RUSH: Okay, what is the state of play now? Even I, ladies and gentlemen, your know-everything, in-touch host, even I mere moments ago was still trying to get the lay of the land on where we are on what’s going on in Washington vis-a-vis the supposed shutdown, vis-a-vis continuing resolution, vis-a-vis the debt limit. I think I’ve got it nailed down, and I’ve also learned something else. Actually, I didn’t learn it. We know it. I just had it confirmed, and it’s about the Republican attitude, and it’s so unnecessary. It’s so defeatist.

The Republican attitude is because they’re total prisoners of what goes on in the Beltway. They’re total prisoners of the Beltway narrative. I’m not kidding, especially in the House, they think the last 15 days have eliminated any chance they’ve got of winning any elections in 2014 and 2016, and I am not kidding. They think Cruz and Lee and the people that led this have doomed them, and they are defeated. They are out of strategies. It’s just mind-boggling that they don’t have the long view, that they don’t understand the seeds that they’re planting right now.

Pat Buchanan has a really good column today in which he concedes (paraphrasing), “Yeah, the Republicans are gonna lose this, but it would be wise for them to remember history and losing with honor.” He cites the Goldwater era versus the RINO lib Republicans led by Nelson Rockefeller and the gang and how even back in 1964, Goldwater didn’t have a prayer because they were coming off the Kennedy assassination. Kennedy had been martyred. JFK had like a 70-point advantage in the polls, and it makes the point that Nixon was even campaigning harder. And this is the point. Other than Reagan, Nixon was the only nationally known Republican at the time that stood by Goldwater and campaigned even harder for Goldwater than Goldwater campaigned for himself.

Buchanan’s point is, look at what happened to Nixon versus what happened to all of those RINOs that threw in against Rockefeller. They were never heard from. Nelson Rockefeller never got the nomination. Scranton, all of these guys, George Romney, they never amounted to anything in the party. They never won anything, particularly nationally, after they abandoned Goldwater in ’64. Now, I know a lot of you people, “Come on, Rush, 1964, that’s long ago.” You know, history, they say, repeats itself in ways. It’s not necessarily true, but you certainly can learn from it. The fact is they’re doing the right thing here, whether they’ve been dragged into it or not, they’re doing the right thing.

They are warning the country of the absolute dangers of Obamacare. Well, some of the Republicans are. Others have been dragged kicking and screaming into it. But the people have led this fight. The people that have done their best to educate the American people as to what’s coming are going to be vindicated down the road. They are going to, as it is said, be stood in good stead. They’re gonna be okay.

And the Republicans that wanted to cave and give up and just go along with the Washington narrative are never gonna be heard from again. They’re not gonna have much respect. They’re not gonna be seen as fighters down the road, and it’s silly to think that what happened in these past 15 days means that 2014 and 2016 are already lost.

Obama’s running around here talking about how every Republican proposal is a ransom or taking him hostage. I’ll tell you who’s held hostage. The Republican Party in Washington is being held hostage, and they’re being held hostage by the Democrats, which is always the case. They’re being held hostage by the media, and they’re being held hostage by these skewed polls. That NBC, Wall Street Journal poll on Friday I think was the icing on the cake, as far as these guys feeling doom and gloom. Now, I’ve got details of what I’m talking about.

Let’s talk about the state of play right now. It looks like the Senate Republicans want to give Obama and the Democrats everything they want. They want to give an extension of the continuing resolution through the end of the year, which would then open the government. That would end the shutdown. They want to give them a debt ceiling hike through the middle of January so that we’re not going through this during the holidays. Oh, they’re also even offering a delay on one Obamacare tax for their union buddies. I mean, it’s a total win for Obama. Did you hear how Obama reacted to it? He rejected it. He said the Republicans have offered another ransom.

I sit here, I’m as far away from Washington in the continental US you can get here in Los Angeles and I’m still stunned that those guys much closer than I don’t see this. I know you see it, too. Obama does not want a deal. This has always been about the 2014 midterms and coming up with ways that he can blame the Republicans for whatever pain and suffering and abnormality he can create as president of the United States. In the meantime, the Republicans think that their only solution is to end this because that will stop the bleeding and that will make people forget about it, and then maybe they’ll have totally forgotten about it by the time 2016 comes along.

