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Liberals Lack Intellectual Firepower

by Rush Limbaugh - Jan 10,2006


RUSH: A little note about this Washington Post story which I shared elements of it with you moments ago: “Despite Advocacy, Alito is Not on Public’s Radar Screen: … Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, said three factors have helped defuse what many experts thought would be a huge fight…” You know, it’s getting to the point, whatever the experts say — be they environmental, be they sports — just go the other way. Be they economic, go the other way. The odds are much greater you’ll win the argument, or you’ll make a better prediction. “[T]he holidays, the dominance of other issues, and the lack of an effective and overarching argument against Alito by Democrats.” Now, that is quite telling, because it’s not that they haven’t made any arguments. If she says here that there’s a lack of an effective and overarching argument against Alito by Democrats, it means something important to me. It means that their standard playbook, textbook opposition doesn’t work anymore. “Weeeell, this guy wants women barefoot, pregnant, and women in the kitchen, uh, turn back the clock on civil rights, uh, old people will lose Social Security, uh…”
“What else have we said? Hostile to workers. Blacks will be put to the back of the bus. Uhhhh. Slavery in South Africa, whatever. Hates voting rights, yeah! Against one man, one vote.” They’ve said all those things. They’ve run television ads. Their left-wing interest groups have been out there saying all the things that they said about Bork, that they said about Clarence Thomas, that they’ve said about any number of conservative nominees. But they just don’t stick anymore which is what I’ve been trying to tell you is the case about a lot of liberalism, just doesn’t stick. This is because an educated and informed public is more attuned now. Just like the seasoned citizens of this country. They have been hearing for all of my adult life: “You elect Republican A, you lose your Social Security. They just don’t want to cut it; they want to eliminate it! They want to take away your home!” Well, Republicans keep winning elections, and none of that happens. Social Security benefits go up. Now we’ve got a new Medicare benefit. The seniors don’t even want it, but they got it.
All these are just, you know, false charges that ring hollow after awhile. Washington Times: “Democrats Dig into Alito’s Opinions on Guns and Race.” Well, they don’t have anything. They
found nothing. “Republicans quickly circulated details of at least four such cases in which Judge Alito ruled in favor of minorities.” This is after Ted Kennedy yesterday — and, by the way, those were not opening statements. It was an indictment. Those were just a bunch of different Democrat indictments against Alito as a man, as a judge, as a conservative, as a Republican, as a human being. They weren’t any opening statements. It was just pathetic, and one of the things Ted Kennedy said was that, “‘In an era when America is still too often divided by race and riches, Judge Alito has not written one single opinion on the merits in favor of a person of color alleging race discrimination on the job.’ Four cases in which Alito ruled in favor of minorities were quickly found and distributed.” Any student in his third week of law school would know this stuff. It has to be intentional — meaning, they mean to say this kind of stuff even though it’s not true. It must be intentional.


That’s what I’m wondering. I go back to the arrogance factor. I think that the great unsung personages in all this are the staff. Senator Kennedy is the walrus out there that’s reciting the words that have been written for him. But I mean he’s an old guy now. He don’t have a whole lot of energy. Happy hour is at five o’clock; the staff is working ’til midnight every night. The questions are written out for him, and I think it’s possible — and I know some of you are going to think this is a stretch because you think these Democrats, “They’re smart. Boy, they’re cagey! Well, they understand strategy.” I don’t see how you can make the case in either scenario. How can you say they’re smart if they think they can get away with a lie like this? It is not 30 years ago. It’s not 1985 when there’s nobody that’s going to respond to the lies. How many Dan Rather-type episodes are the liberals going to have to undergo to understand they can’t get away with this anymore?
The second scenario is they don’t know that he actually ruled in favor of minorities on four cases because he’s a conservative and can’t possibly favor minorities. (interruption) You don’t think that’s possible, Mr. Snerdley? You think they know it? You think that (interruption). I remain unconvinced. I know too many of these people, Mr. Snerdley. They are not as informed as you think. I relish all these conversations I have with liberals. All it takes is one sentence, maybe two sentences for me on whatever issue we’re discussing and I can see that they have never in their lives heard such a thought or considered such an idea. I don’t care what it is. Take your issue. I can’t pull one off the top of my head but I can see they don’t know what to do with it. They really live in a buttoned-down world where their institutions and where their instincts are right — and they don’t allow other views to permeate other opinions. I think it’s possible that they don’t know that Alito has ruled in favor of minorities in four different cases. It’s (interruption). Yeah, you can say it’s almost like they live in a bubble.
Now Snerdley doesn’t think this is even possible. That’s because you continue to overestimate these people. You don’t understand their arrogance. Their (interruption). They didn’t get what they wanted out of the lie because it’s not true. The problem (interruption). Snerdley is telling me, “They got everything they wanted out of that lie because every Democrat in the world is repeating it.” It’s not true. You do not win on lies, and that’s the whole problem the Democratic Party has. They are built today on a foundation of lies — and you can see every lie that they believe being uttered about these people. Truth will always win out in the end. Just be patient. These guys are not going to prevail with this, not in this climate. It’s not 30 years ago. They can’t get away with this. I don’t think they realize it’s not 30 years ago. I think they are still trying to prove the power they had 30 years ago still exists today. Same thing with the people in the media. They’re still trying to prove they have the ability to move a nation. That’s what this whole Iraq business, trying to make it Vietnam is all about. That’s what this whole NSA trying to make it about Watergate is all about.
Journalists are obsessed with being able to have that kind of power again, to shut down a war, to get rid of a president. Democrats are aligned on the same basis. So they go out and tell a lie about this that is so easily fact-checked and refuted that a kindergartener can do it. Well, you say, “Are they this dumb to think that?” One of two ways they’re dumb. They’re dumb if they think they can still get away with it, or they’re dumb if they actually don’t know that it happened. I am willing to consider — and I understand anybody who would doubt me on this, but I am willing to consider that the people on the staff — Senator Kennedy himself included — do not know that Judge Alito actually ruled in favor of minorities four times, because in their minds he’s a conservative and it’s not possible he would favor a minority. It’s just not possible. It simply isn’t! He’s a racist. He’s a conservative. He’s a white guy. He can’t possibly favor minorities! They probably think that the four cases the Republicans dug up are lies.


