RUSH: Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, announced that he’s running for president today. I think that gets us up to 16 announced Republicans. He gave a, eh, fairly average 20-, 25-minute long stem-winder. We have just a couple of sound bites I want to play for you. He was in Livingston, New Jersey, at Livingston High School. He said he traveled around the country and he keeps hearing all these people telling him that Americans are angry. But he said he’s traveled around the country and he hasn’t found anybody angry. He hasn’t found anybody mad. He’s found a lot of anxiety out there, he says, but he hasn’t found anybody that’s angry because Americans don’t get angry — and do you know why Americans don’t get angry? ‘Cause Americans want to compromise.
Yeah.
Here we go. First of two sound bites.
CHRISTIE: (shouting) Both parties… Both parties have failed our country! Both parties have stood in the corner and held their breath and waited to get their own way. Both parties have led us to believe that in America — a country that was built on compromise — that somehow now compromise is a dirty word. If Washington and Adams and Jefferson believed compromise was a dirty word, we’d still be under the crown of England!
AUDIENCE: (cheers and applause)
RUSH: So here we go. It’s the latest push for compromise. The American people are not mad. They’re anxious and they want compromise; they want people working together. How many of you believe liberals and Democrats are failing? Governor Christie said here, “Both parties have failed our country. Both parties have stood in the corner and held their breath, like children, and waited to get their own way.” Do the Democrats strike you as standing in the corner, pouting because they don’t get their own way? Are they really thinking that they have failed? I’m talking about the Democrats, now. When you look at what’s happening in Washington, is it really paralyzed? Is nothing really getting down in Washington? Is that…? How many of you think that?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I don’t know, folks. I know what Governor Christie is trying to say here and I know the message that he’s trying to impart, but I have to tell you that maybe we should send him some of the Rush Revere books. If our ancestors had compromised, we might still be ruled by England.
Now, what Governor Christie’s talking about is when we sat down after we had not compromised and kicked England’s butt, then we sat down to write the Constitution and other things, that’s when we compromised, that’s when Washington and Jefferson and Madison and Franklin and all the rest of the boys — and they were boys back then — well, men, males. Gee, look at how guarded and protective you have to get.
Anyway, that’s when he’s talking about the fact that they compromised. But they didn’t compromise. They tried compromise, by the way, with the king. They tried. I mean, the king demanded that the colonists house and feed British soldiers. There were any number. They tried compromising on taxes until they couldn’t take it anymore, so they dumped the tea in the harbor. I mean, the compromise didn’t work, and it led to the Declaration of Independence and then the war for independence.
Well, Governor Christie’s talking about when we became a country and started resolving the differences that we had with each other. That’s when we compromised. And you know what one of those compromises was? Dare I go there? Dare I go there? Mr. Snerdley, dare I answer my own question? You know what one of the compromises was? Even before — one of the compromises was with the Southern states, which at the time were run by the Democrat Party. There wasn’t a Republican Party ’til Abraham Lincoln came along and said he wanted to end slavery and preserve the union. The Democrats wanted slavery. The Southern states, the Southern colonies demanded that there would be no admonition or abolition of slavery in the Constitution.
Well, the others realized, if you read any John Adams, you know that the many of the early founders just detested slavery at the time they were putting the Constitution together because they are writing documents based on human liberty and all men created equal, Declaration of Independence, so forth. They knew slavery, the country could not abide, the country could not be what they envisioned it to be. And yet, to get the Southern states to go along with the revolution, they had to compromise. So you could say — dare I answer my own question, Mr. Snerdley. You could say that slavery was a part of the founding of America because of compromise. And I would be right. Of course I’m right. I am always right.
It was compromise that gave us a nation founded with certain states permitted to keep slaves. Okay. I’m not trying to stir anything up here, folks. I’m just pointing out what I know. I know what Governor Christie’s trying to do, and I know that many Republicans still think that all the people in America don’t want anything but compromise, that’s what they want. They want cooperation, bipartisanship. This has become almost a mantra in the Republican Party, as though these guys sit around, they meditate all the time and compromise, compromise, ohm is their mantra. Let’s play these two sound bites. Play the first one again, play ’em both back-to-back in context here. Here’s the first. This is from Governor Christie’s presidential announcement this morning.
CHRISTIE: (shouting) Both parties… Both parties have failed our country! Both parties have stood in the corner and held their breath and waited to get their own way. Both parties have led us to believe that in America — a country that was built on compromise — that somehow now compromise is a dirty word. If Washington and Adams and Jefferson believed compromise is a dirty word, we’d still be under the crown of England!
AUDIENCE: (cheers and applause)
RUSH: Oh oh. The crowd had a delayed reaction. Not sure what to do. They’re a pro-Christie crowd, not sure they agreed with that, but they knew as a pro-Christie crowd they better erupt. So they thought about it for a couple split seconds. Probably used up the leap second that we’re gonna have.
