RUSH: Now, let’s get to the health care Stack. “Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich reprimanded his fellow Republicans in harsh terms Wednesday, blaming GOP members of Congress for developing ‘zero’ alternatives to President Obama’s health care reform law. Gingrich, who was speaking at the opening session of the Republican National Committee’s summer meeting, fielded a question about Obamacare and recalled that Republicans were able to block Bill Clinton’s health care reform effort in 1994 because they had ‘a positive alternative approach’ to health care. But Republicans today have nothing comparable to offer. Newt said, ‘I will bet you, for most of you, you go home in the next two weeks when your members of Congress are home, and you look them in the eye and you say, “What is your positive replacement for Obamacare?” They will have zero answer.'”
Now, this gets to the root of a problem that I think has the Republicans essentially in a prison, and it’s a problem the way they deal with it that forever surrenders the agenda and the initiative to the Democrats. And it basically is this. Democrats come up with an idea; Republicans have to have an alternative. If the Democrats want amnesty, the Republicans, according to the thinking, have to have their own version of it. They just can’t say “no.”
If the Democrats want to nationalize health care, the Republicans have to have an alternative that is based on the premise set by the Democrats. So the Republicans are always in prison, always accepting the Democrat premise. It’s, as Tom Lantos once said, “Suicide.” It is utter political suicide. So the Democrats get to set the premise on every issue, set the agenda, set the premise. The premise here, we need national health care, we need amnesty, we need 11 million new Democrat voters. We need whatever. And the thinking is, the Republicans, Marco Rubio has said this, too, and in a very respectful, mild way, I’ve argued with him about it, why do we need an alternative? Especially, why do we need an alternative that bounces off their idea?
Why do we have to accept their claim that the health care system’s broken? They say it. That then opens the door for them to come up with this massive proposal. They set the premise. We agree with it. In fact, the opening premise is the health care system’s broken. I would submit to you, it’s being broken. I would much rather take the American health care system before Obama was elected than what we’ve got now. I mean, it’s a no-brainer. But beyond that, there is an alternative. And you know what it’s called? Free market. It’s called free market entrepreneurial capitalism. It’s called as little interference from the government as possible. It’s called the Constitution.
We don’t need an alternative. I don’t know where this thinking got started. But I know what drives it: the idea that Washington controls everything. Even conservative Republicans, the — (interruption) Does what? No. Our side doesn’t believe in the free market. It’s what I was just gonna get ready to say. They all are of Washington, with Washington as the center of the universe. Washington must always be doing something. The people can’t be trusted to do things. The market cannot be allowed to determine outcomes because the outcomes in the market are not fair. The outcomes in the market are unjust.
Somebody loses. Somebody gets hurt. Somebody suffers. And it’s not fair who wins. We can’t let the market do it. We can’t let a free society make decisions and let the fallout happen as it does. We have to manage it. We have to control it. Washington, ruling class versus country class. There is an alternative. There’s an alternative to the runaway budget. You know what it is? Freeze it. Freeze spending and even allow for inflationary levels for five to seven years. Just do that, and you would be amazed at the difference it would make in terms of the accumulation of deficits. And, of course, the national debt.
There are alternatives. They’re called conservative alternatives, and they’re rooted in the free market, and they are rooted in trusting the free market, and trusting capitalism and trusting the American people. And there’s evidence all over. I mean, this is ridiculous to have to even ask. I don’t care whatever your favorite consumer product is, you ask yourself who did it, and under what circumstances, and I’ll guarantee you the answer is never going to be the government did it. The government didn’t build your iPhone or your Samsung Galaxy S4 or whatever. They didn’t build your TV set. They didn’t build your high-def flat screen. They didn’t build your computer. They didn’t build your car.
