RUSH: Let’s not forget, folks, that during the Bush administration second term there were two (we were told) enlightened literary and film events, both about the assassination of George W. Bush, that we should not react to in an outraged way, that we should understand the literary and artistic intention of the artists involved. One was a movie made in Canada that actually depicted George W. Bush being assassinated. The other was a book by somebody, I think, living in Washington: how to assassinate George W. Bush. There was no attempt during these two events to do anything to castigate these people or to associate them with extreme insane lunatics who might act it out at Daily Kos or the Democrat Underground or the audiences of MSNBC. But I don’t think you can find one illustration of…
You know, I’m not even gonna address the premise. I’ve seen people say about Gabrielle Giffords, ‘You know, she doesn’t even fit the profile of somebody the Tea Party would not like.’ I’m not even gonna defend that premise. The point is the Tea Party doesn’t run around committing assassinations. The Tea Party doesn’t commit violence, period. There is no need to defend the Tea Party under the premise set forth here that they’re a violent mob, which is exactly what the left wants us to do. We don’t right books about how to assassinate anybody and if it happened I guarantee you Secret Service would be on our case. And if such things did happen, we would be defending it as art and telling people, ‘Back off now. Don’t be hasty about reacting. We must understand what the artists are telling us.’
Whether they dip a crucifix in a jar of urine or whatever it is they do, we’re told, ‘Oh, react with reason and restraint here.’ I just said that this is even beneath them, and I gotta correct myself. Unfortunately for the country we’re learning today that nothing is beneath today’s mainstream media. Nothing is beneath the Democrat Party. Nothing is beneath the American left. We on the right, ladies and gentlemen, have led the charge against Congress and the professional political class for noble and obvious reasons. I can’t speak for others who do what I do but I’m not gonna be silenced by this. The people leveling these charges on baseless, nonexistent evidence have racked up a $14 trillion national debt.
The people who are desperately hoping to make some significant, legitimate tie-in between Sarah Palin and this kid are on the verge of bankrupting the country. The United States Congress has an 11% approval rating for a reason. They have done a lousy job. They have spent the money of children and grandchildren. And I and people who do what I do have pointed this out, pointed out their folly every step of the way, but at no time has anybody who does what I do or I ever called for violence. I have never subtly promoted it, have never gone anywhere near it. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.’
The fact of the matter is it is our right and our duty to continue to criticize the very people who have put the fate of our country in peril, and it is. So I would say to all who do what I do; ‘Hold your heads high and turn this back on the media and the Democrats who are coconspirators in policies that are bankrupting this country and risking the future for our children and grandchildren.’ Here we have a disturbed kid. Do you realize that Mr. Loughner has been stalking Gabrielle Giffords since at least 2007? He has. Way before anybody heard of Sarah Palin. Way before there even was a Tea Party. This guy has… You’ve probably all seen by now a woman who the media is trying now to call a sellout, she’s described herself as a left-winger Libertarian at times who knows this kid is telling everybody who will listen what a left-wing radical he was if anything at all.
They’re now trying to destroy her. And she’s anonymous up until then. All she’s doing, whether she even knows it or not, is going against the grain of the template and the narrative that they’re trying to establish here. So you have this obviously deranged, insane, emotionally disturbed kid, and what I want to know is: Where is the left’s vaunted safety net? We’ve spent hundreds of millions, billions, trillions by now — trillions of dollars at local –state, and federal levels to kind of catch these disturbed people and fix them before they harm others. Where is the evidence that their compassion for people like this works? There isn’t any.
What evidence do we have that they are willing to use events like this that they privately approve of events like this for the sake and the opportunity to advance what are obviously sick and perverted political ideas? They will use anyone. They will use any event. They will take what is a genuine tragedy and with no evidence whatsoever attempt to massage it for their own political benefit, and they can’t do it by touting their ideas. They can’t do it by explaining the virtue of their ideas, their beliefs, and their system because they can’t. So what do they have to do? They have to impugn, destroy, get rid of, regulate out of business their political opponents in media if they are to have a chance.
