RUSH: Now we move on to John Kasich. John Kasich is understandably angry. John Kasich is understandably frustrated. Let’s go to back to the first debate. After the first debate, people like F. Chuck Todd and other experts in the media said that John Kasich won the first debate, and it wasn’t even close. He won the first debate hands down. John Kasich was far and away the best Republican on the stage in that first debate.
You know why? Because they said, “John Kasich! Finally a Republican who shows he has a heart. Finally there’s a Republican running for president who shows that he cares about people.” And that’s because of what Kasich said about expanding welfare, expanding entitlements, embracing and accepting gay marriage and all people and whatever they do, because we must love them. The media melted, and they thought that Kasich was gonna run away with it. And Kasich hasn’t gotten beyond whatever he is: Three, four, maybe five percent.
I’m sure Governor Kasich thinks he’s got maybe the best record as a governor in the state of Ohio, and I’m sure he believed what the Drive-Bys said after the first debate, and I’m sure he expected those kinds of things to be said based on the opinions he gave. And yet all of that has not manifested itself in any kind of upward movement, and he’s understandably frustrated. And now he’s out wondering: What the heck happened to our party? What happened to us conservatives? What’s gone wrong? What has happened to our party?
Two sound bites. Here’s the first one. This is in Westerville, Ohio, yesterday at a campaign event.
KASICH: I’ve about had it with these people! We got one candidate that says that we ought to abolish Medicare and Medicaid. You ever heard of anything so crazy as that, telling our people in this country who are seniors or about to be seniors that we’re gonna abolish Medicaid and Medicare? We got one person saying we ought to have a 10% flat tax that will drive up the — the deficit in this country by trillions of dollars that my daughters will spend the rest of their lives having to pay off. You know, what I say to them is, “Why don’t we have no taxes? Just get rid of them all and then a chicken in every pot on top of it!”
RUSH: Right. So the frustration is settling in because the “compassion” play isn’t seeming to work. Kasich, the compassion play was gonna work. John Kasich was gonna show it. A lot of other Republicans who said they believe in “compassionate conservatism,” but John Kasich was gonna demo it. And he did. And it isn’t working. And so now he’s lashing out. Now as best I can tell, I didn’t know we had anybody who wants to abolish Medicare and Medicaid. The closest I can find is Ben Carson saying that he would like to gut Medicare.
But I can’t find anybody else that said they wanted to gut both of them. But Ben Carson has said that he wanted to cut Medicare. “We got one person saying we ought to have a 10% flat tax that’ll drive up the deficit in this country by trillions of dollars.” No, the Republicans in the Congress, Governor Kasich, are doing that. You don’t need to worry about raising the national debt. The Republicans in Congress, your buddies (sigh), they’re helping the Democrats do that. Tax cuts, see? In these guys’ minds, tax cuts — you keeping more of your money — that’s the danger! Governor Kasich’s wondering what happened to the conservative movement.
Yeah. (chuckling)
We’ve been asking that for quite a while of people like him.
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RUSH: Does anybody remember who’s actually gutted Medicare? Can you say the name Barack Hussein Obama? Remember the $700 billion Obama cut from Medicare to take that money and spend it on Obamacare, and then they double counted it? If anybody’s gutted Medicare, it’s Obama. Now, here’s the next Kasich bite. This one’s aimed at Trump. These first two comments are aimed at Ben Carson, who is in the lead. Kasich’s upset at Carson, thinks he’s saying crazy stuff. This is aimed at Trump.
KASICH: (shouting) We know one guy that says we ought to take 10 or 11 million people and pick ’em up. I don’t know where… We’re gonna go in their homes, their apartments? We’re gonna pick ’em up and we’re gonna take ’em to the border and scream at ’em to get out of our country? That’s crazy. That is just crazy. We got people proposing health care reform that’s gonna leave, I believe, millions of people without adequate health insurance. What has happened to our party? What has happened to the conservative movement?
RUSH: Exactly right, Governor. You used to be a ranking member in the conservative movement. People without health insurance? Who the hell did that, Governor? Barack Obama! Obamacare. You signed onto it! Obamacare has left people without coverage. Obamacare has made it unaffordable. The premiums have skyrocketed. This ticks me off! I can’t tell you how this ticks me off. The premiums have skyrocketed. The deductibles are so high, people are never gonna be able to get to the deductible.
They’re never gonna get treated! The enrollment rates are way below what was necessary as stated by Obama. Obama destroyed the health care system! We used to have a conservative movement that Kasich used to be a member of that was trying to stop this kind of stuff. But it doesn’t exist anymore. And the people running for president understand that we need somebody that’s gonna stand up to this stuff rather than agree with it and go along with it under the guise that we can do it smarter or make it better or what have you.
