RUSH: Herbert Meyer wrote great piece today in the American Thinker. Herbert E. Meyer served with Reagan. He was a special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. That would be Bill Casey, who was… I mean, Bill Casey and Wild Bill Donovan, they were the CIA. They were the OSS during World War II. Also Herb Meyer was vice-chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, and he’s written a couple things: How to Analyze Information and The Cure for Poverty. A piece here entitled, ‘The Reestablishment of America,’ in the AmericanThinker.com: ‘America is on the verge of something unprecedented in history: the peaceful, constitutional replacement of our country’s entire political establishment. This is what lies behind the decisions of so many elected officials, at every level, to step aside rather than fight for reelection.
‘And it explains how the Tea Party movement can exert so much political leverage without nominating its own candidates or even without formally choosing its own leaders. Most of the time, we Americans don’t pay much attention to politics. We focus all of our energy on our jobs, our families, and our faith. We work hard, play by the rules, and wish only to be left alone. We love our country, consider ourselves blessed to be living here, and ask little from the men and women we elect except to keep from screwing things up. But in just the last decade, Americans were shocked by two catastrophes we hadn’t imagined our political establishment would allow to happen. The first was 9-11, when nineteen terrorists successfully attacked our homeland, and by doing so revealed that for years, al-Qaeda and its allies had been waging holy war against us.
‘The second was the 2008 financial crash, which revealed that our economy is a house of cards built on a pile of debt so high we cannot possibly repay it. Republicans blame Democrats, and Democrats blame Republicans. To ordinary, non-political Americans — who grasp intuitively, and correctly, that both parties share responsibility for these two catastrophes — these politicians seem like children who’ve turned a party into a food fight. And what do parents do when a children’s party gets out of control? They turn off the music, turn out the lights, and send everyone home, including those few who weren’t behaving badly and just got caught up in the melee. Americans don’t like getting tangled in the details of politics. We prefer to stand back and see the big picture. (This, by the way, helps explain the extraordinary appeal of Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin. That’s what they do, too.)
‘What the big picture is showing now is that our entire political establishment has failed. These were the men and women, both Republicans and Democrats, we relied upon to focus on the details, and by doing so, to keep us safe from terrorists and to keep the world’s most powerful economy from imploding. And they blew it. So we’ll replace them with a wholly new establishment — some of whom will be Republicans, others Democrats, and a few Independents here and there — and hope our next political establishment will get it right. In the looming political battles, persona will matter more than policy. As we move toward the 2010 elections, of course we’ll ask candidates to outline their plans for how to improve our health care system, what to do about illegal immigration, how to bring down the unemployment rate, how to fight the war, and all the rest.
‘But what will determine who gets elected this year won’t be a set of specific policies, but something simpler, and in a way much deeper: a recognition among grassroots voters across the political spectrum that character is more important than personality, that education isn’t the same thing as judgment, and that expertise without common sense is dangerous. Stand back from politics and you’ll see the same re-establishment trend unfolding in other public arenas. Americans have decided that the mainstream media has failed, and so we are replacing The New York Times, the television network news departments, and all the rest with an entirely new media, including FOX News and websites like American Thinker and Lucianne.com. Americans have decided that our country’s education establishment has failed — our kids are barely learning to read and write, let alone taught our country’s history — so we’re seeing the rise of private schools, charter schools, and home-schooling.
‘Would anyone like to bet that within just a few years, we’ll have a wholly new financial establishment on Wall Street to replace the greedy idiots who run it now? The re-establishment of America won’t be easy, and we’ll make mistakes along the way. Some of the new people will prove just as worthless as they ones they replaced. And some very good people who now hold key positions in politics, the media, education, and finance will be swept away by the avalanche. That’s too bad, but collateral damage is unavoidable. No other country in history has ever attempted to replace its establishments so smoothly and so peacefully — and so cheerfully — as we are doing right now. And it isn’t likely that any other country ever will attempt something like this. How exhilarating to realize that 234 years after our revolution, the United States is still the most dynamic, forward-looking, optimistic place on Earth,’ and he concludes with, ‘Boy, what an exciting time to be an American.’