They probably think the Republicans just wrote the cases themselves and assigned them some case number, some imaginary judge and court, they probably don’t believe it still to this day, can’t possibly be. He’s a Republican’ he’s a conservative’ he’s a racist! That’s their thought process. Anything that challenges that sends them off into Never-Never Land — and they, unlike Johnny Depp, can’t find it. I mean, Leahy’s comments during his question period were outrageous, and Alito was just toying with him during the whole time. Leahy said that “spying on Americans without a warrant.” That’s not what happened. He’s misstating the facts. Americans were not spied on without a warrant. He throws up straw men. He’s rambling incoherently near the end of his period starting to talk about Quakers, starting to talk about his grandparents as they were discussing whether a ten-year-old girl can be strip searched. It got to the point here that… Folks, I’m just going to tell you something. Based on what I’ve seen not just in this hearing but in the last hearing as well, the liberals on this committee and the liberals everywhere do not have, they simply do not have, the intellectual firepower to take on our best.
So they have to make up these scenarios; they have to make up these lies. They lie about what the president’s doing. They lie about torture. They lie in defending Al-Qaeda. They lie about supposed rulings that judge, Alito, has signed off on. They lie. They lie because they can’t compete intellectually. They haven’t been prepared for it because they haven’t had to. They ruled the roost for all these years. If somebody dissented, they were simply slapped down and destroyed by the mainstream press, or they weren’t hired at the University, or they weren’t invited to play golf with Tip O’Neill. But other than that they’ve never had to engage. Now they have to engage and we’re seeing what 50 years of conservatism in the minority has wrought. It’s wrought a bunch of people. Roberts is one of them; Alito is another. A bunch of us are laboring in the basements, doing everything we can to try to convince as many Americans of our principles and our beliefs to join us.
We’ve done a great job of it so far. We’re winning elections on that basis. We’re not doing such a hotshot jog governing. That’s another subject. But, we’ve still convinced the American people that conservatism is a far better bet, far better way to than liberalism; the liberals during these 50 years thought they never had an enemy we had to worry about they were just a bunch of gnats swatted away with whatever mechanism they wanted to use –and as such our guys can run rings around these people. It’s not even an intellectual contest. They don’t have the intellectual firepower. They’ve got faux intellectual firepower. I’m looking at a faux intellect right now, Biden, Mr. Windbag. They just wax on. He’ll probably go 25 minutes in his first question before Alito says anything. I haven’t seen him stop yet. Ted Kennedy, intellectual firepower? Come on, folks. Pat Leahy? It’s not even really a contest.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The Washington Post story: Why don’t people care about this Alito nomination? Why don’t people care? Why, this is about the Supreme Court! I said it the other day. For Democrats, everything is a scandal. They’ve just thrown too many scandals out there. The public is tuned out. This phony NSA scandal sucked up a lot of the media print, a lot of the media airtime, sucked up a lot of the oxygen. If you look at the Democrats, everything is a scandal. Every nominee is a monster. Everything that happens in the country is a crisis. People don’t want to hear it all the time, and especially when the Dow just hits 11,000, and the economy is roaring along, and the news coming out of Iraq is good with the elections and so forth, people just don’t want to hear it because it doesn’t ring true. Plus what happens is their emotional tanks empties. I remember one prominent time this happened back in the eighties. Apartheid was in South Africa, became the cause celeb.
I mean, it was the only thing going on out there, and one university after another, you know, raced to see who could divest from South Africa first, and then companies started, and it’s all anybody talked about. The sessions of the South African Congress, whatever it was called, led by Pieter Botha, were televised in this country so everybody could see what a monster was. This is the man keeping — after awhile people didn’t care anymore. The emotional reservoir emptied, and that’s what the Democrats have done. Everything is a scandal. For five years, every statement George Bush has made is a lie, is a scandal, is a statement. Every nominee is a monster. The terrorists are the good guys; Bush is the enemy. I’m telling you, they’ve worn out their welcome, and people simply don’t have the capacity to believe all this stuff. After awhile, you start saying, as they’re saying now, “Come on, I mean nothing can be this bad. No person can be this big a monster! Besides, real-world experience and my life tells me it isn’t as bad as you say. It will only be as bad as you say if we elect you!” That’s what’s happening out there, and they don’t even see that.
END TRANSCRIPT