Now, in the House, let me give you the latest details as I have them as to what the House is offering. They were in conference this morning, and apparently there’s gonna be a vote today, and here are the five provisions of what the House would offer, if this holds up, and I might say that Obama will greet this as ransom as well. The House Republicans are probably gonna vote on the following: House members, senators, the president, the vice president, cabinet members would all have to go into Obamacare, meaning they would not be exempted; they would not be subsidized. The staff is not included in this. House members, senators, president, vice president, cabinet members would all have to go into Obamacare, but the staff would not. They would still get their subsidy.

There would be a two-year tax suspension on medical devices. Somehow this is thought to be a big deal to people. The vibrator industry must be thriving out there, ’cause somebody wants to call it a medical device and get a tax exemption on it. The House is going to propose income verification at the exchanges for Obamacare. Right now, Obama suspended all of that. There’s no income verification in order to qualify for a subsidy, because their computer systems ostensibly are not up and running to be able to tell who does and who doesn’t qualify, so it’s the honor system.

You just go in there and say, “You know what? I qualify for a subsidy,” and you’re supposed to get it. The Republicans want to put the verification for that back in. The continuing resolution, as in the Senate bill, would go through January 15th, so the federal budget, essentially, and the government would open up. Whatever shutdown there is would end, and the government would be funded through the middle of January, and the debt limit would be extended through February 7th.

So it’s a pretty… I don’t want to call it a “cave” because I don’t want to incite anything here, but these are pretty big concessions, and it is that the Republicans really think that they are losing. I can’t tell you what I’ve heard these last 15 days. They just think their world has ended, and it’s so bad that they cannot envision a way — even using the long view — of turning this into a positive. I wouldn’t say the Republicans are in a no-lose situation, but I’m telling you that the DC media have convinced them they’re in a no-win situation.

Who’s convinced them of this? Their own consultants, the Republican establishment. The media and the Democrats have convinced these conservatives — and I’m not talking about the Tea Party guys. The Tea Party guys are still okay. There might be a couple wavers in there, but the Tea Party people are still pretty solid. I’m talking about everybody else. They’re the ones that just want to end this and get away and go home and forget it and pretend it never happened.

So those are the two proposals. Now, I’m sure it’s true for you as it is for me. Those of us outside the Beltway, we don’t understand why the people inside the Beltway always believe and fall for the media narrative that we’re always getting our butts kicked and we cave. Why do they always accept it? Every poll that comes out, they believe. It’s almost as though some people want the news to be bad because…

I don’t know. Maybe they’ve got personal gain they can realize somehow if the news is bad. Maybe they’re just defeatist. Maybe some people are just psychologically ill-equipped to deal with success because in their minds they don’t think it’s real. I mean, there could be a combination of things to explain this, but it’s been going on for so long. The evidence is so clear that the media is never gonna love them.

The media is never gonna respect them. The media is never gonna treat them fairly. They’re going to have go out and above and beyond the media to reach the American people, which has been shown it can be done. But there is this attitude of, “Well, we can’t. We can’t win.” I mean, that seems to sum up the Republican view everywhere. “We can’t win.” I totally, thoroughly reject that.

You may not win this today or this week, but you might win 2014 and 2016. You might win in preparing the American people for the absolute debacle that is about to hit them. If there was ever a time to keep harping on Obamacare — even if you don’t have the guts, if you want to give up on the idea of repealing it, or on delaying it (or defunding it, I should say). If you want to give up on that, at least double down on identifying what it is for people so that when it happens to them, there will be no doubt who told them and who warned them.

There doesn’t even seem to be any impetus for that. Grab — I’m looking for — for George. Grab sound bite number 12. This was on the Fox News Channel yesterday, and this had to be a wet drama for some conservatives. You had George Will on there and Dr. Krauthammer at the same time. Who would that be a wet dream for? I’m trying to think, now. Let me change that. Who would that be really orgasmic for, George Will and Dr. Krauthammer on the same show at the same time?

Can you imagine that person to whom that would be an orgasm?

Anyway, it happened, and they did in fact disagree. Dr. Krauthammer — and that’s how Henry Kissinger says his name so that’s all I’m doing here. I was once talking to Dr. Kissinger, and he was recommending to me the Krauthammer column of the day, and I said, “What’s it about?” And he said, “What?” I said, “The Krauthammer column,” and he started telling me what it was about and why he liked it. So it was Dr. Krauthammer and George Will, and Krauthammer’s of the belief that the Republicans are pretty much tossed it away here and it’s time to cut their losses.

