RUSH: Like Silvio Dante once said on an episode of Sopranos (paraphrasing), “Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in. Every time I try to get out, they suck me right back in.” That’s how I feel. I haven’t said anything about this budget deal, and yet I’m being blamed for it now.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: I’ve stayed out of it. You know I’ve stayed out of it. I’ve told everybody I don’t even care about it. It’s the same old BS. It’s the same old soap opera script. There’s nothing new in it. I haven’t even gotten worked up about it, and in the audio sound bites it’s me versus Boehner. I try to step aside, and they suck me back in. I try to leave it alone, and they bring it right back to my doorstep.
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RUSH: Up next, the budget, Boehner and me, Republicans and me. Oh, woe, is them! So-and-so, just dragging me in. You people know listening to this program, I stayed out of this. I didn’t get into this. I didn’t do the usual analysis of this thing, ’cause, frankly, though it bored me from the get. It’s the same old same old. I gotta take a break now. We’ll come back and we’ll start with the audio sound bites on all of that. Did you know that Paul Ryan interned for John Boehner? I read that today. There’s a Washington Examiner some story. I didn’t know that, that Ryan interned for Boehner way back when.
Not that it matters to anything. I just found out.
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RUSH: Okay, here we go to this budget business. Like Silvio Dante said on an episode of Sopranos, “Every time I try to get out, they suck me back in. Every time I try to leave, they pull me back in.”
By the way, what was Pelosi talking about with the budget business? Pelosi actually embraced the suck. What is she talking about? Anyway, let’s start with the ABC network. This morning on ABC, this is correspondent Tahman Bradley reporting on Boehner’s criticism of conservative groups for their criticism of the budget.
BRADLEY: Republican leadership angered at Tea Party Republicans and the far right, who want to cut spending and address the country’s soaring debt.
RUSH ARCHIVE: It just seems that the Republican Party is absorbed, is consumed with eliminating any conservative influence inside the party whatsoever.
BRADLEY: House Speaker John Boehner took on the Tea Party and outside groups who’ve undermined his leadership the past couple of years.
BOEHNER: There just comes to a point when some people step over the line. You know, when you criticize something and you have no idea what you’re criticizing, it undermines your credibility.
BRADLEY: This was the first big battle between the Republican leadership and the Tea Party since the government shutdown. For many veteran GOP lawmakers, that 16-day ordeal was a turning point.
RUSH: Make no mistake about it, they’re scared to death of it, that’s exactly right. But, you know, Boehner keeps talking about, “You know, you criticize something you have no idea what you’re criticizing.” We all knew what was in it. Everybody knew what was in the budget deal. They’re the ones that told us. Every day there’s a new little bit of information disseminated in it. It wasn’t any big mystery what was in this thing, and it turns out that what was being criticized by others was accurate. So I don’t know what Boehner’s talking about on that score.
But this quote of mine, that audio sound bite they got of me, “It just seems the Republican Party’s absorbed –” they coulda pulled that from a year ago. I studiously stayed away from this and I told you all why, because I’m not gonna get sucked in. Speaking of embracing the suck, I’m not gonna get sucked in by this soap opera business going on every day. This was a fait accompli, what was going to happen here. Let’s face it. We talked about this at great length yesterday in a unique way, I think, about Washington, how it’s constituted, why it’s constituted, the wealth that’s being amassed.
There’s nobody there that wants to shrink that town. There are very few, when I say nobody, very few people in Washington, certainly in elective office, who think there’s a crisis. You know, that is the big dividing line, folks. You people that call yourselves Tea Party people, you came into existence, you decided to enter this fray because of all of Obama’s spending. It was massive the first couple, three years, and all of that new debt, and Obamacare. In 2010 it reached a head, it was out of control, and they’re spending your future, your kids, and your grandkids’ future. They are already spending the taxes that would be collected and then some from people not even born yet.
You and me think the country is in peril. Inside the Beltway there is hardly anybody who thinks that, and certainly in both the Democrat and Republican Party establishments, you will not find that as anywhere near a majority opinion. There is a very, very small group of people who believe that. And it is that, among other things, but that’s one of the big ones that is causing the fissure between the Republican establishment and the majority of people in its base.
