RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites and recount some of what happened media-wise in reaction to the shocking news out of Wisconsin yesterday that the strategic maneuver of stripping all the appropriations out of the bill took place, making it possible for a vote to take place without a quorum. On the day Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin, was accused of being almost ready to cave, he did the exact opposite. We have maybe one of the greatest group freakouts in the history of the American media in this montage.
MADDOW: The Republicans in Wisconsin’s state Senate appear to have invented a new nuclear option.
JAVERS: State Republicans are pulling the nuclear option.
MACDONALD: This is the nuclear option.
REICH: Making a mockery of democracy and the rule of law.
O’DONNELL: Eighteen Senate Republicans conspired to take government away from the people.
SCHULTZ: This was an illegal move.
YANG: Democrats are up in arms. They say this was illegal. They say this violated the rules of the chamber.
MOORE: They are stripping the democratic rights of the people.
MATTHEWS: The Ash Wednesday Ambush.
The left is not practiced at winning at the ballot box. They win through intimidation. They win through bullying and other such tactics. The left is really imperiled when elections are the deciding factor in who gets power, and I’m not exaggerating this. Some of you might be scratching your head, saying, ‘What do you mean, Rush? I mean Democrats, they like elections. They win them now and then.’ Yeah, but they have what we call election insurance. If they lose they still have their plants in the judiciary, and they still have their plants in the bureaucracy. But elections are a problem for the left. And the reason that elections are a problem is because, the truth be known, maybe 30% of the American people agree with the left, maybe at the outside 30% of the American people are full-fledged liberals. So in normal circumstances where everybody as a candidate tells you who they really are and what they’re gonna do, the left would never win one, certainly not a national one.
No Democrat would ever win a national election if that Democrat were full-fledged honest about his policies and his ideas. They have to make it up. They have to lie, obfuscate, impugn, criticize, character smash and smear their opponents. That’s what we’re left with in Wisconsin. They don’t know what to do. The epitome of fair and square has just taken place and they don’t know how to deal with it. The first phase of fair and square was last November’s election. And, by the way, it was even overboard fair and square. This governor and the Republicans in Wisconsin bent over backwards. They gave these Democrats over a month to come back from their cowardly hiding place and the DMZ, the Illinois-Wisconsin border, gave ’em a month, negotiated with them, talked with them, did everything that it’s said you’re supposed to do. They did not ram anything down their throats, did not act uppity, they just stuck to their guns, the Republicans and the governor. And the Republicans it was said yesterday were about to cave, governor was about to cave. And the Democrats, the liberals thought, ‘My gosh, our fear tactics, our intimidation tactics have worked. We’ll keep it up. Bring in more union thugs. Bring in more buses filled with people that are here to deface public property and to frighten people. Just bring ’em all in here.’ That’s how they do it.
The real bullies in our political culture are found on the left side of the aisle. So they bring in all these people with their standard operating tactics, and guess what? They didn’t win. Good old-fashioned standard operating procedure. Very peaceful, everything aboveboard, 100% legal. The governor even went out of his way to be civil with the Democrats who fled the state. The cowardly Democrat senators left the state, Governor Walker went out of his way to be civil and nice. When a legitimate outcome, the result of election and fair, by the book, legislative process results in a Democrat loss, they are at a loss. They don’t know what to do. They really don’t. So all they can do is take over the building and act like petulant — what did Peter Jennings call it? Having a tantrum. The left is having a tantrum here because the truth be known they don’t like elections because this is what happens in elections. All it took was a Republican governor telling the people the truth, ‘Here’s where we are financially. This is why we’ve got not much time to fix this.’ Right on, gov. They elected him to do it, he starts doing it, it really is no more complicated than that. The left is befuddled when things are fair and square. When they lose they don’t know what to do about it other than wreak havoc as they are doing now.
You know, if we outlaw bullying like Moochelle Obama wants to do, if we outlaw bullying the Democrats will never win another election. They’ll never pass another piece of legislation for the rest of time because that’s their modus operandi is bullying, intimidation, impugn the character and intentions of people. These e-mails that the people were citing yesterday in the press and Walker was about to cave, those e-mails even show Walker was willing to bend over backwards for them. He was willing to compromise, do all kinds of things. Now, this freakout, this montage that you just heard, nuclear option, anti-democracy, this freakout is from the same media that laughs when Obama ignores federal judges. The same media that applauds Obama ignoring a federal judge, saying his health care bill is unconstitutional. The same thing media and the same Democrats who laugh when the regime is cited for contempt of court for ignoring court rulings, they laugh, they applaud. Except when they lose, then they can’t figure it out.
If the standard good old American way determines that they lose, this is what you get: Panic, bullying, defacement of public property. Their sense of entitlement is breathless to behold. Power is theirs by birthright. Why, lookie, there he is, the Reverend Jackson in Madison, Wisconsin, even as we speak. Let’s go back, one more audio sound bite before the break. Last night in Madison at the State Capitol, it’s a conference committee meeting to remove the fiscal components from Governor Walker’s budget bill, thereby negating the need for a quorum. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, Juneau, Wisconsin, and Representative Peter Barca of Kenosha — he’s a Democrat — have this exchange about the special conference committee meeting.