By the way, speaking of that, we are adding a leap second. You know why? We’re doing this at 11:59:59. We’re doing it universal time, which would be five p.m. American time, five p.m. Eastern. I didn’t mean to say that Eastern time zone’s American and the rest aren’t, it was a faux pas. Look at this. (laughing) I didn’t mean to insult those of you in the western time zones as not being American. EDT, five p.m. today, they’re gonna add a leap second. Now, the last time this had to happen was I think, I might get the year wrong, but it was not that long ago, 2010, 2012, and when it happened, I think Qantas airways had 50 planes delayed.
It screwed up, a bunch of websites went down with just adding a second. The reason they have to add the second is because the earth is not rotating on its axis quite as fast. Well, obesity is one of the problems, no question, climate change, global warming, CO2 just waiting the atmosphere now. It’s a burden the earth is having trouble carrying. Oh, speaking of that, we now — (laughing) — you know, I’m not gonna be able to win with those of you that love the pope, but one of the lead advisors going to the pope’s conference on climate change is an Occupy Wall Street founder, who is one of the most radical extreme leftists. I’ve got the details coming up.
Anyway, Google even went down two or three years ago when this happened, for a little while. It screws everything up. It was a miniature version of what they all thought was gonna happen with Y2K. It’s not gonna become 00.00.00 when they think it is. They have to add another second in there. And what Google is gonna do, rather than wait until the actual moment of truth to do it, they’re gonna has had a couple of split seconds during the course of the day today, when you won’t even notice it, and your computer system won’t notice it.
But be on the lookout around five p.m. Eastern. That’s when they’re gonna add the split second, coordinated universal time bunch, which is what coordinates every clock on every computer. We’ll see what happens.
At any rate, so Governor Christie is saying here that Washington and Adams and Jefferson had believed compromise is a dirty word, we’d still be under the crown of England. No. We would still be under the crown of England if we had compromised with the crown. We wouldn’t have become the United States of America when we did, if we had compromised with the king. And we tried, by the way. We tried compromising and it didn’t work. The king continued to take advantage, abuse, imprison. He was a monarch; he was a dictator. Raised taxes, all this stuff, Boston Tea Party. You know the drill. We tried compromise. It didn’t work. So we had to compromise with the Southern states, which that compromise created a nation which had slave states in it. Slave states that were run by the Democrat Party. Here’s the next Christie sound bite.
CHRISTIE: When I stand up on a stage like this in front of all of you, there is one thing you will know for sure. I mean what I say, and I say what I mean, and that’s what America needs right now. (cheering) I’ve proven that you can stand up and fight the most powerful special interests this state has to have and stand up and stop them, but at the same time reach across the aisle to our friends in the Democratic Party and say, “If you have a good idea, I’m willing to work with you,” ’cause that’s what our country needs.
RUSH: It’s painful.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: What just happened with the Obama pan-Pacific trade giveaway thing? What just happened there? (interruption) I mean, didn’t the Republicans compromise almost totally and make that happen? (interruption) The Republicans gave that to Obama. The Republicans did more than compromise; they provided the jet fuel for it. Is that the kind of thing that he’s talking about? I mean, that’s compromise.
Democrats wanted no part of Obama’s trade deal, but the Republicans, they didn’t compromise with the Democrats in Congress or the House, Senate. They compromised with the president. I guess that’s okay. I guess they’re just… There’s not enough of that going on out there, folks, and if we had more of that going on out there, why, things would be better. Look, I know where this comes from. This is now obvious. This is part of the Northeastern moderate/liberal Republican handbook. There obviously is one.
And if that describes you, you have to have as one of your lead comments that you are willing to compromise. You are willing to work with the Democrats. If they’ve got a good idea, you’ll listen to ’em. Now, there has to be a reason for this. As silly as it is, there has to be a reason. And I think I have a pretty good bead on what it is. I think that this is the Republicans’ way (it’s a flailing attempt) to disabuse people of the public image Republicans have, which is that they are racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobe, mean-spirited, intractable, uncompromising, domineering, dominated, whatever negative character traits you can come up with.
The Republicans believe that that is how they are perceived by people that do not vote Republican. So it’s obvious that it’s considered necessary to get votes from people who are not Republican if they’re gonna win, and so this incessant mantra. Christie’s not the only one. I mean, Romney vomited this kind of stuff. Jeb Bush is famous for it. I mean, they’re all out there. The Northeastern Republican Handbook Republicans are all promising they’re gonna compromise. So they are accepting a premise. They’re not mean-spirited. They’re not extremist. They’re not racist. They’re not bigots. They’re not homophobes.
They’re none of that.
But they are accepting the premise that they are because that’s what they think the voters believe, and so they’re trying to counter it with this. And they’ve been trying to do this for 20 years, or 15, ten years, whatever the number of years they’ve been trying it, and I don’t know that it works. I mentioned long ago a prediction that I made or an observation I made back in the nineties, and you might even say it was an accusation. I have tried to inform people that the Democrat Party, the left, don’t even waste time anymore articulating policy differences with us.
They do not debate us.
This is patently obvious.
