RUSH: There’s something that you might not know. You may have heard about it by now, but some of you may not. Neil Gorsuch is the son of the most hated and reviled EPA director in the history of the EPA. Her name is Anne Gorsuch, actually Anne Gorsuch Burford. She was Ronaldus Magnus’ EPA director, and they hated her. They just despised her.
It’s unstated. Well, no, it actually isn’t. You’ve had Andrea Mitchell, NBC, some others in the Drive-Bys have mentioned this. They’ve gone to great pains to say we can’t use the sins of the mother against the son, but they are trying to convey that by just saying it. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree or the oil derrick doesn’t fall far from the sun or whatever. They hated the woman.
Anne Gorsuch Burford
When I first saw the name Neil Gorsuch, I mean, whenever it was, weeks ago, I said, “I wonder, I wonder –” it’s not a common name, and I knew the name, so I looked it up, and shazam, the guy is the son of the most hated EPA director, the Democrats-hated EPA director. I mean, she fired people. They accused her of corrupting the agency and polluting America and so forth. It was vicious, folks. It was vicious the way they went after her. And she was fearless. Absolutely fierce and defiant.
Anyway, greetings. Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh here behind the Golden EIB Microphone. Broadcast excellence, three hours. We’ll have Vice President Pence here in a couple of hours. He’ll join us at the top of the two p.m. Eastern hour today to discuss this and whatever else I choose to ask him. And when we have him for, a segment or two, pretty much it?
Okay, the reaction to Gorsuch across the leftist spectrum has been political and predictable, and it basically is breaking down into two camps: the nonelected left that has ties to the legal community. They work at think tanks and they are thinkers on the judiciary or they are judges themselves or they are close to judges or they’re members of law organizations.
You can’t deny the guy’s qualifications. There simply is no way to deny his qualifications. And many of them are saying, “Look, it’s a replacement seat. It’s not a net gain, so let’s kind of keep our powder dry and let’s not launch everything we’ve got on this guy ’cause he’s gonna get confirmed and he’s eminently qualified.”
But then you go to the elected Democrats and it’s a whole different story because their lunatic base is demanding rampant, constant lunatic opposition, and they’re getting it. The leftists, the protesters. I was watching — I know what O’Reilly was doing. I was watching O’Reilly’s show last night after the ceremony — well, I had Fox on and I was watching O’Reilly ’cause I knew he was gonna have some people on talking about this, and O’Reilly — I knew what he was doing. He was playing quasi-ignorant in order to draw his guests out.
He was saying, “How in the world, how in the world is the guy not qualified? How can you not approve the guy?” in order to get Dr. Krauthammer to launch or other guests and so forth. But for people that didn’t know what O’Reilly was doing, I’m sure, a lot of people, “What do you mean, how in the world are they not gonna oppose, how can they say he’s not qualified?” They’re Democrats. And he’s not qualified because this should have been Merrick Garland’s seat, number one.
So the New York Times and everybody else is saying this is a stolen seat, the Democrats ought to have this seat. The Republicans refused a vote even on Merrick Garland, he didn’t even get a hearing, and so Gorsuch ought to be opposed for that reason alone, tit-for-tat. But the real reason that they don’t want Gorsuch is because he interprets the Constitution. And he will not overturn Citizens United. And he will not automatically guarantee that Roe v. Wade stays intact. I mean, they have their litmus tests, and Neil Gorsuch will not pass a single left-wing litmus test.
But I tell you what I think is happening. The left — and the Democrat Party combined — I think they are marginalizing themselves each and every day. The polling data shows that despite all of the efforts that the media has engaged in and that the Democrats have engaged in, Trump is still at a net positive approval rating. They’re really not putting a dent in Trump. The American people are not being swayed anywhere like they usually have been during previous Republican administrations on things like this.
The left is really marginalizing itself, and this guy, there are enough people on the left singing his praises as simply a qualified jurist. There literally is no way to say this man doesn’t deserve to be a judge, a justice, a judge anywhere. He’s just educationally slam dunk, intellectually slam dunk, experience, there simply is no way to say he is not qualified. So to stop him they have to go to other lengths and try other techniques, and when they do that they’re exposing themselves I think for many people for the first time to see exactly just who the Democrat Party is, what it’s become and who some of these people are.
There’s not a dislikable or unlikable thing about Neil Gorsuch as a human being or as a judge, and yet the Democrats are under pressure from their fanatical base to stop this, to oppose this, because they’re living in their own world. They cannot accept the results of the election. They cannot accept what Trump is doing because he won. They just can’t accept any of it. And they do not accept reality.
Remember, reality to them is a construct of people who want to deny the left the right to participate in things. It’s not really really real. It’s all an official creation of an evil majority. And so they can’t come to grips with what has happened. Now, they’re not gonna be able to sustain this emotional pitch forever. Nobody can. It isn’t gonna go away. It’s not going to end. But the energy level and the intensity is going to drop and decline simply because it’s not humanly possible to maintain this kind of legitimate outrage.
They are going to try to maintain the perception that they’re outraged, as it’s manifesting itself in the Gorsuch case. There were protesters outside the Supreme Court last night with prefabricated, premade signs. No matter who the nominee was, they were gonna use ’em, and he’s what? He’s racist, he’s extreme, he’s anti-female, he’s anti-Roe v. Wade, before they even knew who it was.
So much of this is simply what I call by rote, it’s existing because this is all the left knows to do. It’s the only technique they really know how to do, and it’s been successful for them. So that’s why they don’t give it up. And their media allies have enabled them to succeed in destroying Republican after Republican after Republican.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One of the ways the Democrats are going after Gorsuch… By the way, let me get in a little political theater/strategy here. There are two schools of thought; I can see it developing, by the way. This is my interpretation, analysis based on reading and what I’ve seen today on the left.