This is just unacceptable. We don’t have the money, and then they insult us with, what’d they say, “Well, $42 billion of deficit reduction. A $4 trillion budget?” There isn’t any deficit reduction. So then they insult your intelligence by telling you they’re cutting the budget, they are cutting spending. And they’re not. In fact, what they did was lock in spending for Obamacare.
Now, I asked the question yesterday. I’ll pose the question again, hypothetical. Take your pick. If we had a Republican president and a Republican House and a Republican Senate, do you think the Republican Party, as it exists today, would repeal Obamacare? A lot of people would tell you, “No, we’re not gonna go through the trouble. We’re not gonna go through the hassle of doing that. We don’t have an alternative. We’ll just make this work. Too much trouble. Too much work. What do you mean, repeal Obamacare? We can’t. It’s the law of the land.”
The law of the land? I thought the sequester was the law of the land, but that didn’t hold up very long. The sequester was the law of the land, too, but that’s for the most part been given up, those cuts. So they don’t think there’s a crisis, folks. This is no different than when the national debt was six trillion and the budget deficit was $300 billion a year and the percentage of GDP that the debt represented was 18 to 20%, no big deal, same thing. The numbers don’t matter. The percentages are all that matters, and we’re fine. There’s no crisis.
In fact, those people tell you federal government can never run out of money. It’s not possible. They have a printing press. I had ’em tell me this. “Rush, you say that we don’t have the money. Yes, we do. We can print it. We can borrow it. We’re never gonna run out of money.” Amongst people in the establishment, both parties, there’s no — how to put this — pressure, concern. There’s no urgency about balancing anything. They’ll talk now and then near elections, as though there is, but after that it goes by the wayside and it was just talk. Just like all the votes on defunding Obamacare, there were a hundred of ’em, but they were meaningless.
When the time came to really do something about it, the people that actually stood up and said, “Okay, time to do it” were tarred and feathered and destroyed and called terrorists and hostage takers and ransom demanders and so forth. So it really boils down to the establishment doesn’t think that there’s anything even out of the ordinary going on. “This debt, percentage-wise, it’s nothing unusual. We’re not threatened by it and we can borrow and print all we need anyway. I don’t know what you’re worried about. You people are panicked, you Tea Party people, you’re panicked over nothing.”
But the real truth of the matter is that there isn’t any sentiment whatsoever amongst the establishment in Washington to shrink that town, to lessen its role in people’s lives, not really. You know, all the money that’s there is somebody else’s. This is the thing that irritates me. Washington, DC, and the suburbs have become one of the wealthiest enclaves by ZIP code in the country, and the money that everybody has there is somebody else’s first. Nothing is really produced there. Not by government.
Now, you do have some tech companies and others in suburbia, branch offices, but what we’re talking about here, government, where all the money ends up before it gets disbursed, nothing produced. It’s just money taken from other people. So the wealth that exists there is the result of redistribution and taxation, confiscation. When Obama was trying to kill the Bush tax cuts we were told by everybody that the deficit was a matter of national defense. When the Democrats are trying to destroy Republican agenda items, then the deficit’s a horrible thing and the debt is a dangerous thing, and it threatens national security, it threatens national defense. Hillary told us that. Obama told us that.
When they ended up in charge of it, it becomes moral. All the debt, all the spending becomes compassionate and moral. And if there are any Republicans who speak against it, then here come the usual racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, War on Women, mean-spirited extremists. And the Republicans always cower when such allegations are made. In this case, I’m telling you what the real animating thing was, a fear of another shutdown.
I will tell you one more time, the Republican Party establishment is embarrassed of the pro-life element of its base. I’m not gonna go through all the stories that offer evidence or proof ’cause I’ve done it I don’t know how many times, and you’ve heard them all. But you know it’s true. The Republican Party thinks a sizable percentage of its base is really fringe wackos, kooks, if you will. And they associate that group with the people who want to shut down government, which to them is just the kookiest idea in the world. Why would you want to shut down government? The government is the center of the universe. Shutting down the government to these people is the equivalent of extinguishing the sun. You don’t do it. Everybody would die.
