak to people who are Trump supporters who who sincerely believe that r that that Trump is the conservative choice.
I I mean Trump gets up there and says it all the time.
They believe it.
It needs to be exposed by by by the leaders in the conservative movement.
And leadership doesn't mean le leaders don't choose to be leaders.
When people follow Tone, that makes them a leader.
Well, but I have I have made it clear, I don't know, I've not made it a theme every day, but I have said countless times that Trump is not conservative.
I said he's not ideological.
I've said he doesn't look at Chuck Schumer and see an ideological enemy like you and I would.
He just doesn't.
I've I've tried to after the debate on on what what more do I have to say?
Trump's targeting liberals and Democrats.
What Name a conservative who does that.
Do you believe the country would be in good shape with the President Trump?
Do I believe the country would be in good shape with the President Trump?
Um, President Cruz or a President.
Let me, I'm gonna answer it this way.
Honest from the depths of my heart, and this is the guy that this country needs to be saved from the Democrat Party.
The Democrat Party is the most destructive force in this country, and any thing that beats it, anything that blows it to smithereens, anything that renders it a minority institution, because that's what I think needs to happen.
But the Democrat Party just as an institution or liberalism in general.
Because liberal Trump is liberalism.
The Democrat Party is an institution, the people who, that the Democrat Party and the things that it stands for, the things that it's doing under Barack Obama, that's the new Democrat Party.
The new Democrat Party believes America is ill formed.
It is ill gotten.
The modern Democrat Party thinks that the United States of America is illegitimate.
Donald Trump doesn't think that.
The modern Democrat Party thinks that the United States of America is the problem in the world because of our superpower status.
We are too rich.
We're thieves.
We've stolen everything we've got.
The modern Democrat Party thinks this country does not deserve half of what it has.
And its objective is to strip this country down, strip it bare, open the borders, let anybody in the world in here.
The objective is to tear down every institution and tradition that made this country great from our founding forward.
That's gotta be stopped.
simple to me.
And welcome back, folks.
Great to have you here, El Rushmore, with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
You look at the polling data, particularly the polling data coming out of South Carolina, and it looks like Trump has topped out at about 25% of the conservative vote.
And I think this is why he is making moves in other directions.
And it's, of course, strategically understandable because South Carolina is an open state.
But I think Trump's been pretty steady in the percentage of the conservative primary vote that he's getting from poll after poll after poll.
If If you average it all out, uh he's around 25, maybe 28 uh percent.
But it's he's his his peak has been reached for a while, and it isn't expand.
Cruz is catching up.
Uh in some polls rapidly, in in other polls not so rapidly, but still closing the gap.
And Trump knows this.
And that's why there was no no doubt.
Uh or to me anyway, there was no it wasn't confusing why he would take the positions he took on Saturday night in the debate, given the fact that South Carolina is is open.
And uh he wants to win.
Now, one other thing before we go on the get back to the phones on this other matter.
A couple other things.
Snerdley thinks I stepped in it big when I said moments ago that once you realize there's no perfection, then everything becomes a little easier.
Well, I if if I stepped in it, so be it.
But I think the pursuit of perfection in candidates has been one of the reasons that we've been losing.
We might have a guy, and by that I mean a woman could be in a woman's candidate, who is ninety-five percent adorable, lovable, perfect, but might be pro-life.
Gone, you're finished, out of there.
Ninety-five percent perfect, except well, wait, that's not good.
You couldn't be 95 percent perfect if you're pro-life.
Let's throw that out.
That's that's kind of uh mandatory.
Got to be that, or you're not even a conservative.
Um second amendment and so forth.
Uh but immigration.
There are a lot of conservatives out there who are not part of the no amnesty crowd.
My My point is that there's I don't the closest we've ever had to, if you want to call Reagan the perfect conservative, then Cruz is it.
Cruz is the closest in my lifetime that we've come to it.
And obviously is the closest in my lifetime we're going to come to it.
But see, if what if Cruz doesn't get the nomination?
Republicans get ticked off hell with it and stay home, maybe, or not vote.
Which just cedes the election to the other side.
It's a it's a real it's a it's a fine line and a tightrope here.
But in this particular election, I really don't think it's a battle of philosophies, as I've as I've said.
And I I really believe what I just said to the last caller here.
Um the biggest and most destructive force in this country today is the Democrat Party.
They've got to be beaten.
They've got to be stopped.
