×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

RUSH: Remember talking with President Bush just an hour ago, he admitted 2006, middle of the war in Iraq, midterm elections, ‘people were tired of me.’ I said, ‘How does that feel?’ I mean you’re president of the United States and you think people are tired of you. That’s what the left relies on. They rely on people just getting beaten down, just worn down, that’s what they’re counting on here. They’re counting on everybody thinking the election being the peak. ‘All right, victory, we won, we showed ’em,’ but now nothing’s gonna happen. The left, the Democrats, they’re sending the same leadership team back. They want Pelosi back, although some Democrats who lost have leaked a letter that they wrote to Pelosi telling her to go away to Fox News. The letter has been published. I have a copy of it here. I’m saying, ‘Who leaked this?’ But there are long knives out for Pelosi because Pelosi is responsible for a lot of these people losing their seats, losing their careers, losing their jobs. They wanted to serve in Congress. They wanted to be the Blue Dogs and others, not just exclusively Blue Dogs. So they’re lining up the same leadership team and they’re gonna try the same tactics. They don’t know anything else.

They’re gonna pretend the election never happened, folks. They are going to act like they still run the show, and the media in Washington is going to treat them that way. I want to prepare you for this. It happened in 1994, and I told the freshman class then, I said, ‘Do not think that the Beltway media is going to be happy you’re here. Do not expect them to treat you as winners.’ What’s gonna happen is, they’re gonna go to Steny Hoyer, that time it was Tom Foley, they’re gonna go to the Democrats of the day, their friends, ‘These new kooks that showed up, these Tea Party wackos, the majority in the House,’ and the narrative every day is gonna be, ‘What a bunch of kooks are running the Congress.’ The media is going to act like it’s just an aberration, temporary thing, people are gonna have temper tantrums. That’s all gonna be fixed soon because regardless who wins the election, when you get down to brass tacks, the liberals still run the town. This is the risk that’s always present. When the Democrats lose power, the Republicans gain it. In town the power doesn’t shift. The Republicans don’t start running the town. They’re not in charge of the social, and the social’s big, don’t ever think it isn’t. So the media is gonna run around and they’re just gonna beat everybody down.

It’s just like this global warming bunch. ‘Yeah, it’s a hoax, but we’re just gonna keep talking about it. We’re gonna wear you out. We’re gonna make you tired of having to defend it all the time.’ And the same leadership team going back, Pelosi, if it happens, and Hoyer, and Clyburn, the point is going to be to pretend it didn’t happen, that the only thing that’s changing is the outcome of votes on various pieces of legislation. They’re really counting on the fact that the election victory, Election Day itself, election night when the returns came in was the peak and everybody’s gonna think, ‘Okay, we can relax, we got it done,’ and I think they’re miscalculating. They’re miscalculating big time. Here’s why I think this, and this is not good news, folks. And I wish I did not have to tell you this. I wish I didn’t have to report this to you. We just told you about the global warming guys, they’re gonna come back, they’re gonna start attacking conservatives in Congress, newly elected who don’t sign on to the theory that man’s destroying the planet, who don’t believe that we need carbon taxes. Those people who don’t believe that we’re destroying the planet are gonna be targeted.

Representative Fred Upton, Republican, Michigan, wants to be the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Well, it’s not a good thing because Fred Upton, Republican, Michigan, was a cosponsor with Jane Harman, Democrat, California, in 2007 to coauthor the legislation that effectively banned indoor incandescent lightbulbs in the United States. Fred Upton wants to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and this is a guy who believes in man-made global warming, and he is a Republican. He and Harman ‘teamed up again to offer new legislation that would extend the ban on incandescent lightbulbs to outdoor lighting.’ So now these compact fluorescents, these spaghetti lightbulbs, what is the year, is it 2012 that the ban goes into effect? I know they started reducing supplies. A lot of people are starting to hoard incandescent lightbulbs. This is not gonna happen. I’m not gonna put these little curlicue things in my house. I’m not going to do it. And a lot of people aren’t, either.


‘In 2007, Jane Harman and Fred Upton introduced bipartisan legislation –‘ that’s bipartisan, coauthored. Actually the legislation was written by a liberal Democrat, Jane Harman. That’s all you need to know. ‘It became law as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act — that bans the famously inefficient…’ what do you mean famously inefficient? ‘…100-watt incandescent light bulb by 2012, phases out remaining inefficient light bulbs by 2014, and requires that light bulbs be at least three times as efficient as today’s 100-watt incandescent bulb by 2020. Last year, after George Will wrote a column criticizing Upton’s and Harman’s proposal to extend the incandescent-bulb ban to outdoor lighting, the two House members sent a letter to the Washington Post complaining about the column and defending their legislative campaign against the incandescent bulb.’

