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Feb. 17, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:07
February 17, 2016, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
No, no, I already told you.
I said that what happened in the debate.
We got three polls out since the Saturday night debate.
Trump has not lost ground in any of them.
And the average is Trump 35, Cruz 19.
After the Saturday night debate.
35-19 Trump.
Now, one thing about these polls.
You know, we're prisoners to these polls.
And we we have to accept them.
And you remember the controversy over the final poll in Iowa on Friday, prior to the Monday Iowa caucus.
It was a Des Moines Register poll.
And I forgot, did it have Trump winning or had Trump winning by four?
Is that right or yeah, it did.
I think it didn't have Cruz winning.
Cruz surprised.
Okay, Trump winning by four.
But the thing about that poll that nobody believed, and because they didn't believe this aspect, they pretty much attacked the whole poll.
That poll predicted a record Republican turnout.
And you had all kinds of poll watchers and analysts pouring through the data, say, wait a minute, this isn't going to be a record turnout for these numbers to happen.
There's going to have to be a record Republican turnout.
Well, it turns out that there was a record Republican turnout.
And the poll had it wrong in terms of the winner.
They thought it would be Trump by four.
It was Cruz by four.
Well, interestingly, many of the polls that are now out in South Carolina are also projecting record turnout.
And just like happened with Ed Des Moines Register poll, a lot of analysts are saying it's not going to be record turnout.
Well, it's not going to be that high.
The turnout these polls are predicting in order to get these results, it isn't going to be that high.
But yet it was in Iowa when everybody said the turnout wouldn't be as high as it was.
So we just have to wait, but there are three different polls out.
By the way, welcome back.
El Rushbow at 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
Quinnipiac University.
This is a poll that has uh established a fair amount of credibility.
Trump surges to two to one lead among Republicans nationwide.
Clinton and Sanders are locked in a tie among Democrats.
And as they write here, the Quinnipiact poll, Quinnipiac University, uh Trump juggernaut rolls on a two-to-one lead among Republican voters nationwide.
39% his total so far.
Rubio is in second place in this poll nationally at 19.
And Ted Cruz in third place at 18.
Kasich is at 6.
And Jeb Bush in last place, tied with Ben Carson at 4%.
On the uh, and by the way, in this poll, Trump is up eight points in the last two weeks, which includes the Republican debate Saturday night in South Carolina.
Cruz has lost four points in the last two weeks in this poll.
Again, it's a national poll.
On the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton 44, Bernie Sanders 42, 11% undecided.
That is unchanged in the last two weeks.
The top three Republicans are closely matched in terms of voter opinion.
Trump gets a 62-31 favorability rating among Republicans.
And 62-23 for Cruz.
So you would you would uh, as the Quinnipiac people say here, reports of Trump's demise as a candidate are exaggerated.
Tim Malloy, assistant director for the Quinnipiac University poll, says, like a freight train barreling through signals with his horn on full blast, Trump heads down the track towards a possible nomination.
That's Quinnipia.
Two to one lead, and again, that's national.
From the state, this is the newspaper in South Carolina.
Donald Trump still leading the presidential primary in South Carolina after the debate, but the race for second place appears to be narrowing.
Trump 35.
Rubio and Cruz are tied at 18.
Kasich at 10%.
Jeb Bush and Ben Carson in last place at 7%.
Public policy polling.
Interviewed 897 likely Republican voters Sunday and Monday after the debate.
So actually it's a public policy polling poll, not the state.com.
The state newspaper site is where the uh results of the poll were were published.
So anyway, the point is there hadn't been any change.
No appreciable change.
The Democrat side of things, there is outright panic.
Outright panic on the Democrat side.
And I'm going to tell you this the health questions involving Hillary Clinton do not doubt me on this.
In addition to everything else that's not going as planned.
These recurring public instances of health challenges, problems, however you want to characterize it, have got people really worried.
The coughing spasms.
Yesterday in Harlem at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Hillary Clinton spoke, and she was struck by a coughing fit.
Excuse me.
too much to say.
That's been, well, that's been part of my mission.
Right there.
Really worried out there, uh, ladies and gentlemen, uh, Mrs. Clinton, and they're saying that she got choked up uh because the event was so meaning to her.
