RUSH: Sunday morning on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS. He spoke with TIME Magazine economist Joe Klein about contraception and religious organizations. Fareed Zakaria says, “It seems clear that the raising of issues like contraception — you know, the issue with regard to what Catholic charities could or could not provide — net-net, that is helping the Democrats. Because it’s making a lot of independent women say, ‘Wait a minute. We don’t want people telling us what contraceptives we can use.'” And, see, nobody is. Nobody was telling anybody (women or otherwise) what contraceptives they could use. The Catholic Church was. There were religious organizations saying, “Wait a minute. We don’t believe in abortion, we don’t believe in this, and we’re not gonna provide it free of charge.”
The Constitution has a First Amendment guarding religious liberty. They can’t be forced to do this. Obama said to hell with that and forced them. The Catholic Church raised hell and Obama said, “Okay, okay, okay. I’ll back off. I’ll just make the insurance companies do it.” He doesn’t have the constitutional authority to do either. But there was nothing new going on here. It wasn’t as though the Catholic Church was making contraception available and then decided to stop it. All of this is a pure, unadulterated diversion and show to take away from what Obama did, to camouflage or mask what Obama’s doing, which is behaving extra-constitutionally. He does not have the constitutional authority to do this! Anyway, the Democrats have succeeded in changing this whole discussion into the idea that there are Republicans who want to deny independent women contraception wherever they want it.
And that’s what Fareed Zakaria is asking Joe Klein about, and this is what Joe Klein said.
KLEIN: Net-net, it’s helping the Democrats. I think that the strongest case that the Republicans have that’s been obscured by all of this craziness is that the regulatory state has gotten out of control. And so that when you bring it down to contraception, you ask yourself, why, in a country where we don’t require employers to provide health insurance should we require them to – those who do provide health insurance, to provide contraception? Now, I’m all in favor of contraception, but I think that this is a major overstepping of the state’s role.
RUSH: Whoa. Joe Klein. State-Controlled TIME Magazine. This is a bit of an overstep, they’re getting too regulatory here. You don’t seem like you believe this, Mr. Snerdley. Well, then why would he say it? Why would he say he’s worried about it? I’ll tell you why he said it. ‘Cause I think all of this is hocus-pocus, that they think Obama’s a shoo-in now. Let’s go play Scarborough. Grab audio sound bite number seven. This is Scarborough from this morning on his show on MSNBC.
SCARBOROUGH: I’ll tell you what, IÂ’d go back to 1974. I remember election night ’74, Democrats won everything. I don’t think the Republican party has been this bad off — because even then, you could say, well, Haley’s running the party. Even in ’09, you could say they’re going to be able to, you know — I don’t know. This is a pathetic state that the party’s in. And this has been about as bad a month as the Republican party’s had since August of 1974 when Nixon resigned. This is horrific. And it keeps getting worse.
RUSH: Okay, so Joe Scarborough thinks that the Republican Party has descended into depths unseen since Watergate with all this, something that’s fake, totally trumped up, not real. Now, the perception is that it’s real, but it isn’t real. The Republicans do not want to do what they’re being accused of doing. They don’t want to deny anybody contraception. I think Joe Klein is not quite as committed, but he’s on the same page as Stanley Greenberg. He said, wait a minute, you guys, you know, Greenberg is saying you can’t expect to win reelection by lying about a economic recovery that isn’t taking place, when people are living the real economy. They’re not buying that it’s roaring back. And by the same token, contraception, this is something most people don’t think the government ought to be involved in this anyway.
It is a limited few who think the government ought to be providing it and that the government ought to be paying for it. That’s not commonplace, because contraception’s a personal thing. A lot of people don’t even want others to know that they’re using it, nor do they want to know how they’re using it, nor do they want know when, other than the condom which you can’t hide. This is not the big cause celebre that the Democrats and the media have made it out to be. In the meantime, what Joe Klein I think is saying here — well, I’ll just repeat his words. “Why, in a country where we do not require employers to provide health insurance, should we require those who do to provide contraception?” Where did this come from? It’s out of the blue. He think it’s a regulatory overreach. And I think he’s got the same kind of concern that Greenberg has, that at some point they don’t own the country on this stuff, they don’t own the country on the fact that we should go full-fledged, 100% socialist. That’s all I think he’s saying.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, New York, was in Hicksville, New York, at the Holy Trinity High School at a convocation on critical issues affecting Catholic school teaching and he delivered the keynote address. Here’s a portion of what he said.
DOLAN : I ask, who’s trying to impose what on who? We’re not trying to impose our teaching on anybody. We’re simply saying, don’t impose your teaching upon us and make us do as a church what we find unconscionable to do.
RUSH: Bingo. Cardinal Dolan. Hey, we are the church. If you believe what we believe, come Sunday. Come any time. But don’t tell us what we’ve gotta teach. This is our religion. We’re not imposing anything on anybody. We don’t go out and drag ’em into St. Patrick, say, “Here, listen to this, and you can’t leave here ’til you agree.” It’s not happening. The left does that. It’s the left that uses intimidation. It’s the Democrats and the media that use the power of intimidation to get people to cave on their own morality, to give it up. All for the sake of avoiding confrontation or opposition. All for the sake of avoiding feeling uncomfortable. So he’s exactly right. Who’s trying to impose what on who? We put it in order following Joe Klein ’cause I think they’re on the same page here. This is an overreach. We now have, because of this trumped up press conference made to look like a congressional hearing last week, we now have the Democrat Party trying to force the Catholic Church or its universities and schools to dole out contraception, which they find unconscionable.
