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GOP Seeks to Rid Itself of the Tea Party

by Rush Limbaugh - Oct 16,2013


RUSH: There’s Ted Cruz on TV right now ripping this deal. I have to tell you, I admire the guy. He’s unflappable. You talk about… (hits table) I’m sorry, folks. I know that pounding the table… I’m not even pounding it. I’m just putting my hand on the table. I’m sorry for the distraction. I will try to limit it. He’s up there, he’s on TV, saying, “This deal isn’t any good. This deal doesn’t provide any relief to the American people. All this deal does is benefit Obama and Harry Reid.”
But we gotta be fair. Harry Reid didn’t get everything he wanted here, folks. We’ve gotta be honest. Harry Reid wanted a $1 trillion debt limit increase, and he didn’t get it. He only got $986 billion. So he didn’t get $14 billion of the $1,000 billion that he wanted. I’m sure those on our side will claim victory here for hanging tough.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, so Dingy Harry and McConnell were announcing on the Senate floor that they’ve reached agreement here to give Obama and the Democrats what they want, and then everybody go home. I don’t know if the agreement was the Republicans can stay home after they go home, but they may as well. Now, Ted Cruz went out, and he had a press conference at the same time this going on, at which he said that he would not block the Senate deal.

All he could do would be block it for a day or two, and he said that wouldn’t make any sense. So he’s basically, by not blocking it, not trying to block it, it’s a done deal. And of course Drive-Bys are ecstatic, folks. We’re gonna borrow another $1 trillion! You know, we’re gonna borrow a trillion more dollars to pay off money we’ve already borrowed. Boy, it’s a great day in Washington.

I want you to just keep in mind, Obama said raising the debt limit didn’t mean that we’re gonna go into more debt. We just had to be able to pay our bills. Okay, so Christine Lagarde, the IMF babe, she’ll be happy. A global economic catastrophe’s been averted here! The only thing left now is to steamroller and wipe out the Tea Party so that something like this can never happen again, and that is going to be the objective going forward of both the Republican and Democrat establishments.

But we’re going another $1 trillion in debt, and that won’t even take a year to run that up. You wait and see. This trillion dollars that we’re gonna borrow is to pay off money we’ve already borrowed, even though Obama said that that’s not what any of this means. This Pew poll says 81% are dissatisfied, but you won’t find Obama’s name in this poll. I’m sorry, that’s just unrealistic, that Obama doesn’t get any blame? Obama’s approval number is (pick your poll) 37 or 41%.

So it’s a done deal, and for the conservatives, it’s regroup time. I just want you to be prepared. There’s gonna be an all-out assault on the people that you think have done a good job and by extension an all-out assault on you. It’s gonna come from both parties, gonna come from the media. Now, I want to go back to this Bill Clinton piece, because, remember the trick, as I need to reiterate. One of the reasons we’re here is for reasons that still baffle me. The Republican Party has agreed to not oppose anything.

I mean, tantamount they’ve agreed not to oppose anything. Yeah, they voted against Obamacare, and, yeah, nobody really associates opposition with the Republican Party. Of course the pressure is on ’em to, you know, be Democrat light. I mean, the Democrats are saying, “You guys are never gonna win any elections unless you stop this War on Women.” What’s that mean? “You guys better come out for abortion pretty quick or you’re never gonna win, and you guys are never gonna win the White House.”

As though the Democrats care.

“You guys, we’re trying to help you,” the Democrats say. You’re never gonna win the White House again, unless you come out for amnesty.” The Democrats really want to advise us on what we need to do to win the White House away from them? The Democrats really want to advise us on how to act so that we take some of their voters? That’s absolute insanity to believe that, and yet amnesty is the next card to fall. Now that this deal has happened, you watch.

There will be a fast move in Republican circles to push “comprehensive immigration reform,” to go all-in now. I can’t tell you what the Republicans think they’re gonna achieve, except this: I really do believe that some of this is oriented toward driving the conservatives out of the party. I really think some of this is oriented toward the Republicans actually seeking to get rid of their conservative base.

Even if it takes 15 years in the wilderness to rebuild a new base of people who don’t embarrass them, of people who are of the right temperament. Maybe that’s what they’re willing to do. Maybe they’ve got commitments from their donors to keep ’em afloat if they just get rid of some of these wacko right-wing extremists. “We’ll just go all-in here. We’ll try to put together a new base of really responsible moderate, temperate, independent-type American voters.

“We’ll go out, we’ll expand our demographics, we’ll get a lot of Hispanics doing this, by throwing away the Tea Party, and we’ll get a lot of women voters coming back. We’ll throw away our base, and we’ll get the transgender and the lesbian, gay, bisexual groups, we’ll go out and get the Indians that are ticked off at the Redskins. We’ll get them! We’ll come out against that, and pretty soon we’re gonna own the country.”

That is the way they’re thinking, and all they gotta do to bring all that off? All they gotta do is throw away their base. That’s Christmas morning for ’em. Now, the Democrats never stop whipping up their base. Have you noticed? There’s never any pressure on the Democrats to get rid of their base, and you never hear Democrats ripping in their base. You never hear the Democrats acting embarrassed — and believe me, their base is genuine Looney Tunes. Their base lives and workers in asylums.

But the Democrats never act embarrassed by ’em, never act like they want to get rid of ’em. They never, ever do anything other than whip them up, keep them engaged, and turn them out. Meanwhile, the Republicans are tamping their base down. Why? ‘Cause the Democrats don’t like their (the Republicans’) base, and it’s more important to be liked by the Democrats within the wasn’t establishment, I guess, than it is to have the current base they’ve got.

Now, about this trick about shutting up, not being critical, there’s a Politico story. “Former President Bill Clinton is weighing in on the government shutdown, saying the problem is that ‘constant conflict’ can be a big advantage for politicians at the ballot box. ‘Constant conflict is actually often good politics, because the more you can inflame your supporters the more likely they are to show up at Election Day,’ Clinton said on Monday, according to CNN.”

Well, what is that? That sounds like he’s talking about whipping up the base! If your supporters are more inflamed than the other side, even if the other side has more people agreeing with it, you’ll win because your crowd will show up. Whoa! So while the Democrats and the media have the Republicans convinced that any criticism of Obama is bad politically, and any bickering and anything that reeks of partisanship is extreme, mean-spirited, racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic and shut up?

Meanwhile, the Democrats are out doing the exact opposite.

They’re trying to whip their lunatics into a frenzy to get them to turn out and to get them to register other lunatics to turn out. Now, what Clinton meant this to be, I’m sure, is an attack on the Tea Party. But when you strip that motivation out of it and Clinton’s talking about “conflict is good politics,” of course it is! Conflict is good. Talk to anybody that sends out a newsletter on Wall Street and you ask ’em, “What is the one thing you do to gin up subscriptions?”

They predict a crash.

They say, “The crash is right around the corner, and I’ve got the answers for you. Buy my newsletter,” and subscriptions skyrocket when you do that.

Now, I asked somebody on Wall Street, “Well, what would happen to your subscriptions if you wrote a piece now, ‘The market’s looking good. There are no problems out there and everything is cooling.'” Might get some, but not nearly as many as if they think there’s a crisis. And, remember, the Democrats, there’s no crisis that’s too big to waste. So the Republicans have played right along with this. I remain mystified. My only answer to this is that it isn’t a purposeful effort here to get rid of the base. They really are embarrassed by their base or don’t like the base. They’re just not conservatives, in the Republican establishment.


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