RUSH: This is the Charlie Rose Show last night. He has Jake Tapper from ABC as his guest, and they had this exchange about me.
ROSE: Give me a sense of Rush Limbaugh and how the Democrats see him and why he is achieving this kind of prominence now, notwithstanding that he is a popular figure on radio, has always been a popular figure with House Republicans. But now it seems to be Limbaugh versus Obama.
TAPPER: For the Obama administration, this is an issue of — of tone. Rush Limbaugh, who is obviously an incredibly gifted broadcaster and —
ROSE: Humph.
TAPPER: — and the number one radio talk show host in America —
ROSE: Humph.
RUSH: Yes.
TAPPER: — Rush Limbaugh is saying, I want President Obama to fail, and as one White House official put it to me earlier today, ‘For most Americans in this economy, failure is a very terrible thing.’ It’s hard to imagine a vast majority of the American people getting behind the sentiment they want Obama to fail. Uh, I think most people obviously want Obama to succeed, if only because of their own self-interests.
RUSH: Well, now, that’s interesting. The argument here is about ‘tone’? If they really think that, if they think — and I don’t think the White House thinks this is about ‘tone’ at all. I think the White House knows exactly how I’m coming at them. They have people buffaloed. The Drive-By Media is helping to buffalo them. By the way, you know what we’re dealing with here? Forget it’s Obama. Here’s what we’re dealing with — and it’s a mighty thing to overcome. That just makes it a bigger challenge to me. We’re dealing with the automatic assumption that presidents are good for America, that presidents help the country, that presidents want to do the right thing. That’s just what people think.
And when they hear me say, ‘I hope he fails,’ most people without having it explained to them are going to say, ‘Whaaa? Want president to fail?’ Yeah, and the more this economy keeps tanking, the more Obama does nothing about it, slowly but surely more and more people are going to come to realize that he’s not helping. They realized it about Jimmy Carter. They realized it about a number of other presidents. But primarily recently they realized it about Jimmy Carter. I understand what we’re up against here, or what I’m up against. Because most people think, ‘President to fail?’ Yeah, but see, I happen to be — most of us, folks, in this audience happen to be — far more informed than the average American who’s undergoing hard economic times.
Let’s face it: the libs have been very successful over the years in convincing a growing number of Americans to think that government’s the solution and the fix to every problem. Then you add Obama’s messianic personality and charisma to it, and you’ve got a lot of people thinking, ‘Well, we’ve just gotta wait. He’s going to eventually do it because his whole campaign was about that.’ You know what Obama’s big problem is? He follows Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. But the problem with Alinsky is Alinsky never thought he’d actually win anything, so there aren’t any Alinsky rules for what you do when you win. So Obama has to keep going like Alinsky as an outsider trying to break up a power majority in a permanent campaign. So Obama knows only how to tear down, and he’s in that mode to this day.
You say that and a lot of people aren’t going to believe it, but I’m not going to back off of this because it’s fundamental. I believe the American people are educable. I think they can learn. If they can’t… It’s like my friend who has kids in college who bought hook, line, and sinker everything Algore and all the other global warming, manmade global warming hoaxers say. Then this winter came, and it was actual experience of things getting colder and butt boys having their rear ends stuck to the seat of their cars as they get out at the White House trying to go in for instructions, that they started saying, ‘You know what? It’s not getting warmer, and we have record snowfall on March 1st in Washington and New York. It isn’t getting warmer!’ Actual experience helps.
And then at some point they’re going to say, ‘You know, people told us that this was a hoax.’ So it’s a long process. I have never shied from the fight. I’ve never shied away from it. I’ve told you it’s an ongoing thing. Fighting for liberty and freedom is the quest of humanity. Oppressors and people who would deny freedom and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they are numerous. People that want power, people that have incredible egos think they can do it better, they want to control everything? It’s what we’re dealing with here. But the fight for liberty is what I’m not going to give up on. I’m not going to give up and I’m not going to quit, and I know for a fact, like I tried to tell Greg Sargent, that what’s been proposed here is going to make it worse.