I would disagree with elements of this. I do think the Democrats are going to be held much more to account this, particularly this financial mess than the Republicans are. The Republicans have already been held to account. The Republicans already voted their guilty out. The Republicans have already said, ‘You guys failed us,’ and they gave control of the House to Pelosi. So the big bloodletting, political bloodletting will be on the Democrat side. I have no doubt about it. But nevertheless, I wanted to share this with you because Herb Meyer is writing this from a positive perspective, that all this is good and we still have the freedom to affect these changes in a peaceful way. Now, that’s his assessment of all this. We’ll see how it shapes out, but I do think there’s a revolution coming: Huge and big time. And it’s going to be directed at Barack Obama and the Democrats. I haven’t seen a Democrat get elected in Massachusetts to replace Kennedy, I didn’t see a Democrat get elected to replace Corzine in New Jersey, and I didn’t see a Democrat elected to be the new governor of Virginia — and I don’t see a whole lot of Republicans quitting. I see Democrats dropping like flies, some of them changing parties, but I don’t see one Republican becoming a Democrat. I don’t see one Republican afraid of his own political future to the extent that all of the Democrats are.
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RUSH: Back to the phones. Steven in Idaho Falls, it’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey. Good to talk to you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Good to talk to you. It’s an honor.
RUSH: Thanks very much. I appreciate that.
CALLER: My question. Evan Bayh comes out with his big ‘I’m not running for reelection’ speech and all this. Well, then all of a sudden it comes out that he’s got $13 million in campaign funds. What happens to that money?
RUSH: He gets to keep it for a future campaign.
CALLER: A future campaign.
RUSH: Yeah. He can’t convert it to funds to pay the light bill —
CALLER: (laughs)
RUSH: — and he can’t go out and buy a single-engine airplane. He can’t go out and use that money to fly into an IRS office somewhere.
CALLER: (laughs)
RUSH: But he can use it. He can save it. That’s one of the reasons why it’s getting out. I’ll tell you, there are a lot of people that are writing things about this today and a whole bunch of other things. They’re just echoing me, things I’ve said earlier, and people are sending them to me, ‘Hey, Rush, did you ever think about this?’ Yeah, I wonder if the people who stole it from me thought about that? The reason Evan Bayh quit is because if he does want to run for office in the future, he’s gotta keep the $13 million and he’s gotta distance himself from Obama, because he’s voted with Obama down the line. Obama is driving Democrats into the graveyard! Obama is causing Democrats to drop like flies. This guy has got to get himself out of the circumstance where he’s voting with Obama if he wants to run for future office.
Because, believe me: Invoking Obama and his policies in a campaign and a reason to elect you isn’t gonna work. There’s no question in my mind he wants to seek office down the road. None whatsoever. But he’s gotta get out of there in order to distance himself from Obama and hold onto that $13 million. By the way, he’s also really hurting in the polls. He’s at 50% in some and below 50% in others which would mean he’d have to use a lot of that $13 million to run again, and he wants to save it. This is another one of these rules that members of Congress have enacted for themselves. If you quit you get to take your unspent campaign war chest with you. By law you’re not allowed to use it personally, for personal things — like cosmetic surgery, or a new house, a new gardener, or anything like that. I don’t know that some of them don’t do it, but you’re not by law allowed to. But you are allowed to keep it and roll it over and allow it to keep growing. You can invest it to keep growing and use it in your next campaign.
Stephen in Ogden, Utah, you’re next with Rush Limbaugh. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Yes. It’s a pleasure to talk to you from the place that I call ‘the Rodney Dangerfield of towns.’ But we’re fast becoming an emerging Mecca for all outdoor activities here.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. (laughing) I know what he means by that, and it’s not that I can’t keep my tie straight.
CALLER: I called about I think you’re way too easy on Wall Street, but the overriding factor I think is that there’s no accountability in the nation from the top from all aspects, government or whatever. But I called in about I think Wall Street gets off way too easy.
RUSH: Why am I not hard enough on them or too easy on them, as you say?
CALLER: Okay. Well, I guess it’s from — as an example from the housing debacle. You know, it was basically government, I believe, as you said, that caused it. But it wasn’t for the fraud that was committed on Wall Street, these bonds would have never been able to get sold throughout the world. And so the ones who —
RUSH: Well, now, help me understand that. What fraud did they commit?
CALLER: They basically bundled up your loan with the most despicable person’s loan and called it a AAA loan because Rush Limbaugh is AAA, and they sold it to the world as AAA and so the world bought it because it was sold as that.
RUSH: Now, I admit that’s not cool, I admit that’s not cool, but why do you think they did it?
CALLER: They did it for greed. What else? They sold —
RUSH: Let me present another possibility to you. I mean, just consider this. Here you have Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, who are in charge of mortgages. And you have Chris Dodd and Barney Frank who authored, via the Community Redevelopment Act, the whole notion of the subprime loan program. And its purpose, was to extend loans to people that never, ever would ever have a chance of paying them back. I remember Janet Reno threatened a whole bunch of Wall Street banks, ‘If you don’t follow through on this program we’re going to investigate you.’