When they get involved in this stuff, you have an absolute disaster. You’ve got products that nobody wants that they have to be forced to buy that are outrageously expensive. You have people who have no expertise or experience in the industries they’re trying to take over and run. And they get away with it on the basis they’ve got big hearts and big compassion. We don’t need an alternative. I would say it’s this kind of thinking that accepts every Democrat liberal premise that has resulted in this country being where it is. And it’s in trouble, because the people that run the government cannot run an economy. You cannot pick winners and losers. You cannot make everything fair. You cannot oversee and manage outcomes.
Liberalism doesn’t work. Statism doesn’t work. The Constitution does. The free market does. A free people will always come up with the best and the most practical and the cheapest alternatives. Now, for those of you shouting at me, “Well, wait a minute, Rush, how come a Band-Aid costs $60 in the hospital?” Because the government got involved back in 1960 and really got involved in 1970. If the government had never gotten involved in health care, we wouldn’t have 90% of the problems we have in it. This is not even arguable. It’s sad that it has to be argued, because it’s not arguable. It’s flat-out common sense. But the idea that we have to have an alternative, it’s what’s dooming not just the Republican Party, but the country.
The alternative that’s needed is anything that defeats the Democrat Party. The alternative that we come up with is anything that prevents the liberal wing of the Democrat Party from achieving its agenda items. That’s the alternative. But nobody comes up with that anymore. The only alternative is our version of what they want to do. So Newt’s saying, “These Republicans, they don’t have any ideas. They don’t have an alternative to Obamacare.” They damn well better not. The American people do not want to hear a Republican version of Obamacare. The American people don’t want to hear a Republican version of state exchanges.
The American people don’t want to hear how the Republican Party is gonna make the exchanges work. The American people don’t want the exchanges. The American people do not want a 2,200- page piece of legislation that gives the government all this power to ultimately decide who lives and dies by virtue of who gets treated because the costs are so outrageous that nobody can afford it. The biggest problem in American health care is that it has no relationship to the cost of living of the average citizen, like every other business does. There is simply no relationship, no market relationship between the costs in health care and the lives of the American people. And, as such, it can never work. It can never succeed. It cannot treat everybody.
It really is frustrating. But we see in what Newt is saying here the Republican mind-set. What he’s saying is, “We need our own alternative, and it needs to be optimistic and it needs to be of good cheer and we need to be nice and we need to be kind and we need to show compassion and we need our own idea.” What we need to do is simply stop the Democrats in everything they want to do. That’s the alternative. The alternative is denying them their premise. “Mr. Limbaugh, that sounds so obstructive. It sounds so mean.” What do you think they do, Mr. New Castrati? What do you think the Democrats do? They know the game. They’re playing the game. We’re in politics. That’s the business here.
We’re in the arena of ideas. The Democrats can’t win the arena of ideas, and so they’ve chosen another route, and that is the suppression of ideas and the discrediting of anybody who has alternative good ideas. The Democrats are not open or tolerant to anything except their way. Why aren’t we? And we all know the answers, ’cause they’ve done such a good job of making the Republicans look like the architects of gridlock, they’re mean-spirited, they’re racist, they’re sexist, their bigot, they’re homophobe, and the Republicans have gotta act like Democrats to make sure people like them because if they don’t do that, they’re never gonna win another election. And it’s so wrong.
The American people, it’s out there in polling data, the American people do not want Obamacare, nor do they want an alternative of Obamacare. What they want is no Obamacare. They want it yanked. They want it defunded, repealed, whatever. Sixty-two percent of the American people oppose the economic policies of the regime. What is the Republican Party doing? On issue after issue, there is a giant majority waiting to be connected with.
That’s just the first of many stories in the health care Stack. Don’t sweat it. But that’s the biggie. ‘Cause this notion that we gotta have an alternative, that’s what’s killing us. That’s why we’re all stagnating here. There’s nobody stopping the Democrats. There’s nobody stopping the liberals. There’s nobody with a policy to just stop ’em. Not even slow ’em down. The policy is, how do we do what they do and be liked while we do it? That’s not gonna accomplish anything.