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RUSH: I’ve got a story from 2012 during the presidential campaign and the debates about Obama and the sequester that I know everybody’s forgotten about, and, to me, in the real world it would be a bombshell or close to it.

It won’t be in this case, because I guarantee you the way the low-information voter is seeing Obama, they’d probably stop being able to keep up with him ten minutes into the press conference. But, all they know is, my gosh, he’s trying, and it’s the Republicans’ fault. He came out and he started this press conference today with a blatant lie. It’s amazing. The low-information voters just eat it all up. There’s nothing you can do about it. He came out and said the sequester is Boehner’s idea. The sequester is the Republicans’ idea. Everybody in the media, in that room, knows that’s not true now because Bob Woodward has reported it, and they know it themselves anyway.

Not one of them is challenging him on it, and not one of them will. And he’s using his usual straw dogs, “every economist, all economists, a consensus of economists” agree. He’s talking about all the people that are gonna suffer greatly, but that most people won’t. As I say, I have seldom seen a more self-absorbed codependent individual in utter denial. We’re dealing with somebody that in his mind is totally blameless.

He used the line again to the press (paraphrasing) “Look, I know you’d like me to just do this with a wave of my hand, but I’m not a dictator. I can’t tell John Boehner, I can’t tell the Secret Service to close the door and tell Boehner he can’t leave. I can’t do this myself. I’m not a dictator. Boehner walks out on me, and I can’t tell the Secret Service to just close the door and make sure he can’t leave. I’m not a dictator.” He is mentioning that with much greater frequency.

I thought we’d take maybe one or 2% fewer calls today, see if anybody notices a difference in the show. Instead of tying half my brain behind my back to make it fair, 48% of my brain tied behind my back to make it fair. Let’s see if anybody notices the difference. McDonald’s, I understand, is selling 1.5% fewer fries with each order. No, I’m just joking. They’re not. Lord! Gosh, calls to 911 now. Just kidding. I totally made that up. It was a poor joke. Oh, yeah, 911 will answer. I mean, everybody associated with recording the details of a crisis is on duty. Everybody that has anything to do with chronicling the crisis is on duty. Yeah, yeah.

Obama is already astroturfing this, man. He just finished. He said he was confident that the Republicans would come around after they hear from all the people who are being negatively impacted. He’s confident of that. He’s confident that after the Republicans hear from all the people around the country that are losing their jobs and losing their paychecks, that they’ll come around. Now, we know that Obama is already bombarding Congress with Organizing for Action. That’s the new name of his campaign website. They’re astroturfing. They’re already tweeting. They are spamming via e-mail and Twitter. They’ve got one person sending out thousands of messages using different accounts and many names, and they’re spamming Congress right now. It’s artificial.

For every 10,000 messages they get, there’s probably ten people responsible for sending them. Google taught ’em this. Eric Schmidt and Google worked with the regime during the campaign to high-tech ’em up.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to get to this sequester story that we remembered. We went back to our archives last October. Do you remember that Obama, in a heat of the presidential campaign, and during the period of time the presidential debates were going on, Obama granted an interview to the Des Moines Register and then put a hold on it. He granted an interview and then refused to let them run it. This, of course, created a lot of curiosity. What’s in this? Something about that kept gnawing at me. There was something in that that would be relevant to what we’re doing today. And, lo and behold, there is.

Now, two weeks before the election, Obama went on TV in the last presidential debate, October 22, and basically lied. He said that he didn’t want the sequester to happen. This was in a debate with Romney. I’m sure you’ll remember this as I refresh your synapses, as it were. He didn’t want the sequester to happen and he said, in fact, it wouldn’t happen. He accused the Republicans of creating the sequester. When you go back and look at this interview that he gave to the Des Moines Register, that’s how you know that he’s lying somewhere. He either lied to the Des Moines Register or he lied in the presidential debate.

In the debate, again, October 22nd, 2012, Obama said he didn’t want the sequester, and it wouldn’t happen. The very next day, October 23rd, 2012, is when Obama gave an interview to the editors of the Des Moines Register. And in that interview, I want to quote what President Obama said.

