×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

Listen to it Button

RUSH: Now, folks, this IRS business. The things that we went back in our archives and found, as usual, Obama’s trying to make it look like he knew nothing about it. He had no knowledge of it. It’s reprehensible. It’s outrageous. He’s gonna get to the bottom of it. He’s gonna find out who did this — if they did it. He’s gonna take appropriate action. How come he didn’t issue a statement over the weekend? I’m telling you, everybody involved here had to be dragged kicking and screaming.

In fact, the New York Times knew about what the IRS was doing back in March of 2012, over a year ago. The New York Times knew about this, and guess what? They were applauding it. There’s an editorial in the New York Times, “The IRS Does Its Job.” March 7th, 2012. From the editorial: “Taxpayers should be encouraged by complaints from Tea Party chapters applying for nonprofit tax status at being asked by the Internal Revenue Service to prove they are ‘social welfare’ organizations and not the political activists they so obviously are.

“Such IRS inquiries are long overdue, should be applied across the board to the growing number of organizations allied with major political parties that are also ludicrously posing as social welfare groups.” Now, you note the New York Times never writes things like that about such groups as Media Matters, which there’s not. There’s no way Media Matters qualifies as a nonpartisan, tax-exempt group. But the New York Times knew about this in March of 2012.

They knew about it because Tea Party people were complaining about it, and the New York Times was encouraging the IRS in this. “Chief among these groups…” This is, again, from the New York Times editorial 2012. “Chief among these groups are American Crossroads, the campaign machine created by Republican guru Karl Rove and Priorities USA, the Democratic counterpart founded by former White House aides, now openly encouraged by Obama as he runs for reelection.”

That line above shows that this was targeting American Crossroads and Priorities USA, and the New York Times was all for it. Just four or five days ago, the New York Times had an editorial mocking the Republican efforts on Benghazi. Just four or five days ago. Now that’s blown wide open. So the idea that this Tea Party targeting by the IRS is something somebody just discovered and only recently learned about is silly. This was known years ago. In fact, the IRS commissioner Lois Lerner has admitted that all this was going on as far back as 2011.

I went back to our archives here and I found some things that will jog your memory. This is a Breitbart.com story from April 3rd of this year. “Obama: Government Tyranny Impossible Because ‘Government Is Us.'” He was in Colorado. Obama was out pushing gun control. He “made an astonishing statement about gun rights advocates’ fears of governmental gun seizures. He said that such worries would just feed ‘into fears about government. You hear some of these folks: “I need a gun to protect myself from the government. ‘We can’t do background checks because the government’s going to come take my guns away.” The government’s us. These officials are elected by you … I am constrained as they are constrained by the system that our founders put in place.'”

No, friends, that’s the problem. The government is not us anymore. The government is governing against the will of the people. You go issue by issue by issue, whatever it is, gun control, vast majority don’t want what the government is doing. Obamacare. Vast majority don’t want what the government is doing. Issue by issue by issue. This has been the whole bugaboo. Every Obama issue is opposed by a majority, sometimes a big majority of the American people. Yet every Obama initiative is being implemented. And in polling data — this is what gave birth to the Limbaugh Theorem — in polling data, people in poll after poll after poll, by majorities of sometimes into the 60 percentiles, oppose Obama’s agenda, oppose his policies. But yet these same people give Obama a soaring approval rating.

They don’t associate his policies with the direction of the country. That’s what had me doing circles trying to figure out how does this work. How is it that people oppose everything Obama’s doing but yet they don’t associate Obama’s policies with what’s happening in the country? And it’s because Obama is seen as constantly campaigning and not governing, and therefore not really being in charge of everything, and that’s why his answer today to the question about the IRS is right out of the Limbaugh Theorem. (imitating Obama) “I didn’t know what was going on, just a rogue group over there, low-level workers. If it’s happening, we’re gonna find out about it,” as though he’s got no fingerprints on it, nothing to do with it. When in fact he is behind everything that’s happening in this government.

He has people in positions in this bureaucracy that are picked and chosen by him or people anointed by him and he’s got like-minded people everywhere. And some of them predate him, some of these career appointees. You know, the left infests government. So the idea here that all of this is happening in a vacuum and Obama doesn’t know anything about it, not true. And this government is not us. That’s the big problem. This no longer is a government of, by, and for the people. This is a government governing against the will of the people. We pay the government to protect the liberties that we are guaranteed by the Constitution. They are working to undermine them.

The Obama regime uses government to punish people. The Obama regime is using government to investigate people. The Obama administration is using government to intimidate people, to mislead people. The IRS is not just collecting money. It’s collecting information. You ought to see the questionnaire that these Tea Party groups were given. Not questionnaire, I mean the form they were given to fill out. They had to define family members’ political preferences, issues they cared about, actual life experiences they had engaged in. I mean, it was one of the biggest information grabs I have ever seen, a Tea Party group applying for tax-exempt status.

I’d never seen anything like it, and I still haven’t seen anything like it. And look at Obama in this statement in Denver. “I am constrained, as they are constrained, by the system that our founders put in place.” That is an unwitting statement of truth. He is constrained — what does constrained mean? It means things I can’t do. Why is he even thinking about things he can’t do? There are things he wants to do. There are all kinds of executive orders and waiving of the presidential wand to make it happen he would love to do. But the Constitution’s in his way, and he wishes it weren’t.

Be wary, folks, of any politician who talks about the Constitution and uses things like “I am constrained.”

“Don’t worry. We’re not trying take your guns away. I’m constrained from doing that. Even if I wanted to, I can’t because of the Constitution.” The fact that he admits “I am constrained as are all government officials constrained by the system” — I don’t look at this system as constraining. I look at this system as liberating. I look at the US Constitution, the declaration, our founding documents as liberating. Obama doesn’t. The Democrats don’t. They look at them as limiting them. Liberating individual liberty and freedom, that’s the problem, as far as Obama and his gang are concerned.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The Internal Revenue Service began targeting Tea Party groups in March of 2010. Do you remember what happened in March of 2010? Think now. What happened in March of 2010. I’ll give you, in fact, the exact date: March 21st, 2010. Obamacare was signed into law, and immediately the Tea Party groups began to be harassed and investigated by the IRS. This was before the 2010 midterms, which we now know were a Republican blowout, or, better stated, a Tea Party blowout. It was March 21st that Obamacare was signed into law, and that same month is when the IRS began targeting Tea Party groups.

Here’s a story from The Politico that is at least a couple years old. “[Joe] Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting. ‘We have negotiated with terrorists,’ an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. ‘This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.’ Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: ‘They have acted like terrorists.'”

They were talking about the Tea Party. “They have acted like terrorists.” How about Big Sis? Does anybody remember Big Sis? Janet Napolitano had to apologize for offending veterans after the Department of Homeland Security targeted them for right-wing extremism. Shortly after I think it was again 2010, maybe late in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning law enforcement groups to be very wary of certain groups who were likely to commit domestic terrorism.

And the groups that she named included veterans returning home from combat, various right-wing groups, right-wing extremists concerned about illegal immigration, abortion, increasing federal power, and restriction on firearms. Janet Reno’s successor — well, in spirit, anyway. Janet Napolitano issued this report in Homeland Security, labeling veterans and Tea Parties as right-wing extremists, prime suspects for future terrorism. Is it any wonder the IRS would follow through?

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This