RUSH: Indianapolis, Sal, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. The border security issue is actually irrelevant because if you grant amnesty to 20 to 30 million Democrats, the country’s finished. There’s no way to overcome that margin. Because what they’re saying is, “We’re gonna nail the door shut, but the horse is already out of the barn.”

RUSH: I get it. I know exactly what you’re saying. You know, securing the border is irrelevant at any stage, right, if they’re gonna grant amnesty to the 11 or 12 million who are here?

CALLER: Right. I mean, how do you overcome that margin when we have a 50-50 country?

RUSH: Well, what the Republicans are saying is, “We need to do this so that the Hispanics will not hate us, and then — after we’ve made them not hate us — they will then start listening to our message.”

CALLER: But we really need to assimilate these people because these are the same people who voted for Hugo Chavez and one of the two Mexican socialist presidents. They have two socialist parties in Mexico to shape its socialism, and then a communist party. So how do we convince these people to vote Republican?

RUSH: Yes, but these people are fleeing those regimes. They are coming to the United States because they don’t want that. They want to be free.

CALLER: But yet they vote for Democrats.

RUSH: Well, 70% of those who live here vote for Democrats, yes. That’s true.

CALLER: That’s my point exactly. You can’t change their behavior. They expect the government to help provide things for them.

RUSH: Well, I hate to… Let me tell you something. I don’t want to throw cold water on you here, but whether we tie down the border first, second, third, or fourth or not, Sal, you have to understand. You understand, don’t you, that the 11 million here are going to be granted status? You know that’s gonna happen? Right?

CALLER: Not necessarily, no. What I think you could do is make it a felony for anyone to assist the illegals in applying for welfare or applying for a job.

RUSH: Well, of course we can do whatever we want but the idea of it becoming law, the idea of somebody in the Republican Party actually proposing that and enforcing it?

This is really hard, folks.

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RUSH: I don’t want anybody to get confused. I did not concede legalization is inevitable. I was asking a caller a question. I am not conceding that legalization is inevitable. And I want to throw something else out at you as a possibility, folks. I’m not all that convinced yet, despite how it looks, that this bill is a slam dunk victory in the Senate. I know how the Democrats operate. I know that they are smoke and mirrors. I know how they market. They talk about wanting 70 votes in the Senate on this. If they’re talking about it, it means they don’t have them. If they’re saying we’re gonna get, we want 70 votes, they don’t have them yet.

The Democrats are in the business of creating illusions. They’re in the business — and the media, too — of making you feel like all is lost. It’s part of the campaign to get what they want, to beat down any resistance, to make it seem like it’s fruitless to stop them or to oppose them, because you can’t. And so the conventional wisdom is that this thing will sail through the Senate, that’s it, it’s all in the House now. And I’m not convinced of that. Until they take the vote. One thing that’s not being reported about this whole immigration thing is the degree to which it’s opposed by the people in this country. You’re not seeing that anywhere.

You know, Senator Cruz was on the program yesterday, and he said, “Call your senator, call him, call your representative.” I said, “Does that still work in 2012?” “Damn well does,” he said. You try calling. You can’t get through. They got their phones off the hook, folks, because you are inundating them, you are overwhelming them. But that’s not being reported. As far as you know, there isn’t any opposition. You’re it. You’re a lone wolf, you and your buddies. This is by design. The mainstream media exists for many reasons, and among them is to dispirit you and to make you think that what you want is impossible and will never happen.

There’s a reason Harry Reid wants to speed this thing up. And again, I think Senator Cruz was right yesterday, he said, “I think they’re in trouble.” There’s a reason all these amendments are being offered. They don’t have the votes yet. They are trying to sweep up votes. They are Hoovering votes. They are coming up with amendments to get Republicans that are on the fence. But there are some Democrats that have to run for reelection 2014, and they know what their constituents are thinking about this. So it’s hard every day. It’s hard not to get caught up in the inertia that is created each day around the Democratic Party agenda. Because that’s all the news is anymore, folks.

That’s all the news is, is the Democrat agenda and how it’s doing. How’s Obama doing, how’s health care doing, how’s this doing, how’s that going, how’s this going, is Obama in trouble there, is this gonna give ’em any problems over there? There is no news. It’s just a daily report on the Democrat Party agenda. That’s all it is. That’s what the New York Times is, it’s what CBS is, ABC, CBS, the Washington Post, the LA Times, it’s the Democrat Party agenda. And the one thing the Democrats never do is talk about how all is lost. The Democrats never talk about how they’ve gotta change what they believe. They’ve never gotta make people like them who don’t like them. The Democrat agenda is never in trouble. The Democrat president is never in trouble.

Harry Reid, this border surge amendment, he wouldn’t allow that to be voted on if it didn’t have the votes. If they didn’t need them. If they didn’t need the votes he wouldn’t have allowed this amendment to even be brought forth. This Corker-Hoeven, these two senators. So don’t misunderstand me. This is not a fait accompli. It is not a done deal.

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RUSH: Folks, moments ago on Fox, Megyn Kelly was talking with their political director, Chris Stirewalt, and everybody’s asking, “What the hell happened? What happened between yesterday and today that’s caused everybody to speed up to 120 miles an hour on amnesty in the Senate? What in the world has happened?” Megyn Kelly was discussing this with the Fox political director, Chris Stirewalt.