In the activist community and the community organizer community and the elected community and the legal community in the left, you got two camps. One camp is, “Hey, the guy’s gonna get confirmed; let’s back off. You know, let’s mount some opposition and make him have to work for it in the hearings, but he’s gonna get confirmed and we know it. It’s not worth using all of our ammo because it doesn’t change the balance of the court.”
The other faction on the left is made up of most of the elected Democrats who want to use every bit of ammunition they have to try to destroy the guy because that’s just who they are and that’s what their base is demanding. Their base — their lunatic, genuinely insane base — is demanding that there be no tolerance and no acceptance, no niceties, no compassion, no collegiality here. They want this guy destroyed like they want every Republican-related figure destroyed.
The elected Democrats have to listen to that base because that base sends them money and votes for them. But in that, in that group of elected officials are 10 Senators up for reelection in two years that come from red states that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. They are walking a tightrope. Now, since this seat does not change the balance of the court… You’ve heard it said that Gorsuch is a Scalia clone in terms of his judicial temperament, his view of the Constitution, original intent and all that.
That’s not an attempt to take away from Gorsuch’s individuality by calling him a Scalia clone. The point being made that the balance of the court doesn’t change. It’s still gonna be 5-4. Well, it’s gonna be 4-4 plus Kennedy — and Kennedy, you know, goes whichever way the Washington Post Style Section goes. That’s the way it was with Scalia. No real change in balance. The Democrats are fuming that Merrick Garland ought to be there and this balance ought to go out the window, but Merrick Garland isn’t there.
So they want the Democrats to score points, make the Republicans pay by having as tough road or impossible as it can be made road for Gorsuch. The real energy is… This one faction wants to bide their time and let this guy eventually get confirmed like in March or in three months. The nonelected half of the Democrat opposition… They’re worried over who the next opening, who will present the next opening by virtue of resignation, retirement, or dare we say physical impairment. You have Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who’s 83.
You have others that off and on have talked about requirement. She doesn’t want to go anywhere because she doesn’t want Trump appointing her replacement, but we’re looking at four years. If one of the four lives — cutting to the chase here. If one of the four lives in the court retires, resigns, is incapacitated, and Trump nominates Gorsuch Jr., that’s what some of these Democrats want to save their fire for. They don’t want to blow everything they’ve got here on somebody who’s gonna get confirmed, on somebody they can’t damage, on somebody who doesn’t change the balance.
I think they’re misreading all of this. I’m just telling you the way they’re looking at this. They don’t know anything but launching everything they have. Their primary technique for achieving political victory is precisely to destroy political opposition. They are not interested in debate. They’re not interested in the arena of ideas and prevailing in debate. They want to clear the playing field of any opposition. They do this by impugning, by destroying, not just careers, but lives, families, if they have to.
And half of them want to go for the throat for Gorsuch and the other half say, “No, no, no, it’d be a waste of resources.” Here’s the thing. They’re not gonna be able to avoid looking like they’re launching everything to casual viewers and observers. The degree of opposition to Gorsuch is going to be profound enough, and it’s gonna be predictable. “He hates women! He’s a white heterosexual male; he can’t possibly relate to America!” You know, wacko things like that. People are gonna see it for what it is, and they’re not gonna think that it’s tempered. They’re gonna think, “My God, the Democrats are launching everything they’ve got.”
How many times can you launch everything you’ve got?
I mean, how many times can you cry wolf?
How many times can you claim the Republican nominee hates women, hates gays, hates transgenders, hates this, hates that, hates Hispanics, hates blacks, racist, sexist, bigot, how many people can you accuse of doing that before it begins to sound like a yawner? In this climate, with the Trump administration thriving and prevailing and public opinion approval numbers on the positive side for Trump, I don’t think they have the slightest idea of the damage they’re doing to themselves, because it’s never damaged them before.
They’ve always profited from this kind of lunacy. They’ve always succeeded. Well, not always, but more often than not they’ve been able to take out Republicans because the media never chides them, the media never criticizes, the media never castigates them. The media is them, the media and they are the same. The media promotes their lunacy and their insanity and their unhinged nature.
But after a while, when that’s all the Democrats do, no matter the issue, no matter the person, no matter the legislation, eventually it’s just gonna lose its impact. Because people are gonna eventually say, “Wait a minute. Everybody can’t be a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.” And you might think, “Well, that should have happened by now, Rush, because they’ve been doing it –” Yeah, but the lay of the land is different now.
Elections have consequences. We had an entirely different electorate show up in 2016, an entirely different electorate, and they are happy, they are satisfied, they’re not afraid, they’re not frightened, they’re not worried that Trump’s gonna cave. So I say let them be who they are and let them bring it on.
I think the people on the left who want the Democrats to temper this on Gorsuch and kind of dial it back a little bit, I think they’re gonna be frustrated, because I don’t think the Democrats know how to dial it back. Pelosi is who she is. Schumer is who he is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We have a little montage here. This is one of the ways, the knee-jerk reaction of the left to oppose the guy.
NANCY CORDES: Many Democrats refer to this as a stolen seat.
JOHN BERMAN: Some Democrats are calling this a stolen seat.
CHRIS COONS: This is, in some way, a stolen seat.
BILL HEMMER: This stolen seat.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Quote, “a stolen seat.”
JOHN MALCOLM: Referring to this as a stolen seat.
MARC THIESSEN: Their base calls this a stolen seat. It’s not a stolen seat. It’s Scalia’s seat.
RUSH: Stolen seat, well, no, it’s not Scalia’s, it’s Merrick Garland’s. Obama nominated Garland, Garland should have gotten hearings, and he should have been confirmed, but the Republicans didn’t do it, and they stole it from Garland and gave it to this guy, Gorsuch. The New York Times even editorializes that way.