RUSH: They sent me a note yesterday and they wanted my take on their premise. I said the premise is flawed, it’s a bunch of BS, and it’s totally predictable. The Politico wanted me to talk to them about the fact that there were Republicans running around saying the Tea Party is responsible for the fact they didn’t pick up the Senate. I’m not gonna comment on that. I’m gonna comment on it today because they got the story out there, it begs being placed in context, and of course nobody better than I, nobody better than me to do it.
Great to have you here, folks. It’s the Rush Limbaugh program. This is the EIB Network. Great to have you, telephone number is 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
From the Huffington Post: ‘Top Nevada Republican Endorses Harry Reid, Slams Sharron Angle.’ A bunch of Republican moderates in Nevada were endorsing Reid. Now, we’ll get to all this in just a second. You don’t want to miss this. Also, we’re gonna replay the full-throated statement, the full-throated treatise for freedom that I mentioned yesterday at the top of the next hour. We’re gonna replay it because some of our affiliates covered the Obama press conference yesterday and this needs to be heard by those of you who didn’t get a chance to hear it. Those of you who did hear it, I am sure, judging on my e-mail you will want to hear it again.
Okay, at the moment, at the moment the net gain to the Republicans in the House seems to be 63. They seem to have lost three races and won 66. Now, if that ends up being the final result, you count the GOP pickup as six seats in the Senate, if that holds, my prediction on the total of 69 congressional seats will have been proved exactly correct. The number 69 seldom fails, and in this case it appears it’s gonna come through with flying colors. Now, here’s another thing, for months the news media was assuring us that the voters were angry at the incumbents in both parties. This was not an anti-Democrat election; it wasn’t an anti-Obama agenda election; it was an anti-incumbent election. Well, look at the results in the House. The GOP lost three seats as I just mentioned. They gained 66. What does that tell you about the honesty of the media? What does it tell you? If you’re not going to question their honesty, what does it tell you about their smarts? What does it tell you about their accuracy? They simply lie. And they lie without fear because no one has ever called them on it and if anybody ever does call ’em on it they don’t care, ’cause that was yesterday, and they accomplished what they wanted with the lie as far as they’re concerned, and they move on. That’s why we call ’em the Drive-Bys. I’m glad it’s all over, folks, to tell you the truth. Obama can now get back to his bipartisan unifying self.
Thirty-four warships will now be docked off the coast of Mumbai in India, 34 warships. We’ve got 40 aircraft, we’ve got over 800 people, 34 warships, and to top it all off they’re running around cutting off all the coconuts off the trees, off the coconut palms because they might fall off and accidentally hit the president on his head. This looks like exile to me, invasion, what have you, I don’t know, but it’s amazing. It is unprecedented. Why is he even going to Mumbai? Isn’t that a little dangerous in and of itself? We know he doesn’t want to appear on Slumdog Millionaire game show, and two days after the election, he’s long gone.
At any rate, here’s The Politico story and it’s just predictable. I knew this was going to happen. What you need to know about it and what’s interesting about it is who is behind this. The Politico story: ‘GOP Senators Fight Over Failure.’ That’s the headline of The Politico piece. Now, what is the failure? Would somebody tell me where the failure was yesterday? Yesterday was a wipeout. Yesterday was an unprecedented wipeout. It was a deep wipeout all the way to governorships and state legislatures. It was huge and the Democrats and the people at The Politico know it full well which is why they want to take a look at another direction. What failure? The failure here is the failure to capture the Senate. And of course we know that the people at The Politico are terribly upset about that. And we know that people at CBS and NBC and ABC are just wringing their hands, ‘Awe, damn it, the Republicans didn’t get the Senate. Why, what a shame, why, who’s responsible for this failure?’ So we have to start looking to see who’s responsible for this.
