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What’s in Store for GOP Newbies?

by Rush Limbaugh - Nov 2,2010

RUSH: Here is Sheila in Toledo. Great to have you on the program, Sheila. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. This is such a big thrill to talk to you and I always thought if I ever got a chance to talk to you that there would be something that I’d want to share and Snerdley said it would be okay before I got to my point and I wanted to tell you that I think you’re a better leader than Obama is because you’re always encouraging us, and he’s all doom and gloom, and I think that’s why you make today so much fun is ’cause it’s just a holiday and it’s because of you. And the other thing I wanted to share, Rush, is that you’ve said a couple of times that we have like a familial relationship, and I just agree with that so much. When you came back from your honeymoon you gave some advice to your audience, and you said, ‘Never give up.’ And that affected me as strongly as if you were my brother, Rush. It sank way down deep and I just appreciate you.

RUSH: Thank you very, very much. I’m trying to figure out what happened on my honeymoon that would want me to tell you never to give up.

CALLER: Well, you were talking about how it can happen regardless of where you in life that you can find the one.

RUSH: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, okay, okay, right. Now, look, Sheila. Hang on. I got another one of those Obscene Profit Breaks I have to take here and we’ll come back right to you after this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back now to Sheila in Toledo. Okay, Sheila, what was the reason for your call?

CALLER: Well, a few days ago you were talking about something on Drudge about that the Republican leadership was gonna pre-assign staff for the Tea Party people when they got to DC, and it made me think back to when Michele Bachmann organized a caucus for the Tea Party people, and at the time I thought, well, that’s pretty optimistic. And now I think that she’s one shrewd cookie and it was very astute of her to get that lined up. And I wonder if that will be like an anecdote to what the old guard is gonna try and do.

RUSH: Well, there are some, Michele Bachmann is one of them. Look, standard operating procedure that staff, experienced staff are appointed for newbies, newly arrived members of Congress, the freshmen. And it is done because the newbies are newbies, they need to be shown the way of the world, how it works. I’ve been to a couple of orientations. I went to one that DeLay did at the Library of Congress and I listened to DeLay explain to the newbies how the Library of Congress was theirs and how they could use it, what it was for. Now, the story about staff being appointed is a little bit in some cases, shall we say suspect, as one of the theories behind it is that certain members of the existing leadership want to have spies on the newbies, and they want to have staff in there to try to thwart the newbies from really doing what they have been elected to do. In other words, they go in there and make sure they do the leadership’s bidding.

Now, Michele Bachmann and others are going to do what they can to see to it that this doesn’t happen. It’s gonna be interesting to watch. But it is standard operating procedure. This is not unusual for the existing staff to be appointed to newbies. Look, it happens on the Democrat side, too. Luis Gutierrez from Illinois, he agreed be interviewed by me in the Limbaugh Letter because he had said publicly and confirmed something I had always told people, that elected Democrats in the House, new ones are brought in, the Speaker tells them, ‘Look, here’s the lay of the land. If you want to have a chance at increasing your power, you want to move into the leadership ranks here, if you want to have guaranteed reelection, if you want outside your district reelection money, then you vote the way we tell you. If you don’t, you are a man alone on an island and we don’t care what happens to you,’ and Luis Gutierrez basically said one day that this is what he was told when he got there, and he said it on I think 60 Minutes. He agreed to be in the Limbaugh Letter to be interviewed by me. He refused after having agreed to me, and I’m sure somebody got to him, and said, ‘Hey, Luis, we’ll forgive you this time but don’t say that again.’ It was a bipartisan moment here, and it didn’t happen. But that’s okay. We understood it.