George Will had a totally different take on it.

WILL: The Republicans are coming out of this very well. The president who said, “I will not negotiate” is effectively, through proxies in Congress, negotiating an unclean extension because the Republicans woke up to the fact that they have in their hand a tremendous hammer, and that is the sequester, which Democrats hate, which is written into law, and will continue in effect for the rest of the decade unless the law is changed, and changing it with this Congress is going to be heavy lifting.

RUSH: Now, I think Will said this also on Sunday. The sequester is in effect. The Democrats are trying to get the sequester taken out. That’s part of what they want. They want the sequester gone. It’s a budget cut that works. You know why? You know why the Democrats don’t like the sequester? Because it’s a budget cut. It’s not big but nobody notices, there’s no pain, so that’s the worst budget cut that can happen.

Something that actually cuts spending and nobody notices, proving you can do it, is worst thing that could happen to the Democrats. That’s why they want to get rid of this sequester. That’s why they like government shutdowns so they can cut things that actually affect people, that they will feel, that will cause them discomfort and blame it on the Republicans. But the sequester, everybody was scared to death of it before it happened.

So the idea that we’ve got dollars in this budget that we can’t cut ’cause if we do there’s gonna be utter disaster for people is flat-out BS, and this sequester proves it. So Democrats want to get rid of it, and Will’s point here is the Republicans have a gold mine in their hands on the sequester if they’ll hang on to it. His opinion is the Republicans will stay unified over the sequester. I’m not so sure. It’s not that they love the sequester. It’s that they’re in such a get-out-of-this-as-quick-as-they-can mode.

Based on what I’m seeing, I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave up everything, just to get out. I’m not kidding, folks. You and me, we don’t understand why they keep falling for this. What is it? I understand being hated! I understand the media this, the media that, I understand you’ve gotta go out and get votes. But there’s no effort to countermand it! There’s always this appearance (to us, anyway,) that they succumb to it. But I’m like you: Why would the Republicans…?

I’ve shared with you what their proposals are. Why do they want to amend Obamacare to make it more palatable for people? I mean, a lot of these guys got elected campaigning on the notion that they were gonna do what they could to repeal it or to defund it or to delay it. Apparently those were just campaign words. You get to Washington, and now things are so dire that even the proposals they offer are things that will make it more palatable. Why would you do that? These are the same people who say it’s gonna implode on its own.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So while all this is going on, what are the Democrats doing? Well, the Democrats are calling law-abiding Americans terrorists, crazies, and anarchists.

The Democrat Party is favoring deficit spending when we’re broke. The Democrat Party is defrauding Americans with Obamacare. No apologies. The Democrat Party favors the end of the doctor-patient relationship. The Democrat Party favors the IRS running health care. The Democrat Party favors running the private sector via regulations. There’s no allegiance to the rule of law.

The Constitution’s viewed as a liability, and in all of this the Republicans are the problem. The Republicans are holding the Democrats hostage. Where do the Democrats go from where they are? I mean, there’s nowhere to go, other than one-party rule by decree. What’s to stop Obama from banning Congress somewhere down the road? Believe me. I mean, you think that sounds extreme?

If he thought that he could do it and get away with it, he’d give it a shot. That’s his modus operandi: Get rid of opposition, get rid of debate, get rid of disagreement. Just broom it. Ban the First Amendment. Nationalize the media. Get rid of the Second Amendment. You know what they want to do. We’re getting dangerously close to nobody stopping them, and in the middle of all this, it’s the Republicans who are “holding people hostage.”

It’s the Republicans that are “holding a gun to people’s heads.” It’s the Republicans that are “demanding ransom.” That’s all a crock! The really damaging, negative, harmful, mean things happening to people in this country are happening from the Democrat Party. In those poll numbers of people opposing Obamacare, I’ve always seen an opportunity for the Republican Party as a political party to bond with the American people as the party of the individual, state sovereignty, liberty, balanced budgets, free markets, all that.

It’s just sitting there!

It’s just a pot of gold; it’s just sitting there.

It’s just waiting.

The Republicans, though, think that the whole country’s gone over to the left side, because they believe all these polls. Well, I’ve got some research data that shows vast majority of the American people think that one of the biggest problems the country right now is the government. No, it’s not in the mainstream media. It’s a couple of think tank wonks who’ve gone out and done a scholarly study. I found it on Power Line.