‘Long-simmering tensions within the Republican Party spilled into public view Wednesday as the pragmatic and conservative –‘ what do you mean, spilled into public view? Did you see this, Snerdley? Dawn, did you see this? I didn’t even hear about it until The Politico called me with the usual, ‘Hey, Rush, there’s some Republicans out there –‘ I wasn’t given any names. ‘– they’re really saying that it was the Tea Party that blew the chance to win the Senate. This is a contrived, created story, probably created by moderate Republicans, but certainly with the willing accomplices in the media. Failure? Long-simmering tensions spilled into public view? They have been in public view for a long time. It’s why there is a Tea Party. They didn’t spill into public view yesterday. And I’ll tell you, if it weren’t for the Tea Party there would not have been anything to talk about yesterday. There would have been reasons to write headlines denoting failure. If it hadn’t been for the Tea Party the Republicans would be inconsequential, insignificant, which in the case of the establishment Republicans, they are, but just don’t know it yet. And they’re trying to stave it off.
What is this pragmatic versus conservative? That means conservatives cannot possibly be thoughtful, cannot possibly have any meaning. They’re just knee-jerkers. ‘With tea party-backed candidates going down in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada, depriving Republicans of what would have been a 50-50 Senate, a bloc of prominent senators and operatives said party purists like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had foolishly pushed nominees too conservative to win in politically competitive states.’ Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it is obvious now that the establishment Republicans are in open revolt against the people, and that’s what this piece means. That is what this story is all about. Lindsey Graham is featured prominently in this story, as is Trent Lott. Trent Lott is now all of a sudden in the mainstream media a Republican elder statesman. There are also anonymous Republicans in the leadership. I wonder who that might be.
So we have Lindsey Grahamnesty and Trent Lott speaking on the record and there are some anonymous Republicans in the leadership who remain anonymous. And now they sit here a couple days after the election and they whine and they moan and they go crying to the Politico and the media about how sad and how unfortunate and what a big failure Tuesday was. Most of them did not lift a finger in the primaries for conservatives. In fact, Lindsey Graham originally endorsed Charlie Crist in Florida, as did McCain, as did John Cornyn. So they want to sit here and talk about failure and there’s nothing forward looking about the Republican leadership here. This is a circle-the-wagon bunch of people, perfectly happy being in the minority and cutting deals, and now they’re not unhappy they’re in the minority, folks, don’t misunderstand the headline, ‘GOP Senators Fight Over Failure.’ They’re not happy they’re in the minority. That’s not what this is about. We told you it was gonna happen. This is ruling class versus country class, is all this is. This is all about the ruling class elder statesmen GOP establishment laying down markers here.
Now, Lindsey Graham loves to talk about being on a team, loyalty. Whatever he says, it’s amazing, isn’t it? This is the guy Obama would call on to cut deals. This is the guy who was in charge of the Gang of 14 undermining Frist and the others who were trying to stop Schumer from filibustering judges. Lindsey Graham is now the anointed leader, the man of reason. It was Trent Lott I think who authored the power-sharing agreement with Tom Daschle when we had 50 seats. ‘We’re not gonna act like winners, we’re not gonna rub their noses, genuine power share, we’re gonna give an equal number of positions on committees, we’re not gonna have a committee chairman, we’re not gonna do all this.’ We just basically gave it all away and then Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords changes parties and, bammo, we’re in the minority. And these are the people that we’re supposed to take advice from. These are the people who are supposed to guide us into the future. These are the people that didn’t lift a hand, a finger, to help anybody during the primaries. Why is it that Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are not trashed by these same people for their independence?
I mean conservatives are said to be very independent, pragmatic, conservatives get trashed for being incompetent, off the reservation. Why is it that Graham, Collins, Snowe, they’re off the reservation constantly, they are never trashed for their, quote, unquote, independence? The idea that these people represent the mainstream of the Republican Party, amnesty, constitutional rights for Al-Qaeda terrorists, I mean this is not the mainstream of the Republican Party. That’s what’s interesting about all this. Yet here’s Graham quoted repeatedly about those nasty conservatives, how they’re not the best candidates, Jim DeMint needs to be more of a team player. And now Trent Lott is out there saying that we would have won. We woulda won these remaining three races but for the Tea Party candidates. You see, this is interesting, establishment Republicans never lose races, they never lose. It’s always somebody else’s fault when these losses happen. They never lose.
