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RUSH: Well, there's Obama. He's at the Republican Congressional Retreat in Baltimore going on this weekend. Are our guys smart or what? It's the dead middle of the winter and they go to Baltimore for a weekend retreat -- and it's not even football season. Aw, gee. Anyway, Obama was requesting... They asked him to come there. Maybe he wanted to go there. He's lying to them again. "Hey, look, I'm even for tort reform. That's the Holy Grail to you guys, and I told you I'm for it." He just said that, and he said, "Republicans and Democrats have to work together. We just have to work  together." Remember, this is a guy who told these very Republicans, "You can't listen to Rush Limbaugh. That's not how things get done in this town." They still have me on the brain. I am inside their craniums. Axelrod was again talking about this whole notion that I said that. I'm the one that put it out there. I was the one with the courage and the bravado to do it. I said, "I hope he fails."
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RUSH: So Obama went up there to have a chat with the Republicans, right? He's lecturing them. (laughing) Mike Pence asked him a question ten minutes ago and he's still answering it, and he's very defensive. I've been reading the closed-captioning. Our young president is saying, "I suppose, uh, uh, the 500,000 jobs we lost in January before I was inaugurated, I -- I -- suppose that's my policy, too, right? That's what you'd say, huh? And then in February? Well, 600,000 more jobs that were lost. You guys probably say that's my policy, right? That's before my policy had even gone in place but you're blaming my policy, right, right, right?" I mean, he's still lecturing, after telling them he wants to listen to their ideas! (laughing)
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RUSH: Let's quickly go to the audio sound bites to reference this. David Axelrod. This is Wednesday night in Washington, after the state of Obama. Cybercast News Service correspondent Joe Schoffstall interviewed Axelrod. He said, "Given this past year and spending habits, do you believe that Barack Obama... Well, Republicans have said that Barack Obama doesn't have the credibility to reduce the deficit. How would you counter that?"
AXELROD: This is the core issue: Is the Republican Party going to take the position that they simply are going to sit on the sidelines and hope, uh, that, uh -- that -- that -- that, uh, the president fails and the country fails and that they somehow will benefit from this politically, or are they going to join us in a bipartisan effort to deal with our problems? And that's what we're waiting to see.
RUSH: Yeah. Of course, he conveniently forgets Little Dick Gephardt back in 2002 after the dot-com bubble burst, gleefully saying, "Every ten-point drop in the stock market we pick up a House seat!" Mr. Axlerod, you know what's going down here. There's not one Republican who wants any fingerprints on the disaster that you and the Obama administration are making. They don't want their fingerprints on it at all. They want you to have total authorship of this. By the way, Obama is still speaking, still lecturing the Republicans at their weekend getaway in Baltimore. Here now is Robert Menendez. This is the guy running the Senate reelection committee that Chuck-U Schumer ran last time. He was on MSNBC and he got a question: "What are the other key issues on which you expect Senate candidates and incumbents to be saying, 'We're like this. Republicans aren't'?"
MENENDEZ: Start now getting the differences between, quote, unquote, "moderate Republicans" -- the ones that the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee wants -- and the tea parters (sic) in the extreme right wing of their party. Drive a wedge there. Ask them: "Do you believe Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States?" Ask them: "Do you believe the Tenth Amendment doesn't allow for health care for every, uhh, citizen in the country? Do you believe that Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, uh, is socialism?" Let them choose on whose side are they on: Trying to get families back to work in America, or taking care of business? That's going to be an interesting choice.
RUSH: That's an interesting strategery. So it appears here that Bob Menendez is a birther, or he wants to have Republicans portrayed as birthers. That's his advice. Note the contradiction here? "Which side are they on? Trying to get families back to work in America or taking care of big business," meaning socking big business. How do families go back to work if you kill business, which is what these people are doing? Now, The Forehead, folks -- The Forehead, Paul Begala at CNN -- got something right. He said, "Voters do not want bipartisanship."