This Democrat Party that we're up against today is not the Democrat Party of 20 years ago or further, 25, 30, 40.
The Democrat Party today has been totally taken over by ultra-left-wing radicals, international left-wing radicals, for whom the United States of America is an obstacle, for whom the United States of America is a problem, for whom the United States of America is largely disliked.
And they have power now.
And you see what they're doing with the power.
They are chopping this country down to size every which way they can, some of it very publicly, much of it you don't see until it's too late to stop it.
But nevertheless, that's the objective.
And that to me, speaking personally, my overriding desire is for them to be stopped.
My overriding desire is for that party to lose.
Now you get into an argument, okay, well, what's the best way to make that happen?
And then I you know I realize that some people are gonna say the only way that can happen is with conservatives dominating and so forth.
Uh and that'd be great if it was the case.
But my point to you, I'm I'm I'm not going to not vote.
I'm not going to stay home or get my nose out of joint or get twisted in a bunch of anger.
If my preferred person doesn't win, but there's still somebody out there I think can snooker and smack around and beat the Democrats.
And that shouldn't surprise anybody.
My, you know, people can say I've been leading conservatism these 27 years.
I've also been doing everything I can to inform and educate people about who and what the Democrat Party is as well.
Anyway, uh I have this story by Mark Cunningham that is in the New York Post today, uh, and it's about Trump.
And it's yet another attempt to explain Trump.
And I go back to Wendy, our caller from Texas.
When are people gonna wake up?
When are people gonna find out that Trump's a fraud?
When are people gonna wake up and find out this is a disaster, it's an accident waiting to happen.
When are they gonna realize they're making a huge mistake?
When are they gonna see that Cruz is the only solution?
So knowing that those are people, that there are people out there in droves, people are trying to come up with explanations.
Then Cunningham's here is the latest.
And his piece begins this way the other Republican candidates are finally starting to fight on Donald Trump's terms, to judge by the slug fest that was Saturday night's debate.
But it speaks volumes, whole encyclopedias about the ignorance of our political and media elites, that they're only Now realizing that much of what Trump's been doing is just busting balls.
It's a blue-collar ritual with clear rules.
You overly insult people, yeah, but with infinite subtleties.
It can be a test of manliness, a sign of respect, a way of bonding, and much more.
Rule number one is you never wince.
You never squeal.
You can wince, but you never squeal.
You never complain.
You never whine.
Number two, you bust right back if you can.
Not knowing how to play this game is no excuse, and not getting how it's played, shows that you have no idea how a huge swath of America lives.
Cunningham says these are the Americans whom Trump has made his base.
From the start, Trump has targeted the mostly white working class, which happens to be 40% of the country.
And he's done it not just with issues, but with how he talks.
The ball busting, the bragging, the over the top promises.
But bragging is not about his ego, the endless reciting of poll numbers, the constant references to how much the media is paying attention to him.
That's mainly about showing that he's beating the culture of elite.
Trump is reminding people that he's winning.
He's not blowing his own horn because he's an ego freak.
He's reminding everybody he's succeeding.
He's bragging about his success.
This is expected in this world.
Beating the elite on behalf of his voters who have been invisible to the politicians and the media for decades.
I think it's all wrapped up right there, if you want to know the truth.
The people in Washington have been doing whatever damage is done to this country in order for them to get and save theirs.
To get and protect theirs, their positions, their jobs, their power, their money.
Everything they do is oriented towards self-preservation and self-growth.
And whatever happens to the country in the process is of no concern to them, because they don't think they're ever going to live among the country.
They're the elites.
They're always going to have enclaves.
Walled and gated communities and so forth.
Yeah, there's a mess being created, but somebody will fix it down the road.
In the meantime, I'm getting mine, and I'm taking care of my family, and I'm taking care of my kids and grandkids, and I'm acquiring some power.
And so there's a disdain.
Washington isn't about what's best for the country anymore.
It's about what's best for Washington.
Consider a huge story that vanished almost immediately in early November.
Two Princeton economists discovered that deaths are soaring among middle-aged low education whites.
pointed out that story on this program and we gave you the details as to why.
It was a genuine academic study that tried to figure out why the Suicides and premature deaths are happening among white middle-aged, in some cases low education people.
The rise in mortality, that would be death for those of you in Rio Linda.
The rise in mortality from 1999 to 2014 was 22%, up 134 deaths per 100,000 for whites between 45 and 54 whose education ended in high school.