Well, they lost the presidency to Obama. They came up with the nominee. They came up with the strategy. They came up with the agenda. They came up with the way it should be done. They’re the people who tell us Colin Powell is the ideal Republican. They came up with all these ways that guarantee losing. They lost the presidency to Obama. They lost both houses. They lost the House, they lost the Senate in massive landslides to Pelosi and to Reid. We are trying to climb back from the disaster that they created, the confusion that they created, the model they call principles and all the rest. We’re trying to climb out of the soup that they created and now it’s our fault. It’s your fault, the great unwashed, many of you who take two showers a day, by the way, still considered the great unwashed. They don’t acknowledge because they can’t acknowledge that but for the energy of conservatives across this country, the massive electoral gains on Tuesday would not have happened. Left to Lindsey Graham and Trent Lott, Tuesday would have not happened, no way, shape, manner, or form. And it did happen, and all of a sudden it’s a failure. It’s a failure because they didn’t win their precious Senate. And they don’t have their precious chairmanships of the committees.
Let’s look at Las Vegas. Look at Nevada. Harry Reid spent tens of millions of dollars trashing all the Republicans. In fact, I would venture to say that the Democrats have a slush fund of over half a billion dollars. What do you think the stimulus bill really was? Didn’t create jobs, did it? It was out there to fund Democrat campaigns. Harry Reid spent tens of millions of dollars trashing all of the Republicans in Nevada. He dragged down Sue Lowden. Sue Lowden was one of the leading Republicans in the primary race out there, her numbers get dragged down because Reid thought that she was gonna be the nominee so he simply trained his guns on Angle after she won the primary. It wasn’t anything to do with anything other than Reid was gonna trash any Republican who got the nominee, didn’t matter if it was Angle, didn’t matter if it was Sue Lowden. He trained his ammo on Sue Lowden first. Are any of these people wondering why in the hell did Sue Lowden lose?
You can sit here and say that Sharron Angle wasn’t your favorite candidate, but why did Sue Lowden lose? Where were all of you establishment types helping her? Where was your on-the-ground money during the primaries helping Sue Lowden while Harry Reid is trashing her? The Democrats trash everybody with an (R) beside their name. It’s not just Sharron Angle, it wasn’t just Christine O’Donnell. Castle would not have won in Delaware. So there’s Reid training his guns and all of his money and all of his union thuggery on Angle after he takes care of Sue Lowden, but to say that Sue Lowden would have won is nonsense. She could have just as easily have lost as so many more moderate Republicans always do, and then what would they have said? If Sue Lowden had been the nominee and lost we would not even get this story today. We’re only getting a story about failure here because conservatives ended up on the ballot and the ruling class of the Republican Party doesn’t want conservatives having any kind of a foothold, any success or any leadership in the party.
Let’s look at Alaska. No, let’s don’t. If I get started on Alaska I’ll run through what I must do and that’s stop for an obscene EIB profit center time-out. Back and looking at Alaska after this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, folks, I don’t like doing this any more than you like hearing it. I was minding my own business today. I was in a great mood and I get up and I see this headline: ‘GOP Senators Fight Over Failure,’ and I’m asking myself, ‘How many crazy Tea Party people sought Senate seats?’ How many? What did we have? How many Senate seats were up? Thirty-seven Senate seats were up for election. How many Tea Party crazies ran? How can you blame three or four Tea Party types when you have that many seats up for election? Fifteen were in play, and all of a sudden it’s the Tea Party. James Carville said the Democrats — after 2008, James Carville said the Democrats — would be in charge for 40 years. Two generations. That’s what James Carville said.
What he didn’t figure on was conservatism.
James Carville was looking at the existing Republican leadership and saying (impression), ‘We got those boys. We got ’em now! They’re gonna be — they’re gonna be — they’re gonna be in the minority there for 40 years,’ because he was looking at Lindsey Graham and he was looking at Trent Lott. He was looking at all these architects of two landslide losses. He was happy. ‘We gonna have a 40 year majority for the Democratic Party. Where my gumbo?’ Because he was looking at the wrong people. Now what happened? The 40-year majority is down the tubes in a massive landslide defeat — Rushslide, if you will. It was a wipeout, and I get up today, and I see a headline: ‘Republican Senators Fight Over Failure.’ Now, let’s take a look at Alaska. There’s a video out there: Lisa Murkowski said that she would not support repealing Obamacare.