“[T]he good news is that thereÂ’s going to be a forcing mechanism to deal with what is the central ideological argument in Washington right now, and that is: How much government do we have and how do we pay for it?”

I want you to listen to what comes next. This is in quotes. “So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place … we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business. It will probably be messy. It wonÂ’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain.”

He was counting on the sequester being reality.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, I overstated it when I said bombshell. It’s a bombshell to me, but I realize it isn’t to anybody else and it certainly isn’t to anybody that matters. And the people that matter are the people we’re trying to persuade. The people that matter are the low-information voters. So I probably gave this a bit too much weight, although, for you and me, this is hugely important, and worth a lot, because it does establish that what we think about Obama is actually true.

So I want to go through this again because it’s fundamental to understand, the press conference today and everything he said leading up to this just isn’t true. It’s narcissistic, it’s self-indulgent, blameless. I’ve never seen this kind of self-absorption. It’s uncanny. This president stands up there today and he enjoys, folks, reciting the kind of pain Americans are going to feel. Now, he does it in a way that blames the Republicans for it.

He’s the leader of the country. He is supposed to be doing things to prevent all of this, and yet not only is he not doing things to prevent it, he is encouraging these kinds of hurtful, harmful things to happen so he can blame the Republicans for it. His ultimate objective is to just eliminate them as a viable political opposition. But he benefits, politically, career-wise, he benefits from this pain. He benefits from it so long as people blame everybody but him.

So we’re getting the opposite of leadership. There is no real concern for people and their lives. That’s feigned. So let me go through this again. In the debate on October 22nd, 2012, Obama said — and he was responding, by the way, to criticism from Romney. Romney was saying in the debate that American national security is at risk if the defense cuts are triggered in early January and then because of the sequester. And Obama responded, first of all, the sequester’s not something I proposed; it’s something that Congress proposed. And then he said it will not happen.

Well, we all know he did propose it. That doesn’t matter. That’s what you and I have got to learn to accept. It doesn’t matter to anybody that he proposed it, but you and I, for our own sanity, it does matter in that regard. It does matter that we know and can tell people that he’s lying about this. He proposed the sequester and Woodward reported that, and that’s one of the two reasons why Woodward is taken to the woodshed, so to speak, by the regime. And after saying (paraphrasing), “First of all, the sequester will not happen, not something I proposed, it’s something Congress proposed,” he said “it will not happen.” And then he went on to claim further, “It will not happen. The budget that we’re talking about is not reducing our military spending. It’s maintaining it.”

The very next day, folks, Obama did that interview with the editors of the Des Moines Register, and he told them a completely different story. And in that interview he praised the sequester. He said that the sequester, in combination with the end of the Bush tax cuts, would be the equivalent of the grand bargain he’d be offering the Republicans when it came to the fiscal cliff at the end of the year. The grand bargain is what they’ve always wanted. The big, sweeping agreement that dealt with many things that would propel our nation forward without having to go through another crisis in 90 days. The grand bargain. Well, the real grand bargain was eluding him because the Republicans were not cooperating.

So Obama told the editors at the Des Moines Register — and again, let me just set this up. In the debate, October 22nd, he denied that he had anything to do with the sequester, and then he assured people — and I remember seeing this in the debate. He assured people the sequester will not happen. It’s very important that you remember that. Next day, interview, editors, Des Moines Register. By the way, when it was learned that he would not let them print this — and, remember, the editors at the Des Moines Register were agonizing over this. Should they accede to the president’s wishes, stay in his good graces, or should they follow their journalistic instincts and print it anyway?

They had news there. And this went on for a week, if I recall. And people were saying, “Well, why even do the interview if you’re not gonna have it published? Why grant the interview if you’re not gonna publish what the president says?” We all know the answer to that. The press is gonna circle the wagons, protect Obama, as they would any of themselves. So in the debate, “I had nothing to do with sequester, and it isn’t gonna happen.” The next day, October 23rd, in the interview with the Des Moines Register editors, Obama said, quote, “[T]he good news is that thereÂ’s going to be a forcing mechanism to deal with what is the central ideological argument in Washington right now, and that is: How much government do we have and how do we pay for it?”

And this is the money part of the quote. “So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place … we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business. It will probably be messy. It wonÂ’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially IÂ’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time.”