They don’t debate us on policy ideas. They don’t want to go anywhere near that. They will not win in a sincere, honest, up-and-down debate on policy. What they do instead is rely on the default smear. The default smear that Republicans are, at their core, mean (which is a big one), racist (another big one), sexist, bigoted, and homophobic. This is the Democrat modus operandi. The Democrats do not win by defeating us in policy arena debates. The Democrats win by character assassination that is facilitated by their willing accomplices in the media.
And here we’re seeing evidence of it again. Governor Christie, first thing he does, he’s tried to disabuse people watching his speech that he’s not what they think he is. And how does he try to disabuse them? By promising he’ll compromise. By promising he will work with the other side, that both parties are failed. That’s not to be interpreted as a criticism of the Democrats. What Governor Christie is hoping people here so that he, too, thinks his party sucks, and in that way trying to build a bridge of commonality of people he wants to vote for them.
It would be like you telling somebody you’re gonna marry, “Yeah, my parents suck. I know they suck. But don’t worry about it. We’ll fix it after we get married. I know you don’t like my parents, and I don’t like ’em, either. I know you don’t like my grandmother, and I don’t like her, either. And I know you don’t like my uncle, and I don’t like him either. I know my family is a bunch of creeps.” As a way of winning approval. But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because this “branding,” if you will, whatever you want to call it is really deep.
It succeeds, and the Republicans haven’t fought back against any of it. And I don’t think what Governor Christie’s doing is considered fighting back. He’s acknowledging it, tacitly so, as everybody does who says what he’s saying here, and they’re attempting to gain favor with people by a wink and a nod. “Yeah, I know! We got some real wackos on our side.” He doesn’t say that, but when you say that both parties have failed, both parties have stood in the corner, both parties here, both parties have led us to believe in America… Both parties! “But I’m willing to compromise.”
This whole strategy of the left is played out time and time again, and especially under Obama. Everybody on the Republican side is accused of this. I’m accused of being hyperbolic and all the other things as well. The poisoning of the brand of the Republican Party is the plan; the facts be damned. They do not and will not debate us on policy. They cannot win. So therefore the South is racist. Christians are bigots and homophobes. Republican men are sexists and mean predators and violent. We are bitter clingers.
We are religious fanatics who are just as dangerous as ISIS, just as dangerous as Al-Qaeda. But liberalism and the Democrats? They’re blameless because they’re all of the wonderful things. They’re compassionate; they’re friendly. They’re not mean, they’re very nice, and they’re able to relate and understand the life you are living and how bad it is, and the Democrats are willing to try to relate to you and help you make it better. We haven’t really gone to war with the left. This is… We have here. Republican Party hasn’t. George W. Bush didn’t defend himself or his party for eight years. The last two Republican candidates for president did not defend themselves or their party this way.
This premise has been accepted for way too long. And promising to compromise? It’s just… I fear not.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Margate, New Jersey, this Eric. You’re up first today as we head to the phones. And welcome, sir, great to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, great to talk with you. I like Perry, by the way, but I called to talk about Governor Christie.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I want to take you back. Remember Hurricane Sandy and the governor of New York told President Obama not to come in and it was two weeks before the presidential election with Mitt Romney, and Governor Christie decides to do a photo-op in the city of Brigantine. I called you before and I said, “That’s because he wanted to run for president later on,” and other things in the state of New Jersey here. Oh, with Hurricane Sandy, by the way, I stayed. We weren’t allowed to leave our towns here for over a week, and people weren’t allowed to come in and check on their homes. So I was checking on people’s houses here. I had an Air Force pilot, he got arrested for leaving when he had to go over the bridges to get to the mainland. He had to go in front of a judge. He came back on the island, ran the barricade.
But remember the Revel casino? The Revel casino had to get finished. And that closed up here, and the state helped finish that, was halfway done, and now three other casinos are closed, and Atlantic County I think, the county I live in, is the biggest foreclosure rate in the whole country right now, and also my town city of Margate’s fighting the state ’cause the governor insisted on putting sand dunes along all the beaches here, and we’re spending of thousands dollars ’cause we don’t want sand dunes on our beaches. So the governor isn’t all who he makes himself out to be.
RUSH: You just better hope they never discover sea turtles on your beach or the sand dunes are gonna be the last thing you’re gonna be concerned about. You know, I remember that. It was not just Governor Cuomo that told Obama they didn’t want him to show up. Bloomberg didn’t, either, after Hurricane Sandy, Bloomberg said stay outta here. We don’t need you coming in here with all the security and gumming up the roads and so forth, and Governor Cuomo said the same thing. Governor Christie said come on in, and practically had some man love going on walking on the beach there, arm and arm. A week before the election!
A week before the election. And your theory that he was doing it ’cause he’s gonna run for president. Maybe. It would fit the compromise meme. Governor Christie said, hey, my state had been devastated, and the guy with the money came to look at it and I had to do what I had to do for my state and help my state rebuild. So that’s how Governor Christie explained that. Senator Rubio and his beach house there, did it have any damage?
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