She made that comment before the primary. That is one of the reasons she lost apparently in Alaska. Every poll shows the public strongly against Obamacare, and the Republican Party publicly is saying that they are committed to repealing it but not Murkowski. Not Murkowski! Yet Murkowski is supported by Graham. Murkowski is supported by Lindsey Graham — who also, by the way, said that he wanted to work with Obama to pass cap and trade. Even the Democrat senator-elect from West Virginia says ain’t no way we’re passing cap and trade. But Lindsey Graham is all for it. And, by the way, Obama has now said, ‘You know what? We’re gonna drop cap and trade,’ but don’t be fooled. He’s not forgetting his agenda. He’s just dropping cap and trade as the way to get there. Murkowski is supported by Graham and others. She’s a team player, she’s out of the mainstream, great candidate. What will she do to the future of the GOP and the nation, right? This is how we win?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: ‘GOP Senators Fight Over Failure.’ That’s the most exciting story the Drive-By Media has today. They’re so excited about Republicans fighting over failure, when there wasn’t any. How do you look at yesterday and see failure? Admittedly, there are some Republicans who do, and of course since they’re moderates — and reasonable, ruling class Republicans — the media’s only happy to give them all kinds of ink. Far be it for a bunch of Republicans to talk about success after 63 seats in the House. After picking up six Senate seats, a total of 69 seats in both houses, far be it for the moderates to be interested in success. Two years after James Carville said the Democrats are gonna have the majority and be in power for 40 years — two years after The Messiah was elected president, two years after a man unlike any we have ever seen — was elected.
One month after he was immaculated, the Republican Party was in the throes of a massive depression. The Republican Party thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, the only way outta this is to agree with Obama and support him and make people think we’re nice people.’ Lo and behold, where are we? A greater pickup of seats than any since the thirties, whatever it is: 63 in the House, six seats in the Senate. Let’s look at Delaware. A flawed candidate, they say, Christine O’Donnell. Was she as flawed as McCain? Let me just ask the question. Was she as flawed as Senator McCain? I mean, he’s got temperament issues, among other things. Everybody talked about ’em. Was she as flawed as some of the candidates running who have cheated on their spouses?
Was she as flawed as great Democrats like Bob Byrd? Did Christine O’Donnell ever recruit members of the Ku Klux Klan? Did Christine O’Donnell ever get in a car and drive a guy off a bridge and let him drown like Ted Kennedy did? Did Christine O’Donnell ever go to Vietnam and trash her own country, come back and throw fake medals over the White House fence like John Kerry did in his lies about our troops in Vietnam? Not even close, and yet Christine O’Donnell is a flawed candidate. The establishment wanted Mike Castle, a liberal, selfish, professional politician who would help them get their chairmanships back, they hoped. Because what they want is not to save the country. They’re not interested in bringing the country back from the abyss; they want to be in charge of the money for four years.
It’s their turn, their turn to be able to dispense the goodies from the positions of committee chairmanships. So it seems to me that they appear to be perfectly happy being in the minority, if it means not supporting conservatives. They’d be happy to be in the majority if they can get there without conservatives. Let’s talk about flawed candidates. Joe Biden: Plagiarist, pathological liar. He and his family have been involved in some shady deals. Harry Reid? He goes to Washington a mere pauper, now is a multimillionaire. How does that happen? Was he flawed? No. They think Harry Reid’s not flawed, but Christine O’Donnell was flawed. The way I’m looking at this is the Tea Party lost two seats: Delaware and then Nevada. How is the Tea Party responsible for this?
So it appears to me they’re perfectly happy being in the minority if it means not supporting conservatives. They want to be in the majority if it means getting more personal power in terms of chairmanships and so forth. As long as they don’t have to actually change course. I mean, that’s too hard. That is really hard work, changing course. It’s easier to be lazy, intellectually void of serious ideas. Be fat and happy with life as it is. Apparently the establishment Republicans will fight harder and more viciously to stop conservatives than to stop Obama and the left. And it’s obvious, is it not? Any story that has a headline: ‘GOP Senators Fight Over Failure’ ought to be about Obama.
