RUSH: Lafayette, Indiana, Josh, great to have you on the program. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you today?
RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Glad to hear it. The point I have today is with all these campaigns and elections, the candidates that we need to be skeptical of are the ones who wish to label themselves as fiscal conservatives. My thought on the matter is, why make that distinguishment? If you’re a conservative, then you’re already a fiscal conservative. If you’re not, then maybe you’re a social liberal.
RUSH: Well, of course that’s the answer.
CALLER: You can’t be both.
RUSH: Fiscal conservative is somebody who wishes the social issues would not rear their head in politics or —
CALLER: I’d like to call ’em a hyphenated liberal.
RUSH: Well, that works.
CALLER: The hyphen is silent.
RUSH: Look, folks, this is really nothing new. If we can go back to the archives of this program, even during the beginning of the Obama regime, I talked about the divisions in the Republican Party, and I told you that the social issues are the dividing point. I told you. I told you there are a bunch of country club, blue-blooders who don’t want the social issues to be anywhere near Republican Party politics. They don’t want anything to do with it. This is one of the things that’s so frustrating people. Here’s Obama, he’s up there again, he’s out in Parma, Ohio. He’s delivering a speech on the economy. (imitating Obama) ‘We tried it their way. Last ten years. All those policies got us in this mess. They want us to go back.’ Utter lies. Utter, utter lies. We’re in this mess because of him. Nineteen, 20, whatever it is, months of him, is why we’re in this mess. Right now the whole notion of Republicans saying, ‘We’ll, it’s the social issues.’ Broom ’em if you want to, but I mean don’t sit there and try to get them out of the political sphere. It’s a shame that they’re in there, but they are. It’s a reality that’s going to have to be dealt with. But I guarantee the vast majority of Americans right now are not opposed to Obama because he may be pro-choice. Anyway, thanks for the call out there, Josh.
This is Patrick in Wasilla, Alaska. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Great to be on the program, Rush. Thanks.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: Like I told your screener I think that this November’s election will go down as the war against the incumbent in history. I mean there’s a lot of new registration to vote, you know, coming out of the last three years, national interest and everything and a lot of these people coming out to vote, they haven’t been politically indoctrinated, they’re not using political logic, they’re using common sense. And their common sense is telling them that the people who are responsible for how a job has gotten done are the people who have been doing it.
RUSH: Do you think that these new arrivals are holding all incumbents equally responsible?
CALLER: Yes. They are. I mean common sense, you know, it does dictate that they are responsible. They’re the ones that’s there, they’re the ones that —
RUSH: Wait a minute. But there are conservative incumbents who are not gonna lose. This is a war against liberalism. We’re in this mess because of three and a half years of the Democrats controlling the purse strings in Congress. We’re in this mess because of Obama being in charge of the government along with Pelosi and Reid for the last 19, 20 months. They’ve had it for a couple years before that. The media would love you to believe this is a war against incumbents, but it’s a war against liberalism.
CALLER: Well, if you want to consider liberalism growing more dependent state by state on federal funding, okay, I mean basically we’ve grown our dependency on federal funding in each state by making it the name of the game, okay, we’ve been electing politicians over years that are saying they’re gonna go back and get us the most money, not free up the most opportunity in this country, okay, not like free market capitalism, you know, where we go get opportunity for our state. Instead we’re just going and getting the cash, which all’s that’s doing is growing our dependency.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: Okay. Now, we have all kinds of resources, especially in Alaska. We want those resources freed up so that we can grow private sector wealth, grow private sector jobs, okay, and we’re not going to do that by continuing to have our federal government say, ‘Well, no, don’t take that, take this cash instead,’ okay? We need to get away from that. We need to get away from —
RUSH: I understand what you’re saying. I totally agree, but that is ideological. You’ve got some Republicans who believe in that kind of stuff that you just described, but they’re not conservative Republicans and they are vulnerable. It’s what this is all about. This is a war against liberalism! This is a war against socialism. It’s not just a war against — you can call it statism, you’ve just described statism. You just described the government giving benefits away in exchange for votes. Yeah, there’s some Republicans that have done that, and they may be vulnerable as well. But they aren’t conservatives. Dependency on the government is liberalism, socialism, or even worse. Patrick, thanks much. I appreciate it.
Stuart, Florida. This is Don. You’re next on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Okay, I believe that Obama is 100% the cause of this recession mess we’re in, and I am disappointed that Republicans and talk radio let Obama get away with blaming Bush and the Republicans for the mess he inherited. Bush did a good job even with a Democrat Congress. If you look at the timeline the economy was in a nosedive when Clinton left office. Even with 9/11, hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, and floods —
RUSH: Pestilence, too.
CALLER: — the third year of the Bush second term, unemployment was only 5%. Home foreclosures were only 5%. Obama started running for office in the fourth year of Bush’s second administration. He talked about taxing the rich. He talked about taxing the corporations. He talked about raising the capital gains tax and as a result the rich started taking their money out of the stock market and the stock market went down the tubes, the corporations started laying people off, therefore the unemployment rate skyrocketed, and with people out of work they could no longer pay for the homes and the loans that they had incurred.
