RUSH: I want to clarify this impeachment business because Snerdley’s exactly right: “Rush, the proof of what you say is how the media’s already dealing with you.” And he’s exactly right. I have never come out for impeachment, and yet I have. I have never made a call for impeachment. I’ve never demanded the House Republicans get going on this. And yet I am part of the conservative talk radio faction leading the charge against a tyrant president. I haven’t said a word about it. This is exactly what the media is gonna be doing with everybody.

Here’s what I think. And I fall right in line with my friend Andrew McCarthy, who really got all this started. He wrote a book about this called Faithless Execution, and his argument is real simple: Impeachment is a political thing. It’s not legal, in the modern era. And until a political case is made, any attempt is pointless. And the political case being made is what Jeff Sessions is talking about. Jeff Sessions is claiming that Obama is acting in a lawless fashion.

Now, what is high crimes and misdemeanors? Let me tell you what McCarthy, how Andy basically defines it. His book “argues that there is a crucial step in between the realization that high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed and the issuance of credible calls for impeachment: The political case must be built that presidential lawlessness threatens our Constitution, our liberties, our security, and our standing as a Republic under the rule of law.”

So the real question, high crimes and misdemeanors, equals, is a president’s “lawlessness and unfitness so thoroughgoing that we can no longer trust him” with the power of his office? If you want to know what high crimes and misdemeanors is, that’s a pretty good way of getting there. Can we no longer trust him with the power? Is he using his power in vast expansion of what it really is? And there’s no question that that is happening. But then there’s the low-information voter out there who may not have the foggiest idea. You’re gonna have to reach them. You’re gonna have to reach Democrats.

Impeachment’s gonna have to be a bipartisan thing if it’s to ever happen. And we’re so far from that. And the Republican fear is that any real talk of impeachment is gonna further the partisan divide and make the line of demarcation even wider, meaning the sides get even further apart. The reality is that the political case could be made, but the political case can’t be made by people like me. It can’t be made by people on Fox. The political case has gotta be made by political people. And that just isn’t gonna happen. It just isn’t gonna happen. And I realize this, which is one of the reasons I’m not calling for it.

However, I want to be very clear on something here. I do not accept the conventional wisdom that moving forward is instant death for the Republicans. I just went through this, so I’m not gonna go through it point by point, word by word, but every political calculation the Regime has made this year has blown up in their face, and the greatest example is all these kids, accompanied children, the reason this is happening is twofold. Well, hell, there’s actually a bunch of reasons, but I think there are two primary reasons. One is to goad the Republicans into impeaching ’cause Obama and the Democrats think that’s a slam-dunk win for them.

The second thing is, use kids and you soften the opposition to the whole notion of illegal immigration, because nobody wants to do anything to harm the children. Witness the way Hamas uses children in the battle with Israelis. I mean, even now, the children dying in Gaza are dying because Hamas is putting them in harm’s way. The Israelis are getting all the blame for it, and the Israelis have their own PR problem, they don’t quite know how to deal with it because they’re dealing with idiots in the media who have closed minds about what’s happening over there. I have sound bites to prove it later.

But the faces of children — you don’t even need to see the faces, really. All you need to hear is it’s unaccompanied children that are fleeing war torn, poverty stricken, just horribly ravaged homelands. They’re seeking safety, and they’re seeking milk, and they’re seeking a quality life. Who are we to say, “No, you can’t come?” The calculation is that even the most hard line anti-immigration activist will soften when it’s kids. Well, that didn’t work out, did it? It blew up in their face. It blew up in their face in Murrieta, California.

Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, just found out that illegal alien children are being dumped in Indiana. He found out in the media. The Regime didn’t even tell him. The Regime is not telling governors that they’re dumping these kids. It’s blowing up in their face. It is not resulting in a softened attitude toward illegal immigration. And I think impeachment would work out the same way. But it’s academic ’cause it isn’t gonna happen.

I want to go further and make one the thing abundantly clear. While I, El Rushbo, have not once advocated for this, despite the fact the media is putting me at the head of that class doing it, I do think it is a mistake politically for the Republicans to take it off the table. There is no politics to be gained by taking it off the table. The fact that they think there is, is an illustration of just how deeply depressed they are. I contend to you that the Republicans, for some reason, are suffering posttraumatic stress disorder.

After years of being called racist and bigots and sexists and extremists and hatemongers, they’re just cowed. They are none of that, but they don’t know how to deal with it, and their consciousness every day is that’s what people think of them. That’s not good, folks, for a political party and it’s elected officials — many of them, not all — to be running around with that kind of guilt and thinking there’s no way out of it and so forth, and being that purposely maligned. Put yourself in that position personally.

Imagine that everywhere you went — try this as an exercise. Everywhere you go, you walk into a restaurant, alone or with friends or with your spouse or whatever, or you walk into a store, or you walk into a movie theater or wherever, imagine that everybody there who sees you thinks you’re a racist bigot swine. Well, I think that’s what the Republicans think that people think of them. And they are hell-bent to prove it’s not true. And they’re engaging in a lot of what I call negative action to prove it. What is negative action? By announcing there won’t be any impeachment. “See? We don’t hate the president because he’s black. We don’t hate the president at all. We’re not racist! Not only do we not want to impeach him, but we’re telling you right now we won’t be. Please love us.”

Negative action, they’re trying to gain credit for not doing something. No greater telltale sign of the full defensive position the media have put them in and the Democrat Party after years and years of bombardment. So they announce publicly there will not be any impeachment as though, (clapping) “All right. You guys aren’t nearly as bad as we thought. Okay, we’ll think about voting for you, then.” It doesn’t work that way. But that’s what they’re hoping for. They’re hoping that by saying “Hey, we’re not gonna do that.”

