RUSH: Your host once again maligned and misrepresented. And, by the way, I need to give you a heads-up on something here, folks, before we head to the phones on Open Line Friday. This so-called lawsuit that Boehner is threatening to file against Obama for behaving outside the Constitution, for basically breaking the law, for doing things presidents are not constitutionally permitted to do, I think you should know that certain news organizations are now associating my statement in January of 2009, “I hope he fails,” with the Boehner lawsuit.

There is an effort to conflate the two, and in order to do that you have to purposely misrepresent and misunderstand what I said and what I meant when I said, “I hope he fails.” Now, I know, you’re tired of this. You’ve heard this. You knew exactly what I meant the moment I said it.
Furthermore, so did everybody else. Everybody else knew exactly what I meant, but they pretended they didn’t so that they could create a phony narrative that I actually wanted the country to fail because I couldn’t stand a Democrat succeeding in making the country work, so I wanted the country to fail. That’s what they were trying to make everybody believe I meant.

And of course it was just the exact opposite. I wanted Obama to fail at what he has done. I wanted him to fail at growing government. I wanted him to fail with his economic policies. Look what they’ve done. I wanted every Obama policy to fail, and if that happened, the country would be spared. I wanted to save the country. I was offering a defense and a desire to protect the country by saying I hope Obama fails. So let’s go to C-SPAN Washington Journal this morning. This is the host, Peter Slen, I think is his name, and he took a call from Mike in Memphis.

MIKE: My solution is for the Congress, the lack of cooperation between the legislative government with the executive branch is appalling. And it’s killing us. It’s like they’ve adopted Rush Limbaugh’s “I hope he fails” philosophy. There’s no cooperation. Obama cannot do it by himself and it’s gonna kill us. This country is being destroyed from within. Obama needs to call out the military to secure the border. The Tea Party right-wing Republicans, they’re just sitting there and not offering any solutions to problems. I think it’s purely racism and prejudice of the black president.

RUSH: All right, what do we do with this? I mean, we clearly are dealing with the quintessential low-information voter here. I mean, this is classic. There’s so many contradictions in what this guy said, so many factual inaccuracies. And it’s out there. It’s out there on C-SPAN. He says Boehner and the Republicans have adopted Rush Limbaugh’s “I hope he fails” philosophy. No, they haven’t. Here’s the thing. Lack of cooperation is killing us? No. The only thing that is even giving us any hope is the gridlock. If it weren’t for the gridlock, if it weren’t for the Republicans occasionally refusing to go along with what Obama wants, we’d be in worse shape than we’re in now.

But this guy doesn’t even understand. He says there’s no cooperation. Obama can’t do it by himself. Obama’s doing it by himself and he’s bragging about doing it by himself, and he’s promising to do even more by himself. “If they won’t do their job, well, I will. I’m not gonna sit around and wait for them. I’ll go ahead and do it. I’ll do it.” And he’s doing it. That’s why he’s being sued. He’s doing more than the Constitution permits him to do. He doesn’t need any cooperation. He wants fall guys. He wants people to take the hit when the things that he does go wrong from our perspective. They don’t go wrong from his.

And then we get Obama needs to call out the military to secure the border? Who made it insecure? Who opened it? Who’s keeping it open? Who’s promoting it as open? Who’s down there welcoming everybody in? Who’s looking at it as a Democrat voter registration? Call out the military to secure the border? That’s what the Tea Party wants to do, and yet the Tea Party right wing, they’re just sitting there not offering any solutions? That’s all they are offering. We and the Tea Party have countless solutions to these problems. They are the antithesis of Obama policy.

Now, for those of you, and I know you’re there, except you don’t. Most low-information voters don’t know, by definition, how could they? They don’t know enough to know they don’t know anything. So most low-information voters don’t know they’re low-information. That’s the funny thing about this. We can talk about them all day long and nobody’s gonna think I’m talking about them, because there’s not a low-information voter out there who actually thinks he or she is low-information. They always think you’re talking about somebody else. But this, January 16th, 2009, right here on this program just for the sake of getting it out there again because there is an effort being made to associate my “I hope he fails” with this Republican lawsuit.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I don’t need 400 words. I need four: I hope he fails. Well, what are you laughing at? See, now, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, “You can’t do it.” Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying “I hope liberalism fails”? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: “Limbaugh: ‘I hope Obama fails.'” Somebody’s gotta say it.

RUSH: And they did. They headlined me. I was all over. I owned the media and I don’t even have a PR firm. And to this day, when they think it serves their purpose, they revive me saying, “I hope Obama fails.” And they always attempt to convince people that what I really meant was that I wanted the country to fail. I’ve actually heard some people explain it to others this way: “You know what Limbaugh really wanted? You know what he’s really afraid of? Limbaugh’s afraid of a Democrat coming in and the economy booming and the country going great guns. He just doesn’t want that to happen when the Democrats are in office ’cause he knows it’s the end of what he believes. So that’s why he wants Obama to fail. He wants Obama to fail, meaning he wants the country to fail, so that the Democrats don’t get any credit.”

That’s how they were trying to portray what I had said, when they knew that’s not what I meant. I meant exactly what I said. I have never supported liberalism. I know exactly who and what liberalism is and what it does. And if everybody did there’s no way anybody would want more of it. Well, not everybody. You’re always gonna have a few, but we’ve not lost the country. I don’t care what they say about the tipping point. We have not gotten to the point where a majority of Americans just want to give up on their ambition, on their desires, on their families. It hasn’t happened. The media would love you to believe that we’ve reached that point, but we haven’t.

But for me it was I don’t want anymore liberalism. I’ve seen enough of it, I know exactly what it does, worldwide, nationwide. I have seen what liberalism does, and I was hoping Obama would fail in his attempt to transform this country into something it was not founded to be.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, stop and think of something for a second. We are five and a half years into the Obama presidency, five and a half years, and my statement and explanation on January 16th of 2009 — this is two weeks, maybe a week before Obama was even inaugurated, my statement, “I hope he fails,” remains the most memorable and standing expression of opposition to Obama in five and a half years.

I’m a guy on the radio. A guy on the radio a week before Obama’s inauguration says, “I hope he fails,” and that, even after five and a half years, still stands as the strongest statement of opposition to Obama that there is. That’s where the media goes to illustrate opposition. They don’t go to anybody in the Republican Party and what they’ve said. They go to a guy on the radio. What does that say about the political opposition to Obama? It means there hasn’t been very much if my statement is still the go-to statement for the media after five and a half years. Here I am, I’m still explaining this after five and a half years?