RUSH: Nobody disputes that, but your premise is that nobody’s getting on the Democrats or Obama for blaming Bush. And a lot of people are. A lot of people are telling Obama, ‘Grow up. You can’t keep blaming everything on Bush.’ Anyway, appreciate the call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ve been watching Obama here during the break. Those of you watching on the Dittocam today, I’ve got to apologize. I’m yawning. For some reason I’m fighting fatigue here. I’m watching Obama and I almost fell asleep. The audience is almost asleep in this speech out in Parma, Ohio. (imitating Obama) ‘I think you need a break. We gotta have these middle-class tax cuts, need to be permanent, you need a break.’ Smattering applause. It’s listless. And he’s attacking Boehner. I don’t think the people in the crowd care. Anyway, we’ll have audio sound bites from this either later this afternoon, probably tomorrow.
‘Even America’s Liberal Elites Concede that Obama’s Presidency is Crumbling.’ It’s a headline today from the UK Telegraph by Niles Gardiner. Here’s how it begins: ‘Democrats in Congress are no longer asking themselves whether this is going to be a bad election year for them and their party. They are asking whether it is going to be a disaster. The GOP pushed deep into Democratic-held territory over the summer, to the point where the party is well within range of picking up the 39 seats it would need to take control of the House. Overall, as many as 80 House seats could be at risk, and fewer than a dozen of these are held by Republicans. Political handicappers now say it is conceivable that the Republicans could also win the 10 seats they need to take back the Senate. Not since 1930 has the House changed hands without the Senate following suit. Is this a piece from National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal or Fox News.com, all major conservative news outlets in the United States? No. It’s a direct quote from yesterday’s Washington Post, usually viewed by conservatives as a flagship of the liberal establishment inside the Beltway.’ Last sentence of the story: ‘What was once a perspective confined largely to Fox News, online conservative news sites, or talk radio is now gaining ground in the liberal US print media as well — historic change is coming to America, though not quite the version promised by Barack Obama.’
And then CNNMoney.com: ‘Obama’s Jobs Pitch Fails to Dazzle Washington.’ If you can’t dazzle CNN anymore, you are in deep doo-doo. I mean the Obama magic has gotta be gone, if you can’t dazzle CNN?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Jay in Merritt Island, Florida, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, I have the greatest respect for you. You’re one of my heroes. But you said something a few minutes ago that I do take umbrage with.
RUSH: What’s that?
CALLER: I am a fiscal conservative, extremely so.
RUSH: I didn’t say —
CALLER: I am very much so but I couldn’t care less if Mary Ellen has a baby or she has an abortion. I don’t care if Tom and Harry get married. What I care about is Obama spending my grandchildren’s money. That’s all I care about, and I resent being called a liberal. Even a hyphenated liberal I resent.
RUSH: I didn’t call you that! I didn’t call you that.
CALLER: Well, I heard ‘hyphenated liberal’ was somebody who wasn’t —
RUSH: Well, it must have been a caller.
CALLER: — a conservative the social side.
RUSH: It was a caller. I didn’t call you (laughing) a hyphenated liberal. What this guy was —
CALLER: All right. If you’re not calling me a ‘hyphenated liberal,’ I forgive you.
RUSH: Yeah. (laughing) Sorry that you misunderstood.
CALLER: Okay. Straighten me out.
RUSH: (laughing) I understand where you’re coming from. You don’t want any social issues to matter.
CALLER: I couldn’t care less. What does it mean to me if Harry and Tom get married?
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: I’m beyond that.
RUSH: No, I know that, but there are some people who when they describe themselves as ‘fiscal conservatives’ —
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: — are trying to say they are pro-choice/pro-abortion, and this is what the guy was saying.
CALLER: Oh, no. If they’re hiding behind the words, that’s one thing.
RUSH: That’s what he was talking about. That’s what he was talking about.
CALLER: But if you really are fiscally conservative, that’s as conservative as you really have to be. Couldn’t care less. What difference does it make what other people do with their lives? As long as they don’t affect us and don’t affect us in a way that’s negative, that’s all.
RUSH: Well, to some people it does matter but I understand where you’re coming from, particularly at this point in our country’s history and the crossroads where we’re at. You know, whether Tom sleeps with Dick is really not the big thing right now. What Obama’s doing to destroy the country is. Nobody disagrees with you about that. His point was… I don’t have time to explain it. But all I can tell you is, I didn’t call you a hyphenated American.
CALLER: No, no, not ‘American,’ no, no, no. Hyphenated liberal.
RUSH: Hyphenated conservative, liberal, whatever. I didn’t use the word. It wasn’t me!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It’s ironic to me, folks. It’s amazing. A man who has such large ears could be so tone deaf to the American people. This speech in which he just launched a personal vendetta against Boehner is just going to elevate Boehner for no reason. This is all about fixing Obama’s image. It wasn’t about fixing the American economy or anything else.