RUSH: I started out last hour asking, ‘If we’re so dead, if conservatism is so dead, why aren’t they 
dancing on the grave? Why do they try to kill us every day if we’re already dead? Why they keep trying to jam the stake in our hearts?’ Because we’re not dead. They only want you to think we’re dead. They want to dispirit anybody from standing up to oppose Obama. So yesterday I get wind of this listening tour, and I didn’t go out and attack anybody personally on this tour. Jeb and these people. The headline said Jeb was saying ignore Reagan. I gave Jeb the benefit of the doubt. Based on what I read, Jeb didn’t say that. The headline said it, but I don’t think Jeb said it. Romney. I didn’t rip these people personally. I just said we don’t need to pander. We don’t need to be going out and listening. We need to teach. Well, Debbie Dingell — she’s Democrat ‘strategist,’ Debbie Dingell — was on MSNBC this afternoon and the host, David Shuster, said, ‘Putting aside for a second the party issues, generally when a party is on a listening tour as opposed to a teaching tour, that’s a problem, isn’t it?’
DINGELL: No, I don’t think so, quite frankly. I think teaching tours can be, uh, eh, eh, show a sign of arrogance. I think democracy is that you’re of the people and you need to listen to the people. You do need to have sharing of ideas, but just the word ‘teaching’ is arrogant to me; which I think Rush Limbaugh can be, at times.
RUSH: (laughing) Throw me in this mix. Of course, I’m the one that came up with the notion we need to have a teaching tour. Ms. Dingell, let me tell you what’s arrogant. What’s arrogant is the president of the United States saying he’s gonna ‘remake’ this country. Remake it from what? What’s so bad about it? He’s going to remake it to what? What’s so good about what he’s gonna do? He doesn’t have that constitutional authority, to remake this country. And believe me, all these people talk about listening to the American people, like Obama said he was? He’s not listening to anybody. He’s making a show of listening. He’s a big show of making people think he’s listening to them instead of doing what they want.
He is a committed left-wing ideologue demagogue who is doing everything to implement his agenda as quickly as possible, regardless what anybody thinks. He’s not even trying to teach people! He’s misleading. The president of the United States is misleading people about his intentions, misleading people about the results of these policy ideas of his. They are horrible. They are destructive. They’re going to put this nation in hock like we’ve never been in hock before. Everything Barack Obama has touched is broken. The automobile industry, he bailed it out. He was going to fix it. It’s broken! Wall Street is broken. Everything Obama claims he’s fixing, — and, sadly, a lot of people believe — is broken.
Instead of taking over things in the private sector where he has no business being, Ms. Dingell, how about Social Security and Medicare? Unfunded liabilities to $77 trillion in those programs, not one thing being done about it? Wait ’til that comes due. You people that believe in government have got enough messes in government that you’ve made that have to be fixed without meddling in the private sector and screwing it up, too, all under the guise of doing a listening tour. This is why we do need a teaching tour. We need to teach people what’s actually being done by way of deceit. An intricate web of deceit is being woven by Obama and this administration. They’re misleading people entirely.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Joe Scarborough today talking to Mike Pence of Indiana, and during the interview, they have this exchange again about me and the Republican Party.
SCARBOROUGH: Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that GOP shouldn’t pander by going on a listening tour, they should go on a teaching tour. What say you, sir?
PENCE: Well, I — you know, I — you know, I love Rush, and — but I think the —
SCARBOROUGH: Be careful.
PENCE: — I think the objective here of the energy summit we’re going to have today on Capitol Hill featuring former Governor John Engler, now head of the National Association of Manufacturers, is going to be about leaders in Washington, DC, listening and learning and helping to educate the American people about the real cost of the so-called cap-and-trade legislation.
RUSH: It’s exactly what I’m saying! Scarborough and these guys are trying to twist this, and even Pence says, ‘We’re going to listen.’ They’re gonna listen to experts about cap and trade so they can do, what, educate the American people about the truth of it. A teaching tour. If you don’t like teaching, if that offends you, and I hope it doesn’t, then call it a reminder tour or whatever. But somebody has got to go out and teach the truth about what Obama’s doing and also remind people who and what conservatism is. Snerdley has a question. Hm-hm. My audience already knows the dangers to cap and trade because I’ve been explaining it to them for two years, and how did I do that? I taught them. I did not arrogantly remind them about cap and trade. I said, ‘Folks, there’s something happening out there I think you ought to know about.’ There’s no arrogance involved in it. I did not listen to them before I came up with my opinion on cap and trade, I told ’em and if they called and asked me questions about it, I answered the questions. But I didn’t learn about cap and trade by running around asking people or listening to people, other than the people who are experts in the field.
Now, we are experts in conservatism. Therefore, we ought to be the ones teaching it. I’m sorry to lose my patience here, folks. If you are an expert, what the hell do you have to gain by listening to people who aren’t? We got phony experts and so forth. You get my drift on this. This is all done with the best of intentions? I don’t even get credit for that. I don’t get credit for even having good intentions. I’m just a mean polarizing, arrogant SOB. I don’t even get credit for whining — (crying) — because everybody is trying to tell me how to do it. I was getting notes during my little monologue about Jack Kemp. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I think of Jack Kemp.’ Didn’t affect me, stuck to what I wanted to say about Jack Kemp. But it happens all the time. And, you know, it really is no more complicated than this, folks. The easier you make something look, the more everybody else thinks they can do it. It’s a trait of greatness. ‘There he goes, now he’s resorted to his pompous braggadocio personality.’ It’s a good thing I love myself, or I would be in a straightjacket. I’d be in a straightjacket.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Snerdley or anybody else on the staff that’s got the time, I need a research project done. I want you to go back to 1979, 1980, and then 1984, and I want you to find me all the dates of the Ronald Reagan listening tour. I want you to find me every date Ronald Reagan listened, scheduled a listening tour during his two campaigns for president. In fact, 1976, too, when he was trying to get the Republican GOP nomination. Find me all the dates that Reagan had his listening tour.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Russ, Lancaster, California. Great to have you with us, Russ. Hello.
CALLER: Good morning, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: I was calling because I was kind of wanting to get your input. You know how the Democrats are always espousing education as everything we need, and yet when you talk about education they try and slam you on it, when you talk about your teaching tour.
RUSH: Right. That’s because they’re afraid of it. That’s exactly the point. It’s because they are afraid of it.
CALLER: (garbled cell) Why aren’t the Republicans taking them to task on this?
RUSH: Say that again? I’m sorry.
CALLER: I’m sorry. Why aren’t the Republicans taking them to task on this?
RUSH: Why aren’t the Republicans taking them to task on it?
CALLER: Taking the Democratic media to task on this. (garbled)
RUSH: Because the media is not criticizing the Republicans; the media is criticizing me.
CALLER: Yeah, but all we hear —
RUSH: The Republicans say they’re going on a listening tour. That’s fine with the media. The media is fine. ‘Go listen all you want.’ What they don’t want is for Republicans to start teaching conservatism. I’m the one advocating that. That’s why they’re coming after me. Look, I can’t answer the question. I’ve been asked for 20 years, in one form or another, ‘Why don’t the Republicans defend? Why didn’t Bush defend? Why don’t they attack? Why don’t they refute?’ I don’t know. I’ve speculated on every possible answer, and I fail to come up with one. I probably answered it in trying to cover them all, but I can’t tell you for certain. When I’ve asked them, they say, ‘Well, if we try, we won’t get media coverage. The media will simply not cover us responding.’ That’s what they say.