CALLER: George W. Bush.<\/p>\n
RUSH: What did he do?<\/p>\n
CALLER: With his speech.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I know. What did he do with it? What offended you about it or bothered you?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Just his innuendos of not saying his name, and I know who he was talking about. It was like… And God help him, John McCain? I feel so bad for him with what he\u2019s going through medically. Within a few days, when Barack Hussein Obama was sitting at the table and basically told him to get in the back of the bus and shut up; we won. And you never heard any more about him! And now look at him. It\u2019s just… It\u2019s got me tweaked.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/fb-092517-McCain.jpg\")
RUSH: Look, two things: When it comes to McCain you kind of have to throw everything out. I mean, I do. Maybe some of you have a tougher time doing that. I throw it all out. McCain… (sigh) Let me just say it: He is never, ever going to forgive or get over Trump\u2019s comment that Trump doesn\u2019t admire military people who get captured. So in McCain\u2019s mind, he\u2019s got the rest of his life (however long it is) to pay Trump back for that, and every chance he gets he\u2019s going to do it. I just write that off as human nature as applied to Senator McCain.<\/p>\n
I mean, he relished walking into the Senate chamber and thumbing down Obamacare repeal. He relished the reaction to it. The illness that Senator McCain is suffering… You just have to throw it out. I\u2019m not saying give him a total pass. I\u2019m just saying I understand it. I understand where Senator McCain is coming from, and especially with the comment that we heard earlier this week from Senator McCain. We parsed this. I went through it. It was quite telling.<\/p>\n
When McCain was speaking of this vaunted position in the world that the United States created for itself 75 years ago, post-World War II era. He said that we created the world order ,and then we assumed leadership of that world order, and now all this talk of nationalism and punks that are talking this way are abrogating our responsibility. Senator McCain doesn\u2019t realize that that position of leadership was thrown away the past eight years. Obama threw that away! Obama resented every aspect of that arrangement, thought it was not our position to make it.<\/p>\n
We had no business leading the world because we were the problem in the world. We went through all this. But Senator McCain is still living in the era where that\u2019s what the Washington establishment is and what it did and what it does. So his desire to make Trump pay is twofold: That comment that Trump made during the campaign and a couple of other things. Now, as to George W. Bush and the speech yesterday. He didn\u2019t mention Trump\u2019s name, you\u2019re right. Uh… (sigh) I\u2019m a little… (sigh)<\/p>\n
I guess I\u2019m somewhat restrained on this because I owe the Bush family a lot. I mean, they\u2019ve opened a lot of doors for me, and President Bush was as accommodating and nice to me and presented me opportunities that no other president has or probably ever will. And in terms of just his existence as a human being, he\u2019s just a fine, fine, man. He\u2019s a good guy. He\u2019s a great guy, a fine man, and so this is the problem with getting to know these people. It\u2019s why I\u2019ve always tried really not to get too close to all these people.<\/p>\n
It can\u2019t help but then affect commenting on them.<\/p>\n
That having been said, I can understand George W. Bush and his speechwriters. I think Mike Gerson wrote that speech, maybe Pete Wehner, and they\u2019re both the leaders of the Never Trumper, Never Trump brigade, and they\u2019re both besides themselves over what they think has happened to the country because of Trump. I\u2019m not saying Bush doesn\u2019t agree with it, because he said the words. But I would probably attach some meaning to it since Gerson was his primary speechwriter and Pete… Pete\u2019s a friend of mine, too.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/FB-101917-GWB.jpg\")
Pete worked for Bill Bennett at Empower America, and he was one of the top lieutenants of Karl Rove in the White House during the Bush administration, and he\u2019s also a fine guy. We just have a very wide disagreement now about where the country is and where it\u2019s going and conservatism\u2019s role in it and all that. The thing about the Bush speech, though, that troubled me the most… I don\u2019t care what he says about Trump, because it\u2019s predictable. It\u2019s predictable that establishment people are going to hate Trump. He\u2019s the outsider.<\/p>\n
He can\u2019t be permitted to come in and shake things up and succeed; it won\u2019t fly. They\u2019re never going to be persuaded. The establishment types, we\u2019re always going to be embattled with them. They\u2019re never going to acquiesce to any of this that\u2019s going on. They\u2019re never going to be persuaded to support it and join it. This is anathema to them.<\/p>\n
They also come from the position that McCain was talking about earlier in the week, that we have this vaunted new world order that the United States established in the post war period, that we have leadership of the world, and that\u2019s a tremendous responsibility. And we\u2019re abrogating it now with all this talk of American greatness and America, putting America first and making America great. They think that conflicts with the new world order of leading the world.<\/p>\n
And I strongly disagree. The thing about the speech that Bush made was the characterization of the people of the country today — bigotry, white supremacy, racism. You couldn\u2019t win an election if all you had voting for you was white supremacists. You don\u2019t have enough of those people, probably, to elect anybody to a much bigger office than dogcatcher.<\/p>\n
