RUSH: It’s Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity simply by being here. Colorado Springs, Dave, you’re up first. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, my gosh, Rush. (chuckling) What an honor. How are you doing?
RUSH: I’m doing great, sir. Thanks for calling.
CALLER: Oh, excellent. Hey, I just wanted to call. You know, I am just fed up unbelievably with the Republicans. They sit there, like you said, they have a hundred votes to try to get rid of Obamacare and then when push comes to shove, the red line is in the sand, they have the opportunity, and they fund it for two years. What are they thinking? I’m a GOP chair! I’m a precinct chair here in the Springs, and it’s like (chuckling), how am I gonna get interested?
RUSH: All right, let me ask you then, if you’re a Republican chair, because here’s what they’re saying. They’re saying, “Well, look, we can’t win. We have a Democrat president,” who they think is overwhelmingly popular. “We’ve got a Democrat Senate. All we have’s the House. We can’t win anything. All we can do is just try to hold the ground that we’ve got, and this is a great deal. Given that we can’t win anything, given that we don’t have any power, given that we can’t stop it, this is a great, great win, and you ought to realize that and shut up.”
CALLER: (laughing) Not so. (laughing) I mean, this is an opportunity they have. If the roles were reversed, what do you think the Democrats would do? If they had a two seat majority, they would be able to stop government. They would shut it down. They would do whatever’s necessary.
RUSH: Exactly. Did the Democrats ever stop? When the Republicans were in the White House, did the Democrats ever say, “Ah, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t win”?
CALLER: Absolutely not.
RUSH: They don’t.
CALLER: They’re always on the move.
RUSH: You know, back when Newt Gingrich was Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton was in the White House, and they didn’t give up.
CALLER: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
RUSH: They had their Contract with America. Back when Newt was Newt, they fought the Democrats. They fought Clinton every day, every year. They ended up going off the rails, but the fact is that it can be done. This bunch, for some reason, takes comfort in — and wants us to take comfort in — that they can’t win and that they shouldn’t even try or push back, and so it leaves us to ask why. That’s why people then start saying, “Well, maybe they don’t really disagree with what’s going on.”
If they won’t even try, if they won’t even try to amass a voting majority to defeat this stuff, if they’re just going to retreat into the friendly confines of, “Hey, we’re doing the best we can because we can’t win. We don’t have any power. We got Obama in there and we got Harry Reid over here, and we can’t win.” I’m constantly amazed that there’s no push back. Look, I’ll say it again. You look at the opposition to Obamacare. There is a readymade majority just waiting to be connected to by the Republican Party, and there’s no effort made to do so. So what else can we conclude other than they’re really not that unhappy with what’s going on? And that’s why people say that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: “Yeah, we can’t win. Nothing we can do. They have the White House. They’ve got the Senate. We barely holding on to the House here, and we’re really just scared to death of a government shutdown. There’s nothing we can do.” So I think it’s us, folks, that need to learn how to “embrace the suck,” frankly.