You don't believe me.
Grab audio soundbite number three.
She just got choked up.
This is Brianna Keeler, one of the many infobabes for Hillary, CNN with Don Lemon, CNN tonight.
Lemon said Hillary Clinton's speech.
Was it was it well received?
It was.
This was a very supportive crowd.
In fact, actually, at one point she choked up so badly that she struggled to speak for a few minutes, and they actually cheered to fill the time because it got a little awkward.
Right.
She choked up.
She wasn't coughing, she got choked up, she got choked up.
What did you get choked up?
Because it was such a meaningful event.
And it was just, she cares so much about black culture.
I thought I had here at the, I thought I had the soundbite where she's out there impersonating Sharpton.
You know, I can't keep up with my own brain sometimes.
I think I see something and then I don't forget where it was.
Anyway, if we find it, we find it.
But there's panic out there.
In fact, from the political wire, Clinton panic is palpable.
Clinton spent Monday in Nevada, sent her husband to fill in at Florida events after a campaign since the firewall buckling in Florida.
There's a dearth of reliable public polling in Nevada, but no one on either side has asserted the race is not in reach for Bernie Sanders.
And he's just not going away.
Not only is he not going away, he's gaining ground and she's losing ground.
And it's still, when you listen to the analysts and the experts talk about, there's no question she can be the nominee.
No question.
I mean, we own it with the superdelegates, they're all saying.
Look at where it is.
We own it.
There's no way.
And yet, Bernie's not going away.
This is not what they had in mind when any of this was being planned way back when.
So there is panic, and Bill Clinton, of course, doesn't hold the magic.
He's become in many of the people on the Democrats underestimation has become an obstacle to this.
So it remains fluid.
We had a couple of sound bites from Ted Cruz from the press conference that we joined in progress in the last half hour.
There was a portion of it we missed in commercial break, and I have two sound bites from that portion.
Here's the first.
Mr. Trump has sent me a legal cease and desist letter saying, stop telling the voters my record.
Now that is objectively legally frivolous.
I will make that point.
I will point to substance and policy and record.
That should be the bread and butter of politics.
But the insults and the falsehoods and the fabrications have no business in politics.
It is incumbent on all of us to speak the truth.
I can't change what the others do, but I can change and impact what I do, and we are going to continue to focus on substance and issues.
And here's the next bite.
If Donald ever became president, we know for a fact he would not invest any political capital in confirming a proven conservative justice.
Why?
Because for four decades he's been supporting left-wing Democrats, writing them checks.
Many of whose core mission was preventing conservatives from getting to the court.
But even if you take Donald at face value, that he had a transformation on the Second Amendment like he claims he's had on every other issue.
Even if you believe him on that, there is no reason whatsoever to think he would spend the political capital needed to appoint a conservative.
Which means the only reasonable inference is Donald would go for the stealth candidates other Republican presidents have, and they have turned out to be disasters on the court over and over and over again.
So those are the two primary things he said during the commercial break.
We uh at the bottom of the hour where we missed when uh joining in progress the Ted Cruz press conference in the in the last hour.
Okay, Hillary Clinton, back to her just a couple things.
Uh in Harlem, she is back at the Schaumburg's the same place where the coughing spasm broke out.
But before it broke out, this was said.
Some are even saying he doesn't have the right to nominate anyone.
As if somehow he's not the real president.
You know, that's in keeping what we've heard all along, isn't it?
Many Republicans talking coded racial language about takers and losers.
They demonize President Obama and encourage the ugliest impulses of the paranoid fringe.
This kind of hatred and bigotry has no place in our politics or our country.
Never ceases to amaze me that these people never stop us of that which they actually do.
Encouraging the ugliest impulses of the paranoid fr the paranoid fringe they own.
The paranoid fringe is way out there on the left.
And here she is uh supposedly mimicking the voice of Al Sharpton.
Yesterday, political correspondent Annie Carney posted a video in her Twitter feed, Hillary Clinton's meeting with Shafton or Sharpton, and the political correspondent says, Reverend Sharpton, will you endorse Hillary Clinton?
I'm Boston.
I've told only you know and you not tell me.
My lips are sealed, she said.
