RUSH: The second ad by this group called Americans United for Change. It’s basically a bunch of left-wingers and union people. The ad is hilarious. I was minding my own business. I was doing show prep last night while filling out an application to join yet another club to which I have been invited, and all of a sudden I get this note from Jonathan Martin at The Politico. ‘Hey, Rush. That same group is back with a new ad focusing on you. Do you have any comments?’ I normally hate watching video on computers because I cannot hear them, and it’s frustrating as it can be. I just don’t. This one was about me, or had me in it somewhere. So I decided to give it a shot, and I was able to hear this one. This is the audio of the ad.
WHISPERING ANNOUNCER: (dramatic music) An economy in crisis! A president determined to act. But what did Republican leaders say to President Obama’s jobs and recovery plan?
MCCONNELL: No.
WHISPERING ANNOUNCER: What did they say to 3.5 million jobs?
BOEHNER: No.
WHISPERING ANNOUNCER: What did they say to tax cuts for 95% of working Americans?
CANTOR: No.
WHISPERING ANNOUNCER: What did they say to rebuilding roads, bridges, and schools?
CORNYN: No.
MCCONNELL: No.
BOEHNER: No.
WHISPERING ANNOUNCER: So who are Republican leaders listening to?
LIMBAUGH: I want him to fail!
WHISPERING ANNOUNCER: Tell them America won’t take ‘no’ for an answer anymore.
RUSH: (laughing) I played it two or three more times, and I remembered James Carville all week and last Sunday out in the TV shows (Carville impression), ‘Mr. Rush Limbaugh is leading the Republican Party. Mr. Rush Limbaugh is a grand pooh-bah. He is Mr. IQ. He is the leader of the Republican Party.’ So Jonathan Martin says, ‘Do you have any response?’ I said, ‘Look,’ and I sent him back an obscene response that I knew he couldn’t use. He said, ‘Look, do you want me to run this? I can doctor it.’ I said, ‘No, no, no.’ Here’s what I told him. ‘Look, the left needs demons. They need demons to distract everybody while they’re trying to implement what they’re trying to implement — and Bush is gone, so I’m it. Because I’m the only one, apparently, not backing down on anything.’
But here’s the thing. Folks, I say this again. What is so damned important about the Democrats getting Republicans to join ’em on any of this? If this munificence, the Obama spending, is going to result in such magic — if we’re going to end up with that great utopia that the leftists of the world have always dreamed of — why in the world would they want to credit Republicans for helping create it? Wouldn’t they much prefer after this utopia is created to be able to point to me and to Boehner and to Newt and to Eric Cantor and say, ‘They didn’t want you to be happy. They didn’t want this utopia to succeed. Then try to stop us!’ That would end the Republican Party forever. They could wipe out the Republican Party by going this alone and having it work as promised and then pointing fingers of blame at us. Instead, they want to demonize us.
The game has become not, ‘What is Obama doing?’ not, ‘What are these abhorrent ideas?’ not this major restructuring of the American compact. The all-out assault on liberty, freedom, and capitalism that is underway now under the leadership of Barack Obama, that’s of no interest to them at all. What’s of interest to them is, ‘The Republicans are opposing! The Republicans are stopping. The Republicans don’t agree.’ The Republicans this and that. It’s breathtaking to watch. Remember, they want ‘bipartisanship.’ Bipartisanship only happens after one side has been defeated. Ask the Japanese in World War II. Ask the Germans. Bipartisanship is the same as the Limbaugh Doctrine. The only way to really get peace anywhere is when one of the combatants loses and has to surrender and is forced to change their ways.
Well, we conservatives have not been defeated. We have not lost. We will not be defeated. We will not give up. We’re not going to cave in, and we’re not going to respond to all of this pressure being brought to bear to get us to join this debacle. Because that would truly be the end of us, and that is what they know. If we make the mistake of joining this boondoggle, that’s when we are finished with our own voters, of whom there are 55 to 58 million. It’s an all-out assault designed to get us to basically commit political suicide — and, of course, we’re not going to do so. Now, not all of the left is unhappy about this. The next sound bite is from Tina Brown, who at one time ruled the New York glitterati media establishment when she was the editrix at Vanity Fair.
