RUSH: Daniel Hannan, member of the British parliament, spoke Saturday at CPAC. From what I understand it was not televised. You had to get it streaming. That’s what Cookie told me. I told her this morning, “Get me some Daniel Hannan.” She looked and the only place she could find it was streaming. We got it, doesn’t matter. But we have three bites, and his focus was the importance of the congressional elections. He wanted everybody at CPAC to know that, you could have the best president in the world, you guys can elect the best Republican conservative in the world, and if Harry Reid and Pelosi are running Congress, you got nothing. Here’s what he said.
HANNAN: If you repeat our mistakes, if you shift power from the 50 states to Washington, from the elected representative to the federal czar, from the citizen to the state, we know exactly what lies in store for you. I’ve been a member of the European parliament for 12 years. I am living in your future, or at least the future towards which your present leaders seem intent on taking you. And believe me, my friends, you are not going to enjoy it.
RUSH: He continued thus.
HANNAN: European health care, European day care, European college education, European nuclear disarmament, European carbon taxes, the whole package. And I’ll tell you, when you adopt those things, you don’t just become like any other country. You become less prosperous, less independent, less Democratic, and less free. We are at the end of the road that you have just set out along. We’re screeching towards the cliff, and a couple of us, a very small number of us in the parliaments of Europe are trying desperately to jam the brakes on while there is still time. And you know what? We look up and what do we see in our rearview mirror, we see you trying to overtake us, accelerating frantically in the direction that we have been going in. My friends, there is still time to turn aside.
RUSH: This is a profound warning because it comes from somebody who’s living where we are, or where we’re headed. He’s there. That first bite, if you repeat our mistakes, if you shift power from the 50 states to Washington, I’m living in your future, at least the future towards which your present leaders seem intent on taking you. And believe me, my friends, you are not going to enjoy it. You’re going to enjoy less freedom, you’ll become less prosperous, less independent, less Democratic. By the way, all of that will happen if Obamacare alone is implemented. That’s all it would require. But, of course, Obamacare is not all that’s on Obama’s agenda. But with just that, Daniel Hannan is correct. Here’s the final sound bite.
HANNAN: Let me end with a heartfelt imprecation from a British conservative who loves his country, to American conservatives who still believe in theirs. Honor the vision of your founders, cleave to the most sublime Constitution devised by human intelligence. Don’t be the generation that cuts itself off from the wisdom of your fathers and disinherits your children. Never be afraid to speak to and for the soul of this nation, of which by good fortune and God’s grace you are privileged to be a part. God bless you, my friends, God bless America, and God bless the alliance of the free English speaking nations. Thank you.
RUSH: Daniel Hannan. That was Saturday afternoon, Washington, at CPAC. And he also made the point that while the presidential election is important, that gaining ground in Congress is as important. It is just as crucial. The best president in the world could be elected, and if Pelosi and Reid are running the House and the Senate, it won’t matter who the president is, he’ll be stopped at every turn. Because if Pelosi and Reid are running the House and the Senate, the media is right behind ’em. Powerful stuff from Daniel Hannan and Sarah Palin, we’ll have her sound bites coming up. (interruption) No, I’ve not forgotten. We’re gonna do the Paul Rahe analysis of the Catholic Church and how it ended up where it is now vis-a-vis Obama’s lie about — I told you on Friday nothing had changed. In fact, it got worse with Obama’s little announcement on Friday morning that he’s gonna pass the buck, and now the insurance companies will have to provide free contraception and all. It got worse.
This is one of the biggest tricks played in American politics, and Obama was counting on the fact that all he had to do was stand up and say, “Okay, okay, I’ve heard you, church won’t have to buy it, we’ll do it.” I said at the end of it, it’s still the law of the land that the government is requiring contraception, abortion-related facilities, to be provided. It is wholly unconstitutional. The president does not have the power, nor the ability, nor the freedom himself to do what he did. I remember there were people Friday morning cheering, “We beat Obama!” You didn’t beat Obama. You didn’t beat him back. You didn’t do anything. It is as bad, if not worse. And that is the context of the Paul Rahe piece. Wait ’til you hear it. It’s profound. We’ll get to Sarah Palin and her CPAC speech when we get back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Sarah Palin standing up for capitalism, and bringing down the house at CPAC.
PALIN: He says that he has a jobs plan out now, a jobs plan to “Win the Future.” WTF.
AUDIENCE: (laughing)
PALIN: I know! And I’m the idiot. “WTF” plan. Well, he’ll invest your money in bullet trains to nowhere, but he’ll stop Boeing from building airplanes anywhere.
AUDIENCE: (applause)
PALIN: Bankrupt green energy companies get sweeeeeet loans and grant offers, but oil pipelines? Not allowed to give you job offers. We say his plan isn’t “Winning the Future.” It is losing our country. We have a better jobs plan, and it’s called the free market —
AUDIENCE: (applause)
PALIN: — and it worked before this president, and it will work again after this president!
