RUSH: “William Kristol, Editor of the Weekly Standard, seems to have decided that retreat is the way forward for the Republican Party. In a new editorial, the Fox commentator essentially advises the GOP to throw in the towel on the fiscal cliff talks and more or less accept Obama’s terms. In the piece, a dour Kristol details all the shock and depression that Republican insiders feel after losing an election they all thought was in the bag for Team Romney. He then goes on to complain that the GOP’s legislative scene isn’t any better than its failed electoral scheme.
“Even the fact that the Republicans still control the House is cold comfort for Kristol. Worst of all, he grouses, the GOP has no ‘proposal for averting the fiscal cliff.’ So, what to do? Maybe just ‘acquiesce’ to Obama and be done with it?”
He writes: “Might it be prudent for Republicans to acquiesce, for now, to a modified version of ObamaÂ’s proposal to keep current income tax rates the same for 98 percent of Americans, while also insisting on maintaining the reduced payroll tax rate of the last two years and reversing the dangerous defense sequester? That deal would be doable, wouldnÂ’t wreck the country, and would buy Republicans time to have much needed internal discussion and debates about where to go next.”
“But Kristol thinks he knows why this won’t happen. It’s Grover Norquist’s fault. Without giving Norquist the satisfaction of actually naming him, Kristol blames the ‘pledge-master’ for preventing the GOP from caving in to President Obama on a timely schedule.”
I think this simply confirms the theory that I espoused to you earlier today about what the real objective here is, and that is for Obama to secure a confession from the Republicans that all of our economic problems, all of them, be it in the entitlement area, be it the debt, deficits, whatever, home values, whatever, he wants every problem assigned to tax cuts. The fact that Bush cut taxes and Reagan cut taxes, that the country was founded on a silly notion of capitalism and trickle-down, 200 plus years has gotten us to where we are now. He wants it taught in the schools for a generation that tax cuts equal a recession. That tax cuts equal you losing your job. You don’t have a job because of Bush. You don’t have a job because of tax cuts. You don’t have a home because of tax cuts. You don’t have the car you want because of tax cuts.
If you own a home and it’s underwater, it’s because of tax cuts. That’s what he’s aiming for. The money, I’ll just tell you again, the money that they’re arguing about, $800 billion that this plan, $1.6 trillion with that plan, none of it matters to Obama. It’s not about the money at all. This is about the fact that the power to tax is the power to destroy. And what Obama wants to destroy is the Republican Party. And the way to take out the Republican Party is to simply secure, in the minds of a majority of Americans, that the number one belief, the number one policy, the number one identifier, tax cuts equal economic growth. If you destroy that, you’ve destroyed the Republican Party.
If you’re Obama and you succeed in convincing a majority of Americans that tax cuts are the reason for all these economic woes, the next person that proposes tax cuts is gonna be laughed at, and they’re gonna grab the hook, pull the guy off the stage. And Obama knows that once the Republicans perceive whatever they think public opinion is, they’ll try to get on the right side of it, as in we now must be for amnesty, as in, we’ve gotta throw away what we believe on the social issues. That’s why we’re losing elections. Add tax cuts to that and you’ve got the trifecta. Add tax cuts to that, and you have denuded the Republican Party. And that’s what this is really all about. And, in addition, I remind you again, there is no middle ground here. There’s no way to compromise. There is either concession or hanging in, not agreeing to anything, and prolonging the argument. Those are the only two options. There isn’t compromise.
I’m not even saying that the Democrats don’t want to. There is nothing in common between the two parties on any of this. That might make some of you nervous. That might make some of you scared. Compromise and bipartisanship matter so much, I’m just telling there isn’t any common ground here. The things the Democrats want are nowhere near what the Republicans want, not even close. Again, I’ll run through it very briefly. Republicans: spending cuts, entitlement reform. They want Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, made smaller. We don’t have the money for it. The programs have grown well beyond what their even original intention was. There simply is no way to sustain this.
The Democrats want more money to expand entitlements. They don’t want any entitlement reform. There is no “make the system solvent” to them. The system isn’t broken. There’s nothing wrong except entitlements aren’t big enough. The problem, as far as the Democrats are concerned, is that people who can afford it aren’t paying enough to support them and prop them up. There’s no way to split this baby. There just isn’t. Bill Kristol said the Tea Party wouldn’t mind if a few millionaires pay a couple percent more in taxes. So Bill Kristol, whether he is aware of it or not, is signing on to the death warrant of the Republican Party.
I don’t know where he came up with it, but he’s signing on to the Obama wish list. Tax cuts equal recession. Tax cuts equal unemployment. Tax cuts equal massive indebtedness. Tax cuts equal massive student loans. Whatever economic problem there is, it will be said to be the fault of tax cuts. People who could have paid more, didn’t. People who have more than they need, didn’t. And we have finally arrived at a point in our country where a majority of people voting for Democrats, I think emotionally and intellectually understand, that the power to tax is the power to destroy, and they want these people to suffer. They want these rich people to pay for it. They want these rich people to get a taste of it. That’s what Obama meant.
Well, when’s affirmative action gonna stop? Never. The punishment never stops. The punishment is only successful when there aren’t any more rich people, when it’s all been taken from them. Snerdley asked me, “Well, when does this punishment stop?” I said, “When does affirmative action stop?” In fact, that was one of my first questions with affirmative action back in the Septembers. I was talking to some people about it, people who’ve believed in it, and they said, “Yeah, we gotta redress previous grievances, previous discrimination.”
I said, “Okay, so you want to discriminate against some people now to make up for discrimination against others. But the people you’re discriminating against now are not guilty of what you’re angry at?”
“Oh, no, you’re confusing the issue.”
“No, I’m not. But forget that,” I said. “At what point has there been enough redress? At what point have you squared it all? At what point has it all been made equal?”
Never.
Affirmative action was the birth of a new political business for the Democrat Party. Just like feminism was. Just like environmentalism is. Brand-new businesses. Brand-new arms of the Democrat Party.