RUSH: North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis in the Charlotte Observer yesterday wrote his own op-ed: “Voters Didn’t Give Republicans a Mandate.” He says, “Since the election, I’ve heard some of my fellow Republicans claim that the party received a decisive mandate from voters. Let’s be clear: The American people didn’t give the GOP a stamp of approval or a mandate to ram through an ideologically-driven, far-right agenda. If the election was a mandate for anything, it was for elected officials in both parties to break through the gridlock to finally start producing results.”
That is a Republican writing that! Thom Tillis, North Carolina.
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RUSH: Now, Thom Tillis. I ran into this last night, and I know what’s going on here. And this, by the way, is, I think, a good illustration. The left claims… Oh, folks, I was just telling Mr. Snerdley. These sound bites are coming up. I didn’t notice it happened. I got the sound bite roster yesterday from Cookie, and, apparently, PBS did this show last night on reviewing the Obama administration on health care, which they blame me for everything. They only mention my name once, but, in every segment, they used sound bites from me to demonstrate and illustrate the opposition and the obstructionism to Obama.
And, in addition to that, there is a post from somebody. I have forgotten who, and I don’t want to start looking at The Stack right now. It would just distract me. But somebody made the point somewhere last night that Donald Trump studied thousands of hours of Rush Limbaugh before deciding to make the run. He studied thousands of hours of me to learn the lingo, the mechanism by which to connect to voters. I don’t know if it’s true. I think it’s fascinating there’s somebody out there that thinks this.
And if there’s any grain of truth to it, I can’t confirm it. I don’t know.
But this is a classic. The left says that the reason the Republicans obstructed Obama is because they’re afraid of me. They’re afraid of criticism from me, and this is one of things what Obama was telling them. “You gotta stop listen to Rush Limbaugh because not how things get done in Washington!” If you listen to Rush, you’re just never gonna cooperate with me.” And in fact, Obama is leaving office complaining and whining about the fact that the Republicans remain scared of me for eight years, and because of that, refused to help him!
But let’s not forget, he never wanted their help. Obama’s the guy that was out there saying, “I won; you lost. Why don’t you just go somewhere else? I’m not interested in what you have to say.” He never wanted to work with Republicans. Every time Obama would say, “You know, I’m working on this. If anybody has got a better idea, if anybody’s got some insight, I don’t care who it is. If it makes it better, I’m open.” BS. There was never any desire to do anything but smother the Republicans. Which is fine. That’s what politics is.
So here comes Thom Tillis, senator, North Carolina, in the Charlotte Observer, writing an op-ed piece claiming: “Voters Didn’t Give Republicans a Mandate.” He says, “Since the election, I’ve heard some of my fellow Republicans claim that the party received a decisive mandate from voters.” He says, “Let’s be clear: the American people didn’t give the GOP a stamp of approval or a mandate to ram through an ideologically-driven, far-right agenda.” Here’s a Republican using the term “far-right.”
I mean, that is a derogatory term, and he’s using it to talk about his own voters and other Republicans all across the country. He says, “If the election was a mandate for anything, it was for elected officials in both parties to break through the gridlock to finally start producing results.” Now, this is patently not true. It’s obviously not true. So why is he writing this? Well, I will venture forth some guesses here in just a second. But let’s deal with the substance here.
Where could anybody, how could anybody look at this election and this campaign and conclude that what voters wanted was the two parties to “break through the gridlock” and work together? Because what has happened in this country since 2010 is that the Democrat Party has been shellacked. The American people have defeated Democrats in 2010, 2012. Remember, even when Obama wins reelection 2012, the Republicans won control of the House. The tea Party election 2010, then 2012, and then they got the Senate.
And all during this period of time the Democrats have lost… I’m sure you’re tired of hearing me say this. They’ve lost over a thousand electoral seats in national and state elections. They have been repudiated totally. Obama personally and political has been repudiated. There was no evidence and is no evidence whatsoever that American voters want anything to do with the Democrat agenda. Not a majority of them. The Democrat Party has been, folks — it really has been rendered — in many ways not a national party.
The only thing that gives the illusion that it’s a national party is the media and the way they portray Washington as being dominated by Democrats. Whatever Democrats do is what “is.” Whatever Democrats think is what everybody thinks. Whatever Democrats want is what everybody wants in Washington, supposedly. But outside in the real world, Democrats were told to take a hike. And yet here’s a Republican senator claiming that this is an election about sending Republicans and Democrats to Washington to work together, to stop gridlock.
This election was specifically about making America great again. And to do that, the American people realized they had to defeat Democrats. They don’t want to the Democrats participating in this. The Democrats are the reason people are miserable and unhappy and have future careers that look dismal and look like they’re absent any serious health care. I mean, it’s just… It’s a total, total mess. Tillis then says, “Americans from all walks of life have voiced their deep frustration with Washington’s seeming inability to get anything constructive done.”
No, no.