And if you don’t understand how illegal immigration is perceived by the people in this country as the single greatest thing that could destroy it as it was founded, then you are more out of touch with people who vote for the president in this country than I can possibly believe. I’m not — this Kasich, but any politician that doesn’t understand the American people’s legitimate — and it’s bipartisan, and it’s massive — opposition to immigration “reform” in I don’t know when.
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RUSH: Governor Kasich, with all due respect, have you ever heard of Dwight Eisenhower? Dwight Eisenhower was a famous Republican president, famous general. Dwight Eisenhower deported millions of people in this country. We didn’t have immigration in this country from 1924 to 1965. Eisenhower deported a bunch of people that were not assimilating. We used to do immigration the right way. Does everybody forget we’re talking about illegal immigration here? We’re not talking about — which is bad enough as it is.
Do these people not know the numbers I cited to you yesterday: By the year 2022, an additional 12 million legal immigrants will be here? And everybody applauds that, claps their hands. “Yeah, yeah, ’cause we’re a nation of immigrants. Yeah, yeah, right cool.” Okay, fine. We’re talking about illegals! But we’ve deported people throughout our nation’s history. It isn’t anything new. But, look: “We got people proposing health care reform that can leave millions of people without adequate health insurance”?
Who is already doing that? Barack Obama! The Affordable Care Act!
And everybody knew this is exactly what was gonna happen before it was signed into law. This is why everybody opposed it. It was based on a bunch of lies. It was no way gonna give health insurance to everybody. It was no way gonna be free. It was no way gonna be cheaper. It was no way gonna be everybody’s gonna get more health treatment than they ever have had before. There was no way it was gonna improve because it was not constructed that way. Now we have people who are forced to pay fines if they don’t have health insurance, and the fines are cheaper than what it would be to buy health insurance?
What do you think people are gonna do, particularly young people who are healthy? How about the statistic that half of the people in this country earn less than $30,000? We have got serious problems here that have been created by the Democrat Party. The last seven years of Barack Obama have been an absolute disaster economically, socially, and culturally. And what we’ve had is Republicans afraid to stand up to any of it. They go along with it and then try to get accolades and pats on the back for being compassionate.
This is why there’s a disconnect between the Republican Party and its own elected officials. This is why there is now a Republican establishment that does not like having all this opposition called the conservative movement. “What happened to the conservative movement?” The Republican Party’s trying to destroy it, Governor Kasich. It’s too uncomfortable; it’s too much of a nuisance. Want to talk about gutting health care? Try Barack Obama: $700 billion drained from the program in order to fund this boondoggle called Obamacare.
And everybody knows Medicare is headed for collapse like everything else is. We’re $19 trillion in debt! Half the people of this country make under $30,000 a year. How in the world are we gonna have any kind of a tax base that can support anywhere near the kind of economic growth that we need? And it’s not just me speculating that Medicare’s headed for collapse. The government tells us every different day, and then the next day they tell us Social Security’s headed for collapse. At one point, it’s going to be true.
We have the Baby Boomers who can’t afford to retire, who want their Social Security. We’ve got a bunch of Gen X, Gen Y Millennials who have no desire to pay for ’em. They’re barely able to find career-oriented jobs themselves. I don’t know what’s been proposed to deal with any of this by any of these people worried about the collapse. John Kasich’s governor of Ohio. He expanded Medicaid in his state. Compassionate move. Cost is skyrocketing, as you would expect. You expand an entitlement, what the hell do you think, it’s gonna get cheaper?
You expand an entitlement, you put more people in the entitlement, put more people on the rolls, and somehow you’re reducing costs? No, but you’re really being “compassionate,” showing you have a big heart and you love people. (snorts) And then after we expand the entitlement, then all these guys that do that, they tell us how humane it was. “Yes, it was the humane thing to do! I’m not one of those mean Republicans. I have a heart. I have compassion. I support an expanding entitlement.”
It’s been expanded to now include able-bodied young people, and it’s also dropped the requirement to work in order to receive the benefit. What do you expect is gonna happen when you make freeloading easy? And then you call it compassionate! And if you don’t like the term “freeloading,” let’s look at it the other way around: What has happened that makes all of these costs impossible for people to bear on their own? Who’s responsible for that? Who is it that meddles in virtually every little thing? Do you know what happened?
Where’s conservatism gone? I’ll tell you where it is. We see a story that the donor class wants illegal immigrants ’cause they’re cheaper to pay. You know what conservatives say? “No, no, no! That’s not right. We believe in boundless opportunity. We believe in people showing up, working hard, educating themselves, using their ambition. We believe in people getting raises! We believe in people finding great jobs, great careers, increasing their pay, their wages, their standard of living. That’s what conservatism stands for. To make that happen, you get government out of the way.