In other words, the only way the modern Democrat Party, the American leftist movement is to have a chance is if there is no opposition. So a genuinely sad event like this is immediately used to advance a political notion. And not that liberalism is good. Not that liberalism, socialism is the answer. No. The attempt here is to impugn, to besmirch, and to destroy the ideas of those of us who are trying to preserve the country we all know and love as it was founded. What they fail to realize is that this isn’t 1995 anymore. This isn’t 1963. It isn’t 1975. It’s 2011. We have seen them through the Wellstone memorial.
We have seen them take the unfortunate death of one of their own and the memorial service to his memory turned into a purely out-of-control political effort. They ended up losing the midterm elections that year in large part because of it. They got trounced last November down to dogcatcher level through 95% of this country. In continuing this template and narrative that the Tea Party, that Sarah Palin, that talk radio, that Fox News is inspiring violence, they forget that in the process of so doing they are attacking what is now a majority of Americans. They are accusing a majority of Americans of being accomplices to murder. They are accusing a majority of Americans, ’cause it isn’t just Palin; it’s the people who voted for her.
It isn’t just me; it’s the people who listen to me. It’s not just all the other names that have been mentioned, Beck and Levin and Hannity and Fox News people. It’s the people who listen and watch. Over half the country has been indicted — Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, all day yesterday, and much of today — for the actions of one lone, deranged person (and, by the way, the FBI is out now with a profile). Yes, is, ladies and gentlemen, ABC News grimacing and reporting that the FBI director Robert Mueller said, ‘Congresswoman Giffords was definitely the target of the shooter. His team was working with local officials here and the investigation is moving fast. Mueller’s investigation is showing a clear picture. There was a lone, angry, disenfranchised young man who was solely responsible for this shooting.’
That’s a branch of the Obama government saying that: ‘Lone, disenfranchised angry young man.’ But American left and many in the media are trying to say that he was inspired by you if you listen to me, if you voted for Palin or McCain or what have you. This is where they’re not getting it. People can see through their manipulative attempts now. Because they are common and they are routine, and they are predictable. They’re also very destructive, which is another purpose they have in my mind: Keep everybody at odds with one another, keep everybody roiled.
I actually wondered what she looked like. I saw her for the first time today: Liz Sidoti, Liz Sidoti, this AP reporter. We read from her deranged pieces frequently on this program. She was on TV this morning explain what this really meant was how the American people want to move to the center, and how they did in the November election and I’m looking at this and I’m scratching my head. ‘Do you realize what you’re saying? You’ve just undercut 36 hours of attempts by your friends to blame this on Republicans because this great unwashed independent center moderate movement voted Republican.’
They clearly expressed what they don’t want any more of, and it’s the Democrat Party. Nobody talks about a Republican federal judge was killed, appointed by George Bush 41. Have you heard anybody on my side of the aisle, anybody who does what I do try to therefore claim this guy’s a big lib ’cause he shot a Republican-appointed federal judge? It’s not the way we think, and we certainly don’t look to these events to move our political agenda forward. But the left is depraved, empty, and without any substance whatsoever, and about all they’ve got is to take tragic events like this and to turn them into events of a political advantage for them. A party which seeks to profit off of murder. A party, a movement which seeks to profit from disaster. A party and movement who, as you shall hear in a moment, openly wishes for such disaster, in order to profit from it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, speaking of Sarah Palin and George W. Bush, how is it they’re still alive? Folks, the assault — the verbal assault and even pictorial, the visual assaults — on insane Democrat websites. Democrat Underground, Daily Kos (however you pronounce it), on Palin and Bush? ‘Bush = Hitler.’ How are these people still alive because you had an entire television network, MSNBC promoting such vitriol against Bush and Palin each and every night for a number of years. Who since Reagan has been attacked more than Sarah Palin or Bush? And speaking of Reagan, Reagan was shot 1981. Did the news media and the rest of the left demand that commentators dial back the anti-Reagan, anti-conservative vitriol back then? They didn’t. I was alive, paying attention.
I don’t remember anybody suggesting that the relentless attacks on Reagan or conservatism by the then-media monopoly or the rest of the left had anything to do with John Hinckley’s actions. They didn’t rush. No, they waited to find out who he was. ‘Oh, the kid’s disturbed. Oh, just a terribly disturbed kid.’ Never once did they try to say the kid had anything politically motivated. They didn’t warn anybody to dial back the anti-conservatism that was all through the media. It didn’t happen. Let somebody today write a book or make a movie on the assassination of any president other than Bush and see what happens.