RUSH: Well, it’s all over now, folks, except for the voting at the Supreme Court, which could be as soon as tomorrow. The health care decision could be finalized tomorrow. We won’t know about it ’til late June, but they already know what they’re gonna do. The oral arguments rarely change anything, but we’ll find out.
Great to have you back here, folks, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Telephone number, 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
For all intents and purposes, the Supreme Court’s gonna vote tomorrow, or soon on whether to strike down Obamacare, whether to strike down the mandate or to uphold it as constitutional. There won’t be much discussion of the vote, as I have learned. They don’t debate. They don’t discuss cases with each other. They write. They circulate their opinions. To whatever extent those are persuasive, the justices might change their minds, but it rarely happens. In fact, throughout the media today you’ll find constant references to Kennedy and maybe one of the conservatives changing his mind. You never read about the liberal justices being forced to or being asked to rise above it and change their minds. But it has been an incredible week. This has been just an amazing week, folks.
I was reading a blog post today at Power Line, Steven Hayward, who has written some books on Reagan. We’ve interviewed Steven Hayward here at the program for the Limbaugh Letter, the most widely read newsletter in American politics. I was going through this and, you know, one of the themes that we’ve had this week is what is real, who is really smart, who is really engaged, who is it we are really up against. This has been an eye-opening week for so many people. The idea that liberal elites are smarter and run rings around other people intellectually was exposed as an abject fraud this week. The idea that they’re open-minded, the idea that they’re even aware of competing points of views, that was blown up as well. The level of arrogance that they possess is such that there are no opposing ideas except when they are confronted with them.
But would you like to know something? Every argument advanced by Paul Clement, who is arguing for our side at the Supreme Court, every question asked by a justice, every answer, every point about Obamacare that was made in opposition to it has been made for years. You could read the briefs in the appellate cases. You could have listened to this program. You could have read any number of blogs. It’s no secret. Conservatism is no secret. Constitutional Americanism is no secret. It’s out there. Anybody in the world can discover it. I am still blown away by how utterly shocked people like Jeffrey Toobin and others in the liberal media were that it went the way it went.
They were shocked out of their clothes, folks. They were stunned.
Just this week Jeff Toobin was on Charlie Rose predicting a slam dunk for constitutionality. And all it took was 90 minutes of oral arguments and he’s in a full abject panic as though he had never heard any of these objections to Obamacare and he’s then scaring Wolf Blitzer to death. Poor Wolf I think had to take a day off one day this week to deal with his shock over the fact that this thing has some problems. Toobin was out there talking to Wolf Blitzer one day, and Wolf carried his shock and dismay into the night. The next day Toobin was put on with Don Lemon and Wolf wasn’t anywhere to be found, so he might be wearing a little white jacket somewhere here until he gets his equilibrium back.
It’s eye-opening. I really want to be serious about this. They’re a bunch of overhyped know-nothings who do not have an expansive view of the world. They’re in a prison that’s created by their own conceit. They’re in a prison that’s the result of their own arrogance and they live in a place where there is no reality. And that’s what hit them right between the eyes this week. They were confronted with reality, which they regularly, purposely avoid. They have instead constructed in their minds this socialist utopian idyllic dreamland, fantasyland that doesn’t exist, can’t exist, won’t ever exist. And when they are confronted with the reality of anything up against their own constructs, it is the equivalent to you and I of being surprised by a bear in our backyard. It’s the last thing you expect to happen.
Now, let me go through some of Hayward’s piece here to try to be illustrative of what I’m talking about. “The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Month for the Left.” I’m not gonna read the whole thing. I’m gonna take excerpts here. “It is typical for politically engaged people to note the weaknesses and defects of their own side…” No, that’s what’s remarkable; they don’t. There are no weaknesses. There are no defects, until they’re confronted with them. They do not conceive them. (Continuing reading excerpt) “…while overestimating the strength and prowess of their opponents.” That’s us. That’s what we have always done, and hopefully no more. There’s no reason to ever feel inferior to these people. There’s no reason to grant them superior or elite status in any way.
The point I made yesterday, this Verrilli. They’re dumping on this guy. The libs are dumping on this guy, the solicitor general who argued for the government, they’re dumping on this guy left and right. He is from Columbia University Law Review. That equals, in their world, Einstein. Just like Obama was at Harvard law review, this guy is Columbia University Law Review. That’s Einstein. That’s Mensa. That’s as smart as you can be, and we see that he’s not anywhere near as smart as you can be. They’re dumping on him for a very simple reason.