“You turn people loose pick up you have faith in ’em. You trust ’em. You trust ’em, their ambition and their desire, the fact that they love their families and that they want to improve the lives of those that they support. We trust individuals to do the best for themselves, and that will raise everybody. We do not think people are incapable, incompetent, and need a government program in order to get through the day. But when you create all these entitlements, all these government programs and then you import 12 million, 20 million, whatever it is people that are not qualified to earn more than the minimum wage, what do you think is gonna happen to wages?
“What do you think is gonna happen to incomes? And the whole idea of people being self-supporting vanishes.” The conservative movement looks at the news every day in this country and weeps, cringes, and cries. Half the country is making $30,000 a year! Full-time work has now been reduced to part-time work so that people do not have to provide health care, and all of this is ’cause nobody can afford any of it. The proof that nobody can afford any of it is that we’re $19 trillion in debt giving it away.
We can’t afford it, period. We don’t have the money to do any of this “compassionate” stuff. Take a look Europe. You want to see “compassion”? The Europeans are filled with it. The Europeans are filled with all kinds of generational guilt, and so now all these people from all over the world want to better their lives and come to Europe. They said, “Come on in@ We’re good people!” And now they’re searching for guns. Yeah, there’s no Second Amendment in the EU. People that live there now looking for guns because they’re being overrun. The problem is, they can’t find guns. They’re not legal.
Now leaders in European country after European country are doing everything they can to try to resurrect deportation laws because they can’t handle the influx. Because it’s not refugees and it’s not migrants; it’s an invasion. But the good people of Europe, the leaders, the sophisticated elites fail to see anything other than what they thought was their own compassion on display, their own big-heartedness. Millions of people unable to get health care, and somehow this is the fault of the conservative movement? Somehow this is the fault of people running for president, who haven’t had a thing to do with Obamacare?
There’s not one Republican fingerprint on the American health care system today. Not one Republican vote gave us the system we have today. It was strictly a party line Democrat vote. Not one Republican. There’s not one Republican running for president that could be blamed for the structure and the operational joke that is Obamacare. Most of, but not all, the people running for president want to fix it. At some point, though, we’re either gonna realize we can’t afford all of these entitlements and all of this give-away, and we’re also gonna realize how we’re destroying people’s futures by expanding all these programs, by denying people the dignity of their own ambition and desire and achievement. That’s where the conservative movement is, but you don’t find any of this in Washington. You don’t hear any of this in Washington. None of it.
What you hear in Washington is the things I just said to you are troublesome. They’re mean-spirited, extreme, and they’re just undesirable. When in fact those of us who want the best for people actually are the ones with compassion. We are the ones who actually do love people. We’re the ones who actually do want the best for people, and we understand that government cannot, will not, never has, done that.
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RUSH: Have you heard about what’s going on at Walt Disney? Walt Disney is importing new workers, legal immigrants, H1B visas. When I first heard about this, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand why Zuckerberg and these guys are running around pro-legal immigration expansion, until I figured out what was going on. They want recent graduates, high skilled, high GPA graduates from foreign countries. They want to employ them because they are cheaper than it is to hire Americans of the same qualifications, same experience.
At Disney, you know what’s happening? Current employees are being forced to train the immigrants who are going to replace them at half, often, what they are being paid. And Disney employees are finally speaking up about it. The same thing’s gonna happen at Facebook. The same thing is gonna happen wherever you have a high-tech wizard demanding that we expand immigration. They’re looking for cheap labor. They want the same qualifications. They want the wizards of smart in the tech world. They want the brightest geeks they can get. They just don’t want the geeks that can demand wages that are at present being paid.
The reason for this is workers around the world make less than Americans do, and you can’t compete globally if your labor costs are higher. This leads me to another problem. What’s wrong in all of this immigration is a really out-of-focus focus. Milton Friedman, was he crazy, Governor Kasich? Was Milton Friedman crazy? Milton Friedman said you cannot have open immigration and a massive welfare state. The two together will destroy an economy.
Here’s what I mean, by focus. When did this go wrong? When it comes to immigration, when did it matter what foreigners want, more than what Americans want? When did that begin? Because when it comes to immigration, the issue is not what foreigners want or what foreigners demand. The issue is what do Americans want. This is the United States of America and the people we elects and represent us in Washington are supposed to represent us. This is what’s missing. They don’t anymore. They are representing people who are not citizens. They are standing up for people who are not citizens.