KELLY: It comes just 24 hours after one of the most talked about conservatives in the nation spoke to Rush Limbaugh about this bill. Texas Senator Ted Cruz launching a high-profile attack on the so-called Gang of Eight bill, calling it a flat-out disaster. When asked about worries that Republicans had to pass this bill to win Latino votes in the future, the Cuban-American senator did not mince words.

CRUZ: This is a crock that is being sold to Republican politicians that they can just buy off Hispanics. And, frankly, it’s offensive, but it’s being sold as pure politics.

RUSH: You know, it’s also racist to say that these Hispanics can be bought, that their support/their votes are this cheap? So Megyn Kelly says it’s Cruz on this program yesterday that’s just shaking everybody up, ’cause he also told everybody to let everybody in Washington know what you think about it. But they weren’t through talking about it.

KELLY: Senator Cruz went on from there, Chris. Where do things stand right now? Because my impression, in reading in today on the story, is there’s a fire drill. I mean, Harry Reid is like, “This has gotta get passed immediately, before the July 4th recess. Eleven million illegal immigrants have to be granted this path to citizenship! They get provisional status immediately, and all these other amendments? You know, proceed at your own peril Republicans! By July 4th, it needs to happen.”

STIREWALT: You got it. You have sleuthed out the nature of the game down here, Megyn.

RUSH: It’s exactly what happened to me. I’m sitting here, I’m minding my own business, I’m still mourning the passing the Vince Flynn, and about 11 o’clock today all hell broke loose. I started getting e-mails and texts from my brother and from a number of people, “What’s this mean?” and I wasn’t even aware of it. I thought, “What is going on here?” “Harry Reid says this, and Rubio just said this, and Rubio was on Hannity last night and said that. What’s going on here?”

Okay, so I put aside what I was working on to try to get up to speed on this. So in the first hour I found out what was going on and we spent the first hour talking about it, and it turns out that it wasn’t just me that figured something’s going on. Megyn Kelly. I’m telling you, the take-away here is if Dingy Harry had to put the pedal to the metal on this today, something’s not going right. Look, folks, when Dingy Harry’s whip tells him he’s got the votes, they head to the floor because the vote is called.

Now, they’re throwing out that they want 70 votes for this. They don’t have 70 votes. Right now, they don’t have 60, and that’s the take-away.

Right now, they don’t have 60 votes for this.

Because if they did, he would call the vote.

Keep hanging in there, folks. Do not stop whatever you’re doing.

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RUSH: The reason this border security amendment today on immigration is getting so much press — the reason it’s getting so much attention, the reason it appears like everybody’s going 150 miles an hour — is because the media and the rest of the Democrats are hoping that that amendment will give the Republican senators enough cover to vote for the bill. So far, it hasn’t happened. CNN is running a crawl on their screen, a chyron banner: “Senate Bill Will Secure the Border!”

So they’re trying to convince their low-information voters everything’s cool when it isn’t and the bill doesn’t do that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, sir, what’s happening on CNN right now is classic. They’re rerunning their Rubio interview, and they’ve got this chyron graphic the bottom of the screen which, it’s not up there now, but moments ago during a top-of-the-hour break, their chyron graphic which they’ve had up most of the day today: “Senate bill would build a 700-mile fence on the border.” Now, for those of you just joining us who happened to miss the first hour of the program today, I really hope that you’ll go to RushLimbaugh.com later and relive the first hour. I can’t take all of that time to repeat it, but we already have a law to build a fence on the border, 700-mile fence.

The bill was passed in 2006, ladies and gentlemen. Thirty-six miles of the fence have been built. And it just stopped. It was deemed to be too offensive. They didn’t like the way it looked. We don’t want to build fences to keep people out, that’s not who we are. What kind of message are we Republicans sending if we build this? They stopped building it. There have been two amendments — well, at least one, you think two, just in the last month. Two amendments, the Gang of Eight immigration bill, to finish the fence, both amendments have been voted down.

There was no intention to build a fence, and CNN knows it. Besides that, despite this massive new amendment today that’s being offered, the Corker-Hoeven amendment, the Senate amendment everybody’s talking about doesn’t change the order, doesn’t change the sequence. The illegals that are here still get legalized first, and then goals for border security kick in, not objectives, not requirements, not mandates, but goals. So the trigger in the amendment says, in essence, that the fence that was to be built starting in 2006 will now be built after we have legalized the 11 million people currently here in the shadows.
This is about the sequence of things.

Now, we were told at the beginning of this that there wouldn’t be any legalization until the border was secured, and it was on that basis that the bill got a lot of support. On that basis, the Gang of Eight bill got a lot of support from people like you and me. And then at some point during the process we were told, “No, no, no, no, no, you misunderstood. We’re gonna have to legalize first and then do the border because we gotta know who’s here first, we gotta know what we’re dealing with before we secure the border.”

So this amendment today does not build a fence. This amendment today does not do anything about border security. What this amendment does is legalize the 11 million here first, and then suggest objectives or goals. That’s all it does. The purpose of this bill today, folks, is to attract Republican votes on the fence. That’s the purpose the amendment today. And I’m just here to tell you, do not give this up. They don’t have the votes.

If they had the votes, Dingy Harry woulda called the vote. They don’t have them. I don’t think they’ve got 60 right now, and there has been a sense of panic in the last 12, 24 hours. You had Ted Cruz calling here. You had a massive Tea Party rally in Washington yesterday against immigration, yet more people show up — and I’m gonna make sure we have this in proper perspective — we had thousands more people, more than twice as many showed up in Washington yesterday to oppose the Gang of Eight bill than showed up in Germany to hear Obama.