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I’m not defending them. Look, you don’t want to be misunderstood here. These guys are not innocent little kids that got caught up in a scandal, but they were forced to do something that left to themselves they wouldn’t do.
CALLER: Yes, sir, they coulda stepped down. That’s what I’m saying. There’s no accountability in our nation from the top. The little guy, there’s accountability all over the place. He’ll get fired okay?
RUSH: I understand what you’re saying.
CALLER: But there’s no mechanism.
RUSH: No, I understand that. And I have ripped into just this week and last week the whole notion of ‘crony capitalism.’ What has happened here is because of the oppressive, big foot and the threat of total ruination that started with Bill Clinton and Janet Reno and continued with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd that if these people didn’t do this… They couldn’t just walk away or they would be punished. They would be investigated. These people, because of government’s getting more and more and more powerful, wanted to be on the good side with them. That’s what’s happening now. It used to be that corporations and businesses of all size attempted to promote themselves by coming up with products and services that customers wanted and bought and earned a profit. Now, businesses are forced to do business in a way to keep government happy so that they don’t come and try to put them out of business. So when they have these horrible loans that they know they’re not going to get paid back on, rather than quit, what they thought was, ‘My God, how do we stay afloat here?’ So they would package the AAA people with these worthless things and then sell ’em. They came up with all of these new financial products and convinced AIG to create an insurance policy to back all this garbage up.
CALLER: Right, right.
RUSH: Now, if you want to… Look, I’m not exonerating these guys but I’m telling you: The blame for this is the Democrat Party.
CALLER: Okay, but there’s no accountability there, either. Okay?
RUSH: Yeah, exactly. But there’s going to be in November.
CALLER: Right. But, you know, in a way I find it hard to hold the government accountable. There’s no mechanism there. But how about say with the Great Society or something? If they would have linked that or, say, the health care bill with the Democrats and with them personally and say, ‘Listen, if this goes over budget you’re going to have to pay, your family’s going to have to pay, and you’re going to have to step down from office. If it goes over budget within X-amount,’ and if they’re out of office at the time then they have to pay into the system that they created that was an abomination in the first place.
RUSH: I understand.
CALLER: We have to come up with some type of mechanism to hold these guys accountable. If it’s not going to go over budget, prove it to me. Put your money with your mouth is.
RUSH: I understand all of this that you’re saying. I come at this from a different perspective, though. I have an entirely different prism I look at this through. It is this: The Democrat Party for all of my life and since the days of FDR has been playing class envy in order to buy votes from unsuspecting people who the Democrats convince, ‘Vote for us and we’re going to make your lives better, and we’re going to attack these fat cats and we’re going to make sure they don’t get away with all these shenanigans and we’re going to make sure you don’t get cheated,’ and what happens? They become partners with them while they sit there and rip them. Class envy is horrible. I hate the notion that a vast majority of American people were persuaded to despise the business community. You look at the Democrat Party’s enemies list.
It is Big Oil. It is Big Pharmaceutical. It is Big Retail. It is anything. Businesses large and small are targeted by these people for the express purpose of making people like you hate them intuitively. And I despise that. I hate it, this whole notion of, ‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to do! We’re going to punish these rich people. We’re going to raise their taxes and you’re supposed to feel better about it! We’re not going to give you another dime. You’re not going to get your taxes cut. But boy we’re going to screw these people,’ and you’re supposed to sit there and say, ‘Good! Good! I’m happy because they’re getting shafted.’ I hate that. I resent it all to hell. Besides, all these securities agencies all these Wall Street things? It was Congress that had oversight of all this supposedly, and there were a number of people who tried to stop all these shenanigans going on, and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd shut ’em down.
There’s no accountability at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. There’s no accountability at government for any of this stuff, although there will be in November. I’m not… All I’m telling you is I have a much greater fear for the future of this country and a much greater animosity for the Democrat Party which is ruining this country than I do for anybody in business, much more. And if we can’t get past this notion of blaming business for what’s happening to us, when we have a neophyte socialist little Marxist incompetent destroying the country then we’re in big trouble. We need to refocus our anger at the right place, and it’s this government that has power over all of these people. So much power that they can coerce these Wall Street people or anybody else to go along with what they want to do or they face ruination. We have to get rid of the Democrat Party being in a majority anywhere. That’s the answer to this, not to string up a bunch of Wall Street bankers or have ACORN protesting on their front yards in Connecticut. That may make you feel better, but it ain’t going to save your country.