RUSH: We’ll go to Dumfries, Virginia. This is Angela, welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Rush, 24/7 dittos.
RUSH: Thank you. Thanks very much.
CALLER: You can tell Mr. Snerdley, he said he’d been to Dumfries, Virginia. Well, I was at Hamburger Heaven last year with my family there in Palm Beach.
RUSH: Really, you went to Hamburger Heaven?
CALLER: I did. I enjoyed it. My husband liked the sweet potato French fries.
RUSH: Hamburger Heaven, for those of you who have never been here, is the one affordable restaurant in town.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing) I’m just kidding. (laughing) The town council didn’t want to actually grant it permission under the belief that Palm Beachers don’t eat hamburgers.
CALLER: Oh, no, very —
RUSH: Just kidding about that, too. I just love razzing people in power. Anyway, Angela, I’m sure you liked Hamburger Heaven. It’s a great place, it really is.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, I want to ask you, how is it that people that we trust all year long all during the last election, people that we trust like Brit Hume and you’re telling us now that we’re not supposed to trust them because they don’t think — well, Brit Hume said last night that he thinks Newt Gingrich would blow it, he’s not disciplined —
RUSH: Now, I didn’t mention any names here on purpose.
CALLER: Okay, well —
RUSH: And I’ll just tell you that Brit Hume —
CALLER: Okay, I’m saying —
RUSH: Brit Hume was not on my radar when I made the comments. However —
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: — I do have the sound bite here.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: — from Brit Hume that you’re talking about —
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: — where Brit Hume pretty much sticks with the establishment conventional wisdom that Newt can’t win.
CALLER: Well, well, also —
RUSH: Now, wait, you’ve got a good question, because you watch Fox all year, you’ve watched Fox since the inception, and you trust Brit Hume.
CALLER: I do trust Brit Hume —
RUSH: Yeah. And Brit Hume told you last night that Newt can’t win, and now you turn this program on today, and you’re hearing me saying something that’s different, and you are understandably confused.
CALLER: Well, I’m not saying that I’m confused. I’m wondering if you’re confused. I have not heard —
RUSH: (laughing) Ha-ha-ha-ha.
CALLER: I have not heard Newt Gingrich say that he will repeal Obamacare, and that’s really the only thing that I care about —
RUSH: (laughing) I love this.
CALLER: — is Obama losing and he repeal Obamacare, and I haven’t heard him say those two things, and I want to win. I don’t want to lose. What if everyone is right and you’re wrong? And I know you’re right 99.6% of the time.
RUSH: Yeah, that’s an important thing to remember.
CALLER: — but I want to win, I don’t want to lose.
RUSH: All right. I’ll tell you what. I got a time constraint problem here, Angela, and I’m gonna let you go, but I’m gonna answer this in the first segment next hour. I’m gonna answer you as best I can. What if I’m wrong? You have guts. You have guts. You’re not confused. You wonder if I am! (laughing) Angela, I need to remind you here again as a setup for what’s coming. I’ve not endorsed Newt Gingrich. I’ve not endorsed anybody. Chastising our side for political intraparty cannibalism is not an endorsement. She
wants to know what if I’m wrong, what if Brit Hume and the establishment are right, what if Newt can’t win? What then?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And it is a very shaken Rush Limbaugh kicking off the next hour of broadcast excellence. It’s not every day that somebody suggests that I could be wrong, and certainly not every day that a caller does it. So I’m shaken here. But I shall go on. It’s called overcoming adversity. And, by the way, Angela from Dumfries, Virginia, just so you know, Newt Gingrich has several times, numerous times said that he favors the repeal of Obamacare. Angela says she’s never heard Newt say that he favors the repeal of Obamacare. He has.
He’s even signed a pledge that’s out there committing himself to the repeal of Obamacare, but he usually does follow that up with talk about how we need to replace it with something to help those who are currently uninsured, and that causes people to pull their hair out because it’s accepting a premise that the left has put forward.
Okay, so the left put forward the notion we need national health care, we need single payer health care. “No, no, no, gonna repeal, but here’s my alternative plan.” Screw an alternative plan that’s based on that premise.
If you’re just joining us, the last caller in the previous hour said to me that somebody she’s trusted since the get-go at Fox News, Brit Hume, said last night that Newt can’t win. She called to discuss this with me after most of the previous hour was in the can. I assume that she was confused after listening to me discuss how virtually I believe any of our candidates can beat Obama. So I said, “I understand how you’re confused.” She said, “No, I think you’re confused. I don’t think you know what’s going on,” and that’s why I am shaken as I start this hour. Let’s play the Brit Hume sound bite that Angela was referring to. It was last night, I think this is the one with Ted Baxter, who asked Brit, “Who do you think Obama wants to run against, Newt or Romney?”
