RUSH: How long’s it gonna be, folks, before we start seeing billboards all over, Florida, other upcoming primary states with Rick Perry on ’em saying, “Miss me yet?” How long’s that gonna be? You remember when they had the George Bush billboards, “Miss me yet?” a couple months into the regime? 
Anyway, great to have you here, folks, already Thursday, fastest week in the media. Goes even faster when one of the days you spend 12 hours, 10 hours, whatever it was, in an airplane, like I did? Great to have you here, as always, it really is a thrill and a delight. Telephone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
Boy, this Newt stuff. Did you know any of this Newt stuff, Snerdley? Let’s go through the list. By the way, you should know, there’s a blog in the Washington Post. It’s called The Plum Line and it’s written by a guy named Greg Sargent, and I think he used to be at Editor and Publisher back when it was in business. He was one of the guys there when it went out of business. Very, very left-leaning. He’s got a post that includes this. “The New York Times reports today — based on unclear sourcing — that Mitt Romney has endorsed a strategy of raising doubts about Newt GingrichÂ’s ’emotional stability.'” And then there are others that are raising questions here about Newt and his mendacity, his forthrightness.
It is incredible. Yeah, yeah. Well, during the CNN debate with John King, he said that he had all kinds of friends that could vouch for the fact that he had never told his wife he wanted an open marriage. And so yesterday Newt in the campaign said, (paraphrasing) “Nope, nope, there aren’t any friends. It’s just my two daughters. What I said in the debate, that wasn’t true.” But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s the front page of Drudge. Let’s give you the headlines.
Newt flashback, 1983: “Reagan Responsible for National Decay.” This is Newt saying these things.
Newt 1986: “The Reagan Administration Has Failed, Is Failing.”
Newt, 1988: “If Bush Runs as a Continuation of Reaganism, He Will Lose.” Now, of course, Bush ran as a continuation of Reaganism, and he won, and he soundly defeated the loser, Michael Dukakis.
Then here’s the story on the debate claim. “During last ThursdayÂ’s debate, when CNN moderator John King asked about Marianne GingrichÂ’s interview on ABC accusing Newt Gingrich of having requested an ‘open marriage,’ part of GingrichÂ’s crowd-pleasing answer was this charge: ‘Let me be quite clear. The story is false. Every personal friend I have who knew us in that period said the story was false. We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false. They werenÂ’t interested because they would like to attack any Republican.’
“Now, last night, King reported on his show CNNÂ’s John King, USA that Gingrich had spoken inaccurately when he said that friends had been offered to ABC to rebut the story. ‘Well, tonight, after persistent questioning by our staff, the Gingrich campaign concedes now Speaker Gingrich was wrong both in his debate answer and in our interview yesterday,’ King said. ‘Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond says the only people the campaign offered to ABC were the SpeakerÂ’s two daughters from his first marriage.'” So he’s out there, and he told John King during the debate, this is one of the answers that got a standing O. That he’d offered ABC a whole bunch of friends of his to rebut this point that he never said to his wife he wanted an open marriage. That turns out not to be true.
Then there is YouTube video in 1988: “Bush Won’t Win if He Runs to Continue Reaganism.” Of course, Bush 41 won in a landslide in 1988 and it was largely because the American people wanted four more years of Reagan. There are other examples of this profound criticism of Reagan. Drudge’s lead headline is, “Insider: Gingrich Repeatedly Insulted Reagan.” Now, when I saw all of this stuff — and obviously it’s a coordinated document dump here, opposition research dump. It’s obviously coordinated. And this stuff, by the way, that’s on Greg Sargent’s blog, Plum Line, that’s the thinly sourced stuff in the New York Times about Newt being emotionally unstable and Romney putting that out, that’s why Romney is not liked by the Republicans that don’t like him. It’s that kind of stuff that his campaign puts out.
If you want to know, why do these people hate Romney so much? In 2008, you recall, Huckabee and McCain hated Romney. Now they both love Romney, but back then they hated Romney. It’s because of stuff like this. He’s doing stuff like this in ads before they had any money to run their own ads. And, I’ll tell you what, the way this hit me, I told you people this before. I first heard of Newt Gingrich when he was perhaps the premiere defender of Ronald Reagan. This was in the early 1980s of course, Reagan assumed office in 1981. I was working in Kansas City. Between 1979 and 1983 I was working for the Kansas City Royals. In 1983 I left the Royals and corporate America and went back to radio. I was gonna give it one more shot because that was my passion, it’s what I loved and it’s what I did best. And I learned that corporate structures were not for me.