She said, her lips are sealed.
Did you hear that?
So she said, My lips are sealed.
No megaphone was her lips are sealed at it.
She was imitating Reverend Sharpton.
Anyway, hang in there, folks.
Much more straight ahead as always.
Be right back after this.
Okay, back to the phone swing.
I'll explain this uh Apple encryption situation later on in the program, definitely before it uh comes time to finish today.
And we still have some things to discuss about the Senate Republicans and Obama's upcoming Supreme Court nominee, and it's not pretty, folks.
I mean, they've already caved twice.
How do you think we have Sonia Sotomai or Elena Kagan on the court for crying out loud?
You know, experience guided by intelligence.
What's the obstacle here?
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Here's Robert in Mount Laguna, California.
It's great to have you here, sir.
Hello.
Oh, thank you, Rush.
Um admittedly, I'm a Trumpster, but I made an observation that I think I've seen a variant of the Limbaugh theorem play out on the Republican side.
And very specifically.
George Bush, George W. Bush spoke uh in South Carolina, and he he mentioned that he could sense all the anger in the Republican Party and in the people out in the uh who are going to be voting in the primaries.
And then he said, which was really curious because it makes no sense, W, I mean, I'm sorry, Jeb would be the best person to fix it.
When in fact he and the mainstream people are the cause of all the anger.
Well, now wait, wait a second.
I uh uh I'm angry, and most of my anger is not at W, most of my anger is at the Republican established.
I've got some, but I mean the last seven years, my anger's at the Republican Party serving now and Obama.
But you your your point is you think it's kind of strange for W to say acknowledge there's Republican anger out there and only Jeb can fix it when in your belief the reason for the anger is W himself.
Um no, Rush.
My mine is uh similar to yours.
Uh W is just the spokesman.
Uh so I'm just saying, yes, we are we are angry at the Republican establishment for not fighting back on issues like immigration.
It's the only reason we're here, folks.
That I I hate to interrupt you.
It's the only reason all this is going on.
I hate to tell you, this isn't deep and it isn't complicated.
The only reason we're here, as we are, is because there hasn't been any pushback to what the Democrat Party and Barack Obama have been doing in the last seven years, and arguably you can say the last ten, there was no pushback when they were out totally destroying George W. Bush and the administration on Iraq.
Um and all of I mean here you have the very people that voted for the Iraq War.
They voted for it.
Every damn one of these Democrats except for Bernie.
They voted for it.
They got away with being portrayed as people that were always opposed to it, both morally and politically, and they were they demanded a second vote back in 2002 so they could go on record being in favor of it because public polling showed overwhelming support for the use of force in Iraq.
And then these guys come along long ago after the fact when everything crumbles, that they helped make crumble.
They were actively seeking the defeat of this country along with the drive-by media, which is fine, that's who they are.
There was no pushback even then from the Republican administration.
I'm telling you, this pent-up frustration at the Republican Party not being on the field, much less in the game, goes back long before seven years ago.
And it is deep-seated and it is deep-rooted.
There's a lot of anger to go around, but the focus of it is the Republican Party basically ceased operations.
As a stop gap as an opposition party.
Meanwhile, they asked for money all that time and they campaigned, promising that they would stop or try to, and then nothing happened.
This rage and anger goes back a long time.
And if if the Republican Party had had done its job, we wouldn't even be here now.
I mean, we'd be here, but with the the the whole flavor and structure of this campaign would be entirely different than it is.
You really don't need to complicate things that that are simple.
And this one is pretty simple.
And I think the illustration of it, here we have yet again.
It's playing out exactly as it has in specific these past seven years.
So here comes the death of a Supreme Court justice.
It's crucial.
It's crucial the makeup of the Supreme Court.
It's crucial.
I mean, if there is ever a moment to contrast who we are with who they are.
If there's ever a moment to stop What the left is attempting to do it is right here and right now.
And so the Republicans came out and they said all the right things, and it took two days.
Two days max for a couple of Republicans to stand, well, well, well, wait a minute.
I think maybe we can't be seen as obstructionists and so forth.
It looks like the whole pattern is about to repeat itself.
