RUSH: It’s interesting. As I mentioned mere moments ago, when John Kennedy was running for president — some of you are not old enough to remember because it was 1960 — but when he was running for president his Catholicism was questioned. It’s a fascinating case study in how the left recycles its playbook, or another way of saying it is it’s a case study in how history replays. In 1960 during the presidential campaign everybody was worried about whether Kennedy would be loyal to the Vatican, or to the US Constitution — and this was said by other religious people, by the way, and there were some southerners, by the way, some southern Democrats who were pretty concerned about this as well.
Well, something happened, Kennedy was elected, of course, and he established his loyalty to the United States and not the Vatican, and the second thing that happened was, liberals were laughing out there that those Baptists and whoever were so weird they questioned a Catholic for being a Catholic. But it was a watershed moment, if you will, because it was the first time a Catholic had been elected president, and people were concerned. Well, as Senator Kennedy shouted recently, “Hello? Hello?” Here we are 40 years later, and now it’s the liberals who are doing what they mocked 40 years ago. Now it is the liberals who are questioning fealty to the Constitution over fealty to the Vatican, and this is about Judge Roberts.
Judge Roberts is a Catholic, and the left is out there planting little seeds, hoping they will sprout into giant weeds and flowers of doubt. Hey, this guy is a Catholic — and, by the way, this is not the first.
All you have to do to really make Senator Schumer mad is to accuse him of attacking a nominee’s religion. Most powerfully you can do this by suggesting he attacks a Catholic. He did it with Bill Pryor. Bill Pryor from Alabama, the attorney general, one of the nominees of President Bush to sit on the appellate court system. One day it was learned that Judge Pryor decided not to take his family to Disney World in Orlando because the day he planned to take them was Gay Day. “Well, I’ll go another day.” Well, the Democrats on the committee said, “You have bigot tendencies, don’t you? You are a homophobe, and all of this comes from your religion.” Well, they didn’t say that, but when Senator Schumer says “his deeply held personal beliefs,” what else is he talking about, deeply held personal beliefs? And so now, it’s back here again with Judge Roberts.
He, too, is a Catholic — and the very people who pooh-poohed this whole notion of questioning loyalty to the Vatican or the US Constitution are now themselves back doing just that. They even dragged out Mr. Summer Replacement yesterday, Mario the Pious, former governor of New York was on Meet the Press. I’m going to go back to the archives of this program, back in the early days whenever, you know, Governor Cuomo had his radio talk show. He was the first antidote to me that the libs put up there. No, Jim Hightower was first.
I forget which of those two. Hightower was first and then it was Governor Cuomo doing a two-hour show on Saturday morning, supposed to wipe the floor with me. But we had this theme song introduce things in which governor Cuomo was going to appear. Governor Cuomo has this ability to exude a self image of one who has this total ability to mesmerize people, and it stems from his 1984 Democrat convention speech in which they said was a speech of all time. He lived off that speech for quite a while. Our theme song was screaming Jay Hawkins. (Playing of song.) I put the spell on you. Pops those P’s. (Continued playing of song.) Yes, and that’s why we chose it because Governor Cuomo owns you in his own mind when he is speaking. So let’s go to the audio sound bites of Mario the Pious on Meet the Press on Sunday. The first question that Tim Russert said — well, not the first question, one of the questions of Mario the Pious — “What is relevant in a Supreme Court nominee?” Listen to this answer.
CUOOOOOOOMO: I don’t think that there’s any question that religion is very relevant now, more relevant than it has been for a long time. Religion is an important subject in this country, has been from the beginning, but now especially in recent years, thanks to Republican conservatives pushing it on government and a president who, for example, makes a faith-based judgment on stem cells, is very strong on abortion on the grounds that any abortion, even to save the life of the mother, is murder. Religion is a very important subject.