And yet to suggest that this may be what the country is becoming just misses what\u2019s happening out there and what\u2019s going on. And it\u2019s not that difficult. People do not equate the idea of making America great and keeping it great with somehow threatening the world order. That, to me, American greatness, America leading from greatness, America self-confident in her super power status, America confident in the mission for goodness, decency and justice is all the leadership you need.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t need to capitulate and kowtow to anybody. We don\u2019t need to accept a political agenda of a bunch of people that don\u2019t have our best interests at heart, which is most of the United Nations and most of the European Union. And all there is going on now is an effort to reassert the United States as founded for what it really is: The nation\u2019s lone super power, the lone outpost for freedom and liberty, democracy, decency, morality, all of this.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s an effort now to reestablish this as what America stands for and who America is, rather than an America that cooperates with allegations that America is the problem in the world; America is destroying the world because of climate change.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/GOPEstablishment.jpg\")
The establishment kind of lets that stuff roll off their back. “Ah, that\u2019s just those little tin horns saying that. You can\u2019t take them seriously.” Sorry, we do when we have American presidents who side with the tin horns. I\u2019m going to tell you this story again. It\u2019s an ongoing learning process. Folks, I am still learning about this club, the establishment. Every day is — maybe not every day, but multiple times a week I actually learn something about this club. Who\u2019s in it, who\u2019s not in it, how you get in it, how you stay in it and what happens to you to get tossed out of it.<\/p>\n
Now, I want to take you back, particularly to the last four years, George Bush\u2019s second term. This man was repeatedly lied about. Combined efforts of the Democrat Party and the American media literally set out to destroy the presidency of George W. Bush. It had its roots in the Florida 2000 recount aftermath where they told themselves the election was stolen from them.<\/p>\n
So Bush was an illegitimate president from the get-go. Bush was never afforded, accorded the respect of genuinely elected. He was always a cheater or the beneficiary of cheating. Two weeks after 9\/11, the assault on Bush and his administration began and they never fought back against it. And it crystallized in the second four years, the second term, where they literally tried to undermine the war on terror and the war in Iraq, and they literally sought defeat of the United States.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/PetraeusBetray-173x300.jpg\")
The Democrats were routinely accusing the American military of terrorists acts, terrorizing and raping Iraqi mothers. John Kerry and John Murtha accusing US military, US Marines of this behavior. David Petraeus, who is in the club, by the way, a high-ranking member of the Washington establishment, even after everything has happened, Petraeus is still one of the ranking members. They accuse him of lying before a congressional committee before he even says a word.<\/p>\n
And Hillary\u2019s out there calling him Betray Us. And it was all to discredit what he was going to announce as the latest military strategery to win in Iraq, the surge. During all this there was a State of the Union speech, and Bush was booed and treated shabbily during the speech and before the speech, and one of the ring leaders of the opposition was Russ Feingold, a Democrat senator from Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
And it was vicious. It was vicious every day. Bush\u2019s attitude about it was, “Hey, it\u2019s just politics. It\u2019s no big deal. This is just what happens.” They never took any of it personally, while all of the supporters were and all of the supporters, me included, were livid that this was happening; that there wasn\u2019t any push back and that there wasn\u2019t any anger about it, and there wasn\u2019t any effort to stop it, because as Bush was attacked and assaulted so were all of us who voted for him. And there was no pushback to any of it.<\/p>\n
And it was destructive. It was hurting the country. It was hurting the military. It was designed to. The Democrats were trying to divide everybody in order to win back the White House in 2008. They were ticked off that Lurch had lost it in 2004. But anyway, after that State of the Union speech, the cameras remained rolling as Bush exited the House chamber.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s in the area immediately outside and I see Feingold walk up to him. And they start chatting like the best of friends. And Feingold asks Bush to pose for a picture with him. Bush dutifully stops and poses, puts his arm around him, shakes his hand, gives him a fist pump. They\u2019re the best of buddies. Feingold has been trying to destroy Bush for weeks, for months prior to this. But yet in a moment which was not ostensibly televised… and that told me everything.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/650-102017-George-W-Bush.jpg\")
These are two guys in the establishment, and both play in their roles. Neither of them took it seriously. Neither of them took it personally, and yet we all were. All of us were. And that\u2019s something about the club. The people in the club, they know their rules. And the Republicans, apparently, are supposed to be satisfied with second-tier status. Occasionally winning. But when they do, they\u2019re going to be destroyed. Apparently that\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n
And Trump\u2019s upsetting all of this and it\u2019s got everybody so out of whack they don\u2019t know how to deal with it, because the club has its rules. Unwritten, unstated. And they\u2019ve been totally up in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: You couldn't win an election if all you had voting for you was white supremacists. You don't have enough of those people, probably, to elect anybody to a much bigger office than dogcatcher. And yet to suggest that this may be what the country is becoming just misses what's happening out there and what's going on. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":251584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n