BARCA: Excuse me, Mr. Chairman — excuse me, Mr. Chairman.
FITZGERALD: — as the conference —
BARCA: Mr. Chairman, excuse me. I have like 24-hour notice. I have a couple motions I would like to make as amendments to this.
FITZGERALD: No motions.
BARCA: Clearly —
FITZGERALD: No motions will be entertained.
BARCA: Clearly conference committees, you know, do have an opportunity for people to amend the bill.
FITZGERALD: No, there’s no amendments.
RUSH: Okay so now they adjourn the meeting in his face. They just adjourn the meeting in his face. This is an example for Washington Republicans, folks. This is how it’s done, just do it. Just do what the people elected you to do, play for keeps. The Democrats never hold back. That’s why I say this cannot be allowed to be the only incident. Just because we’re losing the media war, we’re not winning the headline battle, this ought to be the first spark that inspires everybody else in elective office to keep this train heading down the track. This is how you do it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Conrad, Fremont, California. Conrad, welcome to the EIB Network, sir, and hello.
CALLER: Hello! Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: It’s a great privilege to be on your show. I wanted to make a comment. I’ve been in and around the unions for about 30 some odd years, and to hear this Wisconsin thing — and unions throughout the United States — all I ever see and have learned through the unions is that they just want to take. They never want to give back. And when you’re dealing with nonunion entities and you have competition, all these other people can keep dropping their prices and asking their people to take pay cuts. Why can’t they agree to come back and take pay cuts?
RUSH: Well, now, you have to correct me here, but I think the private sector there have been a number of cases where unions have done that. Three weeks ago on this program when I talked about the some union people, I was trying to make myself understood that I’m not opposed to unions. If you want to join a union, feel free. But understand what you’re doing. But a lot of airline pilots unions and flight attendants, they’ve had to — I don’t know what the term is — give back. That evidence to release some previously won so-called salary gains in order for the airline to stay open and flying and so forth.
CALLER: True, yes.
RUSH: And I got people ripping me (angrily), ‘What do you mean? Unions never give back! Who are you talking about?’ But in the private sector I think they have. It’s not standard. What we’re really talking now about a different kind of union today. You’re talking about the private sector places, the autoworkers and the mine workers and the steelworkers and that kind of thing. The real focus of attention today (by ‘today,’ I mean in this era) is the public sector government union employee because of who pays them. They don’t make anything; there’s no production going on. It’s strictly a redistribution of wealth. Now, nobody would have a problem with it if they hadn’t gotten so greedy.
If you have the average private sector salary in Wisconsin — salary and benefits package, let’s look this way — equaling $60,000, maybe 62, and the public sector union people making twice that, that’s not sustainable. Because the people who are paying them in many cases have lost their homes, have lost their jobs — and even if they’re working and have their homes, they’re still paying (their taxes are paying) these people twice as much as they make. And this whole notion of ‘collective bargaining,’ collective bargaining when you’re talking about a public sector union is collective bargaining against who? The people!
There’s no evil boss here. There’s no fat cat cigar chomping private jet owning ogre flying around that everybody hates and despises. These people are engaged in collective bargaining against Joe Six-Pack, and it’s tough to make the case that Joe Six-Pack is the enemy. So they don’t really try to make the case that Joe Six-Pack is the enemy, but somebody is. It’s Republicans, it’s Bush, it’s Governor Walker, it’s the enemies of ‘working people’ and so forth — and it’s all bogus. Because the working people, by definition, are making half what the union people make. The whole lexicon that surrounds public sector union people has been bastardized. They are not the aggrieved, slave labor who have to work six days a week, 80 hours a week, barely scraping by, getting black lung.
Really the way to look at this is for the first time the taxpayers for a long time have somebody looking out for their interests. It’s Governor Walker and the Republicans. Everything about this is really wrong. It’s 180 degrees off base. They’re trying to take the old stereotype of a private-sector union person and attach that to a public-sector union person who works nine months a year, earns twice as much as the average citizen in the state, taxpayer, and somehow is constantly angry — and this same person’s dues are automatically deducted, and they ended up at the Democrat Party.
So, in addition to all this, the taxpayers who are paying the salaries of these public sector people, are ultimately the source of campaign donations for Democrats, because 95% of all deductions in dues go to Democrats. Where’s that money come from? The money comes from citizens of the state of Wisconsin or any other state. You know, I’ve explained it in great detail the past couple weeks or so. It’s a money laundering operation. So if you try to think about it, here you have the unions and their union bosses and leaders, their George Meanys, their Richard Trumkas.
When these contract negotiations take place, when this precious collective bargaining session takes place, who in the world is representing ‘management’? Management, in this case, is the taxpayer. Who’s representing them? Nobody! What you normally have is a Democrat governor, or Democrat state official negotiating with the Democrat union leader. How do you think the financial arrangements got to be so out of kilter as they are? So the real way to understand what’s happened here is in Wisconsin, for the first time, the people who earn the money and who are paying the salaries — for the first time — have somebody representing them in the whole arrangement.
Thanks for the call. I appreciate it.