But even during those last two years, of course, I’m in my private time which there wasn’t a lot of when you work for a professional baseball team, 18-hour days, during home stands and so forth. But, nevertheless, I was as immersed in politics then as I am now. What’s funny is nobody at the Royals knew it because nobody ever talked about it. All you did was talk baseball there. If you talked about anything other than what was in the sports page, there was something wrong with you. So nobody I worked with had any idea that I had any interest whatsoever or knowledge whatsoever in politics. But I’m watching this stuff and what happened was, the moment Reagan’s inaugurated, the Democrats, the media, it was as vicious an assault on a human being, on a Republican, as there is today.
Now, those of you who were not paying attention back then — or who were too young to pay attention — don’t doubt me, it was vicious. And Reagan did not have a media on his side. It was the three networks and CNN and the newspapers. There was no talk radio. There were no blogs, of course. There wasn’t the Internet. There was no alternative media. Reagan had National Review. That was his lone ally in the media, William Buckley’s National Review. That was it. And early on in the Reagan years, does the name David Stockman ring a bell? David Stockman, the first budget director for Reagan, within the first year goes rogue and says Reaganomics won’t work, can’t work, it was bad.
It was a total back stab. That’s where the name “trickle down” actually got created I think, and became standard vernacular in the popular lexicon. That, and supply-side. And I remember the stories about Reagan taking Stockman to the woodshed. That’s a quote from the story. That’s how it was described, to get his mind right. But that unleashed a torrent from Tip O’Neill, from every Democrat, I mean all these people. Reagan lied, Bush was right, it is voodoo economics, oh, this is horrible. We were in a great recession at the time here. The Democrats loved what Stockman did, and the guy who self-appointed himself to stop all this was Newt. And that’s where I first heard of him.
Newt Gingrich and Bob Walker and a couple of others that were members of what was called the Conservative Opportunity Society, I don’t know that it had been named as such yet, but it was a bunch of young, relatively new members of the House on the Republican side who were conservatives. They had special orders every night. Once the House had finished its official business, as long as somebody shows up on the floor of the House to speak, the cameras on C-SPAN stay on. It didn’t matter that nobody else was in the House chamber. They stayed on until the last person left the floor. And Newt and his guys were in there five hours a night. They were rotating, each of them would speak for an hour. They would yield to each other. They would interrupt themselves for questions and so forth. But the cameras only were focused on the well. You never knew that there was no audience there, except there was never any applause. You never knew that the House chamber was empty, unless you knew what the special orders were.
And this went on for years. And it’s where I heard of Newt Gingrich. And Newt had appointed himself the personal defender of Ronald Reagan and had appointed himself the singular person with his buddies to counter all of what he thought were the lies of the day being spouted by the media and the Democrats. Then I leave the Royals and I get back into radio. And I decide that I want to get this guy Gingrich on the air to have a chat with, and it was difficult. Couldn’t do it. The requests that Gingrich were getting were overwhelming; he wasn’t really interested in doing a lot of them. He didn’t really have a whole lot of time.
The station I was working on was owned by the Mormon church, Bonneville Broadcasting. It turned out that somebody inside Bonneville Broadcasting unearthed a contact that was able to get to Newt, and I got an interview with him for about 20 or 25 minutes. I don’t remember anything about the interview. These are just little details here to spice up the story. But this went on for years. These special orders went on for years, and it wasn’t just the defense of Reagan. Newt Gingrich was ripping the Speaker of the House at the time, Tip O’Neill; and when Tip left and “Fort Worthless” Jim Wright came in, the assault continued.
It was everything you wish was happening today, is all I can tell you. It was everything you wish the entire Republican Party was doing today. It was led by Newt Gingrich, and what was he doing? He was defending Reagan. Now, all of this stuff that hit Drudge and everywhere else last night about Newt telling everybody the country goes to hell if they continue Reaganism and that Newt insulted Reagan and that the Reagan administration failed and Iran-Contra… I never heard any of that. I started doing this particular program in Sacramento in 1984, and I was just as immersed in national politics then as I am now, and I could honestly tell you this.
