RUSH: Boehner offered Obama a clean debt ceiling bill. I mean everything Obama has asked for and he turned it down and said, “Nope, now you’ve got to do away with the sequester.” And Boehner, poor Boehner, Boehner is — by the way, I’m sorry. This is purely habitual. The table out here is not nearly as solidly attached to the wall, or the ceiling actually, as it is in Florida. Well, it’s a broadcast quality table. It’s just not anchored broadcast quality. Not a complaint, look, I do this by habit. I’m going to try to rein it in because I now how irritating it is. It would be irritating to me, so I’m going to try to rein it in.
Anyway, Boehner, at least according to the LA Times said, quote: “It was obvious Obama had no intention of negotiating with us in good faith.” Now, that’s true, but look at apparently what it took for that realization to settle in, when that could have been known from the get-go. It’s what continually amazes me and I’m sure you. How can the Republicans not see what the Democrat agenda is? How do they continually fall for the notion that whatever the Democrats are talking about is what they really want? “We want to raise the debt limit.” It’s not about the debt limit!
When are the Republicans going to understand, and I’m dead serious about this, when are they going to understand that the objective here is to wipe them out. When are they going to understand that the pure, the only purpose of all of this is to effectively eliminate the Republican Party as anything viable, nothing more than a placeholder is all it’s going to be if Obama and the Democrats get their way. There was never any desire to negotiate, never any desire to share ideas, never any desire to reach a compromise or come to some sort of agreement. The purpose every time — and how many times has this taken place and yet somehow that message doesn’t get through.
This is why, folks, I have been maintaining, and I’m sure that many of you have probably been frustrated at me for being a little bit absent reality in your mind. But since the Cruz/Lee faction got going, I have been making the point — trying to anyway — that the Republicans are winning, that at least the Cruz and Lee faction is winning. Last week, it was I think Thursday or Friday, I remember doing a monologue on how the Republicans’ so-called conservative commentariat in Washington, inside the Beltway is out blaming Cruz and blaming Lee and blaming me, blaming the new media and blaming the Tea Party for this impasse.
I made the point if it hadn’t been for Cruz or Lee, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t have the opportunity that we have. And Obama is stumbling. Obama is not prevailing. His approval number, take your pick, 41/37%. Then that Wall Street Journal/NBC poll hit on Friday and these Republicans started peeing their pants. And I wish I could have grabbed them by the shoulders, said, “Would you ignore that? That poll was designed for the exact reaction that you are portraying here.” Well, it turns out, folks, that I, El Rushbo and others are not the only ones who see the past couple, three weeks, or month this way.
I’ve got a piece by Christopher Bedford here in the Daily Caller, and the headline of this piece: “How Cruz, Lee and Paul Shut Down Obama’s Agenda.” So it is possible in some parts of the media to get the truth of this. Here’s a pull quote: “As one by one, impossible victories were won, observers saw the policy agenda of the president … stagnate and stall: He hasn’t won a single victory since his re-election. It’s almost surreal. Sequester is tentatively in place,” but believe me that’s the new baby that the Democrats are trying to get rid of now. That’s the latest thing they’ve demanded that the Republicans get rid of. Pretty soon they’re going to be demanding a tax increase, which E.J. Dionne, Jr. does today in the Washington Post in his column.
They’re going to throw it all in if they sense that the Republicans are getting close to caving. But the fact of the matter is sequester is in place, amnesty has been derailed. Say what you want, but the attention being focused on amnesty is — well, it’s not the attention being focused. Look at what happened. Obama opens up the National Mall for an amnesty rally, closed to veterans. I’m telling you the American people see this. The American people see what’s happening, and they do not side with the Democrats on this outside the Beltway. They do not. Obama is not carrying the day on this. I know some of you might think that’s crazy to say. Sequester’s in place, amnesty is derailed. Gun control, they haven’t gotten anything on that.
American forces are not involved in serious civil war, and it turns out here that Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have taken the helm of the GOP and that’s why everybody in Washington’s fit to be tied, including Republicans. The Tea Party is despised, even by Republicans. The Tea Party is hated, even by Republicans. It’s hated by remnants of the Bush administration and all those people. It’s hated by the Democrats. The Tea Party is despised by the Republican establishment of the consultancy group because they can’t be controlled. Because there’s not, or wasn’t, at their forming anyway, a single leader.