Now, this would be a tone deaf disaster if the Republican leadership lets Fred Upton ascend to the chairmanship of the House energy committee. This is exactly the kind of nannyism, statism, what have you, that was voted against and was defeated last week. No Republican complicit in nannyism, statism, can be rewarded this way. But seniority may rule the day.

Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Last night on Hardball Chris Matthews was talking to the Huffing and Puffington Post’s senior editor Howard Fineman, no longer at Newsweek. You know, it’s strange. I make the cover of Newsweek and Fineman’s gone. Chris Matthews says, ‘Let’s take a look at Lindsey Graham because he comes off as sort of a thoughtful person in this fight. But maybe he’s just a favorite of ours. But here he is. If you think what happened in Delaware is a win for the Republican Party then we don’t have a snowball’s chance to win the White House.’ That’s Lindsey Graham talking about Christine O’Donnell. ‘If you think Delaware was a wake-up call for Republicans, then we have a shot at doing well for a long time.’

FINEMAN: I can’t tell you how much the Republican Senate establishment hates Jim DeMint.

MATTHEWS: Right.

FINEMAN: They hate him, and one reason they hate him is he’s complaining about the fact that they were trashing Christine O’Donnell, where he, Jim DeMint, went around the country for the previous year trashing all of the Republican candidates that he thought were not sufficiently Tea Partiesque.

RUSH: And that’s true. Howard Fineman’s right. Jim DeMint, the long knives have been out for him in the Senate for a long, long time. They don’t like DeMint. They want earmarks. Remember, earmarks, we gotta get rid of them because they’re bribes. They also are excess spending. There’s nothing redeemable about them. Mort Kondracke last night on the Fox News Channel Special Report, the all-star panel discussing conservatism in the Republican Party, what’s happening.

KONDRACKE: It’s not just the Tea Party. Look, there is a mini-civil war going on, at least in the Senate between the establishment and the DeMint forces. Jim DeMint is a guy who runs candidates against — in primaries against sitting senators, and he is — you know, he wants — he said, I’d rather have 30 people like me than 51 majority in the Senate, and the establishment guys are all looking at themselves and looking to see if they have targets on their back or their front or something like that. Anybody who has ever been seen cooperating with a Democrat about anything has got a target on. You know, that’s not the way you grow a party.

RUSH: Yeah, it is the way you grow a party, Mort. It most definitely is the way you grow one and reform one. Krauthammer responded to this.

KRAUTHAMMER: On the larger issue of the Tea Party, it’s not a party, it’s a tendency, it’s a tendency to lower government, less intrusion, less regulation, lower taxes, less debt, et cetera, and that’s the general principle that Republicans share. The idea that the media are making of a civil war I think is highly exaggerated. I think you will have Republicans who want to accomplish stuff, unlike DeMint, and actually adhere to principle.

RUSH: And he’s right, except the DeMint stuff. The civil war is not in the Republican — well, it’s not a civil war. There is a battle. There is a conservative ascendancy, and the ruling class, the establishment Republicans don’t like the Tea Party types, there’s no question. But all of this misses what’s going on in the Democrat Party, which was the focus of yesterday’s program. They are in deep, deep doo-doo.

A question from the official program observer. Yes, Mr. Snerdley? What is it? I don’t personalize this. He wants to know if they don’t like DeMint, what do they think about me? I’m under no illusion that they like me. I don’t care. I’m not out to be liked. I’m just pointing out here, Fred Upton wants the chairmanship of this energy committee in the House and be and that would be a step backwards, and some of the Republicans in the Senate are going after DeMint. I’m just telling you that the Democrats are counting on this kind of stuff. The Democrats are counting on a lack of energy, they’re counting on people thinking that the election was the peak, was the high point. They’re just gonna beat us down, they’re gonna keep coming with their agenda, and they hope to wear us out. Just warning you. Pure and simple.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is that letter that the defeated Democrats have sent to Nancy Pelosi. I’m not gonna read the whole thing, just some highlights. ‘Many of us want the chance to run again and reclaim the seats that we lost on Tuesday. With you as the leader of House Democrats, the hangover of 2010 stands no chance of subsiding. Many of us have run our last race but remain committed to our party; we want to help recruit successful candidates to run in our stead. Unfortunately, we fear that Republicans will further demonize you, and in so doing they will scare potential candidates out. The prospect of having to run against their own party leadership in addition to their Republican opponent is simply too daunting. …

‘You have been an historic figure in our great nation, and for that we are all proud, as should you be. Nonetheless, we each experienced how Republican demonization of you and your leadership contributed to our defeat. It is impossible not to judge the results of November 2nd as anything but a profound loss. We want to recover. Recovery of our majority in the House necessitates new leadership at the top of our party.’ It doesn’t include you! ‘[O]ne mark of a strong leader is the ability to discern when it is time to pass the baton. As defeated members, whose party needs to rebuild, we are counting on you to show the strength of your leadership in this dark hour.