They’re not standing up for the American people who elect them anymore. As such, we don’t have a representative government. We have a government governing against the will of the people. The will of the people is universally opposed. The Republican-Democrat Party policy on just this one issue, immigration, but there are others. Governor Kasich and Governor Christie and Jeb Bush and whoever falls in line here that foreigners and immigrants are far more important to America’s future than Americans are. They spend all of this time telling us about the plight of foreigners. I realize foreigner is a dirty word, we’re not supposed to say that. Okay. They tell us about the plight of people who live in Mexico, in El Salvador, and other poor nations around the world.
We have to hear about that. We know that. It’s not our fault. We somehow, though, are gonna be blamed or punished or what have you. It’s our responsibility somehow to change their circumstances, and we get to hear about how immigration’s an act of love. Yes, it’s what Jeb says. These immigrants, they love America. Oh, we don’t? This has nothing to do, none of that, what the immigrants want, what the illegals want, what Jorge Ramos wants, nothing to do with what is supposed to be the basis of a nation’s immigration policy.
But that’s where this has really been turned upside down, because, as far as Washington is concerned, elected officials, it seems the only thing that matters is what people that do not live here want. Foreign governments isn’t what they want, foreign citizens isn’t what they want, even some domestic citizens, if they align with these people. The issue is what American citizens want and desire, and they express that by virtue of elections.
The United States is here as a country not to provide benefits for the rest of the world. The way that happens is by building and growing the strongest America possible, creating boundless riches, boundless economic activity and creating revenue growth like we haven’t seen, and that’s how we help the world. We don’t help the world by getting rid of our borders and saying, “Come on in.” That destroys the engine of the greatest country ever. And the fact that people we have elected are seeking that solution is why there is so much opposition to Washington, DC, today.
I have to take another break because I’m up against it on time. We’ll be back.
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RUSH: In the case of Disney, what they are doing, they’re replacing highly technical IT workers who make around a hundred grand a year with foreign workers who make less than 60, plus the savings in payroll tax. They don’t have to pay payroll tax for the three years they hire these people. And the people making a hundred, who have the jobs currently, are having to train their replacements.
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RUSH: Here’s Silvana in San Diego. Great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program today. Hi.
CALLER: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to say that the Republican establishment is not a party of opposition anymore. They have become a party of governance. That’s why they’re so interested in going across the aisle and working together. That’s why they have passed an Iran deal, the transpacific deal, the budget deal. Mitch McConnell, one of the first things that he said as leader of the Senate was that he will make Senate work and he will be passing things in the Senate.
Now, I believe that if your sole focus is governance then the bigger and the more complex the government, the more indispensable you become. And for me it’s such a turnoff when I hear Governor Jeb or Governor Kasich, they keep talking about governing and how they know how to govern and how they know how to work across the aisle. But right now the way I feel, and I believe a lot of other people, is we don’t want bigger and bigger government, and then you governing bigger and bigger government. What we want right now is someone actually cutting the government down to a manageable and reasonable size.
RUSH: Amen, sister. That’s right on the money. The only thing I could add to it is something to buttress your point. I’m gonna go back to 1988. This program started in August of ’88, we were right in the middle of the presidential campaign that year, Michael Dukakis and George H. W. Bush, who was running on claiming that his was gonna be Reagan’s third term. I remember seeing a profile. The Drive-By Media back then, they loved Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, they just loved the guy. I mean, they loved Dukakis, and I saw endless profiles on Dukakis.
And one of the times profiles I saw was Dukakis sitting at his desk, his official governor’s office desk shuffling papers and writing things down and signing things and people bringing him more paper and signing that and more aides bringing in more paper. And then he gathered up all the papers and put ’em in a briefcase and leave the office and go to the sidewalk and walk to some other government building. And on the walk to the other government building being interviewed by whatever Drive-By Media person it was, Dukakis said, “I love this. I love the process.”
And that’s exactly what Silvana is talking about, the process of governing, the process of using the government to do things, and now it’s become: “We must use the government to do things for people.” That’s the purpose of the government, to do things for people, people in pain, people in need, people hurting, people in harm’s way, we must do things for people. And Dukakis could not stop talking about how much he loved the process. My antennae went up. This is not the kind of guy we want, who loves the process. We ideally want somebody who doesn’t dig it, whose idea is to make it as invisible and unobtrusive as they can.
But somebody that loves it — and she’s exactly right. You listen to all these people talk, if they don’t get legislation passed, they are abject failures. We haven’t passed any bills in this quarter. We haven’t got legislation done. People are gonna be mad at us. We are here to get legislation. No, you’re not, not anymore. We’ve got enough. We got more legislation than we need. But she’s right, that’s how they define their success is how much legislation they get done; how many bills they move; how many votes get taken; how many cloture votes are successful; how many pieces of legislation are sent up to the White House for the signature so I can join the signing ceremony and get a pen that was used when the president signed my bill. That’s what jazzes ’em. She’s exactly right. I appreciate the call, Silvana. Very perceptive you are.