BEGALA: Here's the thing now. All the pundits say, "Voters want bipartisanship." In a pig's eye they do! Charlie Crist is a bipartisan Republican. He endorsed the president's economic stimulus plan. I know now he says he didn't. He did! He even did the "bromance" hug there, right? That's bipartisanship, and how is he being rewarded? He's getting beat by the more partisan Republican.
RUSH: Getting beat by the more conservative Republican. That's a reference to Marco Rubio down in Florida in the Senate race there. But The Forehead is right. This call for bipartisanship -- and Obama's doing it up there again -- is a strictly liberal trick. It's a trap. It's a trap that people like McCain fall for every time. (doing McCain impression) "That's right, Limbaugh! We cross the aisle and people will love us. They'll hate you; they'll love us," and it never results in victory. It just results in them, the moderate Republicans, accepting all the premises and all the policies of the Democrats. That's what "bipartisanship" means. Bipartisanship means: You forget everything you believe, you forget every core principle, and you join us on the Democrat side of the aisle. |
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RUSH: We have a couple sound bites of things he said.
 OBAMA: I want us to have a constructive debate. The only thing I don't want -- and here I am listening to the American people and I think they don't want either -- uh, is for Washington to continue being so Washington-like. I know, folks, uh, when we're in -- in town there, uh, spend a lot of time reading the polls and looking at focus groups and interpreting which party has the upper hand in November and in 2012 and so on and so on and so on. That's their obsession. And I'm not a pundit. Uh, I'm just a president. So take it for what it's worth.
RUSH: So that's how the lecture began: "I don't want." Just like he said in the state of Obama speech: "I don't want this attitude that if he loses, we win. I don't want this attitude!" So he says, "I don't want Washington to continue being Washington-like." Has anybody arrived at one of the most glaring contradictions Obama made in the State of Obama speech? He continually ran down Washington. He runs down Washington in this comment: "It's Washington-like. Nobody gets along, nothing gets done, we gotta stop," and yet he wants to turn every aspect of our lives over to it, a place where nothing gets done, a place he constantly besmirches -- and his State of Obama speech was filled, ladies and gentlemen, with contradictions like that. Here's our second sound bite that we have.
OBAMA: We've seen party-line votes that -- uh, I'm just going to be honest -- were disappointing. Let's start with our efforts to jump-start the economy last winter --
RUSH: Yeah.
OBAMA: -- when we were losing 700,000 jobs a month.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah.
OBAMA: Our financial system teetered on the brink of collapse --
RUSH: Yeah.
OBAMA: -- and the threat of a second Great Depression loomed large.
RUSH: Yeah.
OBAMA: I didn't understand then -- uh, and I still don't understand, uh -- why, uh, we got opposition in this caucus. As I recall, opposition was declared before we had a chance to actually meet and exchange ideas. The latest GDP numbers show that our economy is growing by almost 6%. That's the most since 2003. This turnaround is the biggest in nearly three decades, and it didn't happen by accident.
RUSH: "I don't understand why you opposed the stimulus." The stimulus has nothing to do with this. It's inventories -- and even Reuters, State-Controlled Media, says this may not have any legs to it. But he knows full well why they opposed the stimulus. He knows why everybody opposes the stimulus. It's because it is not a stimulus for anything other than the government. He's up there lecturing them in person rather than lecturing them from the House floor. Let's see. Yeah.
Jeff in Indianapolis. Let's get you in here real quickly before we have to go to the break. Hi.
CALLER: Hey. Rush Hudson Limbaugh! Mmm, mmm, mmm!
RUSH: Hey.
CALLER: I had the same reaction that you did. I listened to the beginning of the "speech," I'll call it, to the Republicans now. I had some hope that he was actually going to go up there and really listen to them, and then he started off his speech chastising the Republicans like little children. And my jaw hits the ground and I'm sitting here going, "What is his idea of listening?" I think it just must mean agreeing with him.