I’m not denying it happened, don’t misunderstand. I’m just telling you, because it did happen. I’ve got the audio; the YouTube video is out there. Newt did say this stuff. I just don’t remember it. I don’t remember anybody in 1988 telling George Bush, “You’re gonna lose big if you just continue Reagan,” because the whole Republican Party strategy was to fool Republicans into thinking that that’s what Bush was gonna do. Their whole strategy was to tell the Republicans, “Okay, I’m going to.” I remember George Bush at that New Orleans convention. His theme was, “I’m gonna complete my mission,” and it was based off the fact he had been shot down in World War II.
They had the video of him being rescued at sea after his plane was shot down. He had to parachute out of his plane to be shot down. Great hero story. “Complete my mission.” It was all intertwined with continuing what had happened after Reagan, economically. Now, you people know that I am blessed with a pretty good memory. And I don’t remember Newt Gingrich in the 1980s — I’m not denying it happened. I’m just telling you, this stuff was a total shock to me last night when I learned that Newt had said this stuff. (interruption) I don’t know. Well, we’ve got the audio and we’ll listen to it and see whether it was off the cuff or what, ’cause Newt does… (interruption)
It’s like… (interruption) Well, it’s like… (interruption) He does. The latest thing he blurted out is a moon colony. We’re gonna have a moon colony, get 13,000 people on the moon, and make it the 51st state. And we can have honeymoons in space, honeymoons and weddings in space. It would be really funny because of weightlessness. Wait ’til people find out how much fun you can have when you’re weightless! This stuff just came rolling out yesterday. Now, here’s the problem with that. Here we are in Florida and Obama has effectively killed the space program so obviously Newt says (summarized), “Hey, I got an idea for space: We’ll colonize the moon!
“We’ll make at it 51st state, we’ll have weddings and honeymoons and weightlessness.” Well, the problem with that is the other part of his campaign is focused on reducing spending and reforming entitlements and some modification in health care spending, Social Security spending. So you’re in a state where that is a crucially important thing to people. I mean, you’re telling them to do all that and then at the same time you’re gonna go colonize the moon. It’s a disconnect. But that would fall under the category of “grandiose,” and it just came out of nowhere. Then National Review Online has a DEVASTATING piece on Newt.
Elliott Abrams, who was in the Reagan administration for foreign policy. Elliott Abrams is married to the daughter of Norman Podhoretz. Elliott Abrams is of impeccable reputation and character. I think Elliott Abrams… In fact, last time he was at the White House he was walking out of the West Wing as I walked in. He’s always been nice, stopped, shook my hand, thanked me for saving the country. (These guys always say that, then they smile and walk off.) But anyway, this piece by Elliott Abrams, it just slices and dices with the most harmless tone. There nothing vicious about it.
You’ve got another piece by Bob Tyrrell (known in public as R. Emmett Tyrrell. He started the American Spectator.) It just dumps on Newt, and Elliott Abrams’ piece specifically focuses on Newt’s relationship with Reagan and how there really wasn’t one. So this is obviously a coordinated attack that’s designed to take Newt out here in Florida. That’s what’s going on. It’s happening. We all knew stuff like this was gonna happen. We all worry about when candidates are gonna implode and this kind of thing. My only point here is: I didn’t know any of this stuff. That’s the only thing I’m telling you, and I was shocked when I read it.
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RUSH: You’ve got Nancy Reagan. People have produced, I think, either a letter or a video from Nancy Reagan saying that Newt would be the obvious inheritor of Reaganism. And you’ve got Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s son, who’s endorsed Newt. This Elliott Abrams piece, though, folks, of all the stuff that’s out there is probably the most devastating because Elliott Abrams’ credentials are impeccable. He almost went to jail for the cause. For example, here’s one thing he says about Newt: “As a new member of Congress in the Reagan years — and I was an assistant secretary of state — Gingrich voted with the president regularly, but equally often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides and his policies to defeat communism. Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong.” That’s the tone of the entire piece by Elliott Abrams. But there’s more than just an opposition research document dump here going on. You have Elliott Abrams, Bob Tyrrell coming out with some of this stuff. It is overwhelming, and it happens in one day.