It isn’t gonna work, and I’m not going to accept the premise, ‘Well, what if it does work? Even though you don’t think it is, what if it does work? Would you then say country’s better off?’ If it ‘works,’ quote, unquote — if this works — you won’t recognize the America in which you live. There’s always going to be an America, but if this works — and the only way I can say if this works is within the framework of Obama’s mind. If this works, you have the federal government controlling the means of production. You know, a lot of people… We look at the plunging market, people on our side. We look at the plunging market, and we say to ourselves, ‘Gosh, that’s just great.’ At some point Obama’s people, they’re going to figure out that the market’s going south. But yet Obama’s not concerned about it.
Obama has not said a word about it. Obama is not trying to lift up anybody. Obama is not trying to inspire anybody in personal behavior. He’s not talking about America’s exceptionalism; he’s not talking about American greatness. He continues to hammer the defects of this country. I asked earlier: Who benefits? Well, as the stock market plunges, wealth is being lost: $3 trillion. Also the market cap of major corporations, large and small, is also plummeting. At the same time, do you know what’s happening? People are shorting the market; they’re shorting the stimulus. They’re buying Treasuries like crazy. They’re buying government bonds. The yields are getting smaller because of the demand. The price of the bonds is going up. Put those two things together, and what do you get?
You get an American private sector that you can buy on the cheap. You get an American private sector that you can use all this money that used to be in the markets now going into government Treasuries. If it is your objective to actually control the means of production — which is what socialism is, in part; if it’s your objective to do that — then by gosh this is ideal. How long ago was it that the DJI was around 13,000? Was it within a year? I haven’t looked it up, but it’s not that long ago. We are at 6,700! We have lost 3,000 points since this man was elected. The Fed chairman comes out today and compounds it by saying we need to raise taxes and have socialized medicine. The market was up 60. Bam! It went south again. The cheaper the stock price is, the less the market cap of any given company.
And if your objective — and, by the way, this may sound so radical to you. We’re dealing with a radical. They’re getting their mitts on the banks business, aren’t they? I mean, I’m not making this up out of whole cloth. They’re getting their mitts in the automobile business. They are already — even before this bailout, they’re already — telling people in the auto business how to run the business: CAFE standards and all that sort of thing. I mean, this is serious stuff. So if you want to control the means of production, if you want own it… May of 2008, not even a year ago, the DJI was over 13,000. Now we’re at 6,700. Less than a year! Not one syllable from President Obama to reassure people. Just the opposite. He admits to wanting to remake it. So, yeah. (sigh) I want what I think he’s doing to fail, precisely because it does not strengthen the private sector economy.
It does not encourage private sector wealth, growth, or any of that, and you add his tax increases that he has proposed? Oh, guess what else he’s expected to announce? Listen to this. This is not going to bother too many of you, ’cause it’s only for people that make over $250,000. He’s going to announce the Social Security tax, the FICA tax, on all income. Just like Medicare is. Right now, the FICA tax caps at $106,000 a year annual salary. That’s the ceiling. So if you make 300 grand, whatever. If you make over 250, try adding another 7.5% before it gets adjusted and thrown with everything else. So for you at 250 or above, your rate’s going to be 42%, and then the Social Security on top of it, then your deductions are gone, and let me ask you this. Private sector charitable giving is at an all-time high in this country. He wants to destroy that by reducing the deduction to 28% of every dollar you donate. Guess who gets to make up the shortfall? The government of Barack Obama, expanding its reach, expanding the government welfare state. So, yes, my friends. I firmly believe this is what his plan is and why, in the name of God that created this nation, would I want that to succeed? I don’t. My official climatologist, Roy Spencer, everybody’s trying to help here. It’s amazing. Starting at a quarter ’til 12, to three o’clock, I get thousands of little helper hints. He says, ‘Can’t you come up with something that you want him to succeed with?’ Ummm… Uhhh…Well, I would love him to be the Reagan he talks about. The guy’s got so much talent. I hope he responds forcibly if we’re hit by a terrorist attack. I hope he succeeds in defeating our enemies. Hell. I don’t know.