Now, Obama demanded that the Des Moines Register not publish this interview. The reason, it was thought at the time, was that Obama was embarrassed by having openly begged them to endorse his reelection. And people were wondering, maybe they weren’t gonna endorse him. Maybe it was an anti-Obama piece coming and he was trying to keep hidden. But now we know what it was. The reason why Obama didn’t want this interview published — and I don’t know why he told them what he told them, but both these things can’t be true. One of these has to be a lie. Either what he said in the debate’s a lie or what he told the Des Moines Register is a lie. I happen to think that he meant what he said to the Des Moines Register. Grand bargain he wants.

So he tells these editors (imitating Obama), “Look, we’re gonna have the Bush tax cuts expire. That’s more revenue. And then the sequester’s gonna be in place. That’s big defense cuts, oh, man, I’m in fat city. That’s my grand bargain.” So not only did he want the sequester, last October in an interview he was counting it as a good thing and selling it as a good thing to people he thought were friendly journalists. Now, you contrast that with anything you’ve heard him say the last month, the last two weeks. The sequester is Armageddon. The sequester is the worst thing that could ever happen. It’s the Republicans’ idea; it’s Boehner’s idea.

This sequester means no cops, no firefighters. It means no first responders at all. It means no military, means no military workers. We gotta keep an aircraft carrier in port. No meat inspections. I mean, you know the list. But last October in the Des Moines Register, Obama was calculating life with the sequester, and he was counting the ways it would be good. No one in the media’s called him on this. I told Snerdley today, I wonder if the people at the Des Moines Register even remember that they had this interview. And, if they don’t remember, and now they do, I wonder if they’ll go back and reference their interview in context with the debate on the sequester as it’s taking place today, because we’ve got Jekyll and Hyde going on here.

Now, I’ll tell you what I think. I think Obama wanted the sequester from day one. I think he wants new taxes. Folks, there’s a thing I learned about health care today. Some of you in small business may have already known it. You know, the requirement, the cutoff for having to provide health care insurance for your employees is a business where there are 50 employees. It turns out, let’s say that you are a small businessman, and you own three little businesses. And you’ve decided, “Okay, I’m gonna keep every one of those businesses under 50 employees so that I don’t have to do mandated health insurance coverage.” Guess what? For the purposes of Obamacare, your three small businesses or four, however many you have, can be added.

So if you got ten employees in one, 25 employees in another, and 17 employees in another, guess what? You’re over the limit of 50 because, as far as Obamacare is concerned, your businesses are counted as one when they add up your employees. Now, you thought every business has its own tax ID number. Every business has its own tax report. Every business has its own separate entity, but when it comes to Obamacare, no, no, no, if you’ve got three or more — or two, and the total number of employees you have is over 50, then you are subject to the requirements in Obamacare even if your businesses do not have 50 employees individually.

This has never been done before and there are small-business people now just learning this. So my theory here is, I think Obama’s loving this. I think he’s wanted the sequester all along. He knows he gets away with blaming the Republicans for it and for everything else. This explains why Obama vowed to veto any effort to avert the sequester. And don’t forget yesterday and the day before, the Senate, in an effort to tie Obama to the sequester, actually passed a bill that would give him total authority on what to cut in the sequester, would give him in effect dictatorial power over what to cut. Obama promised to veto it. And a lot of media analysts are misunderstanding why.

A lot of media analysts are saying, “This just shows that Obama’s not serious,” and they couldn’t be more wrong. Obama is dead serious. The strategy here is not to govern. He is very serious about not governing. He’s not cavalier. He’s not lazy. He’s executing a strategy meant to give him both the House and the Senate. That’s why he has vetoed any attempt to avert the sequester. He has vetoed an attempt to give him total authority over spending cuts because none of this is gonna be his fault.

He’s not gonna attach his name to it. He’s not gonna do anything that will help anybody shift the blame from the Republicans to him. We know now, Obama has gotten everything he wanted. He got his tax increases, and he got the sequester. He still wants to blame the Republicans for it. This is the Limbaugh theorem personified. This is it, right here. He’s got everything he wants, and he didn’t do any of it. The Republicans are doing all this dirty, mean stuff.

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