Now here’s how this story begins: “After Republicans drifted for years without a pilot, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have taken the helm of the GOP, steering their party and its grassroots into a much-needed, head-on battle with the Democrats.” Amen. The Democrats have been able to just run roughshod over everybody and anything in their way. Nobody has had the guts to oppose Obama, particularly in the Republican Party.
The American people had, but they haven’t had any leadership until these two guys sprang up. They’ve commandeered a couple of people to join them, elected Republicans. But prior to that there was this abject fear of going after Obama. Race was a big factor, and also the polls in the media. Let’s face it: Republicans are scared to death and they’re rendered neutered by them. These guys don’t care.
They are fighting the establishment of a socialist government that Obama and the Democrats are attempting to establish. God bless ’em. “On the campaign trail on the way to his win in November 2012, President Barack Obama promised to finish the work he’d gone to Washington to do: ‘fundamentally transforming the United States,'” which is what he promised to do five days before he was inaugurated in 2009.
“Things look tough for the right in Washington today, but the reality is these three conservative Republicans, aided by friends in the Senate and the House, have dragged the president’s ambitious agenda to a complete halt, throwing both him and Democrat Sen. Harry Reid on their heels and adding policy paralysis to the president’s long list of post-election woes.
“While Republican leadership in the House was loud when scandals from Benghazi to the IRS unfolded, over the last year conventional wisdom in Washington has held that sequester would never happen; amnesty for illegal immigrants was a done deal; no sane Republican would stand against an assault-weapons ban after Sandy Hook; the GOP would bless a charge into Syria; and, well, fill in the blank: student loans?
“Climate change? The tea party was over and Washington, DC, was Obama’s oyster,” and it was smooth sailing. Nobody was going to stop him. “But then a strange thing happened. As one by one, impossible victories were won, observers saw the policy agenda of the president … stagnate and stall: He hasn’t won a single victory since his re-election. It’s almost surreal,” and I know this sounds like…
You ought to see the faces on the other side of the glass looking at me. They can’t believe it. It’s not their perception, and probably not yours. You think the Republicans are getting their clocks cleaned because you are judging the Republicans to be led by Boehner and McConnell, and on that basis you think they’re getting their clocks cleaned. And maybe they are, but Cruz and Mike Lee aren’t.
It’s Cruz and Mike Lee, and the people that have decided to throw in with them, who are running things now. That’s why everybody’s so ticked off, folks! We were supposed to have amnesty by now. I’m sure you know that. It was supposed to be done. There wasn’t going to be any Republican opposition to it. There was going to be massive new ground gained by the Democrats on gun control.
We were going to move forward on climate change with tax increases, a carbon tax or whatever because of Hurricane Sandy and the devastation in the Northeast, and take your pick. There was no stopping Obama’s agenda. He won big; Republicans were slinking away. Obamacare, there it was, was going to be implemented. The Republicans, it turns out, had simply been uttering words during the campaign when they said that their objective was to defeat it, defund it, keep it from being implemented.
When the time came, they didn’t oppose it. But a couple people did. And because of that, Obamacare is still not fully implemented, fully funded. It isn’t a done deal. Contrary to what people think, Obama is really not having the cakewalk that everybody thought he was going to have. There are giant obstacles in his way, and there ought to be rallies of massive support for the people accomplishing this. People in their own party ought to be, but they’re not.
The long knives are out for Cruz and Lee and anybody who decides to join them. Senior Mr. Bedford here at the Daily Caller says, “Senior Republicans are taking their cues from a couple of freshman conservatives. After years of void, Republicans have leadership in DC,” and they do, and the Tea Party is as strong as it’s ever been, and it’s as active as it’s ever been, and this is just not the conventional wisdom. This is not what was supposed to happen.
So the Washington establishment, the power structure, the elites in the media and in the two parties have gathered together every day to present a narrative or template that it’s the Tea Party that’s hanging by a thread, about to be embarrassed and debunked and gone and taken down and not to exist ever anymore. They’re embarrassing everybody. But the fact of the matter is, for now and at this moment, the Obama agenda has had the brakes applied to it because there are people fighting back.
Folks, I’m going to tell you: We could have won this, and we may still be able to.
If the Senate Republicans had not caved, as they did last week, we could have held on, and we may still be able to. It’s a dicey call. But the long knives are still out for everybody who was opposed to the establishment way of doing things in Washington. Really, you throw all this together — the food stamp problem in and the IFM babe claiming the end of the world this week because of the shutdown and the debt limit, now Obama demanding to be rid of the sequester — and the pressure is enormous on people fighting back on this, and they’re still hanging tough.