And then she moved over to the New Yorker. I can remember when I first got to New York, people that I had great respect for, if they got a phone call from Tina Brown, they may as well have gone and had an orgasm. ‘Tina Brown wants to have lunch with me!’ Who’s Tina Brown? ‘Well, she’s Vanity Fair, Conde Nast.’ Oh, okay. I never understood it, other than she was at the top of the perch in the literary circles of the Big Apple. So I got to know her very briefly. I met her maybe twice. She dispatched one of the other writers at Vanity Fair, Peter Boyer — a great, great guy — to do a profile of me in Vanity Fair in the early nineties, and it was a good profile. It was a good story.
Boyer has since to be heard from. I think he does some stuff at PBS, but he took a hit. I saw Tina Brown last year. Remember when I was in New York? A year ago January, Cindy Adams of the New York Post had invited me to go to dinner and she said, after I’d agreed, ‘By the way, we gotta stop by for a screening of a Susan Sarandon movie at HBO.’ I said, ‘Oh, wonderful.’ So I couldn’t pull out of this. So we went to this thing, and got there and the line of people at the coat check saw Tina Brown and Harry Evans, her distinguished, savoir faire husband. So I said, ‘Hi, how are you guys?’ They were as nice as they could be. ‘You remember the profile by Peter Boyer and Vanity Fair?’ ‘Oh, yeah. Very, very nice.’ Then somehow I end up…
She’s got this new website, and every time they put something up on the website I get an e-mail from her; ostensibly to plug it and promote it, which I haven’t done. So, nevertheless, despite this, I have been sweet as I can be. I have been nice. I have been a gentleman. I have been respectful. The only time I really hit Tina Brown on this program was during the funeral of Princess Di when she made some Oprah-like statements about Tony Blair. I don’t remember what she said. He feels the concrete. He feels the soil on which these people are showing up to pay their respects. I said, ‘Whoa, whoa.’ I had a little fun with this. So she’s on Scarborough’s show today on MSNBC. The cohost Willie Geist is talking to Tina Brown. They play this ad that you just heard, and Geist says, ‘The ‘party of NO’ has become the buzz term of the last couple of days.’
BROWN: I think it’s wonderful. The only thing I do regret, though, is this, you know, giant blowhard bullfrog —
GEIST: (cackling)
BROWN: — you know, Rush Limbow (sic) is being turned into this big icon. I mean, this is a great ad for Rush Limbow, too, so. You know, I love the party of ‘no’ but I’d love it making Rush into this giant…
GEIST: (cackling)
BROWN: He’s a bullfrog with a bullhorn. What can I say?
RUSH: They’re all jealousy. Tina, I have been a giant and an icon long before these cheap imitators at Americans United for Change came along. (laughing) It’s just getting vicious out there. It’s getting vicious. Bush Derangement Syndrome is now Rush Derangement Syndrome, and they are deranged. They need demons. They need a demon to get everybody’s attention focused away from what they are doing. Liberalism cannot flourish in the free market. Liberal talk shows demonstrate this. Liberalism cannot… ‘Now, Rush what about television and…?’ I wouldn’t call it a free market. Those people can force-feed whatever they want, and if they have a monopoly, for example, on television — which they don’t, the monopoly is gone, but liberalism doesn’t flourish in the free market.
Liberals do not even argue. Liberalism, as Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week, set up straw men. It’s like Obama and his speech. (doing Obama impression) ‘And to those who say, we must do nothing…’ Rove is saying, ‘Who says do nothing? There’s nobody saying we should do nothing,’ and he used about ten or 12 of these straw dog arguments during the campaign. He claims to the brain-dead, IQ-less minions watching him that there are all these mean, rotten SOBs trying to stop him from making this utopia; and he characterizes them. ‘These people who say we should do nothing. These people who say X…’ There are no people saying what he’s claiming are being said, but it doesn’t matter because the people watching him think there are people saying so ’cause The Messiah just said there were.