RUSH: They don’t say that. But nevertheless, here’s Mario the Pious who has spoken at Notre Dame and has spoken of his religion and how devout he is and how important it is to him, but of course when he’s asked about this, says, “Well, my religious beliefs are mine and I don’t believe in imposing them on everyone else.” Well, he certainly does believe that and did believe it about imposing his political views on everybody else. Why can’t you impose your religious views on everybody — impose, share, be affected by. What good are your deeply held personal beliefs if they do not animate your acts as a public figure or as a human being? What good is being religious if it has no meaning to you? What good is it? It’s probably of no use to you; it’s simply there for a front.
It’s simply a mask. “Look at me, I’m a religious guy, therefore I’m moral and all this.” But when it comes to matters of morality, what, my religious beliefs are irrelevant because they’re mine. Well, what good are they, then? But the point is 40 years ago this is what was happening to JFK; now it’s happening to John Roberts. The same people who decried those 40 years ago who asked this question are now themselves asking the same question, and who did they go get, Mario the Pious to come out and lead the charge as a summer replacement because it’s tough to get guests in August on Meet the Press. Mario the Pious then added this after uttering his comments on abortion.
CUOOOOOOOMO: Judge Scalia, now, there’s a Republican conservative if there ever was one on the bench. Judge Scalia dealt with this tangentially, but he dealt with it on the subject of death penalty. He said judges, Catholic judges may be bothered in their conscience in voting for the death penalty because the pope has said that it is evil. He said under those circumstances the Catholic judge should resign. There is no question it’s relevant. Everybody takes an oath to support the Constitution including especially judges, so why not ask them? Will you, judge, apply a religious test to the Constitution? Will you start by saying, “I’m not going to support the Constitution if my pope tells me not to”?
RUSH: This is unbelievable. Folks, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. This is not going to appeal to people. And why is it that only Catholics are opposed to abortion? I know a lot of people who are Protestants who are opposed to abortion, too. Why are they simply nailing and zeroing in on Catholics here? Have you noticed that? In this case it’s because Judge Roberts is Catholic, but it’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, the very same people who got angry when these questions were asked of then Senator Kennedy, JFK, are now themselves asking the very same questions. It is an amazing thing. See how valuable their playbook is to them? I wanted you to hear this because they are scared, they are deathly afraid, and this, too, is all about abortion and life.
They are so tied to these feminist extremists on this issue, it’s the one thing they cannot extricate themselves from is the link to these mad, extremist-NARAL type abortion activists, and it’s going to tug them down even further into the quicksand than they already are on their own — and of course you take a look at Senator Kerry. Now, Senator Kerry was Catholic. Now, did we get these questions about him during the presidential campaign? Did we get these questions from the Democrats, did we get these questions about Senator Kerry? No, we didn’t get these questions about Senator Kerry. We didn’t worry about whether he was going to be loyal to the Vatican or not, and why not I wonder? Come on, folks, come on, why didn’t we get these questions? “Senator Kerry, if you become president…” The Republicans didn’t raise the question. They didn’t ask it that way, “Are you going to be loyal to the Vatican?” Or as Mario the Pious says, “Are you going to do what your pope tells you to do or are you going to be loyal to the US Constitution?”
Because Senator Kerry had long ago told the pope where to go. He put on the military uniform again 30 years later trying to hid his liberalism behind it and he also took a shot at hiding his liberalism behind Catholicism, but he got all crossed up, he kept contradicting himself because it was not genuine. It’s all for show on the left, folks. The stuff that’s genuine they hide, they can’t dare show us because they would finish even worse than they do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, I’d like to read something here, ladies and gentlemen. Mario the Pious as we just aired on our sound bite from Sunday’s Meet the Press with Tim Russert, said, “Everybody takes an oath to support the Constitution, including especially judges. So why not ask them, ‘Will you, judge, apply a religious test to the Constitution? Will you start by saying, “I’m not going to support the Constitution if my pope tells me not to?”‘”
May I read to you from Article 6 of the Constitution? “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Right there it is in Article 6 of the Constitution. So if some pack of Senators on the judiciary committee decides to take Mario Cuomo’s advice here and start asking Judge Roberts about whether or not he will apply a religious test to the Constitution, whether he’ll do what his pope says or do what the Constitution says — (interruption) Well, they were.
