RUSH: Ann in Cadillac, Michigan, glad you waited. You’re on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Oh, it’s so exciting to talk to you. You’re just wonderful.
RUSH: Thank you. Thanks very much.
CALLER: Well, I was just thinking that this deal that the unions may be getting of protection from having to pay the extra taxes because they’ve given so much money to the Democrats seems a lot like the sort of deal you would get from the Mafia when you pay for protection, and they shake you down for some money and then they’ll protect you.
RUSH: Exactly. And again, this is another thing that happened right out in the open. I mean, it’s a shakedown. It’s an organized crime type shakedown. Everybody on the other side of the glass is laughing, but I think your point is well made. But see here again, folks, this happened out in public. It was nakedly visible. The unions made a big stink publicly of saying, ‘Whoa! We’re not supporting this. Are you saying we are going to pay a tax on our Cadillac health care bills? You got another thing coming, Mr. President.’ They coulda done this behind closed doors. They coulda done it behind the scenes. They went public. At first, the White House held firm. But then the White House caved. The White House has been buying off whoever they need to buy off to get this done. You know, even Democrats who voted for this thing, some of them, Ben Nelson, he is out there saying, you know, we ought to junk this and start all over. We should have focused on the economy first, which they did, by the way and gave us the current predicament that we are in.
By the way, do you know that unemployment benefits have been extended longer now than at any time in American history? Breaking the record in 1982. You have to conclude here that extending unemployment benefits also extends unemployment and contributes to unemployment. There can be no question about it. I’m sure even economic experts at the AP would agree with that. What everybody is missing is that this is not accidental. This is not a bunch of mumbling, bumbling, fumbling around by dumb, naive people. What’s the guy’s name that appeared at a Scott Brown rally yesterday, John Ratzenberger? He was in Cheers. He’s got it right when he said, (paraphrasing) ‘I was at Woodstock. I built the stage at Woodstock, and all we have here are a bunch of sixties hippies that have assumed power, just a bunch of sixties type hippies,’ and I’m sure he’s referring to people like Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground, the New Black Panthers and all these radicals that Obama has appointed to positions in government and czars in his White House. He said, (paraphrasing) ‘I built the stage at Woodstock. And when everything went bad, when it all fell apart, it was the National Guard that came in there and fed those drugged-out people peanut butter sandwiches.’
It was the very people these hippies are protesting that came in and saved them, and now these people have finally realized — the Clintons are part of this sixties hippie generation, they are — they’ve achieved power. They finally got there. You could say that they’re naive in their idealism, it’s a mistake to chalk up all this as an accident. This is not the result of good intentions. This economic disaster and the slush fund to fix it, the TARP fund, these are not accidents. These are purposeful steps, and I don’t believe that these people really do believe it’s going to revive an economy. That’s not what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to show their compassion, they’re trying to enlarge government. These are big statists. These are socialists, fascists, or whoever. They’re radicals. They’re on the fringe of American thought and belief. But because their beliefs were embodied in some great orator who was able to be a blank piece of canvas, people were allowed to paint whatever they wanted on that canvas and make Obama whatever they wanted him to be, he got elected because the Republicans didn’t have the guts and the chutzpah to campaign and run a real critical presidential campaign of who the guy was and they knew who he was but they refused to do it.
And the Democrats were wise. They knew that the Republicans would not criticize him because he’s black. They were intimidated; they didn’t want to be called racists, so they backed off and McCain was firing people who even pronounced Obama’s middle name. He wouldn’t have that. Mark McKinnon, who was his original media director, said, ‘If there’s any criticism of this historic man, Obama, I’m outta here,’ and he did quit the campaign. Now, the reason that the blank canvas thing worked is because for five years, and maybe longer — I’d have to say for the entire eight Bush years, but it really intensified after the invasion of Iraq, there was a relentless and an unstoppable lie after lie after lie about the state of the economy, about how America was viewed in the world, we are torturers, the world hates us, we are creating terrorism. Look at all the people that believe that Bush actually had something to do with 9/11. You had Michael Moore out there with Fahrenheit 9/11 which is a total piece of propaganda, then he makes this movie that health care in Cuba is better than health care here. Meanwhile, doctors are defecting from Cuba left and right, and people believe this stuff because the Bush administration never defended itself, the Bush administration never laughed at them and said, ‘You guys are crazy.’
The Iraq war was painted as unjust and immoral and unnecessary. I mean you give the press and the Democrat Party five uncontested years, every day an assault on one man and his administration, and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop the result. And it’s exactly what happened. You shoulda heard people coming out of this rally for Coakley yesterday where Obama was still blaming Bush. Poor Obama he’s working 36 hours a day to fix the Bush mess. We had 4.7% unemployment, we had full statistic, full employment in this country, we had revenue to the Treasury that was going like crazy because of capital gains reductions. Fifteen percent is the capital gains rate right now. It was the exact opposite of the way it was being portrayed. Every day we had a new body count out of Iraq. Every day an unjust, immoral war. The Democrats actively pursued defeat. ‘This war is lost,’ said Harry Reid. They called Petraeus a liar. They had people in this country hating their own government, hating their own president, hating their own country, after five years of propaganda unresponded to, unanswered lies.
It’s not that the press is powerful. They’re not as powerful as they used to be, otherwise there wouldn’t be a race in Massachusetts. And, by the way, if there’s no difference in the two parties, why do we care who wins up there tomorrow? Hmm? If all these political parties are the same, it doesn’t matter, does it, who wins? What’s all the razzmatazz about? If you give the Democrats in the press five-years, 24/7 of unanswered attacks, they can change public opinion, and they did. So people thought Obama was a messiah. There was a cultlike thing that developed. And they gave him of course the benefit of the doubt, why, he got in there and the first six months everything is going wrong, they accepted it being blamed on Bush. But they have painted Mr. Perfection on that canvas. And there’s nothing in reality that approaches what they painted. And so now the day of reckoning has come, and the whole blank canvas and the whole myth that Obama was something new and different, unprecedented, blown to smithereens.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ll tell you something else the Obama people want, all of these sixties hippies. Obama has written about this in The Audacity of Hope about how he wanted to reverse what Reagan and his ‘minions’ did. Well, what that means is this: They wanted a new depression to get back and expand the safety net, restore things to the status before Reagan and the Reagan Revolution. Reagan trimmed the welfare rolls, slowed the growth of the welfare state, and they didn’t like that. These people are all about expanding the welfare state, getting as many people as possible on the welfare state. They need to give us a new depression, and they’re in the process of doing it. Don’t doubt me.