And the outcome of that, I mean, you fill in the blanks, you add two and two to get four yourself, because I'm here to tell you what the outcome of that's going to be.
And you don't want to hear it a lot of you.
Here is David and Gap, Pennsylvania.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
God in constitutional dittoes.
I uh heard you ask yesterday how you could stop Trump if you choose to.
And I've been trying to call you for a month already to give you an idea.
Let me let me let me let me set that table properly for people that weren't here yesterday.
I was being beat up by my own audience yesterday, folks.
It was brutal.
I mean, one caller after another was just they were savaging me.
They were calling me everything but a traitor.
So I finally asked them, okay, look, if you wanted me to take out Trump, you tell me what would I do?
How would I do it?
Tell me, what would you do if you were in my shoes?
You wanted to take out Trump, how would you do it?
And old David here from Gep Pennsylvania's calling with an answer.
You've been trying to get through ever since the challenge was issued, and here you are.
Yeah, well, I've been trying to get through for a month for this reason because I really enjoy the Trump conversation, even though I'm a constitutionalist, I wouldn't vote for him, but it's uh it is a relevant discussion.
When you're ready to stop him, since you're the head of the party, I don't think it would be that difficult with your following.
All you would have to do is insult Trump because he will respond like he always does and properly insult you, and then the party would have to decide if they're gonna like you or Trump.
You know, that's interesting.
That that might actually convert the party to Trump.
I doubt it.
Because, you know, most of the people that I talk to that are voting for Trump in their mind, they're not they're just as fascinating a study as what we've been studying the last eight years, people who vote for Obama who are otherwise reasonable people.
And this is just on the other side of the road.
Well, do you think they're falling for the same things like Obama, the slogan was hope and change.
Trump is I'm gonna make America great again.
Are i are those two slogans basically appealing to people in the same way?
Uh, in a sense, yes.
I think so, because they're not really rational.
They because they're not living their lives in the same way these people's platform is.
They're they're living their lives like you often say in a conservative way.
And yet they they just want something to happen on that end.
Well, let's since you've brought this up, I want to explore this with you.
Um let's take a look at hope and change and how it affected Democrats versus Trump who is out there saying he's gonna make America great again.
Now, my my question to you was are those slogans essentially the same in appeal.
Uh making America great again appeals to certain uh disaffected conservatives, Republicans, Reagan Democrats, hoping change was a direct beeline to a bunch of unhappy and miserable leftists.
And you think there's some similarity there, and I don't.
I I think you could make a a uh uh uh pretty detailed explanation how they're they're different.
You you're talking about two groups of people that are basically otherwise rational, who are falling for come on, one by Obama, the other by Trump, and you're you're trying to uh uh uh figure it out because to you uh everybody in these groups are pretty rational and they're fairly intelligent, But they're falling for something, you think.
Well, I don't think that they're the same group in the sense that they're the same groups of people.
I think there's a vast difference in the two groups.
But I do think that from the study of simply trying to figure out I mean they're voting for something that does not line up with what they say and believe on a daily level.
So you know, in that sense, I think it's the same thing.
How how they're ending there isn't necessarily the exact same process.
I agree with you.
I just think it's fascinating that here it is on the supposedly conservative side, it's just about as much head scratching to figure out why your neighbor is voting for Trump as it was eight years ago when we were scratching our head trying to figure out why your neighbor would vote for Obama.
Well, see, that's right ways with you.
I can I can uh no no, I don't disagreeing here, but I don't mean to be uh critical or insulting, so don't interpret it that way.
I think the the Obama personage, the campaign, the slogan hope and change attracted a certain group, but so did his race.
The fact that Obama was uh African American and the first, so therefore you have an historical component.
I think a lot of people who were not Democrats or liberals, but want this country to stop fighting about race because they hate it, they hate the divisions, they hate back and forth, they hate racial arguments, they hate being called racists, they hate being accused of it.
So they thought voting for Obama and electing Obama would finally show everybody in the world that we're not a racist country, and it would be done with it.
It'd be the best way to end that issue.
The hope and change crowd is a bunch of miserable leftists who are always going to be miserable, and hope and change to that to them meant utopia uh this this this grand place where everybody is equal and everybody has the same.
There are no losers.
Everybody's a winner.