They’re not the only ones. It’s not the only place you can find this kind of evidence. The polling data on Obamacare finds majorities have always opposed it. There’s always been an opportunity. This is what those of us outside the Beltway don’t get. I guess it’s just that what happens in the Beltway is the world. There is no world outside the Beltway, for people who live and work there.

I mean, the Democrats in Congress are willing to hold this country hostage and risk default rather than give up their 75% Obamacare subsidy. Don’t think that’s not part of what this is about. Members of Congress and Senate want their subsidy, they want 75% of their Obamacare expenses paid for, and they are willing to hold the country hostage and shut down the government and risk the credit rating and all that garbage for their own personal gain. Make no mistake. That is a factor here.

Just to preserve the subsidy for their Obamacare premiums. It’s been the case in the past. The Republicans were once known as the party of the individual, of state sovereignty, liberty, balanced budgets, free markets, all that stuff. I know some people may say, “Rush, those terms aren’t gonna persuade anybody. Free markets? Who knows what they are in the low-information crowd?” I’m not talking to them right now. I’m talking to you.

The Republicans know what these terms mean.

Ever since Obama took office I’ve seen this golden opportunity for the Republican Party to bond with a majority of the American people. Did you see the 2010 midterm results? It was there! It’s the same old saw, folks. The Republican leadership is not conservative, the Republican establishment is not conservative, so none of that interests them. Go to the Politico here. “What Obama and Republicans Get With the Deal.”

I’m only sharing this with you because this is the kind of crap that influences what happens with Republicans. The Politico, in this story, they’re already crowing. They’re already applauding. They’re celebrating. They’ve got their victory. The Republicans are caving! That’s the whole tone of this story. It’s a tremendous Democrat victory — and really, for their standpoint, who can blame ’em?

From their standpoint, this is a complete rout. The debt ceiling’s been raised enough to last through the middle of January. This is what the Republicans have proposed. The Republicans have proposed the debt ceiling raised enough to go through the middle of January, and without the sequester cuts being locked in, which means it looks like the sequester (contrary to what George Will says) could go bye-bye by the end of the year.

The Democrats are still gonna get a carve-out for their union soldiers (it’s a detail at the bottom of this Politico story), and never mind that that will once again change Obamacare, which is “the law of the land” and you can’t touch it, right? “We can’t defund it, Mr. Limbaugh! We can’t delay it. It’s the law of the land!” It hasn’t been the law of the land since it first began implemented, since Obama decided to piecemeal it.

Again that’s why we can’t let Lincoln’s quote apply here because we’re not gonna be enforcing it strictly. Now we move over to Brit Hume. This is RealClearPolitics and Brit Hume wants to know what is the Tea Party really trying to get out of this shutdown? Brit Hume — and I don’t say this, by the way, with any antagonism. Don’t misunderstand. don’t anybody write Brit Hume and say that Limbaugh was ripping him to shreds.

It’s not what I’m doing. I’m just giving you the perspective. Here’s The Politico, approved media leader to the White House, coming over there to Fox, here’s Brit Hume. He says, “Veteran political observers on both the left and right are still trying to figure out what the House Tea Party caucus and its Senate pied piper Ted Cruz were thinking when they insisted on using the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare.

“It was a hopeless strategy that has not only failed in its stated goal, but helped send the Republican Party to its lowest favorability ratings ever. In conventional terms, it seems inexplicable, but Senator Cruz and his adherents do not view things in conventional terms. They look back over the past half-century, including the supposedly golden era of Ronald Reagan, and see the uninterrupted forward march of the American left.”

Anyway, Mr. Hume goes on to basically say that these people have no clue what they’re doing. I mean, what did they expect to get out of this? This is a wasted 15 days and they’ve taken the Republican Party to its lowest standing in a decade or longer. Well, that’s only if you believe these polls that miraculously appear at just the right time to create this kind of commentary, which takes me to Pat Buchanan column.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To the Pat Buchanan piece. “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” That’s Mark Twain. “According to Gallup, approval of the Republican Party has sunk 10 points in two weeks to 28 percent, an all-time low. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, approval of the GOP has fallen to 24 percent. In the campaign to persuade America of their Big Lie — that the House Republicans shut down the government — the White House and its media chorus appear to have won this round.