“All right, then you’re not as bad as I thought. Okay, we’ll listen.”

But when you take something off the table in any negotiation, you have just given up. You’ve gotta keep your options available. Same thing… There was a guy. What was name, Scalise? Not sure. There was a guy who announced earlier this week — under questioning, by the way, it might have been on Fox News Sunday — that there wouldn’t be a government shutdown.

Why say that? Why take that off the table?

You know what that means? Jeff Sessions thinks the way to deal with a lawless president is to deny him the money to do what he wants to do, and Congress has that power. Every dime spent in this country originates in the House of Representatives. Obama can sign everything he wants, but if the House doesn’t authorize the money for it, it’s academic.

Well, a government shutdown is what would happen, theoretically, if the Republicans exercise their power the purse. There’s no reason in July to say that there won’t be a government shutdown in October, unless you think that the people will hate you less. If you’re running around carrying the baggage that the people already hate you because of all the other government shutdowns, that you can store points by saying there won’t be one?

Uh, sorry, but A, that doesn’t convert anybody. B, it doesn’t win you any support. All it does is weaken your position. “Mr. Limbaugh, are you saying you are for government shut?” No! Can you listen to what I’m saying? I’m talking about in a strategic negotiation you never give up that kind of an option. You always make the other side think it’s possible. Same thing with impeachment.

Do you think Obama’s doing the right thing by unilaterally getting rid of only our nuclear weapons? I mean, that’s like saying, “If we get rid of ours, we’ll show the Soviets and the rest of the world that we don’t mean ’em any harm, and they’ll get rid of theirs!” Doesn’t work that way, does it? Never has worked that way, has it? Yet that’s what Obama wants to do.

He wants to unilaterally reduce our stockpiles, and I don’t think he cares what the Russians do, because what’s on Obama’s mind is America and his transformation of it. So you don’t take impeachment off the table. You don’t, in the middle of this, signal to the president that you will not deny him the money necessary for him to do this. That’s just… You know, Jeff Sessions is right.

Build the case for how the president’s acting in a lawless manner. You build the case that his lawlessness equals unfitness so thoroughgoing that we can’t trust him any longer with the power of the job. If you believe that, then you do what you can to contain that behavior — and one of the ways you contain it is the power of the purse, by denying the executive branch the money to implement whatever these cockamamie ideas are.

If you take that off the table, you’re just signaling to Obama that you’re not gonna take one step towards stopping him, and so why should he stop? I think the Republicans are making a repeated error. The reason the establishment Beltway Republicans hate us conservatives, ladies and gentlemen, is Barry Goldwater’s landslide defeat. They think that’s what happens if they nominate a conservative candidate.

They don’t see Ronald Reagan and two landslide wins.

They see Goldwater.

So they say, “We can’t have a conservative. Look at that! I mean, with Goldwater, we had a landslide defeat,” and then they look at the impeachment of Clinton, and they think that that led to all kinds of embarrassments and losses and so forth. But it is a lie that the Clinton impeachment hurt the Republicans in the next election. Impeachment did not hurt the Republicans any more than amnesty helped ’em in ’86, which it didn’t.

Okay, enough of that.

We gotta move on to other things we get back from the break. So sit tight, we’ll do that. Just wanted to clarify.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We go to Denver. This is John. Great to have you, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you? I’m glad to be on here. Thank you for allowing me to put my 2¢ worth in.

RUSH: Thank you. How are you doing today?

CALLER: I’m doing fabulous. I’m here in the Mile High City, and it’s rained, so the smoke has cleared and I can breathe today. (laughing)

RUSH: Well, congratulations.

CALLER: I’ve been thinking of a very truthful and simple method of answering a question that any Republican might be asked about whether they support impeachment of President Obama, and I believe it’s also one that most Democrats — certainly I would say one in particular — could be in favor of, and that would be President Joe Biden. He always me of Dan Rowan and I don’t even think that the Democrats want him, otherwise he would be the presumptive nominee for president rather than Hillary.

RUSH: See, don’t go making rash assumptions. I think… I don’t know, but to make a blanket assumption the Democrats don’t want Biden, I think, is to fall prey to the conventional wisdom that everybody wants Hillary. I am here to tell you that there are a lot of Democrats that don’t want any part of Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton anywhere near the White House again.

Now, you wouldn’t know that by accessing the Drive-By Media, but they are not universal loved. Consequently — or not consequently. Alternatively, there are a lot of Democrats who think that Joe Biden has been a pretty damn good loyal guy to Obama. Even though Biden kind of stepped in it on gay marriage and forced their hand, and even though he’s a walking gaffe machine.

At these two conventions, there has been no better endorsement of Barack Obama than the ones he got from Biden, including the ones he got from his wife. Biden, if anything, is a… I mean, the one thing Biden knows how to do is kiss butt. There’s nobody better at it if they stand in the way of where he wants to go, and he’s superb at it.

I happen to know there are a lot of Democrats — I don’t know if there are enough to elect him or not, but — that think he needs to be at least shown some gratitude for his loyalty to Obama. He’s never tried to undercut him. He has never done anything other than back up, buttress, and do whatever he can to prop Obama up, at times when it’s been tough.

Now, as it relates to impeachment, that would not be a factor, who would become the veep. If they’re really serious at some point about impeaching Obama, it’s not gonna be, “Oh, my God, we can’t do that it ’cause it gonna Biden, and we don’t want to give Biden a leg up on the presidential race in 2016.” If that’s a factor, then they’re not serious about it.

If you ever hear that we can’t impeach Obama because that gives us Biden, then you know they’re not serious about impeachment. Impeachment’s a very serious the thing. That’s why to have it thrown around here as though it’s just the next Social Security spending bill kind of does it a disservice. But, John, I appreciate the call. I’m glad that you took the time, and I appreciate it.