There’s all kinds of stuff that got done, and the American people didn’t like it. How in the world can he say that people are tired of Washington not getting anything done? One-sixth of the U.S. economy was taken over by Washington! Health care. The Constitution ceased to exist. Look at immigration! The laws of the land have been entirely, totally ignored. People cannot find work. There are 94 million Americans not working because of Obama and Democrat Party economic policies.
There is or was national malaise of depression and just America was flatlined. There wasn’t any energy; there wasn’t any optimism. Obama was giving away the United States’s superpower status. He was giving away the American lead in technology and in energy. He was doing everything he could to cut this country down to side, under the pretext that America is the problem in the world and has never deserved our superpower status because we acquired it by virtue of stealing resources and other things from other countries. This was not about things not getting done.
This was about all kinds of things getting done that the American people didn’t vote for! “For decades,” Mr. Tillis writes, “they have watched politicians talk a good game while failing to deliver.” No, no, no, no. They have delivered! This is the problem! This is a Republican senator writing this, don’t forget. The Democrats have delivered. And the Republicans didn’t do very much to stop it. We have out-of-control budget deficits. We had a out of control national debt. We have Obama budget after Obama budget that was rubber-stamped and authorized!
There wasn’t anything that didn’t get done? The government was growing inexorably. The government was growing unstoppingly. The government was taking over everything it could get its hands on! The IRS had been politicized. The EPA had been politicized. The Department of Justice had been politicized. You had the Benghazi circumstance where people were put in jail for having had nothing to do with what happened. The American people were lied to routinely.
We had Fast and Furious where the Regime sold high-powered weapons to Mexican drug cartels in a scheme to get the American people so upset they demanded gun control, which is another thing the Democrats are trying to do is get rid of guns. And Senator Tillis claims that the American people are tired of nothing getting done? The American people are tired of precisely what was happening and getting done! He says, “They have watched as politicians intentionally create chaos and widen the partisan divide for their own personal gain.”
Yep, that’s a description of the Democrats (chuckles), and the Republicans didn’t do anything. Republicans were given mandates in 2010. The Republicans were given a mandate in 2014. They didn’t do anything! Here’s a guy saying that there wasn’t ever a mandate and certainly not in 2016. “Republicans should remember that when Trump campaigned, he wasn’t holding up a conservative manifesto at every rally. Instead, his message was simple: cut deals and deliver results.” Senator Tillis, you either weren’t listening or you’re not watching.
Have you noticed who he’s surrounded himself with? I’m the first person to tell you that Donald Trump’s not ideological, but that doesn’t mean the election wasn’t. Here’s a Republican trying to tell us there was no ideological component in this election when liberalism was sent packing, when liberalism was repudiated? And there was no ideological component here? Take a look at Trump’s cabinet. Take a look at the people who speak for Trump.
For crying out loud, he has surrounded himself with perhaps a more conservative cabinet than any Republican president we’ve ever had! I’m sorry for getting a little expressive here. But this is mind-boggling. You know what this is? Mr. Tillis obviously is going to run for some other office somewhere down the road, because this — what he’s writing here and what he’s saying — bears no resemblance to what happened in the most recent election.
This is the kind of moderate, bipartisan BS that you get from RINOs, and RINOs had nothing to do with this past election, other than trying to stop Trump, and they failed. We even had some conservatives known as Never Trumpers who tried to stop Trump, and they failed. Thom Tillis was elected in North Carolina to enact conservative solutions, to participate with the rest of the party in enacting conservative solutions to the existing problems created by the left and by the Democrat Party.
He was not sent to Washington to compromise with far, far leftists in the Senate! I can’t believe that he actually thinks he was sent to Washington to compromise with radical leftists. But here’s the thing. Senator Tillis, like it or not, the problems that we have that Trump was elected to address and fix are going to have solutions, and every one of these solutions — and I don’t care who you are. There may be some Never Trumpers who don’t like this. Every solution to this is going to be rooted in conservatism.
It’s not gonna be thoroughbred conservatism. It’s not gonna be 100%, undiluted conservatism. But every solution is going to have conservative elements. It must or there won’t be any solution. Any solution that has any of the status quo, which has radical liberalism in it, will not be a solution! It will be a continuation. And Mr. Tillis was not sent to Washington to continue what has been happening the past eight years. Now, I looked. He barely won his first election to the Senate, and he would not have won if conservatives had seen this side of him.
If he had campaigned for his Senate seat writing things like this, he would not have won. In this sense, he’s a throwback. He is one of those guys that, as a Republican, runs as a conservative and tells you all these great things you want to hear — and gets to Washington and doesn’t do it. So maybe he wants to be governor of North Carolina someday. I don’t know. But this is the kind of stuff you say if you are going to seek an office in, say, a local election or state election like governor, where you have a sizable collection of leftists and Northeastern transplanted Yankees who’ve come down to escape high taxes and oppressive government and are creating the same circumstances in their new locations in the South.