‘We ask that you step aside as leader of our party in the House. With utmost respect, we are…’ That’s a draft copy of a letter that was sent to Pelosi, and whoever wrote it leaked it to Fox News. The long knives are out. You can talk about ‘civil waaaaar’ in the Republican Party all you want. What’s going on in the Republican Party is good for the party and it’s good for the country. What’s going on in the Democrat Party is also good for the country in the sense that they’re being defeated big time. But Pelosi has her defenders. They want her back, because that is a hard, hard leftist institution — and the Democrat Party has gone so far left that she looks good to them still.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So I’m checking the e-mail during the break at the bottom of the hour, and some people want to know why I’m spending so much time talking about the Democrats and Pelosi and all that. Folks, it’s very simple why. In order to be prepared for the future, you have to know how they’re going to act. I know how they’re gonna act, I know what they’re going to do, and their effort is all going to be aimed at one thing, and that is dispiriting you. They want you feeling as negative about this victory as soon as they can. They want you thinking it was all for naught as soon as they can make you think that. And why?

Because in the past, we’ve done it!

In the past, we have treated victory as the end of things. We have jobs. We go back to work. Now, I think they’re misreading the Tea Party this year. I don’t think they have any idea who the Tea Party is, but it isn’t gonna matter. They still are going to try the same tactics, and that is to beat you down. You must prepare yourself. In fact, I do not want to get… Snerdley, make a note. I do not want to get one phone call — ’cause I’m warning you now, I don’t want to get one phone call — from now to the future asking me, ‘Rush, how come the media is treating the Democrats like they won?’ Because the media and the Democrats are one and the same, and they still do run Washington. This is important to understand. They don’t run the House of Representatives, but they run the town.

Now, the Democrat lobbyists are gonna have to do business with Republicans, but corrupting them is the objective. Getting people like Fred Upton on Energy is the objective. Making sure that somebody like Jim DeMint gets marginalized in the Senate is the objective. Taking the wind out of your sails as soon as possible is their objective, and that’s one of the reasons why so many people are pushing for an identical leadership in the House and Senate as though nothing has changed. What you have to keep in mind is, it is a major blow to them what has happened. Here the American Spectator blog.

‘David Paul Kuhn has an interesting interview with Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) about his party’s shellacking in the midterms. Webb says his party has turned its back on Reagan Democrats like himself (Webb was secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan),’ and they’re making a move on Governor Manchin in West Virginia. They’re holding out a carrot to him to maybe change parties in the Senate. So there might be some Democrats like Webb, and he’s sending out feelers here that Democrats are leaving him, letting him down and so forth. The real problem that exists politically is the Democrats, but they’re gonna do their best to create the illusion that it is business as usual — and there’s another primary reason for that.

They’ve gotta keep their donor base up!

It’s all about money. They’re not gonna run around and act panicked. They are not gonna give you the satisfaction of even acknowledging for one moment that they lost anything. That’s why you’re hearing all this talk about ‘working together, compromise, bipartisanship! The American people want the Republicans to work with us. That’s what the election was all about, not the American people want us to go to hell, not the American people want us to be silenced.’ I’ve seen it, I’ve watched it happen, and I’ve seen it work. Their whole objective is to make it appear that they have not lost power, and they’re gonna pull that off. You’re gonna be watching cable news, you’re gonna watch all the friendly yuk-yuks.

All these loser Democrats are gonna be on and they’re gonna be acting like it’s just the same as it was yesterday, and they’ll be talking about the Republicans as though they are a minority and a bunch of whack job losers. ‘And can you believe what they proposed today? (laughing) They really want to cut taxes,’ and they’ll talk about how stupid this is. Because what they realize, what they realize is that there are a number of people on our side who define ‘victory’ as how many of their minds we change, and we don’t. The minds we change, we’ll never see that. The minds we change are their rank-and-file voters, people not in elective office.

So they know you gonna be depressed; they know that you can lose spirit. What does that mean? That means you will stop pressuring Republicans to act as they promised during the campaign. It’s all part of the strategy. My point is they’re relentless, they never go away, they never think of themselves as having been beaten. They don’t look at this as rejection. They look at this as…not so much a challenge. They just get ticked off. They hate you even more. They want you to pay for this. The more they think you’re getting depressed or unhappy with the speed of change, lack of it or what have you, then the happier they are gonna be.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This