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RUSH: Now, back to this Newt stuff. I got a note from Jeffrey Lord. Jeffrey Lord writes for the American Spectator, which is Bob Tyrrell’s bunch. Bob Tyrrell has a devastating piece: Newt is Bill Clinton, only worse! Oh, it’s devastating. This Elliott Abrams piece is devastating. And they all happen the same day. So Jeffrey Lord says: Wait a minute now, Nancy Reagan, 1985, Goldwater Institute, after the Reagan era — and Jeff Lord says, “Believe me, if Nancy Reagan thought for a nanosecond that Newt was anti-Reagan, she would never have been on the same platform with him.” I can vouch for that. I’ve never seen a more protective wife of anybody than Nancy Reagan. If you in your life said one thing against Ronald Reagan, you were gone. You were banished. You were never allowed to be in the same room.
Talk to the people who knew them both and worked with them, and they’ll confirm that. So Jeff Lord says (paraphrased), “Well, if all this that we’re hearing yesterday’s true, what the hell’s Nancy Reagan doing out there giving Newt basically a huge award?” She said, “The dramatic movement of 1995,” that was going on then, “is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie,” her husband, “and in turn Ronnie turned the torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.” That’s Nancy Reagan in 1985. Now, Jeff Lord worked in the Reagan White House.
He’s posted that Elliott Abrams never said a word to him at the time about Newt, not one. And Jeff says, “Suffice to say the political office of the Reagan White House made it our job to defend Reagan from Republican members of Congress. I never heard any criticism of Newt, either, firsthand from Elliott or secondhand from anybody else,” and then he posts his take on all it is at American Spectator. So what do we have here? Tyrrell says that Newt Gingrich is Bill Clinton without Clinton’s charm. This is a long list of people here who have just come out both barrels blazing on the same day, or within close proximity of the same day: Elliott Abrams, Bob Tyrrell, Drudge, Brit Hume of Fox News, Dr. Krauthammer, the New York Sun, the National Review, Vin Weber.
We’ve got the audio. I don’t have it ready to play yet. It’s back in the stack somewhere. I’ll find it eventually, but he did say all this stuff. I just didn’t know it. That’s what has me stunned. My memory of Newt Gingrich is as a premiere defender of Ronald Reagan. So this stuff caught me totally by surprise. And all these people — Elliott Abrams, Bob Tyrrell, Dr. Krauthammer — have impeccable credentials. And then there’s this. This is a post at The Corner, National Review Online. “Operation Chaos in Reverse.” It’s actually a front-page Washington Post story. “Liberal Groups Join in Florida Ad War Against Romney — Newt Gingrich isn’t the only one trying to beat Romney in Florida.
“Several liberal groups are funding new ad campaigns in Florida, targeting the vulnerable GOP presidential candidate, part of an unusually bold effort by Democrat supporters to bolster Obama’s chances in November by influencing the Republican primaries.” So the Democrats are doing Operation Chaos here in Florida. The unions are running anti-Romney ads, big time, all over the state. This is an expensive media market. There are ten sizeable, significant media markets in the state of Florida. You need a lot of money to saturate this state with TV ads. And these pro-Obama people are coming in. You’ve got a $1 million ad buy from the American Federation of State County, Municipal, Employees. That’s the nation’s largest public employee union. They’re focusing on Romney’s history as head of Bain Capital.
SEIU and Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama super PAC, have also jointly launched a Spanish-language radio campaign in Florida accusing Romney of having two faces, and they’re even… Reuters has a hit piece on Marco Rubio coming tomorrow. I mean, folks, everybody involved in politics with a vested interest has opened both barrels of the shotgun and are firing at everybody. Every Republican of note and of stature is under a full-fledged assault in this state today. If you didn’t know better after this Reuters piece, you would think that Marco Rubio contributed money to Adolf Hitler’s campaign. That’s how bad this hit piece is.
It just all over. Newt was on Univision. He was on Univision, and he was talking some weeks ago how he gave depositions in his divorce case. There weren’t any depositions in his divorce case. He didn’t give any depositions. His wife told the media there weren’t any depositions. So everybody is scratching their heads. “Why would Newt say that all kinds of friends were available to prove to ABC? Why would he do this? Why would he tell ABC that he had all kinds of friends who could back up his claim that his wife was lying, Marianne was lying that he never did ask for an open marriage — and then tells Univision that he had depositions in his divorce when there weren’t any depositions?”