HUME: Based on what the White House has been doing and the Obama forces have been doing, it seems clear that they would rather run against anybody but Romney. They’re attacking Romney, which helps everybody running against him, and it has the additional advantage of, in case he wins, they’ve toughed him up a little bit, but I think on paper Romney looks to them like the more difficult —
RUSH: The more difficult candidate to beat, is what he said. Now, I spent a good part of the first hour trying to make the case that I think it’s the opposite. I think the regime set up to run against Romney. I think Occupy Wall Street was established to run against Romney because Occupy Wall Street is anti-Wall Street, and the only Republican candidate they can tie to Wall Street is Romney. In the Washington Post today, there is a story featuring a quote from an anonymous Democrat strategist who is very worried that Newt might — and he speaks on condition of anonymity cause he doesn’t want to catch any hell for letting go of the truth here, and he said he’s very worried that if Newt gets the nomination they can’t tie Wall Street to — what’s the exact quote here. “He doesn’t carry Wall Street baggage.”
I’m gonna tell you, I’m on the other side of this from the establishment. I don’t think the regime is afraid of Romney. I think they want him because of Romneycare. I think they think they can disqualify him on Romneycare, and I think that Occupy Wall Street was set up to run against Romney. I think everybody’s assumed that Romney was gonna be the nominee for months, including the regime. And now all of this is thrown out of kilter because everybody can look at the polling data and can see that while Romney is the presumed favorite, he still doesn’t get over 30% in any poll of Republicans, nationwide. Now, Fox is supposed to be on our side, but they are still the media. This cannot be denied. And the media, the establishment is invested in the status quo. Groupthink happens. It just does.
Now, let me answer the question more specifically. We have been told throughout this process by the media, by the conservative media, by anybody that is considered to be part of the establishment that Perry, Bachmann, Cain, Newt, Mitt, Santorum, can’t win. We have been told over and over and over again, if Perry, Bachmann, Cain, Newt, Mitt, Santorum get the nomination, then Obama automatically wins. We have been hearing and reading this for months. Members of both party establishments say it, that the only Republican who has a prayer of beating Obama is Romney. My friends, I am here to tell you I simply don’t subscribe. It has become conventional wisdom. And you know me and conventional wisdom. When conventional wisdom forms, I go the other way. Conventional wisdom is groupthink. In other words, the Democrats, the Drive-Bys, Republican insiders will not admit that anybody can beat Obama.
Do you believe this to be true? Do you believe that there is only one candidate who can beat Obama? I submit to you that if that’s what everybody thought, Mitt would be in the 70 percents. He’d certainly be above 30. But he can’t get above 30 in a Republican primary poll, outside of New Hampshire. However, in poll after poll, anecdotal story after anecdotal story, and with news now that Obama’s approval numbers are lower than Carter’s, Obama’s approval numbers are lower than Lyndon Johnson’s before LBJ stepped down. We can clearly see that Obama is in trouble.
Honest Democrats, the three or four that you can find will also admit it, from Pat Caddell to Doug Schoen to this guy that we read whose story in the New Republic yesterday, it was William Galston, who did an analysis of demographics, and there’s only one group, only one demographic group where Obama leads and that’s blacks. With young people 18 to 49, Hispanics he’s under 50% everywhere, and we’re told that there’s only one guy? Sorry. This is nothing against Romney. Again, I haven’t endorsed anybody. I’m just commenting on intraparty cannibalism here, but intraparty cannibalism against everybody but Romney does not equal a nomination.
Now, there’s a story in the UK Independent today. I have that story. I was shocked when I read this, because this has not been reported in the domestic US media. In fact, just the opposite is reported in the domestic media. Here’s the headline: “Clooney, Hanks, Spielberg — the stars feted him in 2008. Now the President finds his friends out of the picture. He was young, good looking, and photogenic. He swept to power against heavy odds on the back of a heart-warming, hopey-changey message, completing a rags-to-riches journey that might have come straight out of a blockbuster movie. It isn’t hard to see why Barack Obama’s election in 2008 was the toast of Hollywood. Five-figure cheques poured into his coffers bearing such blue-chip names as Hanks, Clooney, and Spielberg. By this stage in the last election cycle, the entertainment industry’s hearts, minds and wallets were already won.
“Four years later? Not so much. When they enter the polling booths, the stars and the power brokers who run this town will still put their crosses against his name. But the sense of warm, fuzzy optimism that characterised his last election has more or less vanished. Nowhere was the disillusionment more keenly felt than at the Beverly Wilshire hotel last night, as liberal Hollywood gathered for an exercise in champagne socialism.”
It was Norman Lear’s group, People for the American Way, their 30th anniversary, they had their giant big bash at the Beverly Wilshire.
“People for the American Way (PFAW) — perhaps the mostinfluential advocacy organisation in the US — planned to celebrate its 30th birthday in style, with the cost of a table at between £3,200 and £64,000.” I didn’t bother to convert it to dollars. But it’s a hundred grand there for the big table. “The host was Alec Baldwin and the list of patrons, organisers and supporters on the invitation included everyone from J J Abrams, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jon Hamm and Martin Sheen to Barbra Streisand, Kathleen Turner, Larry Flynt and Jamie Lee Curtis.