The Republicans believe that the vast majority of Americans get up every day and are absorbed totally with what government’s doing and how government’s taking care of them and how government’s giving them benefits, and then if somebody comes along and shuts the government down, people start getting upset and they blame somebody for it ’cause their lives go to hell ’cause the government shut down. Republicans don’t want to get blamed for that. They will allow the Democrats to do anything rather than the government be shut down. And the Republicans have given up any leverage that they might want to use down the road by signaling this. By admitting, by signaling to the Democrat Party they are scared to death and they will do anything to avoid a government shutdown, the Democrats know they can always win and have their way.
I got sound bites. I got ’em coming up. You’ll hear this. You will hear Republicans just cower in fear and anger over the possibility that you freaks, you Tea Party people might engineer another shutdown and that would be the end of the Republican Party. You’re destroying ’em. You just don’t understand.
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RUSH: I’m gonna stick with the audio sound bites here on the budget deal, just to illustrate that which we have discussed up ’til now. The first thing, the first sound bite we played, of course, was ABC News trying to say that it’s John Boehner versus me. AndI stayed out of this. I’m in it now, but I purposely stayed out, ’cause there was nothing new in it. We’ve been through all of that. We just continue with the sound bites just to illustrate to you the way this all gets written and reported.
It’s just same thing every time something like this happens.
We’ll stop now with, Carol Costello talking to Candy Crowley (well-known Tea Party experts, both of them), and they’re talking about Boehner’s criticism of conservatives, because they criticized the deal. See, the media loves Boehner now, ’cause Boehner told the Tea Party to go to hell. Boehner is loved now by the media because he stood up to the conservatives — and to people like the Drive-By Media, we pose the biggest problem that they face. Of all problems anywhere, we are the biggest problem, and when our side turns on us, it’s orgasmic for ’em.
So here’s how this went…
COSTELLO: I’m sure many Democrats are hoping that this is really a sign that the Tea Party has lost its luster among Republicans, and Republicans are now fighting back and maybe the Tea Party will (pause) kind of disappear very soon. What’s your take?
CROWLEY: They have certainly, on — on talk radio, gone after John Boehner a great deal on this particular, uh, budget and on what he’s said. But, in the end, it is still in the interests of the Republican Party, including John Boehner, to keep Tea Party types in the fold. These are eager voters who need to come out in November of next year.
RUSH: So here you have the former stalker CNN assigned to me, Carol Costello, and now one of their anchor infobabes, asking Candy Crowley (excited impression), “Is this it? Could this be? Could this actually be the end of the Tea Party, Candy? Is it really? What’s your take? Could it be? Could it be? Is it!” She’s so excited over the possibility of the end of the Tea Party. There is no Tea Party, by the way, as you know and I know.
The Tea Party is made up of people. It’s not an organized party; there is no leader. It’s a body of thought, and it’s not going away, and it represents the majority of the Republican base. (sigh) You know, could somebody tell me what the Republicans are winning, doing it their way? What are they winning, Snerdley? Their RINO candidates for president lose. The next one up that will lose, if he’s nominated, is Christie.
What are they winning? Better stated, what is the Tea Party losing for them? But they think a lot. They think they’ve lost it. (interruption) Four Senate seats? (laughing) That’s right. (interruption) Government shutdown. That’s right. Tea Party’s responsible for the government shutdown. (chuckling) They’re just so afraid of the government shutdown. They don’t win anything doing it that way. Anyway, Candy… (interruption) What? What do they win? (interruption)
Okay. They “win” praise. I’m talking about elections of consequence. They don’t win ’em. Let’s see, 1992? Ahem. 1996? Ahem. 2008? Ahem. 2012? Ahem. They’re nominating the same types. The moderate, middle-of-the-road, RINO types, people that definitely aren’t conservatives, ’cause the country’s never gonna elect those people, right? If they had a track record of winning, some of this might be a little bit more understandable.