RUSH: The applause went on and on and on, but we edited it so that we could get all these bites in in one segment.
PALIN: We’ve suffered massive job losses out there. Washington is hiring, but the question is: They’re hiring for what? They don’t manufacture, they don’t mine, they don’t drill, they don’t harvest. They produce nothing. And the service that they provide, they increase dependency, not freedom. They don’t create wealth, they take it. This is Obama’s Washington. It’s not the Washington of our Founders, but the Washington of the permanent political class. It is something that our forefathers never envisioned — and they would have sworn their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor to change.
RUSH: Sarah Palin. That’s Saturday. She did the keynote. One minor bit of disagreement: The Founders most definitely envisioned this. They fled it. They most definitely envisioned it, in the sense they feared that it was the natural state of things. The Constitution was to be the exception. I’m not… What she means to say is that they never dreamed that somebody like Obama would come along and have this kind of success in this country, but they clearly envisioned this kind of government. They knew it was the history of the world. And that’s why the Constitution was written, and that’s why it was put together as it was. Just a minor little point, but that’s the brilliance of it. That’s why it survives intact, with its original intent, from the 1700s, from the Eighteenth Century forward. Here’s more from Sarah Palin CPAC on Saturday…
PALIN: The conservative movement has never been stronger or brighter with people at the grassroots. And yet, the federal government has never cast a bigger shadow. So for the last three years we’ve been waving a bold banner that shouts, “Don’t tread on me!” See, the Tea Party rose up because Americans woke up.
AUDIENCE: (applause)
PALIN: And our movement, it is bigger than one person. It is bigger than one candidate. It is bigger than one party. It’s about one country united under God. We aren’t red Americans. We’re not blue Americans. We’re red, white, and blue —
AUDIENCE: (applause)
PALIN: — and President Obama, we are through with you!
RUSH: A little Reverend Jackson rhyme in there from Sarah Palin, and she was just getting revved up.
PALIN: When I listened to his State of the Union last month, I was really struck that he barely mentioned unemployment and entitlements. What did he talk about? He gave us more promises. Promises to give us, quote, “an economy built to last.” Well, Mr. President, we don’t want an economy built to last. We want an economy built to grow, and we certainly don’t want your economy built to last.
AUDIENCE: (applause)
PALIN: We want your administration to end.
AUDIENCE: (wild cheering and applause)
RUSH: Right on! Right on, right on, right on. And she was then on Fox News Sunday. Chris Wallace interviewed her. He said, “Do you trust that Mitt Romney is an instinctive conservative?”
PALIN: I trust that his idea of conservatism is evolving, and I base this on a pretty moderate past that he has had, even in some cases a liberal past. I am not convinced and I don’t think that the majority of GOP and independent voters are convinced, and that is why you don’t see Romney get over that hump. He’s still in the 30-percentile mark when it comes to approval and primary wins and caucus wins. He still hasn’t risen above that yet because we are not convinced.
RUSH: Sarah Palin on Mitt Romney. Given that, let’s move forward to sound bite 16. Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Candy Crowley had Santorum on. She said, “You had a great first of the week with that sweep of three states. Not such a great Saturday. I found it surprising that CPAC, this collection — basically your base that’s fueled your campaign — of conservative groups had a straw poll; they voted for Romney, 38 to 31%. What happened there, Rick?”
SANTORUM: The straw polls, um, at CPAC, uh, as you know, for years Ron Paul has won those because he just trucks in a lot of people. He pays for their ticket, and they come in and vote, and then they leave. And — and I’m not… You know, we didn’t do that. Uh, we don’t do that. Uh, I don’t… I, uh, don’t try to rig straw polls.
REPORTER: Do you think —
SANTORUM: I — I know that there were some, uh, un — unhappiness at the announcement.
REPORTER: Do you think Governor Romney rigged it?
SANTORUM: Well, you have to talk to the Romney campaign, uh, and, uh — and how many — how many tickets they bought. We’ve heard all sorts of things.
RUSH: Well, now, I don’t remember where I read it, but somebody I read this morning is accusing Romney of doing that. I don’t know if it’s Santorum. Well, it’s obviously not Santorum because he denied it there, but somebody… Maybe it was just a friend of mine casually mentioning it. I don’t recall. But Romney, by the way, won straw polls at CPAC in a lot of years in the past, in the years that Ron Paul didn’t win it. And the years that Ron Paul did, that’s exactly what happened. He just bussed a bunch of people in, paid for their ticket to get into CPAC, they voted, and they left. This can happen, is the point. Frankly, does it mean anything? At the end of the day, it doesn’t mean one thing. It doesn’t mean one delegate. The straw poll is not gonna provide momentum; it’s not gonna kill momentum. Romney won the CPAC straw poll in ’07, ’08, and ’09, and he came in second to Ron Paul in 2010 and 2011, and what did it mean? Not to put CPAC down. There are just certain things that happen here that don’t really matter all that much and straw polls anywhere are one of them.