Any story that’s about failure and the Republican senators fighting over failure ought to be about Obama and his agenda and what it is doing to this country. Yet we wake up today and we find a lead story in Washington is Republican senators are all bent outta shape over the fact that some Tea Party candidates lost, denying them the Senate. The real failure that has encompassed all of us, the real failure permeating this entire country, is named Barack Obama and the Democrat Party. That’s where the failure is and that’s where the focus ought to be: Fight harder and more viciously to stop Obama. Fight harder and more viciously to stop liberalism. Fight harder and more viciously to fight and stop liberalism. But no. The ruling class is going to reserve all of its energy and all of its ingenuity and all of its resources to fight conservatives.
We took six Senate seats and we might get another one, who knows. I want to know: Who did Lindsey Graham campaign for? Somebody tell me, who did he campaign for? We took six Senate seats. Did he campaign for any of them? As I say, I’m very uncomfortable doing this. I’m minding my own business… (interruption) I know they’re not uncomfortable attacking me, Snerdley, but I’m uncomfortable doing this. This ought not be happening here, but it is what it is. The future of the Republican Party is not Lindsey Graham. It certainly isn’t Trent Lott. They’re the Old Castrati. The liberals, they are the New Castrati. But these Republicans-in-name-only and the GOP establishment types are the Old Castrati.
This GOP pickup was the greatest in modern history. In 1932 the pickup was only 55, and that was seen as the mother of all rejection of Hooverism. We got 63 seats (and maybe some more) and six seats in the Senate (and maybe some more there), and we get a story about failure, and it does not include Obama! How in the world can we get a story about Republicans talk about failure and not include Obama and the Democrats and what happened to them on Tuesday? We ought to do a little test today, Snerdley. You know, I don’t like to do this kind of thing because it distracts from what we normally do. Maybe we ought to do a test. How many callers believe Lindsey Graham and Trent Lott are the future of the Republican Party?
Let’s do this. Every one of you people calling today, you can talk about whatever you were going to call about, but I want to ask each of you before you get into what you wanted to talk about who you believe to be the future of the Republican Party. If you think it’s Lindsey Graham, if you think it’s Trent Lott, I’m gonna ask you. I’ll leave it up to you. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m totally misjudging this. I’ll ask the people. Look at Sharron Angle. She’s out there, she’s running against the majority leader in the US Senate. The majority leader had Big Labor and big business aligned against her, as well as a big party in the GOP establishment running in a state that he isn’t red anymore. I’ve got a story. What did I do with that story? Here it is.
From the Huffington Post: ‘Nevada State Sen. Bill Raggio, who is considered to be one of the most influential Republican lawmakers in the Silver State, endorsed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his reelection fight against GOP challenger Sharron Angle on Thursday.’ That’s October 7, 2010, the date of the story. ‘Raggio has served in the Nevada state legislature since 1972… [G]iven the caliber of his own party’s nominee, he said in a statement Thursday, that time has come.’ I can’t endorse this. Sue Lowden was their preferred candidate but they didn’t do anything to help her.
I mean, the Reid people trained their guns on Sue Lowden and she went down. Sharron Angle won the primary, what are we supposed to do here? And they have no ground game! Steele and these boys had no money for any ground game, no ground game whatsoever, in Nevada and we sit around gonna blame Sharron Angle for this. Fat cats sit in their offices in Washington, answer the phone from The Politico and say, ‘Yep, it’s a giant failure. We didn’t get our Senate back. Reid, it’s not Reid’s fault. It’s Sharron Angle’s fault. It’s Tea Party’s fault, Ken Buck’s fault, Christine O’Donnell’s fault.’ This is not how you build a party.
Christine O’Donnell is running in a dark blue state. She’s trying to win the so-called Biden seat. She’s trying to change the party in Delaware which had gotten fat and lazy, supporting the same candidate for years — who was also destined to lose in this race. He didn’t endorse her, did not jump on board the party after she won the primary. You don’t build a party like this. You don’t win elections nationwide like this. You do what we just did on the conservative side, if you want to win elections and build a party. But even if our side lost I’ll damn full assure you we wouldn’t have called The Politico and said, ‘You know what, the problem here is?’