Mario was one of their candidates at one point. In fact, Clinton was thinking of putting him in there to get him out of the way. Remember that, way back in the mid-nineties? They locked heads because, if you go back to the early Clinton governor days with Gennifer Flowers, he’s heard on tape telling Gennifer Flowers that Cuomo is like the Mafia and so forth. There was some strain between those two and some thought they had put him on the court just to get rid of him, because once you put him on the court you can’t go make public speeches and get in the way. Never happened. But it’s right here in Article 6: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the US.” All Judge Roberts would have to do is cite Article 6 if some senator picks up the suggestion here from Governor Cuomo. Alan in Richmond, Virginia, welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: Yeah, Rush, mega dittos from evangelical Christian land in Richmond, Virginia.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’m just continually offended by the Democrats who have no morality, yet seek to judge mine on a daily basis as well as our Catholic friends who may be appointed to judgeships, who hopefully will be appointed to judgeships, and the Article 6 is just wonderful. That’s just classic. How do people who just only care about themselves set any morality for anybody? It just blows my mind.
RUSH: Well, look it, as long as there’s a moral standard they’re going to fail it, so the only way to not fail a moral standard is for there to not be one and you can get rid of the moral standard by condemning and criticizing anybody who’s judgmental and saying, “You don’t have the right to impose your morality on me, who are you to define morality?” Morality is not an individual choice.
CALLER: Yeah, I guess you’re right. If Clinton would appoint Uncle Mario over there on the basis of, you know, him being a mobster, that shows the level of morality of the party we’ve been dealing with for years.
RUSH: Wouldn’t have been on that basis, now. (laughing). He wouldn’t have appointed Mario on the basis he’s a mobster. Don’t read that. He would have appointed Mario to the court to shut him up, so he couldn’t run around out there criticizing Clinton if he felt the need to or so he couldn’t harass the Democratic Party and try to wrest control. Don’t forget, Cuomo’s son was out there, too — don’t forget Andrew — and it was Bill Clinton who called Andrew Cuomo up when Andrew was running for governor of New York, the nomination, was running for the Democrat nomination. I forget what it was, but Clinton called Andrew said (impression), “Hey, ha-ha-ha. Hey, Andrew, how you doing? You ever heard of the good for the party? You ain’t it, pal. You remember Bob Torricelli? Right?
Let me show what you Bob signed. It’s just real easy. You just sign this and we’ll never say another word about you pal and you’re being good for your party this way.” I mean, this was arguably Clinton who ditched Andrew Cuomo from the political hierarchy of the Democratic Party, after Andrew had served loyally in Clinton’s administration as HUD secretary, Housing and Urban Development. I tell you, that bunch of people over there on the left, loyalty has a strange definition to it, but I’m just telling you out there, Alan, that he put Cuomo on the court not because he was a mobster, and I didn’t say this. I can just see this in the headlines tomorrow, “Limbaugh: Cuomo a Mobster.” It was Clinton who implied that on the Gennifer Flowers tapes back in the nineties, late eighties, whenever he was dating her, and there was always friction between these two, publicly, “Hey, I never said it Mario. I never said it, and she is just a lying b-i-itch. You know how these people are,” and Mario publicly accepted the apology, but there was always the friction out there. But as to your point about morality, I mean, that’s a big problem for a lot of liberals because they just don’t want there to be any.
Judgmentalism, whose right is it? And that’s why all this values stuff bothers them. That’s why they keep talking about they lost on values in the red states in the 2004 election. They gotta go in there and say we, too, have values. Listen to Howard Dean define morality. Howard Dean defines morality as we won’t send troops to Iraq, we won’t lie about weapons of mass destruction. He will not talk about morality in the sense that everybody else discusses it in terms of public and private behavior, and what is the old saying? J.C. Watts said, “Morality is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.”