RUSH: The guy has diarrhea of the mouth. I've had it at various times. There's medicine for it but it doesn't taste good, and it's well on display today. Thanks for backing up the opinion of the host. It's the smart thing to do. |
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RUSH: Okay. We have more sound bites from Obama and his meet-and-greet with the Republicans at their weekend retreat in Baltimore. Here's the first of three...
 OBAMA: We have lost 650,000 jobs in December. Uh, I'm assuming, uh, you're not faulting my policies for that. We have lost, it turns out, 700,000 jobs in January, the month I was sworn in. I'm assuming it wasn't my administration's policies that accounted for that. We lost another 650,000 jobs the subsequent month, before any of my policies had gone into effect. So I'm assuming that wasn't as a consequence of our policies; that doesn't reflect the failures of the Recovery Act.
RUSH: It does. The rest of the year does. You didn't do anything to stop it. I don't know what the Republicans are saying to this guy, because this is on right now and I only have a chance to read the closed-captioning on during commercial breaks. But he goes up there and tries to deflect the blame all off of himself. "It's all Bush's fault! It's all Bush's fault!" even though he voted for every policy that led to all of this. Here's the second bite. We have three.
OBAMA: The notion that I would somehow resist doing something that caught -- costs half as much but would produce twice as many jobs, why would I resist that? I -- I wouldn't. I mean, that -- that -- that's my point. Is -- is -- is th-th-that... (stammering) I am not an ideologue! I'm not! It doesn't make sense if somebody could tell me, "You could do this cheaper and get increased results," that I wouldn't to say, "Great!" The problem is I couldn't find credible economists who would back up the claims that you just made!
RUSH: Well, now, that's just silly. I could find a zillion economists who could back up any claim that you could get twice the results by spending half as much money. He's talking about health care, here. There's any number of ways that you could spend much less than $2.5 trillion dollars to insure whatever number it is, 12, 30, 45 million people -- and there are any number of ways to start lowering costs, and there are all kinds of economists. At the Heritage Foundation there are any number of them. He is an ideologue. Precisely. He only goes out and talks to friendly economists, lib economists who are going to tell him what he wants to hear. Mike Pence follows up. He says, "Mr. President, would you consider across-the-board tax relief as President Kennedy did?"
OBAMA: What you may consider across-the-board tax cuts could be, for example, greater tax cuts for people (stumbling) who are making [a] billion dollars. I may not agree to a tax cut for Warren Buffett. You may be calling for a[n] across-the-board tax cut for the banking industry right now. I may not agree to that.
RUSH: And there you have President Barack Obama still playing the class envy card: Only the rich are getting away with banditry here and so forth. Across-the-board tax cuts like President Kennedy: He cut them for everybody as did Reagan, and it was key of Pence to throw Kennedy's name in the whole mix there. But you see Obama? "I'm not! I'm not an ideologue!" But he is most definitely an ideologue. (sigh) |
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RUSH: Santa Barbara, California. Ron, you're next. I'm glad you waited. It's great to have you on Open Line Friday.
CALLER: Rush, I'd like to say a lot more but I know today is a rich vein for you so I'll just say, "Mega dittos." Rush, I don't believe in litmus tests for Republican candidates. But I would love to see a revived, robust RNC, and I'd like to hear you talk about one possible pledge for RNC candidates going forward and that's forswearing earmarks. I had a chance to ask Michael Steele that question last Friday, and if you'd like to hear that story I'll give it to you, but I'd like to hear you talk about that possible pledge by Republican candidates.