The reason jumps in suicides and deaths from drug abuse, that is, alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and other drugs.
One of the economists, the Nobel winner Angus Deaton notes that the only modern trend it compares is the AIDS epidemic.
AIDS won headlines for a decade.
The Deaton findings basically vanished from the media after a day.
In other words, the story of advanced premature death of large numbers of middle-aged white men got scant attention.
And these soaring death rates are just one sign of the stresses the American working class faces.
Many other blue collar folks struggle on okay, but they know they've got huge problems that just don't get talked about.
Anyone who does raise them gets denounced and then ignored until Trump.
America has not been great for working class people for decades, which is why Make America Great Again is a great slogan for a guy who's talking tough on the problems that blue-collar Americans see as killing them.
And getting attention, unbelievable attention, even as he breaks all the establishment rules, makes them glom onto this even more.
Because he's playing and winning by blue-collar rules, and what are you gonna do about it?
Of course he has to show them he's for real.
Why should these voters trust him answering those unspoken doubts is why Trump doubles down on his promises?
He's not just going to build a wall, he's gonna make Mexico pay, and he keeps saying it over and over again.
He's hellbent on making sure these people believe him and understand that he means what he says.
He's not just sloganeering.
My point is if this guy's right about this, the competing philosophies that you want to throw up against that are not going to register.
If people's lives are so dire that they're considering suicide, that they have no money, that they can't get jobs anymore, they can't find health care, they're being priced out of everything.
Christmas isn't Christmas anymore.
You can hit them all day with how great one philosophy is over another.
You ain't gonna register.
And the anger these people have, and it's not an insignificant number of people either.
Anyway, I gotta take a break here, folks.
More phone calls from you when we get back, so don't go away.
Let me try this another way.
And just so you all know, uh hope you don't have to actually be told this, but I don't uh I don't live in a place where time has stopped.
I'm still not thinking of things in the 90s like the Clintons are.
I'm on it.
I'm up with it.
I am, as always, ahead of the curve.
I am in advance of societal evolution.
I also have a deep respect for your own independence and your intellect and your ability to think for yourselves, and have never ever engaged in what the Democrats engage in, and that is trying to create armies of people not knowing what the hell they're doing.
Much more respect for you than that.
You're free to make up your own mind about whatever.
I'm here to help inform you in my mind, and I'd love it if you'd agreed with me, but it's up to you what do you want to.
But let me ask you a question.
In terms of uh strategy, strategical question, uh experience guided by intelligence, all of that.
How many years did I attempt to awaken the American people about Bill Clinton?
Maybe nine.
Maybe more.
You could say that I continue to try to tell people the truth about Bill Clinton ten years out of out of office, five years after he left office.
How many years have I been trying to tell people truth about Hillary Clinton?
How many days have I spent trying to tell the people that voted for Barack Obama of the grave error and mistake they made.
What was the result of it?
Bill Clinton served two terms, Obama served two terms, Hillary is the front runner for the Democrat Party.
And the reason is something I realize from before I started doing this program.
The people that listen to this program are totally capable of thinking for themselves.
All of you are, at least that's how I approach you.
I don't approach you as not knowing what to think.
I don't approach you as not being able to think.
To me, it would be insulting.
It's the Democrats that treat their voters that way.
They try to creep little armies of essentially robotic voters.
Bus picks you up at certain time, takes you to the poll, tell you what lever to pull, and you go back home.
That's that's not at All what I've been aiming at here.
But my point is in terms of strategy, maybe there's a different way than simply telling people what a reprobate Bill Clinton is or what a danger Barack Obama.
I mean, I can't tell you the number of days I lost my voice trying to tell people about Obamacare.
Still passed.
I can't tell you the number of days I lost my voice trying to warn people about what Obama's real intentions were with this country and what it really intended to accomplish with Obamacare and immigration.
Still one re-election.
No, I'm not.
No, no, no, no.
I'm not saying what it doesn't matter.
I'm saying there are different ways of going about accomplishing the uh the same goal.
Anyway, I'm up against it on time.
I have to stop there.
But we are not through.
You hang in there, be tough.
We'll continue after this, folks.
It's really simple, my friends.
I don't want to destroy anybody who could defeat Hillary Clinton.
I don't want to damage anybody who could defeat the Democrat Party.
It's no more complicated than that.
The establishment still thinks all this anger here is a bunch of spoiled brat little children type anger.
They don't get it yet.
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