RUSH: Well, I guess it’s official now. If there was any doubt, there isn’t any longer. My New Year’s resolution to go low profile and not get noticed is officially now out the window. Are you aware of what I’m talking about? I simply proclaim the inevitability of gay marriage, and you would think that God has spoken on this. Honestly! On the left, you would think God has spoken on this.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: I kid you not. There’s an element, however, that everybody — at least that I’ve seen or heard, and we got sound bites galore on this — is leaving out in reporting my claim yesterday that gay marriage in America is inevitable. What they’re leaving out is rather crucial, in terms of why I made the statement. If you recall, I made that statement after sharing with you the details of a Politico story about two Republican consultants, combined with 75 Republicans who signed on to the amicus brief supporting gay marriage at the Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8.
The Politico story said that the belief in the elite leadership levels of the Republican Party is to not fight it, to let the Supreme Court decide it. In fact, the desire is that the Supreme Court issue a sweeping ruling and make gay marriage legal in every state. When I saw that, what I interpreted is, “The Republican Party wants the issue to go away.” That’s what the consultants in The Politico story said, and one of them was from Florida. I forget where the other one was from, but it wasn’t just those two.
Remember, there are 75 Republicans of various ideological persuasions who signed an amicus brief before the court, and the consultants said they don’t want to keep the issue alive. They can’t win in 2014 or 2016 if this issue is still being debated because they’re gonna be called bigots and sexists and homophobes. So just like every other budget deal, they want to let the Democrats have it and move on to the next thing, and the point I made was, “Why don’t we just stop fighting everything?
“Why don’t we just say, ‘You know what, Democrats? You’re gonna win every election and we’re not gonna argue with you because we don’t want people to hate us.” My conclusion that it is inevitable was based on two things: A, the left isn’t gonna let go of it, ever. They never do, once these things start. Want me to go through the list here? Did they let go of global warming? Have they let go of amnesty? Have they let go of legalizing drugs? Have they let go of banning nuclear weapons? Have they let go of gun control?
They don’t ever let anything go — and right now, folks, there’s no pushback from the Republican Party on any of these things. There’s pushback by you. There’s pushback by the Tea Party. There’s pushback by evangelicals. But there’s no pushback from the Republican Party. The Republican Party is doing everything it can to send the signal that it would be okay with some form of amnesty, it’d be okay with some form of gay marriage. In fact, the more the better to get the issue off the table.
The Republican Party is not really fighting much of anything budget-wise. So my conclusion that gay marriage is inevitable was simply in recognition of what The Politico story said, that the Republican Party wishes it would go away. By that, they mean the Supreme Court issue a sweeping ruling legalizing it in all 50 states. If the primary source of pushback isn’t going to push back, I’m sorry, it’s inevitable. That element of what I said was left out of every report on this.
What’s fascinating, folks, is that every report treats my proclamation as though it comes from on high. “Rush Limbaugh said gay marriage is inevitable! That means it’s inevitable,” just because I said it. Do you want to hear some sound bites? Here we go. What we have first is CNN Starting Point. This is a montage of Soledad O’Brien and John Berman reporting on my “gay marriage announcement.” (chuckles) It wasn’t an “announcement.” It was political analysis. It wasn’t, by the way, an expression of desire; it was a political analysis.
Anyway, here’s that sound bite…
SOLEDAD O’BRIEN: (music) It’s over!
JOHN BERMAN: Rush Limbaugh telling his listeners that the battle over same-sex marriage is (dramatic pause) over.
RUSH ARCHIVE: This issue is lost. I don’t care what the Supreme Court does. This is now inevitable. Once we started talking about “gay marriage,” “traditional marriage,” “opposite sex marriage,” “same-sex marriage,” “hetero-marriage,” we lost. It was over. It was just a matter of time.
JOHN BERMAN: So the issue now goes behind closed doors, of course. Justices will spend the next three months drafting their legal opinions outside the public eye until their decision is ready probably at the end of June.
RUSH: It won’t matter what it is if there’s not gonna be any pushback on it. Don’t forget now, The Politico had a story yesterday (I’ll keep drumming this out until people get it) featuring two Republican consultants who made it clear they hope the court legalizes it. They said the best thing for the party would be for the court to massively make this stuff legal, so it would be another element of criticism the Republicans think would be removed from the table. Oh, and there was also the fundraising angle.
They actually think it would eliminate some fundraising opportunities for Democrats if the issue were to go away. Hopefully I made mincemeat of that argument yesterday as well. Anyway here’s the next sound bite. By the way, there’s one element here of the sound bite they played of me. I want to build on this a little bit today, ’cause I talked about the language here being lost. Once we conceded that the definition of marriage isn’t marriage, just in terms of the timing…
Folks, it is what it is. Once marriage isn’t marriage — once it’s “hetero-marriage,” once it’s “opposite-sex marriage,” once you concede that marriage doesn’t mean what it means — you have effectively lost the argument. I’m speaking there within the context of debate technique, and it goes back to pushback again. There isn’t any Republican pushback. There is either nothing or one degree or another of acquiescence on all these things the left wants, which they never give up.
They never stop advancing their agenda, and they don’t care about any causal effects of this. They don’t care if the country’s never gonna be the same. They don’t care if the country’s never gonna be unified. It doesn’t matter to them! There are really two factions in this country — many more, but really two — where there is no commonality. There isn’t any ground for compromise. Anyway, here’s Piers Morgan Live last night CNN. He was talking with — well, just himself, which he does a lot.
MORGAN: I want to play you an astonishing piece of tape, really. Yesterday we had Bill O’Reilly almost converting to gay marriage. Today, Rush Limbaugh joined in. Listen to this…
RUSH ARCHIVE: This issue is lost. I don’t care what the Supreme Court does, this is now inevitable — and it’s inevitable because we lost the language on this. … [W]e lost the issue when we started allowing the word “marriage” to be bastardized and redefined by simply adding words to it …
RUSH: In terms of debate, that’s not even arguable, folks. We allowed the definition of the word to change so that we could end up being called bigots and all religions could be called bigoted, and Christianity can be called bigoted. Do you realize, as this keeps going, one of the conclusions the left is gonna make is that 2,000 years of Christianity has just been a lie, has just been bigoted? Do you realize what’s at stake here and what is under assault? And there’s no pushback!
Piers Morgan Live. He did have a guest, Piers Morgan. He had former White House “green jobs czar” Van Jones in there. They played the tape that you just heard of me, and Piers Morgan said, “Sort of reminds me, I imagine, of conversations in America in the fifties and sixties which would go along the lines of — I don’t mind having thought about this quite carefully — black people using the same bus as me, but I’m not really ready for ’em to come to the same school. Is it that kind of repositionin…?”
I have no clue what this lightweight means with the question, no clue what he’s talking about. He just clearly doesn’t understand even what’s happening here. But here’s what the reason we’re playing this anyway, here’s what Van Jones said…
JONES: It’s sad. First of all, we are on the verge of one of the great breakthroughs in achievements in human freedom, human equality. I can’t tell you how proud I am to be in a country where people — where the freedom to marry is going to be available to everybody very soon. Rush Limbaugh is right.
RUSH: Yeah, so, from on high, El Rushbo has proclaimed it and therefore it must be. (interruption) Well, I don’t know. I don’t care about Piers Morgan, but the answer that Van Jones gave is quite, quite eye-opening, folks. Having marriage redefined to include anybody now equals “one of the great breakthroughs and achievements in human freedom,” meaning gay people been living in bondage when it comes to marriage, but now they’re about to escape the shackles.