RUSH: I saw a story about this the other day, not specifically about pledges on earmarks, but Steele was asked if there would be an "ideological test." Whoever asked the question... I think it was a Republican, I'm not sure. I think he was speaking to a Republican group. Maybe it was to the media in general. But it was a question that was oriented toward the fact that the Republican Party has this moderate-liberal wing, the old guard, which thinks they are still in charge of things; and the conservative wing, which the old guard hates. They don't want any part of it. The old guard is embarrassed. They're just like the Democrat old guard: The elitists, the Ivy League Republicans. They're just as embarrassed with Sarah Palin as the Democrats are, and other conservatives: Talk radio, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So Steele was asked about this and he said, "I don't think there should be an ideological test to be a Republican. I really don't think there should be." So I doubt that he would go along with a pledge on earmarks. What I think Republicans are working on is a new, revised Contract with America. You could certainly prepare a ten-point plan of objectives and be a contract. They'd all sign it, and they could put that in that, the earmark claim in that. I don't think anybody would oppose it. Republicans have made great hay in opposing it and trying to stop it, but it's such an ingrained thing that Congress does. Hell, that's how they got the stimulus bill passed. They said it was $787 billion, but it was really close to $1 trillion because it took over $150 billion of earmarks and pork to get a bunch of people on the Democrat side to go along with it who weren't really in favor of it.
 I want to go back, too, to Obama and his lecture to the Republicans in Baltimore at their retreat today. In typical "me, me, me," immature and childlike fashion, Obama looked at the Republicans and said, "I'm sure you're not going to blame my policies. I'm sure my policies are not responsible for the jobs lost before I was inaugurated. I'm sure my policies weren't responsible for job losses the first month I was inaugurated," blah, blah. The thing about that is, folks -- and I know many of you out there would agree with this -- businesses look forward. I would say that any jobs lost after his election could be put on him. Remember: Elections matter. There were a lot of people who knew who Obama's policies were going to be. They knew we were gonna get to things like government growth and tax increases. It was in the campaign. People making 250 grand or more, that's a lot of small business people who were going to get their taxes raised. He was playing class envy all the way. I think a lot of people knew what was headed down the pike. So people began laying people off and preparing for the future under Obama. So I don't think... He can't just slough it off. I guarantee you this: If the economy had turned around in January and February, I guaran-damn-tee you he'd be taking credit for it because of his election. (doing impression) "That's right. Even before my policies are in place, people are so happy with me, look what happened," and the media would be echoing that as well. |
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RUSH: Anyway, Marian in Pittsburgh, you're next on Open Line Friday. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thank you. Good afternoon, Rush.
RUSH: Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Thanks. You just made my point exactly just a few minutes ago. I just heard the audio of our president denying any responsibility for job loss in the early days of his administration. And I just wanted to point out how conveniently blind he is to the fact that the mere anticipation of the redistribution of wealth, the big government health care and the other promises he promised put a chill in the business community that affected the hiring and the business outlook as early as November 5, 2008. I'm married to the owner of a very small business, and I can tell you that this is true. It was a time to pull back, be cautious, batten down the hatches just not knowing what was coming out in terms of taxes, Big Health Care mandates, the economy, and so forth. So I guess just to back up your point then. It's true.