“Among these pillars of the entertainment industry’s liberal establishment, there is palpable frustration with the President; he has failed to deliver on almost all their pet issues, from gay marriage and climate change to human rights and social justice. In fact, … Norman Lear, an influential producer, last week responded with anger in an interview as Obama’s name was mentioned. ‘He can’t make up his mind about anything,’ Mr Lear said. ‘He just vacillates. Like Democrats do generally.'” Now, I know, these people still gonna vote for him, as the story says. The excitement’s gone. This is not 2008. All I ask you to do, folks, if you’re asking me… Well, as it turns out Angela was not asking me who she should trust. She was telling me she doesn’t trust me. (interruption)
Well, that’s the same thing Snerdley when she says she’s wondering if I’m confused. I’m just gonna tell you, I don’t believe that there’s only one Republican that can beat Barack Obama. I would say this if the house money were on Newt. I would say this if the House money were on Bachmann. If the establishment were telling us that there’s only one Republican that can beat Obama, I’d have the same skepticism. Now, I’m also burdened (sigh), ladies and gentlemen, with a blistering intelligence and common sense. Common sense has taught me to reject conventional wisdom. Common sense has taught me to spot and identify the desires and objectives of establishment political party people on both sides of the aisle.
And their objectives are status quo: Big government, government the center of the universities, government the center of the world, government the center of life. They have a universal distrust of conservative voters and conservative candidates, because conservative candidates don’t favor the status quo — and so anybody who threatens the status quo must be stopped, in either party; and when I see that it’s people who are easily identified (even with doubts) as conservatives? When I see they are the targets of the effort to disqualify them, and I see one candidate is not the target of any attack by anybody, from anywhere? Sorry, red flags go up, because it defies common sense. We’re dealing with one of the most unpopular presidents in history. That’s the truth.
We’re also dealing with one of the cagiest and most corrupt, and we are facing a campaign that is going to be dispiritingly, depressingly negative. There is no doubt about it. If you’re depressed now, the way you’re going to be in nine months? (scoffs) I hesitate to ponder it. It’s going to be brutal, because everybody knows — on both sides in the establishment, everybody knows — that the candidate-of-big government status quo is an utter disaster and it must be protected. The status quo must be protected by people who derive their power from it. The thing you have to understand, Angela, is there is not a conservative movement in the media. Fox News is not part of a conservative movement. This is not a criticism of my Fox News. It just isn’t. It’s a media company and organization.
The American people will beat the establishment nine out of ten times. The American people will defeat Barack Obama. The American people and the United States economy, which are one and the same, are going to beat Barack Obama. I, frankly — and I’ve said this over and over again. I, frankly, don’t think it’s gonna matter all that much who the nominee is. I’m at terrific odds, of course, with the establishment here. But I think it’s a referendum on Obama, and I think if the establishment on our side had any brains they would make it a referendum on Obama instead of a referendum on who our people are and what their supposed weaknesses are. I would relish it just for a couple days. Our establishment could tell us the truth about Obama the way they’re so intent on giving us all the flaws of people on our side. You ever wonder why they don’t?BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Debbie, Riverside, Alabama, as we go back to the phones. Thank you for waiting. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. And Merry Christmas to you and Kathryn and your staff.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Thank you for all that you do.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I have a question for Angela, because this has really bothered me since you took her call today.
RUSH: Angela is the caller today who wondered if I was confused and didn’t know what I was talking about when that Newt could win. Yeah.
CALLER: Yes. My question to Angela is this: “Angela, who told you the truth while Obama was running for president? Was it Rush? Was it Brit Hume? Did Brit Hume explain to you what Obama meant by ‘transforming America’? Did he even ask Obama what he meant?” So I think Angela is very confused because she’s not using common sense right now, and that’s all it takes, Rush.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. You know, it’s very wise of you. You are very shrewd.
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: I shoulda thought about that myself. I just generally don’t think of myself, but that’s true. I’m the one guy who said, “I hope he fails,” and everybody else had a cow. “Oh, no, you can’t say that!”
“Yes, I can, and I mean it!” I said.
CALLER: And that’s what we want, and that’s what we want out of a candidate right now, Rush. We do did want someone that’s gonna stand up and tell the truth and fight for it. It doesn’t matter what —
RUSH: Amen. I understand totally. People — we’re tired of the media picking our candidates.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And we’re tired of the RNC saying, “Be gentle,” while we’re out being destroyed and castigated and not just us, but the country. Anyway, that’s great. I really appreciate that. I have to admit, that’s a great, great point that she had — and nothing against Brit Hume; don’t take it any wrong way — but she’s right. It wasn’t just Hume, it was everybody. I was the… Everybody was just paranoid. “Oh, can’t believe Limbaugh! Oh, my God, gosh I wish he’d shut up.”