On the Trump side on the Republicans, the people, whatever group they come from, conservatives, independents, Reagan Democrats, the slogan make America great again.
I think that's a factor.
But I think the things that people are gloming on to Trump for are entirely different than the things people glommed onto Obama for.
Yeah, I and I do agree with that.
I my point would be just be to that caller you had earlier today, where he's saying don't spend so much time on Trump.
Well, I think it's worthy of our time because it it is a if you're a political junkie or anybody who likes to watch the demographics of the country and the cultural changes in the country, it is a very fascinating thing.
This has never happened.
Well, let me tell you what happened here.
You're you're right.
We had a caller earlier this week who was of the same frame of mind as the caller you're talking about, the guy that called money, you're talking a lot about Trump, and I went Trump Cruz, dude, Trumbo Cruz, Trump Cruz.
And we had a guy calling earlier this week who was going to make the same complaint, and he was listening to the program on hold.
He was in the hole for an hour and a half.
And when he finally got on air, he said, you know what, I just figured something out here.
You do the news on this show.
You talk about what's in the news.
And I was under the impression you talked about what you wanted to, and you talked about what you wanted people to know and what you wanted people to think, and you don't, you talk about what's in the news.
And I said, thank you.
Voila.
And that's exactly what I talk about the things that interest me.
If I don't do that, I'm gonna be bored, and then everybody else is gonna be bored.
I talk about the things I care about.
And I do it in inimitable ways.
But I do not talk about things, and I don't have I've always said I don't do topics here.
So when somebody wants to slap a quota on me, okay, you've talked about Trump a lot.
Well, you talk about cruise.
Um I'm sorry, Trump was making news, and that's why he was being discussed here.
And nobody can deny that.
He's been making news and all kinds of really, you know, it's hard to say anything is unique anymore, but you have to admit that Trump is getting away with things that nobody in politics has gotten away with in our lifetimes.
It's newsworthy And frankly, fascinating to me to try to understand it and explore it.
I think there's value in it.
I want to satisfy my own desire for understanding in this in this sense about this.
I want to understand who Trump's supporters are and why they're there.
There's all kinds of lessons to be learned in figuring this out.
Rather than sitting here just getting ticked off at it.
And it's the same thing on the Obama side.
I have, I spend more time here explaining liberalism than the liberals explain liberalism on their own networks and their own shows.
Because it fascinates me how anybody can be.
Intellectually, I don't understand liberalism.
And there's no way anybody can because it isn't an intellectual application.
It's not about thinking.
Liberalism is totally about feeling.
And ironically, that's one of the reasons why it continues to seduce people.
The emotions have much deeper impressions, make much deeper impressions, and they're much longer lasting than words that people hear.
And that's a tough thing for me to admit because I'm in the word business.
But it is it is true.
People don't remember what you say, but they'll never forget how you make them feel.
So if if if it if in this case, if Trump is making people feel confident, if Trump makes people feel happy, if Trump makes people feel involved, engaged, if Trump makes people feel like that the country has a chance with him, to hell with what he's saying.
It won't matter.
While all the critics of Trump are, can you believe what he's saying?
Do you believe what he said about Bush?
How could his supporters, my God, Rush?
How could his supporters, how can you excuse when Trump's saying nobody's hearing what Trump's saying?
Isn't it evident by now?
Whatever he's saying doesn't matter.
It's not causing him any support, costing him any support.
It's all about how he's making people feel.
And I would submit to you it's the same thing with Obama.
And by the same token, if you have your average wet noodle Republican could be, who knows, brilliant, smart, whatever, if if there's no charisma personality there, I don't have anybody in mind.
I'm just using this as a exercise.
This this the emotional component of politics, one of the most frustrating aspects of it to me.
Because I don't know how you battle it.
I don't know how you talk people out of their emotion.
I don't know how you talk people out of the fact that something or somebody makes them feel good.
Who wants to be the one to turn that around and make them feel bad?
Just not going to get you any support from them.
So you can pound them with words and intellect and brilliance all day long, it isn't gonna matter.
That's what I mean about the bond.
The bond is an emotional thing.
And that's why only Trump can blow it up.
