RUSH: Jeb Bush has a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, and already Steve Moore from the Wall Street Journal, which published Jeb’s piece, was on Fox today doing an interview with Martha MacCallum, and Steve Moore saying, (paraphrasing) “You know what, it doesn’t look like any Republican can actually take hold of this thing and run away with it. I mean, boy, if Jeb Bush would announce, that’s what we need. Jeb Bush to announce, and that would coalesce all these people, Jeb’s got this great piece in the Wall Street Journal today, and if that happened, oh, Katie, bar the door.” So Steve Moore and some at the Wall Street Journal are now hoping that Jeb Bush gets in this. And who knows, folks, this piece in the Wall Street Journal today is brilliant.
Let me give you three pull-quotes from the piece. “We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions and we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck. Mayors, county chairs, governors, presidents never think their laws will harm the free market but cumulatively they do and we have now imperiled the right to rise. We must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record at delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we’re willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line, and the straight line it turns out is a flat line.” He’s right on the money here.
This column is in direct response to Obama’s Osawatomie speech. And when Jeb Bush talks about the statists, I never thought I’d see the day. I never thought I would see the day — and Jeb Bush is with the Republican establishment. I never thought I’d see the day when the Republican establishment uses that word. I never thought I would see the day. And here it is, and he uses it over and over again and he gets it pretty much right. Of course Obama is promising, all the statists, they all promise no risk, risk-free success, risk-free contentment, risk-free happiness. Everybody is the same, everybody is equal, except the people at the top and we’re gonna cream ’em, we’re gonna nail ’em and we’re gonna cut ’em down to size, and in the process of cutting everybody at the top down to size, look at what you’re gonna end up with. But everybody’s gonna be the same. There’s not going to be any pain. There isn’t gonna be any suffering. Everybody’s gonna have health care, everybody’s gonna have a job, everybody’s gonna have this, everybody’s gonna have that.
Of course it never works. Nobody has anything when that’s the promise. I give you North Korea. I give you the Soviet Union, I give you Cuba, the ChiComs. Wherever this no-risk security of the straight line is tried, you end up with misery. That’s what’s equal. Everybody is miserably equal. The title of Jeb Bush’s piece, “Capitalism and the Right To Rise.” This is how Jeb opens the piece. “Congressman Paul Ryan recently coined a smart phrase to describe the core concept of economic freedom: ‘The right to rise.’ Think about it. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn’t seem like something we should have to protect.
“But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions.” See, this is what the statists think nobody wants. There shouldn’t be any failure. There shouldn’t be any risk, and there should be no consequences of bad decisions. The only people who should suffer consequences are the rich, and we’ll define that as $150,000 a year or more. The only people who should suffer any consequences are the successful because they’re cheaters, it’s unfair, and they succeed at the expense of others. That’s what the statists say, people such as Obama.
It’s very seductive to come along and imply, you don’t use the language, but you come along and imply that there will be no consequences for bad decisions. There will just be compassion. There will not be risks. That’s too dangerous. That’s too unsettling. Risks lead to unhappiness. We’re not gonna have people taking risks. We’re not gonna permit it. Everybody’s gonna do fine and we’ll have just a straight line of equality, and, writes Jeb Bush, “And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck. 
That is what economic freedom looks like. Freedom to succeed as well as to fail, freedom to do something or nothing.” Well, he’s singing my song.
Leave people alone. Let them do what they want with what they’ve got. Let them pursue excellence to the best of their ability according to their desires and their ability. That’s what we conservatives believe, because we conservatives believe that no two people or things are equal; it’s not possible. We’re all unique. We cannot all be made the same, despite the best intentions. That’s all Jeb Bush is saying here. But there’s gonna be blow back here cause he said we need to let people fail, you’re gonna have the libs and the media, “Jeb Bush is okay with people failing. Jeb Bush is okay with people in poverty. Jeb Bush is fine with people suffering.” That’s what they’re going to say that means. And, of course, that’s not what Jeb Bush or anybody else who professes all this actually means.
“People understand this. Freedom of speech, for example, means that we put up with a lot of verbal and visual garbage in order to make sure that individuals have the right to say what needs to be said, even when it is inconvenient or unpopular.” No, no, the left’s taken care of that, too. Political correctness. Self-censorship. “We forgive the sacrifices of free speech because we value its blessings. But when it comes to economic freedom, we are less forgiving of the cycles of growth and loss, of trial and error, and of failure and success that are part of the realities of the marketplace and life itself.
“Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand ‘Do something . . . anything.’ … Woe to the elected leader who fails to deliver a multipoint plan for economic success, driven by specific government action.”
Gotta take a break. There’s more after this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have to tell you, Jeb Bush sounds like me. Jeb Bush in his own words is taking half the message that I take out when I go to do a Rush to Excellence appearance. And I know what you people want. Look, I’m fully aware you want a candidate who sounds like what you hear on this show. I mean you’ve been here 23 years, you’re not going anywhere and I’m not. This has sustained and grown for 25 years, what’s so hard about this? What’s so hard about it? And the tough lesson to learn is, you think, why don’t these Republicans in Washington get it? Why don’t they look at what happens on this program, this audience, the strength, the support — we’re not on the same team, folks. That’s the hard lesson to learn here. There is no conservative movement in Washington. I hate to break it to you. That’s one of the things this election is about.
But let me get back to Jeb’s piece here. “As Florida’s governor for eight years, I was asked to ‘do something’ almost every day. Many times I resisted through vetoes but many times I succumbed. And I wasn’t alone. Mayors, county chairs, governors and presidents never think their laws will harm the free market.” I’m gonna dissent here and I’m gonna except Obama from that. I think he’s aware what he’s doing, and I think he is aware of it to the point that his are on purpose. But we’ve been there and said that. Let me continue here.
“But cumulatively, they do, and we have now imperiled the right to rise. … In Washington, DC, rules are going in the opposite direction. They are exploding in reach and complexity. They are created under a cloud of uncertainty, and years after their passage nobody really knows how they will work. We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy’s resources should be spent. Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint –” that’s another way of saying in their own self-interest, which is my mantra “– are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit.”
Folks, I swear I could have written this. I swear I did write this. The words have been changed to protect the innocent. But this is from Jeb Bush. Now, what are they gonna do, because clearly something’s being set up here. Steve Moore doesn’t go on Fox and throw out the possibility of Jeb Bush throwing his hat in the ring and point out that nobody’s getting over 30% in our primary, but a lot of people are thinking the same thing somewhere.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, Calvin Coolidge, an ex-president, said something that’s pretty intriguing to me. Four-fifths of all of our troubles would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. Just shut up, don’t do anything, just let things work out, and four-fifths of them will. But Jeb Bush is right. Presidents, governors, “Do something! Do something, and do something now!” It’s a mistake.