We’ve always united around these guys after whatever happened in any election. They don’t. That’s clearly in evidence, here. Who did Lindsey Graham campaign for? What money did he raise for conservative candidates? Did he do 1% of what Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint did? Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Sarah Palin, they have more onions than Lindsey Graham or Trent Lott — and that’s the problem. Republican women got more fortitude, more guts than these Port-and-cigar-in-the-ballroom Republican establishment types. If only Christine O’Donnell had been a sensible candidate like Barney Frank. If only Christine O’Donnell had been sensible like Colin Powell, then maybe she would have won, same thing with Sharron Angle. If she’d-a just been as sensible as Charlie Rangel.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ll tell you what, if the Republican establishment types are gonna run out there and blame O’Donnell and blame Angle, they better blame me because I was right in there with them. The problem is that all over the liberal media today I’m being called a winner. So imagine in the liberal media, I’m the winner, but in the Republican establishment I am a failure along with Angle and O’Donnell.
Did you see that new Airbus A380, an engine, which is as big as a building, blew up? It just obliterated. Plane landed safe. I am glad I canceled my order for the Airbus A380. That’s $250 million I didn’t need to spend, as it turns out. I wouldn’t be able to get it into a lot of small airports anyway, so it’s a good thing that I canceled my order.
Lamar Alexander had the class to go to Delaware and campaign for Christine O’Donnell. Did Lindsey Graham? He did not. These people are so concerned about winning a majority, what did they do? Did Graham go to Colorado, Nevada, Alaska, Delaware, West Virginia, campaign for conservatives? I don’t know. Maybe he did. I just didn’t see it. But can you imagine if we ran, if the Republican Party this election cycle had run on the Lindsey Graham agenda, which is amnesty for illegals, which is rights for terrorists, which is cap and trade, which is McCain-Feingold, maybe now they can make it McCain-Graham science Feingold is gone, if we had run on Lindsey Graham’s agenda, where would we be? We would be out of power for 40 years and we get a story in The Politico today about Republican failure, it doesn’t include Obama, after we pick up 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate. This guy, he can’t even be counted on to vote against a liberal activist for the Supreme Court. McCain will campaign harder against J. D. Hayworth than against a Democrat. Mort Kondracke, who once called me a hot dog on the Special Report with Brit Hume, was on the Congressional Quarterly/Roll Call conference call today, and he spoke about the 2010 midterm election in the government, and the moderator, Fred Barbash, ‘Okay, Mort, what’s the agenda out there?’
KONDRACKE: The right wing has been empowered and emboldened within the Republican Party and there will be shrieking every time any Republican leader attempts to make a compromise with the Democrats. You can just imagine Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin all of whom are saying, ‘Do not compromise, do not compromise, do not compromise. We were elected. We were put here. This is it.’ So this is the makings of gridlock.
RUSH: That’s exactly right, Mort, exactly right, and Mort, there’s a whole large percentage of the country thanking me, and a lot of people are gonna be happy with gridlock, damn straight gridlock, damn straight. What’s it gonna take to stop this agenda of Obama’s but gridlock, until we get a majority in the White House to really start rolling it back? And, Mort, what is this obsession that we, the winners, have to compromise with the losers? When did that happen? Let’s go back to World War II. It’s MacArthur and the Japanese on the USS Missouri. The last time I looked, the conditions of surrender were offered the Japanese and they had to sign it and that was it. I don’t think MacArthur asked the Japanese what we, the United States, had to do. Where was the compromise with the Japanese? Where was the compromise with the Germans in World War II? ‘Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Limbaugh, are you comparing the Democrat Party to the Japanese and the axis powers in World War II?’ What if I am? We did give the Russians Eastern Europe. We compromised with the Russians after World War II and what did we get? A Cold War and starvation and mass murder. So, yeah, we’re not interested in compromising with the left, and, as winners, you don’t compromise with losers. It’s the other way around. Learn it, love it, live it, Mort.