So the question is gonna be what would Trump, could Trump, what's Trump gonna have to do to cause people to start feeling worried about him?
And it's not gonna be the result of what anybody else says about him, I will guarantee him to you.
You can tell your average Trump supporter, in addition to everything else that's happened now, including what he said the Saturday night debate.
You can go up to him and say, you know what Trump's really gonna do.
He's gonna do the exact opposite of everything he says.
Wouldn't matter.
You're not gonna get any because no, they don't they won't believe it because they don't feel that way.
Feelings, that's where trust comes into play.
And it's a it's that and the Republicans are all fighting this now.
How do we how do we talk people out of Trump?
You're not gonna talk them out of him.
You ain't gonna talk anybody out of anything.
Is it work with your kids?
It's a really, it's uh to me, it's a new area needs to be explored.
Look, I ran into something too.
I want to share this with.
I gotta take a break, but I ran into something I found in 1978.
Stephen Hayward over at Power Line found it and reprinted it.
And it's uh some guy from 1978 named Harry Jaffa, how to think about the American Revolution.
But it's not what you think.
It's it's it's an explanation of the modern left and particularly how the modern liberal and the modern radical have become the same thing.
Stand where you are.
Don't move.
Hope and change is vacuous and vacant and can be anything you want to.
I hope I get welfare.
I hope I never have to work again.
I want to change whatever Obama's gonna do, and it's a blank canvas, making whatever you want.
Make America great again means something specific.
It's related to the actual American decline.
So there is no comparison in the two.
And my point is that the vacuous, vacant Obama voters are not the same as people that have become absorbed in Trump.
But Harry Jeff, I found this last night perusing power line.
Stephen Hayward posted this, a 1978 little monograph here, how to think about the American Revolution.
And it's what it really does is explain how the average American liberal dissolved and became identical to the average American radical.
Liberalism and radicalism both, and this folks, this is so right on the money.
Liberalism and radicalism both reject the wisdom of the past as enshrined in the institutions of the past, as enshrined in the morality of the past.
Like I've always said, they're trying to disrupt the institutions and traditions, the traditional morality that's made this country great.
Liberals, radicals reject it.
They deny the legitimacy to laws, governments, or ways of life which accept the ancient evils of mankind.
The ancient evils of mankind, examples are poverty, inequality, and war.
Those are timeless things that liberals and radicals say we don't want to tolerate that.
We don't want to think that we have to live with poverty anywhere, when inequality anywhere, when war is anywhere.
We don't believe they're permanent.
They're not permanent attributes of the human condition.
Political excellence can no longer be measured by the degree to which it ameliorates such evils.
The only acceptable goal is to get rid of inequality, to get rid of war, to get rid of poverty.
And capitalism doesn't do that.
Capitalism has winners and losers.
And we don't want any losers.
So we're gonna go socialist and radical, where everybody, if maybe doesn't win, nobody loses.
This is, of course, theoretical.
Liberalism and radicalism look forward to a state of things in which the means of life, i.e., the way you make a living, the good life are available to everybody.
They must be available in such a way that the full development of each individual, which is how the good life is defined with a liberal, is not merely compatible with, but necessary to the full development of all.
I eat free college for everybody.
It's the only way we can ever make everybody equal, is everybody's gotta get a free education, get a free job, get make the same amount of money.
It's the only way to make things fair.
Competition between individuals, competition between classes, races, and nations must come to an end because competition itself is seen as the root of all evils of mankind.
And mankind must escape.
And competition is the evil of all evils.
The good society must be characterized only by cooperation and harmony.
The old liberalism saw life as a race in which justice demanded for everyone only a fair or equal chance in the competition.
But the new liberalism sees the race itself as immoral.
The race is wrong in every race.
There can be but one winner, and there are many losers.
Thus the old liberalism preserve the inequality of the few over and against the many.
This goes on, but I mean, you can you can this defines Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the Alinskies in everybody.
And I'll finish it before the program's over.
I have to take a little break right now, and we will continue as time permits.
Don't go away.
Fastest three hours in media.
And yeah, I get frustrated at how fast they go by too, folks.
You may think what I want to do is get out of here and go home, but that's not true.
I have to stop talking when I don't want to stop, like now.
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