Then this grandiose stuff with the moon colony! Ha. You add all this up, it’s amazing. You know, I had hopes that this campaign would go on and on and on and on all the way to the convention, and I’ll tell you something that’s happened. Folks, Romney’s getting hit, too. Romney’s doing his own version. He’s got some imploding going on out there with Romneycare. There’s a devastating ad that somebody’s put together, pointing out that Obamacare is Romneycare. Oh, it’s one of Newt’s super PACs. And then there’s another ad that makes the bridge, completes the bridge from Romneycare to Obamacare and does it with Romney’s two advisers that went from Massachusetts to the Oval Office. The point is one guy is emerging entirely unscathed in all of this, and that’s Santorum.
Santorum, nobody is saying a negative word about. He’s not under assault by anybody. And we want this campaign to go on and on. There are two reasons. There are two primary reasons that we want this campaign to go on. I know a lot of people are panicked. They can’t handle all this negative stuff about Republicans in the media every day, but it’s going to happen. If they have to lie and make stuff up, this is going to happen. Republicans are hit every day in the media. There’s no way this can be stopped. You’re just gonna have to come to grips with it. There’s nothing I can do, there’s nothing anybody can do to stop the media assault on any Republican candidate or high-profile personality.
So it’s gonna happen. What we don’t want to happen… If we happen to choose a nominee after Florida, if our race is essentially over after Florida and we have our nominee — either after Super Tuesday or right at Super Tuesday — then guess what? Obama can start his focused negative ads on our nominee in March and run them continually through the election. If the campaign can be dragged out, no winner until right before the convention, then Obama can’t focus specifically on the nominee. They have to focus on everybody that’s running and it could delay him, and Obama’s got a lot of money. One of the ways of equalizing the disparity in the money is to have a long, drawn-out campaign that delays Obama’s focused spending against our nominee.
‘Cause we can compete financially in a two, three-month campaign that starts in September, but we can’t keep up with ’em starting in March, or it would be hard. The preferable way… The second reason is, keep this conservative debate going in the news, in the media each and every day. So as long as Obama doesn’t know who specifically to destroy, he’s gotta aim at everybody. That means dividing and diluting his resources. Newt’s also stepped in it, too. He said that he was a Goldwater supporter when he was a Rockefeller state chair. These are the kinds of things, as you heard in the early part of the campaign, people worry about what Newt is going to say at any time, and you don’t know where it’s gonna come from and you don’t know… (interruption) Yeah, he did say it. He said he’s a Goldwater supporter. He was a Rockefeller state chair. He was a regional chair for Rockefeller. (interruption) Nelson Rockefeller. Yeah. Yeah. The Rockefeller wing of the party. Correct. Exactly right.
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RUSH: Here’s some audio. And welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Tom DeLay has joined the fray. Tom DeLay is now saying Newt Gingrich is another Bill Clinton. DeLay says, (paraphrasing) “Yeah, we’d have leadership meetings almost every day and every day Newt had a new agenda. Nothing was ever organized.” You know, the criticism is a lot of people say Romney doesn’t believe in anything and Newt believes in everything. It just depends on the day. Now, if Romney’s behind this attack, we may have to rethink our opinion of his cut ’em off at the knees talents. The question is, whoever’s doing this, do you think they have the guts to do this against Obama? That’s the real question. (interruption) You do? Have you seen any evidence of this? Have you seen any evidence the Republican Party’s willing to go after Obama like they’re going after each other? I haven’t.
I hope that Elliott Abrams and Bob Tyrrell and the rest of them will have just as much fire against Obama as they do Newt. I hope that we see this same kind of focused opposition to Obama once that day comes. I really do. Snerdley says, “Oh, yeah, no doubt.” Really? Where’s the evidence? Where’s the evidence that anybody in our party’s got the guts to go after Obama the way they’re going after Newt here, the way they’ve gone after Perry, the way some of them have gone after Romney, where’s the evidence? We don’t have the evidence. We have to wait and see. And I’ll bet you a bunch of people in this audience, if you ask ’em to make a bet, they would bet the Republican Party doesn’t have the guts to go after Democrats the way they’re going after themselves. I’ll just bet you. We’ll find out. We’ll ask ’em when I get to the phones tomorrow. Just kidding. We’ll get to the phones today. Here’s Romney. This is an ad and you’ll hear Gingrich in this ad. This is a pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future ad.