“Yet, the truth is the Republicans House has voted three times to keep open and to fund every agency, department and program of the U.S. government, except for Obamacare.And they voted to kill that monstrosity but once. Republicans should refuse to raise the white flag and insist on an honorable avenue of retreat. And if Harry Reid’s Senate demands the GOP end the sequester on federal spending, or be blamed for a debt default, the party should, Samson-like, bring down the roof of the temple on everybody’s head.”

Do not give up the sequester, is what he means. Then he says, “This is an honorable battle lost, not a war. Why, after all, did Republicans stand up? Because they believe Obamacare is an abomination, a new entitlement program this nation, lurching toward bankruptcy, cannot afford. It is imposing increases in health care premiums on millions of Americans, disrupting doctor-patient relationships and forcing businesses to cut workers back to 29 hours a week. Even Democratic Sen. Max Baucus has predicted a coming ‘train wreck.’ Now if the Republican Party believes this, what choice did the House have except to fight to defund or postpone it, against all odds, and tune out the whining of the ‘We-can’t-win!’ Republican establishment?” And that’s exactly what a few Republican leaders did, which is the point. They believe Obamacare’s bad and they stood up and said so. They did everything they could to defund or delay it. They fought against long odds, but they were making a crusade a moral stance on this. That’s what they were elected to do. Every Republican, practically every Republican campaigned on the promise to do everything they could to get rid of this. But only a few stepped up at the moment of truth. And instead, the “we can’t win” chorus of the Republican Party’s carrying the day.

“And if Republicans are paralyzed by polls produced by this three-week skirmish, they should reread the history of the party and the movement to which they profess to belong.In the early 1960s, when the postwar right rose to challenge JFK with Mr. Conservative, events and actions conspired to put Barry Goldwater in the worst hole of a Republican nominee in history. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas one year before the election. Goldwater had glibly hinted he would privatize Social Security, sell the Tennessee Valley Authority and ‘lob one into the men’s room at the Kremlin.’ After his defeat of Nelson Rockefeller in the California primary assured his nomination, Goldwater was 59 points behind LBJ.”

And the story continues, and, sadly, I must interrupt myself. If you think you get mad when that happens, you have no clue what it’s like for me to have to interrupt myself, particularly when I’m on a roll, but we’ve got to.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, I want to pick up with this Pat Buchanan piece on the Goldwater-Rockefeller redux because Buchanan’s point here is that the Republicans only did what was morally right. They ran for office. They got elected on the notion of doing everything they could to stop the implementation of Obamacare. Two or three them, when they got there, actually did what they were elected to do, and they did it in a pervasive, charismatic enough way to drag the party with ’em and now the party hates ’em because the party is made up of the “we can’t win” Republican establishment. And, by the way, that “we can’t win” notion, I think you’d agree with me, it seems to be prevalent not just on this issue, but on practically everything.

We can’t win on amnesty. We can’t win on immigration. We can’t win on Obamacare. We can’t win on the stimulus. We can’t win, so what do we do? We come up with alternatives of Democrat ideas that basically incorporate the basic idea but then we try to do it with our own touch, smarter or what have you, rather than presenting a genuine alternative or rather than just saying “no.” We’re not gonna nationalize health care. No, we’re not gonna grant automatic citizenship to 12 or 20 million illegal people in the country no matter what. We’re just not gonna do it. But that’s not what they do. The “we can’t win” chorus sits around and caves and tries to limit the damage.

Now, Buchanan’s point here is that the Republicans that led this fight are doing something honorable and therefore there is a payoff. There’s a potential payoff. He’s going back in Republican history to find it. He goes back to the Goldwater era, 1964, the Republican convention in San Francisco that year was at the Cow Palace. And at that convention liberal Republicans “demanded Goldwater rewrite the platform,” just to show you none of this stuff is new. Just to show you that the Republican Party’s never really been full-fledged conservative. It’s always been this established RINO or moderate group that is really part of the Washington establishment.

They were content to be amiable losers, and everybody got along. They won a couple things here and there. They won the White House now and then and they’d get temporary control of the budget, which was cool. But Goldwater, Reagan, to hell with those guys, they’re gonna upset the applecart. So at the Cow Palace convention where Goldwater is clearly gonna get the nomination, the liberals demanded he “rewrite the platform to equate The John Birch Society with the Communist Party USA and the Ku Klux Klan,”
demanding all of these concessions from Goldwater.