They refuse to admit that he had nothing to defend. He was trying to defend the indefensible. He’s trying to defend a piece of legislation — look at what Scalia said yesterday. Antonin Scalia asked the associate solicitor general, (paraphrasing) “Do you really want us to go through these 2,700 pages? Do you really expect the court to do that? Do you expect us to give this function to our law clerks?” They do. This is exactly who the left is. They’ve got a 2,700 page health care bill, and they expect the court to go through it and determine what’s okay, what isn’t, to give it its final imprimatur.
And they know. They count on Sotomayor, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan — who ought to have recused herself. That’s another thing we discussed. She shouldn’t even be there because she helped put together the arguments that were made yesterday and this week by Verrilli. She shouldn’t be there. In an ethical, sane world, she shouldn’t even be there. So you have 2,700 pages, and Scalia says, “You expect us, the Court to go through these 2,700 pages?” Well, folks, here’s the reality: Somebody’s gonna have to. If it ever is fully implemented, somebody’s going to have to go through those 2,700 pages. Every time you go to the doctor, somebody’s gonna have to consult those 2,700 pages.
And you know who it isn’t gonna be? It isn’t gonna be your doctor and it isn’t gonna be your insurance company. It’s gonna be people like those who argued for the government at the Supreme Court. Incompetence on parade. Nameless bureaucrats who thrive on power over average people. They’re the ones that are gonna be going through those 2,700 pages if this is declared fully constitutional. Somebody’s gonna have to go through them. It’s an outrage. It’s a boondoggle. It is an absolute disaster. “Kennedy expressed surprising skepticism that the court was competent to make health policy.” He said, “I don’t understand your position.” He was talking to Edwin Kneedler, who is the deputy solicitor general.
“I don’t understand your position. Are you saying we have the expertise here on the Court to decide which provisions should stay in and which should be thrown out in the mandate’s overturned? It seems to me,” Kennedy said, “it could be argued at least to be a more extreme exercise of judicial power to keep the rest of the law intact than strike the whole thing. I just don’t accept your premise.” He’s saying: You mean we have the expertise to decide which provisions in these 2,700 pages should stay in and which to be thrown out if we get rid of mandate? It seems to me that it can be argued that’s a more extreme exercise of judicial power than just getting rid of the whole thing.
Somebody’s going to be going through them, and Scalia said (paraphrased quotes), “I don’t want to do it, and I’m not gonna let you make my clerks do it.” And Kennedy said, “I’m not taking that much power away from the Congress.” And the regime lawyers are shocked, because they can’t believe that government officials, judges, would reject this kind of opportunity to wield power. Because to them that’s what this is all about, the immense power in those 2,700 pages, and here we had judges say: “I don’t want that power.”
And they’re shocked! Somebody’s gonna have to if this thing survives. Somebody is gonna be going through those 2,700 pages — and it isn’t gonna be you.
It isn’t going to be your doctor.
It’s not gonna be your nurse.
It’s not gonna be anybody responsible for your treatment.
It’s gonna be a bureaucrat deciding whether or not you are worth it.
Some utopia!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: President Obama, ladies and gentlemen, wants to raise taxes on Big Oil, and he wants to use the money for his failed green energy buddies. That’s coming up. But I want to go back to this Steven Hayward piece: “The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Month for the Left — First came the Sandra Fluke controversy. What looked like a well-staged triumph for the Left because of a rare overreach by Rush Limbaugh resulted instead in a ferocious blowback against Bill Maher, Louis C.K.,” and he goes on and on to describe that. “Second, Obama is in full retreat and panic mode over gasoline prices, and energy generally. …
“Then came the Trayvon Martin incident. But what looked like a by-the-numbers drill…” Listen to the way Hayward writes this: “[W]hat looked like a by-the-numbers drill for the racial grievance industry has started to collapse beneath certain inconvenient facts that donÂ’t fit the narrative such as ZimmermanÂ’s ethnicity and political party registration (Democratic),” and so forth. “Then of course we have the Obamacare argument in the Supreme Court this week. … Finally, yesterday the House voted down ObamaÂ’s proposed budget for next year by a vote of 414-0.” He has details on all these. The point is I went through and I read all of these incidents and reviewed them that constitute “The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Month for the Left.”
What strikes me about every one of them is that none of what they constructed was real. What they said about me, what they said about this program, what they said about advertisers, none of it was real. What they have said about the Trayvon Martin case, nobody knows what’s real there. Every one of these incidents represents an opportunity for them to implement a page from their playbook, none of which is based in reality. It’s all based on stereotypes and cliches that fit the construct of the Democrat Party which is this bunch of different constituent groups that all have to be kept happy. But once again, reality is what crushes liberalism. Reality is what crushes Obama. Reality is what’s crushing Obamacare. Reality is what’s crushing energy policy.
They cannot and do not live in the real world.
They can’t survive there.
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