GINGRICH: I worked with President Ronald Reagan. Worked with Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan playbook. President Reagan. Reagan. Reagan.
ANNOUNCER: Gingrich exaggerates, dropping Reagan’s name 50 times. But in his diaries Reagan mentioned Gingrich only once. Reagan criticized Gingrich, saying, Newt’s ideas, quote, “would cripple our defense program.”
RUSH: April 11th, 1988, Gingrich on a show, host says, “Can the vice president run as Bush on the issues that provided such success for Reagan?”
GINGRICH: I don’t think so at all. I think that the years of 1980-1984 are the past, and the American people are a people peculiarly addicted to the future. If George Bush runs as a continuation of Reaganism, I think he’ll lose because I think on Election Day the American people, given a choice between more of eight years or something new, will vote for something new.
RUSH: So that’s one of the things circulating. And this is January 13th, 2008, four years ago on This Week with George “Snuffleufagus.”
GINGRICH: We are at the end of the Reagan era. We’re at a point in time when we’re about to start redefining, as a number of people have started talking about, that we’re starting to redefine the nature of the Republican Party in response to what the country needs.
RUSH: Newt was one of the early signatories to the premise “the era of Reagan is over.” That’s 2008. (imitating Newt) “We’re at the end of the Reagan era here, in 1988. Nah, nah years of ’80, ’84, that’s the past, American people peculiarly addicted to the future. If George Bush runs as a continuation of Reaganism, he’ll lose.” Newt was wrong. The stuff’s out there. Last night was the first time, and I was shocked, ’cause I know everything, and I remember everything, and I had never heard that stuff before.
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RUSH: Bob Dole has gone nuclear. Bob Dole said, “Hey, hey, don’t leave me out of this.” Dole, National Review Online on The Corner blog: “I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late. If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.
“Gingrich served as Speaker from 1995 to 1999 and had trouble within his own party. Already in 1997 a number of House members wanted to throw him out as Speaker. But he hung on until after the 1998 elections when the writing was on the wall. His mounting ethics problems caused him to resign in early 1999. I know whereof I speak as I helped establish a line of credit of $150,000 to help Newt pay off the fine for his ethics violations. In the end, he paid the fine with money from other sources. Gingrich had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall. He loved picking a fight with Bill Clinton because he knew this would get the attention of the press. This and a myriad of other specifics helped to topple Gingrich in 1998.
“In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad. He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year. Newt would show up at the campaign headquarters with an empty ice-bucket in his hand — that was a symbol of some sort for him — and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it.” Imagine that picture. Newt Gingrich showing up at headquarters with an empty ice bucket. (laughing) Of all the things that Bob Dole remembers to include in this piece.
“In my opinion if we want to avoid an Obama landslide in November, Republicans should nominate Governor Romney as our standard bearer. He has the requisite experience in the public and private sectors. He would be a president we could have confidence in.” So it is both barrels.
Back to the audio sound bites. Nancy Reagan in Phoenix, the Goldwater Institute dinner in 1995. Number 26, 27, and 28.
NANCY: The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.
RUSH: Ronnie turned the torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress. Nancy Reagan. Now, she obviously didn’t know that Newt had been out there saying, “The era of Reagan was over” in 1988. If she’d-a known that she wouldn’t have said this. Here’s Newt Monday night in Tampa, he’s live on NBC. This is during the debate. Brian Williams said, “Mr. Speaker, you’ve been talking a lot about conservative principles in this campaign so far. Is that enough for you? Is that good enough to get you through here?”
GINGRICH: Look, I don’t want to spend my time commenting on Mitt. I’d like to just tell you that I started — I went to a Goldwater organizing session in 1964. I met with Ronald Reagan for the first time in 1974. I worked with Jack Kemp and Art Laffer and others to develop supply-side economics in the late seventies.