Goldwater rejected it. And in rejecting it is when Goldwater said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” And so all the liberal Republicans abandoned Goldwater. But one man stood by him, the two-time loser, Richard Nixon. This is in addition to Reagan, but for Buchanan’s historical purposes here he focused on Nixon. “One man stood by Goldwater. The two-time loser Richard Nixon, who had not won a race in his own right since 1950, campaigned for Goldwater and the party longer and harder than Barry himself.” Nixon was a party man. Goldwater was the nominee. Now, what became of all these people? This is the history lesson.

What happened to all these liberal Republicans that told Goldwater to take a hike? What happened to all these liberal Republicans who told Goldwater, “Look, you can’t be who you are. You gotta moderate. You gotta become more liberal.” What happened to everybody here?

Bill Scranton, he was one of the liberal Republicans, Pennsylvania. He packed it in in 1966, having done nothing. George Romney, trounced in 1968 by Nixon, with Goldwater’s supporters at his side. George Romney got shellacked by Richard Nixon for the nomination, 1968. The people remembered Nixon helping Goldwater four years prior. That was in New Hampshire. Romney quit the race two weeks before the returns came in.

“Rockefeller, who had spent a career calling Nixon a ‘loser,’ lacked what it took to challenge Nixon in any of the contested primaries.” Rockefeller tried to stop Reagan, 1976, Kansas City. “And, lest we forget, one other national Republican spoke up for Goldwater and conservatism in that 1964 humiliation,” and that was Ronald Reagan.
“Nixon and Reagan would go on to win four of the next five GOP nominations and presidential elections. In the one convention Reagan lost, 1976, the right, as the price of its support of Gerald R. Ford, demanded that Nelson Rockefeller be dumped as vice president.”

Buchanan’s point here is that the equivalence of the modern day “we can’t win” chorus in the Republican establishment years from now aren’t gonna win anything, either. Who’s gonna support ’em, on the basis of what and why? What have they done but cave? What have they done but castigate, criticize, and try to destroy their own. I’m talking about Cruz and Lee and Rubio, some of the others. They’re only doing what they were elected to do. They’re simply fulfilling their campaign commitments. Nixon’s fortunes are evidence here to Buchanan that these people are gonna be okay down the road, in the Republican Party. They’re gonna be rewarded for this. And he thinks doubly so once the general public finds out what an absolute disaster Obamacare is, and it is a worse disaster than anybody knows.

There’s a great piece by Marc Thiessen today that I have in the Stack coming up. So America is at a turning point, and the Republican caucus — I have it on good authority this morning — is comprised of people who believe the last 15 days has killed the party for the next two elections. They think we’ll never win. And when America disagrees with Obamacare — eventually it embraced LBJ’s Great Society, it embraced all that, Republicans need to stand up, current polls, corporate Republicans be damned. If the right is right, time will prove it, as it did long ago. (interruption) I didn’t hear you. What was that? Hm-hm.

Well, Mr. Snerdley, the Official Program Observer, has asked me, in bouncing off this Republican attitude of “we can’t win,” which seems to be common, he said, “Democrats, even when they lose, act like they won.” He wants me to explain it. It’s psychology. The Democrats believe they’re the chosen people. The Democrats believe that they are born to power, even when they’re denied it in elections. And when they are denied it in elections, they make everybody responsible for it in their view pay a price. So that’s why they seek to destroy, impugn, mischaracterize, what have you, all of their opponents. They do that anyway, but after a loss they really go big because power, running the country, is their birthright. It’s a psychological belief that they have. And they don’t think that the people want this.

In their view, the people are too stupid to know what they want. So the vote doesn’t matter. When the vote goes against the Democrats, that’s just evidence of how stupid and misled the poor public has been. Polls don’t stop ’em. There’s never anything wrong with them. Let’s reduce this to personal relation. Do you know anybody like that? I have. I’ve been fired by five or six of ’em. Do you know anybody who believes that no matter what, they are — I don’t want to say “right.” It’s far more than that. They’re pathological liars. They’re self-deceivers. They concoct a phony world in which to live.

That is the Democrat Party at large, and I think it requires a profound confidence, by the way. It also can’t be denied much of that confidence comes from the fact they own the media and they own the pop culture. They know they’re not gonna get ripped to shreds for what they do or say. They know they’re not gonna be held to any standard whatsoever. They know that in any fight the media, the powers of persuasion are always gonna be on their side.