In other words, the government is stepping across the First Amendment and say, “You don’t have religious liberty anymore. You are going to do what we say.” Now, that was the original intention of Darrell Issa’s committee hearing. And it was that hearing late in the day, the day before, that the Democrats wanted to get rid of an approved invited witness, Barry Lynn, and substitute him with Sandra Fluke. And Issa, the Republican chairman, said, (paraphrasing) “Well, who is this? We don’t have time to find out who she is. Does she have any expertise in any of this?” So he said no. Carolyn Maloney and the Democrats had a fit, and started charging discrimination, troglodytism, misogyny, Republicans don’t care about women, Republicans aren’t interested in women, blah, blah, blah. And so they do their fake hearing made to look like a press conference, in which they try to make Issa’s hearing look like what it was really about was denying women contraception. It wasn’t.
Issa’s hearing was whether or not Obama had overstepped in demanding that churches and schools of the Catholic faith should be required to do this. And Dolan said, (paraphrasing) “Wait a minute, we’re minding our own business one day and all of a sudden the president tells us we have to violate our conscience? Well, we’re not gonna violate our conscience, and furthermore, we’re not out demanding everybody live the way we suggest. Ours is a religion that’s made up of articles of faith. You’re free to join. You’re free to practice. You’re free to learn. But we don’t impose it on anybody, other than our flock. We do it in the form of teaching.” I mean there’s even forgiveness in the church. There’s no forgiveness in the religion of liberalism. Zilch, zero, nada. This is nothing more than Obama continuing his war on the bitter clingers.
In Obama’s world, in the world of the statist and the socialist, faith in something other than government — ah, ah, ah, ah — not, not, not permitted. Your faith is supposed to be in him. Your faith is supposed to be in government and everything they say and do. If you have faith in yourself, faith in your religion, no. So we’re gonna take these steps slowly but surely and we’re gonna chip away at the foundation of these organizations. We’re gonna basically dissolve ’em. And one of them’s the Catholic Church. And we’re gonna do it by making it look like the Catholic Church is trying to force women into slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Diana in Flint Michigan, I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: (whispering) Hi. Thank you for taking my call, Rush.
RUSH: Yes, madam.
CALLER: First of all, thank you for the great service you do for our country every day on your radio show.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: Also, what I wanted to talk about was, I listen to you a lot, and last week you spent three days talking about Susan Fluke and the situation with contraception. And you apologized over the weekend. And I agree for the harsh language it was probably appropriate. But I don’t feel that you were entirely responsible for the situation. I feel a lot of the blame needs to be placed with Nancy Pelosi and President Obama. Um, specifically because they put this person in a position to bring about this issue and to try to divert the focus of our country and its terrible economic situation on social issues. For three days, we’re talking about social issues. And I was hoping that through the remainder of the year until the election we could focus more on the economy and what’s happening with our Constitution, rather than on all the social issues.
RUSH: Mmm-hmm. Well, “the social issues,” Democrats consider them a goldmine. They are where victory is to be had, they believe. Now, I’m gonna be interviewing a guy named Jeff Bell, former Reagan administration official who has a new book out. I’ll be interviewing him this week for the Limbaugh Letter, the newsletter. It’s the most widely read political newsletter across the fruited plain. He’s looked at the statistics, election data, all kinds of thing, and he’s found that social issues — when prominent — are a winner in Republican presidential politics, not a loser. But this is another one of the myths or alternate realities or bit of conventional wisdom that’s been created.
And even the Republicans believe this. The Republican establishment, the liberal RINO Republicans, they all believe, “Social issues? (groan) Oh, God. Oh, no! If they come up, that’s instant death for us. Oh, no! We don’t have a prayer.” The Democrats love to bring ’em up because they know it creates a self-defeatism among Republicans. It dispirits them. You know, I would say that what we’re into here — and I dubbed this “Wag the Pill” a couple of weeks ago. Because remember now, all of this, Diana, started on January 7th in New Hampshire. There was a Republican presidential debate, and George Stephanopoulos asked Mitt Romney if he wanted to ban contraception.
Romney hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about. And George Stephanopoulos kept pushing it, kept going deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper. Romney said (paraphrased), “What are you talking about? George, nobody wants to ban contraception. The states could, but it’s silly. Nobody’s talking about it,” and the issue was born: Wag the Pill. Just like Wag the Dog, the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie Wag the Dog, you should rent it. It happened during the Clinton years, and it’s all about faking a war that exists only on television in some foreign land.
Everybody was reacting to it, and the Justice Department chases down the architect of this who happens to be Robert De Niro’s character, and says, “You’re messing with everyone. The United States is not the war anywhere.” “Oh, yes, it is. I saw it on television. It’s right there on TV. See? See? There’s the war on TV!” They were producing it in a Hollywood sound stage. It was a joke movie. It was serious but had a humor underline. This is Wag the Pill. It’s the same thing: Creating a war over contraception that does not exist. It didn’t exist. There was no move or push to ban contraception, and the Republicans don’t know what has hit ’em. So the Democrats are faking the Republicans’ War on Women. They’re faking it and everybody’s believing that it’s going on, and the Republicans don’t know how to deal with this.