RUSH: This is Rick in Clarkston, Michigan. Back to Michigan we are. Great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Thank you. Mega dittos, Rush. A question — a statement, really. Obama mentioned all these “phony scandals” and they were a “distraction.” Yet if we were listening to the pundits like Valerie Jarrett and James Carney and everybody, this guy is the smartest guy in the room. His IQ’s off the charts. He’s the deepest thinker. Well, he’s the president of the United States. Can’t he multitask?
RUSH: Well, it’s a great question. But remember who his audience is. A, he’s speaking to the choir out in Illinois. So he’s got basically… Those audiences of his are screened. He’s got sycophants in the audience. He’s speaking to the choir. The next thing that happens is that his audience is low-information voters, and the low-information voters feel sorry for Obama. He has evoked sympathy.
So when he says that there are a bunch of distractions, remember: He blames everything on the Republicans. That’s the whole point. The whole strategy is that. Obama has been president for 4-1/2 years, and his objective has been to remain unattached to anything that has happened. His strategy, in addition to remaining unattached, is to be seen as opposing what has happened.
He’s the architect.
He’s made it happen.
It is his policies that have been implemented.
The Republicans don’t have any power! The Republicans don’t control anything! The Republicans can’t really stop much. Well, they could now, with the House, but they’ve shown very little inclination. But for much of this man’s administration, presidency, they haven’t been able to stop anything. The Republicans don’t have any power. All they can do is stop or delay, but they cannot advance their own agenda.
Yet Obama has succeeded (with the help of the media) in convincing low-information voters — and they are a lot of people, folks — that he’s trying real hard to fix things for them. He’s working real hard to get them affordable health care, while he is responsible for it soon being unaffordable and maybe unavailable. He’s telling them for now the nineteenth or twentieth time that he’s really, really worried about the economy and their jobs.
He’s working really, really hard to get them work, but the Republicans only care about the rich. While his policies have resulted in the loss of nearly nine million jobs! So your observation is, of course, a correct one. “What do you mean? These aren’t distractions? You can multitask. You’re a president. You’ve got power. These distractions only work if you want them to,” but that’s not how the low-information voter thinks.
The low-information voter thinks the world is united against this guy because he’s told them that it is. “Powerful forces are arrayed against him. They’re using all kinds of deceitful tricks and phony scandals to distract and delay our beloved young president from accomplishing his objectives.” The decline in racial relations is a great example of how Obama pretends to be doing one thing — bringing us together — while he’s actually doing the opposite.
Racial relations in this country are plummeting. Racial strife is rising. All the while, Obama is out there talking about unity and bringing us together. “We’re all in this together, and we gotta get together and work hard as a group to get this all fixed.” But while he’s doing that — or while he’s SAYING that — he’s actually making race relations worse. So it’s a correct observation you’re having, but it’s an observation that is made by a minority of people or voters or what have you.
Josh in southwest Ohio, you’re next. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Thank you, sir, for taking my calls. I wanted give you a little more ammunition about this Obamacare deal. He made a big promise that part of Obamacare would be we could keep our current plans. Nobody’s plans would be taken away. I am a pastor of a small church here in Ohio, and through our denomination, we have an agency that provides health insurance and life insurance and retirement and all that, so we could get group policies to supposedly make it more affordable.
But we got a letter in the mail 1st of July that stated, because of the Affordable Care Act, they are going to be no longer offering health insurance as part of that agency because of the rising costs. So we are gonna be forced to go out on our own to these health care exchanges, the state exchanges, the federal exchanges. We’ll be looking for private health care. But being in Ohio, we’re not doing a state exchange, so I’ve got to just wait and see what I’m gonna be able to do for my family, with my wife and my two little girls.
RUSH: This is by design. This is by design. This chaos, this uncertainty, this unavailability — or in some places it will be available, but it’s gonna be so cost-prohibitive, it’s gonna be so cost-expensive, price-expensive — is designed to force us eventually to single payer. Josh, this is happening all over the country. It’s happening to you in southwest Ohio. It’s happening all over the country. And, as I say, it’s happening on purpose.
Now, at first, Josh, if you can’t find an affordable policy, you will be allowed to pay a fine. For the first couple of years, the fine is not that expensive. The fine’s actually gonna be less than what a health insurance policy would cost you. That also is by design. That is so that you don’t buy health insurance, and that is supposed to harm the private sector health insurance market and eventually eliminate them.
If they have no customers, then they have no business.
Their going out of business is what Obama wants. Eventually, he wants everybody forced into an exchange, state or federal, where the government is solely in charge. It’ll be the only place you can go to get health insurance, the only place you can go to get access to care, and then eventually the federal government is gonna take it all over. That’s the plan in five to 10 years.
As I was saying at the top of the program, all of that implements in 2014.
Like, Josh, you say it’s happening to you now, and it is all over the country happening in a lot of places. For example: “The second-largest health insurance company in South Carolina is pulling out of the state at the end of the year because of the Affordable Care Act. Medical Mutual of Ohio is the parent company of the Carolina Care plan, which insures about 28,000 people in South Carolina. The company is also pulling out of Georgia and Indiana.