The Republicans know just the opposite, and they spend their lives cowering in the corners, waiting for the next assault from whoever Democrat Party leadership is or the media or what have you, and that’s what those of us outside the Beltway don’t understand. Why put up with that? After all these years, why not actually fight this stuff on a moral basis, on a what’s-right basis, on being-honest-to-your-constituents basis, what have you?

Now, I mentioned a piece in Power Line earlier. I don’t mention Power Line much, but here’s a piece by Steven Hayward: “Assessing the Government Shutdown: The Long View,” and the reason I’m sharing this with you, ’cause it dovetails with my own theory on this. You know what my theory is: That we’re not losing. It is Obama that’s having all kinds of trouble. I don’t… I’m not under any illusions here. I have a much broader definition of winning and losing.

The Republicans are aiming at a defeat, but I don’t think that that is happening to them, if left to its own devices. They’re securing it for themselves almost because they want it. “The conventional wisdom right now is that the government shutdown ranks somewhere between a debacle and a catastrophe for Republicans, and their abject surrender is expected before too much longer.” Hayward says, “I’m not so sure.

“While I thought the shutdown was a dubious and unwise tactic, I think taking a longer view may cast a different light on the scene. First of all, like the sequester, have the majority of Americans noticed its effects beyond what the media has been screaming about? The bullying tactics of forcibly shutting off public spaces like the World War II memorial on the Mall has surely inflicted damage on Obama …”

See, that’s what I believe.

But the Republicans in Washington are incapable of knowing it, because that’s their world. But I think closing the Mall to World War II vets and barricading them out of there, and then opening the place for illegals to basically go in and rip the country, I don’t think Obama wins that at all. I think it actively hurts the Democrats. It’s just that you’re not gonna see any evidence of it because the media isn’t gonna tell you and there isn’t gonna be a poll on it.

You have to have faith, as I still do, in the American people to believe that. I believe the polls. A majority of people don’t want Obamacare. The majority of people don’t like Obama’s policies. Don’t forget the Limbaugh Theorem. They don’t like Obama’s policies. They just don’t associate him with them. That’s all it is. But they do associate him with the shutdown. They do associate him with what’s happening in the Mall and the illegals versus the World War II vets.

Anyway, Hayward goes on to post a couple of charts here. Now, charts are worthless on the radio. They’re as worthless as breasts on a boar hog. I mean, they’re just worthless. I can’t show them to you on the Dittocam. It’s too small. But they happen to be the only source for the data here so I have a got to use them. These are charts representing research done by Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg.

They have sampled public opinion on a number of things, and they have concluded that “public confidence in Washington DC is at lows not seen since the 1970s. (And we know what happened at the end of that decade.)” The seventies began with Watergate and ended with Jimmy Carter. Again, this is historical perspective that is worth noting. Public confidence in Washington is at lows not seen since the seventies, and it’s not due to the Republicans.

The last chart here is a real stunner. The question on this chart: “These days, what kind of impact do you think the government has on most people’s lives? — 64% negative impact, 17% positive impact, 13% not much impact.” Sixty-four percent negative! Now, again in the historical perspective, I believe this. I believe a majority of Americans, for whatever reason, don’t like what’s going on in Washington at all, and it’s not exclusive to the Republicans.

Folks, the country isn’t working, jobs aren’t being created, careers are vanishing. College graduates have nothing to do. Degrees are worthless and they’ve got all this debt. Nobody’s getting raises. Obamacare’s kicking in, and it’s an absolute disaster. I’m telling you that it is not a panacea, it’s not utopia, it’s not happiness. There isn’t a whole lot of joy out there, and 64% think the government is having a negative impact on people.

I’m sorry; the last five years of the government are owned by the Democrats. That’s why it is important for there to be loud, outspoken, uplifting Republican opposition to what is happening, and that’s the value of what Cruz and Lee have been doing. For some reason, this is not seen by the Republican establishment. Somebody in the party has to stand up and speak out against what’s going on, because this is not right.

This is not good for America.

This is not traditionally American.

This is not what this country’s been.

You couple Buchanan’s column and this thing that Hayward posted with your normal common sense, “intelligence guided by experience,” and you have to believe that the people standing up opposing this are going to eventually be seen as having cared, as being brave and having been right. It may not happen for couple/three years, or who knows when. But it’s an honorable thing that they’ve been doing, and all of the Beltway is missing it, as they miss most everything.