RUSH: Okay. That’s from the debate Monday night. Let’s go back to April 11th, 1988, a Washington news program, Newt Gingrich.
GINGRICH: I think this party in that sense is a very different party than it was, say, from the fights of the years of the Rockefeller/Goldwater process. A period in which, by the way, I was a Rockefeller state chairman in the South.
RUSH: Snerdley can’t believe it. (laughing) Snerdley’s mouth, his chin is on the desktop. (imitating Newt) “I tell you, I went to a Goldwater organizing session in 1964. I met with Reagan for the first time…” Both of these could be true. He could have gone to a Goldwater organizing session in ’64, didn’t like it, and joined the Rockefeller campaign. But it does sound like back in 1988, I’ll say this — (interruption) Well, you got a debate tonight. It’s obvious they’re clearing the field for Romney. Back in 1988’s Newt’s making it plain he was a Rockefeller Republican. And, by the way, in 1988 that was your ticket to the establishment.
Remember, folks, the Republican establishment never liked Reagan. I know I say this over and over again. He didn’t like Reagan. He was Rockefeller’s state chair in 1968 in the South. In 1968, he was a Rockefeller state chairman, talks about going to a Goldwater meeting in ’64. Remember, now, in 1988 the establishment was happy. They couldn’t wait to get rid of — in fact, Jeff Lord at American Spectator has written about some of the things that happened when the Bush 41 people showed up and took over the West Wing. They got rid of all the Reagan stuff. I forget the specifics. But in 1988 your ticket to the top of the GOP was to sign up for being a moderate. So at least best you could say maybe Newt was practicing opportunism there.
So that’s that. That’s the Newt stuff. It was kinder, gentler, the Bush 41 kinder, gentler. Thousand points of light. I was number 732, if you remember. I was number 732 of the thousand points of light. I even printed a certificate. I figured out how to use Pagemaker, so I printed my own certificate. I was number 732 out of a thousand points of light.
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RUSH: You know, every time I mention a blogger, it doesn’t matter what blog site I cite, other bloggers send me e-mails saying they’re phonies, they’re creeps. The hatred in the blogger community is funny. Sometimes I’m hesitant to mention bloggers ’cause I don’t like getting e-mails, “That blogger, he’s a phony, he’s a thief, that was mine first, everybody steals.” But I’ve got a blog here, guy named Dan Riehl. He claims that the video of Newt bashing Reagan is bogus, this 1988 audio that we played of Newt saying that Reagan’s wrong.
Here’s the little blog post. “There’s a short excerpt of a 1988 C-SPAN video purportedly showing Newt Gingrich bashing Reagan when talking about how Bush, Sr. should run” his campaign, should not run as more Reagan, but do something new. Riehl writes, “As I suspected, it’s edited to give a false impression. What you don’t see is immediately after when Gingrich praises Reaganism and the Reagan platform. If you can’t watch it all, it begins at about 2:30 in to confirm it’s the same segment. It’s the minute or two afterward you also need to hear to understand that Newt wasn’t bashing Reagan at all. He was merely saying, Bush isn’t Reagan and the GOP needs something new to sell.”
So I knew something like this was gonna happen. It’s not really that it’s been doctored, but that it has been selectively chosen from. So I sent it up to Cookie ’cause I can’t listen to it, I didn’t have the time to listen it. Cookie said, “Look, this thing is an hour long. I’m sure he praises Reagan at some point or another, but I wouldn’t say it’s doctored.” So my expert says it’s not doctored. The blogger says it’s been selectively edited or chosen. So I just wanted to get it out there. I think Cookie is protesting having to listen to an hour of Newt, basically, in order to find — (laughing) — what I asked her to find. He-he-he-he-he-he.
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RUSH: Cookie is defiant. She’s giving me a minute and a half after of the Newt bite and she’s insistent that nobody’s doctored this and nobody’s changed — and I’ve read the transcript, that’s true. Newt still says look, the eighties were great but we gotta look forward, people — people care about the future, da-da-da-da-da. He praises Reagan in the bite, which the first — the — the excerpted bite doesn’t include any of but it doesn’t change the fact that while praising Reaganism, he still says to George Bush, you — you’re wasting your time if you campaign on Reaganism. Nobody wants more of the past. We want to look forward, nothing changes about that. So the — the Cookster was right.