“Medical Mutual spokesman Ed Byers says, ‘Under new regulations, which are vast and quite complex, it is in our best interest to focus on our core market of Ohio where we are headquartered…'” So they’re pulling out all over the place. Now, I mentioned at the top of the program, there is probably gonna be one last chance to derail this final implementation, which is in January. What’s happening to you now, Josh, is going to be happening nationwide starting in January at a pretty rapid clip.
Yes, 2014 is the magic year for full implementation of Obamacare.
There is going to be one chance at the end of September to derail this and to maybe do a repeal of sorts, a defunding to make sure these things do not get implemented. That’s the continuing resolution fight coming up.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Sixty plus. “More than 60 Republicans have signed a letter urging Speaker John Boehner to defund Obamacare,” according to The Politico. Why only 60? Sounds like the Tea Party caucus to me. Sounds like that’s about it. The House isn’t… I don’t understand it. There’s no push-back on Benghazi. There’s no investigation on the IRS scandals. There’s no attempt here to defund Obamacare. Not much in the Senate, either. You know, folks, two things. You can make the point, okay, there aren’t that many conservatives in the Republican Party. Okay, fine, but the Republican Party’s still the Republican Party. It’s still an opposition party.
Where’s the push-back? What, are they all Democrats now? Okay, even if the Republican Party wants a new base — and I don’t doubt that that’s what’s going on — people ask me all the time, “Why is the House Republican leadership doing X, Y, or Z,” same thing in the Senate. I don’t think they like the base. I think they want to cast it aside, traditional base. They never have really liked it. Conservative base. They don’t want it. Get rid of it and then come back, live and fight another day, put together a new coalition. Well, fine and dandy. Even if you want to do that, you’re still the opposition party; there still isn’t any push-back. Forget conservative push-back against liberalism. What about the Republican Party opposing the Democrat Party, or is that out the window, too?
Now, this continuing resolution, we still don’t have a budget. We’re governed by continuing resolutions, and the one that we’re living under expires and will have to be renewed on September 30th, and there is going to be a big push by conservatives to use this as an opportunity to defund Obamacare and to try to eliminate the final implementation of these exchanges and some of these other mandates that are slated to become law next year. Now, I can tell you right now that there is no desire on the part of the Republican leadership to do this. Yet Tea Party Republicans in the House and a couple of Republican, maybe three or four senators, are gonna make this effort, and they’re going to do it by trying to rev you up.
I’ve talked to a number of these people, and you’ve heard them, and we’ve talked to ’em on the program, too, and they firmly believe that you can stop things by faxing, phoning, texting, e-mailing, they really believe it. They need and are going to need your assistance because there isn’t right now any desire to have a fight over the next continuing resolution. Not among the leadership. But the continuing resolution, “Well, Rush, you’re talking about a potential government shutdown, aren’t you?” Well, maybe, or at least a threatened one.
In the Senate it’s Mike Lee and Ted Cruz which are leading the charge to try to kill Obamacare in September via the continuing resolution. Now, there’s another thing that’s gonna happen before that. The congressional recess. The August recess starts on August the 5th, and so members of the House and Senate are gonna go home to their districts — well, some will go to the south of France and some will go to the arctic to check on the melting down there, and some will go to Antarctic and check on the melting down there and some will go to Bangkok ’cause there are more prostitutes per capita there than any other city.
They’ll fan out, but some of them are gonna stay home, and they’ll have their town hall meetings. And town hall meetings in 2010, and throughout 2009, is what led to the 2010 midterm success, and there are people that are hoping that that kind of thing will be repeated again. But it’s gonna come down to the wire, and there are elected Republican conservatives in the House and the Senate who are going to make one final effort here via this continuing resolution fight that will come up in September to make one last attempt to stop any further implementation of Obamacare. And I tell you what you’re gonna hear from these guys. They’re true believers, and you’re going to hear that if this fails, that this is it.
Once the full and final implementation of Obamacare occurs, then the full fledged entitlement is entrenched, and getting rid of it after all of it has been implemented has never been done before. I take it back. One time. The Medicare thing where the seasoned citizens pelted Rostenkowski in his car during the Reagan administration, they did one time, but it was in its very, very early days. It had not yet had time to become entrenched and the tentacles had not woven their way deeply into the fabric of society. Obamacare’s tentacles are already worming their way into deep, dark crevices throughout our the culture and extricating the tentacles that are there is a challenge in and of itself.
But this effort is gonna be made and they’re gonna lean on you. They’re gonna ask you to help. They’re gonna ask you to just pummel Washington with messages of “we don’t want this. You dare not let this happen.” And I know many people are gonna say, “You know, we’re tired of this. Why is it up to us? We’re not there. They know how we feel. Why do we have to keep reminding ’em?” I know what you’re gonna say about it. But it’s still gonna take your effort. It’s gonna require your involvement. And these guys all tell me it still works. It’s among the few things that do work. It was Reagan’s catastrophic Medicare coverage that was repealed. That was in 1988.