RUSH: Well, it is, and I arrived at it late. The brain neurons are not firing all cylinders simultaneously today. I arrived at it late. But it still is true, and I think we'd have to look this up. But wasn't either November or December 2008 the first real month for job loss? I'm going to have to look that up. Something tells me that it was in December, too, and the reason I think this is that's when Obama started saying, "Oh, it's much worse than we were told. Bush didn't tell us how bad it was. We had no idea it was going to be this bad." (interruption) Was it November of '08? Okay. November '08 was the largest single month of job losses since November of 1974. I was right. That is the case. So Marian, I you're right on the money. |
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RUSH: Also I went back. I keep an archived file here of various excerpts of Obama's books, his alleged autobiographies, and he just went up there and he just said to the Republicans that he's not an ideologue. "I'm not an ideologue. I'm not." He was only the most partisan Senator at the time he was in Congress, and this is from his second alleged autobiography, The Audacity of Hope: "Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream." He admits to being a product of the radical sixties. "I've always felt a curious relationship to the sixties. In a sense, I'm a pure product of that era: As the child of a mixed marriage, my life would have been impossible, my opportunities entirely foreclosed, without the social upheavals that were then taking place. But I was too young at the time to fully grasp the nature of those changes, too removed -- living as I did in Hawaii and Indonesia -- to see the fallout on America's psyche. Much of what I absorbed from the sixties was filtered through my mother, who to the end of her life would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal. The civil rights movement, in particular, inspired her reverence; whenever the opportunity presented itself, she would drill into me the values that she saw there: tolerance, equality, standing up for the disadvantaged," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this business that he's not an ideologue is just a crock because you can go back to his books he's written -- well, allegedly has written. Let's see, I just got a couple more. Ba-da ba-da. Oh, we have a couple more bites? He's still there? The TV cameras have stopped rolling and he's still there lecturing the Republicans? I guess so. So he's lecturing them. Oh, this is good. Listen to this. We have first two of sound bites. It's 26 and 27. Let's hit 26 right now.
OBAMA: How some of you went after this bill, you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot.
REPUBLICANS: (laughing)
OBAMA: No, I -- I -- I mean -- I mean that's how you guys -- that's how you guys presented it. The way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives. What happens is you guys then don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me. If you voted with the administration on somethin', [you] are politically vulnerable in your own base. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion, because what you've been telling your constituents is, "This guy's doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's gonna destroy America."
RUSH: Yeah, exactly right! He's up there identifying exactly what they're doing, and I didn't exactly hear a denial. Did you? In this particular bite, I didn't actually hear a denial -- and nobody booed. In fact, there was some laughter when he got it right. "If you're going to have this strident position you have no room to negotiate with me. You have very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion." They don't want (so far, thank goodness) to "work in a bipartisan fashion." This next one's pretty rich, too. Here's the last of the two most recent bites we have.
OBAMA: I couldn't find credible economists who would back up the claims that you just made. ... If I get confirmation from health care experts, I've gotta be able to go to an independent health care expert. ... There's gotta be a mechanism in these plans that I can go to -- an independent health care expert -- and say, "Is this something that will actually work?" ... I am happy to have any independent fact checker take a look.
RUSH: Folks, this is so disingenuous I shouldn't even have to spend a whole lot of time commenting on this. The Heritage Foundation alone has hundreds of scholars that would tell him exactly why his plan won't work and could tell him exactly what plans would work. He doesn't want to hear those things. He doesn't want to have it on record that he has heard those things. Independent experts? Liberals don't like anybody independent. There's no such thing. They live and they practice among themselves.
 Speaking of Heritage: In the afterglow of the uninspiring state of Obama speech, guess what the Democrats in Congress did? They voted another $1.9 trillion in debt. One bill at a time they are building a bridge that could lead to financial disaster, just like the CBO's guy is predicting for the next two years. Now, if yesterday's bill... It was passed yesterday with all 60 Democrats saying yes. It should be enough to get you to thinking about how our government has to get smaller. The Heritage Foundation is something you should introduce yourself to, where people think through and work on that premise every day: Smaller government. There's a tipping point for all of us and an increase in the government's debt limit by another 13%, the second such vote of a debt increase in 60 days. It might be yours, but everybody has tipping point where they finally realize: "This is getting too big. It's out of control." If this is your tipping point, if you've had enough, join like-minded people like me, members of the Heritage Foundation and start educating yourself on what to do. No other organization spends the time analyzing problems, offering solutions, and putting forth ideas like the Heritage Foundation does -- and they're just down the street from Obama. Just down the street! It's a lot closer to get to the Heritage Foundation than it is to get to Baltimore to talk to the Republicans. |
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RUSH: I have gone back during the commercial breaks here and I've been doing some research on the premise here that the Obama election really intensified unemployment skyrocketing and so forth. It's even better than that, folks. If you look at the GDP and the jobless charts, the unemployment chart's an amazing thing. You see it trucking along at five, 4.7, 5.2, and then bam, in 2007 it starts inching up. 2007! And by the time you get to the end of 2008, it's almost going straight up on this chart to now 10%. With 2007 GDP, at the same time if you look at a chart of the gross domestic product, economic growth, you'll start to see it come down shortly after the start of 2007. That happens to coincide when the Democrats took control of Congress. See, people who invest real money know when to hold onto it. And the Democrats taking over Congress, they're in charge of all spending, they control the economy at that point, and then Obama's election in November of 2008.