But, anyway, you heard Candy Crowley had to tell Costello, “No, no, they’re really not going away, Carol.” They happen to be the Republican base, and the Republicans will need them in November, and they will need them in November. Look at 2010. That’s a Tea Party landslide, midterm congressional victory that the Republican Party didn’t do squat to win. The 2010 midterms. (interruption) Mmm-hmm. (interruption) Well, I know I’ve said that. I have proffered the possibility that the Republicans may indeed…
This is something I think that has to be considered.
The Republican establishment may in fact be so desirous of getting rid of the Tea Party as its base, they may be willing to lose some elections in order to get rid of their base and put up a new base. Now, Pelosi is out there saying… I don’t know this happened or not. Pelosi is saying that Boehner told her to wait until next year for amnesty. They’re not gotta be able to get to it this year. Boehner told her to be patient and wait.
That’s what she is saying. I just saw it on the Drudge Report, that Pelosi is saying that Boehner told her they’re gonna do “immigration” next year. “Amnesty” was not used. The word “amnesty” was not used. “Immigration” will be done next year. Now, Boehner has to know that the base doesn’t want any part of it. Why would they do it, then? You can’t eliminate the role that money is playing in that, either. Donor dollars. You cann’t! You know it as well as I do.
If they’re getting pressure from big-time donors that they better support amnesty, that’s what they are going to do. (interruption) I know. It sounds like Obama talking to Dmitry Medvedev. (impression) “Well, look, you go tell Vlad that I’ll be a lot more flexible after I win reelection.” (Boehner) “Well, look, Nancy Pelosi, sit tight, do election next year or immigration next year.” Here’s Boehner. This is yesterday in Washington. He doubled down here on conservatives misleading their “followers” and everything.
BOEHNER: Well, frankly, I think they’re misleading, um, uh, their followers. I think they’re, uh, pushing our members in places where they don’t want to be — and, frankly, I just, uh, think that, uh, uh, they’ve lost all credibility. You know, they pushed us into this fight, uh, to defund Obamacare and to shut down the government.
RUSH: There you have it!
That is, I’m telling you, what is the primary animating thing.
The establishment is livid that Ted Cruz and his gang engineered. with public support. what happened in the government shutdown. They’re livid. They think (erroneously, I might add) that that’s why they are looked upon with disfavor by the majority of people in the country because they think that a majority of people didn’t want the shutdown. Most people didn’t notice it and don’t even care.
But they believe that the Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Tea Party-engineered shutdown… You can just hear how ticked off Boehner is about this, and here’s Boehner now saying what the Democrats were saying about Ted Cruz, and not just the Democrats. Who was it that Republicans were accusing Cruz of misleading? “Well, you know, Cruz is out there promising people things that he can’t deliver.” Oh, that’s right. It was Peter King, Mr. Long Island, who doubles as a member of Congress and a Fox News analyst.
He was saying that Cruz was misleading his followers, that Cruz was promising people, getting ’em to sign a petition for something that could never happen. “We’re not gonna defund Obamacare. He’s telling ’em lies,” and now that’s what Boehner says. He’s joined that chorus that the Tea Party guys are mislead, and he’s talking primarily here about Heritage Action and two other lobbying groups. Club for Growth. He’s really not talking about me in this case.
I didn’t join this fray. Other radio talk show hosts did big time. I stayed out of it.
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RUSH: Here’s Ray in Livermore, California, as we head back to the phones. Hi, Ray. Great to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: You really know how to get under their skin, Rush. You’re gonna do it again with this one.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Merry Christmas to Rush Limbaugh, David Limbaugh, and the entire EIB Network. I called about what you were talking about in, I think, the first hour: Boehner going after the Tea Parties. I think we were told in 2011 by Harry Reid that the Tea Party is bad, and now we’re being told by Boehner that he’s only one-half of one-third of government, but help me out on this, Rush. Isn’t it that Boehner really just has one-half of one-third of a backbone? Isn’t that what we’re really seeing?
RUSH: Well, sheesh! (laughing) Way to put me in the middle of it here. I have stayed away from this! (laughing) One-half of one-third of a backbone? (laughing).
CALLER: Rush, I’m starting a fund for spinal transplants for members of Congress, and I’ll have my Web page up soon, and we’ll take your donations so we can get some backbones to these Republicans in Washington, DC.
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you, there are some linguini spines there.You’re right about that.
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