 They'd heard the campaign, they knew all of this government growth and redistribution and tax increases were coming, and they started making plans to deal with it by downsizing their labor force, and it's only continued as Obama then came in and implemented the policies that everybody predicted that he would implement. So now he's up there talking to the Republicans here about (doing impression), "You guys, you guys -- you can't come in and negotiate with me! You're making me out to be some Bolshevik! You can't -- you can't -- you can't -- I mean, you -- you got everybody believing I'm going to control everybody's life." Exactly right, and we heard Axelrod. Axelrod says that if Republicans are going to sit back and let the country fail and let Obama fail, if that's what they want to do we're going to hold 'em accountable.
And, lo and behold! I like Mike Allen at The Politico. I really do. But I'm noticing a trend here: Whenever the White House wants to get a new policy or talking point or whatever out, it seems it first shows up at The Politico. Lo and behold, right around nine o'clock this morning, "White House: GOP Accountability Coming." This is the Politico playbook. It's Mike Allen. " The White House plans to step up efforts to hold Republicans accountable for cooperation. Said communications director Dan Pfeiffer: 'There are 59 Democratic Senators now. They're at 41, the Republicans now have a responsibility to govern. In Year 1, they sat on the sidelines and were willing to leave governing in this challenging time to Democrats alone. They have a responsibility now to partner with the President, to try to get things done for the American people.
"With 59 Senators, it is mathematically impossible for Democrats to do everything on their own." So this is a new strategy: It's it is Republicans' fault now. It's all the Republicans' fault. Mean Republicans, they're to blame. They have to join us and govern. They're not going to. Not with the agenda that you've put forth. |
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RUSH: Here's Casey in Casper, Wyoming, great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hello.
CALLER: Yeah, been-a-while dittos, Rush. Yeah, I just wanted to make a comment on the remarks President Obama made about being "a really good one-term president."
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CALLER: You know, he was really good in his one term and he assumes he wouldn't be reelected, who was he being good for besides the American people?
RUSH: (laughing) No, he'd be good for himself. That's an excellent point. Be "a really good one-term president," meaning people would reject him. Look, this guy knows what he's doing. He knows he's going to be governing against the will of the American people, and his definition of success is succeeding in defying the American people. That's why I say, "I want him to fail," and that comment about be "a really good one-term president or mediocre two-term president" can only mean: "If I lose in one term and I've done such a great job of implementing my statist vision, that I am sent packing." It's a great, great point.
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RUSH: Michael in Hampstead, North Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. Thank you, Rush. After President Bush won his second term and Vice President Cheney said he wasn't gonna run, why didn't Bush appoint a new vice president so we would have a good chance to win the next election and not be stuck with you-know-who.
RUSH: Senator McCain?
CALLER: I guess so.
RUSH: I don't know. I don't think he was ever going to replace Cheney. That would have been throwing the left red meat. There was no way, 'cause they were clamoring for Cheney in jail and Rove in jail. They were clamoring for Cheney to be locked up! So the only way it would happen is if Cheney decided to resign, and he wasn't going to resign. He took the job too seriously, and there was no way Bush was going to replace him, especially for a political purpose like that. That's my take on it anyway. I'm wild guessing here but my political instincts, like all of my instincts, are good. Don't doubt me. |
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